There was no love for me on the Internet, but lurking made the time pass. An hour after Diane got home, I heard her putting Max to bed. “Sometimes things don’t work out the way we plan,” she was saying. “You go to sleep now. Let the adults take care of this.”
Adults? My ears perked up. Was Penn still in the house?
Then in the living room I heard Penn’s voice, gently telling Hiroshima that she could not sit in his lap. “I don’t even like you,” he said. The tags on her collar clinked as she settled across his knees. His big hand would be scratching that warm, silky patch of fur behind her ears, and then moving to what he called the sweet spot, a place on her back just above the tailbone.
He was STAYING!
I listened to Diane’s footsteps. Would she sit on the other couch, the way she usually did, or beside him? I considered moving into the hall, where I could get a full download of the conversation, but decided against it. The chance of being discovered was too great—I wasn’t going to blow this.
Penn’s voice was deep when he asked Diane if she was okay, but her reply was so soft that I couldn’t hear it. Silently, I opened my door and leaned against the frame with my ears switched to full antennae mode.
Diane was telling Penn about Charles. “I mean, can you believe it? He wasn’t doing anything illegal.”
“He got a DWB,” Penn said. “Driving while black.”
I imagined him tapping the rolled cigarette behind his ear as if to remind himself that it was there.
“We don’t put up with that shit in Chutiksee County,” he continued. “If you’re going to drive in Where Its Legs Were Broken Off, you better have the decency to be white. Where’d he get the BMW?”
“His mother worked three jobs to save money for his college tuition. When he won a full scholarship, she wanted him to use his savings to buy something nice for himself. He’s the first person in the family to go to college.”
“Is there a father in the picture?”
“Oh God,” said Diane. I imagined her putting her face in her hands. Was she crying? Would Penn touch her? I couldn’t stop myself! I tiptoed down the hall and looked around the doorframe into the darkened living room before ducking my head back again.
“Hi, Aris,” said Penn.
They both sat up straight at the sight of me. I couldn’t tell if her hand had been on his knee.
“Aris,” said Diane. “I thought you had gone to bed.”
“Just passing through,” I said, and was forced to go into the kitchen. I opened the freezer and found half a bar of dark chocolate stashed behind the frozen peas. Eighty percent cacao beans. Diane says that chocolate gives you the feeling of being in love, and we go for the strong stuff. “Chocolate, anyone?” I offered as I passed back by the couch.
“No, thanks,” said Diane.
“I’m going out back for a smoke,” said Penn. He looked at Diane. “You coming?”
I went straight down the hall to Max’s room, where I could hear their conversation on the porch through the window. Max was fast asleep with his Spider-Man blanket pulled up to his nose, the platypus clenched in one fist. After adjusting his covers, I cracked the window that looks out over the porch.
At first, I couldn’t see them. The lighter flicked once, twice. Diane—no smoking! I smelled the first faint whiff of tobacco smoke. Male voice. Female voice. Male. Female. Female. Silence.
“I think I’ve met Charles,” said Penn. “If he’s the guy I’m thinking about, he was over here one Sunday with some of your other students. Back when you were allowed to have those orgies with your students. Guy with a power tie and fedora? Nice looking?”
“That’s him,” said Diane. I tried to envision Charles, in his ironed clothes and red power tie, sitting on a cot in a jail cell with his head down, holding his hat in his long fingers. “He’s a sharp dresser. He grew up poor, wearing hand-me-downs, and he’s proud of his appearances. Growing up with a father in prison forced him to earn his own respect. He wants people to look at him and see—a man of honor.”
“A murder in the family will definitely ding your reputation,” said Penn. When Diane didn’t say anything, he said, “I’m sorry. That didn’t sound right. I’m not trying to make light of this. It is really terrible. Terrible for Charles and his mom, and for you.” He sighed. “What can I do for you? I’ll do anything I can. Just ask me.”
Then Diane said, “Hold me.”
No, Diane! Too soon. Not yet.
Silence. More silence.
You scared him.
Shuffle of feet on the boards of the porch. Rustle of jacket.
Was I breathing? I had to hold my palm in front of my nose to make sure air was coming out.
Silence. Muffle. More silence. Then … definitely … the sound of a kiss.
16 You’re probably wondering what happened to the swan mentioned in the Lab catalog. He committed suicide when his mate was killed by a snake.
CLIMAX
Scraps of memory: this is not how a climax should be written. A climax should surge towards its Himalayan peak; but I am left with shreds, and must jerk towards my crisis like a puppet with broken strings. This is not what I had planned; but perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.
―Salman Rushdie
I have no idea where to put this section of the novel. Failed climaxes aren’t even discussed in Write a Novel in Thirty Days! I mean, how awkward does that sound to your reader? I’m sorry, but we failed to climax. Let’s try again. People say you can hide things in a novel, unlike a short story, where the reader is on top of every word. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a small house, but I’m not good at hiding things. Here is where my story falls apart, smack-dab in the middle.
Penn and Diane were still on the back porch the night she was fired from KCC, still kissing, and I was still eavesdropping from Max’s bedroom. I had folded my arms on the windowsill and was resting my head on them, but the cold air from the crack in the window kept me awake. If Dr. Dhang had been in the room, asking me how I felt, I would have said, Deeply relaxed.
You have a sense of security, she might have suggested. A feeling everything is going to be okay. Perhaps that you don’t need to be in charge anymore?
Actually, no, Dr. Dhang. My services are still needed. I’m not a pervert or anything, and I know that Diane is perfectly capable of kissing a man by herself. However, there were extenuating circumstances.
1. Diane was now, abruptly, unemployed.
2. She was putting her tongue in the mouth of my PMI, who did not touch other human beings.
3. What about Joe?
I hadn’t talked to Joe in a while—or communed, or whatever—but I knew from Diane’s previous forays into romance that he could be trouble. I didn’t blame him; Kate says that her parents hate each other, but they still get jealous when the other one is dating. Joe loves Diane. “The sound of your footsteps in the house makes my heart all wobbly,” he told her once. “Even when you’re wearing those obnoxious cowboy boots.”
Sure enough, while I was staring into the darkness of the back porch, the lightning bug of Ghost Daddy appeared. “Hi, Dad,” I whispered. “I guess you know about the journals.”
He had no comment on this. The flicker stretched into a long green streak, and then a red one, and then a swirl of colors, dancing before my eyes and making me dizzy. I wondered if I was bipolar. “Great writing is ordered madness,” Diane had written in one notebook.
Silence settled on the back porch—a bad silence. There should have been some other noise, a husky laugh, the sound of unzipping, a murmured “Let’s go inside.”
Then Penn spoke. “I’m sorry, Diane. I can’t do this. I want to—I really do. But I can’t.”
“Okay,” said Diane. “Goodbye.”
Was she crying? Should I go out there?
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Will you just wait one minute?”
“I don’t want to have a conversation about this,” said Diane. “This never shoul
d have happened.”
“Let me explain, okay?”
Silence.
“So,” said Diane. “Explain.” Huffy, huffy, huffy! I didn’t blame her, though.
“I don’t know how to say this,” he said, “but I’m going to try. I am not good at relationships. I was married for seven years. You have to be an adult to be in a relationship. I’m not an adult, Diane, but at least I know that now. It’s taken me this long just to recognize the problem.”
“Have you thought about having sex with me?” asked Diane. “Just sex?”
Penn laughed. “Yes, I have. Many times. Have you?”
“Maybe.”
“I couldn’t do that to you,” said Penn.
“I’m not looking for a husband,” said Diane. Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“We couldn’t do that to the kids. If it didn’t work out—”
“You’re right. They need you. PMIs are hard to come by.”
“You know I was married, right? To Ri-Ri?”
“Who is Ri-Ri?”
“My ex-wife, Chihuro. I’ve told you about her. When we moved to the States, Chihuro wanted an American name. She chose the name Lily, but her accent made her ‘l’s sound like ‘r’s. So ‘Lily’ came out as ‘Ri-Ri.’ She hated being called Ri-Ri.”
“So why did you call her that?”
“Because she would not ask me to stop. She would not ask for anything, just hint. If she had asked me to stop, I would have. If she had asked me for a car, I would have bought her one.”
“Did you buy her a car?”
“I bought her a couple of cars. I was making good money. She kept most of it, though. ‘I don’t need Japanese salaryman,’ she would say, and then hold her hand out for the paycheck. I was mainstream back then, chasing the dream: car, wife, house, kids. Then I woke up.”
“Was she pretty?” asked Diane.
“Yeah,” said Penn. “She was fine, very fine.”
Poor Diane. He could have just said she was attractive.
He lit another cigarette in the following silence.
“She didn’t drink?” asked Diane, finally.
“Not like I did. It was fun at first—you know, that warm, fuzzy feeling—and then having the balls to fight the biggest man in the bar. Not really caring when he stomped you into the warm, fuzzy ground.” I heard him walk to the edge of the porch. He was probably leaning against the rail. “I stopped paying the bills. I had a couple of booty calls. Then one day Penn-san was having a seizure at the kitchen table—delirium tremens.”
“Oh.”
“Yep.”
“She called you Penn-san? Isn’t that like calling you ‘mister’?”
“It was ‘Penn-sama’ at first. Master. Then ‘Penn-san.’ Mister. We scaled that down to plain ‘Penn.’ Somehow, ‘Penn’ morphed into ‘Asshole.’ Finally, there was no Penn at all. Suddenly, the woman who had never been able to ask for anything, not even a glass of water at a restaurant—a glass of water is so nice—demands a divorce. Okay, she doesn’t demand. She asks. Plainly.”
“You said yes?”
“I didn’t try to talk her out of it. If I had … who knows?”
“Most people try a separation first,” said Diane.
“Like I said, I was not an adult. Around this time, my dad got sick, and I came back to Kanuga to help my mom out. Then my grandmother fell and broke her hip, and the economy crashed … One day of mowing the lawn turned into another day of mowing the lawn; sometimes I get a booty call. The rest of the time, I try to live in the present moment, zigzagging the three poisons: ignorance, aversion, and attachment. You can get knee-deep in that shit—the Buddhists call it samsara, which means ‘the indefinitely repeated cycles of birth, misery, and death.’ ”
When they launched into a long conversation about karma, I started to yawn. A normal woman would be crying or breaking something, but Diane and I can squeeze our feelings down into tight spaces when pride is at stake. From the sound of her teacher voice, you’d think she had stepped out on the porch that evening to attend a lecture on the wheel of life. I left those clowns to themselves and went to bed.
On the Tuesday after Valentine’s Day, a rumor was going around the Lab that Billy had dumped me because he forgot to send me a gewgaw.
Anders Anderson was all over it. “Long-distance relationships never work,” he said, offering me a sticky bag of Cheetos.
“Commercialized love,” I said. “Really, Anders?”
In the girl’s bathroom, I texted Kate an SOS.
OMG is it over?
She told me to ask Billy himself if it was over. I knew she would say that, but I was hoping she would come up with something better. All the same, when I went home that afternoon, I doused myself with Diane’s Amazing Grace and psyched myself up to text Billy Starr III. “Always wear good perfume,” Diane told me, “even if you can’t afford it. Cheap perfume destroys a woman’s character faster than one-night stands and bad credit.” I looked in the mirror, fixed my hair, and then went outside and did a few flips on the trampoline to knock some endorphins into play. I didn’t want him to think I was sad. Finally, I was ready to send the message.
Did u break up with me? #:-)17
I had counted to 3,025 Mississippi when Diane called me into her room to check her outfit.
“Job interview?” I asked.
“I have a date,” she said. “So what do you think?” She held her arms akimbo and turned slowly in front of me: black skinny jeans and a road-sign-yellow sweater with red heels.
“Make it stop,” I said, covering my eyes.
“Is it that bad?”
“Yes, Diane. It is that bad.” I flopped onto her bed. “You have a date? Do we have a new Mr. Friend on the horizon?”
“Not a date-date. I’m just meeting someone for a latte.” She pulled a dress and a pair of black boots out of the closet. “Did you get any valentines at school today? Hear from Billy?”
“Romantic love is overrated,” I said. I pressed my face into her pillow, and for some reason, I wanted to cry. I felt like a little girl, afraid she would leave the house and never come back.
“I hear ya, honey,” she said. “I need to go out, though. Things have been so serious around here lately. Time for some mandatory fun.”
Diane always says that getting ready for a date is more fun than the event itself. However, both of us sensed the dutifulness of this particular date. She might or might not have seen my face in the window the other night, but Diane had long ago recognized that I was an Indigo child. Reading her mind was the least of my psychic powers. Frankly, I didn’t need my superpowers for this case. Anyone with critical thinking skills (apply, analyze, synthesize, and/or evaluate information) could see that Diane had been scorned, in her career and her love life. She had hit rock bottom here in Where Its Legs Were Broken Off, Georgia. What she wanted to do was drop into a granny gown and break open a bag of cookies, watch some sad movies, call an old boyfriend. Maybe she wanted to throw down a bottle of Jack Black and have a car wreck. As I may have mentioned, Diane was no stranger to the blues. After Max was born, three months after Joe’s death, she went into a postpartum depression that could have ended it for all of us. I have vague memories of hanging out with her and baby Max in the bathroom for long periods of time, with the door locked, but I failed to realize the significance of these episodes until I read a scary journal entry from that year.
Now I understand why those women kill their children and then themselves. You can’t leave them here alone. I want to be with Joe, dead with Joe, but I can’t leave them here. Who would take care of them? My parents? Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Batshit crazy. It makes me wonder why women get pregnant in the first place. What are they thinking? Oh, baby showers will be fun! I’ll eat cake and get those cute little suits with panda ears on the hoods. Here’s the recap of the postpartum journal entries:
After birthing Max, Diane rolled straight down the hall to have her t
ubes tied. (No offense, Max.) Papa and Grandma invited the members of their Sunday school class to visit her hospital room at this time. Several of them watched her throw up when the nurse gave her a tiny cup of ice. Grandma reminded everyone that Diane’s husband had died three months earlier. Then, while Diane made fruitless gestures for them to leave, Grandma told the ladies that Diane had always wanted to be a writer and now she certainly had a lot of material! They said things like, Oh my goodness. A couple of them said they liked to write too. Grandma said Diane would be glad to help them, once she felt better.
On the way home from the hospital, Diane begged Papa to stop and get her a Coca-Cola.
He said they had Cokes at home and it was a waste of money to buy one.
She pointed out that she had just had a baby and then an operation, and she really wanted a Coke.
He refused. It’s hard to believe that Papa was that mean.
Grandma, meanwhile, outdid herself. She left town. “I can’t take this,” she said, after Diane had been in her house for two days with her newborn and her four-year-old and her weeping.
“You don’t love me,” said Diane.
“Well, you don’t love me either,” said Grandma, and off she went to a cabin in the mountains to get some rest.
Diane made Papa take her back to her house with her children. Once inside, she locked herself in the hall bathroom with me and baby Max. I remember that part, sitting in her lap while she leaned against the toilet with her knees braced against the wall. We had wrapped Max in a towel and put him in the dry bathtub.
“You need to write a thank-you note,” Papa was telling her through the locked door, because one of Grandma’s church friends had baked us a casserole. “Right away. People have been good to you, and you need to show your appreciation. Do it now, or you’ll forget.”
“Get out!” Diane screamed behind the bathroom door as the baby started crying. “Get out of my house!”
How to Write a Novel Page 14