Today Will Be Different (5 page)

“I’m not a fan of jazz,” I said to Timby. “No woman is.”

“You should tell Dad to go by himself,” he said.

“Don’t think I haven’t tried,” I said. “But there’s something about me the guy can’t quit.”

We shared a shrug and headed to Joe’s office.

The first thing that should have tripped my alarm was the empty waiting room. But this wasn’t completely unprecedented. Joe had celebrity clients (athletes and musicians) who, for a variety of reasons (ego and ego), couldn’t be in the same waiting room as civilians. Therefore, down the hall from the double-doored entrance to the Wallace Surgery Center was a row of single, unmarked private waiting rooms. Conceivably, Joe’s patients could have been in there.

The second thing I noticed, which did trip my alarm, was the top of the aquarium lying across the couch.

In defense of celebrities (!), they all love Joe. No matter how coddled the quarterback or preening the guitarist, as soon as something goes wrong with their hand, they fly to Seattle because they’ve heard about The Guy. When The Guy turns out to be unpretentious Joe, they become smitten. Joe waters the plants himself. His desk is a mess. The office is in constant chaos because he spends too long with each patient. He treats everyone the same, his curiosity a gentle rain. You’d have to draw him a picture to explain why it’s cooler to save the pinkie of a Cy Young Award–winning pitcher than the wrist of a checkout lady with carpal tunnel. Stars
like
the people who fawn over them; they
trust
the few who don’t.

Nobody was behind the reception window. I moved closer. On the desk was an open container of tortellini salad, its bottled Italian dressing a Proustian blast back to a past I wanted no part of: broke, in New York, eating Korean-deli salad bar.

Deep in the office, Luz the receptionist caught sight of me. I waved. Luz walked over, wiping her hands on her jeans. Jeans + stinky desk food = three-alarm situation.

Luz slid the glass over. “You’re back!”

One thing that happens when you have an alcoholic for a parent is you grow up the child of an alcoholic. For those of you who aren’t children of alcoholics, hear me now and believe me later: It’s the single determining factor in your personality. I don’t care if you get straight As, marry a saint, and break the glass ceiling in a male-dominated profession, or if you bounce around from failure to failure with pit stops in cults and nuthouses: if you were raised by a drunk, you’re above all the adult child of an alcoholic. For a quick trip around the bases, it means you blame yourself for everything, you avoid reality, you can’t trust people, you’re hungry to please. Which isn’t all bad: perfectionism makes the straight-A student; lack of trust begets self-sufficiency; low self-esteem can be a terrific motivator; if everyone were so gung-ho on reality, there’d be no art.

An added bonus of having a drunk for a father is that in order to survive, I became freakishly attuned to subtle body language and inflections. Joe calls this heightened perception my “witchly powers.”

And right then, to anybody else, “You’re back!” would have meant
Nice to see you! It’s been a while.
But to the child of an alcoholic with witchly powers, it meant
Joe told us the three of you were out of town.

And that’s when my day really began.

Ruthie, in the way back, spotted us. Ruthie the office manager and Luz the scheduler were a pair of evil cats. Placid eyes, grins seething with calculation, they worked in tandem with a single purpose: to protect Joe.

Ruthie, the mastermind, was sixty, blond, with a dancer’s body. She always wore beige. Today’s ensemble was a silk top, pointy four-inch heels, and slacks with a crease down the front that could slice you in half.

I wanted information. If I tipped Ruthie off, she’d run straight to Joe. My witchly instincts told me that whatever this was—Joe telling me he was at work but the office he was out of town—I needed to low-key it.

Evil cats versus the adult child of an alcoholic. May the better animal win.

“This is a surprise,” Ruthie said, revealing nothing.

“We’re back,” I said, safe ground, as I was merely repeating what Luz had just said.

Two workmen walked through the back hallway. Propped against the wall, a roll of carpet.

“New carpet?” I said.

“We never have a whole week!” erupted Luz.

A whole week? Hmm.

Ruthie put her hand on Luz’s shoulder. A signal to say no more? What was that I sensed from four feet away? Could it be Ruthie’s heart rate dropping? Had the kitty cat checkmated me?

“I parked in the garage,” I said.

Then, in a prison move if there ever was one, I reached across and rifled around Luz’s desk, touching as much of her personal shit as I could.

An appalled Luz turned to Ruthie, who coolly opened a drawer and handed me validation stickers.

“Take the whole book,” she said.

Timby was up on a chair with both hands in the aquarium, swishing his fingers through the fetid water. “Whee!”

“Let’s go,” I said.

Out in the hallway, I found a wall-mounted hand-sanitizer dispenser. Trembling, I pushed the button. It squirted on the floor. I scooped up the puff of foam and knelt down to scrub it into Timby’s arms.

“Oh no,” he cried. “Was that water dirty?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Smell the soup, cool the soup,” Timby said.

“Huh?”

“It’s what they teach us in school when we’re upset. Smell the soup.” He took a deep breath in. “Cool the soup.” He blew out. “Come on, Mama, close your eyes.”

I stood up. Eyes closed, I smelled the soup. I cooled the soup. My arms rose slightly at my sides; my palms turned inward on their own; my fingers curled like fortune-telling fish.

“I think I need moisturizer,” Timby said, his arms pink from the alcohol.

“We’ll get you some, baby.”

I dialed Sydney. “Eleanor again. This really is the last time. But I do have to cancel. Call me so I know you got this message.”

I turned to Timby. “Me and you.”

“Really?” His fragile hope just about put me away.

“What do you want to do?” I said. “Anything. We can go paddleboarding on Lake Union. Get a sandwich to eat at the top of Smith Tower. Fly kites on Kite Hill. Watch the salmon swim upstream at the Ballard Locks.”

“Can we go to the Gap?”

To the Gap we walked.

“This is all about you, baby,” I said.

Timby tore up the Lucite stairs to the kids’ section. I followed him, my mind barely there.

Husband caught lying = husband having an affair. It felt like a first idea; it felt pat.

My friend Merrill told me that on the first date, a guy without realizing it will tell you why the relationship will ultimately fail. He’ll say he doesn’t want kids, or he’s not the type to settle down, or he’s in a fight with his mother. On our first date, Joe presented himself as the kind, curious, principled man he turned out to be.

Only one thing struck me as odd.

I don’t know how it came up. But he said his coping style was that he takes it, he takes it, he takes it, until he can’t take it anymore. “What does it look like, when you can’t take it anymore?” I’d asked. “I don’t know,” he’d answered. “It hasn’t happened yet.”

The previous guy I’d dated was still hung up on his ex. The one before him was fifteen days sober. If the worst Joe could say about himself was there’d be unspecified wall-punching in the future, sign me up! (And even that didn’t materialize! Twenty years and nary a call to the drywall guy.)

More than anything, Joe is ethical. I once pointed out the irony of him constantly railing against the Catholic Church when he is in fact a walking advertisement for the decency and honesty they preach. (“When they’re not pumping you with lies and self-hatred,” he’d retorted.)

No way could he be cheating on me.

On the other hand, I wasn’t giving him enough sex. I had to get on that.

I poked my head into the dressing room. Timby was trying on corduroy shorts and a T-shirt of a corgi playing drums. Timby’s roll of dimpled, paper-white belly fat popped out over the waistband.

“Do you think they have kneesocks?” he asked.

Not in the boys’ section!
I knew not to say.

And then I remembered. This morning. Joe facedown at the table, forehead on the
newspaper
. Perhaps he’d seen something in it…

“I’m running across the street to Barnes and Noble just for a sec.”

“Wait,” Timby said. “You’re leaving me here alone?”

Before I could fumble for an answer, he said, “Can I pick out something else?” The kid had a gambler’s instinct for knowing when to press.

“One thing.”

I shot to the bookstore, bought a
Seattle Times,
and hustled outside. In the few minutes that took, a stack of wooden barricades had appeared on the sidewalk. Seattle was breaking out in a rash of police blue.

Did I fail to mention that the Pope was coming to town? Oh yeah. For something called World Youth Day. (Does that not sound like a bogus event the Joker would dream up to ensnare Robin?) His Holiness was scheduled to perform Mass at the Mariners stadium on Saturday.

I thumbed through the newspaper. Seahawks, Seahawks, Seahawks. Pope, Pope, Pope. A lady was setting out food for crows, and her neighbors were pissed. Any of these could have driven Joe to despair. Or none.

What a royal frustration! Of course I hadn’t pushed it this morning with Joe. Isn’t that one of the benefits of plodding through so many years of marriage? You get to take things at face value? None of that “You look upset,” “I’m not upset,” “Please talk to me,” “I am talking to you,” “Is it me?,” “I told you I’m fine,” “It
is
me.” Oy, just thinking about it takes me back to Friday nights spent weeping through step class.

By the time I got back to the Gap, Timby had pulled a
Supermarket Sweep
. A girl with a headset was ringing up a haystack of clothes.

Between scanner beeps, Timby whispered, “Hurry, hurry.”

“Don’t think you got away with this,” I said, coming up behind him. “I know you tricked me.”

“Will you be using your Gap card today?” the girl asked.

“No, and I don’t want one,” I said. “We’re never coming back.”

“You ruin everything,” Timby said.

“No,
you
ruin everything.”

The salesgirl’s smile didn’t falter, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t wait to get home and tell her roommate.

It was 11:45 and still no word from Sydney. Out on the street, a white police bus had parked across Sixth Avenue, blocking traffic. I dialed Sydney’s number. As it rang, I pointed to the bus.

“Look,” I said to Timby. “The Pope must be staying at the Sheraton. That’s what you get when you call yourself the People’s Pope. You have to stay at a dump.”

“I wish
I
could stay at the Sheraton.”

Voice mail again. “Sydney? It’s Eleanor. Please call me. I don’t want you showing up at lunch and I’m not there. Or maybe I should go. I don’t know.” I hung up. “See, this is why I can’t stand Sydney Madsen.”

“I thought she was your friend.”

“It’s a grown-up thing.” I pulled the newspaper from under my arm and pointed to the date. “Read that to me.”

Timby did.

I handed him my date book. “Look up today. Thursday, October eighth. Tell me what it says.”

“Spencer Martell.”

“Give me that.” I yanked away the book. In my own hand:
SPENCER MARTELL.

“Who’s Spencer Martell?” Timby asked.

“I can’t imagine.”

Spencer Martell. Whoever it was, I had made a lunch date with… him? Her?

“Who’s Spencer Martell?” Timby asked again.

“Do I look like I know?”

“It’s okay, Mom,” he said. “You did it on accident.”

“It’s ‘by accident.’ Who’s teaching you to speak?”

I took out my phone and searched
Spencer Martell
. One e-mail came up from a month ago.

From: Spencer Martell

To: Eleanor Flood

Re: Long time no see!

By any chance are you free for lunch on October 8? I’d love to catch up.

xS

I scrolled down and found my response. A twelve o’clock reservation at Mamnoon.

It was now ten of.

“Maybe he’s related to Sydney Madsen,” Timby offered. “He could be her brother.”

“We’re about to find out, aren’t we?”

“I’m coming too?” Timby said with big eyes.

“Me and you.”

As for my constant low-grade state of confusion—the Blur is a term that seems to be sticking—let me break it into three categories: (1) things I should know but never learned, (2) things I choose not to know, and (3) things I know but totally screw up.

Things I should know but never learned? My left from my right. Sorry, but you better ask someone else for directions.

Things I choose not to know? Plenty. There’s only so much a good brain has room for, let alone a bad brain like mine. So I made an executive decision: There would be subjects I’d aggressively take no interest in, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lena Dunham, the whereabouts of the stolen paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner heist, what GMO even stands for, and, until Timby’s flirtation with kneesocks in the Gap five minutes ago, gender identity. If that makes my human existence a limited one, I stoically accept my fate. Today’s prevailing stance seems to be
I have an opinion, therefore I am.
My stance?
I have no opinion, therefore I am superior to you.

Things I know but always screw up? Times. If I have a lunch at 12:30, I’ll write
12:30
in my book. But along the way, some alchemy happens in my brain and 12:30 becomes 1:00. You’d think that after arriving for the theater half an hour after curtain (a dozen times!), I’d have learned to triple-check the ticket. But no. I wish I could explain it. One of life’s enigmas.

My point is, switching Spencer Martell to Sydney Madsen might send
you
running to the neurologist, but to me it’s a shrug-fest.