“Well! ‘Tink’—that’s your name, is it? ‘Tink’—”
Mr. Carmichael loomed over Tink awkwardly. At her tallest—and Tink could stretch herself “tall” by sucking in her breath, lifting her shoulders and head, and balancing herself on the balls of her feet like a scrappy featherweight boxer—Tink was just five feet tall; she weighed less than ninety pounds; you’d have thought she was possibly eleven, twelve years old, not, as she’d been at this time, fifteen.
Merissa recalled, wincing: those months when Tink had virtually shaved her head, and sharp little red-tinged quills were sprouting from her scalp like a bizarre form of thorny plant life. And Tink’s face and forearms were covered in freckles like splatters from a paintbrush, which gave to her lopsided little smile the prankish-quirky look of a mischievous child.
“Well, nice to meet you, Tink. Have a great time, girls.”
Mr. Carmichael had backed off. The handshake with Tink was quick.
“Sorry about my dad,” Merissa said, disappointed that her father hadn’t seemed to like her friend Tink more, “but he’s really, really busy—we almost never see him during the week. He’s—I’m not sure what my dad does—he’s ‘chief legal counsel’ of—”
Tink laughed. If Merissa’s father hadn’t made any effort to be charming to her, as he usually did with Merissa’s friends, if he had time, it didn’t seem to bother Tink at all. In fact, Tink had to be the only person Merissa had ever met who was amused when others, especially adults, hurriedly left her presence.
“Your dad picks up the signal—Tink doesn’t F with her friends’ dads.”
“Tink doesn’t what?”
“Tink doesn’t F.”
Merissa didn’t know whether to be shocked or annoyed—or offended.
“So, what’s F?”
“Flirt—Flatter—Fawn Over.”
“Merissa?”
“Y-yes, Mom?”
“What are you thinking about, honey? You seem to be lost in space and looking a little . . . sad.”
Blood rushed to Merissa’s face. “Oh, Mom! I hate it—you spying on me.”
“Merissa, I’m not spying on you—truly. I only asked . . .”
“Well, I’m not thinking about anything, Mom, just going upstairs to start homework. And I am not sad.”
“You certainly shouldn’t be, honey. Not after this week—all the wonderful things that have happened to you. At least, the ones you’ve told me about.”
Merissa’s mother laughed. As if this was some kind of joke and not a silly, senseless remark of the kind Merissa’s mother was always making lately, that made you wonder what she was talking about—if she knew more than she let on, or wanted you to think that she did.
“Don’t worry, Mom—I’m not thinking about you-know-who.”
“I—I didn’t think you were. Not this week, with so much—good news. . . .”
Tink. Of course, I am thinking about Tink.
I am thinking about Daddy, and when I am not thinking about Daddy, I am thinking about Tink.
And when I am not thinking about Tink or Daddy I am thinking about—something else.
“I heard your father talking to you just now—he’s really thrilled, Merissa. This early acceptance at Brown is very good news for us—I mean, all of us.” Merissa’s mother was smiling—trying to smile—but you could see the strain in her face. Quickly Merissa looked away, not wanting to acknowledge those damp, anxious eyes.
“He’s so proud of you, Merissa. He brags to everyone. . . .”
Just barely managing not to be impolite—Merissa felt sorry for her mother, and frightened of her, of what her mother might one day soon reveal—Merissa mumbled something more about homework and needing to text Hannah about the yearbook cover, and moved toward the stairs.
By this time she’d been home about ten minutes. That itchy-excited sensation had begun, on the most secret parts of her body, beneath her clothes, as soon as she returned from school—as soon as she stepped through the door into the back hall.
Almost! Almost where I need to be.
Waiting all day for—this.
Merissa dreaded her mother catching her by the wrist, or just touching her. Merissa’s mother was one of those women who touch, touch, touch to make sure you’re listening to them.
“. . . dinner tonight, just a little later at seven thirty. Your father needs to be on the phone for a while, there’s a conference call . . .”
“Sure, Mom. I’ll come down and help.”
“He’s been under pressure lately. Which is why . . .”
“Sure, Mom! See you.”
On the stairs, her heart beating quick and light and excited, and she’s thinking, Flirt. Flatter. Fawn Over.
Thinking, Maybe I haven’t, enough. With Daddy.
4.
(SECRET!)
Now Merissa was alone.
For the first time since early that morning, when she’d wakened in the dark before dawn and the heaviness of GOOD NEWS! GOOD NEWS! CONGRATULATIONS! sank down on her like a low-lying toxic cloud.
Quickly shutting the door. In her room, and safe.
Listening to hear if her mother might be following after her—no?
And in the little bathroom adjoining her room, with trembling hands—trembling with excitement, anticipation!—opening a drawer beside the sink, and, at the very back of the drawer, seizing the handle of a small but very sharp paring knife—bringing out the knife, and pressing its tip against the inside of her wrist, where the skin was pale and thin and the little blue veins just visible—“I can do this. Any time. Nobody can stop me.”
Her voice was gloating, joyous. In all of the week of Good News, not once had Merissa spoken in such a voice.
“The Perfect One,” Tink had teased Merissa Carmichael.
But not even Tink knew about this.
In the mirror above the sink, a luminous-pale face hovered. The wide-set eyes were shadowed, shining, and fierce.
At such (secret) moments Merissa could bear to see herself.
For it was not herself she saw but another—a stranger—with the (secret) power of life/death in her hands.
Just an ordinary paring knife, stolen from the kitchen downstairs.
Where there were so many knives—some of them gorgeous, glittering, Japanese-honed stainless-steel carving knives, very expensive—no one would miss this little knife.
This (secret) Merissa had cherished for the past eighteen months—when she’d first cut herself, clumsily, foolishly, in an act of desperation and not of sublime cerebral design.
Now Merissa was in control.
Even Tink hadn’t known. (But maybe she had guessed?)
For the girls at Quaker Heights, maybe for the guys, too, Tink Traumer had shown the way. You didn’t have to like Tink—in fact, Tink had more detractors than admirers, by far—but you had to admit, Tink Traumer had not only taken her own life in her hands, she’d had the guts to throw that life away.
This week of GOOD NEWS was making Merissa sick, finally. Just so many times you can smile and say, “Thank you!” when someone congratulates you—at a point, you want to say, “Please just leave me alone! It will never happen again.”
High grades, class offices, yearbook staff, field hockey, girls’ chorus, Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, every honor list you can think of, plus, now, early admission at Brown—she was feeling guilty, selfish.
Like her belly bloated with Diet Coke. Just—disgusting.
Still, Daddy was proud of her. And if Daddy was proud of Merissa, that meant that Merissa was all right to keep going, for a while at least.
(Secretly) lifting her shirt, to check on the most recent cut.
Just a small cross, on her upper abdomen, each stitchlike scab about an inch long. Already Merissa had forgotten why she’d cut herself there—what the particular reason was scarcely mattered—but it looked good. Healing, and not infected.
And if she prodded it with the tip of the paring knife, a qui
cksilver flamelike pain leapt from the tiny wound like a muted shout.
Now Merissa was happy.
“‘Congratulations!’”
5.
(BAD NEWS!)
“Merissa, sweetie? I have something to tell you.”
No no no no NO.
6.
(PUNISHMENT!)
At 7:20 p.m. Merissa went downstairs, finally.
Wondering why her mother hadn’t called her to help with dinner.
(Hadn’t that been the plan? What was going on?)
After all the good news. Merissa Carmichael among the elite.
After Daddy hugging her and telling her, Knew you’d come through, Merissa! That’s my girl.
Of course, this was nothing to be upset about. Morgan Carmichael was a very busy man.
Except if Daddy loves me. Loves us.
What happened to Tink will not happen to me.
Too distracted to focus on homework, she’d been wasting time before dinner texting her friends, whom she’d seen just hours before and of whom one—Nadia Stillinger—had lately a habit of texting Merissa back within seconds, as if Nadia was very, very lonely or very, very anxious, and such obvious neediness made Merissa feel mean.
Merissa didn’t want to get into that—whatever it was.
“Mom, why? I mean—why not? Where is Daddy?”
“I—I think he had to go back to the office, honey. He’d been on the phone almost since he came home. He said—I think he said—it was some sort of ‘quarterly dividend crisis.’ Or maybe—”
Merissa stopped listening. She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears.
So often this had been happening, since September. So often, Daddy was working late at the office—away all weekend on business.
A hot flush of shame came into Merissa’s face.
“It’s all right, Mom. It’s cool. No problem.”
“We can eat in the kitchen, Merissa, or if you’d like to watch TV—”
“I’m not hungry, Mom. I wasn’t really hungry anyway.”
As if she could eat! When punishment was needed, clearly—fasting as well as cutting.
“Daddy asked me to tell you, to be sure to explain, that he was called away ‘unavoidably’—he’ll make it up this weekend.”
Merissa thought, Mom is lying. Mom is scared. Just like me.
“Why couldn’t Daddy tell me himself? I was just upstairs in my room. He just saw me an hour ago.”
Embarrassingly, Merissa’s voice was childish, whining. Tink would be surprised—was this the Perfect One? Was this the girl everyone had been envying this week at Quaker Heights Day School?
“Well, there are these sudden emergencies, Merissa. Things happen out of our control—it’s no one’s fault.”
Yes it is. It is your fault.
If he doesn’t love you. Why should I love you?
Coolly Merissa said it was all right, really she didn’t mind. She’d see Daddy on the weekend, he was taking her skating at the Meadowlands.
Merissa ran back upstairs. Shut—the—damned—door.
Checked her cell phone, but just one text message awaited.
CONGRATULATIONS MERISSA!
HEARD TERRIFIC NEWZ U WILL LUV BROWN
XXX COREY
Corey was one of Merissa’s cousins—a niece of her mother’s. So quickly Merissa’s good news had traveled through the family, obviously spread by Merissa’s mother.
Corey was nineteen, a sophomore at—where was it?—Sarah Lawrence. Typed at lightning speed and never looked back.
Merissa erased the message without replying. Corey wouldn’t remember.
The week had been too long. It was getting to be some kind of joke. She was sick with shame; Shaun must hate her.
At Brooke’s party, he’d tried to kiss Merissa—in fact, he had kissed her, for the first time ever, trying to prod Merissa’s lips open with his tongue—but Merissa had (involuntarily) flinched.
After so long, after years—being “friends” at school, attracted to each other—or so Merissa had thought.
When Merissa stiffened and drew back from him, Shaun stepped back from her.
A flush rising into his face. He’d stammered what sounded like Oh, hey—cool. Sorry M’ris.
Merissa had insulted him, for sure. She had made an utter fool of herself.
Shaun Ryan was a nice guy—basically—and he’d seemed sincerely sorry, he’d been too aggressive with Merissa; he’d misread her smiles at him, her warm, throaty, giggly laughter. But the other guys would know, and so Shaun would be embarrassed and quickly then he would come to dislike Merissa Carmichael.
No way Merissa could text Shaun
SHAUN PLEASE TRY AGAIN. PLEASE KISS ME AGAIN. I AM SO SORRY—BUT PLEASE WILL YOU TRY AGAIN. . . .
No way. You get one chance.
Anyway, Merissa had beat out Shaun and half the guys in the senior class, getting admitted early to Brown. They’d all applied; Brown was tops on their lists.
But Alex Wren had been nice to Merissa, and Alex had applied, too. Desperately Merissa thought, Alex likes me! Maybe Shaun will know and be jealous.
It was all so ridiculous. Tink was correct: You know when it’s time to bail out.
Now again the shivery sensation rose in Merissa, the itchy excitement crawling along her skin. Eagerly her fingers sought out the secret, stitchlike cuts and scabs in her flesh, more than just the little cross in her abdomen—others, diamond-shaped, heart-shaped beneath her hard little breasts, on the soft curve of her belly, the insides of her thighs.
Punished! You need to be.
Now.
“Disgusting.”
Her flabby skin, Merissa meant. If you could pinch and squeeze flesh between your fingers, you were fat.
All the girls at Quaker Heights felt this way. Utterly, utterly disgusting to be fat.
How Nadia could bear to look at herself in the mirror, Merissa couldn’t imagine. Nadia’s features were pretty—especially her warm brown eyes—but her face was round as a plate and she had, if you looked at her sideways, an actual belly.
Merissa shuddered. If she looked like Nadia, she’d slash her wrists.
A text message arrived on her phone—NADIA.
Merissa deleted it without reading it.
“What does she want with me? She isn’t my friend.”
Merissa fumbled for a pair of scissors on her desk. Just a small pair of scissors, not the knife.
Quickly pressing the sharp point of the scissors against the inside of her left forearm, at the elbow. (Higher on Merissa’s arm were several small, scabby wounds like tattoos.) Just a swift gesture, piercing the skin to relieve pressure in her lungs so that she could breathe.
The cut was shallow—a few drops of blood. Soaked up in a wadded tissue and the tissue flushed away in the toilet.
Not much punishment. But Merissa felt better.
7.
(THE UNSPOKEN)
Daddy is moving out for a while. You know that he has not always been happy lately and that he has been away traveling lately, and now he is moving out—for a while. Daddy wanted me to tell you first, because he will be telling you too, but when he tells you, he has requested—oh Merissa, this is important for both of us, for you, and for me, honey—that you do not CRY.
For Merissa’s daddy, like many daddies—like many men, in fact, and boys—did not like to witness tears.
Especially, many men—and boys—do not like to witness tears for which they are responsible.
Tears are blackmail, says Merissa’s daddy.
And how UGLY even a beautiful girl’s face, contorted by tears! Snot-nose, runny eyes, twisty fish-mouth—Daddy will frown and back away when Merissa—(“The Perfect One”)—tries her tricks.
8.
“NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU”
“Merissa, honey—the important thing is, please don’t think that this has anything to do with you.”
But Merissa did! Merissa knew.
Back in early S
eptember, when it began, Merissa knew.
(She hadn’t told anyone. Not one of her friends. Not even Tink—and anyway, Tink had abandoned her.)
Carefully, bravely, Merissa’s mother held Merissa’s limp hand.
Mother and daughter sitting together at the kitchen table in stark morning sunshine and the household quiet—(Daddy had not returned the night before)—and outside on West Brook Way the dull grinding of the Waste Management truck and a clatter of trash cans like jeering laughter.
“—he says that there is no one else—or if there was, for a while last year, remember when Daddy was working so hard on that Northridge account—” Merissa’s mother stopped short, as if suddenly realizing she was saying too much. The skin around her eyes was puffy and bruised-looking, and there was a sourish smell to her breath that Merissa realized had become a familiar smell evident when her mother drew close to her. (Had to be some medication she was taking, to help her sleep. Or for “anxiety.”) “Your father swears there is not—I want to believe him. ‘Just a trial separation,’ he says. He’ll be living on the other side of town in that new condominium village on the river—he ‘feels confined’ with us, he says—he loves us, he says—but—”
Merissa saw her mother’s mouth move, but Merissa was not hearing all that her mother said. This was so ridiculous! So embarrassing! Like a scene in Tink’s TV soap opera Gramercy Park—(Tink had played a DVD of an episode for her girlfriends once, from a long-ago time when, in the story line of the saga, Tink had played a little girl of nine and her mother, Veronica, had played a neurotic rich man’s wife, unrelated to Tink—the girls had laughed at the hokey melodrama, underscored by mood music, such sad, silly women whose lives were a tangle of disappointed marriages and love affairs)—except this was Merissa’s real life.
Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You Page 2
