by Pamela Ribon
Dale came over immediately to read Tess’s webpage for himself.
“I should have known it’d be pink. God, what a girlie-girl.” He made a gagging noise and leaned away from the laptop.
“I’m pissed off. Should I be pissed off?” I asked.
“Yes, you should be pissed off.” He reached over and grabbed a string off my shirt. “Just who does she think she is? More importantly, who does she think you are?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, she’s nobody, so probably nobody read it, right?”
“Yeah.” I sat down and stared at my shoes. I felt so dumb. I felt dumb for letting someone in. I felt dumb for caring. Why did I want to make friends with her? Why did I trust her with my personal life?
“This is the Internet. These are invisible people, Anna. They can’t hurt you. They don’t even fucking know you.”
Dale was right, but I didn’t know how to stop feeling like I had lost a friend. It all felt so shameful, getting exposed like that, getting used for a good story, having someone gush over me instead of actually becoming my friend.
“Dale, this is all my fault.”
“No, it’s not. She took advantage of your trust.”
“This is why I don’t have any girlfriends. Bitches, all of them. Lying, bragging, backstabbing bitches.”
“This is why you don’t have any girlfriends that are still in college.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “I’m calling Becca. We’re going out with all of your real friends and you’re going to forget all about this. She’s a stupid girl that made a fucking fool of herself.” He sat down and stared at the monitor while he listened to the phone ring. “I mean, look at this. Pathetic. Just a little girl who wants some attention. You’re lucky you found out about this before she went all Single White Female.”
It would have hurt worse if I had been more attached to her.
Dale held his hand over the receiver and leaned toward me. “Congratulations on your upcoming wedding, by the way.” He gave me a wink.
“Shut up.”
Later that night after a few drinks, we wrote Tess a letter together, Dale and I. We told her that she was a stupid little child and she needed serious therapy. Then we deleted it and wrote another letter pretending to be a lawyer informing her of a possible restraining order. Then we deleted that and wrote Tess a letter from Ian, telling her that he was so sorry to have missed her because he wanted to meet her and maybe screw her brains out. Then we made him go on and on about how he’s a giant fan of her journal, asking her to keep it a secret, since Anna K knew nothing about it.
That’s when Dale hit “Send.”
“What did you just do?” I asked, clutching his shoulder from behind.
“Oh. Oh.”
“Oh, fuck!”
“Are you sure I didn’t hit the delete button?” Dale kept clicking the mouse, as if that was going to send us back in time.
“No, Dale, you clicked ‘Send.’ She’s going to read that, Dale.”
“Yeah. I’m really sorry about this.” He was smiling.
“Shit. Now I have to apologize.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do. I can’t have her thinking my boyfriend has a thing for her.”
“Sure you can. Just for a week. You’re never going to see this girl again, and she fucked with your private life. You have to get her back. Come on, it’ll be fun.”
“She may not have thought she did anything wrong writing that entry. She’s young.”
“Fine. Then you can use this to find out how two-faced she is. See if she really thinks of you as a friend. Wait to see if she writes back to Ian. See if she even brings it up to you. And she’s not that young.”
“Shit. I can’t believe we created a fake e-mail address for Ian.” I was pacing.
“If she flirts back you can tell her that it was you the entire time, and you were seeing if you could trust her.”
“I don’t know, Dale.” I bit a fingernail, a habit I thought I had broken last year.
“Anna. It’s already been sent. The ball’s in her court. If she really looks up to you, she’ll politely thank Ian and let it go. Or she’ll ignore it completely. I can see why you’ve been staying inside all this time. You’ve got your own Ricki Lake in here, don’t you?”
000036.
Break It’s not you, it’s me. Well, except for you.
20 NOVEMBER
I’m taking a little holiday. Don’t worry about me. Have family fun and be safe.
Oh, and in case some of you found a little webpage that discussed my private life? Don’t believe everything you read. Ian and I would only have sex in someone else’s house if they paid us.
Aren’t those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about terribly upset now? There’s hot Anna K sex being discussed somewhere else? Scandalous!
Love until later,
Anna K
000037.
I was happy to take some time off to go home for Thanksgiving. I wanted to give myself some time away from technology. I was looking forward to playing a little pinochle with my parents and watching bad movies with my sisters.
Tess hadn’t responded to Ian’s love letter, and she also hadn’t written me to apologize. The Tess Mess, as Dale named it, was a good lesson to get early on. I shouldn’t open myself up to a person just because we had an e-mail relationship or because of hero worship. I should have been more careful. I should have had a talk with her, explaining what I did and didn’t want to be public information. I shouldn’t have treated her like an old girlfriend when the truth was she was the newest person in my life.
I was packing when the phone rang. It was Meredith.
“When’s your flight?” she asked.
“Tomorrow morning.”
“You need to change it, Anna.” She took a breath. “Dad’s sick.”
“How sick?”
“Sick, like, you need to come here as soon as possible.”
I called the hospital. I got Mom.
“He’s already sleeping, Annie. We don’t want to wake him. He was in a lot of pain earlier and it took a while for him to fall asleep.”
“Why didn’t you call earlier?”
“It all happened very quickly, honey. We’ve only been here for a few hours. Shannon’s on a flight right now. I’m sorry, Annie. I’m sorry.”
“Stop, Ma. Stop apologizing. Are you okay?”
“I’ll be better when I’ve got all my girls home.”
I got my flight changed to eleven that night. I’d get into Hartford around four in the morning. Meredith was going to pick me up and drive straight to the hospital. I called Mom back to tell her the time changes.
“Okay, Annie. I’ll see you soon. I’m sorry you had to change all of your stuff. Are you going to be okay with work and everything?”
“Mom, stop worrying about me. It’s Thanksgiving. I don’t have work. Are you okay?”
“Hurry, baby.”
My flight was in four hours. I was all packed.
I had two hours to wait before Dale picked me up. I was alone in my apartment. The stillness and the silence crashed inside of me like angry waves of terror. I had never felt so far away from home. I needed to see my father. I needed him to need me. And just as strongly, I wished I could just stay in my apartment and wait until it was all over. I felt like a bad daughter, wishing that none of this had happened, wishing I had never gotten that phone call. I wanted to go home to a house filled with warmth and love, turkey cooking in the kitchen, board games set up in the dining room, and a dog barking in the backyard. I wanted everyone to smile as I walked through the door, to be enveloped in hug after hug as everyone welcomed me home.
Those angry waves slammed against my brain again, reminding me that I can’t have back what I never had in the first place. That wasn’t my family. That wasn’t my home. And now that one of us was probably leaving for good, it would never, ever be my family. We would never have the chance again.<
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000038.
Subject: Too Sad for Turkey.
LD,
I don’t know when I’m going to get a chance to write again. I thought I should let you know what’s going on. I’m about to fly out to see my parents for Thanksgiving. The problem is my dad’s suddenly very sick, and from the way my sisters and my mother are acting, I might be flying out to tell my father good-bye.
I don’t mention my family much, and that’s because we’re a family that keeps to ourselves. We’re very polite around each other. My mom is constantly apologizing for things that aren’t her fault. We apologize to each other for being in the same room, for possibly bothering one another by our presence.
I’m scared. I’m scared that my father is about to die. I’m scared because I don’t really know how to feel about it. We’re solitary people, and the result of that is my father and I haven’t really talked too much over the past few years. He keeps mildly updated on my life, and I stay mostly uninvolved in his. We talk through my mother.
Of course I love my father. Of course he loves me. We love each other in that way that fathers and daughters love each other. But here’s the thing: He’s this sick, and I’m trying to figure out how I’m supposed to feel. Isn’t that wrong?
Shouldn’t I be screaming and crying or throwing things or clutching the bookcase as I tremble and wail? Shouldn’t people be here consoling me? Shouldn’t my sisters want me to talk to them? Shouldn’t my mom want to talk to me? Shouldn’t I be talking to someone about something? Instead I feel cold. I’ve put on a sweater. I’m wearing two pairs of socks, because I know it will be freezing when I get to Hartford. But it’s not cold here in my apartment. I’m just cold. I keep shivering. I feel like it’s the first day of school. That’s the empty feeling my stomach has. Like I just ate oatmeal against my will. Like I’m about to feel very lonely and left out.
I may not write for a few days while I deal with all of this. I hope he’s going to be okay. I hope that this is just another false alarm and when I get there he’s watching television, complaining about the glare from his window or something. I hope that they let him go home and he carves the turkey and we all sit down and quietly eat without getting in each other’s way. I hope we can act like the family we are, and not have to bond together and create this loving, strong family that we have no idea how to be. It would feel fake and wrong, pretending to have these emotions for each other, wailing against each other. We don’t do that. I don’t know how we are supposed to learn it all in one day.
I’m waiting for my friend to pick me up to take me to the airport and instead of having my thoughts filled with my father, I’m wondering if you’re going to be okay without me for a couple of days. I wonder why I’m thinking about you instead of the family crisis I’m supposed to be consumed with. How did you get so far inside of me?
I don’t know what you sound like or look like. I don’t know your real name. How ridiculous is that? I don’t know you. But I’m telling you things here I’ve never told anybody. I continue to pour my insides out to you like some kind of free therapy, hoping that when you write back you tell me that it’s okay, that you feel the same way, that you understand me and that everything is going to be just fine. You’ve somehow become my closest friend in all of this. Why? Why don’t I tell my real-life friends about these things? Why did I tell my friend not to interrupt his dinner with his boyfriend, but to come and get me later? Why didn’t I want to intrude on anyone else’s life? And if they’re my “real-life friends,” does that make you my imaginary one?
I’m probably dwelling on you so I don’t have to deal with the real pain that’s sitting next to me on the couch. That’s where it is. Just outside my body, right next to me. I can see it. It’s a little girl named Anna, and she doesn’t know if she’s ready to say good-bye to a father she’s never really said hello to.
Dale’s here. Gotta go.
I’ll keep you posted. Hope to have good news soon.
God, why am I ending this like some sort of interoffice e-mail?
I’m sad. There you go, LDobler. I’m scared and sad and I don’t know what’s going to happen.
Happy Thanksgiving. I’m very thankful for you, too.
-AK
P.S. I’m packing my laptop. Something tells me I might need you around this holiday weekend.
-----
000039.
When you smell a hospital, you know that things are bad. That smell is so tightly linked to Bad Things. Maybe if I had a baby. Maybe then hospitals would smell like We’re Gonna Have a Baby. I hadn’t been to a hospital often enough to have any good memories attached to the experience. The first time was when I was seven and I fell off a swing trying to look up at the sun during an eclipse. The recess monitor lady screamed at me to stop looking up. I panicked, fell off the swing, and broke my wrist.
The second time was a year later, when I had to say good-bye to my great-aunt, a woman I’d only seen at family reunions. She had a stroke. I hid behind my mother, my face buried deep into her side, as Auntie Moma reached her hand out to me. “Jennifer,” she kept calling me. “Jennifer, give me back my cupcake.”
I thought it was pretty funny, because when you’re eight the funniest sentence in the world to come out of an old lady’s mouth is “Jennifer, give me back my cupcake.” She was angry with me for laughing and then with everyone else for contradicting her. They eventually had to take me out of the hospital room. My Uncle Sammy took me to McDonald’s. I got a Smurf in my Happy Meal.
As the sliding doors opened in front of me and I smelled that hospital smell, I realized that this was the third time. The third real time. I think I’d been every once in a while to visit a friend or get my hearing checked or something, but this was my third emotional experience in a hospital. The smell was soaking into my skin. I felt like I was made out of latex.
I kept weaving around the hallways, afraid to peek into the patient rooms where the doors were open. I was afraid I’d see horrible things inside. Every room held someone sick, someone sad that someone was sick, and someone trying to fix the sick person. There was so much sadness on my father’s floor that it felt like the whole building was about to break down into sobs. Other than hearing a few beeping noises, I was surprised at how quiet the place was. Just a heavy sadness and a tense hush like someone was trying to fall asleep. It looked like everyone there was waiting to clean up after the sadness was over.
In the hallway outside of Dad’s room, I ran into Shannon. Her eyes were red and she kept wiping away tears with the back of her hand. She grabbed me in surprise. Her breath rushed out of her in a noise that sounded like “Whoa.” She pulled me into a hug. “I’m so sorry,” she moaned.
I hugged her tight and whispered. “It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry. He’s gone. He’s already gone.”
Gone. The word people use when it’s too fresh to say “dead.” Too soon to use real words. Gone. Like lost. Missing. Not there. Gone.
And that was it. The packing, the frantic phone calls, the planning, the changing of plans, the calls to Meredith to say I’d catch a cab so she didn’t have to leave the hospital, getting to the airport, reassuring Dale that I was going to be okay, letting him hold me as long as he needed to feel like he had done something, checking my bags, the flight where I couldn’t sleep and an Ed Burns movie tortured me from the ceiling of the cabin, the bumpy landing followed by baggage claim, hailing a cab, the silent drive to the hospital as I hoped everything would be okay—all of it was for nothing. Because I’d never get to hear his voice again.
“We tried calling you when we knew it was the end, but you were in the air and we didn’t want to leave a voice message.”
Then my tears started. Someone put me in a chair.
I knew my mouth was open. I heard my voice say, “Oh.” But I wasn’t controlling anything. I wasn’t aware of anything. I was sitting in the corner of the room and what was left of my family watched me cry.
Meredith put
her face in my lap. It was a strange move, and she did it so quickly that the smell of hospital whooshed up from her hair and into my face. She put her arms around my waist and held me there. She started rocking as she cried, sounding like she was six again. She cried like she had lost her favorite stuffed animal. I saw myself put my hand on her head and pat it. Like she was my dog.
“He said to tell you that he loved you,” Mom said.
“He woke up? He talked to you?”
“Only for a few minutes.” She said it like another apology, her head down, avoiding eye contact. “He seemed to know. He opened his eyes and said good-bye. That he loved us and he loved you and that he’ll miss us.”
“And then he sighed. It seemed very peaceful, Anna,” Shannon said, her voice gravelly from crying. She was holding an unlit cigarette in her hand. I wondered how long she’d been holding it, as it had become wet from the palm of her hand and turned up at the ends.
“How long?”
“Two hours.” My mother smoothed down my hair and wiped her face with her other hand. “Why don’t you go and say good-bye? I have to do some paperwork.”
Then I was in there, alone. Just Dad and me. My dead dad. How the hell did all that happen? I didn’t have a dead dad yesterday. I didn’t have a dead dad two hours ago. Now if someone asked how my dad was, I’d have to say he was dead. I couldn’t do that. Dads aren’t supposed to die. They sit in living rooms and wait for you to call to discuss books and movies and the state of the economy. They don’t die while you’re on an airplane.
I didn’t want to be in that room. I didn’t want to be the only living person in that room. I stood with my back against the wall, my father’s body in front of me. He was no longer alive in that body. I felt so small it was as if I could crawl inside his mouth and look for him.
I took a step closer and felt a chill. A breeze. Then everything was very still again. I looked up and saw the curtains in the room move just a bit.