9 I Tuned You Out

9

i tuned you out

Alexander

No one mentions how you’re jettisoned into an unknown abyss once you separate. You’re forced to relinquish this control you’ve had for so long…this right to respect, or loyalty, or something I can’t quite put my finger on. I guess it’s simply the knowledge of knowing what the other person is doing at all times.

Asking her in a text what the dating rules were created a pit in my stomach as I stood in the entryway waiting for her response. She was pissed and thought it was too soon. She thought it was absurd. I took a deep breath…relieved we finally agreed on something. Yet, despite that fact, I still couldn’t bring myself to respond. I would leave her to wonder.

I’m folding clothes in the bedroom Dani and I used to share. I haven’t spent much time in here over the last few years. I look around and notice it’s unusually tidy. Does she sit in here and organize in her spare time?

“Are you going to move back into this room now?” I hear Noah say from the doorway .

I turn to face him. “No. I think I’m going to stay in the guest room. I like the bed in there better,” I say without emotion.

“So you’re gonna stay in the guest room and leave this for Mom when she’s here and then I’m going to move into Nana’s old room?”

“That room actually used to be the office,” I say and then immediately wonder why I had to clarify that. The woman is dead, for Christ’s sake.

“Do you guys even need an office? Mom writes in here and you work at the clinic and no one has used that room since Nana died.”

I’m staring at him and noticing the hair on his upper lip. He looks like a completely different person just in the span of a few months. He’s taller, lanky, awkward, but it’s not the braces that make him seem awkward. He’s in that couple of years where your body isn’t quite in proportion. Almost like his arms are longer than they should be. His hair cannot decide if it’s long or short and it looks oily from where I’m at, even though I know he showers every day.

He’s looking back at me, expressionless, waiting for me to respond. I seem to be at a loss, just examining him and how different he looks to me in this moment. If Dani were here she might say it’s a good time to have the talk with Noah.

“Yeah, you can have that room, Noah,” I say, completely ignoring my train of thought. Dani can have the talk with him if she thinks it’s so necessary. “I need to move your grandmother’s stuff out of there and put it in the garage.”

“Do you want me to do that?”

“Yeah, I’m just gonna finish folding these clothes and I’ll come in and help you in a bit.”

“Why are you in here?” he asks. “If it’s just basically Mom’s room now and you’re folding your own clothes? ”

“I don’t know. It’s closer to the laundry room. It just seemed more convenient.”

He shrugs as if he doesn’t buy my excuse. It’s true there really isn’t any reason for me to be in this room. It’s just where Dani always folded the clothes. I glance at her desk and notice the computer is gone but there are handwritten notes on a yellow legal pad. This is how Dani has always brainstormed for whatever she’s writing. Early in her career, I was so fascinated by her process. When I had asked her once if she outlined, or plotted, or jotted down notes on bar napkins to bring home and turn into magnificent stories, she laughed and said, “That’s not exactly how it works, for me anyway.”

She had been writing since I’d known her, but didn’t really call herself a writer until she got paid for it. That was not long after we met. Our first date, though, she told me she was an assistant producer. I remember the day she completed her first episodic series script. We were still in our early months, not yet living together, so I hadn’t ever seen her actually sit down and write.

We were in this tiny Thai restaurant somewhere near Warner Bros. Studio, where she was working with an all-female team developing a Cagney Jarren; bear in liquid; thirties pickle-ball instructor; Valentino; adjustments; bagels, wheatgrass; engineer; rat on porch. Some of it I can’t make out. It is, truly, nonsensical chicken scratch.

It isn’t much to read, so I flip the page where there is more of the same, and then halfway down the scribbling stops and what looks like a poem starts. I never knew Dani to write poetry. Intrigued, I read on.

Love Me Still.

Was that your pound of flesh?

I’ve been here for so long .

The furniture has moved,

covered the stains, all the traces of you,

there’s nothing left but here, in my mind, my body, my time, wasted, thinking about you. Wondering if you love me still.

Is this about me? Is this about Lars, that granola-eating tree-fucker? No, it has to be about me. It has to. I spilled wine on the carpet. The stain has been there for years. This must be about me.

I feel tormented wondering what this poem is about. I’m tempted to call her but I have no idea what I would say. I want to ask her why I didn’t know she was a poet too. Instead, I gather myself. I shouldn’t be reading her notepad anyway. This could mean nothing and I’m not sure why I even care. It’s hard to imagine a world where I don’t care even just a modicum, but I decide I better figure that out soon.

The sound of yelling from the other room breaks me out of my trance.

“Shut up and get out!” I hear Noah shout.

I storm into the boys’ room. “What’s going on?” Both are giving the other dirty looks.

“Ethan is treating me like I’m stupid because I tried making slime in the bathroom. I wanted to see if it would make a decent conductor.”

“Excuse me, what ? I thought you were moving Nana’s stuff?” I say to Noah, but he buttons up, sits down on his bed, and crosses his arms over his chest, pouting.

I look to Ethan next. “I told him he was making a mess. He just kept blabbering about electric slime,” Ethan says.

“Electric slime?” I turn and look into the doorway of their bathroom, where I see a purple powdery substance all over the floor, along with some purple slime, I’m guessing. “What the hell, Noah? You’re playing with water and electricity? Are you insane? Get in there and clean it up.”

Noah begins crying. He curls into a ball on his bed. Ethan looks up at me and shrugs. “Well, that went well,” he says.

“Noah, get your ass up and go clean that mess. Have you lost your mind? Why aren’t you using that big brain of yours?” That was harsh. I instantly regret saying it.

Noah is in hysterics now. He can’t even speak. He’s beginning to hyperventilate.

“What the hell is going on here?” I ask. Ethan stands and walks out into the hallway. I’m staring at Noah in shock. “I haven’t seen you cry since you were like six.” Noah says nothing. “Get up and go clean it, now!”

“Okay!” he yells. He gets up and starts walking to the bathroom.

“What is your problem?” Ethan asks him.

“Nothing, leave me alone,” Noah says. Ethan is watching from the end of the hall.

I walk toward Ethan, shaking my head. “All of the sudden he cries now?” I say to him.

“Mom talks to him differently.”

“What?” I snap.

I walk past Ethan. He follows me into the living room, where I sit on the couch to put my shoes on.

Ethan sits next to me. “He doesn’t cry because Mom doesn’t really talk to him like that.”

“He made a huge mess. And it was dangerous!” I argue. Ethan just shrugs.

“Okay, so what would mom have done, then, Ethan…if you know everything?”

“Why are you mad at me, Dad? I’m just telling you. Mom likes that kind of stuff, she’s like a science nerd. ”

“Your mother is far from a science nerd.”

“I mean, she would have asked him what exactly he was trying to do. Noah is smart. He sometimes does some cool stuff. He’s made that slime before and tried to make conductors with other things.”

“Then why were you calling him stupid?”

Ethan stares at me for several seconds. “Because I knew you would get mad at him and make him feel dumb for doing it.” I could feel the heat behind my face getting more intense. My anger was escalating, but Ethan was right. “He’s crying in our room,” Ethan says again, glancing down the hall.

“What?” I say.

I gage Ethan’s expression. “Noah is in there crying. Can’t you hear him?”

The boys’ bedroom is at the end of the hall but our house is not gigantic. “You know I can’t hear that well. Is he crying loudly?” I genuinely do not know what to do in this moment. I feel inadequate. I’ve always prided myself on being a good father. If Dani ever even hinted to me that she thought I wasn’t holding up my end of the deal, I would get extremely angry. I knew dozens of men who spent zero time alone with their kids. I was always hands-on, from diapers to coaching their sports teams. I didn’t understand why I found myself stumped now when they were basically old enough to take care of themselves.

“No, it’s not loud, but I can hear him. You should go talk to him,” Ethan says.

I hold back the urge to scold Ethan for telling me what to do. Instead, I stand and head down the hall. As I get closer, I can hear Noah sort of whimpering. I knock once and open the door. Noah is sitting on his bed; he’s not hysterical, just likely feeling sorry for himself.

“I cleaned it up,” he says in a clear voice .

“What exactly were you trying to do?”

He looks up and stares, nonplussed, before finally saying, “Now you’re interested?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass.”

“I thought I was the opposite of a smart-ass?”

“Noah! Watch your mouth!”

He shrugs.

I know I’m shooting myself in the foot. If there was one thing Dani always said about the way I parented, it was that I was constantly shooting myself in the foot. Noah picks up his phone and starts scrolling through it as if I’m not even standing there. It’s the first time I realize I don’t really know him at all. Kids are not our clones. They grow and change and we have to get to know them all over again at every new juncture.

“Noah, can we talk?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Look at me.” Noah looks up and sets his phone aside. “I’m sorry,” I say.

“I was going to clean it up. I didn’t plan on leaving it there. Why can’t you trust that we’re not little kids anymore?”

“I know you’re not.” I gestured toward the end of the bed. “Can I sit?”

“Sure,” he says.

“I’m under a lot of pressure right now, and I took it out on you. I didn’t really assess the situation. What were you trying to do anyway?” I laugh a little to lighten the mood and he laughs with me.

“I don’t know. There’s a lot of water in that slime we make with the Borax. The charged ions, like the salt in the water, make for a good conductor. It was just fun to make glowing, electrical slime.”

I jerk my head back, not expecting that answer. At the same time, I notice the boys no longer have Star Wars bedspreads, and there is a picture of Noah with a girl from school on his bookshelf. It’s from one of those picture booths. It’s not romantic, just kind of goofy, but I’ve never seen it before.

“Wow, Noah, you actually knew what you were doing with the slime?”

“Yeah, what did you think, I was just gonna go squirting water into a light socket? Fork in the toaster?” He raises his eyebrows humorously. “Blow-dryer in the bathtub?”

I laugh loudly. “You are so much like your mom.”

“Do you think that’s a good thing?”

I’m immediately jolted out of the moment. How do I answer this? “Of course it’s a good thing. Your mom is great. She’s funny, clever. She’s a wonderful mother. You have her snarky sense of humor.” I wasn’t lying.

“She’s just not a good wife?”

“What? No. We’ve been over this. Your mom and I just don’t get along anymore. That’s it. Look, I’m sorry, Noah. Pretty lame of me to treat you like a little kid about the slime thing. You did cry, though, because I yelled at you.” I elbow him lovingly.

“I didn’t cry because you yelled at me.”

“Why were you crying, then?”

“Because I thought you would think the slime was cool. Instead, the whole thing just made me feel dumb.”

I’m struck with guilt; this is how Dani has made me feel countless times.

For a moment, the silence is heavy in the room. He doesn’t realize the impact his statement will have on me from here on out. How do kids break our hearts, put them back together, and then teach us how to be good human beings again just by virtue of their own virtue?

“I do think the slime thing is cool. I didn’t understand it. It’s my fault. I should have listened. I’ll be a better listener. I want to know everything, Noah. Everything going on in your life. Everything about school and you and…” I walk to the bookshelf and pick up the photo, “Is this Zoe Bennett, all grown up?”

“She’s not my girlfriend, we’re just friends,” he says quickly and defensively.

“No, I know. I like Zoe. She’s a sweetheart. Her parents are good people too. Let me finish up some things around here and then we’ll go get a late dinner and keep talking, okay?”

“Sounds good,” he says, smiling.

I walk over and hug him. “I love you, Noah.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

First fire as a solo parent…extinguished!