And Then Things Fall Apart Page 3

  The icing on the cake is that I am having some kind of technology withdrawal. I’m here all alone and it’s not horrible, but it is quiet. Silent. There’s no radio music, no TV blaring in the next room. No street noise slipping in through the open windows. And the loneliness is like an invisible animal in the room, like a giant cat. Every once in a while I feel like I could stretch my arm out past the typewriter on the bed, touch its tail, place my palm on its enormous flat head, and stroke its ears.

  Without the Internet I feel unplugged from the world. There is a new stillness that I have never noticed before. With computers you can set up your whole day so that everyone you have ever known or want to know is sitting in one big cyber room, waiting for you to show up. Whether you do or not, they are there. And knowing they are there is a great comfort. And it’s not just the cyber room but the entire world at your fingertips. The globe is your freaking oyster. Without it, here, under the covers, my world is—this room. This bed. This brain. All my annoying and heartbreaking problems. And an invisible cat curled up on the pillow next to my head, waiting for me to pass out so it can smother me while I sleep.

  The nurse at the clinic warned me. When you get chicken pox at the recommended age of six, seven, or eight, it lasts about three days. If you are about nine or ten, it’s perhaps four to five days of light fever and slight pox, and then, alley-oop it’s all over before the week is out. When, however, you are fifteen and contract the chicken pox (I so wish I could Google “chicken pox” and share its Latin name and other fancy-pants knowledge about my illness, but, oh, that’s right, I’m in a computer-free information ABYSS), you get very—and I mean extremely—sick. It is worse than worse. It is akin to getting the bubonic plague or smallpox like they show on PBS documentaries.

  I have moments of great strength in which I drag the typewriter onto my bedridden lap and type away. These moments are immediately followed by moments of great weakness and existential ennui, after which I basically pass out for a few hours.

  Woo, woo! Snarl, snarl.

  Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

  MEAT AISLE

  My heart is sliced into pieces,

  As red and glistening as marbled steaks

  Wrapped in cellophane.

  A sorrowing beast,

  Its timid snout protrudes,

  Sniffing and panting,

  Hot breath and whiskers.

  I am howling.

  My teeth itch to snatch at skins.

  My arms ache to embrace.

  My essentials long for trust, security,

  A safe bed in front of the fire,

  Where I can rest before tomorrow’s hunt.

  DATE: July 17

  MOOD: The Opposite of Hopeful

  BODY TEMP: 101

  I just had a dream about my aunt’s baby. An invisible giant cat weighs more than it does. In the dream the baby had gigantic golden eyes like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings movie. And it was covered in blood and floating in a Sam’s Club–size mayonnaise jar in my grandma’s fridge—just like the pickled fetuses Esther stares at in The Bell Jar.

  I don’t know what’s going on with the baby. I don’t even know if it’s a boy or girl or if they’ve given it a name, whatever it is. I’m assuming it’s a girl and I’m assuming that she will die. What I am projecting on this poor creature is hopefully a thousand times worse than what is really happening. Lightbulb-shaped skull. Holes in the heart. Undeveloped lungs, and gills.

  I have a good fifteen years on this infant in California. Unlike Esther Greenwood, I have not seen a woman giving birth in real life. We watched a DVD in health class. I think it was supposed to scare us to death from having sex—as in, “Beware! This could happen to you, and by you I mean you specifically, Keek. So let this be your warning. Do not do it with that wrestler.”

  But I am not a squeamish person. I also like to think that I am, in my own suburban way, a little fearless. Just like Esther Greenwood, I like to stare at people and things in dire and horrible circumstances, like homeless amputees on Michigan Avenue and bloody accidents on the expressway. I dare myself to pry my eyelids apart and take it all in, staring so hard the images and feelings burn into my soul forever. And so it was with this DVD in the classroom with half the shades drawn and the volume turned up high enough to drown out snide remarks from the stupid boys.

  We sat there watching a woman with no makeup walking around a hospital room and breathing like she was doing some kind of experimental yoga. Her husband/lover had a ponytail and beard. (How old was this footage?) Then jump cut to the woman on her back with her knees up at her ears, and there’s this total, like, crotch shot, but it was so not arousing to anyone.

  At first I didn’t even know what I was looking at, and I, um, have one. There was what looked like a wall of hair, and Matt’s best friend, Earl the Squirrel, guffawed and said, “Wax much?” Hardee har har.

  Then there was pushing on the mom’s part and the husband/lover in the room saying, “Come on, honey. You can do it. I love you, here it comes,” etc. The mom was working so hard, her lips were bared back from her teeth like a cantering horse, and she was biting down and frowning like she was casting a spell. And then this little hairy head stretched her apart, and then a little squished-up face, and then sploosh!

  It looked just like Esther said: kind of bluish and powdered with white, like a plum dipped in flour. And my jaw was on the freaking floor and my heart was racing up into my ears, and it was as if the whole world held its breath for one full minute.

  The baby looked like it was covered in wax, and it squalled like a baby animal. It had a courageous little penis like a little purple chocolate, and they wiped him off and wrapped him in a white blanket with blue and pink stripes. First there was nothing, and then there was this beautiful and adorable baby blinking at the camera.

  And this is where we all come from.

  The magnificence of it made me suddenly feel old. When I looked around the room, most kids were staring down at their textbooks or scratching imaginary itches, but to my utter shock and surprise there was Earl the Squirrel, wet-faced with tears like my mom at a wedding.

  All I could think of was Matt, how he would have liked to have seen this too, how I would have liked to have seen it with him. It’s not like I’m going to Netflix educational DVDs about the birthing process to watch while eating popcorn and microwaved bean burritos, but I thought about birth and birthing and babies and the freaking meaning of life for almost a month straight. Matt tried to understand, but really, he didn’t see the video, did he? He had no idea what I was talking about.

  Esther’s boyfriend, Buddy (his real name!), shows her (a) an actual woman giving birth and (b) a bunch of fetuses in jars of formaldehyde. Which, I think, is why my brain went there in the first place. When it comes to the baby-having, I don’t really think about it much. As it pertains to me. I mean, I’m fifteen. Babies are something I assume I will have one day, like my driver’s license, a college degree from a decent school, my own apartment in the city. Marriage is for the birds, from what I’ve seen of it. Maybe I’ll change my mind, but thanks to Marriage with a capital M, I’m all kinds of sad today. Marriage seems to suck, but babies are all right. Kids are even better. I was a flower girl at my aunt’s wedding, and now her baby is on infant life support.

  In movies when there is a dog, I always kind of brace myself for the moment when the dog will eat poison, get shot, get run over, drown, etc. And then when the dog dies (they always do; that is their function in the film, to die), I weep and basically lose my mind over it. And that is for make-believe dogs on the silver screen. How must it feel to lose an actual baby?

  Baby birds, when they fall out of their nests in the spring, are bluish with skinny necks and translucent eyelashes. What is life, anyway? Is the baby aware of what’s going on? How dire the situation is? Is it in pain? What could it possibly be thinking of? Is it just mute and senseless, waiting for people to touch it, writhing under Plexiglas? That’s its life?
This baby and I share so much DNA that if it needed a kidney, we would probably be a perfect match, being cousins and all.

  These musings were all—what’s the word?—academic before I watched the stupid Pampers, Downy, and Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo commercials. Oh, daytime TV. I mean, it was so very sad when Old Yeller died. But he wasn’t actually my dog. And it was also sad about the early birth, but it was hard to think of the baby as actually my cousin. But then I was lying here, scratching and not really paying attention, until there was the most amazing parade of adorableness that American advertising has to offer. Babies—what seemed like hundreds of them—sleeping, cooing, dimpling, making cute baby food messes. Learning how to walk. Being licked into hysterics by wiggling golden retriever puppies. Clapping their little chubby hands together, innocent and loving and alive with joy the way only babies can be.

  And our baby became flesh-and-blood real to me for the first time. Whatever they need to save you, a lung, a chunk of my liver, my pancreas—take it all. I don’t need it as badly as you do. I’m so tired of being the only child in my family, my limbs ache from it. She deserves the chance to be bowled over by a puppy. This baby is all potential. I love her sofa king much already. Whether she makes it or not.

  I want to be able to look back on this time of my life and laugh or even just smirk a little. I want to look back like in a rearview mirror at this horrible bloody smash-up of a summer. I want to live through this and move on, and if my little cousin can just hang in there and stick around long enough to have a life, all this crap my family is going through will seem inconsequential. Why couldn’t this one baby, our little baby, splash out in textbook fashion like the one I saw in health class? Who decides what is fair? WTF?

  Although I can’t stop imagining my cousin trapped in a giant mayonnaise jar, I still love mayonnaise. It is one of my favorite things ever. The King of Condiments. Up yours, Ketchup. Esther felt the same way about caviar. I’ve only had the kind of caviar that comes in tiny decorative jars in the pickle aisle of the grocery store, but maybe the expensive stuff is better. Despite my feelings on the matter, Esther is a fool for caviar and spreads it as thickly as peanut butter on anything she can get her hands on.

  In the same way, I could eat mayonnaise like ice cream—and have, at the restaurant. From the giant jar. Just one massive clean (I am always Illinois health code compliant) spoonful, and then I screw the lid back on and go back to the phones to take delivery orders. Who would ever know that I do this? And who would care? How many times did I just take a second to feed my need when we were totally swamped, and no one was the freaking wiser? My eating mayo on the sly is not even in the same league as you sleeping with the waitress at your establishment just because you can and because you think no one will ever find out, Dad. Sofa king different, it’s not even funny.

  This is all I have to think about. This and this and THIS. Matt. Baby. Mother. Father. Amanda. Betrayal. Itch. Bell Jar. Restaurant. Baby. Mother. Father. Betrayal. Amandabell. Restaurmatt. Father Jar. Betrayal. Virginity. Baby. Sex. Amanda. Sex. Mother. Itch. Sex. My whole everything is like one big live-action anagram. Or perhaps a sestina, a villanelle, a sonnet with its own peculiar pentameter, rhyming couplets, and grace notes. But what does it mean? Anything to anyone but me?

  7/17

  Dear Matt:

  I am writing, using a “modern business letter format,” to inform you that I am alive and well and, despite our last disagreement, thinking of you.

  My mother has gone to visit her sister in California until further notice. I’m staying with my dad at my grandma’s. See envelope for address.

  I have, much to my chagrin, contracted what my physician has called late onset chicken pox.

  You are welcome to visit. At any time. As I am without e-mail or private phone service, I’m hoping you can also, ahem, write.

  I am, however, on the mend and, when well, look forward to seeing you at your earliest convenience.

  Apologies again for my mysterious absence. So completely not my fault.

  Sincerely yours,

  Keek xoxo

  DATE: July 18

  MOOD: Incarcerated Rock Star

  BODY TEMP: 101

  This morning Gram gave me typing lesson number two: tabbing. It is not as hard as it looks, but it is also a lot harder than you might think. It is sofa king more efficient and accurate than pressing the space bar a million times.

  My roots are showing.

  I have lost about ten pounds.

  Skinny and pockmarked like some kind of

  incarcerated rock star.

  My fingers prance like rabbits on speed over the letters. It’s entirely different from my mom’s Mac with all the crud between the flat little keys. It’s solid with its own mechanical business to do. It uses a ribbon cartridge! There’s a little silver ball with all the letters and characters on it, like a Barbie-size disco ball spinning all my thoughts out and out and out as I can’t stop typing because my fingers are caffeinated bunnies.

  DO YOU UNDERSTAND MY RAPTURE??? THE TYLENOL MUST BE KICKING IN.

  Okay. Ouch. Shifting for that long is kinda hard, actually, but will it

  I think I am actually developing a little muscle on the side of my right wrist from all this TyPiNg. How’s that for fancy?

  I asked Dad to mail my business letter to Matt this morning, and I hope he didn’t just leave it on the dashboard to bleach in the white-hot sun with his take-out menus and receipts. The idea that Matt might actually get my letter, that I can communicate with him without any cyberspace anything, is cheering me the hell up. Today I’m not even that mad at him. No, today I am pooling my rage and anger so I can spend it all on Amanda.

  Amanda, it’s true, is sort of hot, if you are into girls like her. And if you are a stupid hormone-driven idiot like my dad. My mom isn’t chopped liver, though. She has longish brown hair, not unlike a mermaid’s, and her ears are pierced more than once, which is a little lame but hot if you are her age. Which is something I honestly do not know—more than forty and younger than fifty is my best guess. She is very amazing, and although she has abandoned her only daughter at this suburban version of the Bates Motel, she is, actually, or at least often is, my favorite person

  Amanda. Ugh. If you were looking for the polar opposite of my mom, it would be her. (See chart.)

  MOM

  AMANDA

  Brunette with auburn highlights

  Blonde (greasy from pizza)

  BA from University of Wisconsin

  Triton Community College student

  Triple-pierced ears

  Tacky navel ring

  Great family (Auntie, me, etc.)

  Brother in jail for check fraud

  Awesome boot collection

  Ballet flats (cool, but still opposite)

  Green eyes

  Brown eyes

  Been around the world

  Been to Canada, once. Camping

  Great cook (inspired, really)

  Doesn’t like fish because it’s too fishy

  Married to Dad

  NOT married to Dad

  I could go on and on and freaking on. But they are also opposite in ways that are more complicated. My mom works all the time. And when I say all the time, I mean every day and late at night and early in the morning. She doesn’t even sit down to eat lunch because she is always on the go, and it makes her perpetually exhausted and angry.

  There was a time, before my parents got the restaurant, when we actually went out to dinner. But the whole business is tainted now. Any place we go, Mom’s always tallying how much profit they are clearing. Even at weddings and catered graduation parties, I can see the wheels in her brain clicking away, calculating their markup and wondering who did their draperies. Should she get a guy in to stencil some maps of Italy on the wall? Should she add a weekly pasta special or would that be too much for Jorge and Sebastian to handle in the kitchen?

  She used to be more fun too before the D&D. We talked a
lot more. She sang around the house and actually baked cookies once in a while. How Martha, I know. But the cookies were good, and it was fun and she was totally cool to be around.

  Amanda, on the other hand, goes to community college part-time and works at the Dine & Dash. She goes to concerts downtown and sees lots of movies. She shops and buys (or occasionally shoplifts) expensive nail polish with stupid names. How noble. She screws married men for fun. That’s about it. I don’t think she even reads books.

  !

  Mom’s the one who hired Amanda in the first place, which is possibly the most depressing thing ever. Mom said Amanda had “good energy” and would be “great with customers.” Did my dad think, Nice tits, or, How will she look wearing obscene lingerie, dancing in the walk-in freezer for an audience of cheese, bags of ice, and me? That’s where Mom said she found them, ridiculous underwear and all. Oh, the humanity.

  What hurts so bad, and I mean Bell Jar bad, is that I really liked Amanda. Why I would befriend such an insane, undermining, manipulative whore from the underworld is beyond me. Before I found out about her and Dad, we were so close that she was the one who helped me bleach and dye my hair for the first time. Said she had done it before. Said, “It will look so much better than your hair now.” Said, “What are you, chicken?”

  Anything hair-related was something I would normally have done with Nic. She was my go-to style guru and we were always deeply involved in each other’s evolving look. It’s what we did together. But there was nothing normal about me at that point. Things at home with my parents fighting all the time and with Matt and our white-hot love were spiraling out of control.

  At Amanda’s apartment I sat in a folding chair with a towel over my shoulders as she wrapped hanks of my hair in tinfoil. She smoked half a pack of cigarettes while we ate low-fat pita chips with jarred salsa, waiting for the fuchsia to penetrate. I was transforming into a new person in her kitchen, trying to have power at least over the way I looked. And she let me sit there, like a dumb bunny, rinsing my hair in her sink and blow-drying it into shape as if she were my loving and loyal friend, instead of the person responsible for murdering my parents’ marriage with an ax.