Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The girl, Molly O’Hagan, was taller than Merissa and known for being strong-willed; in fact, Molly was a senior class officer, but Merissa insisted that she was perfectly all right—she’d just missed a step and fallen.

  It was thrilling—in a strange, edgy way—to be pushing away from Molly O’Hagan, gently but firmly. To be the center of this sudden and unexpected attention, to see such sympathy in the eyes of Molly O’Hagan and others. To say, with a resolute little smile, even as she held the wadded tissue to her bruising face, “Thanks so much, but no.”

  The cut bled for a while but wasn’t deep at all—hardly more than scraped-away skin. In a field hockey game Merissa could expect to be more bruised, on another part of her body; but still, it was nice to be fussed over, and by a girl and her friends whom Merissa didn’t really know—nice to be touched.

  Otherwise, being touched made Merissa feel anxious.

  And how thrilling—to feel the blood-trickle down the side of her face that was so startling and unexpected, and drew the sympathy of others.

  And not long afterward, feeling a bump the size of a quail egg on her forehead, throbbing with pain.

  But a quick, sharp, visible pain. A pain that didn’t really hurt.

  Back in the junior corridor, Merissa got plenty of attention from her friends. By this time she was laughing lightly—“Oh, hey, guys, it’s nothing. C’mon!”

  It hadn’t been just the chemistry test that Merissa had been obsessing over but—oh, who knows what?—each day, each hour, it had begun to seem that there was more, more, more. “Think of your résumé for college applications, Merissa! Your résumé, résumé, RÉSUMÉ”—not only Mrs. Jameson, whose job it was to get Quaker Heights seniors into the very best, the very most competitive universities, but Merissa’s parents also; not only her father, who was C O M P E T I T I V E as hell, but lately Merissa’s mother as well.

  We need you to do really, really well, sweetie. Daddy is counting on you, and so am I.

  Which was why, for the sake of Merissa’s college application résumé, she was taking as many honors courses as she could and was involved in as many extracurricular activities as she could be, plus JV (Junior Volunteer) projects that took her, by chartered bus, on alternate Saturday mornings, to devastated urban areas in Newark and New Brunswick, where prep-school students like Merissa assisted adult volunteers in tutoring (black, Hispanic) teenagers who were said to be “functionally illiterate.”

  Merissa had complained to Tink, “You’d think my mother is entering me in some kind of horse race, and little horsie had better do well or the horsie owner, that’s to say my father, will fire us both.”

  Tink snorted with laughter. Not that she thought this was funny.

  “Dude, you got it. So what’re you going to do?”

  Just run the horsie race. And hope I don’t stumble and break my neck.

  And Merissa felt anxiety not just about the college application résumé but anxiety about boys: the boys who asked Merissa Carmichael out whom she didn’t really much like, and the boys who didn’t ask her out whom she liked a lot more, or thought she did—at this time, sixteen, Merissa hadn’t really been out with any boy, only just with a group of friends, and no one actually “with” anyone else.

  Since ninth grade, she’d been in love with Shaun Ryan.

  And it was clear, at least most of the time, that Shaun liked Merissa, too. In any gathering, the two just naturally gravitated toward each other. Nobody made Merissa laugh quite the way Shaun did when he was in a funny mood.

  In the life of a popular girl, there are always boys who like her—in some cases, a lot—whom she doesn’t like but doesn’t want to offend, either.

  For instance, Gordy Squires.

  For instance, Virgil Nagy.

  These were nice—brainy, boring—guys. Every time Merissa seemed to turn around, there was Gordy, or there was Virgil—awkwardly smiling at her.

  Merissa murmured Hi! with an excuse about being really, really in a rush, and escaped.

  Even Alex Wren, whom Merissa sort of liked. But felt self-conscious when Alex fell in step with her, walking with her and trying to talk about—whatever it was Alex was always trying to talk about with Merissa.

  The poor guy’s crazy about you. Face it, M’riss! Tink had jabbed her in the ribs.

  Merissa had laughed. Not wanting to be cruel, but for God’s sake, what could she do about it? Half the guys in Merissa’s grade school (for instance) had had crushes on her, even the short boys whom she’d towered over.

  If only Shaun felt that way about her. Or if only she felt that way about Alex Wren.

  Her father had said, “You are not to go out with any boy until I have checked him over—and not before your thirtieth birthday. Comprendez?”

  But Daddy had been joking. Of course.

  For Daddy wanted Merissa to be popular, too.

  It just did not make sense—(Merissa wanted to protest)—that her father wanted her to be beautiful, and popular, and (she guessed) “sexy”—but at the same time, he didn’t want her to go out with boys.

  The way he’d been jealous of her mother, Merissa’s mom had told her, when they’d first been married; though he’d encouraged her to wear “sexy” clothes, paint her finger- and toenails, and wear high-heeled shoes she’d hated.

  All these things, Merissa had been thinking about when she’d fallen on the stairs. Thoughts like angry hornets buzzing inside her head.

  So, falling and hurting herself so publicly and, for the rest of the day, feeling her head pound, touching the bump on her forehead and the little scratch that had ceased bleeding but felt like fine stitching in her skin, had been, unexpectedly—pleasurable.

  And the attention! Not for scoring high on a test, which makes everyone hate you, but for bleeding, being hurt, which makes people feel sorry for you and want to help you.

  And you can say, with a little stoic smile, Thanks, but I’m fine. I really am! It’s nothing.

  It was punishment for being an essentially worthless, ridiculous, and not even very good-looking person, but at the same time, it was a reward.

  “M’rissa? Hey—I heard you hurt yourself. . . .”

  “Shaun, hi! No, it’s like—really nothing. . . . It didn’t even bleed much.”

  “What happened? Somebody said—you were pushed on the stairs?”

  “No! I was not pushed! Who told you that?”

  Shaun shrugged. Just something he’d heard.

  “Of course no one pushed me. Why would anyone push me?”

  “Maybe jealous of you? There’s lots of . . .”

  Shaun was joking, of course, but his voice trailed off as if he thought better of what he was saying.

  . . . lots of people who hate you.

  Shaun peered at Merissa’s bruised forehead. There was an anxious moment when Merissa thought—half thought—Shaun might lean forward and kiss it.

  If he had—(but Merissa knew he wouldn’t: She and Shaun didn’t have that sort of relationship)—she thought she might faint.

  “Wow! Does it hurt?”

  “I told you, Shaun—no. It’s nothing compared to being battered out on the hockey field.”

  Later, Merissa would regret having spoken so assertively.

  Shaun had shrugged, laughed, and backed off. Merissa had wanted to call after him—Oh, Shaun, wait! It does hurt. I think I’m going to faint.

  But she went away in a state of near euphoria, thinking, Shaun does like me! He cares.

  This was a surprise—wasn’t it?

  Come off it, M’riss. Shaun is crazy about you too, except the poor guy is scared of you—the Perfect One.

  And at home there was Merissa’s mother, near hysterical at seeing such a “lurid” bump on her precious daughter’s forehead. And there was Merissa’s father, home for dinner that night, blinking and staring at her forehead before asking, in a faltering voice, what had happened. And when Merissa told him, insisting that it was really nothing and didn’t hu
rt—(which was more or less true: the little injury looked worse than it was)—Daddy cried, “Hey! Let Daddy kiss it and make it well.”

  Which Daddy did.

  Daddy loves me. He does!

  That was proof.

  Soon after, Merissa began the cutting.

  Why? Because she couldn’t fall down the school stairs every day and hurt herself.

  And she needed to be hurt. She needed to be punished.

  She needed to bleed. And she needed to cease bleeding—to heal.

  She needed a secret world. A world to hide in.

  She needed to seize control, to defy others’ control of her.

  She’d heard of girls who cut themselves in secret, as she’d heard of girls who starved themselves, or stuffed themselves and forced themselves to vomit; and there was the example of Tink Traumer, who spoke openly of her several suicide attempts—but with such an air of gaiety and drollery, you were led to conclude that of course she wasn’t serious!

  (So, when news came that Tink had at last k****d herself, that Tink was at last d**d, the first thought that came to her friends was, Oh Tink, come on! You’re not funny.)

  Merissa had heard of these girls and had always thought they must be mentally ill, or neurotic—to cut themselves with something sharp! It had seemed just too weird, like pulling out your hair a single strand at a time—why would anyone want to do such a thing?

  Eating disorders were so common, no one was particularly surprised or judgmental. In Merissa’s circle of friends whom she’d known since middle school, there were several girls, including Chloe, who had a tendency to be anorexic, and others who overate and induced vomiting. (Merissa wondered about Hannah, sometimes. And Nadia Stillinger, who looked so, well—soft.)

  Merissa could go without eating for hours—she never ate breakfast and often felt too restless to sit still to eat a meal, especially when it was just her mother and herself. Merissa’s metabolism burnt up calories in a sort of nervous combustion, and she supposed she was—just slightly—anorexic, or would be, except cutting was so much more thrilling, because it was so much more dangerous, and forbidden.

  It happened several days after she’d fallen down the stairs at school.

  It happened when the swollen bruise on her forehead was faded, and the little cut that had trickled blood down the side of her face had healed.

  It happened when Merissa was feeling so high-strung and tense—like the string of a bow pulled back, and back, and back, the arrow about to fly—and she knew she’d never be able to sleep.

  Preparing for midterm tests. Or maybe it was preparing to get the tests back, next day at school.

  She was in her bathroom, her hair wrapped in a towel. She’d just had a shower, and the room was fragrant with steam.

  And maybe she’d been thinking about Shaun Ryan—or maybe she’d been thinking about her father.

  Her father and her mother. Who seemed to have little in common any longer except her.

  As if a devil had nudged her, Merissa did a strange—unexpected—thing: She drew the inside of her wrist against the sharp edge of the medicine cabinet.

  As if she’d wanted to cut her wrist, and to cut into the little blue artery. But the edge of the cabinet wasn’t sharp enough and made only a red mark in her skin.

  Pulses were beating in Merissa’s head, in her ears—a terrible pressure was building up. In a drawer she rummaged for the little scissors she used to cut her finger- and toenails, and before she could think what she was doing, she drew the sharp points of the scissors along the tender inside of her left arm. At once a thin vein of blood emerged, delicate as a cobweb.

  “Oh!”—the shock of it, the sensation of relief.

  The cuts were not deep, just scratches. But fascinating to Merissa, how rapidly she could alter her physical state.

  She’d been nervous, and she’d been fretful, and she’d been frustrated, and she’d been bored. But suddenly all that had vanished—now she felt pain.

  The strange sensation called pain. Since Merissa had caused it, and controlled it, and since it was secret, and no one could know—it made her very happy, in that instant.

  I can do this any time I want. And no one can stop me.

  Merissa, my God! What have you done to yourself?

  Merissa! How could you?

  Merissa smiled, imagining her parents’ shock.

  “But you’ll never know. No one will ever know.”

  10.

  “PERFECT ONE”

  “Merissa? Can you help us out?”

  Help out—who? Fourth-period science, and Mr. Kessler was smiling at Merissa in his quizzical-teasing way, for evidently he’d asked a question that another student had failed to answer adequately—and so Mr. Kessler was calling on Merissa Carmichael, who could usually be relied on to supply correct answers.

  Merissa’s face pounded with blood. This was embarrassing!

  Guiltily Merissa confessed. She could see that Adrian Kessler was trying not to be disappointed in her.

  “I—I didn’t hear the question, Mr. Kessler.”

  (Was this happening more often lately? Since Merissa’s fantastic week, since so much Good News had happened at almost the same time, she was aware of things not going so well: going down.)

  (Her first rehearsal of Pride and Prejudice, for instance. Though Merissa had stayed up late several nights in a row to memorize the role of Elizabeth Bennet, she’d stumbled reading her dialogue, and at one point, after an embarrassed pause, Mr. Trocchi said, “Merissa! Elizabeth Bennet is one of the great witty females of English literature—she wouldn’t put us to sleep, you know.”)

  Mr. Kessler repeated the question, which was related to the homework assignment of the previous night—What is the distinction between planets and dwarf planets? Give examples. The question wasn’t difficult, really, and Merissa gave a reasonable answer.

  “Thank you, Merissa! That’s exactly—almost exactly—perfect.”

  Perfect! Merissa was troubled to think that her teacher might be mocking her.

  (But how would Mr. Kessler have known? “The Perfect One” was just a joke of Tink’s—no one called Merissa that any longer; at least, not to her face.)

  With adults, you never knew if they were speaking sincerely or sardonically. Adult men, especially.

  But Mr. Kessler was speaking sincerely, it seemed. Merissa tried to concentrate.

  “Until just recently, Pluto was a planet—the ninth planet—but in 2006 more powerful telescopes revealed that Pluto is just an object, nothing more than rock and ice, and very small—no more than one-fifth the size of our Earth’s moon—like the state of Rhode Island, comparatively. So ‘dwarf planet’ is the new classification.” Mr. Kessler paused. A sly look came into his face, you could see him preparing to be funny. “Like being dropped from varsity to JV status. Like being a dork when you thought you’d been a jock.”

  The class laughed. Heartless, heedless.

  As if, Merissa thought, most of them weren’t dwarf planets.

  Mr. Kessler persisted: “A loser, when you’d thought you were a winner. And you’d gotten away with it so long, you almost believed it yourself.”

  More laughter. Even Merissa smiled.

  Why is it so funny, being a loser? Is it a law of nature?

  Is it—fate?

  Like a death sentence?

  Adrian Kessler was one of the younger teachers at Quaker Heights Day School. It was known that he had all but a PhD degree from Columbia University in ecological studies—plus a master’s degree in education. You had to wonder if he thought of himself as a winner, in fact. Or was he a loser hoping to be mistaken for a winner?

  He wasn’t conventionally attractive—his face was narrow, his eyes set too close together. He was lanky and long-limbed and often restless, moving about the classroom as he taught. He liked to toss chalk into the air and catch it; he liked to scrawl on the blackboard in sudden swoops of inspiration. Like all male teachers at the school, he wore a
dress shirt and tie, but with these Mr. Kessler was likely to wear a corduroy jacket, khakis, and running shoes. He oversaw his students’ lab work closely and was usually patient—or patient-seeming. He had a way of turning criticism into a joke—usually. His hair was often disheveled from his habit of drawing his fingers through it in a gesture of comical exasperation.

  Once, Mr. Kessler had surprised Merissa’s class by saying, as he’d handed back a test in which many had performed poorly, “Because you’re at Quaker Heights, you believe you are ‘entitled.’ But don’t be deceived.”

  So Kessler could be hard-edged—when he chose.

  Mr. Nice Guy, packing heat.

  And he wasn’t an easy grader, though he wanted you to like him.

  Many of Merissa’s classmates resented such remarks of Mr. Kessler’s—which they didn’t quite understand but knew to be judgmental. As they resented receiving grades lower than A-minus.

  Secretly, Merissa thought that Mr. Kessler was absolutely right. Even those classmates whom she liked, in many cases, imagined themselves entitled—to get high grades, to get into the best colleges, to take their places in their parents’ worlds, in upscale towns like Quaker Heights, New Jersey. They would work—to a degree. But they expected to be rewarded, and could be mean and spiteful when they were not.

  The fact was that Quaker Heights Day School, though it had been founded in the late 1960s, in an era of idealism, as a place in which “high-quality education” was administered in “egalitarian surroundings,” was dominated by a hierarchical social structure that most teachers pretended to know nothing about, even as, in the classroom, they deferred to its rankings. For here was a social pyramid firmly in place, as in any suburban public school: popular kids at the top; misfits and losers at the base; in the middle the majority of the student population, anxious not to sink further, ever-hopeful of rising by a notch or two.

  Merissa and her friends—the girls of Tink, Inc.—were somewhere near the top. While Tink had been their friend, and Tink had had an outsider reputation—famous (in another lifetime, as a child actress) even as she was controversial (that’s to say, Tink had numerous detractors)—Merissa and the others had been envied for their nearness to Tink; now that Tink had departed, some residue of her reputation lingered, like a slow-fading ghost.