Reckless Years

by Heather Chaplin

  Tuesday, May 6, 2008

  There was a rumor about me in the sixth grade, a rumor that I’d been molested. Stacy Klien started it. I imagined pushing her in the chest and knocking her to the ground and watching her bleed, but instead I crept away and refused to speak to my mother on the way home and then hid in bed burning up as if I had a fever.

  I used to say to my mom, “There’s a man’s face looming over me. He’s got long hair and a beard and his eyes are blazing.” And she said, “How awful. How strange.” Once, when I was fourteen, I said to my father, just to see what he’d say, “There’s a man’s face looming over me. He’s got long hair and a beard and his eyes are blazing.” I described him to him. I said, “Do you think anyone who looks like that ever did something terrible to me?” And he said, “Heather, how awful. Let me think about it.”

  Wednesday, May 7, 2008

  This morning I went over and peered into the tray of seedlings and almost fell over backward. There were tiny green shoots, the breadth of a hair from my head, emerging from the dirt.

  “Peter! What is happening here?”

  Peter was like, “They’re growing.”

  “Are you insane?” I said. “It’s a fucking miracle.”

  “Yeah, it’s called the miracle of life, dude.”

  All the hairs on my arm were standing up. “I never in a million years thought it would work,” I said.

  And then Peter helped me back to bed.

  Friday, May 9, 2008

  What can I tell you about my father? Should I tell you about the time I was eight and he put Faith and me in the backseat of his car and talked to us about the joys of child-adult sex? He used to talk to me about this fairly regularly, actually—these “other cultures” where people went off to eat in private but made love all together in one joyous group, grown-ups and kids together. He said these cultures were far more advanced. He quoted Plato. Did other fathers not have similar conversations with their daughters? Faith and I had huddled together, silent and shivering in the back of the car, and in my mind I’d shouted, No! No! No!

  Saturday, May 10, 2008

  Soon, Peter and I will start putting the seedlings out on the back steps. It turns out that you can’t introduce plants to the outdoors all at once. It has to be in stages. One hour for the first few days. Two after that, and so on, until, eventually, when they’re hardy enough, you leave them out over night. Only after that do you plant them.

  “How will we know?” I say to Peter. “Let’s just kill them now instead of waiting and watching them die.”

  Peter says we should hold off.

  Sunday, May 11, 2008

  At night I lie in bed and listen to the little sounds that Peter makes on the other side of the house. I want to call out to him to come sit with me in bed. I know this would be highly inappropriate so I refrain, but I find it very difficult when he’s not near me. He’s so kind. All day long, he cooks little bits of vegetables and soup and lentils to try and tempt me. Sometimes I eat a bit. Sometimes I don’t.

  Peter doesn’t want to have sex with me. Or if he does, he would never show it. He’s only twenty-six and he’s so shy. His eyes never glow at me. This is why I can trust him. It’s just like how I made my marriage a nonsexual one. That was the only way I could trust Josh. Although a fat lot of good that did me.

  It’s been two years and a month just about exactly since I started keeping this whole thing. I don’t want this to be the end of my story.

  Wednesday, May 14, 2008

  What can I tell you about my father? Should I tell you that I called him up when I was graduating college and had fallen in love with Josh and had my last breakdown? “I know what you did,” I said. “I know what you are. And I will never speak to you again.” And he’d said, “I know I was a terrible father. You have every right to hate me, but what are you talking about specifically?”

  I’d sputtered and cried and said, “You know what I’m talking about!” And then he’d gotten really mad, madder than I’ve ever heard him, and he screamed, “That is not reality, Heath!” And the way he said “Heath” had deflated me entirely.

  The voices had said, You little shit. Why are you always making things up? Why are you trying to make your father’s life difficult with your lies? And I’d gone to my room and taken a serrated knife and cut three long gashes across my midriff, just to punish myself, to get myself to shut up. The next day he sent me two dozen long-stemmed red roses with a card saying, “I love you.” And I’d screamed and screamed until my dorm mates had pounded on the door and the mental health department had called my mother.

  Thursday, May 15, 2008

  I went out into the garden tonight, after it had gotten dark. The whole place was swarming with slugs. I don’t know if that’s right. Do slugs swarm? Whatever they do, they were doing it. Slithering. They were slithering. Peter said, “Dude, it’s just part of having a garden.” But I gritted my teeth. “No,” I said. “There will be no slugs in my garden. I will eradicate those fuckers. I will triumph.”

  Friday, May 16, 2008

  Seth and Cecilia are lending me ten thousand dollars. Do I need to tell you I didn’t get the job monetizing content for the Goldsteins? I can’t tell you how I cried when Seth and Cecilia did this, all day. I could not stop. I felt so confused—like it was shattering my worldview. Do people actually care? And then Eleanor lent me five thousand dollars. They want me to rest for a while. This generosity fills me with rage and shame and wonder.

  I talk to Seth almost every day. He comes over all the time. But it’s hard because I can never tell him what the problem is. Peter says I should tell him. But I don’t think Seth would ever forgive me.

  Please don’t let this be the end of my story.

  Saturday, May 17, 2008

  Brought the seedlings out into the garden with me this afternoon for their first hour outside. My rosebush is almost four feet high this year and looks like it’s about to bloom. I think, that’ll be nice. I wonder, vaguely, who will take care of my flowers when I’m dead. Surely I will be dead soon?

  Monday, May 19, 2008

  I’m sick of telling you about my father. I have a chafing sensation between my legs when I think of him, is that not enough? I have phantom hands on my breasts. You’d probably like something more specific, wouldn’t you? Maybe, secretly, you want something graphic, even. Well, sorry to disappoint. All I have are shards of memory. What a stupid phrase. My shrink after college used to say that. He’d say, “Survivors often don’t remember abuse. They are left only with”—and here he’d raise his hand in the air and close his eyes—“shards of memory.” He was such a pretentious fuck. Me, I’m not a poet. I’m a facts-based person. I told you that at the beginning. I’ve spent my whole life feeling ashamed of this knowledge I have about my father, but no, I told myself, no way, shards of memory are not enough. You got facts or you got nothing. But then the shards got so bad when I was leaving college, pointed and spiked, like glass breaking in my hands. Then after I told my father off, I spent more hours than I care to recall sitting in the closet crying while voices called me a sniveling liar and images of a leather strap ripped my back to shreds and a machete went up between my legs. So now, at this point, I give up. I’d say shards of memory is pretty fucking apropos. My hands are bloodied with them.

  Tuesday, May 20, 2008

  “Peter . . .”

  “Yes, dude?”

  “Once he picked me up from school when I was sick. And he was so nice to me. He brought me soup. He said he wouldn’t be mad if I accidentally threw up and didn’t make it to the bathroom on time.”

  I’ve been crying all day.

  “I know, dude.”

  “And Peter. He taught me how to use chopsticks.”

  “I know, dude. I know.”

  And then I just lay in my bed, the tears running down the sides of my face and into my ears. My father is with me all the time. He owns me. There’s just no way to stay alive, this being the state of things. It
is too oppressive. Eventually, all the lifeblood will simply drain out of me. There’s nothing dramatic about it. It’s just that the struggle is over, and soon, I imagine, I’ll be dead.

  There are aphids on my foxgloves.

  Wednesday, May 21, 2008

  I’ve come up with a better term than shards of memory. You know how dancers develop muscle memory—your body learns what to do so your mind doesn’t have to think about it? That’s what it’s been like for me. I would call what I have physical memories. Between my legs knows. My chest knows. My neck knows. My brain remembers nothing, but my body knows it all.

  It’s funny, isn’t it. At the end of the day, there really is nothing that will save you—no man, no medicine. Just the moments as they tick by.

  Saturday, May 24, 2008

  After I took the seedlings into the garden for their outdoor time, I lay on the couch and watched six hours of BBC’s Edward the King. The scenery is made of cardboard but I don’t care. It’s good stuff.

  “That’s my girl,” Eleanor says. “A little European royal history to get you up and running.”

  Sprayed the aphids with soap and water. Didn’t help at all.

  Peter went on online and found out you need ladybugs to deal with aphids. I ordered some.

  Monday, May 26, 2008

  Seedlings continue to grow.

  On couch. Finished Edward the King. Started a book about Louis XIV. What filth they lived in at Versailles. Was it worth it for the jewels?

  The ladybugs arrived. Peter and I went out back and released them, spooning them out of their container onto plants all around the garden. We shall see. I doubt they’ll help. I’m feeling a bit of my old homicidal self return. Am very angry at aphids. Also at the lilies my mother gave me because they’re growing sideways instead of straight.

  Tuesday, May 27, 2008

  Walked a small circle around the block with Sakura and Peter. That was a step. Watched first four hours of Fall of Eagles about the Hohenzollern, Hapsburg, and Romanov empires. Wilhelm II. What a maniac. He was in Edward the King too, always driving his English cousins crazy. Amazing how history turns upon such things as a person in the wrong place at the wrong time being out of his mind.

  Wednesday, May 28, 2008

  Didn’t take seedlings out today because it was raining. Peter thought they’d be fine, but I don’t think they’re ready for that yet. Finished Fall of Eagles. World War I not actually Wilhelm’s fault. Franz Joseph of Austria gives order to go into Balkans. Why does he do it?

  Thursday, May 29, 2008

  Sitting in the garden. Sakura is sniffing the miniature English daisies.

  “Peter,” I say. “Why do you think Franz Joseph invaded the Balkans? I mean, he started World War One.”

  Peter takes his laptop off his lap, puts it down on the bench beside him, and crosses his arms high up on his chest.

  “It was an act of nihilism,” he says.

  “You think everyone is a nihilist.”

  “No, I’m serious. I’ve thought about this.”

  “Okay,” I say. “You’re the student. You tell me.”

  “Everything he knew was over. His era was up. He’d been raised from the day he was born to be emperor of all this territory that didn’t even make sense anymore by the time he was an adult. He married the most beautiful princess in the world, who then spent all her time traveling instead of staying in Austria and being empress. She fucking supported Hungarian independence.”

  “I always wanted to be the most beautiful princess in the world,” I say.

  “His son and heir was an opium addict who killed his seventeen-year-old girlfriend and then himself in a suicide pact. His wife who wouldn’t stay home got murdered by an Italian anarchist on one of her trips. And then his next heir, Franz Ferdinand, marries a commoner, which no one in their family has ever done in like six hundred years. I mean, shit is falling apart.”

  “The center cannot hold,” I say.

  “Franz Ferdinand only goes to Sarajevo in the first place because the officials there promise not to snub his wife.”

  Peter raises his arms in the air. “And then he gets assassinated by anarchists.” He recrosses his arms. “So it’s like an honor thing, but also, it’s just kind of saying, fuck it, I give up, I don’t understand what’s going on anymore, I can’t make sense of this world—and jumping into the abyss, you know?”

  “Damn,” I say. And then, “I thought you were studying religion.”

  Peter opens his laptop. “They make you take history too.”

  Saturday, May 31, 2008

  All the ladybugs flew away, while the aphids remain. I am losing control of my garden. It is the one thing in the world that gives me any pleasure, and I am losing it to a bunch of pests.

  Kieran calls me. He’s met someone. Someone he really likes. He says he has me to thank for the relationship. I assume he means because I forced him to look into himself. I’m thinking, okay, I was his training wheels; there are worse roles you could play than helping someone learn to love again. I say, “How so?” because I want to hear him say these things. But no. Apparently his new girl is friends with the Irish art gallery owner. At first this girl didn’t want to go out with Kieran but the art gallery owner said she had an American friend (me) who’d had the best sex of her life with Kieran O’Shea, and that convinced her to give him a try.

  “Thanks for the recommendation, girl,” Kieran says.

  So I guess that was the point of my connection with Dublin. To help Kieran O’Shea find his real love. Christ, why me? I think. And then, this cannot be the end of my story.

  Tuesday, June 3, 2008

  Something in the night took Cookie Monster–sized bites out of my lupines. It’s slugs, I know it. I put a border of pennies around every flower out there. Copper is supposed to be like kryptonite to slugs. I might be dead soon, but first I will kill all the slugs in my garden.

  Summer is coming to visit next month.

  Friday, June 13, 2008

  Left the seedlings out for eight hours. And there they were, looking green and hearty. Some of the Lilliput zinnias are even beginning to flower. This is good because I had to remove two foxgloves yesterday—I haven’t been able to get rid of the aphids and I didn’t want the whole garden to become infested. Then, the lilies my mother gave me are essentially lying down. Also, my pansies have grown long and stringy and they cause me a great deal of distress to look at them.

  Saturday, June 21, 2008

  Colin Landau came over today. He’s in the US now covering Obama’s campaign for the Guardian and when he asked if he could visit, I said, “Well, I’m housebound, but if you want to come sit in my garden, you can.” And apparently he did. We sat under the Christmas lights, beside the pink blooms of my rosebush. I made him look at the slugs slithering along between my flowers. Colin did not agree with me that this is necessarily a disaster. “I think they’re quite common,” he said. “You need to do something about them, sure. But is your garden wrecked? No.”

  He’s very reasonable, that Colin Landau.

  He said, “So, how you doing since I saw you in London?”

  “I’ve been a little lonely,” I said.

  He tilted his head to one side. “That’s funny,” he said. “By your own philosophy, there’s no such thing as alone.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Well, all that business about complex systems, right? Isn’t the point that everything is interconnected? Like you said, subparticles only exist in relation to one another.”

  Then his eyes grew very kind. “But I’m just being a twat and intellectualizing everything. Of course sometimes a person just feels lonely. That’s okay too.”

  We sat out there for a long time. Colin is so elegant. He’s long and slim and, just like in London, he was wearing a neat charcoal blazer. He looks so straight, but his mind seems so unusual. I find him disarming. He said I should come visit him in DC. If I don’t die first, I think I will.

  Sun
day, June 22, 2008

  Ben and Marie and my brother and Cecilia come over with Alex and the new baby, whose name is Owen. He’s a beautiful baby. A perfect oval face with a tuft of blond hair on top. Totally alert, watching us all through blue baby eyes. Ben and Marie sit together on the iron love seat I have out there. Ben’s got his arm around her shoulders. His other hand is on Alex’s head, who leans between his knees. They seem so well. I can’t believe anyone could ever seem so well after what they’ve been through.

  “The garden’s looking good,” my brother says. He’s eating a burger that Peter just handed him. Peter is manning the grill.

  “No, it’s not,” I say. “It’s all fucked-up.” I start pointing around.

  “See that bare spot? Those were my foxgloves. And there, look at those pansies—look how they’re growing sideways. And the same over there with the rosebush—it’s nearly horizontal. And my lilies too—look at that. It’s like they want to lie down on the ground.”

  “Oh, shut up,” my brother says.

  “Yeah, enough,” Cecilia says. “It’s amazing back here.”

  “And I can’t get rid of the slugs.”

  “Slugs are part of a garden,” Peter says.

  Alex is two and a half now. I don’t think he remembers me at all. I find myself staring at him, looking into his eyes, trying to see if there’s some connection between us. He has a startled look about him. It makes me feel tremendously sad. Even as I’m oohing and aahing over Owen, the new baby, I’m thinking, poor little guy. Does he know? Does he remember? Even if he doesn’t, will he ever escape it? Surely you can’t just step around something like that. I’m afraid almost to look at Marie. If it were me, I’d hate the world so much that I would never, ever feel safe enough to have another child. Then I think, there’s no such thing as safety anyway.