TJ: Why?
FM: It sounds dumb, but I felt like I had to, okay? Like no one was going to accept me for who I was if I didn’t have some extra tricks up my sleeve. So I started doing stuff. Stealing liquor. Taking stupid things from stores. Sneaking out of the house and going to hang with the guys in this parking lot they all hung out in. I became the cool girl, the girl who could bring the good stuff no one else could get.
TJ: That sounds dangerous.
FM: It wasn’t, until it was, you know? Like this one time, I was convincing this older guy, like maybe twenty-five, to buy me a bottle at Vic Pierce, this liquor store, and he was acting all nice, but then he expected me to do something for it. I grabbed the bottle, and he ran after me, but I was yelling at him, “I’m fourteen! My dad’s a cop! I’m fourteen!” And he let me go. [Laughter]
TJ: What’s funny about that?
FM: I was sixteen, and my dad wasn’t a cop.
TJ: Still, that doesn’t sound like a funny story.
FM: Nothing’s funny when it’s happening. But when it’s over, it can be sometimes.
TJ: Perhaps.
FM: Anyway, it was all mostly fun until my parents realized what I was doing and sent me to this teenager boot camp thing.
TJ: What’s that?
FM: You know, like one of the therapy places where they basically kidnap you and take you out into the wilderness until you straighten up and fly right.
TJ: What was that like?
FM: It was hell. Nothing funny about it at all. They made us get up at six and do drills and clean the latrines. And all that shit you see in the movies about people yelling in your face and making you climb walls and stuff? That’s exactly what it was like. Only worse. Because I was sixteen years old, and I hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Like, there were girls I knew who were doing way worse things than me.
TJ: I’m sure your parents just wanted to help you.
FM: Yeah, but that’s an extreme way of doing it. And it doesn’t work, you know. There’s no science behind those programs at all. You’re not more or less likely to succeed if you attend one.
TJ: I’ve heard that.
FM: I looked it up. After I got out of there and I had to do summer school to make up for the classes I missed. I researched these places, and I put together this big file to show my parents it doesn’t work. It can even make things worse.
TJ: What did they say?
FM: All the stuff you’d expect. They were sorry. They didn’t know what to do. Wah, wah, wah. And then they died. My sister told you about that, right? I bet she did.
TJ: She did.
FM: She’s the one who went to the police, you know. Can you believe it? She always had it in for me.
33
MY TURN
CECILY
When Tom and I got back from New York, we didn’t speak about what had happened. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t as if we came to an agreement or anything, only every time he tried to bring it up, I’d stop him. I couldn’t stand to hear about it. I almost couldn’t stand to be around him. So we made up some excuse to the kids about why we’d come home a day early, and then I concocted another story about how Tom had to go on a long business trip. Tom got the message and packed a bag and went to live in a hotel near his office.
He stayed in that hotel for two weeks. Two weeks of nights where I cried myself to sleep and missed his body in the bed next to me and his help with the kids, and where I tried not to think about the fact that she was probably there with him every night, though he swore he’d broken things off and that he was just going to “think.”
Like you’re in a time-out, I wrote. I couldn’t stand speaking to him on the phone, so we had taken to exchanging e-mails.
Maybe that’s not a bad analogy, Tom wrote back. I haven’t been thinking much lately about what I’ve been doing. Maybe it’s time.
And then I would go cry in the bathroom, worried the kids would hear me or see my reddened eyes. Before, they always seemed so oblivious to us, lost in their own worlds. But now, suddenly, they were both asking lots of questions about where was Dad and how come this trip was longer than the others and Dad would’ve loved this episode of whatever TV show we were watching.
It was torture, like I was trapped in someone else’s dream, and until they woke up, there was no escape for me. I have never felt so out of control in my entire life.
Talking to Kaitlyn helped. She was the one who told me it was okay to hate him. She was the one who told me it was okay to leave him. She was the one who told me that whatever I decided, to stay or to go, she’d support me. She was on Team Cecily, and Tom could go fuck himself.
That always made me laugh. “Tom can go fuck himself.” She always said it so emphatically. Was that all an act? Or was she mad at Tom, too, mad for letting whatever there was between them turn into deceit and sneaking around and . . . I don’t want to know.
When I told Kaitlyn I was letting Tom move back home for a trial run, she brought over two bottles of our favorite wine, and we sat up till midnight drinking it.
“Am I an idiot to be letting him come back?” I asked.
“ ’Course not. He’s your husband. The father of your children. And you love him.”
“But do I? Do
