THURSDAY: A Noncustodial Mother’s Wacky Movie Playlist

BY MIR-YASHAR SEYEDBAGHERI

Copyright is held by the author.

WE FIGHT over what movie to watch, my college friend Ralph and I. We have our own movie night once a week. It’s a good way to get away from my apartment, with the plastic coffee table that threatens to break, the smell of old Chinese food, and the empty bedroom, waiting for a weekend guest who’ll never come. And, of course, it’s a good way to get away from the ghosts of accusations past.

I want zany movies. Give me Tropic Thunder, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or even Step Brothers. I want to roar at Robert Downey Jr, mocking blackface or Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly being too immature to get jobs. I want to enjoy movies without heartbreak, and without familial fragmentation.

Ralph thinks I’m a goofball at 59 for liking these movies. He prefers fare full of tragedy, like Dr. Zhivago. Movies that “exude a pronounced ethos” as he puts it. He can be pedantic, but he’s my friend, and we do like to talk ideas — politics, philosophy, classical music.

“Penelope, those are movies for immature pissants,” he says of my picks.

If I’m an immature pissant, let it be. We usually find some middle ground, though. One tragic, dark movie, and one comedy.

But Ralph wants to watch Kramer vs Kramer this week.

I can’t watch that movie, the story of a mom leaving, finding herself and then coming back, only to get hit hard in court, win custody of her child, and relinquish him again. Every time I think of that movie, I think of news stations blaring stories about “noncustodial” mothers, with images of crying kids splayed across the TV screen. I think of psychologists harping on the deleterious impacts of homes without custodial moms. And voices rise to my mind, a chorus, a fusillade fired at me.

“Were you on drugs?”

“Were you a drunk?”

“Did you secretly hate him?”

“Were you dealing with psychological problems? Psychological problems are understandable. You want to keep your kid safe.”

“Why did you leave me behind? What did I do?”

So I tell Ralph, I just can’t.

“Come on, Pen,” he says. “It’s been three years.”

“And he hates the hell out of me,” I say. “No matter how hard I try.”

Ralph just nods. He wants to say so many things. Give it time. It’ll be all right. I’m grateful that he doesn’t.

I go home. Cover up all the pictures. I go through my phone and delete a thousand texts, all of them unanswered, even though I know they’ve been read. I stare at the blank screen, almost wishing I could reverse this action. This purge, for lack of a better word. But the texts are gone.

Then I go into the bedroom, strip the bed of the lavender sheets he likes, until only a naked, cold frame stares at me. I can always put them on again, if things change.

Then I head back into my small living room, with the sickly urine-coloured walls that I’ve meant to repaint and look for a movie online. It’s not a Step Brothers sort of day. So I go with the The Big Lebowski. Getting attacked by nihilists and threatening bowlers feels soothing.

***

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program in the U.S. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time,” have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. His work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Ariel Chart, among others.