Please, Lord, if there’s any way for me to fix things, please help me find it. I’ll make any sacrifice. I’ll do whatever You want.
Within reason.
Again, I’m sorry. Prayer is not my forte, and I don’t want to sound like the kind of asshole who believes she can bargain with God.
Argh, I’m sorry I just swore at You, God. No one will blame You if you smite me. So what I’m trying—and failing—to say is to please just put me down for anything within Your will and I’m all over it if I can please, please, please somehow help my mom and dad. Thank You and sincerely Yours, Lissy Ryder.
That didn’t sound right, either.
In Your name, Amen.
Love,
Lissy
That’s when I feel an almost psychic flash and I hear a vaguely British voice saying, “Open your eyes and get out of bed, dumb ass.”
They say the Lord works in mysterious ways. If one of those ways is talking to me in language I understand, then I’d best do what He says.
Oh, so gingerly, I ease my eyes open.
I guess He wants me to see David Coverdale.
The sun beams down, making David seem all the more beatific in the poster. I want to take a look around and get my bearings, but I don’t know how long the tonic will last and I cannot blow this shot.
I stumble out of bed right when the yelling begins downstairs.
Yes!
They’re fighting!
Both of them!
Which means Daddy is alive!
My heart in my throat, I run down the stairs so fast that I miss the final couple of steps and pretty much fly into the foyer. But midflight, I notice something twinkling. When I land, I pause for a second to take everything in. I’m standing beneath a ball of mistletoe and there are swags of greenery everywhere. Across from me in the living room, a massive Fraser fir fills the entire bay window, and it’s a monochromatic monster, decorated solely in hot-pink lights and hot-pink ribbons.
Wait. I know this scheme—this is how we decorated the tree in 1991.
Even though I’m so glad to be here, I don’t understand why I landed on this particular date. As I hustle toward the sounds of yelling, my mind races through the possibilities. If we’re in December, that means I already inflicted all the damage I was supposed to do back in October. So this isn’t about changing anyone’s past except for that of my family.
I linger in the doorway, taking in all the life in my father’s face. Seeing him leaves me breathless. Daddy’s wearing a warm plaid robe and pajamas with little sailboats printed on them. He and Mamma are sitting in the atrium breakfast area with a plate of fruit and a pot of coffee between them. Daddy has an array of credit card statements at his side and he’s gesturing at my mother with the checkbook. They’re bathed in sunlight and surrounded by greenery and it’s pretty much the best thing I’ve ever seen.
“She already got a BMW for her birthday—now you bought her a mink? For how much? This statement must be a mistake, because no one would spend that much money on a child. And what’s wrong with the three winter coats she already received this year? I don’t understand, Ginny. Help me understand.”
Mamma rolls her eyes. “That’s because you understand nothin’, George! Sissy bought Gussie her first fur when she was sixteen! We are so far behind the curve raht now it’s not even funny!”
“Au contraire, Ginny, it’s very funny. I’m laughing all the way home from the bank.”
And that’s when, for the first time ever, I interject myself into one of their arguments.
“Stop it! Both of you!”
They both turn to me, openmouthed with shock.
“I don’t have much time, so do not interrupt me right now. This? What you’re doing right now? Has to stop. Do you understand me? Because you know what happens when parents don’t get along? Their daughters act out. As it stands, I’m not due to turn slutty until college, but if you keep it up, I’m going to get started now instead. So unless you’re looking to be the youngest grandparents at the country club, or hearing ‘Let’s welcome Lissy Ryder to the main stage,’ knock that shit off. Because FYI, if I get knocked up, I’m staying here for you to raise the baby.”
Mamma visibly shudders and Daddy leans forward in his seat. I can’t tell if he’s enthralled or enraged, yet I haven’t time to worry about that right now.
I point at my mother. “You. Cut it the fuck out with the sibling rivalry. And yes, I said fuck and I don’t care if it’s not ladylike. See? I’m already halfway to the stripper pole. Keep it up with the crazy possession-based arms race with Aunt Sissy and you’re both going to bury your husbands before they can even retire. So unless you’re competing over who gets to be a widow first and which of you wears the most gemstones to the funeral, cool your damn jets.”
“Melissa Belle Ryder, I would nevah—” she starts.
“Zip it, I’m not done with you. Next, you have to get over your mother issues, okay? You’re what, almost forty years old? It’s time to put that shit to bed. Why don’t you start by taking one day a week to go to therapy instead of the mall?”
Daddy tries to suppress a snicker. He fails and I give him the whale eye. Duly chastened, he does his best to stop smiling.
He fails.
“You refuse to treat Daddy well because Grandmamma never approved of him, even though you claim she made you marry him. Did she have an actual shotgun? Were there real death threats? No. Could you have asserted yourself if you didn’t want it to happen? Yes. So you married him and you stayed married, not because you had to, but because you wanted to. You love him and you need to show him. This endless power struggle has to stop. Nothing bad is going to happen if you finally allow him to see that he’s half the equation. It’s not all about winning, Mamma.”
Mutely, my mother nods. I may just be getting through to her, possibly because she fears I might follow through on my threat to become an exotic dancer. Or a teen mom. But it doesn’t matter why I’m reaching her; it only matters that I’m reaching her.
“From this day forward, your job is to treat him like the wonderful, kind, compassionate, endlessly patient man he is, and not like some barnacle you can’t quite scrape from your hull. Got that? And speaking of, Daddy’s buying a boat.”
Daddy cocks his head as though I were speaking in Swahili. “I am?”
I whip around to point at him. “Not your turn!” I refocus on my mother. “So, you, Mamma, first up—return the frigging coat. What am I going to be, seventeen and running around in a fur? I’ll look like a Russian prostitute, which, correct me if I’m wrong, is not the image you want to cultivate. Also, I am not your status symbol. My achievements, or lack thereof, are no reflection on you. Do something with yourself, for yourself! Play to your strengths! Become an interior designer or a personal shopper or a pageant coach!”
My mother smiles her first genuine smile in a very long time upon hearing this. Sometimes the solution has been right in front of you and you need the threat of your daughter removing her clothing for strangers’ money to finally recognize it.
“You’re going to be so much happier if you can base your self-esteem on something other than where you vacation and what your kid drives. Also? I’m starving. I’m hungry all the time and I suspect you are, too. We need something other than lettuce and melon cubes in this house. I don’t want to wait until I’m married; I want to eat now. People have to consume protein and carbohydrates every day or they get super, superbitchy. We need to fix that. Make some damn spaghetti. Daddy will teach you how if you’re unfamiliar.”
I feel the first pull of exhaustion from the tonic wearing off, but I can’t stop until I’m done. I press on.
“Now, Daddy, here’s what you need to do: Learn to say no and mean it. Put your foot down. Don’t let her run roughshod over you. I think part of why she’s been so overbearing is that she’s looking for the limits on your patience. If you keep showing her you have no limits, then nothing is ever going to change.”
I shoot Mamma a look and she quickly nods in agreement.
“Now, wait one second.” I run into the kitchen and find my keys hanging on the hook by the garage door. I hand them to my dad. “You are going to take these and you’re going to sell this car.”
Mamma blanches. “Lissy, sugar, what are you—”
“Zip. It. You, Daddy, talk to my friend Tammy’s parents, because she’s been dying over this thing and they’re probably the only people you can unload a pink convertible on without taking a massive loss. Then I want you to use that money that you earned and do something for yourself with it—buy your boat or maybe take a six-month sabbatical to work on your book.”
Daddy’s reeling as if I’ve just delivered a punishing uppercut. He’s shaking his head like a boxer who barely made it off the ground before the count.
A wave of fatigue hits me so hard that I have to brace myself on the table. “I know stuff about you, Daddy. We do live under the same roof. What you don’t know is that you’re a great writer—really, you are. You could make something of it. You don’t have to be imprisoned in your office for fifteen hours a day. There’s another way. Take that path, Daddy. Please. For all of us.”
My knees buckle, and if I don’t go upstairs to lie down right now, I’m not going to make it. “So that’s it. That’s your food for thought. Right now, you two need to figure out how you’re going to be with each other. Mamma, let your guard down. Daddy, sac up. Get this done. Make out if you need to. I’ll be upstairs.” Then I hug my mother and I plant a kiss on my dad’s forehead. I can barely tear myself away from him.
With much effort I’m able to haul myself up the stairs, and the last sound I hear before I shut my door is that of their laughter.
My bed has never seemed more inviting, and David Coverdale beckons for me to rest my weary head. I look out of my window and I see the Murphy family piling out of their station wagon in their Sunday best. They must be coming home from church.
That’s when I hear that little voice again, and He tells me I’m not quite finished. I have to think quickly.
I grab a thick Magic Marker and a piece of poster board left over from some silly pep rally. In the biggest letters I can fit on the board I write a quick message and stick it in my window.
And then I’m out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Karma Chameleon
And now I’m back.
Whether I’m back in black is yet to be discovered.
The benevolent figure of David Coverdale watches down over me as I try to figure out my next move.
One time when Brian and I were hanging out, he explained the concept of Schrödinger’s cat in regard to my deep and abiding love of denial. He said that some weird (my words, not his) Austrian dude tried to explain what a paradox was by coming up with a scenario wherein a cat was stuck in a box with radiation or something. I didn’t really understand what he was saying, but the crux of it was that until someone actually looked in the box, the cat could be considered both dead and alive, but nothing was official until the box was opened.
So right now my world is one big, unopened box that may or may not contain a dead cat.
Disconcerting, right?
If I get up and go through the rest of the house, then I’ll know for sure what happened to my dad. I’ll either find out that my past-fix worked, or that it didn’t, and then I’m going to be paralyzed with grief. As hopeful as I am that he’s here, I’m equally dreading that he’s not.
So my plan right now is to hover in the in-between. Box-o’-cat territory. I’m just going to stay here in my room and avoid stuff until I can’t anymore.
No matter what happens next, and whenever I choose to open the box, I believe I’ll have come through this experience a better me. I’m not so enamored of the whole Lissy Ryder persona I’ve been putting on for so long. She was shallow and mean and self-involved. She wasn’t someone anyone (outside of a villain in a teen movie) would aspire to be.
Melissa Connor was better, yet she was a different kind of self-involved, overly controlling and equally dismissive. She may have been a little nicer (at least to your face) and far more successful, but she didn’t quite get it right either. She was unable to unclench.
I don’t think I want to be either of them anymore, at least not entirely. Although . . . they both had a few decent qualities. For example, I kind of want to be the Lissy who gave a young Nicole Good Humor bars and who made Madonna scrub her face to keep her safe.
I wouldn’t mind being the Melissa who wrote a check to send Amy to rehab, but not because she felt guilty. Rather, I’d want to write that check because it was the right thing to do. I want my first thought not to be “What’s in it for me?” but “What can I do for you?”
I want to be someone who’s there for my family and my friends, and not just when it dovetails into my own needs.
I want to work for a company whose goals I support, and I want to give them my all, and not the bare minimum. I’m not saying I should give more than I get, because corporate America can be pretty Lissy Ryder in its own right if you let it. I’m just saying three hours of tanning and treadmilling on company time is bullshit. I accept that now. I was in the wrong.
I want to be more comfortable when things aren’t perfect. Perfection is overrated, and also, it makes you superhungry. If I could not launch into absolutely apoplexy at a gray hair or a tiny line or a cellulite dimple, that’d be great, because I want to be someone who’s not a slave to her appearance. I’ve come to realize that the package doesn’t matter nearly as much as the contents.
I want to worry more about what’s important and less about what others think.
Not to go all Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz, but I have come to understand that the only person who’s in charge of my destiny is me. If I want all of the above, then the onus is on me to make those things happen. I may be unemployed and living at home, but I can change that with a little hard work.
I decide I can start the process of becoming more me by looking the part. I strip down and then re-dress in some silly but flattering mom jeans and a still pristine Whitesnake baseball-sleeve concert T-shirt. I never once wore it outside of the house. Well, that changes today. This is who I am, like it or lump it.
While I’m bent over tying my sneaker, I spy the end of the poster board sticking out from underneath my bed. I cautiously pull it out and use the sweatpants I just took off to dust the top of it, revealing the words “LION PRIDE” in big letters, topped with glitter. But that wasn’t the important message on this board. I flip it over to see what I wrote twenty-one years/twenty-one minutes ago.
BRIAN, YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT KURT COBAIN (AND EVERYTHING ELSE).
I can’t help but smile.
Brian really was right.
Nirvana was groundbreaking, and their music is as relevant now as it was back then. I get it now. Finally. Maybe they weren’t to my taste back then, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t change everything two decades ago. And maybe that was my problem with them—they represented a new age and a new era, and that scared me because I thought I’d be left behind, like so many eyeliner-wearing, spandex-clad, Aqua Net–using icons whose packaging was just as important as their contents.
Nirvana was all about sound without any glam-rock theatrics, without any distractions or gimmicks, and that had to have terrified me, as I was made of the sum parts of my own personal stage show. Nirvana was just who they were, take it or leave it. When Cobain made the tragic decision to neither burn out nor fade away, he cemented his position as a music legend. I can’t deny that.
A denial, a denial, a denial keeps running through my head.
You know what?
It’s
probably time I download Nevermind.
It’s also time to check on that cat.
I slowly open my door and make my way down the hallway to my parents’ bedroom. The bed is unmade and there’s a pair of Daddy’s plaid pants on his side. But I don’t allow myself to break down over what this might mean. This isn’t over until it’s over, and I’m going to have some faith, for the first time in my life.
When I’m down the stairs, I slip into Daddy’s library. I’m instantly enveloped in the scent of Royall Lyme and Wint-O-Green Lifesaver. I inhale deeply and just stand there for a minute, imagining how it felt when Daddy would hug me.
Eventually, I open my eyes again. At first glance, all is how I left it after I came home from the hospital, only his file folder of boats is missing. Then I spot an anomaly on his shelf. There are rows and rows of books, and each individual row contains books with the same covers. I pull one out and look at it.
A Civil Affair by George Ryder.
Oh, Daddy, you did it!
His other titles all include some play on the word “civil,” like The Civil Warriors, A Civil Tongue, and Civil Wrongs. I quickly scan the back of one of them and it looks to be a legal thriller from the perspective of a patent attorney whose specialty involves civil engineering. This makes total sense, because Daddy’s undergraduate degree was in civil engineering, which is one of the prerequisites for practicing his type of patent law.
I’m so proud of him.
No matter what happens next, Daddy had the chance to live his dream, and my job here is done.
I peek out the front door and I notice a couple of unfamiliar cars in the driveway. Who would be here? And why? Please tell me they aren’t paying their respects or dropping off casseroles. I hear murmurs toward the back of the house and I’m drawn to them like a moth to a flame. The fate of the cat is about to be revealed.
Here I Go Again: A Novel Page 25