Bloomberg reported that Rebecca’s ex-husband was going to prison. She came into the office with a big beautiful smile on her face as if nothing happened, but obviously she’s never had a big beautiful smile before, carrying a big fluff of flowers in her office and slamming the door. I had known they were done-zo for a while, but damn, the article was tough. No one who buys flowers for themselves is actually okay. It was all a show. I told that to Cyndi.
“She’s going through a hard time,” she said.
“She doesn’t have to be so pathetic about it,” I said.
Genevieve said the same thing, as if she’s the only one who has had a hard time ever. At least they weren’t together when they sent him off, I told her while she was stirring pasta. Police barging in, arresting the man who just jizzed on you.
“Don’t say jizz,” she said, gesturing at Bret. He was on his iPad, big green headphones matting down his curly hair.
“Oh, he can’t hear me,” I said. Genevieve liked the iPad because he wouldn’t bother her while she was cooking. Legos splayed out near him begging to be played with. I stared at my kid.
“I want to rip those things off his head,” I said. “Let him hear something real. The fire trucks outside. His parents talking. Doors slamming.” I opened the window to let in the ugly sounds of the city.
“This is beautiful,” I said. “It’s beautiful because it’s happening now and nearby.”
“Let him have his fun. She calms him.”
“The iPad is a she now?”
“Lisa,” she said. “The woman he always watches.”
Lisa Time is his favorite iPad show. I don’t know how he pulls it up. It might just come pre-loaded onto the thing.
“He’s a plastic boy and he’s growing up in a fantasyland.” Genevieve had brought over a chair to sit in while she stirred. “His eyes are going to burn. You take that thing away when he goes to bed, right?”
“You wanna give him Cheerios and a bath? Go ahead.”
I stared at the pasta. “Rebecca needs a hobby or something,” I thought aloud. “Don’t women her age knit?”
Cheerios went down easy. He could do that with Lisa. But the bath was worse. He kept screaming NO! at me when I said he couldn’t take the iPad in water. NO! NO! NO! He doesn’t get it—buddy, I’m trying to make things easier for you! I told Bret that.
“NO!”
I wiggled my fingers in the hot water. He was irritated. I bought him these color bombs that made the water deep magenta, sparkly black, like a galaxy, but every time I asked him how cool it was, he pretended like he didn’t see it.
“I want Lisa.”
“No Lisa tonight,” I said.
He laid his head back and demanded Lisa. Genevieve was in the other room, being right. She was reading a thick novel on our tacky bedspread. Something that belonged in the 2000s. Quilted and uncomfortable. She was laying right on top of it, not getting tucked in—that’s how I know even she doesn’t like it.
“He wants Lisa,” I said.
She didn’t look up. “Then give him Lisa.”
“We gotta do something about this ugly bedspread.”
“It was my grandmother’s.”
“I always forget,” I said. “Sorry.”
She shrugged.
“I’ll let you keep reading.”
I propped Lisa on the toilet seat and played her out loud, but he wanted the headphones. The long wire dangled but didn’t touch the water. He didn’t want to play with a ducky or anything. I had got him these water crayons you can write on the walls with. This light-up disco ball that could shine in the dark. But he just looked at the screen, my plastic boy.
The next day at the office I hadn’t even set my utilitarian cross-body satchel down when Rebecca wanted me at a protest. Cyndi told me that. I looked at Rebecca’s door, still closed.
“She could tell me herself,” I said.
Cyndi put a hand on my shoulder. “She’s having a hard time right now.”
“We’re all having a hard time!”
They sent me too early. It was fucking freezing out. The crowd hadn’t even shown up, but they could at any moment. I found a park bench and pulled up an episode of Lisa Time. A nice redhead appeared on my screen.
“I’m Lisa!” Lisa said, against a blue-sky backdrop. The sun had a big smiley face. So did the colorful butterflies, fluttering around grinning dandelions. I wondered if this was inappropriate messaging; the real world’s not this friendly. There are sexual assaulters and rejected job applications and hospital-bombing terrorists, but here my boy was, thinking that life was all cookies and cream.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. A blushing mustached man in earmuffs mumbled something. He had on a nice, thick green coat that was probably designed for Alaskans that GQ caught wind of and repackaged for thirty-somethings on stroller walks. I took off my earbuds.
“My kid loves that show,” he said.
“Mine, too.”
“It’s always Lisa, Lisa, Lisa with her.”
“It feels weird,” I said. “You think they won’t replace us? Like, she’s teaching them everything they need to know?”
“Pidgeons fly right out of the womb, man,” the guy said, pulling a cookie out of his pocket, wrapped in foil. “We could learn from them.”
“Pigeons?”
“Dude,” he said, taking a big bite. “Kids grow up faster, leave home quicker, less resources from us. They handle themselves on their own. Evolution is training us for this. Panda bears give birth then skedaddle. It’s happening to humans, too. My oldest went to college at 16. I got a 13 year old who’s getting deployed tomorrow.”
“And they learn that from Lisa?”
He nodded. “It’s the best. I got time to be a person now. I can be nude in the morning.”
I gestured to the cookie. “You get that from home?”
He pointed to a nearby cafe. I got up to head that way before he gave me a hug for some reason. I welcomed it.
Cookie in hand, I watched the protest. It was about animal rights. A woman in a beanie gave me a good, radical quote. She asked who I was with, I told her, then she said she wanted to retract her statement, but I told her no take-backsies. Gave her a real shit-stirring look, like, Sowwy about it! She tried to grab my recorder out of my hands, and I said I could arrest her for that, but I was bluffing, I always say that and usually it works. She and her feminazi brigade walked away. I finished my cookie and talked with the photographers trying to win Pulitzers. One took a photo of a cigarette in a puddle.
I got back to the office to fill Rebecca in, but her door was still closed. I knocked, hearing the sobs. I sighed near her assistant.
“You think you could get me in there soon, or should I just shoot her an email?”
Stephanie checked the calendar. “Her time’s booked.”
“Oh, what?” I said. “She has ‘cry’ at eleven, then ‘sniffle’ at twelve?”
Stephanie frowned. “She’s having a hard time lately,” she said, as if I didn’t know.
I gripped her cheekbones and got in real close. I could see where she had shaved her unibrow this morning. “Everyone is having a hard time!” I didn’t mean for spit to land in her eye.
“They’re not happy,” I told Genevieve that night. Bret was watching Lisa on his stomach. “I shouldn’t have yelled.”
She was making a watermelon feta salad. “Do you despise powerful women?”
“She’s just stupid. She is legitimately a low IQ individual.”
“Isn’t she going through a tough time?”
“The thing is,” I said, “unless you’re severely medicated, every single person on earth is having a tough time. So I don’t get that excuse. Everyone is forming this infantile wall around her, telling her it’s okay to feel what she feels, live your truth, whatever. She’d be better off if someone just told her to get over it. That’s how feelings work. They go away.”
“If you were publicly arrested and a news outlet picked it up as a story, I wouldn’t be able to come into work.”
“That’s reasonable! Then don’t! Hire a replacement. But don’t mope around. Don’t cry in the office and make it everyone else’s problem.”
“Crying doesn’t demand anything from everyone. It’s an intimate moment with yourself.”
“She needs to be more intimate.”
“I gotta get you a book about empathy.” Genevieve started setting the table.
“I am empathetic,” I said. “It just has a limit. Isn’t that fair? Don’t we all gotta get our work done? I mean, she’s over my shoulder, telling me about the deadline, weeping into my rice pudding. It’s disgusting.”
Genevieve was holding forks. Bret had the iPad two inches from his face.
I wiped my hands on my DON’T BLAME ME, MY WIFE TAUGHT ME EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT COOKING! apron. “See, this is an interesting conversation about the limits of feeling. Bret is totally missing out on this. He’s gonna grow up and have no memories of us, only Lisa.”
I walked over to him and kneeled down. “Buddy, dinner’s ready. Lisa Time’s over.”
He ignored me. I plucked off one side of his headphones, but he rolled away from me, eyes unblinking on the screen.
I put my hands on my hips and turned back to Genevieve, sitting down with the hot plate of food.
“Time to get off, now, Mister Guy,” I said as I swiped at the iPad. He screeched as I tried to take it and my hand slid across the screen. Lisa’s calming voice was replaced with a loud Subway ad.
“Where did Lisa go?” Bret yelled.
I poked around the iPad, trying to get her back. The thing was a mystery to me. “Um.”
Genevieve came over.
“You unsubscribed from Lisa! You killed her!” Bret yelled. Now he was crying.
“I can get her back,” Genevieve said, taking the iPad.
“Our five-dollar deal won’t last forever!” the Subway ad said.
“Give me Lisa!” Bret whined.
“Lisa is not real,” I told him. “You need to exist in the real world with real people. Mommy and Daddy are real!”
“Daddy isn’t real!”
“I am real!” I screamed.
“Everyone needs to stop screaming!” Genevieve screamed.
“Tell him I’m real!” I screamed at her.
“Daddy is real!” she screamed.
“I want Lisa!” Bret screamed.
“YOU DON’T NEED LISA BECAUSE YOU HAVE A FATHER FIGURE,” I screamed. “I CAN TEACH YOU WHAT YOU WANT TO LEARN FROM HER.”
At the office, they accused me of assault. “I got a little rowdy,” I admitted. Everyone looked at me strangely. Sedona from HR called me into her office.
“So, we had a little incident.”
I crossed my arms.
“We weren’t feeling good?”
“There is no ‘we,’ I said. You’re treating me like a child.” She was Lisa, I realized. I was Bret.
“It’s important to learn how to regulate our emotions,” she said. “When you’re not feeling good, you should be able to talk to someone about it.”
I did plenty of talking in my mind. Saying that I didn’t know how to control myself, or recognize my emotions—that offended me even more than having to be here. I was a man in charge of his mind. No meds, no supps.
I took a deep breath and leaned forward. “There’s nothing to explore,” I said. Sometimes if you’re a real asshole she’ll let you go early. “I’m ti-red of every-one saying that just because Rebecca’s ex did something terrible, just because her phone’s blowing up, just because she’s quoted as an accomplice, means she can be lazy and sad.” I used my hands a lot, waving them around, as if I thought Sedona was an imbecile. And I sort of did. “A boss has to manage their emotions.”
“I’m hearing that.” She wrote something down. “Well, Rebecca’s going through a—you know, I’m sure you’ve heard enough of that.” She dug in her files and handed me a worksheet. At the top it said Understanding How You Feel. I went back to my desk and slid it under my keyboard.
Genevieve took me to an auditorium to attend a book tour. The website of this woman described her as a “soul healer.” She wrote about feelings. Bret watched Lisa Time, re-subscribed.
“We need to meet people where they’re at,” the lady said to an audience of women and Bret and I. “We are all connected.” I decided she had nothing interesting to say.
After the talk, we got hot chocolate at a diner. Ours were spiked with a candy cane sliding through a dollop of whipped cream.
Genevieve put her gloves down. Her nose was red. “Did you learn something?”
“No,” I said. “It was all platitudinal bullshit.” I let the whipped cream fuzz my beard. The waitress asked if we wanted water.
Genevieve read what the author had written in her copy. “‘Stay present, guided, and beautiful.’ That’s quite nice.”
“If it’s so important, shouldn’t Bret hear about it? Why does he get to play on the iPad?”
She just looked at me. I tried, really really hard, to have hurt in my eyes. To let her know this wasn’t how I envisioned living my life. Pleading with her. Over a screen.
I sighed. “I don’t think this is good for him. I just don’t.”
“What’s he gonna do otherwise? Terrorize us?”
“He’s a child. He needs friends.” We lost him, even though he was physically present.
Genevieve looked down at him too, next to her in the booth. They were on one side, me on the other. But she had a weird, tender expression that suggested it wasn’t as simple as that. The table was awkwardly large. I couldn’t reach across to gesture that I wanted to hold her hand.
I took the iPad and Genevieve startled. I nodded to say it was okay. I just tilted it back so that we could all see. And we watched Lisa Time.
Rebecca wasn’t firing me. She decorated her office like a therapist would. I was on a nice sofa on top of a bohemian rug imported from Turkey thanks to the company credit card. She had her own tea stand with good biscottis. The room was stuffed with flowers. Her husband was doing fine in prison, reports have been saying. I downloaded more news apps to keep up.
The word “assault” had gotten to me, dug into my fears of public humiliation via job loss, but plenty of people had done plenty of worse things—JC only got a stern talking to for wandering into the ladies’ room and grabbing an intern’s cooch. He said he was suffering a psychotic break, which, later, he did.
“I’m trying to operate with kindness,” Rebecca said. “I’ve been learning to do that recently.”
I apologized. “For, you know, everything that’s happening. I probably only made it worse.”
“Honestly, it distracted me. It was sort of funny. Stephanie can be a lot. Always with that clipboard.”
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh. She leaned back in her chair in an unappealing way. Like a lazy person would. We’re in a meeting, I thought. Have some class. I had near-to-perfect posture. I had taught myself how to remain with my back straight for multiple hours before I turned eighteen. I imagined her sleeping in this position.
“The story about the protest was good work,” she said. “Nice little detail about that guy. About Lisa Time.”
“It’s tyrannizing my kid. He’s addicted.”
“I think there’s a there there,” she said, one of her favorite phrases. “You could look into it.”
“I’ll explore,” I said.
“You know, it’s a kid’s show, but it actually helps. She has some mindfulness episodes.” She laughed. Her glasses almost fell off her face. “It’s so funny. We’re teaching these things without learning them ourselves.”
I shrugged. “The one I watched was sort of weird.”
“Give it a try,” she said. “You’re on assignment.” She smiled for the first time in a while. It was nice to see her not crying into a tissue. I smiled, too.
The rest of the day I watched Lisa. One Lisa on my desktop, one Lisa on my phone, both with captions on. On the bus I watched Lisa. On the treadmill I watched Lisa. I put a DiGiorno pizza in the oven and watched Lisa. I blinked like a child at her array of nice guests and warm cheeks. She had wonderful teeth. You don’t notice anyone’s teeth until a wonderful set comes along, a real knock-out pair. Here was a woman who wanted to help the world. Here was a woman who was good.
“We’re gonna have a TV dinner tonight,” I told Genevieve as she got home. She took off her scarf and scoffed.
“That’s rich.”
She helped me with the TV trays, though, and put Bret on the couch, iPadded and mute. I spoke Lisa Time into the remote. Ten duplicates of her glowing face appeared on the screen, and as I hit play on one, my heart beat quicker. Like I was putting on a performance. Like Lisa was an extension of me. Like she needed to do a great job right now, like it was showtime.
As she began her intro I looked over at Bret, looking at his own Lisa on his own screen. The milk in his glass was filled to the brim. The pizza was still hot and oily. I gently removed his headphones and pointed. “Look, buddy,” I said. I held his back with my fingers, and the pad of my thumb could reach his neck. He looked up.