From the other room, Kat replied, "Yes."
I spit into the sink. "You let me believe George did it."
"You would have been disappointed to learn he hadn't."
"You hated George anyway, so you just let me think the worst about the guy. As a kind of revenge," I said.
"That sounds plausible."
"You met some kid in a seaside town, slept with him, and that was it."
Kat messed with the room's miniature coffee maker. "He wasn't really a kid. More like in his twenties. He said he worked on fishing boats in the summer and snowboarded in the winter. He'd made enough money to buy a boat of his own. I spent the rest of the vacation debating whether to tell you. When you came to a conclusion on your own I let it stick. I'm really sorry, Cedar."
The coffee maker struggled to life, forcing hot water through a presealed packet of stale grounds. We watched it drip as snow turned to slush outside.
"What do you say we get the hell out of here and find somewhere with real breakfast?" I said.
"There's a Denny's just up the road."
"Let's do it. I'll meet you at your room in ten."
Outside, bundled and walking precariously through the whitened parking lot, I felt free of the stifling innards of the motel room and Kat's narrative. I appreciated the bracing cold, the condensation on my glasses. We trudged through tire tracks, across parking lots, to the roadside Denny's. Inside, we enmeshed ourselves in the flow of truckers and other snowed-in travelers, got seated in a booth, and were soon enjoying coffee a little stronger than the crap that had been brewed in my room. This was the kind of place where crummy weather outside made the food taste better. I was hungry for eggs. I wanted an American breakfast with all the fat, cholesterol, and starch it implied. I ordered extra sausage on the side. I ordered the tall stack. I asked the waitress for a refill on coffee. Kat ate a cinnamon roll and devoured a yogurt-and-fruit cup. I needed a shave, but I didn't give a fuck. I reached over and touched Kat's hand as it made for the cream.
"It's okay about that guy on the boat. I don't care. I don't even care you lied about it."
"I almost didn't go through with the abortion."
"Yeah, I mean, you debated about it."
"I was scared. A couple days before we went to the clinic, I tracked down Father Roth to ask his advice."
"No kidding."
Kat nodded. "I made up an excuse and took the ferry into the city. I went to that church where my mom and I used to go the AA meetings, and asked someone there, an official of some sort, a deacon, if I could see Father Roth. He hadn't been with that church for a while. But they knew his full name. Desmond Roth. I went to a phone booth and looked him up. I called and an old man answered. When I asked for Father Roth he laughed and said Father Roth was long gone. When I asked for Desmond he said it was him. I told him I was a former member of his church and had something very important I needed to discuss with him. He tried brushing me off, saying he was no longer a priest but I begged and he finally agreed to meet me. He actually didn't live that far from the church, ten blocks or something.
"So I showed up at this condo. You know how it goes, seeing people you haven't seen a while. There's this moment when you first see them when you try to fit them into your old memory. He looked a hundred years old. He was thin and balding and his breath smelled, literally, like shit. His skin looked all scabby and his eyes were sunken in and surrounded by these harried black bags. I would have turned and ran if he hadn't shaken his finger at me, smiled, and said he remembered me.
"So I followed him through this mess of dead houseplants and cardboard boxes, into his place. All the blinds were down. A TV was playing a soap opera, if I remember. A parakeet was screeching. It was afternoon now and I noticed he was still in his pi's and bath robe. It stank even more like shit, like human shit, beyond a bad bathroom smell, it was just horrid. But my disgust quickly faded and I started feeling real pity for the man. He was on his last legs, I could tell. He almost fell, sitting down in his chair in the kitchen. I asked him if he wanted me to make him some tea and he didn't say no. So I put the water on to boil and got a pretty good look at the refrigerator, which had all these pictures on the door of Father Roth on various vacations with these other guys, everyone tanned and happy in the sun. At one point he went into a hellish coughing fit and the water wouldn't boil fast enough to make the tea. Finally he calmed down and said he was sorry I had to visit him in such a squalid place.
"I was trying to just make conversation before I got on with my big questions, so I asked what made him decide to leave the church. I was starting to make the connection that the reasons were, you know, sexual. He said-and I remember this exactly-'I was tired of being judged a sinner by men who raped little boys.' Apparently, he had come out to his bishop, basically told him he wanted to spend his life with another man and didn't want to hide it. Soon after that he was defrocked.
"After I made him his tea, he started babbling about all sorts of things, but one thing he said stuck with me. He said suffering is the only true barometer of the health of the spirit. He said Christianity is flawed because it's a belief system based on the avoidance of sin rather than relieving suffering. This was one of the opinions he picked up after he was defrocked, when he started studying the world's religions. He traveled through South America and Asia for a year with a nondenominational group that gave prosthetic limbs to land-mine victims. He came back with a boyfriend from Buenos Aires and they broke up within a couple months. He said he went through a real rough patch where he tried to kill himself, actually cut his wrist in the bathtub enough to make himself faint, but luckily a friend found him."
"AIDS?" I asked.
"Of course. But his problems were bigger than a disease. So, I told him I had gotten pregnant and was considering an abortion. I asked him if I was going to hell." Kat flagged down a waitress. "Ma'am? I could use more coffee, please?" She turned back to me. "You were always an atheist. I became one the hard way."
"I've just never trusted the medical opinions of people who believe the world is four thousand years old," I said.
The waitress filled up our mugs, throwing off our sugar/ cream ratios.
I said, "So what did Father Roth say? When you asked him if you were going to hell?"
"He told me that God is the world's most prolific abortionist."
Outside snow plows had cleared the road to the airport. I started thinking about flights and ground transportation. We finished breakfast and lumbered back to the motel, our conversation devolving into the small talk of people about to say good-bye. I made arrangements to catch a flight scheduled to leave in about four hours, took a shower, put on my least dirty clothes, and glanced at the primary colors of a complimentary USA Today. Kat walked into my room without knocking and handed me the final pages of her manuscript.
"This is the end," she said before she kissed me.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the following people and organizations for their kindness, generosity, and support.
Jennifer Beard, Miles Boudinot, Scarlett Boudinot.
Aimee Bender, Rick Moody, Matthew Simmons, Suzanne Stockman, Rebecca Brown, Sherman Alexie.
Eveiyone at the Richard Hugo House, New City Theater, the Goddard College Port Townsend MFA program, and Planned Parenthood.
Dave Cornelius.
PJ Mark, Amy Hundley, and everyone at Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Misconception
Ryan Boudinot
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
We hope that these discussion questions will enhance your reading group's exploration of Ryan Boudinot's Misconception. They are meant to stimulate discussion, offer new viewpoints and enrich your enjoyment of the book.
More reading group guides and additional information, including summaries, author tours and author sites for other fine Grove Press titles may be found on our Web site, www.groveatlantic.com.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Many authors have
explored the role of memory in storytelling. Lewis Carroll wrote in Through the Looking Glass "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." With that in mind think about memory in Ryan Boudinot's novel. How does it work?
2. In how many ways does the title, Misconception, relate to the story? Can you find various meanings? What is your understanding of misconception? What do you think of the subtitle? Did it affect your perception as you read? Did it make itself clear in the end?
3. Most novels are written in first person or third person. Boudinot has woven two first person narratives into an inventive work. Who wrote the first chapter? Why? What are the differences in Kat's and Cedar's narratives? Is it more than just different voices? What is the nature of truth in memory?
4. Almost everything we know about Janet and Wade Rivers is written by Kat. How do you think that Cedar would describe them? Did it surprise you when they decided to separate? Did it surprise Cedar?
5. What is Kat conveying when she says that she has "moved across the mountains to the green side?" (p. 49). How does this affect her reaction to George's proposed RV vacation later on? Did you find Kat's description of the trip sad or funny or both and what does this reflect about the character of George?
6. "I was happiest en route, with my laptop and a coffee in a sleeved paper cup, arranging ground transportation, stepping from the gate to plane to gate. Inhaling jet fumes in the optimism of rental-car parking lots" (p. 33). What does this tell you about the adult Cedar? Did you think that he had changed from the adolescent Cedar?
7. "In Kat's hotel room, I stepped over a case of wine and cleared a half-finished Sunday Times crossword from a chair. She offered an insincere apology for the mess. On the desk were the contents of a sack lunch: a cellophane-wrapped sandwich, an apple, carrot sticks. Some books-In Cold Blood, something by Philip Roth. Her clothes all over the place. On the table sat a PowerBook. Toilet articles and coffee supplies, a printer, a sleeping bag, CDs in sleeves, masking tape. Loose change. A lone tampon clawing its way out of its applicator. A pack of spearmint gum" (p. 39). What sort of picture did this assortment of stuff show you? Did it match with your impressions of the young Kat?
8. In the chapter narrated by Kat-the manuscript of her memoir that Cedar is reading-Kat is an inexperienced pre-adolescent. What does she understand about her mother? What effects does her friendship with Margot have upon her?
9. "Cedar Rivers is a boy in my class who we call the Mad Scientist" (p. 59). How does Kat feel about Cedar at this point? When she is telling of the same incidents in Cedar's voice in the first chapter, is she trying to give a different impression?
10. What did you think of the device of Cedar finding Kat's book of short stories, Nymphonomicom, on Amazon .com along with the self-consciously erudite review written by Ryan Boudinot?
11. "`You get to see parts of bodies that the bodies themselves never saw.' `Like a memoir. You get to see parts of lives that those living them never saw"' (p. 73). What makes this exchange between the grown-up physician, Cedar and the writer, Kat so poignant?
12. "We spotted Kat's father's van-a white beaten-up Ford with the name of his employer, Apex Septic, stenciled crappily on the side-across the street in the IFC parking lot. A man appeared to be sleeping inside. The tailgate bore an ideology in the form of a bumper sticker: Bosses are like diapers. Full of shit and always on your ass!!!!" (p. 77). What does the meeting between Jerry and Kat at Kentucky Fried Chicken reveal about Kat's connection to her father? Why does she want Cedar to come along? What does Cedar fail to notice about Jerry?
13. "We laughed. Veronica's boyfriend, George, clomped stiffly up the stairs. He was an angular format of human being with tiny eyes in the kind of bald head that seems to automatically come with a mustache" (p. 23). What are Kat's feelings about her perspective stepfather, George? What does Cedar fail to notice about George?
14. Do you think that Jerry and Veronica make an improbable couple? In the chapter Santa Cruz 1970, describing their meeting and courtship, what drew the two to each other?
15. "George hesitated then touched Kat's shoulder. She shrugged him off. `Don't touch me. Pervert"' (p. 99). When Cedar witnesses this interaction, he takes it as further proof that George has raped Kat. But Cedar assumed this from the beginning-why? Do you think it ever crossed Cedar's mind that Kat might have been unfaithful, or would he rather believe that she had been raped? And when do you (as a reader) realize that he is wrong?"
16. "As I stared through my smudged reflection at the landscape, I had no idea how I was going to find Kat's father, or where I would stay that night. The Greyhound deposited me at the station" (p. 133). In the chapter Beyond Mountains, Cedar sets out on a quest. "'I'm not a runaway. I always meant to come back. I'm not like the other kids who come in here. I don't do drugs, I get good grades. I'm studying medical text books on my own because I'm going to be a doctor.' `And you needed to go on a little road trip to find someone.' `Yeah, I needed to find my-' I stopped" (p. 150). What emotions does he unconsciously express to Mr. Cox?
17. "You think you know everything about me. You think you can see inside my head. But you have no clue what I'm about. You barged into my life and started thinking you had authority over it. That thing that happened to me, I wish I had never told you about it. I wish I'd just taken care of it myself" (p. 159). Kat makes this dramatic statement at the end of Beyond Mountains. Think about the implications. What is really happening between Cedar and Kat?
18. "I. Hate. Boys" (p. 163). In Kat's three-page screed about the opposite sex, what is she trying to clarify? Why won't she allow George to be kind to her? Why is it impossible for her to understand her mother's justifications for marrying George?
19. Do you think that George and Veronica make an improbable couple? What do you imagine happened after all the revelations at George and Veronica's dramatic wedding?
20. "I said, `so what did Father Roth say? When you asked him if you were going to hell?' `He told me that God is the world's most prolific abortionist"' (p. 214). Were you surprised by Kat's final revelations to Cedar? In the end, why do you think she wanted to see Cedar again and for him to read her book?
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger; Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz; The Ice Storm by Rick Moody; The Rotters Club by Jonathan Coe; The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith; Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl; A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
SUGGESTIONS FOR FILMS
Juno; The Royal Tenenbaums; Memento; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Table of Contents
This part is narrated by Kat.
Misconception Page 14