The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky

by Jana Casale

  “You’ll be over that loser in no time,” Erin said.

  “Yeah, fuck him!” Leda continuously felt the need to denigrate her ex whenever she spoke to Erin, because Erin seemed to be very tried and true when it came to men. “Hey, he either steps it up or I get a new vibrator!” was Erin’s personal dating mantra, and Leda was quite impressed.

  They planned to go out to a sports club in downtown Boston. Leda wasn’t much for clubs, but Erin had convinced her it was a great way to meet guys. After an incredibly demoralizing encounter with a guy who danced with her for 2.3 seconds, said “Let me know when it gets awkward,” and then half a second later whispered “You’re beautiful” and walked away, Leda became violently ill from bad Chinese takeout. She spent the majority of the night in a bathroom stall listening to women peeing and then clanking out of the bathroom over and over between stomach cramps and dry heaves. By midnight she’d managed to finally get herself in condition to head back out, where she found Erin dancing the night away with some guy wearing a bizarre T-shirt with dolphins all over it. He looked younger than he probably was and had a rat-tail down his back. When Leda tried to talk to him, he answered everything in Austin Powers quotes: “Yeah, baby!” and then “Oh, behave!” Erin laughed like it was funny, and Leda lost all respect for her tried-and-true friend. These are the standards of a woman who told me my ex was a loser? She took a cab home and typed out a text to her ex-boyfriend that she’d never send. “I miss you,” it said. She avoided Erin after that.

  It seemed to Leda women would spout ideals that were in no way reflective of the men who stood by their sides. Another friend she’d known from school, Hanna, a wickedly intelligent woman who had four degrees, including a PhD in women’s studies, married a guy who regularly used the term fat chicks and posted all kinds of articles arguing that pay inequality was a myth. “Me and my hubby disagree about politics but we agree about snuggles,” she’d posted beside a picture of them. Snuggles? Leda thought. Et tu, Hanna?

  And if it weren’t some conflict of ideals it was just a kind, loving, good woman matched up with a short-tempered asshole, or a cheater, or a bum. Women making excuses over and over and for what? The shallow sense of self it provided? Is it shallow when it feels like everything? Leda wondered.

  She thought to text Elle after seeing her post. Maybe she’d frame it innocently, as “How are you?” or maybe she’d just go for it and say “You’re staying???” But really she felt that she shouldn’t judge her dear Elle floating and flailing in her rich relationship. Life was hard and short and happiness was complicated and dusty.

  That night Leda cuddled up close to John. She felt grateful for his kindness and his warm body pressed up against her. As she drifted off to sleep, she thought about Grace, a girl she knew in middle school who gave an eighth-grade boy a blow job. It was the first blow job any of the girls had given, and the details of it circled the school three times over. “She swallowed” wafted up and down hallways as girls huddled close in disapproval and sheer awe. In the context of seventh grade the repercussions of the blow job meant many things, but mostly it meant a new tool on deck for scores of girls to feel simultaneously intimidated by and superior to Grace. With an eye roll or one giggly comment so much power could be dealt and wielded and ripped in and out of each other’s hands. How awful, Leda thought. She then thought of Elle and her smiling face on the beach, looking as perfect as always, and she was sad and angry and exhausted by it all.

  Little did she know then that the phone conversation from days before would be the last time she’d ever speak to her friend. There would be no more desperate calls or texts, no more lunches, no more contemplative reasoning between the two of them. Off into the ether their friendship would go, and that night they both slept beside men who loved them.

  CHAPTER 47

  Leda and Her Mom

  “Do you want to take anything from the backyard?”

  “What?”

  “The backyard.”

  Leda’s parents were moving to a condo. They’d sold the house, and her mom asked her to come go through all her old things to decide what of her childhood was worth saving. At first Leda didn’t think much of it. She was sure that at this point in her life she’d effortlessly sort through old stuffed animals and hair accessories from 1997. Pass over boxes of dolls and school projects with ease, fearlessly donating her life away, tossing its excess into the garbage. But it wasn’t like that. The moment she opened her old closet and came upon a mechanical chick that jigged across the floor circa Easter 1993, she felt an upending sense of doubt in all potentials of progress.

  “How cute is this?” she said to her mom, pointing as it moved across the floor.

  Her mom shrugged. “I can’t believe it still works.”

  “Should I give it to Annabelle?”

  “Will she really want it? It’s kind of young for her.”

  “I think she will.” And Leda put the chick in a box marked “Annabelle.”

  Within twenty minutes the box marked “Annabelle” was overflowing.

  “Leda, this is too many things. She’s not going to want it all. And even if she does, your house will be overrun with all this crap.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll put it into storage and she can save it for her children.”

  “Oh, please, Leda, that’s crazy. Throw it away.”

  Leda looked over at her mom’s “keep pile.” It was small and elegant.

  “Aren’t you going to miss the house, Mom?”

  “Yeah, in some ways.”

  “All this stuff, it makes me so sad to see you throwing it all away. I could cry. Really, I’m trying not to cry but I could.”

  “Don’t cry for things that can’t cry for you,” her mom said.

  “Did you just make that up?”

  “No, it’s a saying.”

  “Well, it’s brilliant. But I still feel like crying.”

  A few hours later (after Leda spent forty-five minutes looking through her fifth-grade science fair project about ants), she and her mom went out for lunch.

  “What does that say? I don’t have my glasses.”

  “Goat cheese,” Leda read.

  Leda worried about her parents getting old almost every single second of every single day. If her mom told her the same story twice she’d beg her to go get tested for Alzheimer’s. If her mom ever started a conversation with “Your dad…,” Leda would fill in the blank with violent momentum: “broke his hip,” “has heart disease.”

  “No, Jesus, calm down,” her mom would say.

  To what end any of it was didn’t seem to make much of a difference, and as it was she and her mom just continued along as they had always done. Leda, coming to her for all kinds of advice, admiring her, looking up so faithfully to the woman who sold her home and broke a roll over her goat cheese salad.

  “So John and I got in this huge fight yesterday about the bureau. You know the one that sat unassembled in our bedroom for, like, six months?”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, I finally made him put it together, and of course he was a total jerk about it. He always puts me in this position of being this nagging wife and then complains when I act that way. It’s like, I wouldn’t be like this if you would just do the things that you said you were going to do.”

  Leda thought of her husband in flashes of aggravation: the bureau never being built, her computer that still ran slow, the kitchen table he always promised to wipe down.

  “Maybe you should talk to him about it when you aren’t fighting. You know, tell him specific ways he could help you. I think men do better with concrete direction.”

  “That’s what I already do.”

  “Yeah, but do it one thing at a time and be very praising when he does help, even something small.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “It works.”

&n
bsp; “Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think things will ever change, honestly.”

  Leda looked down at her salad, the same goat cheese one as her mom had, and she remembered the feeling she’d felt right after Annabelle was born as she was holding her in her arms. Randomly she’d remember it, the elation. The utter and total limitlessness of the joy she’d felt. And then whatever she struggled with in that moment was instantly gone, dissolved by the memory of her happiness. “What can I say, John means well,” she said, thinking of baby hands and the smell of hospital gowns.

  After lunch Leda and her mom went for a walk down the bike path in the center of town. It was cool out despite the sun, but they soon warmed up as they got moving.

  “So many new houses,” her mom said, looking off at a construction site. “It’s kind of a shame.”

  “Why? It’s good people want to live here.”

  “It’s just sad that it’s become a town only for rich people.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can’t wait to leave,” her mom said.

  “Yeah, I can understand that. Although…I don’t know what,” Leda said.

  They walked past all the new construction, and over the little bridge that covered a brook.

  “Remember when we used to play Pooh Sticks here?” her mom said.

  “Are you kidding? It was, like, the best part of my childhood.”

  When Leda was young she and her mom would walk to the little brook and toss sticks in on one side of the bridge. Whichever stick came out first on the other side was the winner. Her mom got the game from Winnie-the-Pooh. They’d read the books together, and when Annabelle was little her grandma read them to her too.

  “I should have brought Annabelle along so we could have played one last game.”

  “One last game? We can come back anytime. We’re moving, not dying.”

  “That’s true.”

  The rest of the walk they talked about Elena Ferrante’s novels. Her mom had just finished the first in the Neapolitan series.

  “I love how all of the politics are just interwoven into the story. It’s so political at times, but you’d never really think of it in those terms,” she said.

  “Yeah, she doesn’t use it as a crutch like so many writers do. It’s there but not just for the sake of deepening the novel, you know?” Leda said.

  “It’s masterful,” her mom said.

  They got back to her parents’ house and started organizing the last of the boxes.

  Leda took a break to use the bathroom. As she sat on the toilet peeing, she looked around the little room. How many times I’ve peed in here, she thought. She finished up and washed her hands. Before leaving she put her hand against the wall. Slowly and carefully she ran it along the tile. She watched it bump past each line of grout. You can’t take it with you. And then she thought of her mom and how strong she was, always. She remembered the time she and her childhood friend Caitlin were at Walgreens playing with the bouncy balls and then this scary lady came over and yelled at them and said, “Pick these up! You kids are going to cause an old person to fall.” And the scary lady kicked the balls at them and she and Caitlin were crying as they put the balls back, and then her mom appeared from around the corner and she looked the scary lady in the eye and said without the slightest sense of anything but utter and total control, “Do you work here?” and the scary lady said, “No,” and her mom said, “Good, then leave them alone.” And the scary lady walked away, just like that.

  The memory gave Leda a sense of focus. She left the bathroom and went back to her old bedroom to go through the overstuffed “Annabelle” box once again. In no time at all it too looked elegant and small.

  After finishing up she came back downstairs to find her mom, but she wasn’t there. The side door was opened to the porch. Leda stepped out and there was her mom at the far side of the yard. She was cutting branches off the lilac tree.

  “Mom, what are you doing?” Leda said.

  “I want to take them to the new house.”

  “The branches?”

  “I’ll miss it,” she said.

  Leda watched her mom snap off each branch and pile them neatly by her feet. How careful she was, how certainly she worked.

  “Do you want to take anything from the backyard?” she asked.

  And Leda said, “What?” but only to prolong the moment. She knew she’d take some branches too.

  CHAPTER 48

  You and I

  Leda and John were no longer a young married couple. They didn’t have sex more than once a week, ever. Sometimes they wouldn’t have sex for weeks on end. Neither of them really complained much about it, because neither of them really minded. There was a time when Leda heard about married couples not having sex anymore and thought there was no way that she’d end up like that. She thought the women who let sex go out of their marriages were lazy or had never experienced good sex, but now she understood. Sex was something for young people. She was too tired to care about it like she had before. There were just so many other things worth doing, like sleeping. She and John talked about it after they lazily made love on their anniversary night.

  “Do you think we’ve lost our passion?” she asked him as she lay against his chest.

  “No, I think things just change.”

  “We still have good sex,” she offered. It was true despite the lack of it.

  “We’re perfect,” John said.

  She smiled and held him tighter.

  In general, Leda found herself enjoying the company of her daughter endlessly more than the company of her husband. Annabelle was ten years old, and Leda loved listening to her speak.

  “Aren’t these sticker books great?” Annabelle said when they were at a bookstore. She held up a little book of shiny cat stickers. “I had so many when I was in first grade. But I never took them out of the books.”

  “Why not?” her mom said.

  “I guess I just didn’t want to ruin the book by taking one out. It already looks so perfect.”

  “What’s so good about perfect?”

  “Perfect just looks better with stickers.”

  Like her mother, Annabelle loved to read. She’d ask for books for every holiday or birthday. Sunday mornings she’d lie on the floor and press her bare feet up against the wall and just read and read and pass the day away. Sometimes she’d tell her mom about the books she was reading; she’d go into great detail over what she liked about this part and that. Leda adored it. Her daughter’s take was so brilliantly free. She was never cynical about anything. No one had yet imparted their devastating judgments on her taste. Whatever she felt about what she was reading was her own.

  “Then they eat the fudge and become invisible.”

  “What do they do when they’re invisible?”

  “They spy on people and then they see the murder, but they can’t tell anyone about it because if they did they’d have to tell them about the fudge and no one would believe them.”

  “Shouldn’t they still try, though?”

  “They do in the end and then finally someone does believe them.”

  “That’s good.”

  “There’s another one in the series, but it’s not as good. It’s about magical buttons.”

  “Why don’t you like it?”

  “Too much magic.”

  “But isn’t the book you read all about magical fudge?”

  “Yes, but that’s not why I liked it.”

  “Why did you like it?”

  “Because they couldn’t tell and they knew no one would believe them. It was like in real life, kind of.”

  “I like books like that too.”

  “Do you think I could have my birthday at a bookstore?”

  They ended up doing a sleepover party instead. Leda did call Barnes & Noble, but all they offered was somethi
ng for little kids. Annabelle invited five of her friends to the party: There was her friend Judith from down the street, a quiet girl who was achingly polite and frequently said “thank you” even if it was unwarranted. She and Annabelle had known each other since they were toddlers, and their friendship seemed to be based on little more than proximity. Her best friend was Sasha, a girl from school who liked sports and talked loudly. Leda adored her because of her unrivaled sense of humor.

  “I ate seven cupcakes and my mom told me I’d be sick, but then she was the one who threw up all over my grandma’s porch from bad hot dogs,” Sasha once said.

  Miriam and Ally were also school friends who came over on occasion, ate snacks, and watched the Disney Channel. And lastly there was Stassi. Annabelle knew her originally through Miriam. The three girls had taken a swim class together. Leda didn’t really care much for Stassi. She thought back to the time that her mom met Anne and described her as having a slutty face. Stassi was much too young to have a slutty face, but she was nonetheless not a serious girl. In a year or two Leda had no doubt that she’d be dating boys and probably smoking cigarettes.

  The plan was to have the girls come over for pizza and then to watch a movie. Annabelle was so excited about her party that she’d slept hardly at all the night before.

  “Now I’ll be too tired to stay up,” she said at breakfast.

  “You’ll be fine. You’ll be full of adrenaline and won’t feel tired at all,” Leda said, and leaned down to kiss her daughter’s forehead. Her hair was a warm mix of John’s blond hair and her own dark hair. But her eyes were dark, like Leda’s.

  Once the girls arrived, the house sounded jittery and awake. Leda liked having kids over. She found children to be so much more enjoyable to be in groups of than adults. The last parties she’d ever remembered actually enjoying herself at were the ones she attended as a child. There wasn’t the pretension that plagued adult parties—children were excited and wanted pizza and to play games and that was it. There wasn’t some self-congratulatory reason to attend a party as a child. No promotion to brag about. No engagement ring to show off. And certainly no child ever tried to get anything out of the other partygoers; there was no effort to climb a social rank or to meet a new partner. It was pressureless in a way adulthood couldn’t be.