Stupid
I Am No Longer
by Ben Miller
Annie's father is killed and so I call her up. We had been together for a long time and her family still talks to my family, and so I heard about it. I ask myself why I'm calling her and I don't know. It's because I want to feel sad about something, because there's nothing really happening in my life. I'm on the phone for a second and she says,
"Why are you calling me? Because I loved you once and you like to hurt me over and over again?"
I say, "I'm calling because I care about you."
She takes some time and says,
"Yeah. I'm a wreck. Life is turned upside down, David. I'm glad you called. I don't know where I'm going, you know? And fuck you."
I tell her,
"I'm sorry to hear that. I'm sorry about everything."
She says,"That's your problem, you never are. There is no sorry about you. Let me tell you, asshole, I am sorry. Boy am I ever sorry. You cannot even come close to grasping how sorry I am."
I say, "How are you doing?"
She puts me on hold for a minute so she can find an ashtray. I'm watching the TV on mute and a bunch of people are on a beach, almost naked, dancing to rap music.
"Are you there?" she says.
"And I will be," I say.
"Oh that is probably not true," she says. "When are you there? Now? A little late, no?"
She goes silent like she's trying to figure out what happened the last time I was there.
"You can't just prance right on in here,into my head,asshole. You think that because I'm vulnerable I'll forget that you killed me? I thought you loved me, David. That's how good a liar you are. I thought that. How stupid."
I say,
"I love you. Come on, you know that."
"I was stupid then, mister," she says. "But stupid I am no longer." And after she exhales: "How's the bitch?"
She's talking about the woman I left her for. We live together now, etc., etc.
"Gone," I say. "She up and left me little over a year ago. Right after I sent the letter."
I don't know why I said it. I think that maybe it's because Annie is a born looser, and I want her to win something, at least feel the satisfaction of some small victory. She says,
"Good. Bastard. Taste of your own medicine." There's a silence, during which I hear some breathing. Some breathing and some thinking. "I'm a mess," she says. "You might find this hard to believe, but I really miss him. I mean I loved him. You know?"
Turns out her father was on a kayaking trip when he died. Here is what happened. He was a very fat man, at least three hundred pounds. He drove a 1982 Toyota Celica everywhere, and it had no muffler. But he was rich, incredibly rich, and because he was so fat and cheap with his money, the whole family built up a deep and incredibly unhealthy hatred for him.
He would go on these kayaking trips up in the Sawtooth Mountains outside Boise, Idaho. Almost every weekend he would pack the cooler with a great deal of deli meat and leave without telling anyone. He was a fat, fat man, and so the whole family assumed that on one of these trips he would die. It was simply unthinkable that a man that fat could endure any kind of physical strain without dying; for them it was just a matter of how and when. So they took bets. Annie would say "heart-attack" and her sister Pat would say "he'll fall off a mountain," but inevitably their mother, always the realist, would say "nah, he'll come back."
So he goes away on one of these trips. Meanwhile the mother is filing for divorce. Thursday and Friday she's at the lawyer's settling the papers, getting things ready. Annie's not living in Idaho anymore, but she's just talked to him over the phone about some overdue bills. But while he's up there he dies.
I find this out, by the way, from my mother. She tells me on the phone the other night that Annie's father was up in the mountains with his girlfriend, a woman he’d been having an affair with for over six years. I'm shocked, not so much that he's died, but that he was up there with a girlfriend. The probability of a man that fat getting involved with another woman, let alone a woman, must have been something like a million to one. And beyond this, he never showed love to anybody. He was a consumer. I mean that he simply took from the world. That was his job. Take, take, take. So this is what happened.
He's up there in the boat with this woman and they reach a stretch of rapids and the boat capsizes. From what I understand it tips over on her and Annie's father is in the water, watching his girlfriend float downstream, underneath the boat like it was her very own coffin. He knows that she's in trouble. He calls out to her a couple of times, tells her to grab hold of a tree branch, swim underneath or whatnot. But it's no use. She's under the boat. So he decides he's going to save her. I mean, she's drowning right there in front of him. And so he swims as hard as he can, reaches the boat, goes under it and then gets trapped with her and they both drown.
Annie's telling me all of this on the phone. But it occurs to me somewhere in the middle that she has refused to realize that this woman was her father's girlfriend. To everybody else it was plainly obvious. They'd been seeing each other for years, her mom told my mom with an appropriately resigned tone, and so talking to Annie now, I realize that there's been a massive cover-up.
"They did a big story on him in the Idaho Gazette," she says. "Big front page story about how he tried to save this poor woman he worked with. I feel so bad for her family, you know? I mean she had two kids and everything. God, David. I guess he was a good man after all. He really cared. He died doing something good."
Right or wrong, the rationale I come up with is this: in Idaho, people who die just don't have affairs--that are public. Instead, they have tumble weed and martyrs. And so, I figure in this instance, do as the Idahoans do--lie.
"Jesus," I say in a somber tone. "I guess that's right."
She says,
"I hate you for lying to me all that time. You're a real piece of work, you know that? Hell, honesty is not your thing--I understand that. But all those nights waiting up? I was working late? My ass! I'm glad the bitch left you. Smart girl. And you know something? I hope you rot in hell."
Just then the dance show comes back on the TV and two girls are French kissing. They're dancing while they're tonguing each other, and in the background a bunch of shirtless college guys are cheering them on. I'm watching these two girls and wondering if they like each other.