Which made one of us.
Our staring contest, however, was never given a chance to run its course. This is because just when I was getting the upper hand, I heard the screen door rattle in its frame. Then I heard my father’s unmistakable too-loud voice echo through the hallway.
“Tessie!” he shouted. “Is that you?”
He shuffled into the living room, slamming the door closed behind him.
“Tessie,” he boomed. “Are you home? Whose car is that outside? It’s parked in my spot!”
I could almost see through his eyes as he passed his drab furniture. Did he even notice it anymore? The cracked coffee table. The stained couch. The wallpaper in the hall, starting to peel. Finally, he appeared in the doorway to the kitchen where he stopped and remained still for what must have been at least ten seconds. He looked from me to Grace the Rower, both of us silent.
“Okay,” he said eventually. “Anyone want to let me know what’s going on?”
I glanced up at his face, which had always been young and handsome compared to the faces of other dads. He had me when he was just nineteen. Today, however, he looked a little tired. His wide brown eyes were red-rimmed. And his long hair, which was just starting to go gray, glittered with sand. He wore a black suit and in his right hand, he held his favorite tote bag, which read: DEATH: IT’S A LIVING.
“Who are you?” he asked Grace. Then he turned back to me and said: “Tessie, what’s happening?”
I wasn’t yet able to speak. And neither was Grace.
I should add here that middle-aged women always seem to have the hots for my dad. They think he’s hunky in a bohemian sort of way. Before he became such a divorced sad sack, waitresses flirted with him shamelessly when we went out to dinner. Sometimes right in front of my mom, who found the whole thing confounding. “They don’t have to watch you floss,” she said once. Anyway, sitting there in the kitchen, I felt like I could already see Grace sizing him up.
“I’m Grace,” she said now, “and I am in your kitchen because I rescued your daughter from the lake this morning.”
“The lake?” said my dad, like it was a place he’d never heard of.
“The one at the foot of the hill,” said Grace. “The one your daughter jumped in.”
I felt my face warming.
“Oh Christ,” I said. “She didn’t rescue me.”
I avoided eye contact with Grace, but I could feel her watching me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You weren’t flailing around in the lake, screaming? That’s not what was happening when I found you?”
My dad looked around the kitchen, as if searching out more evidence.
“Tess,” he said, “I think I’m missing something here. Why are you home from school? And why were you in the lake with your clothes on this morning?”
My cheeks felt hot. My heart was beating in my ears.
“I was doing my morning row,” said Grace, “earlier than usual, and I saw her jump. It looked . . .”
She stared at me.
“It looked like she was going to drown or something. I thought maybe she was trying to . . .”
I stood up and took a step toward Grace, holding tears at bay.
“I wasn’t trying to do anything,” I said. “I didn’t need to be rescued by your stupid little boat that looks like a dildo. It was a purification ritual! It was for my soul! You ruined it. And now you can leave. Dad, I’m sorry for the trouble. I’d like her to go now, please.”
But my father was stuck in place. His eyes were locked on Grace. And for some reason, the fact that he was haplessly looking at this woman and not at me, his soaked and half-crazed daughter, pushed me over the edge. I felt my jaw clench, and when I spoke I hardly knew what I was saying.
“Dad,” I said. “Quit staring at the boat lady! Grace, I don’t need a babysitter anymore. Thanks for nothing. I’ll see you all in hell.”
And at that, I stalked out of the room like a teenage drama queen, my shoes squelching on the varnished wood. But as I walked up the stairs, I risked a single look back and met eyes one last time with Grace. And I was surprised to see that the look on her face wasn’t angry. It didn’t even seem annoyed. Instead, there was just a knowing stare that made me turn away.
Upstairs, I noticed that the taste of lake water was still in my mouth. It was brackish and sour, like fish had been peeing in it since the dawn of time. I remembered floating in the lake and looking up. The clouds had been so close, like they were right on top of me. I didn’t feel any time passing before Grace reached out and grabbed me. She had been shouting, but, at first, I couldn’t hear it. My ears were plugged with water and everything sounded miles away.
“I’m still a little unsure . . .”
I heard my father’s voice from the window near my bed. He was down in the driveway. I inched toward the window and cracked it open.
“. . . never been great with authority. She got kicked out of summer camp once for inciting a riot. I’m sure she’ll be—”
“No,” said Grace, interrupting him.
I watched her stand with perfect posture in the driveway.
“No?” Dad said.
“I don’t think she’ll be fine,” she said.
She walked closer to him.
“I’m not sure exactly what your daughter was doing this morning, but it didn’t seem fine to me. It seemed very strange. When I pulled her out of the water, I couldn’t get her to talk to me for ten minutes. She was freezing cold and she was crying. I think she might need some help.”
The last word, and all that it implied, seemed to shock my father. He ran his hand through his hair.
“I should go,” she said. “But do me a favor.”
“What’s that?” he said.
“Wake up. Your daughter needs you.”
I watched her walk to her Jeep. I could just make out the bumper stickers. MY OTHER CAR IS A BIKE, read one. Another said, COMPOST HAPPENS. A larger one read simply: GREENER PASTURES.
Grace rolled down her window and turned on the ignition. My father’s mouth was slack. Grace put the Jeep into gear, backed out of the driveway, and coasted down the road with her windows open. I watched her hair swirl around in the wind. And even after her car was out of sight, blocked by a neighbor’s hedge, I could still see her red and white boat cutting a wake through the air.
5
Dear Jonah,
If you want the world to wonder if you have completely lost your shit, your best bet is to jump into a lake fully clothed.
That will get the job done for you pretty quick. It is also a great way to pick up a yeast infection, I’ve heard. I’ll keep you updated on that front should new details become available (about my vagina).
Also, in case you are in some afterlife with Wi-Fi, I just thought you should know that my plan to cut off communication with you has not only failed but also resulted in a temporary lockdown. In fact, as I write this, I am currently in a state of exile in the office/guest room with only a few of my father’s old Playboys from the late 1980s to keep me company.
Briefly on that topic: I can’t help mentioning that the amount of pubic hair I have seen in all of my existence has just gone up 80 percent in the last two hours. If I ever fall asleep again, I’ll probably see it in my dreams.
Sorry. I’ll move on.
You might be wondering, at this point, how I’m writing this at all. Especially since I told you (telepathically) I was chucking my computer into a lake. The answer is simple:
I have temporarily commandeered my father’s ancient PC, which looks suspiciously like the one I used to study “keyboarding” with Mrs. Hopkins in elementary school.
This computer is slow, but so is my brain, so we have found a kind of harmony. And now that I’ve found you again, maybe I should get to the point.
The point is this: When I haven’t been having a series of mini panic attacks and/or staring at the wall, I’ve been thinking about an article you sent me on
ce from a tech magazine.
This article was about death. A subject I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. And it projected that someday, in the not-too-distant future, we will all be able to upload our minds to computers as a form of life extension.
Basically we’ll create an e-us, made of virtual DNA, and then, as long as the power doesn’t run out, we will never ever die. We will live on, alongside cat videos and the mean comments at the bottom of celebrity profiles.
At the time, this idea gave me the creeps so bad I had to watch videos of baby sloths falling off things for a half hour just to cleanse my thoughts. Now I’m not sure what to think. Maybe it’s not so crazy to have a backup copy in case something happens to the original.
Maybe we’re too careless with our first lives.
Let me state for the record that there are a number of questions I would like to ask you regarding your recent nonexistence. But to start listing all of them at this point would make this message at least a hundred pages longer. You see, you have effed me up in a number of significant ways. So, maybe I’ll just ask this one:
Is this your backup copy, Jonah? Or am I truly just talking to myself?
Awaiting answer,
Tess
6
It was two in the morning when I finally gave up on sleep.
I had spent the last half hour listening to my father toss and turn in his huge bed across the hall. Another, kinder me might have tried to convince him that I wasn’t completely losing my mind and that everything was going to be all right. Unfortunately, I am not another kinder me. I am just regular shitty me. And, even in the best of times, I have serious doubts about my own sanity and whether anything can ever truly be all right.
Also, my dad sleeps in the nude.
So, there you go.
It had taken him two full hours to come up to my room after Grace was gone. From what I could tell, he just sat in the driveway before that, talking on his phone. Probably with my mom. My back-assward life is the only thing that keeps them in contact anymore. If they didn’t have my many problems to discuss they probably wouldn’t even speak to each other.
Which is a little sad, particularly because my father has been slow to move on from the divorce, even though he squandered her money and generally acted like a selfish dick-nose during the latter part of their marriage.
Anyway, after Grace drove away, he eventually entered the house and walked upstairs one painstakingly slow step at a time. Then, as far as I could tell, he just stood outside my room, sighing. He didn’t knock. He didn’t try the knob. It was hard to tell, actually, how close to the door he was.
He had the habit, like a sulking child, of shutting down completely when something was wrong. It would be funny if it wasn’t so infuriating. I felt the familiar anger this time, but it was quickly smothered beneath the sadness and shame I’d been nursing since I jumped in the lake. Eventually, after what seemed like a thousand hours, he stepped closer and cleared his throat.
“Um . . . Tessie?” he said.
He paused, waiting for a response. I provided none.
“So, I wish I could . . . um . . . understand what’s going on here. But, since I don’t have the faintest notion, and you aren’t really being . . . um . . . generous with the details, I feel like I’m just kind of powerless, you know?”
I knew he was dying for a sign I was there, but I couldn’t bring myself to give him one. I didn’t know what to say.
“Here’s the deal,” he said after another substantial pause. “Your mother is not coming back early from India.”
I thought I heard a sad laugh.
“She’s there with . . . him. And I guess they’re too busy bending their bodies into Lotus poses to be bothered with anything happening at home. Instead I’ve been given instructions. I’m supposed to drive you back to school tomorrow, and see that you finish the year. Your mother has made it clear that dropping out isn’t an option in this family.”
When I swung open the door, I nearly bashed my father in the face. As it turns out, he had been standing pretty close. He jumped back, and his expression looked somewhere between startled and angry.
“But you dropped out,” I said.
“We’re not talking about me,” he said.
“Also we’re not a family anymore,” I said.
I looked at his hands. He appeared to be holding a plate of food.
“What’s that?”
“I made you macaroni and cheese,” he said. “With two cheese packets. The way you like it. Or, you used to, at least. You know . . . um . . . when you were a kid.”
I stood looking at the plate for a moment, the pile of neon orange noodles. It looked both absurd and delicious, and for a moment I thought I might break down and let everything out.
Dad was always my confidant when I was a kid. Usually unemployed, he used to pick me up from school each day, searching me out in the crowd of tiny beings. On the long walks home, I’d narrate my entire day, and he’d nod as if every detail was fascinating. Really? You fed the hamster an entire grape? Then, if he was in a good mood, we’d stop to get Coke Slurpies from 7-Eleven and compare brain freezes.
But, we weren’t really pals anymore. Now he was the guy who stole from me and ruined the later portion of my childhood with his self-obsession. I just reached out and grabbed the plate from his hands.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
He stood there blinking at me for another few seconds, then he spoke again.
“Tess, I have an opportunity,” he said.
I looked around the hallway.
“What? Here?”
He shook his head.
“I got a phone call earlier. From out of state. I guess the guy hasn’t heard about what happened in Nantucket yet with the . . . you know . . . dog explosion—”
“What kind of opportunity?” I interrupted.
“Well,” he said. “The kind I specialize in.”
I took a bite of macaroni.
“It’s a job and, financially speaking, I need to take it.”
He cleared his throat.
“So as far as I can tell, I have three options. One is to leave you behind and just go . . . do this job. But, after this morning, I just don’t think that’s going to be . . . um . . . possible. The second is to insist that your mom cancel her trip and come get you, but that doesn’t seem to be realistic either. So then there’s the last option, which is . . .”
“Who died?” I asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“You said it’s a job, and your job involves the dead, right? So who died to make this golden opportunity possible?”
He chewed his bottom lip.
“Well,” he said, “Sargent Bronson died.”
“Who’s Sargent Bronson?”
My father looked for a moment like he might break into a laugh. But when he spoke it was in a flat, even tone, as if what he said next was perfectly normal. And who knows, in his warped world, it probably was.
“Sergeant Bronson,” he said, “is a racehorse.”
7
After Jonah left me that note at the party last fall, we started to send e-mails. It was kind of quaint like that. We’d send long meandering updates on life at our respective schools, filled with boatloads of questions at the end for the other to answer. Sometimes an e-mail just full of answers would come back. Other times it was a series of texts, rapid-fire, one after the next.
So, while I went through each friendless day at Forever Friends, my phone would hum with his responses to questions I barely remembered asking.
Orange Soda. No question. It has the most grams of sugar per ounce.
Or:
Are you kidding me? Invisibility! It used to be flying, but then I went through puberty.
Or:
Cinemax at my friend’s house. There was a m
ovie on about a sorority car wash. It only took five minutes for the first bikini to fall off. I never saw the sequel though. And I’m really concerned about the car wash. Did it stay in business?
Or, as the questions grew more personal:
Brooke, a girl I knew in fourth grade. She was diabetic and she had to carry around a little drink box of apple juice in case her blood sugar got too low. Watching her sip her drink box filled me with the most intense sensation of love I have ever felt. She kissed me under the slide, and then moved a year later. I don’t know where she is now. I’ve never even looked her up. I just want her to exist in fourth grade forever.
And eventually:
I’d like to. Scratch that. I’d LOVE to, but I don’t think I can afford the ticket right now. Don’t worry, though. It will happen soon. So soon! There is no one I would rather see right now. No one.
The more I asked when he was coming to see me, the more I got answers like the one above. They were always positive, full of hope and enthusiasm, but each time, they completely shut down the idea of a visit. At first I thought he wanted to break up, but he didn’t have the guts to tell me. Yet, if anything, his messages got more romantic.
Probably we should just get married. People in religious cults don’t have a monopoly on marrying young. Anyone can do it. I’m not going to officially ask you yet, but just think about it. Holy Matrimony. With me. Soon.
Til death do us part.
Is that really what he said at the end?
Yes it is.
I have the saved message to prove it.
And I was looking at this message, staring at those very words on my phone, when my father leaned over across the aisle of the airplane and removed the earbud from my ear. The drone of the engines filled the music’s absence, and I was yanked back to the present. A present that included Dad and me on a chartered flight, speeding toward an unplanned horse funeral.
Things I'm Seeing Without You Page 3
