And Then Things Fall Apart (16 page)

ME:
Mom—

MOM:

ME:
Love you too.

When I have a daughter with the chicken pox and I call her long distance to say hello and she starts to weep into the receiver about her broken heart, I will remember to ask her more questions. I will be kinder and more interested in her goings-on. I will not bring up the phone company's billing methods. I will not talk about my own relationship issues.

I will be the mother.

And I ask you, how can being an adult
ever
be as shitty as being fifteen? If I were sixteen, at least I'd have a driver's license and a sweet sixteen birthday bash. I'd fit a certain marketing bracket like a glove. But I am fifteen, which is too close to thirteen and too far from eighteen to be of any real use to anyone. I'm independent and totally dependent. I'm
a kid. I'm not. I'm mature for my age instead of just being my age. I'm old enough to know better but too young to do anything on my own. I feel ancient.

Online spiritual advisers say that if you ask a kid younger than five years old “Who were you before you were here?” they will tell you with all honesty, and with no shame, who they were in a past life. I read that on some website my mom had up on her Mac. I don't really know any little kids to ask, but I would love to try to find some.

Most people in school talk about how they were Marilyn Monroe or Hemingway. And I'm always, like, why the hell would Marilyn Monroe or Hemingway show up in some suburb of Chicago and be in high school? Reading makes me feel like I've lived a thousand lives in addition to my own. Characters in books really stick around for me. You know cartoon cells, the translucent sheets they draw on to make cartoons? Every time I read a book, especially one that grabs my guts, there is another translucent layer added to what makes me, me. Each layer is saturated in color and signed by the artist. I mean, yes, I think I have been on earth before, but reading books that illuminate and explore what it means to be alive sometimes makes me feel as wise and powerful as Cleopatra.

Once when I was in fifth grade (only five years ago!), I read an entire Trixie Belden mystery that I found on the
sale table at the library. On Gram's porch in one afternoon, I read and read and drank an entire pitcher of iced tea until the book was finished and my bladder was the size of a volleyball. That's how I roll.

I mean, I like movies, too. All kinds. Technicolor, musicals, black-and-white, rom coms, bromances, thrillers, animated shorts, documentaries, chick flicks, dramas, foreign, sci-fi,
Chimps in Space
, whatever. Love them all. They are yet one more way to learn about living. Books and movies, they are not mere entertainment. They sustain me and help me cope with my real life.

Speaking of real life, what the holy hell is up with my mother? “Thought I was doing the right thing”? “I really had no choice”? Dad's the one who decided to ruin everything for some dirtbag in his employ. As far as I can tell, Mom didn't do anything but work her fingers to the bone and meditate, feed Coffee, and make sure the carpets got vacuumed on a regular basis. She was betrayed, and, speaking as an expert on betrayal, she should really stop beating herself up about it, or at least stop being so nice to her adulterous, lying, cheating, selfish heap of garbage soon-to-be ex-husband, aka Dad. Why are women—and I mean most women I know or see on TV—so ready to take the blame for everything and so ready to apologize for everything? My mom is always saying “Sorry” when what she means is “What? I didn't hear you,” or “Excuse me,” or “Please don't
be mad at my decision.” The only person she never says sorry to is me.

My head hurts. A glass of Sabor Latino juice, a little Tylenol, and it's good night, Chicago.

When I asked Gram what shock treatments feel like, she took a while to answer me. She didn't really want to go into detail. After our whole chicken pox blood experience, we are closer than ever, but I'm surprised she told me about it in the first place. I still expect my mom to be, like, my capital-M Mom. But my grandma is a different type of mom to me. She can be the world's oldest showgirl; she can be my best friend; she can be a life inspiration or a life warning; but whatever she is, she is connected to me in intense and unique ways. And I'm kind of into her since the bath, the heart-to-heart, and the vintage clothes bonanaza.

Despite reading my pages, she has never lied to me. And although I was totally aggravated that she invaded my privacy, at least she was extremely interested in me and my life and my writing and the goings-on in my brain, which is more than I can say about either one of my parents, or even Matt. Besides, I could have confronted her about it,
but I didn't. For all I know it was all in my paranoid poxian imagination.

There's this Plath poem called “Kindness” all about, um, kindness sliding through the house with cups of tea. And so now I think of Gram as Dame Kindness without any irony and in all seriousness.

We were making teacups of raw hamburger and egg, recipe number two on my
Bell Jar
recipe list. I was a little grossed-out, but then Gram said in the 1950s she used to put the same raw egg and raw hamburger mixture between white bread with mayonnaise and ketchup and call it a cannibal sandwich. Which didn't make it any more appetizing, but made me determined to at least take one bite.

I was mashing raw egg (raised on vegetarian feed, with extra omega-3s) and ground beef (organic grain-fed and humanely raised and slaughtered) with a fork and got the ball rolling by asking Gram what Myrna Loy looked like. Esther says that her last and beloved therapist looked like Myrna Loy, and I assumed Ms. Loy was blond and perky/pretty like Doris Day. But no. Myrna Loy had a heart-shaped face and black hair and was, in Gram's words, “drop-dead gorgeous and as smart as a whip,” which makes so much sense. Of course Esther would appreciate a witty, intelligent, and sophisticated therapist over a replacement mother. And then I took a deep breath and just asked, “So, Gram. What did shock treatments really feel like?”

Without stopping, she kept mashing her meat and egg and said that it didn't hurt. That her brain was so messed-up that the shock felt like jumping into a freezing swimming pool until she was numb. Afterward she rested in a sunny hospital room until her brain slowly warmed up enough to think rational thoughts. Gram had three treatments, was in the hospital for three months, and didn't really want to say much more.

In
The Bell Jar
, Esther describes shock treatments as a thousand times more bone-shaking and loud and violent.

“Did you try to kill yourself?” I didn't really think about it then, but now I'm wondering, what if she had said, “Oh, boy, did I! I took pills by the handful,” or “I let the Saturn idle in the garage with the door shut and breathed deep while I waited to die,” or worse. And then what could I have possibly said?

Luckily, she said, “No. I didn't. But I wasn't eating. I slapped a salesgirl at Marshall Field's because they didn't have a shoe in my size. I put bright red lipstick above and below my lips so I looked like Bozo the Clown. I was sadder than I had ever been in my entire life, and I couldn't bear it anymore. I just couldn't bear being alive.” She placed our teacups of meat on saucers and fanned crackers around the base of the cups.

“Back then shock treatments were the knee-jerk prescription for anyone who was severely depressed. Shock therapy
or pills, usually both. But I got better. Your dad was away at the University of Wisconsin, and I wanted to be myself again, for him at least. I did it, and I'm fine now, but sometimes, Karina, life can overwhelm you. The trick is to put your head down and just get on with it. I got a little weak and succumbed to the despair. I'm not proud of it. I don't talk about it. I just wanted to let you know that I've been through worse things than what's going on with your parents, and survived. You will, you know.”

“Will what?” I asked. I was still mulling over the brain-on-ice thing. After her shock treatments Esther compared her brain to an ice skater doing figure eights somewhere on a giant deserted pond, and I knew my Gram was being real with me.

“Survive, Keek.” And she smiled. “Eat your cannibal cup.”

On a cracker, it wasn't so bad.

Funny how you think you're such a smart-ass know-it-all, and then the curtain is pulled back and what you thought is the real story was not the whole story. I feel like I have been living in the Pulitzer Prize–winning stage production of Karina's life. Starring Karina as Keek. I am just faking it until I figure what the hell to do next. I like to think I have X-ray vision and “know” people, but it turns out that I have been wrong on all counts—that is, Amanda, Dad, Matt, Gram, Mom. What goes on inside your head and heart is
entirely private. At least I know who/what the hell I am. I don't reveal much to the outside world. Mostly it's all here, on these pages. I'll let it out one day, soon. When I'm ready. Right now it's easier keeping the pages locked away. Bolted up. Surrounded by laser beams like the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. Which means upside down, beneath a short stack of outdated
Prevention
magazines in my dead great-grandma's underwear drawer.

My pox are gone for the most part, but I'm still as tired as a malaria patient. It is probably more depression than anything else, but whatev, I need my rest. So I'm lying on the couch in the front room, waiting for sleep or the loneliness cat to pounce on me, when my pathetic limping phone vibrates to life on the floor next to the end table. And it is—Matt. The nonvirgin scoundrel.

 

Hey K! Im bak frm d lake :)!

And for a minute there—maybe even five entire minutes—forget that I am mad at him, that he is my XBF, that I am ignoring his attempts at communicating. My head is swimming with love and I text him this:

ME:
QL

MATT
: Hw RU? Stil got chikin pox?

ME
: FeelN mch btr. Mis U.

MATT
: M2

ME
: I h8 my dad ryt nw. Totes dpresd

MATT
: Y?

Matt knows all about Dad and Amanda. He was at the restaurant practically as much as I was. But I never told Matt all the sordid and painful emotional details. I was too embarrassed. I made it seem like I was made of tougher stuff, that this kind of ridiculous soap opera behavior had no significant impact on me. Ha. If this happened to Matt's parents, he would be furious, like the-Hulk-ripping-his-shirt-off incensed. Me? I'm always a little enraged, with a dish of dejected on the side. Would you like betrayed with that? No substitutions. And when Matt flat out asks me why I am so depressed, without my brain thinking about it, my fingers type this into my keypad.

 

Evry1 I care bout hs betryd me. Evry1 dz whtev the
hell thy wnt and nvr thnks hw it mght affect me. Nt jst
dad n Amanda but u & mom & evn Nic a lil. Whr r u?

Okay. That looks absolutely ridiculous in text. But that is it in a nutshell. Hurt, shattered, deceived, etc. My father slept with someone I knew and didn't even think about what it might do to me. I'm someone he's supposed to care about more than anything else in the world. Amanda didn't think of me at all, I'm sure, as she flung her bony self against my father all over the cold storage items. And I'm waiting for Matt's answer, because I think that it might help me feel closer to him. Or at least make me laugh. I'm waiting and waiting in the heat for what feels like an hour.

People—and by that I mean the media, weathermen, late-night comedians—go on and on about how cold Chicago is.
Brrrrr,
and blizzards and digging cars out of snowbanks and “Oh, the hardy Midwesterner can handle all weather.” No one talks about how Chicago gets so hot you can fry eggs on car hoods and how it goes from winter to summer in sixty seconds flat. No spring to speak of. I don't remember spring this year. Maybe it happened and I was too caught up in my own hullabaloo to notice. And now that it is August and I'm not shivering with a fever, it is unbelievably hot. Sweat drips down my back and over whatever pox scabs remain, making me fidget as I sit there waiting for Matt to text something—anything. And then this:

MATT
: it tAkz 2 2 tango

ME
: ?

MATT
: @(*o*)@

What is up with boys? And no acknowledgment that I broke up with him. Maybe the text was too nuanced for his jockian brain. Or maybe he isn't going to let me break up with him by text. Maybe he loves me so much that he thinks if he ignores it, it will go away. Whatever confusion has kept us alive and whole is fine by me. Besides, I know the koala bear is our code for “I love you.” And then I see Matt's beaten-down old, black VW Golf (Wolfsburg edition) pull up in front of Gram's house, and I proceed to watch him try to parallel park for fifteen minutes.

He is here! And I think
I am excited! But not really
. I'm going to let our bodies do the talking. See what happens. See if my body has forgiven him. Bodies don't lie. Right?

It wasn't Matt's idea, but he inspired the whole thing. God, he is sofa king beautiful. This whole time, typing about him and every other little thing on this IBM typewriter, I forgot how real-life good he feels and tastes and forgot how much I can't wait to see him again every time we leave each other. But I know we're not getting married or anything. He doesn't really read enough. Oh, he reads. But not enough, not for fun. He's really all about his body. We're going to different colleges for sure, so what's the point?

To be fair, when push came to shove, he was honest with me, at least. About the virginity, I mean. Unlike both of my parents, he can look me in the eye and tell me things I should know just because I deserve to know. Now I think that we were meant to be together. During this time in both our lives. I know it sounds dramatic, but maybe when I'm, like, thirty or whatever I will look back wistfully at my awesome high school boyfriend. It will probably all end terribly and in tears, and I might find out
(but most likely not) that besides the sexual adventuring with the ring rat brigade, he totally made out with that Keds-wearing freshman. But today, right now, I'm glad he's around.