I poked at my portion of the appetizer, feeling gutted. This whole time I’d been walking around Griffith Park, seeking out a monster that wasn’t even there. My psychiatrist had been right. P-22’s proximal vitality had given me a false sense of control over my intangible fears. Now he was sickly and pathetic, and the threat of his nearness and whatever fantasy it afforded me had vanished, or at least been contained.
I’m not sure whether the disappointment was evident on my face or whether Daniela’s psychic powers were simply kicking in, but she seemed to read my mind.
“Apparently there’s another one?” she said, with an optimistic question mark in her voice. “In the Santa Monica Forest—P-41.”
My mind raced. Maybe P-41 would cross the freeways, just like P-22, and end up near enough to us that I’d have an excuse for another hunt. But why was I willing him to come closer? That didn’t seem motherly. And if the animal did show up, then what? I could hear the chorus of parents: You think a mountain lion’s bad? What about drunk drivers, kidnappers, or the first time she gets her heart broken? Terrors come in all shapes and sizes. There would always be another puma.
Just wait.
* * *
The next day I went back to Griffith Park and prowled around, idly wondering where P-41 might set up shop. But instead of looking for animal shit, I found myself distracted by the sight of two eight-year-old girls, dancing and singing upbeat songs about puking, their moms in tow, saying, “Pretty melody.” Farther up the path, a toddler swung between her parents, shouting, “Look, glitter,” her eyes alighting on some silvery garbage poking through the weeds, like she’d just found gold. Her mom glanced at the detritus: a rusty shopping cart stuffed with bulging plastic bags. “Very nice,” she said.
I projected us onto that scene, my husband, our daughter, and me. She’d arrive confused and unknowing, wondering who the hell we were, and we would have to show her. I imagined her at three, unencumbered, easily amused, believing rusty, discarded shopping carts were carriages, that trash was pretty treasure. At eight, she’d make up songs about the times she barfed. Just because I was strange and sort of afraid of everything didn’t mean I had to scare her. In fact, if she turned out to be anything like me or my husband, she would need some reassuring. We were neurotic, but part of parenting would mean deciding which parts of ourselves to reveal. So we would go to Griffith Park, I decided, during the daylight hours, while lions slept, and point out the nice parts: the dogs and desert flowers and birds, and how bits of garbage underfoot could sparkle in the sunlight, how even in the desert, where the earth crumbled and was dry, life somehow thrived. There would still be pumas, but there would also be us, and we would have one another. It wouldn’t always be enough, but it was something: a sense of safety in a predatory world.
Acknowledgments
This book would not be possible without the talent, guidance, and compassion of Betsy Lerner, Peter Blackstock, and Morgan Entrekin. You have my gratitude, admiration, and affection.
In these essays I describe some lonesome moments that might have been intolerable without the incredible support of my closest friends and family: Mom, Dad, Ellie, Drew, Mara, Michael, Carly, Tom, Gail, Michael Hertzberg, Frank, Alex, Nathaniel, Meredith, Jenni, Jemma, Sarah McKetta, Nathan Johnson, Bridget Barry, Amy Heberle, David Iserson, John and Anna Mulaney, Genevieve Angelson, Pinckney Benedict, Jessica Almon Galland, James Gallagher, Mr. and Mrs. Zarwell—and of course, my psychiatrist, Dr. Fox.
I am also deeply indebted to the magazines and websites that first published these essays in their original forms—Hazlitt (“Prey”), the Guardian US (“Snowflake”), the Guardian Weekend (“Catfish”), Elle online (“First I Got Pregnant Then I Decided to Kill the Mountain Lion”), Mary Review (“Cricket”), and Vice (“I Hunted Feral Hogs as a Favor to the World”)—and to all the editors thereof who helped me shape them: Alexandra Molotkow, Jessica Reed, Ruth Spencer, Melissa Denes, Chloe Schama, Mitchell Sunderland, and Jillian Goodman.
As always, I am grateful to my subjects—Susie, Deb, and the people of Snowflake: thank you for opening your lives to me (it is never easy to be written about, I know)—and to those who leant me their time and insight so that I might better understand some of the issues touched on in these essays: Dr. Michael Rich, Nev Schulman, Stephen Dubinsky—and especially Vicki Levi, who provided invaluable research, materials, and priceless advice about the Miss America Pageant, thank you.
Special thanks to filmmaker Mae Ryan and writer Jillian Gagnon, who embarked with me into unknown territory, and generously permitted me to make them characters in my work—and of course to my dear friend Sarah McKetta, who has come with me on more writing assignments than I can count.
Most of all, I am eternally grateful to my husband, Simon, for adoring, encouraging, and inspiring me every day. I love you like crazy. I love you all the time.
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