by Martin Riker
For you see, I had all this tip money—to get back to our story—by now quite a lot of it, which at first I’d zippered into couch pillows, then stowed in plastic bags in the storage basement. But this was a precarious system, and if our money was eventually to pay for an education, what I really needed was a bank account. I could not simply walk into a bank and open one, but on the computer, to my amazement and delight, there existed semireputable financial institutions that in exchange for charging grotesquely high fees would allow an account to be opened entirely online, with only a street address, an e-mail address, and a social security number. Already, I had two out of three!
To get the social security number, I would need to write again to Tanya’s parents, but for this, too, I had a new expedient means—e-mail! By e-mail, I could quickly obtain from them the information I needed to open an internet bank account, into which I could deposit cash to save for school, even the courses for which—I had done research!—could be taken online. And none of this required me to interact with a single living person. It required only that I continue to steal Tanya’s money, and technically her identity, and that Tanya remain indolent and regularly inebriated long enough for me to see it all through.
Having thus found solutions to my short-term problems, I spent the next year pouring all my energies into this plan. Communicating with her father, through a second “Tanya” e-mail address I created, produced a more rhetorically complicated string of correspondence than I had anticipated, but was not difficult in any logistical way. No, the greater difficulty by far was simply getting computer time at all, since this could only occur in those moments when Tanya was (1) alone and (2) sufficiently intoxicated, and when (3) Ken was also out at work. Sometimes weeks passed without such an opportunity. And even when I did get computer time, I struggled with distractions of my own, for the internet presented an enormous world of new possibilities to me, the same possibilities it provided everyone else, though for me they were even more tempting. Each time I faced the computer screen, I fought against my desire to participate, to “sit in” the chat rooms, to visit the listservs or “surf” the communal waves of that virtual ocean, where I might for a moment imagine myself a full-fledged member of democratic society. And while I am proud to say that for the most part I successfully restrained myself and kept my focus on Tanya intact, still there remained one possibility I could not ignore.
A search for “Unityville” unfortunately turned up almost nothing. It still does—I just tried it. A search for “Samuel Johnson,” on the other hand, turned up so many items I did not know where to begin. Beyond the famous eighteenth-century English writer (who wrote essays and books, created the first English dictionary, annotated Shakespeare, and had a famously large, domineering personality that even now stretches over pages and pages of search results), there lay a vast wilderness of lesser Samuel Johnsons with their various affiliations and accomplishments. “Johnson” turning out to be the second-most-common last name in English, and “Samuel” being, among first names, the ninth. For weeks I clicked through every link I could, whenever I could: frantically at first, then more slowly as the task’s pointlessness became apparent. Eventually, I had to concede that I was wasting valuable time. I was not going to find my son. I needed to reapply myself to the problem of Tanya, where I had begun to face new worries.
Her “thing” with Barry was utterly erratic, constantly on again, off again, while Uncle Bernard’s favor was beginning to wane. We had amassed quite a lot of money, but I had not yet found a solution to my long-term problem—which I have yet to explain—and with things growing unstable on the Barry/Bernard front, it occurred to me I needed a backup plan, for which the obvious (and only) option was Ken.
I began sending him e-mails from Tanya revealing her truest, most secret self. She was being held captive by Bernard and Barry, I wrote, who had planted secret microphones around their entire building so that she could not, she could never speak to him—to Ken—about her real feelings. Her real feelings were: passion, tremendous passion and longing for Ken, the hope that Ken would steal her away, would take her, at the right time and at a moment’s notice (but not before!) as far away as possible, perhaps even marry her—if he wanted that; she wasn’t insisting—simply for the two of them to start a new life together, very far away and preferably someplace nicer, but not Denver, or Pittsburgh—possibly central Pennsylvania? She had aspirations: she wanted an education, to make something of herself. And she wanted to support him, Ken, because she thought he was just so smart, and talented, she loved listening to him talk about computers and was even frankly attracted by it—“turned on,” I probably wrote—and she knew he had aspirations as well. Together, I wrote, they could make a life that would be better than either of them was capable of making alone. Perhaps have children—if he wanted that; she wasn’t insisting—and so on. Ken was shocked, no doubt, but willing, or eager, and in the silence of cyberspace, we planned our escape.
So now I had two plans and no more time to internet-search for my son, an activity that had proven fruitless and heartbreaking. Two plans were better than one, but this left me still facing my long-term problem, which all this time I had hoped would somehow miraculously resolve itself, but which I could not afford to ignore any longer.
My long-term problem was, of course, how to get Tanya to go along with any of it.
I will not catalog the various overly complicated plans I devised and discarded, but will simply tell you that in the end it was not Samuel Johnson but Barry and Bernard who found a solution. It came about suddenly and took effect quickly; in fact it all happened in a single day:
1. Barry came over to tell Tanya he was getting married (to someone else).
2. A few hours later, Bernard arrived to announce she had exactly twelve hours to clear out of the apartment.
3. By that time, Tanya was already “shitfaced” (Bernard’s word).
4. As soon as Bernard left and Tanya had made her way from shitfaced to incapacitated, I wrote a note and slipped it under Ken’s door: Barry was raving! Bernard had threatened to kill her! And so on.
5. Around four in the morning, Ken crept into her apartment to save her.
Of course Tanya did not actually understand why Ken woke her in the early hours, whispering, and hurried her out to his car. She did not understand why she had to bring her things, why his car was packed with his own things, or why they were driving north, then west, then north again. Mostly she did not understand why he seemed to think she should understand all of this. But she was still half drunk, and dealing with a terrible headache, and was used to strange occurrences in her life. She understood well enough the overall gist of what was happening, and Barry and Bernard had made clear the alternative—in fact in some ways she understood the situation better than Ken did—and two days later she was living in St. Louis.
Small downtown, large parks. More Tampa than Denver for humidity, more Pittsburgh than Breezewood for traffic, more swamp than mountains for vegetation and bugs. Popular pastimes include baseball and barbecue. Gated neighborhoods you drive past but never enter. A great deal of red brick and those white-with-crossbeams houses called “mock Tudor,” though where I learned that term I have no idea. A free zoo, museums. Host to a world’s fair over a century ago that it continues to tout as if it happened last year. Long waits at the traffic lights. Something called “frozen custard.” That is everything about St. Louis I can think of right now.
The apartment above Ken’s mother’s garage, though meant to be temporary, proved hard to move out of once they’d moved in. Ken worked long irregular hours and when home, he was, if anything, too attentive. He had decided that part of his role in their new life together was to save her from her substance abuse, and to this end he employed his mother, a horrible old woman in a fluffy purple robe who hardly ever spoke to Tanya—and never nicely—to “keep tabs” on her while he was away. Most days, therefore, Tanya found herself in the off-putting situation of being alone but unde
r constant semihostile surveillance—harassed with muteness, henpecked with boredom—and I, Samuel Johnson, came rather quickly to regret the role I had played in creating this new, unforeseeably terrible life. I hoped that Tanya would soon revolt against it, as she had revolted against her parents, and against Donald, and against life in the congregation years before. But in St. Louis, Tanya was in no mood to revolt. The events of Tampa, in particular the shock of Barry’s marriage, had drained her of all confidence. She plummeted into a debilitating depression that left her wallowing in self-pity and crying for days on end.
And of course there was nothing I could do for a sober Tanya, no means by which I could affect her fate. In vain, I watched her deteriorate. I watched her walk the neighborhoods, shrinking further from the mindful world. And when she stopped walking, stopped shrinking, then, and for quite a while after, I watched her watch a lot of television.
Gilmore Girls and Grey’s Anatomy, The Office and 24. Family Guy, King of the Hill, and Malcolm in the Middle. It really doesn’t seem that long ago. Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Trial by Jury, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami—a preponderance of law procedurals and adult cartoons, but many of them quite clever, I thought. The low end, on the other hand, brought a bottomless pit of tediously identical contests and reality programs, all of which Tanya watched, none of which Tanya missed, from Supernanny to Nanny 911, from Wife Swap to Trading Spouses, from Extreme Makeover to Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, not to mention The Apprentice, The Contender, The Bachelor, The Biggest Loser, My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss, American Idol, America’s Next Top Model, Project Runway, Survivor, Fear Factor, and one I found particularly offensive titled Who’s Your Daddy?, which placed an attractive young woman in a room full of older men, one of whom, she was told, was the biological father she’d never met. By asking a series of questions, the young woman was meant to identify her father correctly, for which she would receive $100,000. In fairness to America, I should add that this program aired only once and was instantly canceled, suggesting that the pit of reality television was not truly bottomless, as I claimed a moment ago, since in fact this program found its bottom, the bedrock of human degradation below which even reality television could not go.
Also world events: it felt good, I suppose, to be aware of them again (Tanya being perhaps the only person in the world who failed to notice the events on and after September 11, 2001), yet even the news was not what it once had been. The events were serious enough—gay rights, Katrina, George W. Bush—but the programming style was more sensational than before, and even the subject matter had acquired a perversely “celebrity” bent: Janet Jackson flashes at the Super Bowl; Martha Stewart goes to jail. It was news of entertainment, or news as entertainment, which did not surprise me as much as it should have, I think, since by then even the most serious programs had come to seem merely entertaining, that and nothing more. In fact, on most days television did not even entertain me any longer, because it was Tanya watching. Tanya who ought to have been getting her education by then, on her way to a more meaningful life.
Is it any wonder she grew fat? Over two years, she grew quite fat. And Ken, who was fat to begin with, grew even fatter, although this did not temper the disgust he now felt looking at Tanya, or the blatancy with which he and his hideous mother allowed their scorn to fester on their thoughtless faces. Of course this environment only caused Tanya to feel worse about herself. Of course she only sunk lower into depression and started eating even more, compensating for the hollowness of her life and the love and support that no one was giving her.
Now in those moments when my mind turned to Samuel (because of course even then my thoughts often turned to Samuel), I wondered: if I had stayed with him, had remained his father and watched him grow and attempted to guide him, would I have had any more success than I was having with Tanya? He would have made better choices, because he was such a smart and curious person to begin with—although wasn’t Tanya promising to begin with? What if he had grown into a bored, disaffected adolescent? What if he had come to be something less than his potential? Something more like me? And isn’t this, in the end, the true plight of the parent (allow me to reveal to you the true plight of the parent), that even when you can do things, there’s nothing you can do?
So this was it, the finale. I had reached it. I could now look back upon my own trajectory and make a fair assessment. I would never know Samuel, or help him. I had taken on Tanya instead. I had adopted Tanya if only to discover how I might have done as a father, and I had gotten my answer, disappointing if not surprising. I would never help Tanya. She was miserable, and I was stuck. I would never help anyone. In the end, a sober, depressed, overweight Tanya flopped in front of a television was the best I would ever do.
So now what?
Now Tanya saved herself.
Or “saved” herself—so confused had I become as to what constituted a good life for Tanya that my mind could no longer decide whether to put “saved” in quotation marks.
One day she took to the computer and began searching for Barry. There was nothing about him in Tampa or anywhere else. For days she searched, eventually landing at an online catalog of mug shots. State by state, county by county—the catalog being organized by state and by county—she scanned for Barry’s stupid face. Until at last she found him, right there and recently: a DUI in Peoria, Illinois. That very day she packed a bag, stole some money, said a silent So long to St. Louis, a silent Fuck you! to Ken and his maternal gargoyle, and boarded a bus to Peoria. Which is not a large city and has relatively few establishments of the sort Barry might frequent, so she found him in no time at all.
This move to Peoria—this was the final stop for Tanya. Quite a bit more happens in this story, but she never moved anywhere else.
I’ll skip what Barry had been doing in the meantime (except perhaps to mention that central Illinois turns out to be one of the internet pornography capitals of the world). I’ll skip describing Peoria (other than what I just said about it). I’ll start by saying that, given Tanya’s new girth, I could not imagine how their reunion would go. Or rather, I could imagine it perfectly, and was bracing myself—but in fact it went much better than I had guessed. Barry, though no longer married, had no interest in Tanya romantically, and this probably accounted for much of the depression she suffered over the next few years. (And yes, it has occurred to me that Tanya may have actually loved Barry. The evidence was there, and certainly it explains a number of her more horrendous decisions over the years. He may even have loved her back, in his way. Personally, I could never see it, could never understand what she saw there—but then that is the cliché of love, isn’t it? Of romantic love or any other? That we do not choose it, it is not reasonable, it comes to us in whatever form it wants to and often makes no sense at all.) So, yes, he rejected her romantically, but he also had a new venture going, and at least he offered her a job. It was a job that took advantage of her talents and did not exclude her on the basis of being overweight. It was even a decent job, in the sense that its particular indecencies were slightly less indecent—or simply more anonymous—than the sort in which she’d previously participated. Her new job was to have sexual conversations on the phone and in computer “chats.” He set her up in an apartment with a phone and a computer, and she settled into yet another new life.
In which her first order of business was to return to her substance abuse—heroin in particular—with a vengeance, a literal one, since abusing her body was a means of rejecting the sober life she’d so recently escaped. Fleeing St. Louis had at last released in Tanya a long-dormant instinct for self-reliance, or so I told myself, while her drug use I chose to see as an extension of this instinct, a counterattack against dullness and despair. Obviously I would have preferred her self-reliance take a less self-destructive form, but I held out hope that this new spirit might eventually turn more productive. And of course her drug use also meant that I w
as no longer helpless to help her! With Tanya now splitting her time about evenly between pornography and substance abuse, we were finally again in a position to pursue her education, and meanwhile I had come up with a new and better plan for getting Tanya herself involved.
I created a long-lost uncle who, after many years of searching at no small cost and effort, had finally tracked Tanya down. Uncle Samuel had no children of his own, he opined (by e-mail—I did this by e-mail), and was getting old. He had no wish to impose himself personally upon Tanya; he understood she had her own life and did not need some nosy uncle hanging around, but he did wish to help her, even though he did not know her, because he was lonely, had been alone for almost his entire time on this planet, and had no one else to help. He understood from her parents that she had never completed her high school education, and on the off chance she wished to address this shortfall, he had taken the liberty of enrolling her in a set of online continuing education courses, for which he’d pay the tuition, and also—importantly!—place money to support her in a bank account in her name. It was admittedly not a large amount (of course I did not trust Tanya with the full amount of her actual savings), but there would be more added to the account if she took the courses as I recommended, and a bonus if she did well in her first semester. In short, my plan was to purchase not only her education, but also her willingness to participate in it.
And she tried. She did. For the first several weeks, she signed into the class websites and did the work. Whether it was the incentives I had given her, or her newfound self-reliance, or the fact that she had no one in her life now and no other way to spend her time, or simply that she was finally old enough (thirty-six going on eighty) to see that the future had arrived and nothing particularly good was waiting to reveal itself . . . whatever it was, all that mattered was it was working. And as she became more involved with the course work, her substance abuse went down. I felt, for a moment, a swell of pride, in Tanya and perhaps even more so in myself. Yet as she lost interest in the course work, which happened the moment the lessons became just the slightest bit challenging, her substance abuse went back up again. Which caused me, not anger, but frustration, yes. We were halfway through her first semester—already she was giving up!