I Love You and I'm Leaving You Anyway (30 page)

Paul reads from a book he bought at the ashram. He bought that book in the midst of his paralyzing fear, and the fact that he is standing here now and there is so much love in this room—you can feel it—is a testament to something greater than what is least in a person. The book contains a poem to a saint, detailing one hundred things about her that are of god.
She has the light of a million stars in her eyes. She is everything there is to know in the Universe.
And he lists twenty other things I can’t remember.

But they were all about me.

We do the part where we say “I do”—he says it, and I say it—and then we kiss and people clap and wipe away their tears.

And then we turn and walk down the magnificent staircase together. Just married.

I’LL ADMIT IT:
I’m not very nice sometimes. It’s just that when I see the words “Unknown Caller” pop up on my phone, which means my dad is calling, it starts a conditioned response of feelings that fall like dominoes in the same order every time, and the last feeling is anger. First I feel obligated to pick up the phone, then I feel guilty that I feel obligated, then I feel bad that I feel guilty, and last but not least I feel angry that I feel bad, guilty, and obligated to talk to my dad when he’s the one who went and got himself put in jail. For thirty of the last forty years.

But I always pick it up anyway.

Before I quit drinking I was never angry at my dad. When people would ask me about my childhood, I would reel off the two-minute version of my story
(Mom = crazy; Dad = jail; me = foster homes)
and they would invariably say, “Wow, you’re so well adjusted! Are you angry with your dad?” And I would inevitably reply, “Not at all! Isn’t it amazing!? I think he’s
awesome
.”

But now that the chemical bubble-wrap has come off, I am discovering that I totally don’t think Freddie is awesome. I think he is a selfish, vain narcissist who committed crimes so he would have the
money, jewels, and clothing that would get him the women (sex) he wanted. And I’m not afraid to tell him so.

“Hey, baby!” My dad’s always so excited to talk to me. Which kind of makes me sick.

“Hey.”

“What, you’re not happy to talk to your dad?” Freddie sounds like he wasn’t expecting this. Which is obviously a defense mechanism—I haven’t been very happy to hear from him since I was twelve and a half.

“I’m mad at you,” I say plainly.

“Oh, you are?” His tone is like Barbara Walters in one of those after-the-Oscars interview shows. Warm and curious. “What is it?”

“Yeah, I am,” I say. “It’s taking me years to undo all the bullshit you created for me.”

“Now, Tracy.” He’s a little bored. We’ve been over this a thousand times. “I’ve told you I’m sorry; what more do you want?”

“Nothing, I guess.” It’s not like I want him to be waterboarded or something. “I’m just not over it yet.”

“Well. You’re going to have to get over it.” Freddie rarely uses an ungracious tone of voice, but he is now. “The past is the past.”

“Yeah, except for when it’s not. Like now,” I say, bruised. “I’m still suffering the consequences of your obsession with women and sex.” I tend to use a lot of psychological jargon when I’m putting the screws to Freddie.

“Okay, then,” Freddie says in his Barbara Walters voice. “Why don’t you tell me about that?”

So I tell Freddie all the things I am learning in therapy and in my reading. How he wanted
regard
. Especially from women. Not love, but regard:
to be considered or thought of in a certain way
. He wanted to be thought of as important, handsome, desirable, sexual. And he wanted power over women: to set the rules, say what happens, and judge their bodies. And how that affected me in ways too numerous to catalog in a fifteen-minute phone call. From body image to sexual
ity to, of course, my problems with men. How first, I chose men not like him. And now, I choose men just like him. Which sucks.

“You’re a very intelligent young woman, Tracy,” Freddie says.

“Is that all you can say? I’m intelligent?” Now I’m
really
pissed off.

“What do you want me to say?” And so is he—pissed—though this is as close as he’s going to come to open warfare. Freddie’s a lover, not a fighter. Like Paul.

“How about, ‘You’re right and I’m
so
sorry, Tracy. That must have sucked for you,’” I retort. “How about that?”

“You’re right, Tracy,” he concedes. “And I
am
so sorry.”

I hate that he’s so willing to apologize. That he doesn’t counter-argue. Or defend. Mostly, he just listens—and as I sort through more and more of my pain in sobriety, there seems to be an endless supply of “uncoveries”—and he admits to it all, and says he is sorry, and sympathizes with my pain. It’s kind of a bummer, too, because unless he fights, I can’t fight back. And I really want to fight.

So, I’ve found a new way to show my anger—not by what I do, but by what I don’t (or won’t) do.

I don’t send him pictures of my son. And I won’t visit.

This is much more hurtful than not picking up the phone. And when he asks me why, I say, “You reap what you sow.” And most of the time, he takes it silently.

Once in a while he gets angry. He tells me I am selfish and uncaring. That he is stuck in there and I am depriving him of the one thing that would brighten his day: a picture of my son.

“You don’t give a shit about me,” he says. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”

“That’s not true,” I say calmly. “I care. I’m just busy in my life. I’ve got a million things to do: the groceries, the carpool, the laundry, and a job to make it all work.” I put a little spin on this—I want Freddie to feel ashamed that I’m out here doing all of this on my own.

“I’m your father, Tracy,” he reminds me. “I’m human.”

I don’t really know what he means by this. Because he’s my father I shouldn’t be angry? To the contrary.
You’re my father, so you should have protected me!
That’s what I want to say.
You should have gotten your shit together! You should have let go of your pathological need for the attention of women and gotten a job driving a bus, so I wouldn’t have had to suffer!
But all that’s been said already. A number of times.

Then, I have a breakthrough.

“Hold on,” I say. “I think I just got it.”

“Got what?” He can hear something in my voice and he’s grateful there may be a reprieve soon.

“Got
it
. You know how when I was little and I was just getting shuttled around here and there, or in foster care…And how you were out chasing women and chasing deals, and doing whatever else it is you were doing?”

“Yeah…” He’s not sure where this is going.

“Well, that’s how I am now. I’m just living. It’s not that I’m
activel
y ignoring you. I’m not driving to work going,
I wonder how my dad is right now, sitting in his cell, lonely and hurt that I haven’t sent him a picture of Sam.
I’m just driving to work! Not thinking of you at all,” I say excitedly. “That’s how you were, too!

“When I was little, you weren’t
actively
ignoring me. You were just doing your life. Your version of going to work and doing the laundry. You weren’t doing it
to me
. You were just
doing it
.” It’s hard to keep up, the thoughts are coming so fast. “You see?”

“Sure, but—”

“Now the tables are turned. I’m so busy with the stuff that’s in front of me, I just never quite get around to thinking about where you are or what you’re doing or how all my busy-ness might be affecting you.” I finally take a full breath. “But I’m not doing it
to you
either. I’m just
doing it
! Isn’t that awesome? I totally get it!”

He gets it, too. Karma’s a bitch.

This might not sound like a huge revelation, but it is. It has several implications.

1) It means I can begin to let go of my anger—because I can comprehend how my dad did what he did. Yes, Freddie’s choices had particularly negative effects. But, in principle at least, I can see how he’s not all that different from anyone else. I can bring him back into the circle of being a human being, not a monster.

2) It means I can also let go of being a victim. Because being a victim is a double-edged sword. You get to be right (and righteous), but then you’re stuck there.

3) It means that one of these days, I just might go visit him.

PAUL CAN’T SEEM TO GET
a job. It’s been five months since we got married and in that time he’s been up for five jobs and lost them all—including a huge nine-day extravaganza that would have set us up for the year. With each rejection, Paul is getting increasingly demoralized. I do my best to try to keep his spirits up.

“I suck,” he says. “That’s why no one wants to hire me. I ruined my career with that McDonald’s job.” He’s talking about some job that went horribly awry not last year but the year before. “But what was I supposed to do? My brother was under arrest! I was distracted.”

“It’s okay. You’ll get one,” I say encouragingly. “Any minute now.”

“You don’t understand, Tracy.” He says my name all clipped like he does when he’s angry. He’s got that irrational, closed-minded thing going on where he just
cannot
hear anything that might be hopeful. “If this keeps happening, my company will stop putting me up for jobs and start putting up someone else.” Paul’s face is hard. He gets mean looking when he’s afraid.

He has a point. In the entertainment business, success often comes in a “run.” It doesn’t matter whether you are a singer, writer, director, actor, or costume designer; most people have a “moment,” and unless you die early, like Elvis or Marilyn Monroe, eventually it’s over. There are a few immortals, like Madonna or Clint Eastwood,
who have thirty-or forty-year runs. But most people fall a lot closer to the Milli Vanilli end of the spectrum.

“Well, they haven’t stopped putting you up for jobs yet. So why not be willing to be one of the people who keeps working?” I’m losing patience. I understand Paul’s fear, of course I do; I grew up poor as shit. I just hate to see him letting it rule his mind.

“I’m telling you, they’ve figured it out. I completely blow every other job.” Paul looks at life like he’s watching CNBC, but instead of focusing on the program, he can’t stop looking at the ticker tape crawling across the bottom of the screen that says,
You’re fucked, you’re fucked, you’re fucked, you’re fucked…

“Never expect anything you don’t want,” I say against my better judgment. I know I should be quiet. Paul’s in so much fear he can’t hear me. Can’t I see that? Too bad I’m not known for my ability to stop talking.

“I don’t want to hear your New Age positivity bullshit, Tracy.”

He isn’t the first guy to say that. And he isn’t the first guy to be wrong about it, either. It’s not that I’m into positive thinking. It’s that I’m into exercising free will! I may not be able to control the world, but at least I can choose what
I’d
like to have happen. If I were Paul, I’d visualize two big buttons, like on a game show. One is red and says:

NEVER WORK AGAIN!

The other is green and says:

HAVE A WONDERFUL CAREER NO MATTER HOW UNLIKELY THAT LOOKS RIGHT THIS SECOND!

Which one am I going to hit? I’m not saying I’m going to get what I want right at this moment, but my life experience has shown me
that if I keep hitting the positive button no matter what, all kinds of cool things will happen. Like eventually I’ll write a book.

This is not how Paul thinks. Paul thinks life is a book that is already written, and he’s really afraid that the last page says,
Hah! I told you you were fucked! Sucker…
There’s absolutely nothing I can say to change his mind. And I really want to change his mind. Because if he doesn’t get a job (and soon), I worry about what’s going to happen to us.

PAUL’S SHOWING DEFINITE SIGNS
of mental problems. First off, he doesn’t leave the house. Not really. I mean, he walks across the street to get a double Americano at the little coffee place every day. And he occasionally goes with me to the movies or we go to dinner at one or two places that he favors—one of them in East L.A., miles from any Hollywood types. But unless he’s getting on a plane, he can usually be found sitting behind his desk. All. Day. Long. When I leave for work (that is,
when
I work—I’m down to only two days a week), he is sitting there. And when I return, he is sitting there. Looking at his computer. I try not to say too much about it, afraid to push him over the edge.

“How was your day?” I ask, like he had a “day” in the way the word is commonly used.

“Fine,” he says. At least he
tries
to make it sound like he was productive. “I got some work done on the script.” He means for his animated movie.

“Oh, yeah? How’s it coming?” I try to sound interested. It’s painful to go through the motions like this, but what other choice do I have? I can’t let loose with a bunch of my fear and say what I really think—
When is something going to happen? You’re going crazy! You need therapy! We can’t go on like this!
It would be counterproductive. I used to think being married to a tortured, mentally ill artist seemed romantic, like in that French movie
Betty Blue
or something. Not
anymore. (It took a couple of decades, but my twenties are finally over.)

It’s beginning to dawn on me that Paul’s agoraphobic. “I’m a hermit,” he says. But that’s just a nice way of putting it. I used to wonder exactly how people executed agoraphobia. Did they literally never leave the house?

Now I know—they just don’t leave the house
unless they absolutely have to
. Which, on a day-to-day basis, appears simply as a “preference” to “hang out” at home. Do they not talk to anyone? No, they just arrange their lives so that they’re usually only talking to someone they already know. Well.

Sam is a little young to do the math on why Paul has been home so much but I’m aware that he’s probably picking up at least some of the tension around here. It helps that he lives at Dan’s half the week, but still, things need to change.

Finally, six months into the marriage, six months without a job for him, and six months without ever being at home alone for me, we get some relief. Paul is going to direct another music video for the British Pop Star. This is good for two reasons. One, it’ll help him rediscover his ability to manifest work. And two, it’s going to be in India.

“You
have
to take me,” I say when he tells me they’re paying his hotel and airfare. This doesn’t sound nearly as much like a polite request as I wanted it to. “I’ll pay for my ticket. And stow away in your room.”