I Regret Everything (3 page)

My mother lived in the co-op on Riverside Drive that she and my father shared until she threw a kitchen knife at him one particularly festive Thanksgiving and he moved out. How she got full custody of Gully and me after that episode was something no one's ever been able to explain and didn't say a lot for Edward P. Simonson's interest in having us around.

In the divorce my mother's big win was the apartment, a three-bedroom on the tenth floor of a doorman building. I hated it. Don't get me wrong; the place was total real estate porn. Big rooms, lots of sun, a river view to die for, wood floors, all the original details. North of us the lights of the George Washington Bridge twinkled. But my mother was there with her four cats. What's funny about this is that I'm an animal lover, but four cats for one person seems excessive. Oh, and I'm semi-allergic, which she was convinced must have been in my imagination. So, four cats plus my mother are five reasons I didn't want to be there. Six if you count her boyfriend Dodd who was usually draped over the living room sofa like a ratty afghan.

Let me tell you about my mother. Her name is Harlee Joy Spaulding. I know. Har-LEE. It was Janet Spaulding when she was growing up in Rye, but Janet failed to capture her uniqueness so she christened herself Harlee at Vassar where she majored in art history. She could babble endlessly about Minimalism but when it came to stuff like knowing how to talk to me about anything other than the perils of addiction, forget it. During the 1980s she had worked in an art gallery in SoHo but then she married my father to pursue a life of child-rearing and cocktails. She was in recovery again, sober less than a year, which meant I was supposed to no longer be worried about coming home to find her passed out at four in the afternoon. But the thing is, you never stop worrying.

Harlee was a beautiful woman and that goes a long way toward explaining how she managed to swing another two marriages even if both imploded because of her drinking hobby. I ignored the not-my-real-dads as best I could. There were step-sibs in the mix but since I got packed off these kids were like apparitions who appeared when I was home for the holidays and floated in and out of my adolescence like little ghosts. For husband number two she moved us to the Upper East Side and for number three it was Tarrytown. Like a true New Yorker, she never sold her own place. The Riverside Drive address was her life raft and she always swam back there.

Since my release I had been living at “home” which meant reluctantly cohabitating with my mother, her feline menagerie, and occasionally Dodd. Harlee was hinting she might marry him. She was going to be fifty soon, so her hormones were conspiring to help her make worse decisions than usual.

—After a certain point, Spall, you can't set your sights too high.

She wasn't sure Dodd was marriage material since he got downsized from some mid-level job at a bank, went to massage school, and had recently started work at a day spa called Harmony. She was always making him give her “sacral adjustments.” Ten minutes after we met Dodd told me it looked like my shoulders were out of alignment and asked if I wanted one. Like that was going to happen.

—From her perch on the couch my mother said, Dodd, can you believe this girl had to wear a brace and stay home from school for an entire year when she was eleven because of spinal curvature and now she's turning down free treatment?

A typical day: I got up late, hopefully after Dodd left for the spa. Coffee, black, and a piece of wheat toast with apricot jam. My mother would be in the living room listening to Joni Mitchell on her iPod, drinking quarts of coffee, and working on a sweater or a blanket, yarn snaking from the tote bag she carried with her everywhere, knitting needles pumping like pistons.

—Morning, Spall, she'd say.

—Hey, I'd say.

—Everything good?

—Awesome.

—Get enough sleep?

This was passive-aggressive because I was sleeping like a bear so it was her way of telling me she didn't approve.

When I stayed home I read novels: Camus, Houellebecq, and
The Sickness Unto Death
by Kierkegaard, not a novel but more my Bible since it said that if you don't get right with God you're in despair. I wasn't a God person but it worked as a metaphor. My copy had a lot of underlining. And I read poetry. I dug the 20th-century poets who knew how to rock a rhyme. Blank verse was supposed to be cooler and rhyming poetry allegedly for dorks but it was a soothing representation of order in the universe and that was something I craved. Last winter I learned to use it as a coping technique, the Iambic Pentameter Strategy. In challenging moments I would formulate words, sometimes nonsensical, occasionally borderline poetic, that in five-foot lines would mimic the human heartbeat—

ba-Bum / ba-Bum / ba-Bum / ba-Bum / ba-Bum.
 

It worked like a breathing exercise for a yogi.

And there / is Dodd / again / upon / the couch.

Arranging this reality in iambic pentameter made it easier to deal with.

When I went out I'd sit in Central Park, usually Strawberry Fields, and think about John Lennon and how he was lucky to get assassinated. I know that sounds weird so don't get mad but look, how could he ever follow The Beatles and once he was dead there was no pressure. Or maybe I'd go to the Met and hang around the Egyptian pavilion in silent communion with the art lovers. I'd study the carvings on the ancient stones or stare at the sarcophagi and consider the mummies that were buried in them. Here's a profound thought: The mummies were just like me three millennia ago, people who woke up, ate breakfast, suffered through their day, had dinner, then lived to be about my age and died. If I were an Egyptian, I'd be old. The typical life span today is nearly four times as long. That's a lot of afternoons to fill. So a few times a week I laced up my Chucks and took long walks. To the northern tip of Manhattan where the East River veered from the Hudson and shells filled with rowers pulling long oars in soothing rhythm glided past. To the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights where with a pen and paper I'd sit on a bench and sketch the boisterous skyline. Fifth Avenue from the arch in Washington Square Park all the way up to Harlem was the best for dog watching because you'd go from toy poodles to pit bulls on one long stroll.

—Where were you walking? my mother would ask when I arrived home.

—Nowhere in particular.

In my rambles around the city, I thought a lot about Happiness. Whenever I saw my father he reminded me life was about goals. Maybe I would be happier, he suggested, if I had a goal.

—Goals, Spall, he said. You choose one, work toward it, and then before you get there set your sights on another.

How was anyone ever supposed to feel satisfied? No wonder half the country was on antianxiety medication. But it was complicated since goals per se were not a bad thing.

—Dig the furrow and the harvest will take care of itself, my father said.

He liked to use farming metaphors even though he went to boarding school. It's the Protestant work ethic the country was founded on and woe to you if you didn't get with the Calvinists who ran this place. Even if you wanted to be a glassblower. There was a lot of pressure to be a really good glassblower, to have a shop and a catalogue and blow a shitload of high-quality glass. I wasn't that competitive. Like my brother Gully. He was building sailboats and my dad thought that was fine as long as he wound up building the boat that won the America's Cup. But Gully didn't care about being the guy who built the boat that won the race. He just loved boats. It's why he was living three thousand miles away in Washington State. So he didn't have to meet our father for lunch and hear about how an individual needs goals.

—Spaulding, have you gained weight?

Edward P was seated behind the yacht-sized desk in his law office with its view of rainy southern Manhattan. The drop-in wasn't planned but if he had an issue with that it was hard to know. As a rule, if a father asked his daughter if she'd gained weight it's
quel faux pas
but he was probably concerned I might develop anorexia to go along with my other less than optimal qualities so his observation was probably meant to be encouraging. Once you'd been labeled as a person with psychological issues it was hard to figure out how you were being perceived. Was someone walking on eggshells because they didn't want to trigger an episode or did they mean what they said?

—You told me the same thing last week. The meds cause water retention, remember?

—Well, you look . . . terrific? Am I allowed to say that?

This was typical for us. My father was not the easiest adult to talk to. He'd say something that could be misconstrued, then I'd respond in some slightly defensive way at which point the exchange usually ended, unless he had swallowed a couple of Scotch and sodas. Then Edward P became pretty voluble, although, to be clear, he stopped after two and, unlike my mother, never threw a single knife at anyone. He worked like a coal stoker in a Dickens novel, played indoor tennis in the winter, sailed in the summer, and seemed devoted to my two half-brothers who were twelve and ten, probably to make up for not being around much when Gully and I were kids. He was carrying a few extra pounds and when I thought about how being a lawyer stressed him out it was hard not to be concerned. When my parents broke up I spent every other weekend with him and one month every summer. At least that was how it worked before I was sent away to school. Now that I was technically an adult, all bets were off.

—So, Dad, I had this idea. You know your ex-wife's cats?

—Sure, he said, rolling his eyes.

—I can't live in that zoo anymore. Would it be okay if I moved in with you guys? It would only be until school starts in the fall.

—You can't make it through the summer?

—Dad, I said. My sinuses.

—Duly noted, he said.

—I'm going to die.

I realized maybe this was a little tone-deaf considering what I had put him through this past winter.

—What are you doing this summer? he asked, not bothering to answer the question about moving in with family number two.

—Not a lot, I said. I enrolled in a creative writing workshop at Barnard summer school.

—You need to get a job, or an internship sort of thing. You need a plan, Spaulding. A goal. We've discussed this.

—I want to be a writer.

—Look, kiddo, any kind of career in the arts is a long shot. There's a lot of rejection and a person needs to have a thick hide. You have so many great qualities but a thick hide?

—I'm nineteen years old. Don't crush my dreams.

—In the event you can't find anything you can intern here at the firm a few days a week, get a feel for the place. You have a good brain, Spall. You'd probably make a fine attorney.

—I'd rather be a lighthouse keeper.

—Then do something you like.

—Are there any jobs where I can read all day?

—If you don't find one you can run the copy machine here.

—Seriously?

—Do I look like I'm kidding?

—What about moving in with you guys? I promise to keep taking my meds.

The rain had started up again, splashing against the windows. I gazed around the quiet order of my father's office, the well-lit paintings of sailboats, the clean desk of a tidy mind.

—Let me talk to Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina, the wife. I knew that's what he'd tell me. My father and I were like two bad musicians trying to find the beat. Someone was always a little ahead or behind.

—You're welcome to stay here until the rain stops.

Several of his colleagues were waiting for him in the conference room and he excused himself. After he left, I put my feet up on the couch. Because of my shyness, often mistaken for snobbery, meeting anyone I wanted to talk to was hard. My parents did not have writers as friends so I never encountered any. And it would have been challenging to have sought them out since my school was in Montagnola near the Swiss-Italian border, not great if you wanted to expand your horizons although lovely if you were a sheep. If you're wondering what drove me to stand in Mr. Best's doorway, there you are.

What did Mr. Best make of me when I appeared, when I entered the room, when I posed on his office couch? Could he tell how horribly self-conscious I was? Such a crippling case of nerves it felt like kernels of corn popping in my stomach. When I met someone new, I felt like a marionette and instead of being in the conversation I'd see another me, meta-Spaulding, equally uneasy, pulling strings. Could he tell? And had I really asked him to take me to lunch?

Dr. Margaret Noonan, who I'd been seeing twice a week since my release, and who insisted I call her “Dr. Margaret,” had told me to approach social situations like I was playing a character named “Spaulding.” This Spaulding was deep-space cool and confident. This Spaulding could star in a movie about the other “real” Spaulding and win an Oscar. In my father's office these words cycled through my brain:

The ner- / vous girl / asserts / her fool- / ish plan.

But Mr. Best was so friendly, talking to me like I was a person and not throwing me out. I made a mental note to discuss this with Dr. Margaret during my next session. I had initiated a conversation and nearly gotten through it without embarrassing myself. Why did I ask him to take me out to lunch? When it came to trying to understand my behavior, Dr. Margaret was helpful but whenever I talked to her about anything creative she saw it as an extension of my therapy.

—I'm working on this poem about flying over everybody.

—So you can't be seen? Or so you can be seen?

I don't know! But I didn't want to talk about it. My parents forced me to go to therapy. Dr. Margaret was nice and everything, but I would have rather been at the dentist. I thought it might be helpful to have a casual conversation with an actual writer and that's what I was thinking I would do with Mr. Best. At least that's what I was thinking until I stepped into his force field. Yes, force field. It sounds overdramatic (and intergalactic) but that was the effect of the confidence, authority, and ease he exuded.