YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR LIFE
Jeremy T. Wilson
This happened back when I pretended to knit stuff for a bunch of moms in Wicker Park. Hats, gloves, scarves, whatever. They all looked so sad with their applesauce-stained “The Future is Female” sweatshirts, so I thought I’d bring them some joy.
I’d put a hula hoop around you so you’d stay put. Remember? You were only about eight or nine months old, so I guess not. But I’d set you down on the playground inside that hula hoop, hand you some measuring cups and spoons to play with, and you’d never cross the border. Your own island. You were such a good girl.
And I know you don’t want me to use that word anymore, and I’m not here to argue, but that’s what you were then, a girl, my baby girl, and so when I think about you in the past that won’t change, because that memory is mine, not yours.
Anyway, I pretended I knit this stuff for these moms because . . . well, I don’t know, I guess because I wanted them to think I was more than just a stay-at-home dad, that I had some kind of robust talent.
Really I bought everything off Etsy. And one day this mom Paige gets wise. Paige was different from the other moms. For one thing she was single, the only one among them, and she looked different, too, super tall, like she might’ve been athletic once, wide hips, which will be important here in a sec. So she sits next to me on a bench while I’m watching you play in your hula hoop and she says, “You don’t knit.”
“Of course I knit,” I say.
“Bullshit,” she says. “If you come over to my place for lunch I won’t tell.”
Don’t worry. This is not a story about some secret affair I had and now there’s a long-lost sibling out there dying to meet you. But it is a story you need to hear.
So we go over to her condo, and the place is a mess, mail scattered on the floor, Amazon boxes stacked by the front door, mounds of toys and blankets. Clutter, clutter, clutter. Paige makes PB&J sandwiches. You’re on the floor, the hula hoop around you, and her son Rainer, who was probably all of five, he’s on the couch on his iPad.
Yeah, his name was really Rainer. That’s not insignificant.
So we sit there and talk about stuff like farmer’s markets or electric cars or whatever white people talked about at the time, I don’t really remember, but I do remember her telling me I should have more kids.
Did you know we tried? Did you know we wanted more? It just didn’t happen, and then your mom made partner at the firm and kept getting busier and busier, and, well, sorry you were all by yourself.
Maybe if you’d had a sibling things would be different, or . . . never mind. I love you no matter what. That’s not the point.
The point is that Paige gets up all the sudden and yanks Rainer off the couch and the two of them go upstairs and don’t come back. I mean, it’s like thirty, forty minutes. I don’t know what to do with myself, and you know I can’t stand clutter, so what do I do? Right. I clean her condo, tidy the piles, put all the sandwich stuff away, wipe down the counters with some toxic cleaner I would never use myself, and when I’m all done, I write her a recipe for a Negroni on the back of a gas bill.
You’re not old enough to drink a Negroni yet, maybe just a sip, but it’s your mom’s favorite cocktail, really bitter.
Rainer Maria Rilke was a poet. Paige named her kid after him, although, come to think of it, we never talked about it, so I guess it could’ve been a family name, but for reasons that will become apparent, I’m pretty sure he was named after the poet. Rilke’s most famous for some letters he wrote to a young poet named Franz, which Franz went on to publish later as, what else? Letters to a Young Poet, where Rilke offers a lot of heartfelt advice like: “Almost everything serious is difficult, and everything is serious.” Not much for laughs was Rilke. He was only twenty-seven when he started those letters, and Franz was almost twenty, so what the hell did either one of them know other than how to be sad?
Anyway, after that lunch at Paige’s, I find my copy of the book and reread it, and I’m noticing all this stuff I underlined in blue ink when I read it back in college, around the time I met your mom, and I don’t even recognize myself. Like, who’s the dude who underlined, “Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, some-thing helpless that wants our love.” Seriously? What the hell does that even mean?
But here, you can have my copy. You might like it.
You remember that children’s book I was working on and never finished? About the owl and the octopus? Probably not. I used to read parts of it to you to get your reaction, and most of the time if you smiled or giggled or frowned or farted, I would use that as a guide to keep going or to revise. You were my muse! The book was supposed to be about how two really smart but totally different animals can discover common ground. Well, I decided to name the owl Rilke and the octopus Franz.
And this is all important because of what happens the next time we go over to Paige’s.
She invites us over for cookies, and I go because I still feel like she might rat me out to the other moms, and when we get there she makes this big show of looking for chocolate chip cookie ingredients, and guess what? No chocolate chips! So she’s got to go to the store, and she’s out the door before I can stop her.
So here we are again. Rainer burrows into the couch with his iPad, and I sit on the floor outside your hula hoop and watch you play with blocks. I preheat the oven. I swear to God it’s like an hour and she’s still not back, but I don’t have her number, so I can’t call or text, and when I ask Rainer what his mom’s number is, he shrugs and says something like four, two, seven. I check the gas bill where I wrote the Negroni recipe. No phone number. But get this, she’s changed the proportions on the envelope, marked through the 1.5 oz of London dry gin and replaced it with a 3, and that may not mean a lot to you, but to me it means Paige’s not so much interested in a cocktail as she is in getting blotto!
You should bring that word back, by the way, blotto. When you’re old enough.
So I go upstairs to see if I can find something else that’s got a number on it, a different bill, a note, a label in a backpack, whatever, and surprise, surprise, the second floor is a wreck. Rainer’s room is covered in dirty clothes, red cheese wax rolled into balls, sour smell. And Paige’s room’s not much better. A mountain of clothes all heaped on the unmade bed, magazines fanned out on a wine-stained rug, as-sorted glasses and mugs stuck to every surface, gray pebbles spilling from an open box of cat litter.
I have not seen a cat.
You and your mom never understood my deal with clutter, like why I couldn’t stand a mess, but to me, a mess is a reflection of what’s in your head. It was obvious the mess Paige was living in was an objective representation of a psychological mess, or vice versa. Chicken or egg, I guess. But this is why our counters always had to be clean.
Anyway, her bathroom’s more of the same, grimy toilet bowl, stinky towels tossed in corners, but there’s this drying rack standing in her giant Jacuzzi tub. You know, like a place to hang clothes that are too delicate for the dryer. We had one in the basement, but you probably don’t remember. They’re very helpful. And on this drying rack she’s got a lot of underwear, nothing sexy, just a lot of practical, utilitarian underwear in bright colors.
Okay, so now you’ve got the scene. Here’s where it gets weird.
I start to fold her underwear, doing her a favor, trying to help her get her life together, because what kind of monster doesn’t fold their underwear and put it in a drawer?
Please do this for me, sweetheart, and always fold and put away your underwear.
But then I think, what am I doing? She’s probably tricked me. She saw how I cleaned up her first floor and now wants me to clean up the whole place, thinks if she stays gone long enough, maybe I will. I’ve been duped!
So I unfold the underwear and put it back on the rack, and the last pair is this really, really hot pink pair, and I’m like, wow! Paige does not seem like a hot pink panties wearing person, and I know you don’t like the word panties, but sometimes it’s really the right word, and it’s funny, so you’re going to have to forgive your old dad, yet again.
But who is a hot pink panties wearing person? Are you? Am I?
So here we go, and I know you don’t want to hear this, but because of her wide hips and all, I wonder if they’ll fit me. And this strikes me as a funny thing to do, like an inside joke between me and her panties, a way to get back at her for leaving me alone in her condo and taking advantage of my compulsion for cleanliness, so I think, ha! Wouldn’t it be funny to have this little secret, to know the next time she puts on these panties that I’d had them on, too?
I really can’t explain it. And there’s a lesson in that. Not everything can be explained or categorized or identified or labeled or pathologized or even named, and I think the world is better off that way, with some mystery. But I can say that it might’ve had to do with the fact she knew I didn’t knit those gifts for the other moms, and I wanted to know something she didn’t know.
This sounds real stupid, and maybe it’s not a reason at all, but somehow there I am in her panties.
I’m sure you can picture it even if you don’t want to. I’m standing there in this woman’s hot pink panties, and they’re real tight, and I’m looking at myself in the mirror, when I notice all these toothpaste flecks on the glass like a dot-to-dot, and there’s an open tube of lip-stick on the counter with its gaudy, red tip pointed right at me.
I can’t resist!
I pick up the tube and connect the toothpaste dots, lightly, thinking I’ll clean the glass later, but also thinking she probably won’t notice or care, probably think Rainer did it, call him a budding artistic genius.
And if you’re having trouble believing any of this so far, here’s the part that gets real freaky.
When I connect the last dot, I step back, and you know what I see? An octopus.
I shit you not.
My eyes fit squarely into its face. My mouth is where the octopus’s mouth would be if octopus’s had mouths, but they don’t, they have beaks, and I think, wouldn’t it be funnier if they had lips? Can you picture an octopus with lips? It’s funny, right? So, yeah, I smear the lipstick on and pucker up and close my eyes and kiss the mirror.
And when I open my eyes, Rainer is standing in the threshold of the bathroom, and he holds up his iPad and takes a picture of me and says, “Make me a sandwich.”
Well, of course I do what he says, and the whole time I’m spreading peanut butter and jelly on some nutrition-less white bread, I’m wondering if he’ll tell his mom. Will he rush to show her the awe-some picture he took? Or is Rainer a keeper of secrets? I’m thinking I should threaten him, tell him his mother won’t let him have the iPad anymore if he doesn’t delete that picture, but that’s the problem with other people’s kids, right? Where’s my authority coming from?
So he eats the sandwich, and when he’s done I ask him if I can get him anything else, if there’s anything he wants, anything, say, that his mom might not usually let him have, a huge bowl of ice cream, some candy, a huge bowl of ice cream topped with candy. “She’s not here,” I say, “our secret.”
“I’m cool,” Rainer says. And, man, am I hoping he’s right. Eventually Paige comes back, and she’s all apologetic, and she tells some long story about the first store she went to being out of chocolate chips, and she wanted to call or text to let me know, but she didn’t have my number, and we should really exchange numbers, so she had to hop on a Divvy bike and go down to Mariano’s for chocolate chips, where she ran into a friend of hers she hadn’t seen in a long time, and this friend offered to drive her back home, but then they had to make all kinds of stops for this and that or whatever, and so that’s what took so long, and she asks, “How were things here?”
Rainer’s on the couch still watching videos or playing a game. Hasn’t even looked up since his mom walked in. Doesn’t say a word, so I tell her everything was fine, but we don’t stay for cookies.
If Paige knows anything she never says. We sit together at the park and she never brings it up, not even the lipstick all over her mirror. We exchange numbers, which I immediately regret, because she’s a habitual texter, but nothing of substance, mostly videos of dudes get-ting hit in the nuts. Every time I see her name come up I’m freaking out she’s going to send the picture of me, but she doesn’t. I answer all her texts with a thumbs up.
Days, weeks go by, and just when I think nothing is going to come of it, that Rainer’s a trusted keeper of secrets, or he’s simply forgot-ten, or never took a picture in the first place, he launches a campaign of extortion. He demands I buy him candy, sour gummies. So I do. And after that he wants some Shopkins. Remember those? They never made any sense to me as anything other than advertisements, but I buy them and tear them out of their package and drop them into Rainer’s empty snack bag when his mom’s not looking.
Then he demands money, in the form of a $100 Target gift card.
So I’ve got to swipe his iPad and delete the picture.
One night after we put you to bed, I tell your mom I’m going out for a walk and I go over to Paige’s. She answers the door, and she’s got a wooden spoon in her hand. And I remember this because she’s drawn a sad face on the back of this wooden spoon, and she has a name for it. She calls it: Mr. Sad.
I tell her I think I left your hula hoop at her place the last time we were over, so can I take a look?
She steps aside and waves me in with Mr. Sad.
The condo’s dark and smells like onions. It’s late, and I’m thinking Rainer will be in bed, and I’ll just distract Paige somehow and find the iPad and get it over with.
And I know what you’re thinking. Bad idea, Dad. And you’re right.
Anyway, Rainer’s still up, and I say, “Rainer’s still up?” like a question, even though I can see him right there.
And she says, “You came here to judge my parenting?” And I say, “No, no, it’s just late is all.”
And she says, “Bedtime,” and slaps the wooden spoon on the cushion next to Rainer. “Don’t make me use Mr. Sad,” she says.
He holds up a finger, and she clacks the back of his knuckles with Mr. Sad, and he drops the iPad on the couch.
Mr. Sad means business.
So they head upstairs and she’s dragging Rainer along and she says one more thing, she says, “Are you sure you’re not looking for something else?”
So now I’m thinking she knows. She’s seen the picture and she knows, but I’m still not sure, so when they’re both gone, I grab the iPad.
And, right, just like you were thinking, it’s password protected. I try a couple of easy ones. Nothing works. I don’t want to keep trying and lock the whole thing up. I’m thinking I could steal it, crush it with a brick and toss it in an alley. But where else might that picture be, you know? It could be in the cloud, ready to be retrieved on the next device, or maybe all their devices are shared. Maybe I was al-ready a meme!
I try one more passcode: r-a-i-n-e-r And it works!
I navigate to the photos. Hundreds of screen shots of the game he spends all his time playing. Hundreds of selfies of Rainer making dumb faces. I scroll and scroll and finally I find it. There I am, framed in her bathroom, hot pink panties on and lips painted red, and I’m surprised to see that I’m smiling.
But there’s more.
Somebody’s added to the picture. Above my head, someone has drawn a thought bubble, and inside that bubble are scribbled the words: “you must change your life.”
Pretty weird, right?
Turns out, although I didn’t know it at the time, that this line is from one of Rilke’s most famous poems. Look it up.
And here we’ve finally gotten to the whole point of this long story. I’m not going to pretend to know what you’re going through, but
I know this, we are so much more than one thing, so much more than the way people see us or even the way we see ourselves, so much more than this label or that label. I don’t want you to have to choose. I simply want you to be. No, I simply want you to become, to be al-lowed to become, because I know this, sweetheart, just before I deleted that picture, I saw a glimpse of myself I hadn’t seen before and would never see again, and I’m not talking about the lipstick and the panties, although I guess that’s hard to ignore. I’m talking about a wildness, a flirtation with danger, part of me that was out of control. I made a decision to snoop around a stranger’s condo and pick up her panties and smear her lipstick on my lips and kiss her mirror, and that was bold, and weird, and unpredictable, and passionate, and all those things your mom eventually accused me of lacking, and I could feel all that in the picture, and it was like a different version of myself was on display, one that was inviting me along, daring me to change, saying, come on, you are this person, you can be this person, you can be this person and more!
But I didn’t listen.
I deleted that guy.
And as the years went on I slowly settled into the man I am now, the man you know, the man your mother grew out of love with, and who could blame her really? I tried real hard to be a dad, to be the best dad, the perfect dad, so much so that I neglected any other part of myself that was trying to push itself out and grow. But your mother worked all the time and was never around, so she’s not totally blame-less here. And now you get to learn when you come to my place that not everybody has marble countertops and a toilet that warms your ass. Good lessons. But I’m not telling you this to be all maudlin and sentimental and nostalgic, and maybe I don’t really know at all why I’m telling you this, but I thought maybe you could use a story about adults not having all the answers.
God, it’s really hard to make a point. I know how it sounds in my head, but it’s not sounding that way when it comes out.
So how about this?
If you don’t want to shave your armpits, don’t shave your arm-pits. If you want to wear high heels and makeup, wear high heels and makeup. If you want to chop all your hair off, change your pronouns, and have everybody call you Sal, cool. But know this: there was a time in your life when I dropped a hula hoop around you so you’d stay in one spot. Don’t be so eager to put that hula hoop on yourself.
Jeremy T. Wilson is the author of the novel The Quail Who Wears the Shirt (2023), and a short story collection, Adult Teeth (2018), both published by Tortoise Books. His stories have appeared in Atticus Review, Florida Review, Invisible City, Moon City Review, Sonora Review, Third Coast, and Best Small Fictions.