He told me before that he’d wished over and over again for a daughter. For me. For a little girl he could pour all of his love into without having to worry. Someone he could love as much as his wonderful wife. Ex-wife. That’s why I’m here, because he wished for me. He didn’t want to give any credit to my mother because she’d left us.
He always said, “I’m your mother and your father.”
He was constantly calling the hotel, asking when I’d be home, telling me about his symptoms: “Noelle, it’s liquid right now, absolute liquid. Like water. And it burns. My god how it burns. I don’t know if it’s connected to the blood but I’ll tell you what, I’m wondering if it’s made my sphincter as weak as the rest of my body. It affects the muscles, you know. And that’s a muscle, just like any other muscle. And it takes the right muscles to keep it from just being liquid. You need the muscles to get the nutrients out and, you know, work it into a solid. Oh, Noelle. Oh god, Noelle. It’s just so hard with you working nights. I wish you didn’t have to. I miss you so much. I need you. I need you, Noelle. I ordered something that might help. It’s this four-way massager that stimulates muscle development. Should be arriving tomorrow morning. When you get home we can target some of my weaker muscles, maybe you can help with the places I can’t reach … ”
And then the sore spot in my brain would flare up. I imagined it, pink to red and swollen and spewing something slimy. And I pressed and pressed and pressed harder, again and again, tided myself over until I could find some nice pattern to seep into.
God, it’s so embarrassing.
So horribly, terribly, disgustingly embarrassing.
Ha!
Diary, you dickhead, stop making me write these embarrassing things in you. How are you doing this? It feels good though, to write it down like this. Because when I write it down it seems like it can’t be real. Like I’m a character in a movie, one of those princesses whose mother died when she was young and left her with a terrible ogre of a father. Dead mother, ogre father, that’s enough to make a person kind of special right? Though usually it’s a stepfather, because the princess couldn’t be the spawn of someone as absolutely terrible and disgusting as Herman.
Anyway, it still feels good in a way. I like it when you validate me, diary, when you confirm that my father is a terrible weirdo beast and that I’m special. I’m a princess. Keep that up and we’ll be friends forever.
Depending how we play up the dad (sympathetic vs. monster), we could even get some critical attention.
Man. I shouldn’t have said that though. Any of that. About my dad. My poor, poor dad. He’s got these watery eyes, all red-rimmed like the lids are turning inside out. I’m always sorry to see them open. That means he’s awake. He’s alive. Another day to endure. They’re all yellow where they should be white and really they’re sort of sickening but they make me depressed instead of nauseous.
It’s not his fault he has the worst body in the world.
And I hate myself for hating him for it.
The other night he said, “Noelle, if I wasn’t this way I could find someone to love. A wife to take care of me. Because, you know, this is a wife’s job. A wife’s job. This isn’t your job. And I’m sorry for that, Noelle, you know I’m sorry, right? I’m not out of love yet, am I? I could find someone else. I could. I know it. And I know I’m a burden on you, sweetie. I have no right to do this to you. But who would want me this way? Who would want to take this on? I have no one else.”
“Dad, it’s okay. You’re gonna be okay eventually, alright? And you’re gonna find someone new.”
“There’s no one like your mother, kiddo.”
“I know.”
“She was too good for us.”
“I know.”
“So we can’t hate her for leaving.”
“I don’t hate her, Dad.”
“Aw Noelle. We’re all each other has kiddo.”
“I know, Dad.”
That was a common sort of conversation. He repeated himself a lot. Because all he did was sit in the living room, scribbled in the TV’s artificial light, getting fatter and fatter and fatter and fatter so if you fast-forwarded his life it would almost look as though he were melting into his armchair.
Sometimes instead of getting fatter in front of the TV, he’d get fatter on the phone. Sit in a creaking wooden chair in the kitchen, chatting with one of Dr. Schiller’s 11 other chronically ill patients, because that’s all they had to talk about, all they had to identify themselves. HERMAN DIXON, Co., Bl. (that’s colon and blood). He and the other patients would make a game of out-repulsing each other with gooey, stinky symptoms of their illnesses. Every minute growing less and less attractive to some potential new wife who might come and save me from hell.
Since I was little it’s been all desperate clinging hugs, loud weeping into my shoulder, and stuff like:
“It’s just you and me, Noelle.”
“You’re the only thing that keeps me going, Noelle.”
“You’re all I need in this world, Noelle.”
In fact I can’t think of a single day in which he hasn’t said something like that. Or like:
“I’m sorry, Noelle.”
“You don’t deserve this, Noelle.”
“I’m ruining your life, Noelle.”
“You’re my wish come true, Noelle.”
He’d say that god wouldn’t have given me a father like him if I couldn’t handle it; that we were blessings for each other because he was making it so one day I’d be the best wife and mother in the world, teaching me to care for another person the way that I have for him. We were each other’s precious gifts. He said, “Daughters end up marrying men just like their fathers, sweetie, and you’re gonna make a man like me very happy one day.”
It’s weird to love someone for so long, really believe them that they’re your whole world, and then suddenly hate them. A lot. And I know this is going to make me sound like an even bigger asshole, but like, it’s hard to hate someone for something they can’t help. It makes you feel really awful.
Like, it’s really fucking hard to hate someone for their spastic colon. It really is.
It took a lot for me to finally admit it. Because it meant I basically had to admit that I’m a bad daughter. And a bad person.
I really wish he could have abused me in some more traditional way. Like if he beat me up or had sex with me or something. Because then I’d have a name to put on it, and years and years worth of Lifetime movies telling me that IT’S NOT MY FAULT and that HE’S WRONG. But this way of being treated, this was uncharted mental torture, it felt like a crime but it wasn’t a crime because if it was a crime some nice-smelling social worker could legally take me away and I wouldn’t have to feel so goddamn guilty.
I won’t work at the inn forever and ever like Alf because I want to make enough money to run away and leave him. I’m okay that everyone in this town will think I’m an asshole because after I leave I’ll never come back. I’ll be LEGENDARY as an asshole. NOELLE DIXON LEFT HER POOR SICK FATHER AT HOME, SAD, LONELY MAN, HIS ONLY DAUGHTER THE BIGGEST ASSHOLE OF ALL TIME.
And I’m never going to get married. I’m never going to have kids. I want everything about my life to end with me because I should have never been born. Never should have been wished for.
I’d initially thought that taking the nightshift at the inn would make it better, if we were on totally different schedules things might not be so bad. Maybe I’d miss him and start remembering things that I’d once loved about him. Slowly the absence would chisel away my hatred and I could see him as just a sad, sick man again.
The Nightshift. Another potential title?
But it was really only getting worse. His usual neediness laced with resentment that I was never around. I was getting less sleep and feeling more stressed so every time he said my name I wanted to feel his teeth crack beneath
my sturdiest boot. The nightshift just made me hate him more.
Do you wanna know what he did last night? Okay listen to this. He called the inn to tell me that he’d fallen and hurt his back and couldn’t get up and if I didn’t come home right away to help him he’d be stuck on the floor, cold and alone all night long, nowhere near a TV. He literally shrieked into the phone.
So I rushed home, leaving Alf all alone at the inn, which is honestly the worst even though he was really nice about it, just to help stupid Herman into bed, prepare a hot water bottle or something, prop him in front of a TV. Anyway, as soon as I opened the door, I caught him walking out of the bathroom. The sound of the flushing toilet seemed to go on forever, fuelling my fury.
“Um, hi,” I said. “What the fuck?”
“Oh, I ah, wow, Noelle, you left right away for me?”
“You said it was an emergency, Herman.”
“Honey, that’s so sweet.
“Herman, I left work, Alf’s there all alone, I—”
“I just, I feel better now. I just kind of turned and my back cracked and now it feels better. So, I’m sorry, I would have called but I had to use the bathroom.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not, Noelle, now don’t you call me a liar.”
“You needy, pathetic liar.”
“Noelle!”
“You called me home from work, Herman.”
“I swear I fell, my back was aching! It was!”
“Stop lying!”
“Here,” and he rushed over to his bag and pulled out his wallet and produced fourteen dollars. “Here, why don’t you run across the street and grab us a pizza, Noelle. The People’s Court is starting in five minutes. We can have a nice night in now that you’re home, okay? I’m sorry.”
“I’m going back to work.”
“No! Noelle, just stay home! You’re already here. Just come watch The People’s Court and eat pizza. It’ll be really fun!”
And I turned around and slammed the door shut so hard the sound made my ears ring.
So furious. Bright red flashes, fuzzy Christmas lights, swelled in and out of focus, blurring my vision. And before I knew it I was back at the inn and I didn’t remember anything about walking, like my body took over while my brain boiled in some kind of rage trance.
I didn’t even say hello to Alf when I walked in, just went straight up to my room and slammed the door again because I wanted my ears to keep ringing.
And in there, I pressed and pressed and pressed so hard on the sore spot I thought I could feel grease and blood and sweat seep from my pores like a wet sponge.
Close-up of blood glob falling over her lip. This is a horror movie, so some of this blood has to be sexy blood. Like this sexy glob.
And then I started doing something I’d never done before.
I pressed my nail into my scalp and made a half-moon slice, the way you would break into an orange. And I worked at the slice, pulling it up, picking picking picking at it.
I picked and I picked and I picked until under my nail was all crammed up with blood and a glob of it drew a slow, heavy line down my face.
7. Olivia Grieves suggested that these “bumps in the night” might be caused by a rat infestation, though empty traps in the attic and basement fail to prove such a theory and Olivia herself seemed skeptical of that explanation.
8. A spastic colon.
9. The blood tests are inconclusive at this point.
10. Herman Dixon was on a fixed government income due to his disabilities and also appeared to suffer from an addiction to buying infomercial products.
11. The Dixons’ family doctor. He’d been seeing Herman for the past 30 years and Noelle since she was a baby. He said Herman and Noelle had always been a “troubling pair,” disclosing that Noelle came for physicals very sporadically, her father far too often, and that the last time he’d seen her was just a few days before the Anniversary. When asked if anything unusual happened during their appointment, he said that Noelle had seemed quite on edge, touching her scalp more often than usual. He also said that he’d spoken with her more candidly than ever before about her father’s condition. He admitted that this only seemed to “agitate her more,” and he regretted bringing it up.
Fourth Entry
Alf and I spent the bulk of our time standing or sitting around the desk together. Sometimes we’d use the computer but not often. It doesn’t have the Internet. Just some really lousy computer card games like Solitaire. And the ancient software we use for checking people in and out of the hotel. Anyway it looks like a computer and has a keyboard and chairs and stuff so we hang out around it anyway. Kinda like how you’ll still look at a TV even when it’s off.
In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve started writing in you a lot, diary. Like once I started I just couldn’t stop. Even when I want to stop I can’t stop. And I’m carrying you with me all the time now, only wearing clothes that you can fit into, like sweaters with big front pockets even though it’s hot outside.
In fact I’m writing in you RIIIIGGGGHHHHT NOOOOW. Ha. Sometimes I write in you at the front desk, like I am riiiigggghhhhht noooow, and other times I take you to this little closet underneath the main staircase. It’s a weird shape, kind of a leaning triangle cut out of the wall. There was nothing in it when I found it but a stool and a bare light bulb. Over the bulb I fastened a little red lantern with a little black-haired girl running around it. Almost like a cartoon when I spun it really fast. I found it at a garage sale a million years ago and always knew it’d serve some special purpose one day. Actually not really. But now that it does serve a special purpose, that lie seems true.
I asked Olivia what the closet had been for and she said Holcomb 12 had built it as a “time-out” room for his son. She kept it the way it’d been all those years ago because she thought it would be a kind of attraction to people, to see part of the building in its original state. Instead it mostly got them talking about the punishment. Being forced to sit in a dark room alone for an indefinite amount of time.
Possible spin-off movie about Holcomb’s son: “He’s OUT, he’s ANGRY, and he’s BURYING PEOPLE ALIVE!” Please forward that essay to me.
What if he’d locked his son in and then tripped and fell and hit his head and died? And his poor son was stuck in there to starve to death. Die all alone. Even if someone found him before he starved to death, he’d never be the same. I wonder if it’s better to know you’ll never be let out of a closet than it is to think that someone, at any moment, might unlock the door and open it and set you free. 13
At least with a diary you’re not really alone.
Maybe it’s not exactly fair to call this, you, a diary. Because I don’t say, like, Dear Diary, or like, Dear Noelle, and to be honest I don’t tell you everything. Not that I lie but I just know I wouldn’t tell you EVERYTHING, like for example, if I did something illegal, I probably wouldn’t write it down in here because that would be stupid.
Though you do seem to have a way of prying things out of me. What is it about you? Is Alf right? Is it just girls who pour things into diaries? Who plant these sticks of dynamite around? Who let you judge them constantly by confessing every little thing?
Anyway maybe I’m mostly using you, diary, on the off-chance I accidentally drop you somewhere or you, like, fall out a car window and some mystery person in a fancy car spots you on the road, stops and picks you up, and reads you and thinks, like, “Wow, what a great writer this Noelle is! This diary, it should be a novel!”
Then the mystery person with the fancy car tracks me down and makes me famous and takes me away from everyone forever. Especially Herman. Who I’m able to douse in my new money so he’s quiet forever, my fiery guilt finally smothered.
Actually, maybe you’re my surrogate conscience, diary. Like, I’m actually in a mental ins
titution and I’m doing this experimental diary therapy to develop or repair my somehow non-existent or deformed conscience. Writing a fix into my deficient brain. THERE IS NO INN!!! THERE IS NO ALF!!! This diary is a manufactured judge to my terrible thoughts and deeds, and if I don’t keep writing in it, don’t keep confessing, I might lose my conscience forever, turn into a sociopath and kill everyone … dun dun dun …
That’s too exciting.
Probably I’m just a regular old boring narcissist who is, naturally, too vain to appear that way. And that’s not exciting at all. This diary is a record of nothing really. Except for how sad it is that this might be the version of my story I’d write to make myself seem great to a stranger.
Which actually probably reveals more about me than even my most honest self ever really could.
I like how some things just have authority because they are what they are. A diary has authority. Truth is implied. Because it’s a diary, SEE? But maybe I have to start saying DEAR DIARY for all of it to be considered true. So maybe I’ll start:
Dear Diary, my mother14 never left and my dad isn’t sick and annoying and I stopped picking at my sore spot and all the skin has healed perfectly.
That’s stupid.
Actually, diary, isn’t it weird that I’d probably hate you if you were real because you’re the better version of me?
I wish you were alive. I wish you were alive. I wish you were alive. I wish you were alive. I wish you were alive. I wish you were alive. According to my dad, I just gave birth to you. So you’re a real person now. Lying open on the floor, face down, covered in fluids. But I guess more brain fluids as opposed to vag fluids. I wipe you off and I kiss you and now you’re totally and completely real. There you go. You’re WELCOME.
The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated) Page 3