Bittersweet Dreams (28 page)

And I surely had a lot to get out. And I certainly didn't do it with Dr. Burns.

I had seen Allison writing in her diary only once and was so uninterested I barely paid any attention, but at least I had a good recollection of what it looked like. It was a leather-bound ruby-red book with a gold clasp. I imagined she kept it in her desk drawer, and I was sure she was writing in it right now, crying her river but building no bridge to get over it. Like most of the overly dramatic teenage girls around me, she wallowed in her own sadness even without an audience. At least she could feel sorry for herself if no one else would.

However, the depth of Allison's depression surprised me as much as it did Julie and my father. She was so unhappy at dinner that she barely ate a thing, and no matter how her mother prodded her with questions, Allison would not reveal the cause of her unhappiness. Unfortunately, Allison glanced at me during the questioning, and her mother became even more suspicious.

After dinner, when Allison had left for her room, Julie pulled me aside. “Did you say anything nasty or unpleasant to her that would make her so unhappy?”

“What would I say? What are you going to find wrong with me now?”

“Do you blame your father's disappointment in you on me? Is that what this is about? Because if it is, you have no right to take it out on poor Allison.”

My father stood off to the side, looking meek but waiting to see what I would say. Years ago, he would have told her the idea was ridiculous and not to bother me with such a question.

“No,” I said, glancing at my father. “I blame his disappointment in me on him.”

My answer took them both by surprise. Julie's eyes nearly exploded, and he looked like he was in physical pain.

Before either of them could respond, I went upstairs and, like Allison, slammed my door shut. I didn't have a good night, either. It was uncharacteristic of me, but I sulked and raged inside myself. I didn't do any significant work and couldn't read. I watched a few minutes of television before shutting that off in disgust and just lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. I felt tied up in knots, frustrated with myself as much as with everyone else.

We were so much better off before my father married Julie, I thought. Of course we both missed my mother. Because of who I was, what I could do, people might believe I missed her less. Some of that was understandable. Being a man, he was more lost and lonely. I could understand why a man as young as he was at the time had a need for a relationship with a female. I just couldn't understand and probably never would understand why he chose a woman like Julie. Maybe he should have had a heart-to-heart talk with her ex-husband and learned what the divorce was about from his point of view. People like to find out who drove the used car they're considering and what they thought of it before they buy it. Why couldn't he have given a new wife at least as much thought and caution as a used car?

I didn't get more than a few hours of sleep. My father had to leave very early for a business trip. Julie took one look at me at breakfast and did her best to avoid looking at me after that. She was quieter than ever in the car, and with Allison still acting depressed and me behaving like a clam in a shell, it was more like riding to a funeral than to school.

“Remember, I'm going to Lisa's house to study for tomorrow's history test and have dinner,” Allison told Julie just before she got out of the car.

“Oh. Right. Call me when you want to be picked up, but don't make it too late, Allison.”

She finally turned to look at me.

“I'll be here to pick you up,” she said.

“Don't bother,” I said. “I have things to do after school and will take a taxi home.”

“Oh. Well, then, I'll do some shopping down in Newport Beach with some friends,” she said. I could hear the relief in her voice. She didn't have to be alone with me, even for fifteen minutes. I could shut her out easily, but it was a relief for me, too, not to have to bother.

It was an unremarkable school day for me, except that every time I saw Allison, she continued to look despondent. I noticed that when her friends were laughing, she wasn't even smiling. How could a fantasy about a teacher, even one as good-looking as Alan Taylor, cause a girl Allison's age to be so depressed? Why couldn't she see how ridiculous it was, and why would it take her so long to get over it? I felt sure she had fantasized about other teachers, boys, rock stars, and the like. She had gotten over them.

Could it really be that it wasn't a fantasy? Was Alan Taylor's involvement with me simply part of his characteristic behavior? People, especially young girls, had the incorrect idea that only unattractive men took advantage of young girls. But I knew that it had nothing to do with their looks; it had to do with their mental state. Maybe, even for Alan Taylor, older women were too much of a challenge, too threatening, and this claim about his impending engagement was all a cover story.

Too curious now to ignore what was happening with Allison, I decided to go right home after school. It wasn't the first time that the behavior of other teenage girls interested me. I couldn't help feeling like an outsider. The things that made them laugh and cry, seized their complete interest and devotion, were mostly meaningless and silly to me. I took time to study and analyze them, knowing all along that it was a way to analyze myself. What was I missing? Why had my super intelligence made me so different? Did I enjoy being different?

Julie was gone for the day with her friends. My father was away and wouldn't be home until dinner. Our maid had left. The house was dead quiet. It was my house, but because of what I wanted to do, I suddenly felt like an intruder.

After I put my things away, I went to Allison's room. I wanted to read that diary, but I was surprised not to find it in her desk drawer. I had to be careful rifling through her things. I didn't want anyone to know, especially Julie, that I was doing this. I could just imagine the issue she would make of it.

It wasn't in any of Allison's dresser drawers, not even under the clothes, and it wasn't on the floor of her closet or on the shelf in it that was stacked with her board games. I checked her old toy box, with its dozens of small dolls and discarded electronic games, and then, frustrated, I even looked in the bathroom cabinets. If I hadn't seen her writing in it, I would believe she had made it up.

Did she carry it with her always? She probably did, I thought. Many girls her age probably did that. They were all afraid of forgetting to write down some major event in their lives, like their dreamboat boyfriend casually brushing against their budding breasts or something.

I was about to give up when I glanced at her shelves of children's books. Why hadn't I realized that for Allison, her diary was as important as a world-famous title? There between
Alice in Wonderland
and
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
was the gold-trimmed, ruby-red leather binding. How appropriate that it was located between two of the world's most famous fantasies, I thought as I plucked it off the shelf. I listened to be sure no one had come home yet, and then I sat at her desk and opened the diary.

The first page was titled “My Life by Allison Cummings.” Although my father still hadn't legally adopted Allison because her real father wouldn't give up custodial rights, Julie insisted that she go by his name. She was Allison Cummings now. It wasn't legal, but Julie told her it would look dumb to use her real father's name. I didn't know whether that bothered Allison very much or not. She never said, and I never asked her.

From the dates on the pages, I realized she hadn't begun to keep this particular diary until early this year, but she began by recalling her feelings and thoughts after her mother had married my father and they had moved into our house. I was almost as interested in that as I was in what she had written about Alan Taylor.

Her writing was simple but surprisingly grammatical. Of course, she began each section with “Dear Diary” and dated it as if she were writing to someone who would actually listen or care. I suppose in the diarist's mind, she was sending a letter off into something like cyberspace. It was all floating out there but never touched by any other eyes.

What seized my attention, of course, was her opinion of and feelings about me. She liked my father very much and even thought he loved her almost as much as her real father loved her. I could understand that. My father did have a warm, wonderful smile. It was why he was so successful in business. I, however, was another story.

Dear Diary,

I always wanted to have a sister, even a brother, but when Mommy told me Mayfair was to be my new sister, I wasn't very happy.

The first time we met, she was very polite, but she looked at me so hard with those scary eyes that she made me feel funny. She was very quiet and read even when we were all in the car or in a room together. She never asked me any questions or came into my room.

I remember she wouldn't let Mommy kiss her.

She still won't.

She didn't even kiss her father that much. He always kissed her, but she never threw her arms around him and kissed him like I would kiss Daddy.

I like her father very much. Someday I'll just start calling him Daddy, I'm sure. He'll probably love me more than he loves Mayfair, because I won't hesitate to kiss him or let him kiss me.

Maybe her daddy is sad about having a daughter like her. Maybe he pretends he's happy that she's so smart. Maybe he wishes he had a daughter more like me.

Mommy always thought Mayfair was very strange. She told me her father said she was more intelligent than any other student in the whole school. She told me Mayfair might be smarter than any student in the whole state and that we have to forgive her if she seems different because she's always thinking.

She's still that way. She can't help it.

Her brain won't stop.

Mommy said she thinks Mayfair even thinks when she sleeps and doesn't dream. Dreams can't fit in her head because it is so crowded with thoughts and facts.

Mayfair never had a doll or at least never showed me one or told me she had one.

Mayfair doesn't have any real friends. Even now, I never see her talking with any girls except one girl named Joy who looks like she just got out of a third world country where people are starving to death. I don't think many girls or boys call Mayfair unless they need help with something in school. She usually doesn't get invited to other girls' houses after school or on weekends. I don't think she's ever hung out with friends at the mall or gone to a movie with them.

I can't remember if she was ever invited to a real party, but she doesn't seem to care.

Mayfair reads books Mommy can't read.

Mayfair never tells me about boys she likes.

She never wants to do anything with me. I asked her many times to do things, even just go for a walk, but she's always too busy.

But she is really very smart, even smarter than my teachers.

I ask her to help with my homework. Sometimes she does, and sometimes she's too busy.

I don't know why she's too busy. She is either on the computer or reading or writing things.

No one makes her do it. She does it because she wants to.

Mommy thinks she does it because she can't help it. Her brain makes her do it.

I still wish I had a sister.

Mayfair is like having another adult in the house. She doesn't even want to go to the movies with me and tells me every movie I want to see is silly.

Mommy says Mayfair might be the smartest kid in the whole world, but she would rather have me for a daughter and that secretly her father wishes the same thing.

She said Mayfair will never be happy. She said she wanted to see if she could help her.

That was when she tried to show her how to put on makeup and fix her hair.

Mayfair wasn't very interested, and Mommy gave up.

Here's what I remember about Mayfair when I first came to live with her and her father.

She never spilled anything at the table. She never ate too much or too little, and she always wiped her lips after every sip of what she was drinking.

She didn't care about her dresses or her shoes very much.

She never had a nightmare or cried.

She smiled sometimes, but it wasn't a big smile, and I can't remember when she laughed at something I laughed at.

She asked Mommy questions that made Mommy want to get away from her.

Everything in her room was always neat. She liked taking care of her own room and didn't like the maid doing much in it.

She never told her father that she loved him in front of me.

I don't remember him going into her room much and never to tuck her in at night.

I remember thinking that maybe she was made in a laboratory and she wasn't a real girl.

She was in some of my nightmares.

That's what I remember about Mayfair when I first came to live here in her and her father's house.

I stopped reading for a moment. Nothing Julie had told her really surprised me, but reading Allison's impressions of me did give me pause. I loved my father more than she thought I did. Her mother had filled her with these ideas. The idea that she thought she could replace me in my father's eyes was disturbing. Maybe it was just a little girl's dream, that of a little girl who really didn't have a full-time father, but it still bothered me.