The red JUST SAY NO warning is what I thought about when I sat in a stall three months ago, searching for any sign of my period on the toilet paper. It soothed me as I stood barefoot on the cold, damp bathroom tiles on a late September morning, waiting for the white stick to give me a sign: plus or minus. Positive or negative. Yes or no. I braced myself on the sink, forehead pressed to the mirror, my breath fogging up my frightened reflection. I told myself, “I have to get rid of it. I have no choice.” But I knew that even if I wasn't on Accutane and the baby was twenty-digits perfect, I would've come to the same reluctant conclusion.
When I finally got my period, inexplicably twenty-seven days late, I had already ignored as many messages from Marcus. This wasn't something I wanted to talk about over the phone or e-mail. I was tired of telling him everything in absentia.
You, too. Which is why you're getting this letter now. And for that, and all of my other unspoken secrets, I'm sorry. So, so, so sorry.
Repentantly yours,
J.
* * *
* * *
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Date: December 11th, 2003
Subject: Poetry Spam #32
coastal quarantine
inoculate, isolate
secret soul disease
—Original Message—
From: Pinky Webguy [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: December 10th, 2003
To: [email protected]
Subject: chevrolet quarantine marjoram fuzzy sprocket pocono
stairway cognition isolate imprudent tantalum denotation pipeline stomp analogy playwright durable centimeter wizard aristocrat inoculate rhododendron testicle asthma torpid ascendant cherry bunt silicone transmittable tool downcast lacy sallow imitable swathe wreck stadium bohemia secret educable soul acrobat morphology demystify bolshevik wyoming auburn pagan fear showmen ban editorial escapee harmful zone self heterodyne hitler synchrotron polytechnic ahoy attack disease convulsive soak broody basilar coastal prickle rio cogent recriminatory brazil ridge defunct exclaim
* * *
the seventeenth
Ah, there's no place like home for the hellidays . . .
“MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!” might seem like an improvement over my mother's usual first-glance, still-on-the-doorstep greetings (usually a recrimination or an accusation about my appearance). But in truth, her seasonal cheer was an affront to my humbuggy sensibilities. As was the house in general, which smelled like pine needles and cinnamon sticks and was all aglow in the tasteful, unblinking little white lights my mother favors. Surround-sound carolers contributed to the merriment. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-blah-blah-blah-bleech.
Mom grabbed me by the arm. “Let me show you your present!”
I was surprised that she hadn't commented on my wardrobe (third-day-in-a-row jeans, ratty black thermal), epidermal land mines (mostly clear), or hair (finally! finally! finally! long enough to twist into a sloppy topknot). I interpreted her haste as a sincere desire to spread joy to the world, one malcontent at a time. She guided me down the hall and then stood for a moment outside my room, blocking me from entering. And then, with a dramatic sweep of her arm, she opened the door.
“Ta da!”
Ta da! My room was gone! Gone! My mosaic from Hope, my snapshots of Marcus, my movie posters, my books, my CDs, my everything . . . GONE!
“Mom! What the hell happened to my room?!”
I guess it could have been worse. It could have looked like the results of one of those not-even-third-rate Trading Spaces rip-offs, with, like, seaweed stapled to the walls. It was all very tasteful. Very . . . beige. Natural wicker furniture, a polished wood floor covered with a sand-colored sisal rug, photographs of beach scenes on the creamy walls. It could be a hotel room, a room for anyone.
“Isn't it beautiful?” she said, pulling me inside. “It looks so much more spacious and sunny without all your stuff strewn about.”
“My stuff! Where is all my stuff!”
“Why are you upset? You were always complaining about how babyish your room was. You even tried to paint over the wallpaper, remember? I thought I'd surprise you with a makeover!”
She was showing a little too much enthusiasm. I tapped my sneaker in defiance.
“Don't get all huffy with me, Jessie,” she said, sounding a bit huffy herself. “I redid Bethany's room, too.”
“Now I'm really confused,” I said.
Then my mom went on to explain that she needed to redo our rooms as practice for what she hopes will be her new career as a professional stager.
“A what?”
My mother brightened. “A stager is real estate professional slash design specialist who sees the hidden potential in spaces and makes superficial yet strategic cosmetic enhancements to let the true personality of a property shine.”
“And people pay you for this?” I asked skeptically.
“Yes!” She was very proud of herself.
“Why would anyone put more money into a house they want to sell?”
“This is not designing for living, it's designing for leaving.” My mother draped her arm around me apologetically, feeling sorry for this daughter of hers who was so in the dark about the most obvious truths. “My work creates a faster sale and more money for the seller. Sometimes it's simply a rearrangement of furniture and a removal of clutter. But some rooms are in such disarray that they require a total overhaul.”
“Like mine,” I said dryly.
“Yes!” She was too excited to notice that I was insulted. “I've reinvented it as a guest room, inspired by the casual elegance of a Caribbean resort. But for your sister's room, I wanted to try my hand at something entirely different . . .”
She crossed in front of me to open the door, leaving me in a fog of perfume. Nothing could have prepared me for what was inside: a burst of blue. Baby blue, to be specific.
She had reimagined Bethany's room as a baby boy's room.
My mother started talking very, very fast, her excitement now bordering on mania. And psychosis. “It was my intention to do a baby girl's room, which would be practical because of Marin, but then when I was shopping for bumper sets I saw this adorable one with the blue choo-choos and I thought, This is how I want to transform this room! So I just went with it.”
I looked around the room, at the Dr. Seuss books on the blue shelves next to the teddy bear sitting in the blue rocking chair across from the blue diaper stacker on the blue changing table under the blue choo-choo mobile . . . and I couldn't help but wonder how much this fake nursery looked like the real nursery in which the older brother I never met was discovered blue in his crib . . .
I thought maybe this was a cry for help. That by doing something so drastic, so over the top, she was begging for a long overdue discussion of that which is never discussed.
“And Marin can still sleep here,” my mom breezily continued, unaware of my discomfort. “She's surrounded by a pink and sparkly feminine aesthetic at home, so I don't think that sleeping in a blue room a few times a month will—how should I put this?—make her more masculine, now, do you?”
This was the creepiest thing I've ever seen. And there was only one way to escape.
“Mooooom! WHERE! IS! MY! STUFF!”
“Jessica Lynn Darling, don't get so testy,” Mom said testily.
It worked.
“First of all, anything in this room was left behind when you went to school. If these things were so important to your well-being, why didn't you take them with you?”
I was so freaked out that I wasn't even thinking in English anymore. I was thinking in some made-up language spoken by asylum inmates (which will come in handy when I have my mom committed). I couldn't form a single word, let alone a sentence that could express how supremely horrified I was. My mother misinterpreted my silence.
“See?” my mother said, fluffing her bangs in the choo-choo mirror. “You know I'm right.”
“Just te
ll me where my stuff is,” I said, when the powers of speech had returned.
“Stored in the basement,” she replied. “In a properly labeled container.”
I went into the cellar and found the large bin she was referring to: JESSIE'S JUNK.
And so, for the next few hours, I sat on the floor of the dim, dank basement, sorting through my junk. The mosaic picture of me and Hope brought a drizzle of tears to my eyes. The ME, YES, ME T-shirt that Marcus gave me to wear for my graduation speech created a steady rainfall. But the “Fall” poem, proof of how far we've come, all the way to being “naked / without shame / in Paradise . . .” Well, this brought on a torrential thunderstorm of tears. I might still be drowning downstairs if my dad hadn't come to get me with his corny Christmas cheer.
“Ho ho ho, Notso!”
I wish I could get high on frankincense or buzzed on myrrh, just to get me through these next few days until Marcus comes home. His last poetry spam told me what I'd suspected all along: He knew a heavy workload wasn't to blame for my lack of communication last semester. It was something else, something big I was too afraid to tell him, something he knew existed simply because he knows me so well. Something I will tell him when I see him. I swear.
the twenty-fourth
I wasn't the only one anxiously awaiting Marcus's arrival at my parents' house.
“MMMMMMMMMMAHCUSSSSSSSSSS!” shouted Marin as she careened into my knees.
“She associates you with Marcus,” Bethany explained, setting out a tray of Papa D's Holidaze Donuts, which, to my knowledge, were the same as their regular variety, only coated in red, white, and green sprinkles. “Where is he, by the way?”
“On his way. He'll be here very soon.” I stroked Marin's curls to console her. Her fair hair is the same color mine was before it darkened with age and temperament to its current bitter chocolate hue. Sometimes this gives me hope: The Blond Bond is broken! On more jaded days it makes me grieve for her future, which will be more dun than sun.
“YAY! YAY! YAY!” Marin whooped as she bounded toward the Christmas tree.
“She's more excited about Marcus than Santa Claus,” I observed.
“So how are things between you two?” Bethany asked.
“Well, you know, this is Santa's really busy time of year . . .”
“I meant Marcus,” she said, clarifying the obvious. “You haven't talked about him in ages.”
I wanted to point out how she'd scarcely mentioned her husband in the past six months and she was married to him. But bringing him up would have created a Christmas crisis. G-Money believes no American of any color, class, or body mass index should ever be deprived of the opportunity to go into a diabetic coma. So if a Jew gets a craving for a king-sized cone of eggnog custard with a side order of Holidaze donuts at 2 A.M. on Christmas morning, someone has to keep the Shoppe open to serve him, and that person is G-Money. I'm sure if you asked him—not that I have—G-Money would tell you that he's doing it all for his wife and child. But haven't those priorities gotten a bit out of whack when loyalty to the brand seems to come before everything else, including your wife and child?
“You're not having problems, are you?” my mother asked, pinching stray sprinkles off the poinsettia print tablecloth.
Now that Marcus has been endorsed by Bethany, my mother is less hostile about our relationship. This proves the indestructibility of their Blond Bond.
“No,” I said. “It was a tough semester, that's all.”
“How tough could it have been?” my dad asked, the bells on his corny Santa hat jangling. “You got four As and a B-plus.”
“That B-plus is really going to ruin your record,” my mom said mockingly.
“I don't know if Bethany could find four As and a B-plus on all her report cards, ever,” my dad said.
My sister gasped in offense. “I made the Dean's List my last semester in school!”
“Was that the semester you got an A in step aerobics?” Dad asked.
My sister huffed herself out of the room. As she's gotten older, Bethany has grown less tolerant of her role as the Hot but Dumb One. Guess what that makes me?
I shouldn't complain about my status. After all, I just completed my third semester at one of the most selective institutions of higher learning in the world (and I have used up almost all of my dead granny money for the privilege of doing so). I have read Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche. I have listened to Josquin des Prez, Monteverdi, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Verdi, Wagner, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky. I've analyzed works by Raphael, Michelangelo, Brueghel, Bernini, Rembrandt, Goya, Monet, Picasso, Wright, Le Corbusier, Pollock, and Warhol.
La-di-da.
See, you'll forgive me for all this name-dropping when I confess that I don't remember a damn thing about them. Okay, that's not entirely true. I remember Pollock paint splatters and discordant Stravinsky noise and Machiavelli's primitive political methods, you know, the stuff of Jeopardy! daily doubles. But my knowledge really doesn't go much beyond that. If I have a photographic memory, it's a shitting Polaroid camera that self-destructs after producing a single, flawless picture that fades to nothing almost immediately after first viewing.
I was like this in high school, too—I was only as smart as my last exam—but I thought that maybe it was because my brain was in feast or famine mode. I'd stuff it with info for tests, but because it would be deprived of any sustenance on a day-to-day basis, it would get used up and forgotten. I was hoping it would get better at Columbia; that through Columbia's “legacy of cross-disciplinary scholarship,” I'd be “compelled to analyze and ponder thinkers from the past” so that I could “better contemplate and influence the future.” (Uh, like it says in the brochure.) However, I can barely remember anything from Contemporary Civilizations, a class I aced less than two weeks ago, yet I can recite every line of dialogue from The Breakfast Club. Other Columbians have room for this kind of arcane knowledge and the stuff their parents are paying for.
One could argue that it isn't any school's role to make you smarter per se, but better educated, because intelligence is innate. If that's the case—you're smart or you aren't—I know I am. But that old get-laid aphorism is totally true: Tell smart girls how hot they are, and hot girls how smart they are. I used to be okay with being well above average in intelligence, and just average in looks because I was still above average—a 3.0—for the total package. But after three semesters at Columbia, I now know there are plenty of girls out there who are A-pluses in looks and intelligence. (And they surely exist in California, too.) I already know Marcus loves me for my mind, so I think I'd get more out of him telling me that he loves me for my ass.
This is what I was thinking about when the doorbell rang.
My dad answered it, and there he was. Marcus Flutie. Marcus Flutie standing in the foyer underneath the mistletoe, as stretched out as his white T-shirt, as skinny as the thin wales of his corduroy pants. Standing as he had stood so many times before. Marcus Flutie, my boyfriend. More than that. My love.
And yet, he still seemed as ineffable to me as he did back when I'd see him with Hope's brother, when I knew nothing about him other than that he was just another one of Heath's dirty, dangerous, druggie friends. No matter how close I get to Marcus, I will never know exactly who he is. And the only reason that didn't send me screaming back up the stairs is the certainty that he will never know me, either.
Marcus didn't say anything when he saw me, only pointed upward to the beribboned sprig of greenery hanging above his head. I floated over to him. I opened my lips to say something. Hey, maybe. Merry Christmas, or I missed you.
It should have been I'm sorry.
But he pressed his mouth over mine and sent these and all words back where they came from. My apologies would wait.
the twenty-fifth
I get why people have kids, besides the whole propagation of the species thing. Kids give you license to do dorky things and have fun while doing them.
Before Marin, Christmas had kind of devolved into this depressing festival-forced holly jollity. YOU WILL HAVE A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS, GODDAMMIT. There were all these holiday traditions that simply had to be followed, even though they had lost all their meaning. For example, in the Darling household we don't put on any Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving. And the annual inaugural record is Johnny Mathis's first Christmas album, the one where he's wearing the red jacket in the snow, not to be confused with his many follow-up Christmas albums, all of which have synthesized instruments and suck. And the first playing of Johnny Mathis has to be the original record, as in vinyl, not a CD, because it has certain scratches that make the record skip in predictable spots that would be missed by key members of the Darling household. And so, we have kept a turntable in the house for this once-a-year event, just so we can all hear Johnny stutter the last line in “White Christmas.”
“Annnd maaaay aaall yoour Christmases . . . ses . . . ses . . . ses . . . ses . . .”
Until my mother laughs and says, “Spit it out, Johnny!” and bumps the needle so he can finish the line.
“be white.”
This has to happen every year. Just like the tree always has to be draped in freshly strung cranberries even though it's a long and tedious and finger-stinging process. Just like we always have to bake Gladdie's butter cookies, even though they always come out tasting like oily tongue depressors.
But this year was different. There was a genuine excitement about waking up this morning because there was a wee one among us who sincerely believed that something magical had occurred while we slept. Think about the very concept of Santa for a second: A fat senior citizen in a tacky red suit flies around in a sleigh pulled by magic reindeer, delivering gifts for all the good little boys and girls in the world in just one night. It's absurd. Yet kids totally buy it. Totally. And in small children, that pure, untainted faith is a beautiful thing. In grown adults, however, I find it disturbing. After all, how different is Santa from Jesus and Buddha and Allah and so on? But that's an easy comparison for an atheist to make.
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