The Lit Report

by Sarah N. Harvey

  I WENT BACK to my old routine—Dad’s house on Saturday, church with Mom on Sunday, back to Dad’s for dinner—but Jonah was never there when I was, and he didn’t call. I missed seeing the babies all the time, and I really missed Ruth, but every time I saw her she was busy with Jane, so I spent my time with Miki and Boone. Miki had started taking some kind of medication, and she didn’t spend all her time locked away in the decompression room anymore. Maybe Ruth’s Super-Mom routine had kick-started Miki’s competitive streak. Whatever it was, Miki was way better. She still needed help with Boone, and she spent a lot of time sleeping, but she fed him and changed his diapers and took him for walks. Dad was thrilled.

  “You girls ever going to make up?” Miki asked one day when we were taking Boone for a walk in his bright orange Bugaboo stroller (with UV-block parasol!). Trust Miki to buy the Ferrari of strollers, although I have to admit, it’s pretty cool. “Ruth seems kind of down,” she added.

  “She seems okay to me,” I said. “She’s always all ‘Oh, I have to sterilize Boone’s bottles’ or ‘I’m freezing a batch of organic applesauce for when the babies start on solid food.’ Brandy’s even offered to babysit so Ruth can go out for coffee with me, but Ruth’s always got something more important to do, like clean Jane’s ears or clip her fingernails. It’s pretty obvious she doesn’t want me around.”

  Miki stopped the stroller and turned to face me. “For a smart girl you can be pretty dumb sometimes, Julia.” She was smiling when she said it, so I squelched my impulse to a) smack her and b) run away. “Ruth’s just as confused and frightened as I was. She just doesn’t want anyone to know it. Motherhood really messes with your head, whether you’re seventeen or forty-two. Your world gets really tiny— and your body goes haywire. Look at me—I completely derailed. Some days I still need to go off by myself. Ruth’s different. She loves looking after Jane and Boone, and she’s really good at it, but I think she’s lonely. She never wants to be by herself, not like I do. Think about it: her parents have cut her out of their lives like she’s a malignant tumor, she isn’t going back to school, her brother’s leaving and her best friend is sulking. She has no skills, no way of earning money. All she has is Jane, who is totally dependent on her. Or at least that’s the way it must feel to her. I don’t mind admitting that I’m pretty dependent on her too. If she and Jane hadn’t turned up I’d probably still be locked away in the decompression room. She’s scared, Julia. Wouldn’t you be?” She turned the stroller around and started walking back to the house. I trailed after her.

  “And as far as Jonah’s concerned,” Miki continued, “stop feeling sorry for yourself. Since when do girls always have to wait for the guy to call? It’s not the nineteen-fifties. Pick up the damn phone, Julia, before he leaves for Vancouver. Anyone with eyes in their head can see he’s crazy about you. Everyone but you, apparently.”

  “But he’s going away,” I whined.

  “Jesus, Julia, Vancouver’s not Outer Mongolia. Get a grip.”

  And with that she took off at an almost-jog. I didn’t try to keep up (I hate jogging and I was wearing flip-flops anyway), and when I got back to the house, I went straight to the decompression room. I hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob and climbed into the bed. I needed to think.

  After about an hour I had come to two conclusions. First, Miki was probably right about everything, but I had to prioritize. Ruth could wait, since she wasn’t going anywhere. Second, if Jonah blew me off, I was heading straight to the Dairy Queen to bury myself in what I call “the full catastrophe meal”: a Brownie Earthquake followed by a Pecan Mudslide. And I was taking Ruth with me.

  I snuck out of the decompression room and grabbed the portable phone off the coffee table. Technically, phones are forbidden in the quiet room, but there was no way I was phoning Jonah with Ruth around. I called Jonah’s cell. It went straight to voice mail, and in my mind I could see him frowning at the screen and pressing Ignore. I burst into tears and hung up without leaving a message. I put the phone down and curled up in the fetal position on the bed. Ten minutes later, when the phone rang, I picked it up on the first ring. My hands were sweating.

  “Hello?” I croaked.

  “Julia?” Jonah’s voice sounded shaky. Was it possible he was as nervous as me? “You called? Is everything okay?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I mean, Ruth and Jane are fine, if that’s what you want to know.”

  He was silent for a moment, a moment in which I abandoned hope. When he finally spoke, all he said was, “I’m coming over.”

  “What? No!” I yelped into the phone, but he had already hung up. I was screwed. The boy I loved was coming over, and I was hiding in a small dark room, wearing a pair of my mom’s baggy, pleat-front, Eddie Bauer khaki shorts and a faded Run for the Cure T-shirt circa 2002. I had hairy legs, dirty hair, chipped nail polish, chapped lips and probably bad breath. If Jonah saw me now, he’d break up with me for sure. And anyway, I wanted to look good when he broke up with me, on the off chance that he might eat his heart out later when I was on the cover of People magazine. I imagined him sitting in an overheated kitchen after a twelve-hour shift, holding the magazine up to his sous-chef and saying, with a catch in his voice, “You know, she could have been mine...” And I would come to his restaurant with my rich successful artist boyfriend, and Jonah would prepare our meal himself and serve us, with tears in his eyes...

  Muffled voices interrupted my breakup fantasy before I got to the part where Jonah tells me that he made the biggest mistake of his life back when we were teenagers, and I smile pityingly and say...

  “If the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign is up, that’s what it means. Unless there’s a fire or something.” Miki’s voice was coming from right outside the door. I burrowed under the covers and closed my eyes.

  “So let’s light one. She’s been in there for, like, three hours. It’s not like her. What if she’s, like, choked on her own vomit or something, like Janis Joplin?” Ruth sounded really worried, which was sweet, but I hoped Miki realized that there was a chance Ruth wasn’t speaking figuratively about lighting a fire. For all I knew, she was piling rolled-up newspapers outside the door and reaching for the matches. I smiled a bit in the dark. Maybe the old Ruth wasn’t completely gone. Maybe she needed me after all, if only to keep her from doing stupid things like burning Dad’s house down.

  “Why on earth would she be choking on her own vomit?” Miki asked sharply. “She hasn’t been drinking, has she?”

  “I really need to see if she’s okay, Dr. Stevens.” Jonah’s voice was low and insistent. “If she wants me to go, I’ll go. I promise.”

  There was a soft knock on the door, followed by Miki’s voice.

  “Jonah’s here to see you, Julia. Can he come in?”

  “Okay,” I said. “But no lights.”

  The door opened, and Jonah stumbled into the room.

  He groped his way to the bed, stubbing his toe on the chair.

  “Shit,” he said. I couldn’t help it—I giggled. He sat on the edge of the bed, and I stuck my head out from under the duvet. No way he was going to see what I was wearing if I could help it.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow, Julia,” he said. “I wanted to see you before I went.”

  “Tomorrow?” I squeaked. “So soon?”

  “Yeah. I gotta get set up before classes start. Meet my roommates, buy my books.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I have to tell you something before I go.”

  “Okay.” Here it comes, I thought. The big It’s not you, it’s me—I’ve found someone else—You’re too immature for me speech. I held my breath and dove back under the covers. I wished I could choke on my own vomit. I’d never heard of anyone choking to death on tears and snot.

  “This has been the best summer of my life,” Jonah said slowly. “You, me and Ruth at the lake. Jane’s birth. But mostly you. You’re amazing—the way you’ve helped Ruth, the way you commit to things, even really crazy things. The way y
ou giggle when you’re nervous—I should have said something sooner, but I knew I was going away and it didn’t seem fair to you. Long-distance relationships are hard...and you probably want to date guys your own age and chefs have such brutal hours—”

  “Are you kidding?” I screeched, flinging off the blankets and throwing my arms around him. “Boys my own age are losers. And we can text all the time and talk on the phone and visit on holidays.” I started kissing him—his perfect chin, his crooked nose, his chiseled cheekbones, finally his delicious lips. “It’s only for a year,” I mumbled into his mouth. “I mean, how hard can it be?”

  Jonah laughed, and I pulled him down on the bed beside me. A knock on the door reminded me that Ruth and Miki were probably still standing outside, with their ears pressed against the door.

  “Everything okay in there?” Miki asked.

  “Couldn’t be better,” I yelled.

  “You coming out anytime soon?” Ruth sounded aggrieved and slightly dangerous, the way she did when Jonah and I played Scrabble or watched public television. I grinned at Jonah and rubbed my nose against his.

  “Ahhh. An Inuit kiss,” he sighed. “Can’t say Eskimo anymore, you know.” He loomed over me in the dark and I felt his eyelashes graze my cheek. A butterfly kiss. Nobody had given me a butterfly kiss since I was about six.

  “We’d better get out of here before Ruth goes all Chuck Norris on us,” he said. “You know how she gets.”

  “That I do,” I said. I got off the bed, yanked down my T-shirt, smoothed my shorts and ran my fingers through my hair. There wasn’t much I could do about the way I looked but suddenly it didn’t matter anymore. Jonah held out his hand to me and we left the decompression chamber together. I took the Do Not Disturb sign off the door. I didn’t think I’d need it for a while.

  JONAH LEFT FOR Vancouver the next day, and after that I kept super-busy. Now that I was officially his girlfriend, I missed him more than I ever had when he was away at Bible boot camp. School was about to start up again. I dropped by Dad’s every day to see the babies, but I came home every night to have dinner ready for my mom when she got back from work. I’m not much of a cook, so it was nothing fancy—lots of salads and grilled fish or chicken—and once in a while we even had dessert, which was a totally new thing for my mom.

  “Are you sure you’re not getting too thin?” she asked me one evening as we were doing the dishes together.

  I laughed. “Not a chance,” I said. “I never thought I’d hear you say those words, though.”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “Sometimes I get a little, um, obsessive.”

  “Just a little,” I replied. I bumped her bony hip with my own, and she flicked the dishcloth at my butt.

  “I like being this weight,” I told her, “but I don’t want to get any skinnier. Ruth and I are sort of trying to keep each other honest, and it helps that she can’t eat spicy food or chocolate while she’s nursing. She’s had to cut down on her caffeine intake too, which means no caramel mochaccinos. She’s kind of bummed about that. So that pretty much means I don’t have those things either. Solidarity and all that. Plus, neither of us has any money, so the occasional tub of vanilla Häagen-Dazs is about as exciting as it gets.”

  “So you guys are getting along a bit better these days?” she asked.

  “Yeah, we’re good.” I hesitated. I wanted to talk about Miki—how she’d helped me see that Ruth was struggling with being a mother even though she acted like she had it all figured out. I wanted to tell her how much I loved Boone. I was tired of pussyfooting around in both houses. Maybe if I told Mom how messed up Miki had been, she’d lighten up.

  “How come you hate Miki so much?” I blurted out.

  “I don’t hate Miki,” she said. “Why would you think that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, let’s see: she’s got your husband, a new baby, a lot of money, a fabulous house and a great job.”

  “So—let me get this straight—I’m supposed to hate her for having a good life?” She smiled and put her hands together as if she was praying. “That wouldn’t be very Christian of me, would it?”

  I was gobsmacked. She was making a joke about Jesus. What would be next—a T-shirt that said Jesus Loves You (but only as a friend)? “Well, don’t you hate her? Isn’t that why you freak out every time Dad calls or comes by? Isn’t that why you haven’t bought a baby present for Boone?”

  “Oh, sweetie,” she sighed. “Is that what you think? That I’m jealous of Miki?”

  When I nodded, she put down the dishcloth, sat down at the kitchen table and pointed at the other chair.

  “Sit,” she said. “This is hard to explain, and you’ll probably think I’m crazy, but here goes.” She took a deep breath. “It’s not jealousy or hatred I have the problem with—it’s love. I’ve loved your dad since I was your age, but I’ve known for a long time that we weren’t good together. We were,” she frowned while she searched for the word, “combustible. He’s my addiction and my faith is my AA. You were too young to remember, but we fought a lot and he hated it when I became a Christian. You want a definition of irony, here it is: the thing that finally drove us apart—my faith—is what keeps me from hating him and Miki. But I try really hard to stay out of his life, which unfortunately means staying out of Miki’s and now Boone’s life too. I thought it was best for everybody—including you—if I didn’t get involved. At all. Ever. And sure, sometimes I’m a bit jealous, but only of the material things—the house, the cars, the vacations. Which brings me to something else I need to talk to you about.”

  There was more? All this time I thought Mom hated Dad and Miki, when she’s actually more like a recovering alcoholic who can’t go near a bar? Yikes. What was next? Had the Internet spit up a Bible-believing rancher boyfriend in Texas or somewhere else I really didn’t want to go? Wasn’t this backward? Wasn’t I the one who was supposed to be freaking her out? And wasn’t she the one who taught me all about self-control and self-discipline? I must have looked terrified, because she laughed and grabbed my hand as I got up to pace the kitchen.

  “Sit down, Julia. It’s not that bad. I’m going back to school in a couple of weeks. I should have told you sooner, but everything was so...hectic.”

  “You’re going back to school? What for?” I had a sudden vision of my mom, in her favorite red and white snowflake sweater and sensible walking shoes, sitting next to me in my math class, joining the choir, playing field hockey, pulling straight A’s.

  “I have to do some upgrading at the college first. Then I’m going to apply to law school as a mature student. One of the partners at the firm has been after me for years to get off my butt and go for it. He’s got some pull at the university, and he’s written me an amazing letter of recommendation. I can work part-time if I like, but I’ll probably get student loans and try to get through as quickly as possible. Of course, I have to get into law school first, but Gary thinks I’ll be fine as long as I score high on the lsat. He’s helping me with that too.”

  Gary? Who was Gary, and why was my mom blushing? I was speechless, and believe me, that doesn’t happen very often. A career change is one thing, but a lawyer boyfriend? Maybe Texas wasn’t such a bad idea.

  “Julia?” my mom said. “Say something, honey. I know it’s a bit of a shock, but I’m not getting any younger. And let’s face it, I probably already know more law than most of the lawyers in my firm.” She laughed and got up from the table, kissing the top of my head on her way to the living room.

  I sat for a few minutes and tried to digest everything she’d told me: new career, possibly a new boyfriend—Mom was getting on with her life. So were Jonah and Ruth and Dad and Miki. I sat down beside her on the couch and laid my head on her shoulder.

  “So, this Gary guy—is he hot?” I said.

  Fourteen

  All this happened, more or less.

  —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

  I didn’t scribble an outline in crayon on some wallpape
r before I started writing this book, as Vonnegut says he did. I didn’t actually write an outline at all. I just sat down and wrote. As you’ve probably noticed, there are no aliens (unless you count Ruth’s parents) in my book, and the only wars I’ve ever witnessed are domestic ones, which don’t have quite the narrative punch of the firebombing of Dresden. Even so, when I was writing I often felt like Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut’s hero, looping around in time, dropping in on my own life. Nobody can top Vonnegut when it comes to mixing up tragedy, fantasy, memoir and comedy. He makes it all seem perfectly reasonable. Which it is. Nobody’s life is all one way—tragic, comic, fantastic—it’s all just a big spicy jambalaya of absurdity, even without visitors from the planet Tralfamadore.

  My mom and I both went back to school the week after she told me about Gary. It feels weird, being at school without Ruth, as if I’d forgotten one of my legs at home. Very destabilizing. We’ve been going to the first day of school together forever, clutching new HB pencils and pristine notebooks, our hair held in place by matching Strawberry Shortcake barrettes. I’m in a new homeroom, with Stewart sitting to my right and Brandy right behind him. Marshall’s in another classroom, which is just as well. Over the summer, Stewart and Brandy hooked up, and Dino and Jerry are no more. Marshall’s pretty pissed. He’s even dropped out of the Classics Club, so we let Mark Grange join. Turns out he’s a total movie freak. He even has this thing that he calls Hollywood 9-1-1, which is a list of 555 phone numbers from movies and television shows. So you can call, say, Mr. Burns from The Simpsons or the Christian Broadcasting Channel from South Park.

  For the first couple of weeks of school I answered so many questions about Ruth and Jane that I thought my head was going to explode. I finally did up a FAQ sheet and handed it out to anyone who approached me with a question. Who’s the father? was the question on most girls’ glossy lips; a lot of guys asked, What does it feel like to have your hand up your best friend’s, uh, you know? Neither concern was addressed on my FAQ sheet. A simple Mind your own effing business sufficed. Then Ruth brought Jane to school one afternoon. She was immediately surrounded by a gaggle of cooing girls (including that bitch Rachel Greaves, who had started the rumor about the steak-knife caeserean), and a bunch of guys who muttered things like Look at her tits and She’s hot, man, as they gave each other high fives. Rick Greenway was nowhere to be seen. After Ruth’s visit my celebrity status decreased dramatically, especially when a rumor started going around about the home ec teacher’s passionate affair with a German shepherd. It turned out she’d fallen in love with a man of German descent who owns a sheep farm in New Zealand, but even so, I wasn’t in the spotlight anymore, which suited me fine.