by Pamela Ribon
It wasn’t until that Saturday night, while printing out the entries for Dale’s present as I got ready for the party, that I felt my first pang of panic. If Dale disapproved, what would I do? I knew deep inside that I wanted to keep writing. I didn’t want anybody to tell me it was wrong. Nobody knew about my writing project and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the criticism exposing it would bring. The opinions. The judging. The confusion. I hoped everyone would understand why what started out as a birthday present was quickly becoming the most rewarding part of my daily life.
I checked my e-mail right before I went out the door. There were three this time.
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Subject: re: re: Yay!!!
Anna K,
I can’t believe you wrote back! I’m practically blushing. Your latest stories had me in hysterics again. I hope you and Ian finally figured out which family you’re visiting this summer. I thought Ian was out of town. Did he miss you like you missed him? Does he read your webpage?
When did you first start writing? Do you get paid for your site?
Tess
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Subject: Fan Mail
Anna K,
I like your website because you’re truly showing me why girls are weird. I knew it all along, but reading your journal is like getting to read your sister’s diary and all of her friends’ diaries as well. There’s something fun, twisted, and slightly sexy about that.
LDobler
P.S. Change “slightly” to “very.”
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Subject: Football/Basketball
Anna K,
My friends and I tried out your football tips, but we modified them to basketball. Guess what? It still worked! We only had the one slip where my friend Liz compared one of the players to Vinnie Testaverde. I quickly covered by saying, “But once we start mixing sports we’ll never agree on anything!” I couldn’t believe they bought it.
I’m starting to think that boys don’t know anything about sports at all. They just like having a reason to see each other every weekend. You know what happens when they get together and watch a game that they’re not interested in? They talk about other games they saw in their past. That’s like talking through and episode of Sex and the City about how great the last season was. Amazing.
Anyway, thanks for all your help. I’m enjoying being one of the guys.
-Laura
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I walked to Dale’s thinking about how I’d have to be more careful with my fake time line. I didn’t even realize that I had put Ian out of town and in my bed during the same week. Maybe I was posting too many entries at a time, but every time I wrote, the amount of fan mail would grow. As happy as I was for the attention, I did feel a pinch of guilt that the people writing thought I had a different life than I did. I reminded myself that the attention was for Anna K and not me. I was just a writer creating a character. Every story had a ring of truth to it.
Once at the party, I looked around Dale’s apartment wondering how so many people fit into a space that tiny. There were six people on his couch, another two resting on his coffee table, and people leaning against every inch of wall space. Two very drunk, very young girls were dancing in the middle of the kitchen, leaning on each other, craning their necks to see if anyone was watching them.
Shannon wasn’t there yet. I checked my cell phone for messages. None. I dialed her dorm room but got her machine.
I went outside for a cigarette. I spent some time catching up with a girl whose name I could never remember. Dale and I had met her at another party and she became a part of the party circle, but I never saw her outside of those social events. I tried to steer the conversation in such a way that she’d say her name again, but it didn’t happen. She complimented my shoes. I complimented her hair color. Then we sat quietly for a while. I bet she couldn’t remember my name either. Still, it was comforting to sit with a near stranger like that. There was no pressure to perform.
I waited for most of the party to clear out before I handed Dale the box that held his birthday present. I used a Gap garment box left over from a Christmas present. We were in his bedroom, the sounds of the party muffled through the closed door.
“It’s not from The Gap,” I said quickly.
Dale lifted the box up and let it down with one hand, weighing it with a challenging look on his face. “Well, it doesn’t feel like a gift certificate, so you’re already beating all of my other friends. And I’m not talking to Jason until he apologizes for giving me that blender.”
“He gave you a blender?” I laughed and moved some wrapping paper off a nearby chair so I could sit down.
“It means either he thinks I’m a drunk or he thinks I’m his bitch. Either way, he’s completely in the doghouse.” Dale flopped back on his bed, the box resting on his chest.
“Until you’re drunk and need the garbage taken out.”
“I am his drunk bitch,” he moaned. “I just don’t want him to know it yet.”
He had someone else’s tie around his neck. An empty Shiner Bock bottle dangled from his healed left hand. I was sad he didn’t need me to wash his hair anymore.
“Open your present,” I said, leaning forward to shake his feet in both of my hands.
He sat up and placed his feet flat on the floor. He yanked the box open with one clean jerk. He made a noise like he was about to blow out a candle.
“Is this what I think it is?”
Dale held the pages to his chest, the silver ribbon I had wrapped them in curled around his fingertips. Somehow he had dropped the bottle, but I hadn’t heard it hit the ground.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just smiled.
“You’re writing again,” he said with what appeared to be tears in his eyes.
“You asked me to write. So I did. I wanted to show you what I wrote.”
“I’m going to read this now. All of these pages.” He stood up, his feet tangling in discarded wrapping paper and ribbons. He unknowingly kicked an Over the Hill shot glass that was resting by his foot. I watched it roll across the room and into his closet.
I lit a cigarette, laughing at his drunken stumble. “You don’t have to do that now, Dale. Enjoy your party first.”
“Shit. Not one of these fuckers here is my friend. These people are just drinking all of my beer. You! You’re the friend.” Dale leaned out his bedroom door and scanned the living room. “Okay, I take that back. About six of the ten people here are actually my friends. They’re good people. And the four I don’t know are probably their dates.” Dale’s eyes welled up again. “I hate how I do that. I assume the worst.”
“Maybe you should read a few pages.”
“Then we can talk about how great they are over another beer, okay? Your hair looks fantastic tonight. It’s really a pretty color.” He grabbed a fistful in his right hand, careful not to tug. The blond ends swirled around his fingers. Dale started humming to himself.
“Happy birthday, Drunkston,” I said, kissing his forehead.
As Dale read, I went out on the porch again. My silent stranger friend was gone, so I leaned forward on the balcony railing and looked over our neighborhood. I could see my apartment. Dale and I often joked about putting up a rope between our houses so we could send each other messages. We had walkie-talkies once—until we became obsessed with the cross-traffic interference we could pick up with them. We were riveted to the sounds of neighborhood police CBs and the goings-on of the security team at a nearby hotel. For two weeks we stayed in our own apartments, talking to each other with a phone pressed to one ear and a walkie-talkie to the other, anxiously wondering what would happen next. It was Jason who finally put a stop to that obsession by threatening to call whatever authorities were necessary—whether they were cops or psychiatrists. He confiscated the radios and we’ve kept to phones ever since.
My living room light was on. I thought I had turned that off.
I loved my tiny second-floor apartment in the Hyde Park neighborhood, even
though the rent was too high, I didn’t have central air, and every summer I thought I was going to die from the oppressive heat. I loved the Austin nightlife, the way there was always something new to do and the old things hadn’t worn out their fun yet. I’d built up years of memories, and the town fit me like a favorite sweater.
When Ian and I first started dating, I always let him lead our life. He chose our evenings, decided where we went for vacations, and was the one planning how long we were going to live in Austin. I told Ian that if he felt the need to move I’d go with him, but deep down I didn’t want to leave. Luckily he liked Austin as much as I did.
I felt a pull inside of me now, a yearning to find something new, and I wondered if it meant my time in Austin was running out now that my life with Ian had ended. As I stared at my apartment window, the shadows of the furniture just visible in the light, I imagined saying good-bye to all of this. I tried to picture what would happen to me next.
I realized Shannon had sat down next to me. She was wearing a shiny mauve dress with thin shoulder straps. Her hair was curled and I could see the hairspray straining against the weight of her pretty brown tendrils. She had glitter on her eyelids.
“Wrong kind of party,” she said to me. “I thought there’d be lots of dancing.”
“Dale’s work friends aren’t as fabulous as we are,” I told her.
She lit a cigarette and looked around.
“Did you drive here wearing that?” I asked her.
“No, I stopped at your apartment and changed.”
“That’s why my light was on,” I said, turning back toward my place.
“You’re the only person I know who watches her own house while at a party. Tomorrow we’re having fun. I didn’t drive all the way from Houston for nothing.”
“We’ll have fun.”
“I’ll stay through the holiday weekend, if that’s okay.”
“Sure. That’s cool.”
“I’ll mostly be studying, but I thought it’d be nice to go down to Barton Creek and read in the sun.”
Dale’s high-pitched panic voice doesn’t normally startle me since he uses it all the time, but it shook me immediately out of my conversation when he screamed through his bedroom window, “Get in here!”
“I think you’re in trouble,” Shannon whispered.
I ran into the bedroom to find Dale trembling. He was holding a shuffled bundle of pages, letting them fall from the space between his hands and his chest.
Before I could speak he grabbed me by the arm, pushed me into his bathroom, and shut the door.
“Get in the tub!” he said quickly.
“What?”
“I said, get in the tub!”
This certainly wasn’t the reaction I had been expecting. I stood, my mouth opening and closing silently, ridiculously.
“Get in the fucking tub, Anna!”
I did what he said. My shoes slipped on the porcelain. I steadied myself by holding on to the soap dish. I took Dale’s beer out of his hand and took a sip.
“I don’t believe this,” he started.
“Do you want me to explain?” I asked.
“I want you to shut up.”
“Don’t talk to me like that, Dale.” I could feel a fight starting. I only had to hold back and let him rant and I could avoid it completely, but something in me wanted to fight back instead of letting him run me down with his words.
“I don’t want you to write about Ian.”
“I don’t want you to tell me what to write!”
“This is unhealthy.”
I stood up, narrowly missing my head on the curtain rod. The shoes I was wearing made me taller than I was used to, and I was happy for the extra inches. “I did it for your birthday present, Dale. I don’t need a lecture.”
“You did it to write about Ian.”
“That’s not true,” I said indignantly.
“No? Then why do so many stories come back to being about him? You’ve written a webpage worthy of stalker status here.”
“I’ve written a webpage pretending to be some other girl who has a boyfriend that’s based on Ian, but not really Ian.” My foot slipped, so I quickly squatted and grabbed the soap dish to steady myself again, this time slapping my right hand down on a damp and sticky bar of soap.
“There’s no way you really believe that,” Dale said as I gently turned on the faucet and rinsed my hand in the cool water.
“This isn’t about Ian,” I said.
“Everything is always about Ian, including when you deliberately do something that’s supposed to not be about Ian. Don’t you see that? You can’t move on if you wallow around in him.”
“I’m not wallowing!”
“And writing about him isn’t going to bring him back.”
“I don’t want him back.”
“I’m sure.” He turned away from me and gripped the sides of his bathroom sink. The room seemed strangely quiet as Dale waited for me to come to some sort of realization. But he was wrong. I wasn’t trying to win Ian back. Besides, none of it mattered because Ian was never going to find the site. And even if part of me was hoping Ian would somehow read it and it’d make him want to come back to me in some mushy, romantic, music-swelling way, it was only so I’d have a good story to tell my children someday. I didn’t want the man; I wanted the vignette.
And the truth was I didn’t want those children just as much as I didn’t want their father. The father that didn’t exist. Those children I didn’t have. I’d even named the invisible kids that I didn’t really want. Veronica and Clay. Veronica was older and Clay was really good in sports. I went to their make-believe soccer games and their fantasy piano recitals. I hung their nonexistent finger paintings on my unpurchased refrigerator in that house I didn’t have with a husband I wasn’t looking for. I didn’t need a perfect ending; I just wanted to borrow the good moments. I wanted snippets of other people’s lives. I didn’t need the whole thing.
Dale put his hands over his face. “I can’t believe this is on the Internet,” he moaned. He looked embarrassed for me, just as I’d been dreading.
I tried to brush it off by sounding casual. “It’s just a webpage. There are millions of them. Look, don’t tell Shannon, okay?” If Dale was reacting this badly, Shannon’s teasing would be much worse.
Dale was still pacing, his arms crossed firmly at his chest. “But what if Ian finds it? What if someone he knows reads it? How are you going to start seeing someone new if you’re writing every day about your last boyfriend as if he’s your current boyfriend?”
I hadn’t heard the words put in that order before.
“They’re just stories,” I explained calmly. “Some of the stories are about Ian and some aren’t. I’m not pining or wallowing. I’m just writing.”
My hands were trembling, and somehow I had picked up a washcloth from the edge of the tub. I was wringing it in my hands, watching Dale watch me. Seeing the range of emotions in his eyes. Confusion. Love. Pity. It was that last emotion I wanted to erase.
“I wasn’t going to tell you,” he started, “but I saw him the other day.”
“I don’t care, Dale.”
“Fine. Then I won’t say anything else.” His entire body language shifted as he said deliberately, “Oh, man. My mouth tastes like a sock.”
Dale grabbed his toothbrush and turned on the cold-water faucet. I was exhausted at the thought of playing this game with him. Instead of being coy, pretending what Dale had to say meant nothing to me, I decided to just come right out and take it.
“Where did you see him?” I asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Apparently Dale was still interested in the game.
I sighed. “Ian. You saw him. Where did you see him?”
“I don’t want to bore you with things you don’t want to hear about. You’re right. You’re past all of this bullshit.” As he brushed his teeth he stared at himself in the mirror. I watched his blue eyes widen as he rota
ted his head, checking his skin for blemishes. He never had any.
I stood up and stepped out of the tub. Taking a step toward him, I tugged the ends of his hair in my right hand. “You wouldn’t be bothering me if what you were going to say was really good, like he was crying in the middle of a field or something.”
Dale spit the toothpaste in the sink and rinsed his mouth out with his beer. He stood up straight, inches from me, both of us facing the mirror. “Why would I be walking through a field, exactly?” he asked.
“You know what you just did is the grossest thing you’ve ever done, right?”
“You only think that because you’ve never dated me.”
And then it was quiet. Dale and I stared at each other through the mirror. I knew he could wait much longer than I could. Besides, it was his birthday.
“Spill it.”
“He’s still dating Susan, you know.” The words came tumbling out of his mouth with a touch of glee.
“I know.” Ian began dating my friend Susan pretty soon after we split, and since then it had been too difficult for all of us to hang out. I could see Ian by himself, but I couldn’t face Susan anymore. Every time she spoke I saw Ian’s dick in her mouth. Crude, but the truth.
“He came up to me at the bookstore, acting like I would want to talk to him. I chose your side and I think I made that pretty clear. Actually, I think he came up to me because he knew I chose you and I wouldn’t feed him any bullshit.”
“You have told me absolutely nothing. This is not your story, you know. I don’t want to know about your trip to the bookstore. What did he want?”
Dale’s voice seemed lower as he said calmly, “He wanted to know if you were still around. He said you hadn’t been calling.”
“Like he can’t call me!” My face instantly flushed hot and I found myself marching back into the tub. My fancy shoe slipped on the porcelain. I held on to the tiled wall with both hands, bracing myself against the wave of anger as I hissed, “Asshole!” I knew I was playing into Dale’s trap, but my emotions had taken over. “He could call me. Why is it me that always has to call him?”