Prozac Nation (13 page)

Here was this really great, sociable, charming, fun-loving guy who rated so high in all the laundry-list ways that a mother dreams of that he ought to have had
GOOD CATCH
stamped on his forehead. And he's with, well, me. And everyone's thinking, How can this be? I'd overhear girls talking about us in the school bathroom while I hid in the stall. And I agreed with them completely: If I had been one of those other girls, I'd have made the same catty remarks, I'd have thought that witchy ninth-grader with all that long hair and all those long skirts had nabbed Zachary only because she puts out, or gives good head, or something. To myself, I just thought, Well gosh golly gee, this is my good fortune. With Zachary around, I suddenly felt so shielded, so cosseted and coddled and wrapped up in so many layers of protective coating that everything going down between my parents stopped bothering me. But I kept wondering when the jack-in-the-box was going to pop out and say, Time's up!

My complete absorption in Zachary made it pretty easy not to notice that I no longer saw my father. Dating was such an all-consuming activity: We doubled up with another couple to go to a Police concert (the Go-Go's opened and I sprayed my hair into a bright pink tangle); we went to Zachary's brother's wedding (and of course there was an engagement party before that); we had to blow off school for entire afternoons and go cruising around in Zachary's new 280ZX, as if we were two suburban teenagers; or hide up in his bedroom and make out with the shades closed and the lights off. It seemed that for years I had quietly and surreptitiously prayed to God that He might make me—or whatever it was about me that made me
me—
disappear, metamorphose into somebody else, somebody who didn't walk around as though a crazy, hazy shade of winter hung over even the brightest of days; and after all this time, He sent me Zachary and let me get absorbed into the preternatural ease of life with the perfect boyfriend. At long last, I had disappeared, and this other girl, with this dreamy swain straight out of a Harlequin romance, had taken my place.

And in the midst of this most unlikely spell of wish fulfillment, I refused to let the downs of my dad ruin everything, didn't want to see him and hear about lawsuits or financial difficulties. I didn't want to spend an hour riding back from the few hours a week that we actually spent together, didn't want to do time in the heated car in the middle of winter with him and my stepmother chain-smoking their Winstons, driving along the Throgs Neck Bridge with the windows closed and this horrible sense of suffocation and lung cancer and gloomy, early death all over that Oldsmobile. I was just sick of the whole business of having this unnatural relationship with my father, this strange situation that hadn't changed even years after the divorce. Instead of having ongoing connections with both of my parents, I had to travel between distinct and mutually exclusive universes in order to spend time with either of them. The discontinuity had driven me completely crazy long ago.

And I found myself, so quietly, so subtly, almost completely unconsciously, doing the very thing they told me I never had to do (though they acted like they wished I would): choose between them. And of course, I'm no fool. It was only natural that I side with the person who keeps an apartment with a bedroom in it just for me and doesn't mind when I use whatever soap is by the bathroom sink. We are such extensions of each other, my mother and I, so much two pieces of the same being, that everything that's hers is mine. Of course I chose my mother, for better or for worse.

From time to time I would go through the motions with my father: visiting his mother in her utilitarian housing complex in Brighton Beach, eating Chinese food and revealing to each other what the fortune cookies say. Checking out some new design exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt, or visiting all the Rembrandts in the Frick Collection. But it wasn't every Saturday. Sometimes it wasn't even every other Saturday. Sometimes it was just once a month, and sometimes it was only a quick dinner in the middle of the week. Sometimes we wouldn't even speak on the phone for a long while. A couple of weeks would go by and we wouldn't even make excuses when we finally hooked up, wouldn't even say, I tried you the other day but there was no answer, because there's no reason to make anything up when everyone understands and tacitly accepts that it's just so much easier this way. It's so much easier not to be torn apart.

Plus, being with Zachary had actually improved my relationship with my mother in ways that five years of five-days-a-week family counseling never could have. My mom liked Zachary so much, she'd practically planned the wedding. She'd make extra-special pasta dishes when she knew I was bringing him home for dinner, and she pretty much decided that, having managed to attract this mensch, I must not be such a mess. She didn't actually say anything to me like, For a few years there it was all pretty much touch and go with you, Ellie. For a few years there I didn't know you would pull through, but now you've got this great guy and everything is just super. She didn't have to say any of this because it was just so obvious, and I didn't have the heart to tell her that it wasn't so, that underneath all that I was feeling as loose and lost as ever.

 

I want to renounce everything that came before Zachary and deny that there would ever be an after. I start to think, Maybe Zachary and I
will
be together forever and it all really will work out okay. Maybe I
will
marry him. Maybe I
am
Cinderella at the ball. Maybe fourteen isn't too young to know who's right for you, especially since nothing ever seemed right before Zachary. I devote all my energy to thinking about how to keep this relationship from ever ending. I think about it so much that after a while there isn't anything more to the relationship except my plans to keep it going. I mean, for most people, the phone calls, the dates, the schedule that a couple creates, are all a means to an end, a way of organizing time to maximize the pleasure of each other's company. But for me, the time we spend together is about nothing more than furthering that time; every date is about planning the next date and the next and the next and the next; every phone call is about figuring out when he will call me again, what time what hour what minute Everything is about holding the ideal in place for fear of ever going back to that lonely little world I used to live in.

Then one night, when I am babysitting for our neighbors downstairs, my father calls. Mommy must have told him where he could find me, which I think is a stunning display of maturity on both their parts since they can barely talk without hostility surfacing. I haven't seen my dad or spoken to him in three weeks, and maybe even Mommy is beginning to think this is too long. So we chat. I tell him about Zachary, and for some reason I even tell him that I had gone to Planned Parenthood to get birth control pills.

“I'm glad you're being so responsible,” my father says, ever the laid-back parent, never the moralizer. “Just be careful.”

“Be careful?” I ask.

“Be careful of your heart.”

“Oh that,” I say, certain that I have nothing to worry about. “Yeah, well, Zachary's a pretty good guy.”

“I know. But be careful.”

For the first time in a while, I am taken with sadness that I never see my father anymore. I could never discuss sex with my mother. There are all these things my mother is good for that my father isn't, and all these things my father is good for that my mother isn't, and if only they could work out their differences, or keep the din of discord to a minimum, I could have two whole parents.

“Listen, little one,” my father starts to say. “Little one, you know how much I love you.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I'm not being tentative because I doubt him. I just, I don't know, what the hell can you say when everything's such a mess? What does the word
love
mean in this situation? What good is it?

“Well, Elizabeth, things might happen that you won't understand or that might seem wrong to you, but you should just know that I love you and I'm always thinking about you.”

“Okay.” I never stop to say, Daddy, what are you talking about? What's going to happen? Because I actually just want to get off the phone so I can call Zachary. My dad had a tendency to speak cryptically and shroud things in mystery when they weren't ultimately that compelling. I kind of thought this was just one of his moments.

 

I dream that I am a child of two or three, my father is babysitting for me while my mother goes out, and as usual I make him leave his shoes outside my door so I know he's still there. I wake up in the middle of the night, the shoes
are gone, but my mother has not come back. I am alone in the house, the electricity is off, I can't get the lights on, I keep bumping into things, I am alone in the dark, I am alone in the world, and I start screaming.

 

Within a month, my father left New York without a trace, a tragedy that was only eclipsed by the fact that Zachary also left me without a trace, except for the beautiful gold necklace he had bought for me and insisted I keep. He said something about how he wanted to feel like he could play basketball with his friends without worrying that I was going to start crying. And I said that it had never occurred to me that he'd rather be shooting hoops than in bed with me, and he said that, yes, in fact, sometimes he would prefer to play basketball, and that in terms of absolute value, sex and sports were equally meaningless to him, they were just two different ways to have fun.

So all I was to you was a way to have fun? I asked.

Yes. That's right, he said.

And that was it.

Be careful of your heart.

I was, after the breakup, what you call a complete wreck. For the first time in my life, my pain had a focus. And I just couldn't help myself. I didn't care what anyone thought, I didn't care that all the girls in school would say, See, he finally got wise, I didn't care how stupid I would look with teary mascara stains and purple eyeliner tracks down my cheeks, I didn't care about anything except how this was the worst pain ever. I used to weep for never having anything worth losing, but now I was simply resplendent—puffy, red, hysterical—with a loss I could identify completely. I felt justified in my sorrow and I couldn't stand the way everything about Zachary seemed to be everywhere: Every staircase we'd necked on and lounge chair we'd chatted on between classes was redolent with memories of him. My God, even the lint that gathered on my clothing and still hadn't come out in the wash reminded me of Zachary. I would burst into tears in class and not bother to excuse myself. I cried on the subway. One day, I got mugged walking to the subway, and figured it was as good an excuse as any to go home and stay there. Some days, I was so deep in sorrow that every little thing, walking across the street or fixing myself breakfast, was such an effort that I didn't even bother. My hands would go limp as I washed the dishes or applied lipstick. I would fall asleep doing my homework. I would take cabs everywhere because I had no energy to negotiate the public transportation system. My mother felt so bad for me that she would pay for my taxis. I would show up at her office some afternoons and cry. I interrupted business meetings, and if she said she couldn't talk, I would cry some more. My cousin Alison, who was living with us on weekdays at that time, would listen to me review what had happened with Zachary and my plans to win him back. She'd tell me that I was repeating myself and would act amazed when I still went on. My mother and I went on a cruise to Bermuda for Memorial Day weekend, and since there were no phones on the ship, I made them hold the boat in port one day as I gathered enough change to call every one of Zachary's friends at their beach houses to see if he was with them when I couldn't find him at home.

“Elizabeth, you're obsessed and this is crazy! I've had it with this! Had it!” my mother yelled when I returned to our cabin on the ship. “He's not your husband or your fiance, he's just your boyfriend and there'll be more to come.”

There was no way of making her understand that it just wasn't true, that Zachary was my last chance and now it was all over for me.

 

We're sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service. No further information is available.

When my father disappeared, moved far away and didn't tell me where, when I found out because I dialed his number and heard the operator's recording, when my own grandmother wouldn't even tell me where he had gone, when my worst nightmare was realized because my father had at last disappeared, it was almost a relief. My deepest fears had
been confirmed, proving that it was not all in my head, that all my years of worrying about everyone disappearing had not been for nought.

I was actually on to something.

As if that could make it hurt any less.

We're sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service.

Sorry comes later, years later, with a litany of explanations that shift the blame to circumstances or try to imply that it was all for the best: I left because I hated watching you get caught between me and your mother that way; I left because I was going to start my own business down south, make a lot of money, and be able to take better care of you financially; I left to make life easier for you.

I start to get the weird feeling that nothing is really happening to me, that I am watching a movie and I can turn away any time. I start to think of everything in the thud person:
A father has walked out on his daughter.
I try to think of odd occurrences and the way one might describe them as if they were someone else's problem:
A husband beats his wife,
I hear an older version of myself saying.
A boyfriend drinks too much and then tries to bash in his girlfriend's face,
I hear another voice from the future reporting. Every personal disaster that might possibly befall me, I can come up with a simple declarative statement to describe.