The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky

by Jana Casale

  “Listen, Annabelle, listen to me: if you’re a good girl we’ll go get you a special present after breakfast.” Where they would go for this special present Leda wasn’t sure, but there was something somewhere plastic and pink that would suffice at any given moment. This she could count on.

  “No! I want to push the button. I want the button. The button.” Annabelle sunk down to her knees and then sat on the ground. Leda felt a little sorry for her child then. She was tired and had played too much Jenga the day before. So far this trip had been puking and sleeping in a strange bed. Leda found traveling as an adult stressful enough, but as a child with so little control over what terrible pancakes she ate, it really was no wonder that she wanted to push a button.

  “Do you want to go back to the apartment and push the button and come back for breakfast?”

  “No! I want to push it now. The button, now. The button.” Annabelle was sobbing so hard that Leda was sure passersby would think “the button” was a code word for some kind of paddle those religious people use to beat their children.

  “Annabelle, stop it! There’s no button here. If you want to push the button, we have to walk back to the apartment to get on the elevator and push the button.”

  “Nooooooooooo.” Annabelle was now lying down on the concrete in front of the IHOP. Leda looked out over the parking lot. Everything was hot and sticky. It reminded her of a scene from Breaking Bad in a vague way. I wish Jesse were here, she thought, tapping into an old celebrity crush she had in hopes of escaping the moment at hand. It worked briefly.

  “Noooooo, the button, the button.”

  An older woman exited the restaurant. “I’ve been there, honey,” she said as she passed by. “I’ve got six of them myself.”

  Six of them? Leda thought. Do you hate yourself?

  “Annabelle, you need to stop it. You need to calm yourself down so that we can either eat pancakes or go back to the apartment. Sit up.”

  Leda pulled Annabelle into a sitting position, but the child fell back down and cried to herself. She seemed no longer to be tantruming for anyone or anything, really, but more just letting her ego develop here in this parking lot. Leda thought to call John but then had a better idea.

  “Hey!” she called out at the woman who hated herself with the six children. “Can you do me an enormous favor?”

  Minutes later the woman came back out of the restaurant holding a single pancake in a napkin.

  “Thank you so much.” Leda went to hand her a five-dollar bill.

  “Oh, no, they didn’t charge me,” she said. “Good luck with her.” It sounded like a mean remark, but Leda knew that this woman meant to her very core to wish her luck.

  “Thank you,” Leda answered.

  The woman nodded a solitary nod. If she could say what she’s thinking, she’d say “Godspeed,” Leda thought.

  It was less difficult than Leda had anticipated to get Annabelle to eat the pancake, and as soon as she did she calmed down and Leda convinced her to go inside to get more. By the time they sat down her daughter looked as if she’d been through some kind of childhood war. I hope this is the last bad day of this vacation.

  But it wasn’t. The next day Annabelle got burned on a candle at a gift shop. And the day after, they made it to the beach, but the water was too cold to go in. They sat on the sand and eventually left after it looked as if John was getting sunstroke. Leda tried to apply some wisdom from the article. She brought snacks with her and scheduled in naps, but the days were long and fell apart easily. Annabelle was stressed-out and cranky, and as a result at every turn they ended up buying some kind of plastic novelty gift.

  “We’re going to need another suitcase for all this crap we’re buying,” she said to John as she stood in line to purchase a stuffed unicorn that glowed in the dark.

  The second-to-last night of the trip Leda had a labored dream about having sex with Jesse from Breaking Bad. It was an intensely divine dream where he was kind to her and said things like: “You’re the hottest one I know, yo.” They made love on a mattress on the floor in slanted light. She felt so alive it was hard to believe she was asleep. The next morning when she woke up the dream weighed heavily on her. It was one of the best dreams she’d ever had, certainly one of the best she’d had in recent memory, and that’s why she hated it. There was an element of escapism in it all, as there had been that day at IHOP, and that bothered her on a certain level, that here on her vacation with her little family she was seeking refuge in the hands of an attractive fictional meth addict, but what upset her more was the reminder of a vague ambition she’d felt after watching the series those few years ago. She and John had watched all five seasons in the span of one week. It was a feverous time when blue meth and indulgent violence kept them up till 2:00, 3:00 a.m. every day. After they’d watched the finale Leda felt inspired. She wanted to write something like that, something so suspenseful that you could not look away, only she thought she’d like to write it about women.

  “Would there be a way to write a show like that that’s just as thrilling but not about men asserting their masculinity over each other? What about women?” she’d asked John.

  “A woman superhero maybe?” John said.

  “No, that’s too mannish.”

  Leda wrote out a few ideas but nothing came to fruition. Soon after, she got pregnant with Annabelle and forgot all about it.

  Having sex with Jesse reminded her of all of it and it made her sad, although that sadness itself she could hardly understand, really. Nevertheless, the last two days of the vacation she couldn’t stop thinking about it, which was a shame because the last two days were the best days of the entire vacation. Annabelle finally got over what little bug had made her so disagreeable and the weather was perfect. They went to the beach and swam and had cookouts and picnics. The sunsets were extraordinary, and she and John had sex the last night that was exceptionally sweet. But despite it all she kept turning to the dream, looking for clarification.

  The plane ride home started out fine. They tried to keep Annabelle as thrilled as was possible over flying again, but she’d moved on emotionally and wasn’t quite as keen to go along with everything. She knows it’s not that great, Leda thought as they boarded, Annabelle standing silently at her side.

  After they got seated, Leda watched as an older-middle-aged woman shuffled around the plane trying to be sure her family of two teenage children, a husband, and some kind of extended relatives were all settled. She didn’t look tired, really, even though given the circumstance she very well should have been. “Don’t worry about me,” she’d overheard the woman say at one point. “I’m fine.”

  During the flight things went fairly well. Annabelle slept through most of it, for which Leda was grateful. A baby a few rows down cried for almost the entire three hours and the mother, a slight-looking woman who probably looked thinner pregnant than most women look not pregnant, tried to soothe the child by carrying him up and down the aisle. Leda tried to smile at her a few times in the same solidarity that woman at IHOP had given her. It was best to continue passing that along.

  When they landed the captain came on the loudspeaker to explain to the passengers the reason that they’d have to taxi for “a little bit.” “A little bit” turned out to be code for two and a half hours. And it was here in these last two hours that Leda made the solemn promise to herself that when she got home she would burn that article. Annabelle didn’t want to sit even though the seat belt sign was still on. The TVs were shut off for some reason, and despite the colored chalk available to her, Annabelle continued to try to get up exactly every thirty-eight seconds. The mother of the baby was also feeling the ills of being forced to sit as the child screamed bloody murder, hardly taking the time to catch a breath. Leda got so used to the sound that she could almost hum along with the baby’s screams. She memorized the varying pitch and could nearly make out a melody in it
all. Somewhere at the front of the plane a child was complaining about missing a soccer game, and to her right was the older mother still managing her family even as there was little managing she could do.

  “We’ll call the car when we get out and let them know,” she said loudly enough so each scattered family member could hear.

  Leda thought then again of the dream and of sleeping with Jesse. But the thought disgusted her, and with some kind of ruthless whimsy she thought of herself writing again and being a writer far away from this plane and this place. She could see herself as someone else, and the feeling she expected to feel from the thought, the relief she wanted so badly, she didn’t feel at all. Instead she felt what it was, and what it was was that she wanted to want something else, but she didn’t. She wanted this. And she knew all the mothers on the plane wanted this as well. They weren’t trapped like some literary heroine who burned toast and felt sorry for herself. They were fearless and they were fierce. We’re no more trapped than men with all their anger and all their violence, she thought. But we’re mothers and that’s better. And what did that mean about her that she didn’t miss Jesse and the sex? That she didn’t miss writing? That a vacation as horrible as this one was the light of her life?

  And then, without worrying about the seat belt sign, Leda got up and she walked to the bathroom and she looked at herself in the mirror and that red dot was there in the middle of her forehead staring back at her, and she took her index finger and pointed at it and held it there on the dot, wishing for it to go away though she knew it wouldn’t. Who are you? she thought. But she wasn’t scared and she wasn’t all that sorry. And somehow she felt free, trapped in a plane that skated along the tarmac, unable to stop enough so that she and her family might be able to get off.

  CHAPTER 38

  Walking to CVS in the Rain

  Soon after they got back from the trip Leda needed to run to CVS to buy paper plates because their dishwasher had broken. These are the kinds of things we do all the time, she thought, loosely associating the errand with every flat tire of her life, every lightbulb that went out without warning, as every lightbulb is wont to do. It was raining, but she took the opportunity to walk anyway. CVS was one of the few places close enough to her home that she could walk to now that she lived in the suburbs. Suburban life had proved to be relaxing and deafening all at once. She feared rape so much less, and yet the solitude seemed to prescribe a constant sense of imminent rape. Certainly she didn’t think this explicitly, but late at night as she was dead asleep or drifting into sleep she’d find herself all of a sudden having a sense that someone was standing beside the bed. John told her that she would often wake him in a panic, asking him if someone was there.

  “Is that a man?” she’d say as she’d point to a pile of laundry.

  “No, Leda. It’s not.”

  “Are you sure? I think it’s a man.”

  “You’re dreaming. Go back to sleep,” he’d say.

  Leda never remembered these conversations. She’d only remember herself staring at something standing still, big and bulky, shadowed and beside her, so sure of what it was, so sure that somehow a man was there in their home, just watching her. How can you be so sure of what the laundry is in the night? she thought.

  She stopped for a moment to tie her shoe. When she was a child, tying her shoes was one of the few things she’d taken forever to learn. It was shoe tying and bike riding that had held her up. When she’d first learned to ride a bike she was ten years old and determined not to be the only child anymore who didn’t have a bike. It was a taxing secret to keep from all her friends.

  “I can’t ride a bike,” she’d have to confess in the cafeteria or standing in gym class, or wading through an aboveground pool. The children, especially those who had invested considerable pride in their bike-riding aptitude, never ceased to take the opportunity to make their dear friend feel worse about herself.

  “What?! You can’t ride a bike?? I’ve been riding since I was four.”

  “I just never learned. I don’t know why.”

  “That’s so weird. I could do it since I was four!!”

  “I know.”

  “You’re weird.”

  “I know.”

  For her tenth birthday she asked her parents for a bike. Her dad helped her assemble it on the driveway after she’d opened the big box it came in. She helped turn screws and handed him handlebars and wheels one piece at a time until the mess of the bike scrambled over the driveway became a solid single thing, and she thought that she almost felt more exhilarated at its deconstruction than its construction.

  It took her about forty-five minutes to learn how to ride. Pretty soon she was flying over the concrete sidewalks, no different from any other suburban kid. It surprised her how easy it was, how something that had plagued her so viciously was over and done with just like that. All those kids had made her feel so inferior for so long, and for what exactly?

  And has it changed? Are we not all wishing we could ride bikes before everyone else? She thought of a girl she’d known in college who cried because she was still a virgin.

  “It’s not all that great,” another girl said in consolation.

  Leda remembered herself feeling a sense of urgency over losing her virginity too. It seemed like being a virgin was some great offense to adulthood, but then you had sex and it was like you never were a virgin. Nothing, no big deal. A life milestone you obsessed over for absolutely no reason.

  Then there was Anne, who in the last few months had started to panic about being single and not finding “the one” yet. Leda felt sorry for her.

  “It will happen!” she’d text. But she knew Anne didn’t want to hear it coming from her. Anne wanted to get married and have kids. She didn’t want her married friend with a kid to hand out any kind of courageous advice. How cruel it all is. Fertility and online dating, the living antithesis of each other.

  Leda thought again of being on the plane and her epiphany about herself not wanting to write anymore. It made her upset so she shut her eyes tight for a moment and tried hard to think of something else, something far away, blissful. Nothing blissful came to mind, but she did remember that past September she and John had found a pigeon tipped upside down with its neck bent back. At first when she saw it she thought it was dead, but then she saw it blink at her. Its eye seemed to say something powerful and fluid and indistinguishable. Leda had watched a video online only the day before about what to do if you find a hurt bird. What had compelled her to watch it in the first place seemed virtually inextricable from this moment. It was as if something that existed in the stare between them had touched her, sent her to that video, and then on to this moment, this place, this salvation.

  “Put on these gloves and turn it over,” she said to John.

  She was nervous to touch the bird herself. John had once rescued a dove as a young boy, a story he often recalled whenever it was appropriate. “I rescued a dove once,” he’d say, and because of that she felt it was better he would be the one to move the bird. He already knew what lightness it bore; he wouldn’t spook at a sudden wing flap or the complicated nature of a talon. When they put the bird upright it walked a few steps but fell back over and landed once again with its neck upside down. Things looked grim, but Leda didn’t want to leave it like that. She started looking up phone numbers of bird rescues. In the meantime, people on the street passing by quickly assessed the situation and would throw their two cents in: “broken wing,” “rat poison,” “probably dying,” they’d say. Whenever they’d come to see that she and John were planning on helping the bird they’d become oddly combative.

  “If it has a broken wing they’ll just put it down.”

  “There’s nothing you can do for rat poison.”

  “It’ll probably die either way.”

  Why do these people care if we help the bird? Is it really too much for them to ta
ke that someone else is kinder than they are? What they should really be saying is, “Please let it die on the street so I can feel all right about my laziness,” she thought.

  They found a rescue organization and drove the bird over. Leda held it on her lap in a paper box with a towel over the top.

  “I think it’s a girl,” she said to John, and lifted the edge of the towel to be sure that the bird had enough air.

  The rescue people took the pigeon and seemed to think that it would be okay. They nodded and smiled, and she and John made a donation of thirty dollars. Not enough to cover the bird’s care, most likely, but they still felt good about it.

  A few days later Leda called to check up on the pigeon’s progress.

  “I’m so sorry,” the lady on the phone said. “It didn’t make it.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad.” Leda tried to think of something consoling to say but nothing really worked. She finally settled on: “At least she died peacefully.”

  “Yes,” the lady said. “Hopefully next time the outcome will be better.”

  Next time? Leda thought.

  Making her way into CVS, Leda noticed a man standing out front with his phone. As she walked past, she vaguely hoped he’d notice her. It was rare that she’d be walking around without either John or Annabelle, and these opportunities felt like the only few she’d have left for men to give her attention. Why she wanted their attention in this useless, fleeting, completely superficial way she wasn’t sure, but what she was sure about was that the older she was getting, the less men looked at her, and it bothered her more than she’d even admit to herself. What? You pass thirty and that’s it? It’s over? she’d think whenever a cute guy at a coffee shop handed her a latte with the same empty expression that he gave to anyone else. My power is going, going, gone. She thought momentarily of the witch from The Wizard of Oz: I’m melting, I’m melting.