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Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
Last night you watched The Eurythmics perform a compilation of their greatest hits on Saturday Night Live’s 25th Anniversary show, and you said to your new wife, Susan, "Isn’t this what really bad lounge singers are reduced to?" and she said, "I don’t know, I’ve never been in a lounge." She is pregnant, your new wife, Susan. She is not from Long Island like you; she is from Burlington, Vermont, where girls like her smoke weed in the park during their oat-sowing years. She asks you why Saturday Night Live is being aired on Sunday at 8:00. You can’t figure it out either until you realize: for you, the target audience (the people who don’t stay up until 11:00 on Saturday nights anymore), they have squeezed this crappy anniversary show into prime time. Now, today, you are sitting in a painted wood chair on the second floor of an old Victorian with your ex-wife, Liz, and your daughter, Corey, while a new kind of torture is being performed on you in the guise of family therapy. It all has to do with Corey, who is refusing to attend the overpriced alternative school that you are borrowing against your 403(b) to pay for. Instead, she complains of headaches and leg cramps that make it impossible for her to get out of bed until Zoom comes on at 4:30 and she can safely bond with the obnoxious 8-year-olds on the show whom she thinks of as her friends. You must fix this problem by paying for therapy conducted by a woman who is probably not married, probably childless, and who looks more like your new wife, Susan, than your ex-wife, Liz. She is distracting you. Her gaze accuses you of abandoning your original wife and child, while at the same time seeming to beckon you to join her in the excitement and promise of starting all over again - with her, with a new wife and child, with a chance to do it all over again, sans the falling apart part. "So tell us, Corey, what we can do to make it possible for you to attend school again." You sound impatient, and Liz is telling you to shut-up with her eyes. But you are not about to let this seventy-five dollar meeting go astray. "Other than paying your tuition, and buying your books, and so on." The attractive but accusatory look of the therapist is changing to one of shock. You offer her a smile. "I hope you won’t consider me harsh. You have to realize how frustrating this is. I mean, Liz and I have been on the phone every night this week racking our brains over this. We've both tried to talk to Corey and help her get through whatever is holding her back, but she hasn't budged. At the risk of sounding crude, we can’t afford for this to go on much longer. So what would you suggest, Corey?" Corey swings her freckled ankles. Unlike the therapist, she is not shocked, or intimidated. "I want you to home tutor me." This has been her refrain, her mantra, like the way "marry me", used to play in your head. "I see, and how do you propose I make a living?" "You won’t have to. Mommy will work." "Stop it, Corey," you say. A hush cools over the room as Liz breathes deep and says, "Let’s just step back." This is a shorthand phrase that spans all the way to your earliest arguments with her. It is her way of reigning you in. You are stinging all over at the words as you examine her outfit - one of her own designs, a jacket made of varying shades of cotton remnants, seams showing boldly, decorated with antique blue buttons. As is her trademark, she preserves the old - with great care and at great cost. |
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