The Book of Atlantis Black

by Betsy Bonner

  Love, Mom

  Atlantis replied that as soon as the charges were dropped—and she believed it was only a matter of time—she’d be filing a lawsuit against her.

  Atlantis believed that Mom had cheated us both after our father’s death and accused her of hoarding vast sums of cash. In fact, our father’s will had been short and straightforward, leaving everything to Mom. Mom had told us that we could expect to inherit some money in trusts when we turned twenty-five, but when Atlantis reached that age, Mom bumped it up to thirty. And by the time Atlantis turned thirty, Mom had no intention of funding her drug addiction. Atlantis had come to believe there was another, earlier will—something that might have been written and notarized before our father had a brain tumor. Of course there was nothing.

  ·

  One Sunday morning, when I was thirteen and waiting to get picked up at a friend’s house after a sleepover, I was alarmed that my father came to fetch me. Mom was usually in charge of driving us everywhere when Nancy and I were teenagers; I knew that Dad must have come straight from church. He explained that Mom had been in the hospital. She and Nancy had had an argument the night before, Nancy pushed Mom—or made a threatening move—and Mom slipped backward onto the driveway and broke both wrists. My father hadn’t seen it happen and called it an accident.

  After Mom came home, she had to fumble around in double casts, bumping them together to turn doorknobs or the pages of a book. Nancy made light of Mom’s clumsiness. She mimicked a struggle with a knob on the television, knocked her forearms together in imaginary plaster casts, and tried to get me to laugh. I told her that imitating Mom’s helplessness made her look like a psycho; if she had to play a role, why didn’t she pretend to be normal?

  ATLANTIS’S FACEBOOK UPDATES

  May 12

  Atlantis is on the run.

  May 14

  Atlantis is writing a song for Gretchen called “Tennessee”—Gretchen wrote the lyrics and has been begging Atlantis to write the song for months. The muse is at the door.

  Later on May 14:

  Atlantis is emotionally drained from completing “Tennessee”—it’s very raw and sad and real. She now wonders if it sucks.

  And she wrote on Gretchen’s Facebook wall:

  I love how every time we think we should write a book about our lives, something more dramatic happens, like I end up in jail or you in the psych ward—LOL. Two muses colliding!!

  What was up with Gretchen in the psych ward?

  Atlantis sent an MP3 of “Tennessee” to me, and to four of her former bandmates, with this message:

  Half her lyrics, half mine—inspired by her—she was begging me to write it for months—but PLEASE read the “disclaimers” before you listen to the song.

  Atlantis’s “disclaimers” were in a message she’d sent to Gretchen earlier that day, which she also forwarded:

  I apologize for the excrutiating [sic], painful vocals—like I said, I need to record it on a hi-fi device—but then again, “Tennessee” is a very excrutiating, painful song . . .

  I didn’t listen to the song. Instead, I wrote back: “I want to spend some time with you this summer.”

  Atlantis replied that she’d found a job—ghostwriting the autobiography of an aging rock star from the eighties:

  He wants to do some weird live video thing that the only thing I can possibly relate it to is “The Wall” by Pink Floyd. He’s taking me out to his desert casa for a few days next week before my court hearing so I can start writing in a clear and silent environment.

  I spent the last 28 hours with him—but at least I was making money.

  What the fuck?

  ·

  I returned to Paros, kept myself busy exploring more of the island, and had a visit from my old college friend Michelle—now a sculptor and yoga instructor. I had a platonic crush on Michelle, who was well-read and as independent-minded as my mother or Atlantis.

  Michelle and Atlantis had met six years before, when my sister and I were living together in New York. I’d worried that Atlantis might find her pretentious—which I knew was how Atlantis saw me sometimes—but she loved Michelle’s story about working for some conceptual artist who’d paid her six dollars an hour to roll up hundred-dollar bills, tie strings around them, and hang them from trees.

  Michelle looked athletic after her years of physical discipline, and her once-unruly hair had been chopped off in an adorable pixie cut. She had, of course, done it herself.

  I took her to a taverna and spilled my guts about Atlantis’s legal and personal situation. She said that Atlantis had “a fragile and sensitive soul,” which could be difficult in this world and “in other ones,” but my accounts of the German Gentleman, the Millionaire from Mexico, and the Aging Eighties Rock Star worried her.

  Michelle asked if I was considering visiting Atlantis. I had to leave Greece soon anyway—since I didn’t have a work visa, I was required to go somewhere out of the country for a few weeks if I wanted to return for the summer—so I bought a ticket and wrote to Atlantis that I was coming to California on June 7. She replied that this wasn’t a good time. I told her that was exactly why I was coming.

  “OK,” she wrote. “But don’t judge me about my weight.”

  ·

  In group emails to family and her old friends, Atlantis sent updates about her court case and her living situation. She said she was on the verge of homelessness, out of cash, and vomiting blood.

  Oh, I was chained and shackled next to a girl on the jail bus who has a house in Mexico—we were practically soul mates. When I asked her what her name was, she said, “It’s very strange—you won’t forget it—” and she showed me her wristband: EUNICE. How weird is that? So funny how once you decide to map out your life, things just start falling into place.

  It was weird that she’d been tethered to another Eunice. But whatever she thought she was mapping out could hardly be called a life. All she seemed to want was money; for drugs, I assumed, but possibly to flee the country. She said she’d been stealing food; Aunt Tina advised her to go to soup kitchens. Aunt Tina also sent a couple of hundred dollars behind Mom’s back, with an admonition that it be put toward gas and rent, and nothing else.

  On May 25, Atlantis wrote to me that she had a friend sending her heroin “in case of the very worst possibility.” And she wrote to our uncle, the executor of our father’s estate, demanding a copy of the will. “Don’t tell anyone this,” she wrote to me,

  but I gave a guy a handjob the other day for $100 b/c I had to pay the utility bill. It was so disgusting and I couldn’t believe I did it, but I am so fucking desperate and so broke. I just wish our mother would give me my share of what our father left us and call it even. Because there’s no way I’ll be able to see a dime of that money if I’m looking up at the Mona Lisa—too many people will be watching and AB won’t be the same AB. I’d have to get it through you, and god knows how I’d do that.

  It was partly my own fault. I shouldn’t have participated in Atlantis’s fantasy of disappearing, but how could I tell my sister now that I would never show up at the Louvre, in any July, in any year? Still, I could barely control my loathing; I knew that Atlantis was manipulating me, and that I could no longer deal with this by myself. I forwarded her entire message to my aunt and told her that Atlantis needed real help, that I was frightened by what she might do, and that Mom should consider giving her some money. If Mom refused, I might be able to send some of what little money I’d saved from the 92Y and hadn’t spent in Greece. I made an appointment through my aunt to talk with Mom on the phone—at six in the morning for me, eleven at night for her—but she never called.

  ·

  Atlantis knew that I’d ratted her out to Aunt Tina.

  I PRAY TO GOD you have not told her what I told you in utter confidence re: the handjob. I am so ashamed and so mortified—and the worst part is that I was DEAD SOBER while I did it.

  I would cut off my own hand before I ever let you do somethi
ng like that—but again, this is my life, not yours.

  I have my limits. I NEVER went any further than the HJ (I can’t even believe I’m even talking like this) but it was quick cash and I’d done it so many times before for free as a teenager it just didn’t seem like that big of a deal. Anyway, enough of the HJ incident. Pretend you never heard about it.

  Atlantis was right. This was her life, not mine.

  ATLANTIS’S FACEBOOK UPDATES

  May 28

  Atlantis is also in utter denial that she is so poor that she’s been reduced to selling her guitar.

  Atlantis is still aroused from an erotic dream she had about Hillary Clinton.

  May 29

  Atlantis is having girl-drama with underage girls and she is not interested in either one.

  May 29

  Atlantis is wondering if last night was just a bad dream—but the evidence suggests it wasn’t—so she’s going back to sleep.

  May 30

  Atlantis is recalling with horror being “invited” to another 3-some last night. She thought those days were over!!

  June 5

  Atlantis is obsessing over the loaded .45 that’s under the bed where she sleeps that she just learned how to use yesterday.

  ·

  She’d posted two close-up photographs of what looked like a pistol sticking out of her underwear. Or I assumed it was her—the photographs didn’t show her face. The caption read: “AB’s on the run, AB’s got a gun . . .” And she quoted a line she loved from Natural Born Killers: “How sexy am I now, motherfuckers?”

  I was back with Dan, in Athens, getting ready to visit San Diego, on the date that those photographs were posted. I never saw them until after she disappeared.

  ·

  ATLANTIS’S FACEBOOK UPDATES

  June 6

  Atlantis is obsessing over her growing-out mullet. People keep telling her, “I love your hair!!” Then again, so did all the girls in jail . . .

  ·

  On the eve of my departure from Greece, Atlantis wrote that she was excited to see me—although she might “have to go” while I was there: “The Mona Lisa might be closer than you think.”

  SAN DIEGO, MARCH 2008

  I moved to San Diego to get my bearings. That’s what I’m doing here now—just getting my bearings.

  13.

  On June 7, Dan took me to the Athens airport, and I flew to San Diego, with a couple of hours’ layover at JFK. On the ground in New York, I realized that I was very afraid of what I would find in San Diego; I considered canceling the rest of the trip and just staying in the city for a while before going back to Greece for the summer. I could catch my breath and see my friends—my family of choice. I was willing to put up with feeling guilty for the rest of my life. In my journal, I drew a guitar and wrote: “If you die, I will learn to play.” Then I boarded the plane for California.

  In San Diego, I checked into the Vagabond Inn, a hotel with a pool that my sister had liked when she’d stayed there with Leah, her former partner, the previous year. Atlantis wasn’t answering her phone. I left a voicemail, sent a text, then picked up Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace, which I’d read in Greece and brought as a gift for Atlantis.

  Sometime in the night, the phone awakened me. “Ms. Bonner? Atlantis Black is here to see you.”

  A muffled pause, then the voice. “Hey you! Oh shit, sorry, darlin’, did I wake you up?”

  In that moment, I didn’t care if she was drunk or pilling. It was her. Just a flight of stairs away.

  “Hey! It’s room 208—”

  “Oh shit, sorry, darlin’. My phone died and I didn’t realize it had gotten so late—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Room 208. Do you need me to come down and get you?”

  “No no no.”

  When I opened the door, she caught me in her arms and nearly knocked me over. She stank of beer and a new perfume—someone else’s scent? I held her long enough to feel her bird’s heartbeat, then pulled away to look at her.

  Her face was flushed, her hair unwashed. She was wearing her faded Old Navy jacket and the same Converse low-tops she’d worn hiking at Glacier Point. Her eyes were rimmed with red.

  “I’m so glad you’re back!” she said. “So what’s all this drama with the guy in Greece? Do you think he’ll come live with you in the States? Good thing you’re finally getting laid! Did he give you orgasms? You know, we might find someone for you here. My friend Montana’s a total dyke but one of her guy friends is a hot bartender and he’s single I think . . .”

  She told me that the Millionaire from Mexico had canceled his business trips after she’d moved her things into his garage and that they’d been living together in San Marcos for the past week. (I wondered what had happened with the German Gentleman.) If we all got along, she said, I could stay in his guest room while I was in town. He’d offered to cook dinner for both of us the following night.

  I made a list of practical things she needed—a place to live, food, money, a job—then stepped outside the hotel and called Mom. If she would agree to send money, I would do what I could to help Atlantis into rehab, or at least into a new living situation.

  “Jail would be the best thing that could happen to her,” Mom said.

  “She says they beat her up there.”

  “Oh, fine,” she said. “I’ll send you a check, but this is the last one. When I die, the rest is going to the ASPCA.”

  ·

  The next day, I found Atlantis a sublet that would start July 1—three weeks from then—and last her through the summer. I filled a cart with healthy food and nonalcoholic beer at the Ocean Beach People’s Organic Food Market on Voltaire Street. On our way to the Millionaire from Mexico’s, Atlantis said she needed to stop at a sports bar on the same street.

  “No way,” I said.

  “I’ve got money waiting,” she said. “I did a shift for a friend last week.”

  “I can’t support you if you’re drinking.”

  “You don’t know everything,” she said. “I earned that money and we need it. Come on, it’ll take two seconds.”

  I followed her into the dark bar, where some dudes were sitting around drinking beer and watching the TV. The bartender hugged her and counted out a hundred dollars.

  It took two seconds.

  ·

  The Millionaire from Mexico’s house in San Marcos was indeed spacious and was bordered with lush gardens watered by sprinklers. There was a black sports car in the driveway. Before we went inside, I memorized the license plate.

  We found the Millionaire in the kitchen, cooking spaghetti and mixing a salad with greens he said he’d picked from his garden. He wore glasses with wire rims, was clean-cut and a bit paunchy. Atlantis went up to him and pecked him on the cheek. He shook my hand and looked me briefly in the eye, but mostly he seemed lost in Atlantis. Over dinner, he talked about his mother in Mexico, and his dead wife, and I decided that he was a lonely man, but probably not a psycho killer. When he offered me his guest room, I accepted.

  Atlantis excused herself to make a phone call, and the Millionaire asked me where I’d been in Greece. He seemed impressed by all the islands and ruins I’d visited.

  “Your sister’s very beautiful,” he said. “You are too—but my God, you’re so different. I can’t believe you’re from the same family.”

  As I was bringing my bags upstairs, I overheard Atlantis talking on the phone. “It’s kind of hard to sell myself when I’m like, uh, you know, I’m not gonna have sex with them. So I’m kind of looking for people that, you know, might not be of US citizen descent.”

  She was leaving a voicemail for an old friend of hers named Colleen, a Brooklyn-based writer whom she trusted. Colleen had once told Atlantis that if she didn’t write the story of her life, she, Colleen, would do it.

  ATLANTIS’S FACEBOOK UPDATES

  June 9

  Atlantis is about to embark on a legal frenzy before her perliminary [sic] hearing on Wednesday. She
also has to iron her suit, if she can remember how to use an iron.

  June 10

  Atlantis is filling out an application to the Peace Corps praying they’ll do the background check before her trial is over.

  June 11

  Atlantis is about to get in the shower and face the music. She has to be at the Courthouse by 8:15am. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WAKES UP THIS EARLY??!!

  ·

  The morning of the hearing, we got up at dawn for the trek from San Marcos to the San Diego courthouse. She took the wheel—driving relaxed her—and played Amy Winehouse and Arcade Fire on her iPod. A gray blazer she’d picked up at Walmart was on the armrest between us. I gazed out the window at manzanita, and smelled eucalyptus and the Pacific Ocean. I could almost pretend that we were taking one of our road trips, free to go wherever.

  ·

  In the hallway outside the courtroom, Atlantis called out to a beefy, blue-eyed man in a suit. “Fancy meeting you here! This is my sister. She came all the way from Greece.”