Carrie Pilby

by Caren Lissner

  “And that the Bible is right, and there is a heaven, and we have to be good to get in,” I say. “And that we all know what good means, and what bad means, and that we know the answer to every question of morality and behavior. But then, the lines get blurred, and we’re not so sure we want these absolutes after all.”

  Dad puts down his chopsticks. “I’ll never get this,” he says.

  I hand him a fork.

  Dad and I watch the last fifteen minutes of It’s a Wonderful Life together—the rest is a colossal bore, so each year for the last five years we’ve purposely just watched the last fifteen minutes—and then he asks if I want to sit in the kitchen and talk. Even though we talked through dinner, I think he has something more serious to discuss. We haven’t had a really long talk since the hurricane. He makes cocoa and we sit down.

  He rubs his face with his hands.

  “About the ‘Big Lie,’” he says.

  I shake my head. “I—”

  “I thought it was true when I said it,” he says. “I thought—”

  My plan has always been to make him feel guilty about the Big Lie. For some reason, that made me feel better. But now that he starts talking about it, I feel bad. I don’t want him to think everything’s his fault.

  “You had every right to be disappointed,” he says, looking down at the table.

  “Maybe I took it too literally,” I say. “At the time, I thought you meant that people in college would be exactly like me. I wanted it to be true so badly. I couldn’t wait to finally find a place where I’d fit in. I didn’t realize there would be such a gulf, that I’d have to work so hard to understand people.”

  He looks as if he’s straining under the weight of raising someone for most of their years and still not knowing the verdict. “In elementary school,” he says, “you were so far ahead of your classmates. Your teacher and your principal agreed it was best to move you up. Once we figured out the appropriate grade level, you thrived academically. So yes, I assumed once you got to college, with all those brilliant students, you would thrive socially as well.”

  “I started off in college only feeling a little bit different,” I admit. “But I did expect the people there to have boundless intellectual interests and devotions and a clear set of moral views. As they began to get closer to each other, they changed more and more. The more they changed with no explanation, the more I felt like a freak. And then I wondered, Why am I the freak?”

  Dad puts his chin in his hands, but he’s smiling at me. “You’re a good person,” he says. “You know that? I didn’t know what kind of person you’d turn out to be. But you’re a good person. And I’m glad. I don’t think you should compromise on the good that’s within you.” He sits back. “But what I failed to do was teach you how to become friends with kids your age. If you won’t compromise your own standards, can you also accept others who aren’t just like you, intellectually and morally? Can you accept sinners and not their sins?”

  He’s right—this is one of the biggest things I have to work on now. But even if I stop expecting people to be just like me, I know that they’re still going to push me to be just like them. Why is it that liberal people believe no one has the right to pass judgment on their liberality, but it’s perfectly fine for them to censor other people’s rigidity?

  Dad is looking at me in a strange way. Finally, he says, “You remind me of your mother sometimes. More and more, the older you get. Maybe that’s obvious.”

  He doesn’t talk about my mother easily. I don’t say anything.

  He says, “She and her sister read everything growing up—literature, history, everything. You know that none of the women in her family had gone to college. But your mother decided at the last minute to save money to go to school so she could teach English. She got an administrative job at our firm, and I wouldn’t have even paid attention to her, but one night, I was having an argument with some of the men in accounting about British political history. One gentleman kept arguing a point and trying to make me look like an idiot. So your mother came up to us. I thought she was going to ask something about work, but she just said softly, “That’s not true.” She gave a whole peroration on why my colleague was wrong. The more she talked, the more I fell in love with her. And not just because she was taking my side. Every day, I waited at work for everyone to leave so I could talk to her. At first it was nonsense, but we talked for hours. She was amazing. She’d say whatever she felt to anyone. She would have told off the head of the company if she’d felt it was right. I couldn’t hold a candle to her as a person. And God, what a mind.”

  I look into his cocoa. It’s swirling.

  “That’s all beside the point,” he says. “There probably is never a time and place where a brilliant person will fit in completely. A hundred years ago, your morality would be more in line with other people’s, but you probably wouldn’t feel any more like you fit in than you do now. You’d be dying to burst forth and pour your intellect on the world, and you’d be repressed. Yet today, we live in a society where you can do anything. The consequence is, morality has become relative. And you, with your concerns about what’s right and whether you should hew to it, are an anomaly. Is that bad? I loved your mother to death. She was different, too. Yet so was I. We were different from the world, yet similar to each other. I wouldn’t have wanted her to change or give up anything that really mattered to her. The same goes for you. Re-evaluate? Maybe sometimes. But don’t feel forced to come to any easy conclusions. Some people debate the issues you’re considering all their lives.”

  “I’ll be the one,” I say, resigned. “I’ll be the one who debates them all my life.”

  He smiles. “You’re cursed. Cursed with a mind. Use it. Don’t fear it. But don’t let all of your thinking destroy you.”

  That night, my father stretches out on the futon in the living room and I repair to my own room. I climb into my window loft and sit there, hugging one of the square black pillows. Across the street at the Guarino household, the lights are blinking rapidly: red, green, dark yellow, white. It’s peaceful. Inspiring.

  I turn off the lights in my room and do something I haven’t done since I was in the single digits.

  I kneel beside my bed and pray.

  “God,” I say, “I’m not going to lie. I don’t know if you exist, or how I should treat you if you do. I want to be a good person. I’m not sure what this entails. It seems less clear to me each day. I went to a new church recently. So in a way, you help, whether you exist or not. And maybe that’s the point. You get me thinking about what I can do to be a good person. Well, it’s Christmas Eve, so I know you’re getting a lot of requests, ‘Please help everyone pronounce in excelsis Deo,’ et cetera. I’d like to pray for the homeless, the old, the sick, and I guess anyone else who’s not doing too well. And I’m sorry for when I judge people. I’m also sorry for some of the things I’ve done lately…it just seems so hard to avoid them. That’s no excuse. Is it? I know it’s not.”

  I think of Matt. He hasn’t called me since I caught him cheating with Beth. If he had called me again, I would have turned him down, but the scary thing is, it’s only because I caught him. That’s what it took. It wouldn’t have been because he was engaged to Shauna. It took me seeing him with yet a third person to finally stop me. Part of me knows that if I hadn’t caught him with Beth that time, I probably would have slept with him. So what is it that changed me into the kind of person who would help someone cheat? If it was that I became more forgiving, or more understanding, is that good, or bad?

  “Anyway, God,” I continue, “thank you for giving me a good life. I do appreciate it, and I’ll keep trying as much as I can to be a better person. Amen.”

  Add that to the excuse list: I’ll try.

  I really will be a better person.

  Starting after New Year’s Eve.

  After I finish my list.

  Chapter Eleven

  What’s left is to tell someone I care about them, and
to go out for New Year’s Eve.

  But two days before New Year’s, I haven’t gotten any invitations to parties.

  I need to do something. I could spend the night out alone, but that’s a cop-out. If I’m going to do this, I should do it right. It’s only one night.

  I gather my courage and leave a message for Kara. “I know you’re busy, but I was wondering if you know of any good New Year’s parties….” I sound awful, but it’s all for the list.

  If she doesn’t call back, I’ll still go out somehow.

  But Kara does call back later. “Carrie!” she says. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Nowhere special,” I say.

  She says she’s going to a “progressive party,” in which she and some friends will move from apartment to apartment all night, eating and drinking. The starting point is her place. I tell her I’ll be there.

  New Year’s Eve morning, part of me wishes for my old life. If I had my old life, I could excitedly plan to gather Chinese food and ice cream tonight, rent a movie, and jump into bed. Or I’d just listen to music and dance around. I’d be having a fun, safe Pilby Party. All the things I want, and no chance of disaster. Very tempting. But I’ve done that already.

  If I stay inside today, I won’t feel out of place. But if I stay inside until I’m forty, I may venture out and find the world has passed me by. Why are these my options?

  I could go to grad school, if they offered a master’s in remedial socialization.

  I start getting dressed around seven. I stuff my money and ID in my pocket. I leave my journal on my bed so I can report on the party later. Since I’ve looked at my luscious, comfy bed, it’s hard to turn away. It calls to me. It would be so easy to dive in and snuggle up.

  I flip the light and walk out.

  It’s cold.

  Very cold.

  I want to reconsider. Jack Frost is nipping at my nose, fingers, elbows, toes, ears and firm round buttocks. If I am going to stay out, I should be wearing five sweaters and a scarf. But no one at the progressive party will be wearing five sweaters and a scarf. In fact, some of the women passing me in the street aren’t even wearing coats. Trading common sense for fashion, as usual.

  I make my way down my front steps. I look back and see through Bobby’s window that his TV is on. I guess he’s alone on New Year’s Eve.

  But I won’t be. For a change.

  There are lots of strange-looking folks outside tonight, people decked out in fluffy pink boas, leopard-skin hats, green hair, chains, collars, leather pants. Why am I repelled by these things? What’s wrong with differences? Because they scare me. Because they’re risky.

  I find myself hoping the people at the party will be normal. But what is normal? If I had the answer to that, I’d have the answer to everything.

  I arrive at Kara’s not a moment too soon. I’ve come only ten minutes after the official staging time of the party, figuring I’d be unfashionable for a change, but this crowd doesn’t know the word. There’s a line to get into the apartment. Next door, I hear the music blasting at top level. That song “Get Off” from the 1970s is playing, and all the guys next door, who I’m sure include Stephen and Pat, are singing, “Aw, aw, aw, aw.” I’m glad I wasn’t alive in the 1970s. I would have hated it. I would have hated the sixties, too. It’s strange to think of how different all of us would have turned out if born in another decade. In the 1950s, Matt and Shauna would have been the Cleavers.

  Finally I get inside Kara’s place. Her living room is a mishmash of wooden tables with nachos, bowls of dip, pretzels, little cups, and bottles of all shapes, sizes and colors. In a corner, three girls with long, crossed legs are sitting on the floor and smoking, looking drugged-out. Against a wall, a tall, skinny guy in an orange shirt is leaning in and smooching a blond girl. I look closer and realize the girl is Kara. She’s dyed her hair. “Carrie!” she says. “You look great!” Then she says to the skinny guy, “What’s your name again?” She hiccups.

  “Barn,” he replies, and she starts laughing.

  “Here,” she says to me, waving her arms at him. “You need your mouth washed out, for free?”

  “No thanks,” I say. It’s only eight-fifteen, and already she’s drunk. This is not a good sign. “How many more houses are there?” I ask.

  “What?” she yells over the din.

  “How many more apartments?” Leave it to me to ask a logical question in an illogical setting.

  “I don’t—” hic “—know.”

  “Seventy-five,” says Barn, and he leans in and kisses her more. He’s got what look like black woven armbands tattooed on both biceps, and for some strange reason, they look good on him. I’d be afraid to get a tattoo myself, but I’m attracted to this. I don’t know why. Scary.

  Kara breaks away and calls to me. “I’m not going to the other apartments!” she yells. “Carrie! Stay here. Right?”

  “Okay.” She’s the only one I know, anyway.

  “Well, I’m going,” says Barn, and he wipes his mouth off.

  “Good,” Kara says. “Somebody give me a drag.”

  A few people leave, but more show up. Kara sits down at a table and beckons me to do the same. “I haven’t even been smoking,” she tells me. “I mean, pot. And I still feel stoned. It’s, like, secondhand hooch.” Then she laughs.

  “I guess it works.”

  She hiccups. “Do you want something? Have you had a drink yet?”

  There’s a pitcher of something icy and blue. She pours me a giant plastic cup and I take a gulp. It tastes good. It doesn’t even seem like there’s alcohol in it, although there must be. “What is this?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Poison. Ouch!” She gets up and throws a bottle cap off the seat, then sits back down. “Someone is fucking trying to kill me.”

  “I doubt they’re trying to kill you with a bottle cap.”

  “It may look like a bottle cap,” she says, but she doesn’t finish the thought. She reaches her finger out and sticks it in the salsa. Then she dabs a little on each of her cheeks. “My name is Conchita Rivera de Salsa.”

  She stands up and claps. “Olé! I need a Latin lover.” She turns to me. “Do you want to be my Latin lover?”

  “Ix-nay.”

  “I didn’t say pig Latin.”

  I pick up my glass of Blue Whatever and finish it.

  “That’s the way,” Kara yells. “Go Carrie!” She fills another and hands it to me, then wipes the salsa off her cheeks and steps closer until she’s in front of my face. Her nose is almost touching mine. If only her nose’s perfectness could transfer. “Come up to the roof with me,” she says.

  There’s a latch on the roof of her closet, and she pulls it down. A stepladder made of natural wood emerges. Nice. Kara climbs it and I follow, careful not to spill my drink. The ladder creaks and must be dusty because it makes me want to sneeze. I think about sneezing and I can’t. Drat. I’m regressing and ascending at the same time.

  No one follows us, and Kara closes the latch behind her.

  Once I’m on the roof, I am hit with a gust of cold air. The stars are all around, a glorious infinite galaxy.

  I stand straight up. Below, I can make out the artistically pruned rooftop gardens of New York, which are sometimes greener than in suburbia; in the distance are fireworks and airplanes and red air traffic control lights that appear and disappear.

  I feel like the two of us are the tallest people in the world. The sky is spinning around me. Kara stands next to me. I drink my drink. It’s still cold out, but I barely feel it.

  “Look at the moon,” Kara says.

  “Ka-ra,” someone calls from downstairs. “Where’d you go?”

  “I don’t want to talk to them,” she says. She walks over to a folding chair that has a blanket draped over it. “Bring a chair over,” she says. I drag one across the roof, and it bumps and stutters. Far below us, there’s revelry in the streets: Noisemakers, hollers, laughter, sudden screams.

 
; “New Year’s Eve, big fat deal,” Kara says, sitting down, as if she wasn’t the one who donated her apartment for a party to mark the very occasion. “That’s something on a man-made calendar. Not like the equinox or the solstice. That’s the cosmos. That’s spiritual. We should have parties for that.” She throws her fist in the air. “Party for the solstice!” Her voice shoots into the New York sky, past the Chrysler Building, through Co-Op City, maybe into Westchester.

  Kara pulls the blanket off the chair and lays it on the ground. She crawls onto it and rolls over on her back, staring at the sky. “Come here,” she says, stretching her legs. “The view’s better.”

  I get off my chair and crawl over, feeling ready to tip. I lie down on the blanket with my head perpendicular to Kara’s. All of a sudden, I think there actually was a lot of alcohol in those blue drinks.

  A whole lot.

  She looks at me. “I didn’t think you’d ever call again,” she says. “I want you to be my best best friend in the world.”

  “Do I have to give you my lunch money?”

  “Is that what your friends made you do? That’s mean.”

  “I wasn’t popular, like you.”

  “You’re popular here,” she says. She grabs my hand and kisses it. Then she stretches out.

  “Kara!” a voice screams from downstairs. “Where are you?”

  “Oh my God!” she shrieks back. “You guys suck!”

  I hear a siren go by. The poor police must be having a terrible time of it.

  “Let’s sit up,” Kara says. “I’m cold.” We sit up, and she puts her arms around herself. “I don’t like my friends,” she says.

  “Make new ones,” I say.

  “Where?”

  “In church.”

  She starts laughing.

  “Some of my friends are so immature,” she says. “I’m not going to have parties anymore. It attracts the wrong people.”

  “It attracts people who like parties.”