Notes on a Near-Life Experience

by Olivia Birdsall

  For Deb: my mom, soul mate, and centripetal force

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my editor, Stephanie Lane, and Delacorte Press for taking a chance on an unknown kid. I am indebted to my professors and classmates at Brigham Young University and New York University, especially Louise Plummer, Brian Morton, Breyten Breytenbach, Chuck Wachtel, and Nicole Hefner, for their input and encouragement. Mom, Dad, Erik, Anna, Lisz, Diana, David, Bekah, Michael, Zanna, and JohnEr, thank you for your love, inspiration, and patience.

  prologue

  GROWING UP, I WENT TO SCHOOL WITH THIS GIRL, JENNIFER Reebi, who had a mole about the size of a cherry pit in the middle of her left eyebrow. Her eyebrow, unaware of the existence of the mole, grew right over it, which made the mole that much worse, because not only was it big and conspicuous, it was hairy. Once in a while someone would show us how they could dislocate their finger at will, or they'd get an infected mosquito bite on their leg, an enormous zit on their forehead, or something equally gross that would take attention away from Jennifer's mole. But all those things were temporary, and the mole was permanent. No matter where she went, what she wore, who she sat with at lunch, Jennifer Reebi's mole was always there, obvious. You couldn't look at the girl and not focus on her mole, like how when you pass a really gruesome car accident, you slow down without even realizing it. Jennifer Reebi could have been brilliant, beautiful, the funniest, most interesting girl ever to live on earth, but in our minds she was a girl with a big, disgusting mole in the middle of her head. That mole ruled Jennifer Reebi's life; it defined her.

  The fall of seventh grade, Jennifer Reebi returned to school moleless, with a normal eyebrow and everything. She had a teeny scar, but if you didn't know about the mole, you'd never suspect a thing. She was actually pretty cute. But she was still Jennifer Reebi, Mole Girl, and whenever anyone mentioned her or tried to describe her to someone else, they never failed to bring up the ugly mole she'd had over her eye. Her mole got bigger and hairier and uglier every time it was mentioned, and there was no immediate evidence to remind us of the truth. The legend of the mole was probably worse than the mole itself. Jennifer didn't even have a shot with new people; so many people remembered her mole that everyone else was bound to find out about it sooner or later. Her mole was inescapable. Back then, I couldn't imagine a fate worse than having Jennifer Reebi's mole, or even just having to live with its ghost. Then, miraculously, just before high school, Jennifer Reebi's family moved. If she's smart, I remember thinking, she'll forget about that mole and never mention it again.

  If there's a moral to the story of Jennifer Reebi, a “main idea,” as my English teacher always says—and I don't necessarily think there is one, but if there is—it's something about identity and society and escape.

  But there's more than that.

  Jennifer Reebi got to leave the ugliest thing in her life behind, while most of us are stuck on the side of the road as people slow down to catch a glimpse of our tragedies.

  WHEN I WAS LITTLE, MY PARENTS HELD HANDS IN PUBLIC. Wandering through grocery stores, in movie theaters, at Linda Vista Elementary School's end-of-the-year carnival. Everywhere. It was embarrassing. They held hands even when we begged them not to. As a result of this constant hand-holding and all that went along with it, I am not an only child. There are three of us: my older brother, Allen, is seventeen, I'm fifteen, and my sister, Keatie, is eight. When I was in ninth grade, the hand-holding stopped, much to my relief. Maybe I wouldn't have been so relieved if I'd realized what that might mean.

  Lately, my family has been different. My full-time family has always been my mom, Allen, me, and Keatie. My dad works a lot, so I think of him as more of a part-timer. He comes on vacations with us, is around on weekday mornings and Sundays, and occasionally stops in for dinner on weekdays. My mom complains a lot about how much he works, but the complaints haven't changed anything yet.

  The full-time family has always been pretty tight, but lately things have been getting a little… loose. We used to hang out together; we'd sit at the same table and do homework while my mom paid bills, or we'd read magazines or play video games (okay, so I don't really play video games, but I'd be there when my brother and sister did). We even sat around and talked sometimes, like families on TV do. During the past few months, Mom has been working more, and Allen's been gone a lot. Keatie and I watch more TV and talk a lot less than we used to.

  That doesn't sound like a big deal, probably, but it feels like a big deal to me. I mean, my family isn't boring, exactly, but we have routines:

  —We eat dinner at seven o'clock every night, unless there's a dance performance or a violin recital or a soccer game or whatever going on. My dad only makes it to a couple of dinners a week—always on Sundays, and then usually at least one other day. He works a lot, even on weekends.

  —Every Friday my brother and sister and I have pizza or Chinese food or some other kind of takeout for dinner, because that's my parents' “date night.” When he's in a good mood, Allen gives them an obnoxious piece of advice like “Now, remember, Maggie”—that's my mom's name—“don't think that just because he buys you dinner you owe him something,” and then he winks at her, or he'll remind my dad to use protection, or he'll tell them they have their whole lives ahead of them and they shouldn't put all that at risk for a few minutes of fun. He's big on making people as uncomfortable as humanly possible.

  —On Saturdays we clean the house. Everyone, even my dad, has an assignment, and they can't do anything fun until they finish their assigned chore.

  —My mom puts us each to bed every night. She doesn't tuck us in or anything, she just likes to talk to us before we go to bed. Most nights before I go to sleep, I tell my mom about school, and boys, and who said what about whom. I guess I tell her everything.

  —My dad makes our lunches for school every night and puts them in the refrigerator for us so that they're ready and waiting for us in the morning. Unfortunately, he is a big fan of bologna sandwiches, and most of the rest of us aren't. My sandwiches usually end up in the garbage. Allen's friend Julian eats his every once in a while. I don't know what Keatie does with hers.

  —Keatie, Allen, and I watch Jeopardy! together; sometimes Mom or Dad will watch with us. Okay, so we don't just watch it. We try to answer the questions, and sometimes we even keep score. (I never said these routines weren't embarrassing or ridiculous.) Or we'll each pick a contestant at the beginning and whoever's contestant wins doesn't have to do dishes.

  —My dad takes one of us to lunch once a month. I think this was my mom's idea; when Dad started working a lot, we didn't see him much, and one night Keatie asked my mom when her real dad was coming home. My mom asked her what she meant by her “real dad” and Keatie said, “You know, the one who lives at home, like on TV. The dad we have lives at work.” Mom sort of flipped out and Dad started picking us up from school every once in a while and taking us to lunch.

  I didn't realize how much I depended on these habits, on the routine, on not having to think or worry about how my family functioned. I didn't realize how much I liked or needed our traditions. I think sometimes you have to lose things to see them for what they really are. Which sounds stupid and obvious and clichéd, like that song my mom sometimes listens to in the car about paving paradise and putting up a parking lot.

  I GUESS I BEGAN TO NOTICE THAT SOMETHING WAS WRONG about three months ago. The three of us, Allen, Keatie, and I, were sitting in the living room, waiting for Jeopardy! to come on, watching Wheel of Fortune and guessing at the answer to a puzzle with only three letters—all Ts—showing. It looked like this:

  Keatie guessed, “The Cat in the Hat … no, wait… Stand Up to …
”

  I guessed, “Stick My Toe … Italy Is Too …”

  Allen didn't bother guessing. “You guys suck. It's Allen Rules the Universe, Obey His Every Command.”

  “Al, you always say that's what the answer is, and it never is,” Keatie told him.

  About then my parents came down the hall into the living room. They were arguing.

  My dad said something like “I want you to stop acting like my mother, that's all.”

  And my mom said something like “I want you to stop acting like a child, then.”

  We didn't say anything.

  I don't know what they were fighting about. It would have been easier to guess the answer to an impossible puzzle with three Ts showing than to even begin trying to understand what was going on between them. And at that point, worrying about my parents' relationship seemed as unnecessary as finding the answer to a puzzle on a stupid TV show. They were fine, holding hands or not. There was nothing to see; we kept on driving, didn't even think about slowing down.

  YORBA LINDA, CALIFORNIA, MY HOMETOWN, IS THE BIRTH place of Richard Milhous Nixon, one of our nation's most misunderstood and underrated presidents, according to some Yorba Lindans. In the seventies no one really thought like that because he was the president and he hired burglars to spy on the Democrats or whatever, but I think people cut him a lot more slack now that he's dead. Yorba Linda is full of upper-middle-class people who have horse stables or swimming pools— sometimes both—in their backyards; people who think that because they own horses, they live in “the country” even though no one lives more than one point seven miles from a minimall; people whose patriotism moved them to change the name of our high school from West Hills to Nixon; people who get bored with their marriages after nineteen years.

  In second grade, when my class toured the Nixon Library for a field trip, the tour guide told us that when the library had its grand opening, four U.S. presidents attended. At the time I believed that presidents were like kings and queens— that they had to die to leave office—so I didn't understand how four presidents could have attended at once. I'd always thought I lived in a magical place—after all, presidents are the closest things we have to royalty in America, and back then I expected everything in my life to be special, out of the ordinary. I lived where presidents came from. I had all these fantasies about my parents' sitting me down one day and telling me I was adopted and I was really Nixon's kid or grandkid, the offspring of a president, practically a princess. When I got home from the field trip, visibly disturbed, my parents found out what was wrong and tried to explain to me about elections. I almost threw a fit when they told me that presidents were only presidents for eight years at the most and that when they were done they went back home and found new jobs and lived nonpresidential lives like anyone else. Somehow grown-ups always managed to make things seem so ordinary; elections made Yorba Linda seem like any other place.

  The realization that there was less magic in real life than I wanted there to be hit me hard, but after a while I built up some resistance. I try not to let those kinds of things get to me anymore. Usually, if you pretend you never believed to begin with, it doesn't feel like you've lost as much when you find out the truth.

  LAST SATURDAY, DAD WAS AT WORK ALL DAY, AND IT WAS HIS job to clean the kitchen. So on Saturday night when he got home, my mom ripped him a new one.

  “Russ, your job today was the kitchen, and it's still a mess.” It's not like my mom to get upset about little things like this. But lately, she's been hypersensitive about my dad's not being home very much.

  “Please, Maggie, I was at work all day, and now you want me to clean the kitchen? Give me a chance to rest. Have one of the kids do it. Tell Keatie I'll give her twenty bucks. She loves doing stuff to earn a little extra money.”

  “No way. This is your job. We care for this house together, remember? As a family.”

  “I'll clean the kitchen,” I told them, “free of charge.” It makes me uncomfortable when they get like this.

  “That's okay, Mia. Your father will do his own work,” my mom said.

  “No, Maggie, I won't,” Dad said. And he left the kitchen, walked out of the house, got in his car, and drove off.

  I couldn't believe that my parents, two adults, were having such a ridiculous argument.

  After Dad left, Mom said, “Mia, you will not clean a single dish or lift one finger to clean that kitchen, do you understand?”

  “Why? This is so stu—”

  “You heard me, young lady. This is your father's chore and he's going to do it.”

  I heard my dad come in late that night. I listened for voices, for some kind of an argument, but there was only silence.

  Peace at last, I thought.

  But the next morning the kitchen was still a mess, and my parents weren't speaking to each other. We all stayed out of their way, and out of the house, as long as possible. When I got home from my friend Haley's that night, just in time for dinner, the kitchen was clean, and we all ate together like we normally do on Sundays. I was too scared to ask what had happened. All that mattered was that things were back to normal.

  IN FOURTH GRADE, MY CLASS DID THIS FAMILY HISTORY PROJECT where you had to fill out this chart and learn about who your grandparents were and stuff like that. When my teacher assigned the project, she said something about how we might be surprised who our ancestors were. Then she asked if any of us knew any stories about our relatives. A lot of my classmates raised their hands and talked about how they were related to famous people: Haley is related to Harriet Tubman, Steven Spielberg, and Shaquille O'Neal, somehow; Ana's ancestors came to America on the Mayflower; and Billy Lee's grandfather is the host of the most popular game show in Korea. I don't think I have a very interesting family history. My dad doesn't really tell me stories about his family. Instead, he talks a lot about Woody Allen. Woody Allen is this guy who makes movies that my dad really likes. I don't know much about my father's childhood or my ancestors, but I do know a lot about Woody Allen.

  Most people my age don't really know who Woody Allen is. They are vaguely aware that he makes films and that he is not physically attractive. My mom says my dad wanted to be the next Woody Allen when he was in college, before Allen, Keatie, and I were born. My brother, sister, and I are named after Woody Allen and his leading ladies, as Dad calls them. My older brother's name isn't just Allen, it's Woody Allen Day, but if you ever called him Woody, he'd kill you. My full name is Mia Farrow Day, and Keatie is actually Diane Keaton Day. It's bizarre; I don't know why my mom agreed to it, but then again, when I think about the times when my parents fight about what octane of gas to put in the car, what movie to see, or who to vote for in the city elections, I wonder how and why they ever decided to marry.

  From what I've seen of Woody Allen movies and from what I've heard on E! Entertainment Television, the man is a freak. He usually directs and stars in the films he writes, and he usually writes his character as a man who has lots of women falling all over him. Did I mention the fact that he looks like a computer programmer? He divorced Mia Farrow a while ago and married their adopted daughter or something. Very weird. If Mom ever had another baby girl—and she insists that she won't—her name would be Soon-Yi. That's the name of his third wife/daughter… Soon-Yi. I don't know what we'd do if she had a boy.

  When I was younger, I'd go to my dad's office with him on Saturdays. I'd do homework, answer the few phone calls that came in, and go to the Korean market in his office complex to look at the octopus tanks and buy candy with flavors I'd never heard of, and when I got bored, I'd bug Dad until he took me to lunch. On our way to the office, he'd tell me stories about Mia Farrow, how beautiful she was, how she'd been married to an opera singer or musician or something before she met Woody. I'd listen and feel special to have been named after someone so famous and interesting, and I'd think that my dad knew everything about everything.

  HE THOUGHT IT WAS A GREAT JOKE. MOST OF MY DAD'S JOKES are the kind that only he t
hinks are funny. He says the rest of us have no sense of humor.

  When I was learning to talk, he'd point to my mom and then to me and say, “Mama…Mia… Mama… Mia.” He's kept it up ever since—yelling for us to get in the car, looking for us at the grocery store, whenever the situation warrants.

  “Mama, Mia… Mama, Mia.”

  He hasn't said it in months.

  Last week, for instance, after my dance performance— which he nearly missed—when we were getting dessert, he was trying to get us all to hurry up and order, and he said, “Maggie, would you just make up your mind already?”

  My mom just ignored him and kept looking at the menu.

  So he turned to me and Keatie and said, “Girls, you know what you want, right?”

  He usually says something like “Mama, Mia! What would you ladies like?” He usually gets a kick out of stuff like that, and Mom usually smiles at his jokes even if no one else does. Maybe we've all finally gotten tired of the old jokes.

  I hope somebody comes up with some new ones soon.

  ALLEN WORKS AS A BAGGER AT STATER BROTHERS, THE GROcery store near our house. Occasionally, he has to go out to the parking lot and round up the carts people leave scattered around because they are “too damn lazy to put their freaking carts in the damn cart corrals.” I love it when Allen uses the words cart corral. I tease him about his bagger jargon-lingo-shoptalk whenever he gets going about cart corrals.

  Anyway, when he first started working, my mom was really excited, and she went to the store and bought stuff just so Allen could bag it while she took his picture. I went along to watch.

  “Mom, please. This is embarrassing,” he said.

  Mom ignored him and turned to the cashier. “I'm sure you see this all the time. Didn't your mother come visit you on your first day of your first job?”