Page 49 of A Happy Catastrophe

“That’s probably very wise,” I say.

“And, ducky, just do me a little favor, will you?”

“What would that be, oh father of mine who has missed every single signal he needed to see?”

He laughs. “Show her all the ways Brooklyn is not Florida. Shiver a lot! Tell her how dirty and disgusting the subways are. I don’t know. Tell her you miss the Florida beaches. She’s a Florida girl. She’ll come home.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

MARNIE

My father is dead wrong. My mother is not one bit interested in going back home. And this is fine by me. Two weeks in, and we are actually having a good time in our new capacity as girlfriends. She’s asked me if I could possibly call her Millie instead of Mom. It would make it easier for us to talk about real things, she said. We sit up late talking at night, covering nearly all subjects of interest—things I never thought I could talk to her about—like bad boyfriends, men who turn into couch potatoes when you’re not looking, the evidence for magic, bad hairdressers who rely on too much hairspray, the fact that my mother always thought that she and I were kindred spirits while the other two family members were too rigid, whether boredom constitutes grounds for changing one’s life . . . aaaand the pros and cons of me getting pregnant.

I don’t think me getting pregnant is going to happen soon, at least not until Patrick’s show is over. He’s getting more and more withdrawn. I have taken to organizing what I call Jiffy Conjugal Visits when I make him sit with me in the living room under the fleece blanket—for whole minutes at a time—drinking our mugs of coffee on the couch after we get Fritzie off to school and before my mom gets up for the day. It’s not ideal conditions, of course, but if a couple wanted to have sex under those circumstances, they could. We apparently are not that couple, however.

We sit there together, and every now and then I let my hand drift over to his thigh in a reawakening kind of way, and . . . well, nothing happens. It’s as though there’s a force that pulls Patrick away from the real, tangible world of feelings and love and lures him back into the conflicted world of art and misery. Sometimes it seems that there is just a little remaining bit of Patrick that’s still mine, a little schmear of him that doesn’t belong to this project, but it’s in danger of disappearing, too.

So maybe, not to get all dramatic about it, this is nothing less than a battle for his soul. That’s the message I seem to get from Toaster Blix, when I have asked. Fight for him, her voice says.

So one day I throw caution to the wind and get myself naked under that throw. He looks horrified, and I tell him that it’s time we remembered what’s good in the world. Remember making out? Remember making love and how nicely things fit together?

So I worked at it and got us started, but then he thought he heard the creaking of the hinges on the bedroom door and he leapt off of me like he’d been shot out of a cannon, and took up a sitting position, with his arm flung casually over the back of the couch. “So, how about the Mets this year? Any good prospects?” he said in a loud voice.

I laughed and whispered, “Get back on top of me; that was just the wind.”

“Marnie! What if she comes in here and sees us?”

“Well, Patrick, she and I are now BFFs and not mother and daughter, and I think she’d tiptoe away back to the bedroom and silently cheer for us. She knows this is the way babies get made, and she knows we want a baby.”

But uh-oh. A shadow crossed his face at that.

“Didn’t we agree to wait on that plan?” he said.

“I believe the minutes would show that we decided to wait, and then I pointed out, accurately enough, that I am older than dirt, and that I wanted to get started on tracking my ovulation—”

He closed his eyes, shut himself right down. “Not now, please,” he said, as though he was in actual physical pain at the thought. “I can’t take on anything else.”

“You do know that it takes nine months to actually form a little human,” I said, pushing my luck. “It won’t be an instantaneous new person.”

“After my show,” he said. And then he added, “Maybe. If there’s anything left of me.”

Which I should have addressed right then, except I was too scared. What the hell was he talking about? Did he mean that the little schmear of him that I’m getting was going to get even smaller immediately? Was he going to make it disappear altogether?

I looked into his eyes, and I couldn’t find him.

That was when I actually got really frightened.

Hang on, the toaster said.

Just when I’m settling in to the new reality—being BFFs with my mom, having a bold eight-year-old to look after and a houseful of teenagers hanging out in the basement, all while trying to hold on to the rapidly disappearing Patrick—the world abruptly takes a major shift into The Holidays. I have always been a big fan of the holidays—all the tra la la stuff and the decorating and the sparkly things—but it also means that there are more flower orders coming in, more red velvet ribbon needed, as well as poinsettias filling up every available space, and along with that comes the fact that more people are likely to burst into tears in the Frippery over all that jolly deck-the-halls propaganda.

And Fritzie, who has been simmering along, takes this opportunity to go crazy.

It starts at a land mine–filled little tradition called Parent Day Luncheon held by the school. The notice arrives in the backpack one day. I see it as I’m unpacking the lunch box and pulling out the homework folder (MATH STORY PROBLEMS DUE TOMORROW: HAVE FUN WITH THESE). And there, just behind the promise of the delightful story problems, is an even more promising notice, printed on purple paper: PARENT DAY LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL ON FRIDAY.

“Oh!” I say. “Fritzie, shall we go to this?” I’m so on top of this, already thinking how fraught this must be for Fritzie, and how I can ask Kat if her friend Sal can help out with the orders that morning while I dash out to the school.

She’s petting Bedford on the floor and doesn’t even look up at me. “I asked Patrick, and he won’t come because he’s too busy,” she says lightly, but not as lightly as she thinks. “And anyway, it’s boring.”

“Are you sure? I mean, I could come. We could make it fun, couldn’t we?”

“Nope,” she says, and leaves the room.

“I’ll talk to Patrick,” I call after her. “Maybe he could take the morning off.”

“No, thank you,” she says in a singsong voice.

My mother gives me an alarmed look and yells, “Say, do they ever have a grandparents’ day? Because if they do, little miss, I’m giving you notice now: I’m coming to it!”

Fritzie’s bedroom door closes. I bite my lip.

My mom says, “I think you should work on her.” That was always my mother’s way: work on somebody. But I like to think I’m sensitive to other people’s needs. Maybe it’s somehow worse for Fritzie if I do go—if she has to explain to everyone that I’m not her real mother; I’m not even her stepmother.

Patrick, when I ask him, points wordlessly to the calendar—how January follows December so closely. He makes a gesture that looks like a head exploding, and then he shuffles back to his studio, shaking his just-exploded head.

o;That’s probably very wise,” I say.

“And, ducky, just do me a little favor, will you?”

“What would that be, oh father of mine who has missed every single signal he needed to see?”

He laughs. “Show her all the ways Brooklyn is not Florida. Shiver a lot! Tell her how dirty and disgusting the subways are. I don’t know. Tell her you miss the Florida beaches. She’s a Florida girl. She’ll come home.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

MARNIE

My father is dead wrong. My mother is not one bit interested in going back home. And this is fine by me. Two weeks in, and we are actually having a good time in our new capacity as girlfriends. She’s asked me if I could possibly call her Millie instead of Mom. It would make it easier for us to talk about real things, she said. We sit up late talking at night, covering nearly all subjects of interest—things I never thought I could talk to her about—like bad boyfriends, men who turn into couch potatoes when you’re not looking, the evidence for magic, bad hairdressers who rely on too much hairspray, the fact that my mother always thought that she and I were kindred spirits while the other two family members were too rigid, whether boredom constitutes grounds for changing one’s life . . . aaaand the pros and cons of me getting pregnant.

I don’t think me getting pregnant is going to happen soon, at least not until Patrick’s show is over. He’s getting more and more withdrawn. I have taken to organizing what I call Jiffy Conjugal Visits when I make him sit with me in the living room under the fleece blanket—for whole minutes at a time—drinking our mugs of coffee on the couch after we get Fritzie off to school and before my mom gets up for the day. It’s not ideal conditions, of course, but if a couple wanted to have sex under those circumstances, they could. We apparently are not that couple, however.

We sit there together, and every now and then I let my hand drift over to his thigh in a reawakening kind of way, and . . . well, nothing happens. It’s as though there’s a force that pulls Patrick away from the real, tangible world of feelings and love and lures him back into the conflicted world of art and misery. Sometimes it seems that there is just a little remaining bit of Patrick that’s still mine, a little schmear of him that doesn’t belong to this project, but it’s in danger of disappearing, too.

So maybe, not to get all dramatic about it, this is nothing less than a battle for his soul. That’s the message I seem to get from Toaster Blix, when I have asked. Fight for him, her voice says.

So one day I throw caution to the wind and get myself naked under that throw. He looks horrified, and I tell him that it’s time we remembered what’s good in the world. Remember making out? Remember making love and how nicely things fit together?

So I worked at it and got us started, but then he thought he heard the creaking of the hinges on the bedroom door and he leapt off of me like he’d been shot out of a cannon, and took up a sitting position, with his arm flung casually over the back of the couch. “So, how about the Mets this year? Any good prospects?” he said in a loud voice.

I laughed and whispered, “Get back on top of me; that was just the wind.”

“Marnie! What if she comes in here and sees us?”

“Well, Patrick, she and I are now BFFs and not mother and daughter, and I think she’d tiptoe away back to the bedroom and silently cheer for us. She knows this is the way babies get made, and she knows we want a baby.”

But uh-oh. A shadow crossed his face at that.

“Didn’t we agree to wait on that plan?” he said.

“I believe the minutes would show that we decided to wait, and then I pointed out, accurately enough, that I am older than dirt, and that I wanted to get started on tracking my ovulation—”

He closed his eyes, shut himself right down. “Not now, please,” he said, as though he was in actual physical pain at the thought. “I can’t take on anything else.”

“You do know that it takes nine months to actually form a little human,” I said, pushing my luck. “It won’t be an instantaneous new person.”

“After my show,” he said. And then he added, “Maybe. If there’s anything left of me.”

Which I should have addressed right then, except I was too scared. What the hell was he talking about? Did he mean that the little schmear of him that I’m getting was going to get even smaller immediately? Was he going to make it disappear altogether?

I looked into his eyes, and I couldn’t find him.

That was when I actually got really frightened.

Hang on, the toaster said.

Just when I’m settling in to the new reality—being BFFs with my mom, having a bold eight-year-old to look after and a houseful of teenagers hanging out in the basement, all while trying to hold on to the rapidly disappearing Patrick—the world abruptly takes a major shift into The Holidays. I have always been a big fan of the holidays—all the tra la la stuff and the decorating and the sparkly things—but it also means that there are more flower orders coming in, more red velvet ribbon needed, as well as poinsettias filling up every available space, and along with that comes the fact that more people are likely to burst into tears in the Frippery over all that jolly deck-the-halls propaganda.

And Fritzie, who has been simmering along, takes this opportunity to go crazy.

It starts at a land mine–filled little tradition called Parent Day Luncheon held by the school. The notice arrives in the backpack one day. I see it as I’m unpacking the lunch box and pulling out the homework folder (MATH STORY PROBLEMS DUE TOMORROW: HAVE FUN WITH THESE). And there, just behind the promise of the delightful story problems, is an even more promising notice, printed on purple paper: PARENT DAY LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL ON FRIDAY.

“Oh!” I say. “Fritzie, shall we go to this?” I’m so on top of this, already thinking how fraught this must be for Fritzie, and how I can ask Kat if her friend Sal can help out with the orders that morning while I dash out to the school.

She’s petting Bedford on the floor and doesn’t even look up at me. “I asked Patrick, and he won’t come because he’s too busy,” she says lightly, but not as lightly as she thinks. “And anyway, it’s boring.”

“Are you sure? I mean, I could come. We could make it fun, couldn’t we?”

“Nope,” she says, and leaves the room.

“I’ll talk to Patrick,” I call after her. “Maybe he could take the morning off.”

“No, thank you,” she says in a singsong voice.

My mother gives me an alarmed look and yells, “Say, do they ever have a grandparents’ day? Because if they do, little miss, I’m giving you notice now: I’m coming to it!”

Fritzie’s bedroom door closes. I bite my lip.

My mom says, “I think you should work on her.” That was always my mother’s way: work on somebody. But I like to think I’m sensitive to other people’s needs. Maybe it’s somehow worse for Fritzie if I do go—if she has to explain to everyone that I’m not her real mother; I’m not even her stepmother.

Patrick, when I ask him, points wordlessly to the calendar—how January follows December so closely. He makes a gesture that looks like a head exploding, and then he shuffles back to his studio, shaking his just-exploded head.

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