Dating : The Nikki Chronicles: The BMW

One thing I’ve made sure not to do is tell anyone I’ve been writing you. You do know I’ve got your address up in Seattle, be easy to send these, but I’ll wait until after the divorce. That is, of course, if it ever wraps up. LOL

I did tell you your father wants a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) and a non-disparagement clause? Another big LOL. I told Matti (and Chandler) that if your father hadn’t wanted to be disparaged, he shouldn’t have done anything worth disparaging. I want to add an LOL here, but I won’t because I think all the LOLs are beginning to make look a bit crazy.

I’ve been rereading Heartburn these days to see how Nora Ephron managed to fictionalize her divorce and still keep it funny. And you know something the problem is by the time a marriage gets to the divorce stage it’s not really funny.

Still, I keep thinking about your car — your 328IS BMW. People who know BMWs are impressed by that car, and when I first met you, and I told people I was driving the 328, they kept fawning about what a great car it was. I assured them it was not. I explained its low undercarriage and how I ripped off the grille when I parked over the cement barrier at the hospital in Long Beach.

Gotta ask you something, Nik. Did you ever love me? I’m asking because I’m going back through all our emails, and I’m looking at them and reading them, and it occurs to me that, regardless of what you said, I’m not sure you ever really wanted a wife.

I think what you wanted was a live-in ghostwriter, which is kind of funny because when I met you the only thing I wanted was credit for my work, not money. And you just kept offering me money.

Remember how you offered me $10,000 to ghostwrite Dread? Funny. At least to me. Because if I had ghostwritten it and you’d registered it with the WGA, did you know that I could have raised all sorts of hell about that? The WGA, at least the West Coast WGA, doesn’t let you register a script under your name if it’s been ghostwritten.

Ehh. Seriously, who cares? I didn’t agree to ghostwrite anything for you. Maybe that’s why you eventually left. I wouldn’t ghostwrite for you. I edited for you. I edited so so much. You don’t seem to remember that. Doesn’t surprise me. You — and your father — have a pretty short memory when it comes to people doing things for you.

Remember how I edited that monologue for you. Something based on Dostoyevsky. And I gotta hand it to you, babe, you were always better read than I was. That prep school background, maybe? I’m just Shanty Irish, honey. My tastes are much pedestrian. Furthermore, I didn’t even get my B.A. until I was 35 and a mother; my tastes in literature — and humor — were already set.

I was a bit disillusioned with school, especially literature. I used to tell people that one sure way of ruining humor was turning into a class into the university. Can you imagine trying to study and footnote into oblivion what makes people laugh? Something unexpected — like slipping on a banana peel can make people laugh. Or odd juxtapositions like Third Rock from the Sun — a glimpse into our cultural from an alien perspective. But other than that? Honey, I’d rather just laugh.

And I wonder, does it bug you that I’m calling you ‘honey’? Don’t let it. I’m calling you ‘honey’ so I can get you the fuck out of my system. It’s called healing. Haha. I like that I’m starting my healing by using ‘fuck.’ Seems appropriate.

Okay, abrupt shift here. Back to the car. I’m bringing it up because the day you left, the day you Ubered on out of my life, you left the 328 in the driveway parked at an angle. Parked at such an angle nobody else could park there. Pretty sure it was intentional.

Oops. A digression for a second. Mavis, when I first met her, and when she kept calling me ‘honey,’ told me in a very ‘just-between-us-girls’ sort of way that you were very manipulative. And I told her — and I kept telling her (and others) over the years — that I never saw you as manipulative, not in any adult sort of way. You were manipulative, I thought, in the way that children are. They throw tantrums to get their way. You threw tantrums to get your way. But if a child is surrounded by adults, then they recognize the ploy and don’t give in.

Anyhow, that’s how I saw you for years and years and years. Until you Ubered off and left your car parked on the diagonal.

Blake came over the next day, stared at the car, wrinkled his lips: “Did he leave the keys?”

I shook my head ‘no.’

Janet came over the day after, asked the same thing. “Did he leave the keys?”

“No,” I told her.

“Didn’t you have a spare?”

“He asked for it back.”

Janet arched an eyebrow.

Ah-ha. You did it intentionally. Asked for the key. Parked the car inconveniently. Then took off. Kudos, baby. Kudos.

The car stayed like that for a week. Then I was having a party. This was back when the pool was broken. Did I tell you about the pool? The deck is sinking, and the thing stinks like rotting vegetation. There’s a huge leak in two of the underground pipes. Did your father tell you? I love it because your dad’s all gaga about my possibly having destroyed the house the way you were so wont to do, and he’s requiring that a neutral party look at the interior of the house when I leave. In the meantime… In the meantime, baby, the fucking pool’s sinking.

Remember when you wanted to get your dad removed as trustee of your trust? With what he’s done to the pool, you probably could get him removed now. But I wonder (said gleefully) who would do that for you? Elyse? Suzanne? Erin? Irene?

Yeah, right.

Anyway back to the car. So there we are — a pool party. And I want people to be able to park in the driveway. And it’s pretty much impossible. But Janet and Ian and their two girls, and Chandler and Jerry and the grandkids (you ought to see Glory these days, god she’s big), and Blake all came over early. To figure out the “car problem.” So we all stand around it. Ian’s tall, Jerry’s tall, Blake’s strong. Even I’m fairly strong. And Janet and Chandler are strong. So we get the great idea to pick up the car and simply straighten it.

You know what? A 328 is too heavy to lift, at least without a forklift.

“Can you force the window down?” Ian asked. “You could put it in neutral? Roll it out of here?”

“We tried.” Janet said. “Can’t budge it.”

Then Gloria strolled over, all 10-year-old sass. “Why don’t you break the window with a rock?”

Ahh. Out of the mouths of babes.

We look for a rock, find a huge cement block in the garage. I’m all in favor of smashing the car to bits when Chandler stops me. She always was a solid problem solver.

“How about you call a locksmith?”

Duh.

Everyone agrees that would probably be the adult thing to do, but…

Everyone also agrees that smashing that BMW would give us joy unmatched by simply calling in a locksmith.