She got an electric feeling when she thought to call him, like maybe this time it would go ok. He was the last person she’d had sex with. But she’d had enough sex, that wasn’t what the feeling was about.
Oh, man, what a crazy idea. Her heart started going crazy, and she got an adrenaline rush. Everyone in the waiting room was taken care of, and Megan was on the phone. She could stick the call in real quick. She didn’t have the energy to call him at night, and also she had to watch out for the dog and the kid at night. There was something neutral and encouraging about the office. She held the phone, her cell phone, out in front of her and almost started laughing that low, barking laugh again, like vomit-laughing, while she looked at her phone and thought about calling.
No matter that she’d deleted his phone number from her address book three years ago, those numbers were burned in her brain and they would never leave. Sometimes she thought she’d see those numbers on her deathbed while she was going over all the stuff that had made up her life, but that was stupid.
Abruptly, she dialed his number and slapped the phone to her cheek.
His voicemail.
“Hey, it’s me, Jillian. I just had a couple of quick questions about Adam, like, an update or something, so give me a call when you get this. Ok, thanks.”
She hung up, set the ringer to vibrate, and put the phone in her pocket. The way she said the message was ok. It sounded nice and like she wasn’t a crazy lady, but it had come out too fast. He’ll just think I’m in the middle of something and that I figured he’d have his voicemail on. He’ll think I’m busy and that’s why I was talking so fast.
She tried to do some work, but she knew he’d call back, since it had been almost a year since she’d called him. She knew that when she called him too much he was unlikely to respond, but she knew, she really knew, that since she hadn’t been abusing their connection—you know, Adam—that he would probably call her back.
No, he would definitely call her back, since she hadn’t been calling him all the time. It had been a year, and she deserved to be called back.
He called back. Her phone started vibrating while she was thinking. It was a bad sign that he’d called back so quickly.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he said.
“I guess I had some questions about Adam.”
“Yeah, I got your message.”
“Well, so, here’s the thing. My car is damaged from a deer accident, and I don’t have enough money to get my car fixed and pay for Adam’s day care this month. And, also, I work in the city, so I’ve been taking the train to work and a woman from my church has been driving him to day care, and so I really do need my car.”
The guy sighed on the other line and said, “I told you a long time ago that I didn’t have any money, and if the reason you wanted to have this kid was to get money from me, it wasn’t going to work, Jillian. Don’t you remember that?”
“Yeah, I remember. I guess I just thought you might be interested in the welfare of your son.”
“Well, I just don’t have anything.”
Jillian began to feel that rage again that she got when she talked to him. Somehow she always forgot about it. That feeling like she just wanted to get her hands on him and sink her fingers into his skin and pop out his eyeballs and mash his genitals and rip off his fingers and shove them up his nose and into his brain to try to get him to be a decent person and act like they had some kind of humane, caring understanding.
“So, what am I supposed to do, leave him at home all day? Bring him to work? Or should I just take him out back and shoot him in the face with a shotgun?” she asked.
“I don’t understand why you’re getting so emotional, Jillian. Nothing has changed. Nothing in our agreement has changed.”
“But don’t you care at all?”
“This isn’t about whether or not I care. I wish you wouldn’t make this about that. I wish you wouldn’t attack me in this way, it’s not fun. I called you back because I thought you were trying to be friends with me, and I was interested in that.”
“You know, I am interested in that. I would like for us to get along, but right now I just . . . ”
“I really don’t think you’re ready for friendship. Every time you talk to me, it’s some demand. Don’t you see why I wouldn’t want to be around that? We don’t know each other well enough for me to put up with that.”
Jillian wanted to start crying or screaming, but unfortunately she couldn’t do either.
“I just thought you would like an opportunity to help out your son,” said Jillian.
“No, that’s not what’s going on here. You want me to pay to fix your car.”
Megan couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, but she knew Jillian was talking to her ex and therefore she knew (by the nature of their conversation) that Jillian did not in fact have a child support court date next week.
“Which I believe proves, not that you care,” she said later that night to Randy, “that she is a hysterical, pathological liar.”
“Ok,” said Randy. “But I still don’t see why you care so much.”
“I care so much, Randy, because the way this woman behaves is completely disgusting.”
“Yeah, well, so she lied. So what? She’s embarrassed. She doesn’t want her employers and coworkers to think she’s a criminal. I get that. I understand it.”
“Yeah, ok. But I guess what I haven’t been able to communicate is, I mean, I get why she wouldn’t want to be thought of as a criminal, but I think she does want to get caught. Either that or she’s just a total moron. Why would she wait until after telling everyone that she had a child support court date to call her ex and ask him for money? And loudly. There’s a lot at stake. She lied to get codeine, too, and she’s been taking it at work.”
“I don’t understand why you care,” said Randy.
“It’s disturbing, that’s why! Because she does these elaborate performances, like chewing her ex out and asking for painkillers, but on the other hand she acts like no one is watching. That’s it. Everything with her is an act, but she behaves like her acts are invisible to everyone.”
“Ah, if only she knew,” said Randy. He cleaned some crap from underneath his toenail.
“She’s practically shitting on the floor,” said Megan.
“Mmmhm,” said Randy.
“It’s like, don’t you finish concocting worlds like that when you’re fifteen?”
“What worlds?” Randy asked. He was thinking about how much longer he and Megan would stay together.
“The parallel worlds in which the lies aren’t lies,” said Megan. “It’s like, I remember I didn’t do some project on dinosaurs or whatever in sixth grade, so a week after it was due, I broke into my science teacher’s room and stuck my paper into the stack of graded papers. And then I convinced myself that she must have just overlooked it, and practiced how I would say ‘that’s strange, I wonder why you didn’t grade it?’ That’s what Jillian is doing, but she’s not a child. She has a child, and it’s terrifying to think of her in charge of something that fragile when she’s living in a delusional reality!”
“What happened with the dinosaur paper?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Megan. “I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter.” She picked up her beer and drank from it.
TWO
Jillian went into the bathroom that night and sat on the floor and cried while she listened to the radio. When the commercials came on, she felt self-conscious and had to stop crying for a second, but then when the music came back on she cried again. She did this for 20 minutes. The bathroom smelled like dog urine.