was angry and because he disliked himself. The more he disliked himself,
the more he took it out on other people, and the more he took it out
on other people the more he disliked himself.
—Lev Grossman
Mars
I’ve run away again to be with another woman—Mars, my other wife—or so Chrissie says.
I know I should have stayed and worked things out like a man, but I’ve always been running and spinning my whole life.
Why stop now?
“What the hell’s the big whoop?” Mars rasps, handing me a drink. “The girl’s got the good life. I knew it’d be trouble when you two got hitched—she has no idea what our lives have been like.”
We’re sitting on her patio and she’s got her laptop out—manuscript pages scattered all over the umbrella table.
The weather has changed and a storm front is moving in—we’re contemplating moving inside.
Then, everything darkens as the sun goes behind some huge thunderheads and Mars is squinting up at them, trying to divine the probability of rain, but more likely, imploring the gods for an answer to whatever I saw in my wife.
“Way too young and naïve,” she concludes, taking a deep drag of her cigarette and exhaling slowly, as the smoke hisses out from clenched lips.
I try to soften her anger.
“Naw, Chrissie’s okay—she really does love me, Mars—but you’re right about one thing. She doesn’t get what it’s been like for us growing up the way we did.”
A brittle smile tells me Mars doesn’t agree.
“You see this manuscript here,” she says, “—Memoirs of a Mob Goddaughter? Well, if that girl read it, it’d make her lovely hair stand on end. I remember overhearing Uncle Carmine arranging a hit on rival gang boss. The boys were a bit skittish—even Gabe, his right-hand man. And you know what he said? Death’s the cost of doing business. It happens alla time. Sunrise—sunset. Things go on. Take care of it, Danny.”
I gulp in shock. “Just like that?”
She laughs, her smile wide and eyes squinty. “Just like that—and no ghosts never troubled him after.”
There’s an ominous rumble of thunder above us.
My face falls. I’m not self-assured and cold like that. She sees my embarrassment and reaches out and pats my cheek good-naturedly. “Your father took care of business too in his own way—didn’t have to snuff nobody—but knew how to be a man.”
I colour at my weakness. She’s right. Father would never cave into Mother’s crying. I recall his last words burned into my memory: I’m looking to you, Everett, to uphold the family honour—conduct yourself in a manner worthy of the family tradition and the dignity of the Landsberg name.”
I tried—I really did. That fall I met Mars at university and found someone who had my back—defended every hard choice I had to make—but that was until I met Chrissie, and began to fall back into my own soft ways.
I like Mars’ hardness and darkness—she draws and repels me—fascinates and nauseates me at the same time.
I know I’m flirting with infidelity and disloyalty but I need to hurt myself more than I want to love Chrissie.
It’s a sick form of self-hate.