Please Ignore Vera Dietz (14 page)

NO PLACE, NO TIME

I am in the dark forest and I can’t move. I am lying flat on the forest floor. There are bugs. I feel wet. I smell gas. Above me is the Master Oak. It drops acorns on me, like hail.

The tree explodes into flames. I still can’t move. The acorns are now flaming acorns, and I am wet with gasoline, bound to die. The strippers arrive.

Dancers with green sequins, G-strings, fishnet stockings, and garter belts dance around me. Tassels on their breasts go in circles, and fan the flames closer to me. One girl looks new. Her tassels don’t synchronize. My attention is held by the lead stripper. My mother is taking off a feather boa and swinging it around with her lips pouted. She stares at someone in the audience, but I can’t move my head to see who it is.

I am on a swing, swinging high above a river. I am a little girl again, holding on so tight, my hands hurt and the cold chain of the swing gnaws itself into my knuckles. I wiggle my legs. I yell “Stop!” but the swing won’t stop.

Dad says, “But this is fun!”

I start to cry and scream like someone is stabbing me. I hope he will get the picture. Instead, he laughs and the swing does not slow down.

“Stop!” I cry. “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

There is a paper airplane floating on a current. I am riding it, wedged into the center fold, arms spread along the wings. I am flying over the town and up toward the pagoda. I zip down Pitt Street and then Cotton Street, full of Harley-Davidson motorcycles and American-made trucks. I hang on as the plane navigates around the S curves, and my hands grow stinging paper cuts. By the time we arrive at the pagoda, my fingers are bleeding, but I am overjoyed. It is beautiful up here. Flying is beautiful. Until I am thrown off, sent bouncing off the rocks to my death.

The strippers are now Nazis. I mean, they are in sexy Nazi uniforms—something out of a Mel Brooks movie. Fishnets and swastikas. The dancers’ tassels are red and black, and behind them crosses burn. I look around and see no one. I look down and see I am back in the paper airplane. Parked. Someone has put bandages on my bleeding hands. My mother has been replaced by Charlie, who is twirling a pair of white briefs above his head. He tosses them to the nonexistent audience, and as I watch to see where they land, the pervert from Overlook Road appears an inch from my face. “What pretty pigtails.”

Charlie is leading me through the dark woods. We are in real time—I somehow know this. Charlie holds my hand firmly and tugs. He is pulling so hard, my hand starts to bleed again. We get to a clearing and he stops and looks up.

“Look at that, Vera.”

I tilt my head back and see a sky full of stars.

“Can you tell which one is me?” he asks.

I point to the brightest one.

He grabs my hand again and we arrive at the foot of the tree house ladder. Then we are in the tree house and Charlie is showing me his secret floorboard under the mattress.

He says, “You have to do this.”

I say, “I know.”

He says, “I’m sorry.”

I say, “I know.”

He says, “Do you forgive me?”

I say, “Not yet.”

He says, “There’s not much time left.”

I say, “For who?”

He says, “People will get hurt.”

I become annoyed.

He says, “What’s wrong?”

I say, “I’m scared.”

He says, “Just do it.”

He hands me an old cigar box.

I say, “Why me, Charlie?”

He says, “You’re the bravest.”

HISTORY—AGE SEVENTEEN

The first time I ever rode on a motorcycle, Dad displayed a shade of fear I’d never seen before, and said, “Charlie Kahn, that’s my only daughter you have on that machine.”

“Be cool, Mr. D. I’ll take good care of her.”

We went to the pagoda. When we got there, I felt like a new person—a seventeen-year-old grown-up. When I pulled the helmet from my head, I felt, for the first time in my life, nearly as cool as Charlie. When he turned around and kissed me, gently, on my lips, I blushed and told him to stop.

But I didn’t want him to stop.

Then we put our helmets back on and drove back down the hill—and when I put my arms around Charlie’s waist, I held on tightly, like a girlfriend would. It was nearly Halloween. I had just turned seventeen.

We had a movie night every Friday that winter. Dad would make popcorn and then leave us alone. Our friendship hadn’t suffered from the gaps of high school, like many did. Though we had our own lives, Charlie and I were able to come back to where it all began—just the two of us.

Sometimes Charlie would reach over and hold my hand, which made my brain explode so much I couldn’t concentrate on the movie. All I know about
Apocalypse Now
is that it’s about Vietnam. I can’t even remember who starred in it. What I do remember is Charlie’s hand and how strong it was, and how he rubbed my palm with his thumb and how he smelled of buttery popcorn.

I lost my job at Arby’s in January because I had become so part-time, I was useless. I blamed Dad and his inability to cough up Mom’s car, but he exhibited no signs of guilt.

Then, Valentine’s Day came. There was a dance, and balloons and flowers and cheaply made rings and all sorts of lame teddy bears and stuffed animals, as if teenagers can be wooed with the same shit as five-year-olds. It was the Dietzes’ most hated holiday of the year, too, because it dealt with the consumerization of something sacred. Mom and Dad had agreed never to buy each other anything on the day. It was a false, Hallmark holiday. A sham. A moneymaking sideshow for insecure couples who didn’t have true love. I agreed with this, for the most part. (I disagreed that Mom and Dad were the poster children for true love, though. Obviously.)

So, when I got home from school and there were a dozen red roses for me on the kitchen table, I tried my best not to be cynical. Dad had put them in an old crystal vase we had, and left the sealed envelope at its base next to a note from him that said
Back at 5. Had to go to the notary
. I opened the card and Charlie’s messy handwriting read,
Let’s go out tonight. I’ll pick you up at 8. Love, Charlie
.

Love? Love, Charlie? Out? Out where? You’d have thought I’d be used to Charlie and his spontaneous weird shit by then, but I wasn’t. Not when it amounted to a hundred bucks’ worth of roses and a date in three hours. Though he meant it to be sweet, all I could see was control and manipulation.

Over dinner, Dad said, “Nice flowers. Who are they from?”

I blushed. Sighed. “Charlie.” I added, “But I don’t know why he sent them.”

He looked up at me from over his glasses. “Occam’s razor, Veer.”

My father was obsessed with Occam’s razor, which, in short, says that the simplest solution is the best solution. (Meaning, Charlie sent me roses because he loved me.)

“We’re going out tonight, I think.”

Behind his eyes, I saw a thousand worried monkeys, knitting his eyebrows together into an indecisive frown. He’d told me a long time ago that I wasn’t allowed to date Charlie, but in the years that followed, he’d said more than once that we were cute together. I don’t think he knew what he really wanted anymore—and I wasn’t sure what I wanted, either.

I came downstairs at 8:05, sat down on a kitchen stool, and looked at my reflection in the patio door until 8:15. I’d put on my favorite pair of jeans and a pair of Doc Martens boots I hadn’t worn in yet.

I should have known Charlie would be late. At 8:30 I called his house, feeling so stupid I can’t even explain it. Mrs. Kahn answered in her usual chirpy hide-the-bruises sort of way, and when I asked if I could talk to Charlie, she told me he was out.

She didn’t sound surprised that I was looking for him. Or that I wasn’t out with him.

“Nice that he’s doing something social, isn’t it, Vera? After all these years of trying to be so different.”

I wanted to tell her that it was okay to be different. That
different
made Charlie who he was. But she would never get it. To her, anything weird was scary or stupid. Something to roll her eyes at. If Charlie was the next Einstein, she would have told him to not be weird, to comb his hair, and to stop thinking about physics, while his father forced him to go to Vo-Tech and learn about HVAC.

“Will you tell him I called?”

“Sure. But let’s not ruin his fun, okay?”

She hung up. I wanted to kill her. I wanted to kill him, too.

“Everything okay?” Dad asked.

“Yeah,” I said. Right when I said it, I heard Charlie’s bike buzzing up the road. When he arrived, he seemed distracted and upset by something. I figured it was just Charlie being intense.

I didn’t know how to feel, wrapped around Charlie, driving up Overlook Road. While I bounced around on the back of his bike, I felt stupid for not asking him where we were going first—for allowing him to lead me, like I was some blind idiot disciple mesmerized by his coolness, like everyone else. When I talked inside the helmet, it echoed.

“Where are we going?” I asked quietly. And the echo asked, “Where are we going?”

He took the left toward the pagoda and carefully maneuvered around the S curves until we came to the straight part in the road, about a hundred yards from the parking area. He took his hand from the handlebars and patted my right knee. Because he was slowing down, I took this to mean that our first stop was the pagoda, which I thought was pretty romantic.

I thought back to the note he sent with the flowers. I said, “Love. Love, Charlie.” My helmet said, “Love. Love, Charlie.”

The place was deserted but for two cars, and I couldn’t see any people.

Charlie slowed down and pulled into the first parking space, the one right in front of the pagoda itself, and put his feet down to steady us. I stepped off, and then he balanced the bike on the kickstand and got off, too. We took our helmets off, and I reached up and tousled my hair to feel better about it. Charlie smiled and opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, someone yelled, “Hey, Charlie! Over here!”

It was one of his Vo-Tech friends. He was down on the rocks, waving at us. Charlie waved back, then turned to me and said, “Come on.” I gave an obvious scowl, but he didn’t see it. As he walked, I saw him reach back for my hand, but I slowed instead and kept my arms to my sides.

There were six of them. Two couples curled up with each other and two extra guys, goofing around on the rocks. They had beer.

“Do you all know Vera?”

There were grunts of different answers. Yeah. No. Hey, Vera. Welcome. Nice to meet you. Weren’t you in my gym class last year? Are you in Tech? Isn’t she the one who …

I managed, “Hi.” What I meant was:
Take me home
.

“Wanna beer?”

Charlie caught a flying can of beer. Then another. I declined and he stuck mine in the pocket of his leather. I was starting to get cold. The wind was bitter. This didn’t seem like a date to me.

“You cool?” Charlie asked.

I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say, so I said, “Yeah.”

The two couples sat at the very edge of the far rocks. They giggled and tossed their empty beer cans into the air and listened to them bounce off the rocks and land farther down the hill. Charlie guzzled down his beer really fast, then pulled the one meant for me out of his pocket and cracked it open.

“You want to sit down?” Charlie asked.

“I’m freezing,” I said. What I meant was:
I hate you
.

Ten minutes later, the two couples who were on the rocks got up and walked over to us. They were Jenny Flick and Bill Corso, and Gretchen and her drunk boyfriend, who I heard was in college.

“She isn’t drinking?” Jenny asked Charlie. I was standing right there, but she asked Charlie.

“I don’t drink,” I said.

This caused a chain reaction of snickering. Someone passed out more beers. Two guys headed toward the edge of the rocks to pee.

“You okay?” Charlie asked.

“Yeah,” I said. What I meant was:
No
.

Bill Corso reached into his back pocket and pulled out a joint. The rest of them circled around him to block the wind. My brain was sprinting through a trillion thoughts. Nothing made sense. They passed the joint around quickly, taking loud hits from it, and when it got to me, Charlie spared me by taking it from the person who was passing it. When she was done exhaling, Jenny said, “And she doesn’t smoke, either.”

Charlie looked annoyed. “So?”

Jenny shrugged and moved her eyes from me to Charlie, back to me, and then back to Charlie. I could see her brain working. Then, while the others passed the joint around again, her eyes undressed Charlie while I watched. It was so obvious, it made me sick to my stomach.

Charlie must have noticed I was shivering, because he put his arm around me and enclosed me in his leather jacket, next to his warm chest. This made Jenny sneer and put her arm tightly around Corso, and it made me warm enough to realize that I had to pee—which was a problem, because the pagoda was closed for business and there were no bathrooms.

When the stoner circle broke up, Charlie lit a Marlboro and the couples went back to making out on the rocks. I whispered in Charlie’s ear about having to pee.

“There’s a great spot down by the wall that Jenny uses sometimes. I’ll stand watch.”

I said, “Thanks.” What I meant was:
You’ve been here before with Jenny?

I walked down in the red glow, with my right hand on the stone wall to keep my footing. Charlie stopped at the top of the path. When I reached a dark enough spot, a few steps into the trees, I slid my jeans down, and once my body adjusted to the freezing cold, I finally peed. Above the sound of liquid on frozen ground, I heard Jenny say, “Why’d you bring
her?”

Charlie said, “Vera’s cool, man.”

“You think?” one of the guys said.

I reached into my coat pocket for a tissue to wipe.

“Shut up. She’s not deaf, you know.”

“Isn’t she a geek?”

“No,” Charlie said, annoyed.

“I heard she was.”

“I heard her mom slept around.”

“That’s kinda hot,” one of the guys said.

“It’s skanky,” Jenny Flick said.

My heart beat in my chest as I zipped up and followed the wall back to the glowing red scene. Charlie held out his hand, but again, I didn’t take it. I thought he could see things the way I was seeing them, and figured we were about to say goodbye and go wherever we were going next. But when we got back to the rocks, he walked over to the two Vo-Tech guys and pulled out a small bottle of booze from the inner pocket of his leather, took a swig, and passed it on.

They both drank, and when they passed it to Charlie again, and he tilted his head back to drink, one of them said, “Hey! Kahn brought the good shit!”

Charlie turned to me. “Want some?”

I said, “Nah.” What I meant was:
Who are you?

He reached into his cigarette pack for a smoke, but it was empty. He fumbled around his leathers and then turned to me. “Veer? Could you grab me the pack of smokes under the seat of the bike?”

“Sure,” I said.

Jenny Flick said, “While you’re at it, can you stop somewhere and find a personality?”

“Jenny,” Charlie said.

“What? I was kidding.”

“Wasn’t funny,” he said, and then turned to say something to me, but I was already walking up toward the parking area. I got Charlie’s Marlboros from under the seat and stuffed them in my pocket. I stopped and sat on the wall, and faced the pagoda and appreciated its bizarre, out-of-place beauty. I thought if I stayed up there for a minute or two, Charlie would come looking for me, but instead, I smelled pot smoke again, and realized no one gave a shit.

I gave myself a real Ken Dietz pep talk. “Vera, this is what kids do in high school. You shouldn’t be up here sulking. You should go back and be yourself. Cynical, funny, straight-up Vera Dietz.”

It didn’t work. It didn’t work because I knew not to give the best of myself to the worst of people. So I decided to ask Charlie to take me home. But when I rounded the corner of the pagoda and saw him showing Jenny Flick and Bill Corso and the rest of his new friends how paper airplanes (this time, Corso’s three interim reports to warn of his impending failure) soar in the fast, frigid current, I turned around and headed home.

I fast-walked down Overlook Road in the dark, thinking of Charlie, boiling. Fuck Charlie. Stupid asshole. Stupid roses. Stupid pagoda. Stupid losers. Stupid boots giving me stupid blisters. Stupid Vera Dietz.

When I walked in the door, up the steps, and into my room without a grunt, Dad noticed. He said up the steps, “Why don’t you come down and we’ll order pizza from that new delivery place and pig out?”

So we did—and he didn’t say one word to me about Charlie. While I put on my flannel pajamas, he moved the roses to the windowsill by the sink, which was nice, actually, because our garbage disposal had gone funky, so they helped cover the smell of old water and rotten vegetables.

The pizza place had a little coupon pasted to the box top. Two dollars off a two-pie order with Coke. As my father cut it out for his fridge coupon organizer, he saw the call for drivers.

“ ‘Must be eighteen,’ ” he read. “What do you think? That could be a fun job.”

“I won’t be eighteen until October. Anyway, I want to work at Zimmerman’s this summer, now that I’m old enough.”

Of course, Dad didn’t like this idea, but he knew it was a paying position, because I hadn’t stopped mentioning it since the first summer I’d volunteered at the adoption center.