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He’s kneeling on the floor with his baseball cards spread out all around him, his brow pinched in concentration. He won’t even look at her, and it adds a deeper tremor to her already shaking voice.
“Jason,” She scrambles for what to say, for how to explain divorce and infidelity to a nine-year-old, “Love…is the most beautiful thing in the world—“
“Baseball is the most beautiful thing,” Jason interjects hurriedly, his small fists balling at his sides, “Not love.”
Part One
Trina is stretched out on Whizzer’s leather sofa, her high heeled feet propped up on the arm rest while her head is cushioned by a pillow. Overwhelmingly, she’s reminded of one of the very first time that she had been in Mendel’s office, how she had sat just like this on his (admittedly a lot cheaper and well-worn) couch and finally admitted to her unhappiness and desperation. That session was the first time that Mendel had kissed her, later telling Trina that he’d tasted the salt on her lips from her tears.
As always, the photographer pays little attention to her, fiddling with the settings of his new camera and seemingly only half-listening to her. But he hasn’t kicked her out yet, so Trina takes it as a sign for her to continue.
“He makes me feel desired,” Trina admits, staring hard at the water stained ceiling, “Like I’m actually sexy. Marvin never did that. Hell, he would hardly even touch me.”
Whizzer snaps a picture of her to test the new settings, calling out the title, “A housewife in the middle of a sexual awakening.”
Trina makes a face, “Please don’t call it that. And I was never a housewife either. I’ve always worked.”
Whizzer shrugs, venturing again, “Working girl thinking about fucking her husband’s psychiatrist?” He laughs when he makes her cheeks flush, his tone mocking but not necessarily malicious.
Trina wouldn’t call the two of them friends or anything. Sure, she’s picked up the habit of coming here on her lunch break and Whizzer always seems to enjoy making her flush and stammer, but they rarely engage in any conversation with sustenance. More often than not, Trina just talks at him, with Whizzer usually ignoring her and making an offhanded lewd comment every once in awhile.
“So this new boy-toy of yours,” Whizzer prompts, looking at her through his camera’s lens, “How special is he?”
Trina ignores the innuendo in his tone, replying with a half-smile, “He’s delightful, and romantic…and spiteful.” But then she remembers last night, when she had slammed the door so hard, it made her teeth rattle, “But I guess I am, too.”
Because he’s crude and has no qualms of breaking social etiquette, Whizzer removes the camera from his face so she can see his waggling eyebrows, “I meant what about when he’s naked?”
Trina bites back a blush and a smile, answering coyly, “Thrilling. He can be just so—vicious.”
Whizzer cocks an eyebrow at her wording, “As in screw-you-hard-in-the-back-alley-of-a-Denny’s vicious or honest-to-God-might-actually-kill-you vicious?”
Trina thinks about this, “A bit of both.” She pauses, her brow pinching together, “I think he’s sorta-kinda…mean.
“But I love him.” Trina breathes out, believing that if she would just say it quietly enough, it’d make it less real, “And I need it—this thing that we have together. And if he’d just love me back, it’d all be so perfect.” She could be his perfect wife, just as she was Marvin’s.
But then again, isn’t that what she ran away from in the first place? How would Mendel be any different than Marvin? They’re both so nasty, so immature. They’re both men—selfish and condescending and will always want to control her.
“As a wise man once said in a limerick that he made up on the spot,” Whizzer says, gesturing to himself, “Just enjoy what you can; love the dick, not the man.” But it isn’t that easy. Trina doesn’t want just sex. She wants to make a home someday—again. And hopefully get it right this time around.
But she can’t really say the same about Mendel, can she? She remembers the fight that they’d had the previous night, a ghost of a headache returning to her in secondhand frustration.
“You know,” Trina says wryly, trying to distract herself from the dip in her heart, “You’re a better psychiatrist than my actual one.”
“Then maybe I should start charging for these therapy sessions.” Whizzer responds, an edge of seriousness in his voice, “Or you could always pay for a photo at least, considering how much I let you loiter on my property like a vagrant.”
“I don’t really have much of a family left to take a picture of.” She reminds him, but she turns his proposal over in her head.
Trina looks around at the family photos lining Whizzer’s cream-colored walls, dozens of nameless families pining their dead eyes on her. She looks at all the forced smiles and the tacky dressing, and she feels a cold chill run down her spine. Some seem like truly happy families, their bond evident in the ways the wife holds the husband’s hand or the daughter hugs the mother’s legs. Others, though, remind her of just why she’s never pressed for her own family portrait.
It’d be too much exposure—of who they all are, of what kind of “family” that they turned out to be. In the portrait, Trina would be able to pick out the tension in Jason’s shoulders and the dispassion in Marvin’s eyes and the helplessness in her own smile. It’d be too personal, too honest.
And for the longest time, Trina chose delusion over honesty. She chose her family over her happiness.
But then she made a different choice. And now Trina goes home to a small apartment and picks fights with Mendel just because it feels so damn good to be so damn cruel and has sex on dirty kitchen floors, and it is everything to her. Trina never knew that being so selfish be so liberating.
And everything has changed so much, hasn’t it? They may not a tight-knit family again (yet), but at least they’re not lying to each other anymore. Trina would love to have something real to share with Marvin and Jason—for once.
“You know,” Trina says softly, “Maybe I will take you up on that offer.”
Part Two
The following day after the picture is taken, Trina is back again, but somehow the air has shifted. Rather than being across the room and hardly paying any mind to her, Whizzer actually greets her when she comes in, already seated in the chair next to his leather couch.
“Hi.” Trina says dumbly, staring at him in surprise.
“I should have the portrait finished in the next day or so,” Whizzer informs her as she hesitantly sits down, adding casually, “How is the family, by the way?” And it’s such a bizarre and unlike-Whizzer thing to ask that it throws Trina for a loop.
“I thought you hated small talk.” She points out, furrowing her brow.
“It’s not talking small if I’m actually interested.” And Trina can see that. His body is angled directly toward her, and he’s leaned in a little—as if to catch her every word. There’s a glint in his eye, but for the life of her, Trina can’t decipher just what it is.
“Jason has been less of a hell child this week." Trina gives in to him, smiling at the thought of her son, "He’s letting me take him to a baseball game tomorrow, which is—"
"Yeah, yeah, cute kid. Anyway," Whizzer taps his knuckles against the chair's wooden arm, "How's Marvin?"
Trina looks at him, caught off guard by the interjection, “Uh, he’s—fine, I guess. I haven’t really spoken to him since the photo.”
Whizzer looks down at his camera, his voice light and airy, "So, since Mendel wasn't in the photo, did you not let Marvin's hot new thing in it either, or...?"
"What, like a girlfriend?" Trina scoffs at the ridiculous notion, "Marvin's a maniac. Even if he were dating again, he couldn't hold a girl unless he knocked her up." She smiles wryly, gesturing to herself, "Case in point."
"Yeah," Whizzer mutters, his eyebrows doing something weird, "That's why he can't hold a girlfriend."
"You two seemed to get along well enough." Trina vaguely recalls, though she had been more focused on Jason through the whole thing to notice them in the background.
Whizzer shrugs and looks unable to commit to the harmless observation, saying vaguely, "He made an impression." At Trina's narrowed gaze, he elaborates with a casual gesticulation, "He wasn't quite what I was expecting, from the way you described him."
"What, like a prick?" Trina snorts, "Trust me, he can turn on the charm when he wants to."
“He has a face for the camera, you know,” Whizzer tells her, a hitch sneaking into his voice as his speech quickens in passion, “And not just because of aesthetics. I mean, you could actually see the rage and frustration in the way he held himself, the preview of a tragic story locked away in his closed-off gaze. It was so moving, so electrifying—” Whizzer suddenly shifts in his seat, flushing and only stuttering a little as he hurriedly adds, “In purely artistic ways, of course.”
Trina just nods, offering a bemused, “Good.”
He watches her carefully, echoing the sentiment, “Good.”
Letting the moment pass, Trina opens her mouth to tell him about the argument she’d had with Mendel this morning, but he cuts her off before she even has a chance to take a breath, “So I was wondering if you could help me with something today.”
“Of course.” She answers immediately, the intense desire to please still engrained in her mind.
Whizzer gives her a small smile as he takes out a notebook, "I'm trying to nail down my demographics for my clients. There's this quick little survey that I was hoping you could test run for me.” He angles it just so she can’t see his writing, “The questions are kinda stylized for the individuals themselves in the picture rather than for the whole family, but since Jason and Marvin aren't here, I think you can answer for them, right?"
"Yeah," Trina shrugs, wryly adding, "I know them well enough."
"Let's start with the man of the house," Whizzer implores, confusing her given that she’s the one actually here, ”I remember you told me he was always so withholding.”
Trina scoffs wryly, “Right.”
Whizzer makes an unconvinced face, “Are you sure about that?”
"What do you mean?”
He shrugs, “Well, maybe he was just withholding from you.”
His response shocks her, has her leaning in and asking, “Do you really think so?”
“I can just tell you what I picked up on from first impression,” He cautions first before he elaborates, adopting that one weird pitch again like before, “And to me, it wouldn’t be precise to call him dead weight. When I met your husband, he seemed very passionate—Very, very, very…” He swallows hard, shifting in his seat again. On automatic, Trina starts to look down, but he abruptly pulls her attention back to him.
”So you wanted to impress him?” Whizzer says, glaring down at his notebook and clicking his pen idly.
“Uh—Yes, Sir," Trina answers belatedly, adding with a fringe of bitterness, “But clearly, I did not.”
Abruptly switching gears, Whizzer leans in, “Did he sweat a lot?”
She blinks, “What?”
But Whizzer seems to hardly notice her shock and discomfort, pressing hurriedly, “Was he ruthless?”
She squints, “Huh?”
“Narcissistic?”
She balks, “Who?”
Whizzer shakes himself from his daze, shifting in his seat again and looking down at his notebook, “Let me just move on to the next question.”
“Yes,” Trina says firmly, bemused, “Please.”
Whizzer abruptly looks up at her, gauging her reaction, “Does he sleep in the nude?”
A small, horrified silence settles between them. And Trina is convinced this must be some sort of prank. Only Whizzer isn't laughing. Why isn't he laughing?
“Nope.” She answers anyway, just waiting for the punchline.
Something in Whizzer’s face falls as he hurriedly scribbles that down, his voice dripping in disappointment, “Does not sleep nude. Okay, moving on…”
“Can you tell me how this helps your business again?”
“Relax, Trina. They’re just survey questions,” Whizzer tries to soothe her before once again asserting, “Like how bad is his temper?” Without letting her answer, he continues, breathing irregular and face flushed, “Like would he slam you hard against a wall? Would he just take and take? Would he grab you by the arm, by the hair? Would he leave you sore but begging for more? Would he—" Whizzer’s watch goes off, interrupting the bizarre rant.
“Lunch is nearly through.” He notices faintly, his voice a little hoarse. After a minute, he seems to gather his bearings again, shaking himself from his fervor.
Without promising a follow-up, Whizzer throws the notebook over his shoulder, satisfied with whatever that he found.
The flush fades from his face as he asks casually, “Tell me: what's going on with you?”
Trina gives him a sour look, “So now you’re interested in me?”
Whizzer just smiles, but his eyes are still a little glazed, “Of course.”
Part Three
“My son’s distressing.” She tells him days later, rubbing her throbbing temples, “He barely even talks to me anymore. Do you know how frustrating that is? How do I reach him if he won’t talk to me?”
Whizzer is more interested in fixing his hair in the mirror, but he does offer up, “Usually I just dangle a rattler near the camera to focus their attention on me.”
“He talks to Marvin,” Trina says sourly, missing the way Whizzer perks up at the mention of her ex-husband, “He loves his father. And it’s not like I don’t want them to be close. I just want him to love me, too. You know?
“I mean, I’m the one who takes him to ballgames,” Trina tells him, “And then somehow it’s always my fault when his team loses. How is that fair? At least I take him; Marvin can hardly sit through an entire game.
“We explore museums on my days off,” She keeps pressing, trying to prove to Whizzer and herself of how much of a good mom she is, “But he barely even acknowledges me. It’s like—like sure, we’re standing side-by-side, but we’re miles apart. How do I let him know he can trust me, confide in me? What should I do now?”
Whizzer shrugs, not offering any type of advice. In that, he is just like her psychiatrist.
:: - ::
To Trina, love is the most beautiful thing in the world.
But to Jason, love means unhappy parents and cold glares across the dinner table and slamming doors and yelling (so much yelling) and being selfish.
And because of that, he doesn’t believe love is beautiful. Who could blame him?
The End.