To Be Honest Page 15

  When it was time to exchange presents, they had a lot of tradition and ceremony; they’d been doing this the same way for decades.* I kept commenting on it and asking questions, unpleasantly reminding everyone over and over that I was an outsider instead of just running with it. “My family had no traditions,” I said. “And we didn’t want to do anything that mass amounts of other people were doing.”

  Eve’s mother, her sister, and her sister’s boyfriend gave one another presents like they really knew one another, like they’d done research and planned surprises. Eve didn’t have money for gifts, so she’d made everyone personalized drawings and comics. Almost from the start of the giving and receiving presents, I was crying. I tried to explain to them why it moved me so much, but again I was imposing my experience on everyone, taking over the scene. Given the circumstances, it went pretty well.

  In the morning, we visited Eve’s dad, who enjoyed the fatherly tradition of cutely intimidating his daughters’ suitors. Because I wasn’t conventionally masculine, certainly not the type of guy he’d dreamed of his daughter being with, I made an appealing target. He cracked a joke about how every man should know basic carpentry, and I responded as if he’d made an actual argument. “Have you ever noticed that whenever somebody suggests what everyone should know how to do, it always happens to be something they themselves know how to do? What a wild coincidence!” Eve and her dad weren’t laughing, so I tried to be clearer. “What if I insisted that a real man should be able to play piano? Or write a story? Or cry on cue? Who gets to decide what everyone should be able to do?”

  Whatever response Eve’s dad expected to his innocuous jab, this wasn’t it—I watched him decide how to take it, whether to laugh, be insulted, or to engage in argument. He laughed politely.

  Eve changed the subject, complained about the typical troubles of freelance life as a twenty-four-year-old, and her father said, “Welcome to the real world.”

  I launched into another rant. “When we talk about the ‘real world,’ why is it always negative? I’m gonna start saying that about good news, like when someone wins the lottery, I’ll say, ‘Welcome to the real world!’ or ‘You fell in love? Welcome to the real world!’” Eve’s dad liked this bit more than the last, though I could also see him feeling disarmed by the unpredictability of our back-and-forth.

  Afterward, as we walked to the car, Eve held my hand and said, “He’ll love you. It’ll just take him a minute.”

  It occurred to me that I was taking part in a common experience: setting out to convince a girlfriend’s parents to like me. Setting out to be liked by anyone had always struck me as such a doomed enterprise that I’d never attached to it any feelings of self-worth. And it seemed hypocritical to feel proud when someone liked me unless I was willing to feel ashamed when they didn’t. Giving away the power over my feelings seemed a dismal gamble. I ran this train of thought by Eve in the car while she drove back to her mom’s. Gazing out the windshield, she said, “That’s just what it means to care.”

  “I don’t think it’s good to define yourself according to other people’s arbitrary opinions,” I told her.

  Eve shrugged, now in a much worse mood. “I just know I like it when you care.”

  When we returned to her mom’s house, everyone sat around the kitchen table to make plans to see a movie. Though I was usually pretty particular about what I wanted to see, I thought they would like me more if I was willing to see whatever they wanted. Eve’s mom looked at the list of movies in the newspaper and said, “Michael doesn’t like dramas, so let’s see a comedy.”

  This claim baffled me. “I like dramas,” I said. “I’ll see whatever you want to see.” Eve gave me a hard look like I was making a big mistake, but I couldn’t imagine what that mistake could be.

  “It’s okay,” Eve’s mother said. “We’ll just pick a comedy. We know you like comedies.”

  “What makes you think I don’t like dramas?” I asked.

  “A comedy would be great,” Eve said, grabbing my hand under the table and shooting me another look that meant I should shut up. I guessed that I was supposed to agree with her mom that I didn’t like dramas, but I couldn’t bring myself to say that. I tried to stay quiet and let them choose. Eve’s mother suggested a movie. “Michael, do you want to see that one?”

  “I’m open to whatever you want to see,” I told her. Eve frowned for reasons I couldn’t understand.

  “Okay,” Eve’s mom said as if I’d vetoed her suggestion. She then asked about another movie.

  “Whatever you guys want,” I said again. Eve looked exasperated, and I was so confused that I just cracked. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m trying to follow the rules of this conversation but I can’t figure them out! Can someone please just explain it to me? Are you saying I don’t like dramas because you want to see a comedy? And when I told you I’d see whatever you wanted, you acted like I’d rejected your suggestion. I honestly meant that I didn’t need to take part in choosing the movie. I’m trying to be nice but Eve’s looking at me as if I’m being rude, and I can’t figure out what to say!”

  I was laughing, but Eve’s mom and sister had their eyes down, mortified. Then, within seconds, they burst out comforting me. “We don’t have to go to a movie, it’s okay! We can just do something here!”

  Eve got up to shepherd me from the room, saying something like, “Hey Michael, I just remembered something to show you.” She brought me to our bedroom and said, “Don’t worry, just stay here a few minutes and I’ll take care of it. When you come back, don’t mention anything about this.”

  “Are they gonna want me to apologize?” I asked. People always wanted me to apologize.

  “Acting like it didn’t happen is the apology,” Eve said.

  When I returned, the movie had been decided and everyone was in a good mood again.

  Later that night, when we were alone in the guest bedroom, I asked Eve what had happened. She paused with a quizzical expression and then whispered as if communicating a sensitive military secret. “My mom tries to make everybody else feel comfortable. My whole family tries to make everyone feel comfortable.”

  “How was the bit about my not liking dramas supposed to make me feel comfortable?”

  I could see that Eve had never tried to explain the way her family communicated, which blew my mind because explaining how my family and I communicated was like my part-time job. “When you want something, you can’t just say you want it,” Eve said.

  I interrupted with a little obnoxious rant. “People say this all the time. ‘You can’t just ask for what you want!’ or ‘You can’t just tell them how you feel!’ Where’s this can’t coming from? Just open your mouth and move your tongue and vocal cords!”

  “They don’t mean you literally can’t!” Eve scoffed. “They just mean it’s rude!”

  “Okay, so if they want something, how do they go about it?” I asked.

  Eve answered quickly now, but was still whispering. “They give you a hint and then you notice and make them comfortable by saying it’s what you want.” Eve paused, impressed at her discovery that she could translate social life for me so clearly. “So, when Mom said you didn’t like dramas, that was her way to say she didn’t want to see a drama. And when she asked if you wanted to see a specific movie, that was the one she wanted to see. You were supposed to act excited about whatever movie she asked you about. When you said ‘whatever you want,’ she took that to mean that you didn’t want to see it.”

  “That’s the most complicated thing I’ve ever heard,” I told her.

  Eve laughed and softened, got onto the bed to hug me. “For you, it’s complicated,” she said. “It makes sense to us like how your family makes sense to you.”

  Though Eve had warmed now, I was still frustrated. “But how does this make anyone comfortable? To not be able to admit what you want? To know everyone’s only pretending to want what you want? Doesn’t that feel terrible?”

  “No! Why would that feel terri
ble? Everyone’s being nice!” Eve said. “I mean, sometimes there are miscommunications, I guess, but it’s worth it.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  This was another question she’d not previously considered.* She thought a moment and said, “Because we’re always showing that we care and giving chances for other people to show that they care.”

  “Can’t everybody caring about each other just be assumed?” I grumbled. “Can’t they just say ‘I love you’ or something?”

  “No!” Eve laughed. “It’s nice to show you care over and over.”

  “A broken record of love,” I said, at first with some bitterness, but then moved by it. “I’d like to show you that I care over and over,” I said. “I don’t get this whole avoidant, indirect way of doing it, but …”

  “I know,” Eve sighed.

  “I love how great you are at translating,” I told her. As I finished this sentence, I plummeted into a neurotic spiral. I’d previously rolled my eyes at those who always played to the room, donning the most advisable mask. I’d prided myself on only wearing one face. Not everyone was allowed to exist that way. For most, switching personas wasn’t a matter of preference but of survival. Beyond that, my speaking one language burdened everyone else with translating. Who knew how many had ushered me away and smoothed things over without my noticing? I watched Eve mull over my comment, taking in that being my girlfriend meant also being my translator.

  Once I’d met Eve’s family, she started asking when she could meet mine. My family never came to New York and were really only all in the same place at family camp, so I joked, “You could come with us to family therapy camp!”

  “I could come to family camp?” she said. “I’d love to!”

  I’d told Eve a lot about family camp over our first year and a half together. A lot of movies reminded me of camp, so I’d pause them to tell her stories.

  “You’d really want to come?” I asked. “Why?”

  “You like it,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I? And I could spend time with your family. And it sounds fun to go camping with you.”

  I took this explanation at face value. After all, Eve was really into “family” in general. And lots of people enjoyed camping. Besides, family camp would surely be twice as interesting with Eve’s commentary. So I didn’t question it. It didn’t occur to me that bringing my girlfriend to family therapy camp might be a bad idea.

  It’s Fun to Be Nice

  We decided to spend a week in Los Angeles staying at Mom’s house before camp. When I discussed it with Mom over the phone, her voice was ecstatic. “I’m so excited to meet her!” With the same enthusiastic tone, she added, “All that matters is that she likes me!”

  When Eve walked in the door, Mom gave one of her near-violent hugs. “I’m so excited to meet you! I hope you like me!”

  Eve laughed in the hug, surprisingly not thrown off, and said, “I hope you like me too!”

  We put down our stuff in Mom’s office, which had a bed and doubled as a guest room. As Eve took in the room, she noticed the affirmation Post-it notes Mom stuck on the mirrors and walls, things like, “You will sound professional and confident in all phone calls,” “You deserve to be seen,” and “You will be appreciated for your authentic self.” I stood next to Eve and watched her read each Post-it, her expression shifting from discomfort to amusement to sadness and back. I remember she lingered with a melancholy smile at the one that said, “You are a good person.” Though she didn’t comment on the Post-it notes, she did comment on the lighting, that my mom used blinding energy-saving florescent bulbs without shades or dimmers. “It’s the least-flattering lighting possible!”

  “Hmmm,” I said. “That would explain why I always found myself so ugly.”

  While Eve was in another room on the phone with her sister, I told Mom Eve’s observation about the unflattering lights. “Huh,” Mom said. “That’s funny. Well, I guess it’s good that we see what we really look like.”

  “But those bulbs make us look worse than we’d look anywhere else,” I insisted. She remained unconvinced, didn’t change the bulbs.

  Mom hosted a breakfast at her house so that her family and Joe could meet Eve. It was a big deal to her that I had a girlfriend.

  When Joe walked in the door, he beelined for Eve, said, “Wow! You’re Eve! It’s so great to meet you!” He hugged her and said, “We knew it wasn’t gonna be easy for Michael to find somebody, but we never lost faith that someone would understand him!”

  Eve’s eyes widened. “Wow,” she said emptily, filling conversational space. “That’s so nice.”

  I’d warned Eve about my grandparents, but she showed no sign of irritation or recognition of their unpleasantness. It was wild to watch Eve smiling and laughing while Grammy regaled her with repetitive tales of nasty people she’d encountered (waiters, doctors, random people on the street). Under the light of Eve’s attention, Grammy got on a roll, recounting endless stories of alleged nastiness.

  At one point, Mom couldn’t stay quiet anymore and said, “Mommy! You’re still mad about that? You told me that story when I was a teenager!”

  Eve intervened, “But it’s such a funny story!” Mom and I exchanged looks, desperately hoping that Eve was only acting.

  As Eve sat through Pa’s dirty jokes and creepy comments on her appearance, I kept trying to interrupt and save her, but Eve always waved me away to keep Mom’s parents comfortable. Eventually, they ran out of things to say and the conversation degenerated into repeating how “sweet” Eve was.

  That evening, I was excited to have time alone with Eve to hear her true thoughts about all she’d seen, but her take wasn’t what I’d expected.

  “Your grandparents aren’t so bad!” Eve insisted. “You made them sound like monsters!”

  I sputtered, “I assumed you were pretending! How could you possibly have enjoyed talking with them?”

  “They’re your family!” Eve said. “Sure, they’re not great conversationalists, but it’s fun to be nice to your family.”

  “What’s fun about being nice!?!” I asked in horror. “Being nice is excruciating!” Eve laughed at the state I was in so I calmed down. “Well,” I said. “For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen them love someone so much. You might be the only person outside the family who’s ever listened to them.”

  Eve sighed. “Wouldn’t you be unpleasant too if no one ever listened to you?” Eve overestimated how many people listened to me and underestimated my unpleasantness.

  When I told Sidney that I was in L.A., he insisted that while in town I work with the director of my theoretical horror movie in person.* I feared that they would fire me if I said no.

  Eve didn’t sympathize with my predicament. “You’re leaving me alone with your mom?”

  “It’ll just be for a part of the day each day,” I said. “I’ll leave you the car in case you want to go somewhere and I’ll be back in the afternoon.”

  But by afternoon, she was in an even worse state. “You told your mom about me criticizing the lightbulbs! Why would you tell her that?”

  “I thought it was good advice. And I wasn’t gonna take credit for your observation.”

  “But it was awful. I tried to tell her I didn’t say it and she didn’t believe me.”

  “Don’t lie to my mom!” I told her.

  I’d never seen Eve so exasperated. “While you’re out, she keeps trying to talk to me for hours and take me shopping, and she doesn’t notice that sometimes it’s too much. Even when I try to say no, she doesn’t understand.”

  I could imagine Eve’s version of “trying to say no” being a series of imperceptible hints we’d never pick up. “Did you try just telling her explicitly that you want to do something else?” I asked.

  “No! I can’t just say that!” Eve said. “I want her to like me!”

  “With my family, you can make boundaries,” I told her. “She won’t be offended. And even if she is offended, that’s okay.”

&nbs
p; “No, it isn’t!” Eve said.

  I continued working on the script in the mornings, and each time I met back up with Eve, she was more in the mood to fight than to go out and have fun. I could tell that she wanted to break up but couldn’t figure out how to do so in the situation—we were staying at my mom’s house, about to leave for family therapy camp. I figured it’d be best to address this instead of leaving it unspoken. “I can tell that you want to break up,” I told her. “And I’m afraid you’re gonna spend the whole week of camp pretending everything’s okay, refusing to admit that you want to break up. So, I want to talk through it. Maybe you don’t want to go to camp. Maybe we should break up and go to camp as friends? I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

  Eve glared. “Are you dumping me?”

  “No!” I said. “I’m in love with you. I’m trying to make you feel better about dumping me. If you need to break up, I don’t want you to feel bad about it.”

  Eve shook her head. “Believe me. If I’m breaking up with you, you’ll know.”

  “Okay,” I said, starting to cry. “Just please don’t pretend to like me more than you really do or pretend to be happy when you aren’t. If I can tell that you’re pretending, it’ll be so sad. And if I fall for it and believe that you still love me when you don’t, that’ll be even worse.”

  Eve was moved by this speech and embraced me. “I wouldn’t do that,” she said. “I promise to be honest.” I still didn’t believe her.

  The next day, we set off on our romantic getaway to family therapy camp.

  Rooting for Trauma

  The snaky road to camp especially concerned me this trip because of Eve’s self-diagnosed “vomit-phobia” which I’d learned about when we watched movies. So many movies featured vomit scenes—comedies, dramas, horror movies, romances—far more than I’d ever have expected. Whenever a character threw up, Eve cupped her hands over her face and lamented, “Why does there have to be vomiting in every movie? Who likes to watch vomiting? Who wants to write about vomiting?”