Ask the Passengers

I stare at the small case of it. “Shrimp is good.”

“That’s it?”

“Or shrimp is bad,” I say.

Jorge looks at me like I must be high. Frank S. gives me a thumbs-up from over by the big industrial mixer. Dee still has a look on her face like she’s losing me. Because she might be losing me.

At home, we eat DIY dinner because none of us are hungry at the same time. I do leftover pizza. Cold. Ellis eats a can of meatballs. Mom has a salad. Each of us seems to be in our own little world with our own little shadows.

After dinner, I go out to the picnic table and I try to think about the Socrates Project and my toga, but I’m distracted by the realization that I’m completely alone right now. No friends. No family. No Dee. I look at the planes and picture the passengers feeling sorry for me for shutting people out. For having to do what I have to do next, which is figure out all the ways to not be completely alone. I ask them: Do you think one day they might let me love them again?

PASSENGER #1008

MIKEY JO MARTINEZ, SEAT 1D

FLIGHT #4430

DALLAS TO JFK

What people don’t tell you about this part of breaking up is the embarrassment. I’m Mikey Jo Martinez, man. Always a happy guy. A good father. A good husband. I go to church, and I volunteer at the soup kitchen twice a month, you know? And all I feel is embarrassed right now. I almost didn’t make it onto this plane because I thought about taking a bunch of pills last night. That’s a first. Mikey Jo Martinez doesn’t think about shit like that. Ever.

Donald and Glen told me that divorce was freedom. They said that they have more time and less worries, and no one bitches at them anymore. But they didn’t love their wives, either. I do.

More than I ever did before.

You know that saying about how you don’t know what you have until it’s gone? I already did know what I had, and now that she’s gone, I know even more.

Donald and Glen said something about dating honeys. How they go clubbing. Shit, man, I’m thirty-five years old. I don’t want to go to a club. I don’t want honeys. I want Noelle back. I want my kids back. I want to hit Rewind. So I’m going back to Jersey to see if she’ll try one more time.

And I’m landing in an hour, and I don’t know what to say. All I know is that nothing I ever said before worked.

She said she loves me. She said she doesn’t want to do this to the kids. She said that she really wants it to work out. But she said it’s up to me… and I don’t know what that means.

I can admit that at first I was a jerk. She gave me some self-help book, and I threw it on the ground, but I was mad. Really mad. And I’m still mad and embarrassed.

What’s scary is that I still feel that way on some days. Like I have anger issues. Like I’m some animal. When, really, I know I’m a good guy. I mean, most of the time, you know?

My favorite part of flying is when we break through the clouds. Seeing them from above is magical, but flying through them to see the landscape below is beautiful. As we do it this time, we hit some turbulence, and I focus on some tree-covered mountains in the distance and the dark yellow of the setting sun hitting the edges of the scattered small clouds between me and the mountains. While I do this, I hear Noelle’s voice in my head—the last thing she said to me on the phone. She said, “If you’re coming back here, then you’d better have something new to say, because I’m not going to sit and listen to the same old excuses, Mikey. You either need to own up to your shit or just stay in Dallas with your mother, because this is your last chance.”

She means it, too. Noelle Martinez doesn’t say anything she doesn’t mean, which is why I love her as much as I do. You can count on people like that.

I look out the window and see the sun getting lower and the mountains in the distance getting yellower, and I feel this sharp pain in my chest like someone just shot me. It hurts, but it’s good, too. Like it’s letting the pressure out of my chest. It’s a relief. Like someone somewhere is releasing the embarrassment and letting me think straight.

Suddenly, I know what I’m going to say.

I’m going to say: This was all my fault. I’m so sorry. I didn’t appreciate you, and I didn’t help you. She will look frightened because Mikey Jo Martinez has never admitted stuff like this before. I will ask her to hug me. When she does, I will ask: Will you let me love you again?

38

WHAT WOULD SOCRATES DO?

“HEY,” KRISTINA SAYS. It startles me out of my love-sending, and I sit up.

“Ninja,” I say. “Didn’t even hear you come out the door.”

“I snuck around the side,” she says. “I don’t feel like seeing Claire right now. Or your sister.”

“I don’t see why not. They still probably like you more than they like me.”

“Look,” Kristina says. She sits down on the table next to me, our feet on the bench part, and I share my blanket with her. “You have to understand some stuff.”

“I understand enough,” I say. “You lied about me. I’m not your best friend anymore.”

“Please! Just stop!” she says, and she starts crying a little, and I feel like shit—a little like my mother. Twisting the knife once it’s in and all that.

She reaches into her coat pocket and gets a tissue, and she blows her nose a few times. Finally she says, “I did make it up. But I had to.”

“You had to? That’s even lamer than denying it.”

“Let me finish,” she says. “You don’t understand what it’s like to be from here. You don’t understand what it’s like to have a family who’s always been from here.”

“And this makes it okay to tell lies about your best friend how?”

“God, you can really be like Claire, you know that?”

“Thanks.”

She looks at me and starts to cry again. “I’ve lost everything! Can’t you see that? Everything!”

“No. I can’t see that,” I say.

“I was Kristina Houck—”

“You’re still Kristina Houck!”

“I was Kristina Houck: Homecoming Court, Unity Valley girl. I had a reputation. I had status. I had a future. Recommendations to the best colleges. Connections. People,” she says.

I interrupt her. “You still have all that stuff. Doesn’t explain why you lied about me. Which, if you look at it from my point of view, looks like this: Townie girl with status and connections makes up lie about her pseudo–best friend who moved here and was never accepted by the townie people, and then denies it and makes a shitload of excuses, as if it’s okay for good Unity Valley girls to lie about big nothings from out of state.”