Chapter Three.Grey Gardens
My boyfriend and I hadn't been seeing eye to eye for weeks. We had just bought a new condo and seemed to be fighting over every detail of its remodeling. Why he would agree to install an eight-by-eight-foot fish tank and then not fill it with a single dolphin made me want to burn his eyebrows off. I saw a side of him that I had never seen in myself: someone with the energy needed to ask lots of questions, get the answers, and then ask more of the same questions in different, annoying ways.
" Chelsea, if you want to make an aquatic statement like that, why don't we get a small sand or tiger shark?" Ted asked.
"I'm not trying to make a fucking statement, Ted. Dolphins are our friends, and sharks are assholes. Why would I want to buy an animal that could potentially go haywire and eat my ass?"
"I'm just trying to make some alternative suggestions."
"Well, Ted, I think a shark is unreasonable. Why not get an electric eel if we're going to go down that road? Maybe something that can escape from the tank and chase us all around the condo like it was on some sort of vendetta? Didn't you see the fourth installment of Jaws, where the shark's granddaughter chased the family all the way to the Bahamas? What would we even name a shark, Ted? Hitler, O.J., Manson?"
"Okay, Chelsea, let's just try to stay focused."
Initially, when my designer told me that some couples break up over the design process, I assumed she meant people who were shallow and materialistic: people who drove Toyota Cressidas but also managed to afford eyelash tinting and Invisalign.
The things we were disagreeing over were so menial and exhausting that I almost immediately lost interest in the whole affair. I'm a girl, but not as much of a girl as my boyfriend, so I decided to fold on almost everything. Except for the dolphin.
When he told me he wanted to take his son to Hawaii for his spring break, I thought it might be a good opportunity for me to stay home and ponder how I got myself into this mess in the first place. Hawaii bores me. There is no nightlife, and whenever I'm there, I wake up at seven. If I wanted to wake up at seven, I'd adopt a black baby.
My boyfriend is similar to a large toddler, the only difference being he doesn't cry when he wakes up. He's very animated and has a lot of energy and wants to exert it all at the same time on a variety of activities, which can be incredibly annoying. Coming from a family that specializes in making plans that will most likely never materialize and then being so exhausted from the prospect of an actual outing that we all have to take a nap doesn't really prepare you for the type of person who gets excited by a tide change. Plus, he's twenty years older than me, which makes his behavior even more suspect.
Needless to say, I was euphoric at the idea of spending a weekend alone in my condo with zero responsibilities. The only plan I had was something involving barbecue sauce at my friend's house Saturday night. I was going to spend all weekend planting a tomato garden in my bathtub.
Friday night I went over to a different friend's house and got back home at around two in the morning. Perfect, I thought. I'll sleep in, get up, go for a run, write all day and maybe into the night, and then, depending on my productivity, maybe even make a field trip to Dunkin' Donuts as a reward.
The next morning I woke up at eight-thirty and couldn't go back to sleep. I was pissed. I knew myself well enough not to get up and start being productive. I was thirty-four now. I was a long way from when I first started drinking at around eighteen, and would wake up the next morning super early with a false sense of energy. Then, two hours later, I'd be exhausted, thinking, Why the fuck am I in a canoe?
I went to grab the remote control and thought if I watched a movie, I'd fall right back asleep.
I called my boyfriend in Hawaii.
"How do you turn on the TV?" I asked.
"Which remote do you have, the Time Warner or DirecTV?" he asked with the excitement he usually reserved for fabric swatches or an episode of Dancing with the Stars.
Our house is technologically rigged with gadgets and remotes and settings, all of which I have somewhere between slight and zero interest in. When it comes to math or electronics, I am somewhat more advanced than a six-year-old who's been homeschooled by Levi Johnston.
Ted had tried to show me on several occasions what each button on all three of our remote controls did: which operated TiVo, which one was for the toaster, which one massaged your balls, et cetera. It's true what they say about patience being a virtue; it just happens to be a virtue that I choose not to pursue. Quite honestly, I'd rather just get someone else to turn on the toaster.
The bonus of this little setup is that Ted loves his electronics and happens to have an excessive amount of patience, so as a result he loves to tell me all about each gadget, even though he knows my frustration will most likely end with me throwing one of the remotes against a wall or running it through the dishwasher. Since I am also unable to operate the dishwasher, this option is less frequent as it would have to be coordinated with a visit from our cleaning lady, Maria, who comes only on Tuesdays and Fridays. In Ted's never-ending interest in television, he had also recently installed television screens in every ridiculous oversized appliance or mirror that would allow it. There was a TV screen in the bathroom mirror, one on our treadmill, and one in the microwave door. The last proved to be the most confusing of all, because any time you popped something in the microwave, you didn't know if what you saw inside was a roast beef or Al Roker.
Once he guided me to the movie channels, I found my way more easily. I would have to stay within the selection in front of me for fear of losing my place forever, so my options were somewhat limited, but more numerous than before I placed the call to the island of Maui. The upside of this is that I am open to watching almost any movie ever, especially if there's an overweight child in it. I love anything overweight.
I scrolled down until I hit Nim's Island. From the looks of things, I could tell that it was ending soon and Definitely, Maybe would be starting in twenty minutes. It was safer to commit to a movie I knew nothing about than to browse around looking for other channels, because having the TV backfire on me and my losing my place altogether was always a threat. I'd rather watch something I didn't care about than screw with the remote and gamble with being lost forever in the sports department. I had already lost a weekend the previous fall to women's basketball finals, when I watched a two-hour profile on a six-foot-six black female player, all the time wondering to myself if she would ever achieve half the success of Kobe Bryant and manage to get an entire line of beef named after her.
The first scene I saw of Nim's Island was Abigail Breslin swimming underwater at an inhuman velocity in order to rescue another sea animal who looked a lot like Jodie Foster. Jodie had apparently been thrown from a boat but managed to keep her eyes open and breathe for a ninety-second montage. Obviously they were both playing dolphins. "Too soon," I said loudly enough for both of them to hear, as I jumped out of bed to head into the kitchen.
The sun was blinding when I opened the bedroom door. Not realizing how nice a day it was in the main part of the house was extremely irritating. I grabbed a pair of sunglasses and a visor, looked out the windows, and spotted hundreds of boats coming in and out of the marina.
I pulled all the drapes shut. I wanted to be alone and lie in bed for a long period of time. I didn't need to be reminded that other people were outside swimming through life like Nim and Jodie Foster, making the most of their Saturdays, doing cartwheels and high-fiving each other on Rollerblades. I also didn't need anyone looking in my window and seeing me wearing nothing but a visor with the E! logo, sunglasses, and a bra I'd bought three years ago from Walgreens. At this point it was more like a backpack.