Notes on a Near-Life Experience

by Olivia Birdsall

  “Supportive? Whatever. You know you've made fun of dance ever since I started.”

  “I have no idea what you're talking about,” Allen says. “Back me up here, Julio.”

  “Sorry, Mia, I'm with Al. I have no recollection of ever making fun of dancing. Do you really get all sweaty before you compete?” Julian asks. “I'd like to see that.”

  He wants to see me sweat? What do these things mean?

  “Sick. That was totally uncalled for, dude.” Allen gives Julian a look of confusion and disgust. He shakes his head. “Whatever. Dance, shmance. On to more important things: the team. We have no name.”

  “Right. So, what do you think we should call ourselves?” Julian asks me.

  “How about something that uses your and Al's names? Like the…um, Woody Jewels or something?” I suggest.

  “Are you kidding me? That sounds like the name of a porn movie or something,” Allen says.

  “Everything is sex to you,” I say. “What about the Sharks?”

  “Okay, that's good. But why sharks? What about our team makes them sharks?” Julian asks.

  “I don't know.” I cannot believe they're this serious about anything. “Does the name have to mean something?”

  “Hey, what if we do a Yorba Linda–themed name,” Allen says. “Like the Nixons? Or the Fighting Oranges? What about Yorba United? Like Manchester United, you know?”

  “That's a possibility,” Julian says. “Write that down.”

  “I need to do my homework; can you guys go somewhere else?” I ask.

  Allen and Julian decide to move their meeting to the basement. A few minutes later Julian returns.

  “Hey, um, I didn't mean to shoot you down about the Sharks. I mean, that was a cool name.”

  “No worries. I don't really care what you guys name the team. It's none of my business anyway.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Just making sure. See you later,” he says, looking at me kind of weird before going back to the basement.

  First the pepperoni, then the sweat, now the apology. Julian is definitely acting strange. With all the changes going on around here, is it possible that one of them is actually good? What if Julian is different? What if he thinks I'm different? What if, amidst the absolute and total annihilation of my family, Julian Paynter has decided he likes me? Just when I have basically gone completely crazy? Or maybe it's the craziness that's making me think he likes me. Should I say something? Start lying out in a bikini in the front yard?

  WHENEVER YOU'RE MARKED ABSENT FROM A CLASS AT MY school, you get a call from the school district that night, a recorded voice that says:

  “According to our records, your child missed one or more classes today. Please contact your school attendance office regarding this absence.”

  Today is the third day in a row I've answered the phone and heard the recording. I haven't missed a single class. And I always drive to school with Allen, so I know he's there. At least, he's there at some point…. The last thing this family needs is a delinquent kid.

  I tell my mom to call the attendance office about the mistakes they've been making.

  JULIAN COMES OVER AND ALLEN ISN'T AROUND. I'M WATCHING MTV on the couch, and Julian sits down next to me, grabs the remote, and turns off the TV.

  “What's going on with you?” he asks.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, staring at the blank screen.

  “Do you, um, need someone to talk to… about anything?”

  “So you and Allen have decided to compete for the role of replacement parent, then,” I say.

  “What's that supposed to mean? You're acting like a zombie. And…well, you don't stare at me the way you used to. What's going on?”

  Has he noticed how I look at him? Great. Has it really changed or is he just talking crazy? Since when does Julian notice the way I look at him? Since when does he talk crazy? “The sky is falling. Nine models wore leg warmers in the last issue of Seventeen.”

  “That's, uh, too bad.” He's acting weird again; he's sitting up too straight. “Did you know that prom is on a Saturday this year?” he asks. What does prom have to do with leg warmers?

  “It's on a Saturday every year,” I tell him. “Who cares?”

  “So, do you wanna go or what?” Julian asks.

  I turn to see if he's being serious; he's staring at the blank TV screen now. He looks pained, as if he's watching someone die rather than staring at an empty gray box.

  “Very funny.”

  “I'm serious.”

  “What? Did Allen tell you to ask me because he thinks I'm depressed or something? Are you asking me because you feel sorry for me? And isn't prom like seven years away?”

  “Mia, I don't feel sorry for you. Well, I do if you really think leg warmers are a big deal…. But Allen didn't tell me to ask you. In fact, he'd probably get mad at me and tell me to keep my hands off you if he knew I was asking you.” He pauses and waits for me to say something.

  I can't breathe. I can't speak. I mean, I have been preparing for this moment for my entire conscious existence, and I somehow have no idea what to say or do.

  Julian continues, “I want to go with you. And I wanted to ask you before anyone else did.”

  For some reason, I start staring at the TV again, too; maybe that's what I'm supposed to do and Julian is trying to show me, so I don't get it wrong…. Or not…“If this is a joke, I will kill you.”

  “Can't you make this even a little bit easy? What do I have to do? Get down on one knee?” He stops staring at the TV and looks at me. “C'mon, Meezer.”

  I want to shout, “Of course I'll go. I love you. I want to bear your children. I would go snorkeling in a pit of nuclear waste with you if you asked me to.” Instead, I say, “Fine, Julian, I'll go, but only because you begged and because I needed an excuse to buy some silver leg warmers.” Brilliant. Now he probably thinks I hate him.

  “Good.” He smiles and looks relieved for a second, but only a second. “Now I have to figure out what to tell your brother.”

  So what if in ten years global warming is going to make the ice caps melt and flood the planet and kill off the entire human population? Who cares if my family thinks it's okay to spontaneously combust? I get to think happy thoughts and live in an alternate universe, one where Julian Paynter and I live on love and stare into each other's eyes all day between make-outs. That will be my future. Everyone else can wallow in misery. I am a princess; my fairy tale has finally begun.

  HALEY ANSWERS THE PHONE ON THE THIRD RING. “HEY, stranger.”

  “He asked me,” I tell her.

  “Great. Congratulations,” she replies. “Who asked you what?”

  “Julian. To the prom.”

  “Are you serious? What happened? How? What's been going on with you guys? Is this why you've been so hard to get ahold of lately? I can't believe you didn't tell me. I can't believe this.”

  “I did tell you. I mean, I am telling you. Nothing's been going on. I mean, he's been acting weird, but the prom thing kind of came outta nowhere.” I start to wonder how long it's been since I've talked to Haley about anything real, anything important. Before I can stop myself I tell her, “My dad moved out.”

  “Oh, Meems. Shit. I'm sorry. When? I wish I'd known. I would've come over or you could've come over here…to talk about it…or something.”

  I am so tired of trying not to think about them or talk about them. I am tired of spending my life trying to figure out what happened to my parents and what I'm supposed to do about it, and hiding it from everyone so that when whatever is wrong is right again no one will be the wiser. I am tired of avoiding feeling sad by feeling numb. And I get cold inside when I think about talking about it. I want to talk about Julian and dresses and how pissed Kiki Nordgren will be when she finds out.

  “I don't know,” I tell Haley. “I don't know what to say about it. I would have told you, but there was never really a good time to bring it up. It happened so fast, you know.”

  I couldn'
t explain to Haley what had been happening because I didn't really know. I felt retarded for not telling her, and for having a messed-up family. And it's not like it happened all at once, either; it had been happening for a long time. But how do you tell your best friend that there are a million things you never said and that there will probably be a million more? If there are things I couldn't even admit to myself, how could I have told Haley about them, best friend or not? Realizing that, I wonder what I really know about Haley and her family—whether everyone keeps so much hidden.

  Haley's dad sleeps in the living room on the couch, but supposedly that's because he has really bad gas problems or something; it's nothing to do with the state of her parents' marriage.

  “Hey, listen, I've gotta go now. My dad's here. We're all going out to dinner together,” I lie, to get off the phone.

  “Well, call me when you get back. I want to talk to you.”

  “I will. Bye.”

  “See ya.”

  Why is it that even when something great happens, the bad stuff taints it? Why can't I tell Haley about Julian without talking about my parents? Why can't I keep those things separate? I just need to be more careful, I guess. How can I ever feel happy if all the painful and sad things keep leaking into the good ones?

  TWO YEARS AGO, WHEN WE WERE ON VACATION IN ARIZONA, my mom found out that a car auction was being held near our hotel. She's not really a car aficionado, but for some reason she fell in love with this car there, and when no one bid on it, she approached the owner as he was loading it onto the truck with the other cars that hadn't sold. She negotiated a price, bought it, and drove it back to the hotel to show us. Dad was livid, and he said it was because she hadn't discussed it with him first and she hadn't done any research on the car. Mom suggested that maybe he was angry because she had a vintage red Porsche and he didn't, which only made him angrier. They got like that sometimes. They clashed. They had such different ways of doing things. Usually they complemented each other: Mom's impulsiveness eased Dad's rigidness; Dad's careful way of doing things saved some of Mom's not-so-well-thought-out plans from being total disasters. But sometimes, like with the car, they were both too stubborn to compromise, and the battles ended with each of them doing what they thought was right. This time was like that.

  Mom and I drove the car home, across desert highways; through orange groves, strawberry fields, and suburban neighborhoods; right into our driveway, while Dad, Allen, Julian, and Keatie took a plane back. Mom kept the top down most of the way and told me stories about her first car, the first new car she and Dad had ever owned. I told her about my dream car, sang along to songs on the classic-rock radio station, felt like I was free, somehow.

  That's how it was with us. She would listen to me talk about anything; she told me stories about what she was like when she was my age. I wasn't afraid of my mom, the way some kids are of theirs. I always felt like she understood me. Like she liked me. Like she liked being my mom. Lately, though, whenever I want to talk to her, I feel like I'm interrupting something. Like it isn't fun for her anymore. Like I'm a burden.

  ONE SATURDAY NIGHT AFTER DAD'S BEEN GONE A FEW WEEKS, Mom asks me if I want to go to the movies with her, just the two of us, since Allen is at work and Keatie is at Dad's.

  “Sure,” I say.

  The movie is the only one showing at a theater that people are always trying to shut down because it's old and ugly. It shows movies that are kind of old, but not really old; they're not black-and-white or anything. The one we see is kind of depressing. It's about all these people who just kind of fall into a coma for no apparent reason, just kind of check out of life one day. Then this doctor finds a medicine that seems to wake them up and the people start to live and talk and act normal, but eventually the medicine stops working and the people go back to their coma. Mom and I both cry at the end when all the people are lined up, listless, in their hospital beds again.

  We drive home in her car, listening to a Righteous Brothers CD. She begins to tell me about Dad. About them.

  “When we started dating, my friends thought I was crazy. We didn't have anything in common, really. Your father was interested in politics and philosophy; I couldn't have cared less about those things… but he was so smart, and he just adored me. And it seemed as if, ultimately, we wanted the same things—family, a home, a life together….”

  “No offense, Mom, but, duh … everyone wants those things. So you married Dad because he liked you and because he wanted to live in a house and have kids?”

  “That's not what everyone wants, actually, Mia. Julian's dad didn't want those things, and it seems that your dad didn't, either. A few years after Keatie was born, he became distant. He started working longer hours; he seemed less interested in me, in you kids, in being a husband and a father. It was as if he just slipped away. Even when he was present physically, he seemed absent, like his mind, maybe his heart, was somewhere else.”

  What she's telling me makes me uncomfortable. How could someone be in one place and be someplace else at the same time? How come I had never noticed what my mom was talking about? “What do you mean?”

  “He just became… vacant, empty. I don't quite know how to explain it. He just checked out on us. But then after a while, he'd be back just like he was before—happy … alive…. Those times made me think we would be okay.

  Every time he went back to his old self, I told myself he was back for good, that the… emotional absence had just been a phase. I'm sorry, Mia, I shouldn't be telling you all this,” she apologizes. But she goes on anyway. “The times when he was involved and excited and loving were so wonderful, but then he'd check out again. Kind of like the people in the movie. It became a sort of bittersweet cycle…. We tried therapy, but your father…It's hard being married to a ghost.”

  I have no idea what she means, how my father, who has always lived in the same house as us, living, breathing, working, was ever like any of the people in the movie—absent, empty, unresponsive.

  I nod anyway. It feels like she needs that.

  “But he kept falling back asleep, kept going back to it.”

  “Yeah.” I nod again, wonder who my father is when he isn't just my dad, the guy who helps me with my math homework and talks about Woody Allen. He is someone who grew up, who had dreams, who maybe lost them, who feels things; someone who became a ghost to my mother while he still seemed real, unchanging, to me, his daughter. I think of how I've sometimes felt like I'm watching my life pass by, like I'm watching a movie, and I wonder if I am like him. The back of my throat aches; my chest feels like it's being pumped full of Jell-O. I suddenly feel as if I have to concentrate just to breathe. I can't remember ever having felt as scared as I do now.

  The song “Little Latin Lupe Lu” begins to play. We have to sing along. It's what we always do.

  “Did I ever tell you that the Righteous Brothers used to practice in my neighbors' garage? My mom used to take us down to listen to them,” Mom says.

  I remember. She's told me a thousand times before. Every time we listen to the CD. I remember how the first boy she ever kissed, Tony Rojas, when she was in seventh grade, told her not to tell anyone they'd made out because he didn't want the other girls to think he was her boyfriend.

  “Julian asked me to go to the prom with him,” I tell her.

  “That's wonderful, sweetie,” she says, instantly my mom again. “When did he ask you? What did he say? What did Allen say?”

  We talk about proms, high school, boyfriends, the whole way home. But it feels different. I know she is hurt and confused and scared. I guess I've known that for a while, but I've tried to ignore it. And now I can't. How will she hold us all together, keep us all afloat? How will she rescue us if her boat is sinking, too?

  Tonight I can't sleep. I keep thinking about the things Mom said. I can't make sense of them. Why didn't I ever see my dad the way my mom did? If he was acting so weird, if there were times when he didn't want to be with us, didn't care about us, why
didn't I see them? I wonder if maybe he and Mom would have been okay if they hadn't had kids, if he'd been able to make his films or be a philosopher or do whatever he wanted to do. I wonder what my dad thinks of me, how he feels about me. I mean, I know he must love me; I'm his kid. But does he like me? Does he think I stole his life? Does he blame me for his lost dreams?

  I FIND KEATIE WATCHING OUR FAMILY MOVIES—VIDEOTAPES of dance recitals, vacations, birthday parties, Christmas mornings, Easter egg hunts, championship soccer games—when I go down to the basement to practice my new routine. I notice that she keeps watching the same part of one tape over and over again; I think it must've been made on the first day we had the new camera.

  In the scene Keatie watches, Dad wants to make sure the camera works, so he wanders around the house taping, droning on about whose room is where and how long we've lived in the house, until Keatie convinces him to let her hold the camera. She has a hard time keeping the camera steady as she zooms in on my parents in the kitchen.

  Mom unloads groceries, unaware that Dad is sneaking up behind her until he blows on the back of her neck.

  Mom turns around and laughs. “What on earth are you doing?” She and Dad kiss.

  Keatie's disembodied voice is heard: “Do it again!” And they do. You can hear Keatie giggling. Mom puts her hand in front of the camera lens and the screen goes dark.

  “Keatie, why do you keep watching that part of the movie?” I ask her as I lift one leg onto the barre to stretch.

  “What part?” she asks.

  “You know which part. The one you keep rewinding to.”

  She watches the scene again and doesn't answer until it's over and the tape is rewinding again. “I like it because I got to hold the camera.”

  It makes sense. She was in charge, and when she was, they were happy. And now all she can do is watch—a person passing the scene of the accident.