Life After Coffee (4 page)

“Because she said I couldn’t have the iPad.”

“You said ‘I hate you’ before all that!” I snap.

Any outward act of my being a calm and caring parent evaporated around the time of the foot slight. If Peter came over to try and eat my stinky feet, I think I’d just kick him away. Why am I sinking down to their level like I just stepped into a pile of juvenile-behavior quicksand? I’m supposed to rise above all this. That’s what my mother’s been telling me my whole life: “Amy, just rise above it.” That’s what
she’s
been doing her whole life—the second half of it anyway. It seems as if I’ve yet to rise. Are these parenting skills that you’re supposed to pick up along the way, or was the ability to remain reasonable in the face of provocation supposed to be gifted to me right after I finished labor?

“Look. You can have the iPad tomorrow, Billy,” says Peter.

“No, he can’t!”

“It’s fine,” says Peter.
Officially undermined.
“Billy, you can have the iPad if you’ll just tell us why you’re saying such bad things about Mommy.” Billy pauses for a moment. He clearly doesn’t want to talk about this. Yet he clearly does want access to his iPad tomorrow. I suppose it is quite clever the way Peter’s turned it from a stick into a carrot.

“I don’t care about Mommy being here and getting it all wrong. That’s not why I’m mad.”

“Then what is it?” asks Peter.

“I miss you, Daddy. You haven’t been here to play with me. It’s just boring without you. When are you coming back to look after us again?”

“Soon, bud. Very soon. Just give me a bit more time, okay? Mommy is so excited to hang out with you guys right now.” Yeah, I’m practically doing somersaults. “Can you say sorry to her, please, Billy?”

“Sorry,” he says, too quickly, avoiding eye contact. I know he doesn’t mean it, but Peter doesn’t seem to be after a genuine statement here. He just wants to diffuse this thing. And he’s doing a better job of it than I ever could—as evidenced by the last eight minutes of my life.

“Now give your mother a hug.” Billy slumps over, gives my midsection a hollow embrace, and then heads off toward his bedroom. I feel like the kid picked for the team only after the teacher insists someone call her name.

“You okay?” Peter asks me.

“No,” I answer.

“I know,” he says, and comes in for a head bump. We lock eyes deeply for zero point three seconds.

“Daddy! Come and read me a story,” yells Billy. And the moment is broken. Like so many of them before this one.

No one tells you about all of this in the birthing classes. They should. In fact, they should probably do a seminar when we’re all still in high school on how parenthood’s guaranteed to run your relationship and your mental health straight through the shredder. But then the birthrate might start dropping even faster than it already is and fifty years from now there would be no one left to pay the government its precious taxes. This is all a conspiracy.

And now it’s two in the morning and all of this trouble is still floating about in my brain. Around the midnight mark I started to wonder if I was permanently angry as a kid myself, if I ever put my own mother through all this drama. I don’t remember it being that way, but I expect I had a skewed view of the situation. I do remember general tears, fuss, constant arguments—accusations of my being “emotionally volatile”—but that wasn’t until I was a teenager. Maybe I should ask her what kind of a child I was. Maybe Billy’s generalized rage toward me is just par for the course for Jansson stock? Mom and I have had a rather distant relationship since the kids came along and I didn’t quit my job. Every conversation became laced with hints that my constant circling of the globe was practically child abuse, and eventually I just stopped calling. She’s never approved of the untraditional situation. Not that “traditional” worked out any better for her.

I close my eyelids tighter. These kids are going to be up in four hours and counting. I’ve got to sleep. Peter’s busy not-so-gently snoring. Violet has her head in his armpit and her feet on top of my stomach. It’s no wonder I’m wide awake. A fragment of some past advice I read on insomnia comes to mind: if you can’t sleep, get up and do something else. It’s ten in the morning in England. Mom will be at work so I can’t call her. I’ll e-mail instead.

I gently push Violet’s feet to the side, slip out of bed, creep to the laptop, and open it. After a few moments of indignant whirring—turns out that, unlike me, my computer
was
sleeping—we’re ready to go.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Hi Mom,

How’s life in sunny Yorkshire? Any new “English cuisine” recipes for me? If you want to send one now, there’s a chance I might actually be able to cook it these days because I got FIRED. Yup. Fourteen years of doing everything for that cock monkey Dexter and he sold off the company, hoarded the profits for himself, and threw my livelihood into the dumpster. We are screwed. Utterly screwed. We’ve got next to no savings, Peter’s as allergic to work as he ever was and to top it all off, the kids are totally thrown out of routine by my actually being in their lives and now both hate me. Especially Billy who’s being an uber-shit.

As you’ve often vaguely hinted, I’ve always been a failure of a mother. But I feel as if my one saving grace was an ability to provide for my family. Now I’m not even doing that anymore, I’m not sure where I fit in. I think maybe I’ve missed my chance to be a proper part of my family, to be a proper mother. I think I might have missed my chance to ever have their love at all.

Anyway. When you get a minute, maybe you can draw on your own personal experience of a lifetime of handling bullshit and let me know how I’m supposed to cope with all this. Cheers!

Your darling daughter,

Amy

Well.

I obviously can’t send that diatribe.

As much as Mom disapproves of my career, she’d go hairless with worry if she found out we’d lost our only source of income. There’s no point in dragging her down with me into the poop pot of hell that is currently my life. Especially as she’s in no situation to provide any help, financial or otherwise. Besides, between her all-consuming job at the county council and my father, she’s got enough going on.

My mother’s been basically living life from inside a shitstorm since 1997 when—within one glorious year—my dad lost all his money, renounced his US citizenship, developed hard-core arthritis, and moved them from their leafy north London semidetached to an ex-council house in the depths of Yorkshire—and not the nice part. I never got to the bottom of what happened to Dad’s cash. I was told that tax laws were technically not broken, but from what I can gather, he’d authorized loans to a couple of firms in the States and had bent regulations to the point of being obnoxious. He hasn’t been back to the United States since. I don’t think he dares. These days they’re broke. They seem happy enough, considering all they’ve been through, but I think the news that their only child and two grandchildren could be about to starve to death might send them both into a mental death spiral. So what’s the point?

I quickly delete the e-mail before I have some kind of brain spasm and hit “Send.” In its place I send something written in my normal brand of upbeat/vague that I always use for my parents.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Hi Mom,

How’s life in sunny Yorkshire? Any new “English cuisine” recipes for us? Things are much the same as ever here. Peter’s had some time recently to work on his screenplay so we’ve got fingers and toes crossed for that one. Billy’s and Violet’s legs both seem to get two inches longer every time I look at them. Both are as crazy as ever. But that’s kids—right!? I know I can’t have been all peaches and cream—or maybe I was . . . ? Thanks for Billy’s Paddington Bear—he loved it. Sorry I didn’t get many pictures of his party. Anyway—hope you and Dad are well and his knees aren’t giving him too much trouble.

Miss you both!

Love,

Amy

Now that I’ve purged the need to dump all my problems onto my mother, my brain clears, and for one glorious moment I can breathe.

And then someone extremely worrying rushes into the blank space: Matt Colburn.

Matt and I began dating just before his meteoric climb upward, just after he started writing and producing
Real World Vampires
. Matt jumped right on the whole vampire/supernatural thing just as it was taking off. Despite what he says in interviews, he never had a flicker of interest in anything remotely supernatural before the show. He’s more of a social scientist than a writer or producer. His ability to scope out trends a millisecond before they take off is uncanny. After our relationship finally finished, he produced three hit movies, migrated right to the top of the entertainment world, and stayed there. I like to think that the two events were not related. That’s how I met Peter, stalking Matt at Comic-Con trying to find out if the reason he’d finished with me so abruptly was to start seeing someone else. It was: his future wife. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.

Matt ended our three-year relationship in a three-minute conversation when I called him up from a farm in Brazil in the middle of a trip. He announced that what we were doing was no longer practical; that he needed me to make a choice between him and my job, then and there. I wavered for one point two seconds and then chose the job. By the time I got back to LA and wanted to talk it through properly, he was seeing Kimberly. The problem with Matt and me was that each of us was always the most important person in our own lives. I wasn’t willing to ditch my coffee career/obsession to accompany him to premieres and be his mental support hotline/punching bag when he went through one of his self-flagellation episodes. I wasn’t willing to be physically there for the larger percentage of the year. And he wasn’t able to go for weeks in a row by himself.

In the end, I suspect it was in some part the sex that finished our relationship. It was just so damned good that the pauses in between became almost unbearable. So we ended, and I married Peter on the rebound. Not to slight my marriage to Peter. We’ve hit the skids a little since the kids have come along, but who doesn’t? And honestly, Peter’s a much better match and a more supportive husband to me than Matt ever would have been. With Peter there’s a connection that was completely missing in anything Matt and I had. You quickly get the idea from watching
Real World Vampires
that its creator and writer isn’t the most nuanced of people. (And, by the way, shouldn’t that be
Real-World Vampires
? Maybe they thought a hyphen would confuse their target audience.) Personally, I always thought the show was slightly exploitive of the mentally ill. Each week Matt’s crew would profile some sad soul or even a group of unfortunates who sincerely believed they were actual vampires. Fascinating, disturbing, compelling. Matt jumped on the wave of reality TV right as it appeared on the horizon, and he rode that thing all the way to shore—making plenty of money as he went.

It’s getting cold so I crawl back into bed. I see my glasses on my nightstand. I should take this golden opportunity to try and get some of the applesauce off the lenses. I walk into the bathroom, pick up a dampened Spider-Man washcloth, and gently rub at the applesauce. It’s not coming off. Whatever toxic mess of chemicals is in that sauce seems to have bonded with the lens. I rub with a little extra vigor. Big mistake—the lens pops out, straight onto Spidey. If it took me four days to get around to wiping sauce off my glasses, when am I going to find time to get them fixed? Is it still legally permissible to drive if I close one eye? I dig through the medicine cabinet and there at the bottom is a tube of Krazy Glue. Two minutes later and the lens is back in place; however, there is now a semitransparent trail of glue running across the center of the lens.

Looks like by trying to make things better, I just made everything incrementally worse. I take this observation as a signal from up above that, likewise, it’s probably a really bad idea all around to call Matt.

But you know what? I think I’m going to do it anyway.

CHAPTER 6

Peter is watching the kids and I’ve been allotted fifteen minutes in which to call Matt and convince him to read my husband’s script with a view to either buying it or passing it on to someone else willing to plonk down the money for it.

I have the number for Colburn Entertainment, scrawled on a Post-it, in one hand and my iPhone in the other. Should I even make this call? It would be completely easy to tell Peter that I left a message with Matt’s assistant and then just give a series of “oh well, such is Hollywood” shrugs as time passes and the “phone call” is not returned. That’s a rather devious and dishonest way to approach things. However, if there’s a simple way to avoid making this call, I should probably take it. Now that I’m confronted with the moment, speaking to Matt—if I get through—is going to be super awkward. What do I say? “So remember the last time we spoke and you told me unless I ditched my career in order to support yours, we were over? Turns out the guy I opted to marry instead is—in direct contrast to your stupendous success—a colossal failure of a writer. So, even though we haven’t spoken in almost a decade, could you do me the kind of favor you probably wouldn’t extend to ninety-nine percent of the people you meet and please read, and potentially buy, his screenplay? Oh yes, and no one in Hollywood wants to work with my husband because of his bad/litigious attitude—but you probably know that already.”

Well, it’s just not an easy conversation to have, is it? Plus, I’ll completely look like a stalker, like I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the past nine years for an excuse to call him. It’ll look like I never really forgot about him. It’ll look like part of me still wishes it were the olden days, that things had worked out differently. But Peter needs this. No one else is going to do him a favor, and in all honesty Matt’s probably his best way in. We both know that. Peter is a good writer, and who knows, if he’s written something interesting enough, Matt might take a risk on him. And, of course, the truth is, I want to talk to Matt. I want to know that his marriage bores him stupid and that—no matter how it looks to the outside world—his career success hasn’t made him happy at all.

Should I? Shouldn’t I? My fingers apparently have made the choice on my behalf as they appear to be tapping out his number. Looks like I’m doing this. I take a deep breath. It doesn’t help. My finger shakes as I plug in the remaining digits. My heart’s ramming my breastbone like it wants to break free from my chest, free-fall down to my phone, and physically stop my finger from dialing. Too late. It’s ringing. I don’t know if I’m actually going to be able to get a word out. Too quickly someone picks up.

“Colburn Entertainment.” An image flashes into my mind of the impossibly hip twenty-two-year-old girl on the other end of the line. Legs and arms at adolescently awkward angles, her pink pudgy lips all sulky and sultry.

“Um, can I speak to Matt Colburn, please?” I can hear that I sound like a nervous mess. Ms. Sultry probably gets a hundred people a week trying to bluff their way into speaking with Matt. She’ll hear my tremble and think that I’m a wannabe.

“Is he expecting your call?” The way she says it clearly indicates that she already knows the answer is “nope!”

“Not exactly.”

“Do you have a referral?” Eh? From my doctor?

“No. Can I just leave a message for him?”

“Sure,” she says, and somehow I doubt my message is ever going to make it into Matt’s hands. But that’s fine with me. I’ve done my duty. I leave my number, hang up, and mentally mark the close of the entire sequence of events. However, before I’ve even reached the bedroom door, my phone rings. Well, damn it. My arms and legs start to vibrate again. I pick up my phone and stare at the screen. Now that I see the number, I can’t believe I ever forgot it. It’s Matt’s cell. I drop the phone, then pick it up and answer.

“Hello,” I say.

“Amy?” Just two syllables out of his mouth and it’s like I’ve stepped through a fold in time. Nothing’s changed. He’s exactly the same person. We’re in exactly the same situation. I’ve just had him on pause all these years. I should not have made this call.

“Matt. How are you?” I go for formal. For “let’s act as if we’ve never seen each other naked—ever.”

“Amy? What’s happened? Why are you calling?” He’s not joining in with “formal,” and his tone’s gone straight to intimate. Conspiratorial. This isn’t helping my emotional system, which has gone from being flashflooded with adrenaline to saturated in oxytocin.

“I’m actually calling to ask you a favor,” I say, trying very hard to keep the flirt out of my voice. Unfortunately, if there was a curly cord attached to this phone, I’d be twirling it between my fingers right now.

“Where are you?” he says. There’s an urgency to his tone that I vaguely recognize. I’m not sure what the emotion is behind it. Regret? Lust? Passion? I’m possibly projecting here.

“I’m at home, in Pasadena.”

“Can we meet?” he asks. Meet? I wasn’t expecting this.

“It’s okay, Matt. I don’t want to take up too much of your time.” Going for ultraformal now. “It’s Peter O’Hara. My . . . husband. He’s written a screenplay, and I was just wondering if you’d take a look at it.”

“Oh, you were, were you,” he says teasingly. He thinks I’m lying! He thinks I’ve engineered this whole setup in order to get in touch with him.

“Yes. I was. Will you look at it?”

“Sure.”

“Great. What’s your e-mail?”

“Hold up a minute. If I’m going to spend the time reading your husband’s screenplay, then I want to see you in person.”

“Can we Skype?”

“No.”

“Why do we need to meet?”

“Because now that I’ve heard your voice, I want to see you.” That urgent tone again.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” I ask. It seems a pretty pertinent question at this point.

“I think it’s the best idea I’ve had in about a decade.” Well, I can’t say I’m not flattered. But I have to draw this to a close.

“I’m going to messenger it to your office.”

“You do that and I’ll put it straight in the trash.”
Bastard.
Maybe I’ll just hang up. Pretend none of this ever happened. “Don’t hang up the phone, Amy.” He’s not as psychic as he seems. Hanging up on Matt when the conversation wasn’t going the way I wanted was always my thing.

“Come on. I’m surrounded by a bunch of Hollywood jerk-offs all day. It’d be really cool to talk to someone real for a change.”

“One of the little people.”

“Don’t be like that. I know things finished weird between us. I miss you, Amy. You were a laugh. Let’s just meet to say hi. What have you got to lose?”
Everything.

“When?” I ask.

“Soon. I’ll call you.” And with that he hangs up. The lack of “good-bye” somehow seems to make everything even more implicitly shady. Perhaps I’ll hand him a printout, we’ll all have a good
laugh
, and that’ll be the end of this episode of
Real World Exes.

Perhaps. In the meantime I’d better go and share the glad tidings with Peter—and check that there’s some ink in the printer.