True Story

by Kate Reed Petty

  So you wait until Katie is distracted—carefully inspecting her apple for worms—then you say, “Lindsey. Do you mind if I give Katie these dog stickers I found?” You pull the stickers out of your pocket to show Lindsey how small of a gift it really is.

  But Katie spots them. She stops, midbite, and removes her teeth from the apple. “Doggies?” she says. She reaches up and holds your good hand, pulling the stickers down toward her face.

  It would be weird to hide them from her at this point. “Yeah,” you say. “Do you know anyone who might want them?”

  Lindsey folds her arms and sighs. But you’re watching Katie—her eyes wide, her chin tilted down in exaggerated modesty. You’re impressed with her savvy. She understands that you’re breaking the rules, and she’s being extremely careful to play along. Trying her best not to ruin her chances.

  “Well . . .” she says, dragging out the last consonant. “Maybe I could have them?”

  Lindsey lets it go, and Katie skips in delight all the way to the park, tapping her fingers on the packet of stickers and singing, “Doggie doggie doggie doggie dogs!” At the park she sits between you and Lindsey on a bench, peeling off the stickers one at a time and flattening them onto Lindsey’s purse, your coat, her own cheeks, naming each one as she does. “This is Licker,” she says, sticking a golden retriever on her own jacket.

  You lean back and try to soak up this moment. It’s nearly perfect. You look around the park, trying to appreciate the sunshine and the smell of fall and these precious hours with your daughter.

  That’s when you notice a pale man sitting on a bench, maybe twenty yards away. Right when you look at him, he looks away.

  “This one is Wicker,” Katie says, sticking a Labrador on the bench.

  Was the man watching you?

  You glance away, then back, studying him. He’s tall and thin, pale and pasty, with gray hair; he’s reading a magazine, wearing a trench coat. He glances over at you again, and then again away. You frown.

  “Idiot!” Katie says, patting your shoulder urgently. You look down, and your daughter’s sweet face reminds you that you are probably being paranoid. Imagining strange men following you is a thing of your alcoholic past. You’re sober now. You’re trying to stop seeing things.

  “I said, this is Kicker,” Katie says, and pats the small terrier she has stuck onto your coat.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE DOG IS COVERED in glitter and wearing a red plaid beret. You keep it on the coat for the rest of the day. It gives you a real feeling of optimism. You’re nearly at the halfway mark—you’ve paid Lindsey four thousand dollars. And maybe letting Katie keep the dog stickers is a sign she’s easing up on you. Maybe you did something right for once.

  That night you go to a mindless action movie. It’s your standard treatment for the depression that sinks in after your monthly visits with Katie, when the lonely month stretches out ahead of you like a sore throat. Today, the movie actually helps. As the credits roll you feel a little lighter than usual, you can see the future more clearly, when you’ll be looking back on this hard time instead of living it.

  Then you’re walking home and you pass a bar with its door open. There’s a jukebox in the back outlined in neon red, and a woman with the low-cut back of her blue dress turned to you. The urge to go inside and buy her (and you) a drink is so strong you stop and put your hand on the outside wall to steady yourself.

  You look through the door at the jukebox and the woman. It’s a perfectly composed scene. Like a noir film still. You shift your body weight, willing yourself to walk away.

  You hear the sound of metal and look down. You’re standing on one of those basement hatches that dot the sidewalks of New York. There’s just a few millimeters of steel between the duct-taped soles of your shoes and a break-your-neck fall down a steep flight of stairs. What a metaphor.

  “You are not going inside,” you say, out loud.

  Then you zip up your coat and notice that Kicker has fallen off and is gone. Whatever was left of the day’s good feeling vacuums out of your chest. You gasp twice. Two loud sobs without tears.

  You stumble home and spend the night lying on your back on your hand-me-down mattress on the floor, listening through the old plaster to your upstairs neighbors having a fight and wondering whether asking yourself Am I thinking of killing myself? counts as thinking of killing yourself.

  The jury is still out, and you’re still awake, at six o’clock in the morning when your phone dings with a text message from an old friend: Urgent job. Come ovr.

  2. Fear Safety

  00:00:00 So I’m just going to spitball here for a second, with this, with how I think the opening should go. I have the whole thing all worked out. If I just had the time, I could write the book myself.

  . . .

  It is what it is. You ready?

  . . .

  It starts out like: I used to be afraid of everything. I’m the youngest of three boys. Also the shortest and skinniest. So I learned fear from a young age.

  00:00:30 One of my earliest memories, like six years old, and I’m locked in the basement, with my brothers on the other side of the door telling me that the black fungus in the basement was about to release its spores, that those spores would seep through your nose and into your brain and make you go psychotic. That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about fear.

  Flash forward twenty years, I was twenty-six. CEO of my own company. Been in business two years and we’re already in the black, I had fifteen people working for me, taking home two hundred K, fielding offers from investors left and right. Order of magnitude offers. Do you need me to slow down?

  . . .

  00:01:00 Right, of course it’s recorded. Anyway, I’m fielding offers, running my business, you’d think I’m on top of the world, right? But here’s the crazy thing: I was still ruled by that same fear.

  Italicize that, Alice. It’s a really important point.

  Then say—because we want to really hook the guy reading here—say, maybe you picked up this book thinking that you need a new morning routine to kick-start your life. Maybe you’re hoping I’ll give you some tips about a firmer handshake, or, I don’t know, how to stand with your feet spread wide apart, some crap like that to make you more confident. Solve all your problems.

  00:01:30 I’m here to tell you all those tricks are bullshit.

  Nothing will work—and italicize this next part—until you overcome your fear!

  And once you overcome your fear?

  Nothing—that’s in all capital letters—NOTHING will stand in your way. And italicize that, too.

  . . .

  This is what I was typing—transcribing tapes from a client interview—when Haley called.

  I was sitting in a corporate coffee shop in the suburbs. It was my first visit home from Barcelona in three years; my mom was disappointed that I had to work, but I was on deadline. I was auditioning to ghostwrite a book for an entrepreneur, a self-help book about overcoming fear with a method he called “Fear Safety.” I’d promised Fox a draft of the introduction by the end of that day; if he liked it and hired me to write the whole book, I’d make enough money to take six months off work. It was almost time for lunch when Haley called, and I hadn’t even written the first sentence.

  I turned off the ringer and let the call go to voice mail. I told myself it was because of the deadline. It was a question of discipline, I decided, and not my feelings about Haley.

  The truth was that I had no discipline. I’d originally become a ghostwriter—composing self-help manuals, memoirs, and other vanity projects—because I was running away from Q, and the job offered privacy. I also envisioned a part-time commitment; I thought the work would fit neatly into four-hour parcels of the day, leaving me plenty of energy to write a horror novel, something I’d been dreaming of doing for year
s. But in reality I did very little writing at all. I procrastinated on my client projects, wasting a lot of time either reading on the internet or installing new blockers to stop myself from reading on the internet. I’d start working only when it was definitely too late. Then I’d write frantically, ten hours a day, and finish three days after the deadline. Through the subsequent drafts I would alternate between the same procrastination and panic; by the time the book was finally sent to the vanity printer, I’d be too mentally exhausted to do anything but take long walks and browse used book stores until the next client project arrived, and the cycle started again.

  Which is all to say: I could have taken a five-minute break and answered Haley’s call. The real reason I didn’t pick up is that we hadn’t spoken in nearly a year, and I was still angry.

  I left my phone facedown on the table and went back to the tapes.

  00:02:00 So this book is the story of how I overcame my fear. Basically the point is that I went from a high school nerd to a Fifty Most Eligible Bachelor in New York.

  . . .

  Right. I went from the skinny kid with hand-me-down glasses, who used to get his mouth stuffed with toilet paper at school—

  . . .

  Yeah, it was pretty bad. But I went from that nerd to the entrepreneur who sold his first company for seven-point-five million dollars, so yeah—the joke’s on everybody else.

  . . .

  Typing the tapes is one of my favorite procrastination methods. The agency has all of my interviews transcribed for me, but I always end up typing them again. It’s a cheap trick to get my fingers moving in the shape of the client’s voice. It helps me forget my own voice, too; the agency’s software only records the far end of the phone call, to cut down on the cost of transcription. My half of the interview is silence.

  But the trick wasn’t working that day. I was having trouble getting into Fox’s voice.

  00:13:30 Trust me: I was the kind of guy who used to regularly walk out of my apartment with toothpaste on my face because I was too embarrassed to look in the mirror. I couldn’t look myself in the eye.

  . . .

  Swear to God!

  . . .

  So if I could overcome my fear? Anyone can.

  . . .

  He sounded like such a jerk on the tapes. During our interview, though, I’d liked him a lot. He was friendly, one of those businesspeople who pride themselves on flouting the stiff etiquette of business. He treated me with casual affection, like a barista at his favorite coffee shop. True, he was condescending, but all of my clients were condescending; people are ashamed of hiring a ghostwriter. So when he acted like it was my job to take dictation, I understood that it was because he was embarrassed.

  00:17:00 Overcoming my fear wasn’t easy. But it wasn’t rocket science.

  It was a question of a new mind-set, shifted with a daily practice, and mostly a belief that my life was worth it. That I was worth it. And I want you to know that you are worth it, too.

  Italicize that, Alice. You are worth it.

  . . .

  There was also the fact that Fox was going to pay me really, really well. He’d asked for me specifically; he offered triple my rate. After our first conversation I hung up and thought, This will be the easiest twelve thousand dollars I ever make, giggling to myself because I had never actually made twelve thousand dollars. Of course I liked him.

  But his voice! I wondered how I was ever going to turn his ramblings into anything readable. It was like he’d spent years watching nothing but Glengarry Glen Ross and motivational speeches by Tony Robbins. He talked precisely, but too fast. I heard desperation pressing out from under his manicured confidence.

  00:34:00 I’m going to show you how you can overcome your fear. Because once you overcome your fear, you can do anything. You can reach your dreams.

  . . .

  I stopped typing and leaned back, letting the tape prattle on. I glanced at my phone, saw that Haley hadn’t left a message, and was glad I hadn’t picked up; I assumed she’d hit my number by accident. I looked out the window of the coffee shop, trying not to feel sad about our lost friendship, trying not to absorb Fox’s desperation. It was a sunny, quiet Tuesday in the suburbs. I watched a woman pulling two children out of the back of her car and nestling them into a double stroller.

  I wondered what Richard Fox was so afraid of.

  00:52:30 It starts with identifying your fear. Fear is constantly rationalizing itself. Fear doesn’t want to leave. It tries to convince us that we need it. It tries to convince us that, if we let down our guard, something horrible will happen. Yes, giving up fear is actually another thing we are afraid of! Stupid, right?

  . . .

  As the woman from the parking lot maneuvered her double stroller over the curb, I stopped the tape, took out my headphones, and leaped up to hold the door.

  “Your children are so sweet!” I said. “How old are they?”

  “Almost two,” she said.

  “Twins?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Fraternal.” I walked with her to the counter, cooing over the toddlers and asking polite questions. All three of them looked at me skeptically, but I barreled ahead, chattering as we stood in line. I wanted to get more hot water for my tea. Also, I wanted the woman to remember me.

  It was a defense mechanism I couldn’t shake, even though I wasn’t sure I needed it anymore. I had no evidence Q was still interested in me, or still dangerous. But I was still nervous. When I traveled, I checked his social media accounts to make sure he wasn’t nearby. I wore my hair cut short and dyed blond; I carried pepper spray. I knew Q had probably moved on—years had passed—but I still felt my vulnerability at unexpected moments, like a dress that rides up too high when you sit down.

  So I made a point of being everyone’s casual friend; I wanted people to listen if I ever called Help. In the coffee shop that day I had already chatted with the pierced-beyond-her-years barista and with the woman in her late forties who had wanted to take the USA Today someone else had left next to my seat. And here I was, chattering my way into friendship with this skeptical young mother: “It must be hard with twins! If you need anything, I’m sitting right over there.”

  I thanked the barista by name and waved goodbye to the twins. As I walked back to my seat, I smiled at the middle-aged woman, who looked up from USA Today and smiled back. I reminded myself that everything was going to be okay.

  And then I realized that this, maybe, was the real reason I liked Richard Fox. I’d never thought much of self-help books. Life is hard; anyone offering a shortcut is probably lying about the shortcuts they took themselves. But the more I listened to him, the more I believed Fox’s confidence was manufactured. If I heard desperation in his voice, maybe it meant that he had really overcome something horrible. Maybe, if I wrote his book, I would learn to do it, too. I opened a new document to start writing the introduction at last.

  Then my phone interrupted with an insistent chime. It was a text message from Haley.

  Hey Alice, thought you’d want to know—my mom passed away. It was a couple weeks ago. Would love to talk sometime when you’re around. LYLAS.

  It took me a few minutes to calm down, but finally I packed up my things and went outside.

  “Alice!” Haley answered, saying my name with real warmth. “I wasn’t sure you’d call.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea about your mom.”

  There was a pause; I imagined Haley on the other end of the line, blinking back tears. I felt horrible for not talking to her all these months. “Thanks,” she said. “She was sick for a long time.”

  “Last time we talked she was in an experimental treatment, I remember.”

  “Yeah, she did a few of those.” Haley sighed heavily. “Anyway.”

  “Was there a funeral?” I asked.
r />   “We had a ceremony, just family.”

  I sat quietly for a minute. “Thanks for letting me know,” I said. “I’m just so sorry.”

  I searched for some warm memory of her mother I might share: The time she taught me to French braid Haley’s hair. Or the smell of the cinnamon she mixed in with coffee grounds. Most importantly, the way she never treated me like damaged goods; after what happened in high school, Haley’s mom was the only adult who spoke to me with neither pity nor self-conscious terror in her voice. But I wouldn’t talk to Haley about that time in my life ever again.

  Finally I just said, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks. But how are you? Are you still in Spain?”

  I made a humming noise of assent.

  “And are you still ghostwriting?” Haley said.

  And like that, my sympathy was gone. Her voice was falsely bright and curious; in her tone I heard all the years of lectures she had given me, about how I should tell my story, I should claim my voice. I knew she saw ghostwriting as an act of cowardice. “Actually,” I said, guilt and irritation wrestling in my throat, “I’m on deadline. I should go.”

  Haley said, “Oh.” She laughed, sarcastically. “I see you’re still punishing me.”

  “No, work is just crazy. It’s a crazy day.”

  She didn’t say anything. I wanted her to feel better, but I didn’t want to relent. I reminded myself our estrangement was her fault this time (she’d published an op-ed that included a description of what had happened in high school). “I’ll call you again soon,” I said finally.

  She still didn’t say anything.

  I found myself trapped, waiting for her to speak. The urge to apologize cycled up again, and again I reminded myself not to relent. I closed my eyes. I had nothing to apologize for. I held the phone away from my ear and took a deep breath.

  And then I realized what she was doing. Silence is the oldest trick in the interview book.