Going in Circles

by Pamela Ribon

  Raves for Pamela Ribon’s “witty, wonderful, and wise” (Maryland Gazette) novels

  WHY MOMS ARE WEIRD

  “A rollicking page-turner. . . . Fantastic and satisfying.”

  —Albuquerque Journal (NM)

  “Compassionate. . . . fans will identify with this kind, imperfect heroine.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This joyous, single-sitting read is as bright and witty as it is wise and bittersweet. . . . Ribon is a sparkling talent.”

  —South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  “Hilarious and heartfelt. Why Moms Are Weird tackles the absurd morass of family with joyful wit and brutal honesty. I barreled through this book.”

  —Jill Soloway, Showtime’s United States of Tara and

  Six Feet Under; author of Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants

  WHY GIRLS ARE WEIRD

  “Chick lit at its most trenchant and truthful.”

  —Jennifer Weiner, New York Times bestselling

  author of Best Friends Forever and In Her Shoes

  “Light and entertaining.”

  —Booklist

  “A whole lot of good reading.”

  —Miami Herald

  “Irresistible. . . . [L]ike hanging out with your best friend just when you need to most.”

  —Melissa Senate, author of

  See Jane Date and The Secret of Joy

  Going in Circles is also available as an eBook

  ALSO BY PAMELA RIBON

  Why Girls Are Weird

  Why Moms Are Weird

  Available from Downtown Press

  PAMELA RIBON

  Downtown Press

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Pamela Ribon

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or

  portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address

  Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department,

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  First Downtown Press trade paperback edition April 2010

  DOWNTOWN PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ribon, Pamela.

  Going in circles: a novel / Pamela Ribon.—1st Downtown Press trade pbk., ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Single women—Fiction. 2. Roller skaters—Fiction.

  3. Roller derbies—Fiction. 4. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3618.I24G65 2010

  813’.6—dc22 2009051281

  ISBN 978-1-4165-0386-6

  ISBN 978-1-4391-6925-4 (ebook)

  For my wives:

  Anna Beth Chao

  Cat Davis

  Sara Hess

  Allison Lowe-Huff

  Dana Meller

  Allison Munn

  And for the

  kick-ass, badass,

  superhero rock stars

  of the LA Derby Dolls

  Did my ring burn your finger?

  Did my love weigh you down?

  Was the promise too much to keep around?

  —Solomon Burke

  (lyrics by Buddy & Julie Miller)

  I’ve been working on a cocktail

  called ‘Grounds for Divorce . . .’

  —Elbow

  Paranoia may be the most natural response to the feeling

  of love, to fully valuing another and hence growing aware

  of the ever-present potential for their loss.

  —Alain de Botton

  The Romantic Movement

  1.

  I’ve done the thing where I’m awake but I haven’t yet opened my eyes. I’m in that twilight haze where I know I’m not asleep but I can’t move a muscle. I’ve only got a second or two left before the panic will set in that I’ve somehow slept myself into becoming a paraplegic, that during the night I wrestled in some kind of nightmare that caused me to twist in horror, snapping my own neck, dooming me to an eternity of immobility.

  Naturally, this will then trigger a second wave of fear. If I have separated my head from the rest of my body there’s no real way that I can let anyone know this has happened. I will have to remain useless and numb, stuck in this position until someone figures out I’ve gone missing. I fear that it won’t be a matter of hours, but perhaps days or weeks before anyone truly notices. My office mate, Jonathan, will eventually get bored with this unexpected man-holiday and will finally ask someone if I died.

  But first, there’s this special just-up time, when I can’t move and I can barely think, when everything is perfect. I’m half in the real world but still able to clutch on to whatever dream I’m reluctant to depart. That makes this person I am—this Charlotte Goodman, age thirty, a skinny brunette with absolutely no singing voice and a deep aversion to paper cuts—nothing more than a concept. I’m not a real person and I don’t have to be. Yet.

  The dream I just fell from was gloriously mundane. I was sitting in seat 16A of a Continental flight somehow headed to a Starbucks, where I was to pick up a DVD for Sandra Bullock. This was supposed to be important. I was sitting next to a college frat boy who was singing the words to . . .

  No, wait. I was sitting next to a sorority girl who was talking about her boyfriend who was the lead singer for . . .

  No.

  Damn. Nothing. It’s gone.

  Eyes open.

  Morning, Sunshine.

  Matthew used to say that every morning. It was a sarcastic dig at how terrible I am for the first hour before I get three good cups of coffee into me. It’s not new—back in high school my parents would sometimes find an excuse to leave the house rather than wake me up early. They became avid churchgoers just to avoid my morning wrath. I know it’s not right to hate everything before nine in the morning, but I don’t understand how everybody acts like it’s okay to be up at that hour. If we all got together and took a stand, we could all sleep in and force mornings to become a time for sleep and sleep only.

  An early riser, Matthew would be well into his day, coffee brewed, having sometimes already gone for a run, taken a shower, and eaten breakfast before I waddled into the room, half-asleep, half-dressed, usually with only one eye open.

  “Shh,” he’d say, cradling my face with one hand. “Half of Charlotte is still asleep. Right Eye needs more dreaming.”

  And he’d whisper, pretending to tiptoe around the right side of me, the one that could wake up with a roar. “Shh. Right Eye is such an angel when she’s sleeping.”

  This was before we were married, when there wasn’t a question as to whether we were supposed to be together. Now I hear Matthew say, “Morning, Sunshine,” even though he isn’t here to say the words.

  I’ve had to come to accept the fact that every morning my eyes will eventually open. I will wake up, and t
hen I will have to get out of this bed. I’ll brush my teeth, take a shower, put on clothes, and do all of the things almost everybody else seems to be able to do every single day no matter what is happening to them. I used to be one of those people, the normal ones who would make coffee and go to their jobs and joke with their friends and be productive members of society. Not anymore. At least not now.

  Now I’ve had to develop a few defense mechanisms, tricks to accomplish a real-life calendar day without too many setbacks. Since I began employing these tactics, I have a 75 percent chance of making it to the next time I’m in this glorious bed without a full-on breakdown. Yes, there are still crying jags and the occasional panic attack. And sure, one time I kind of lost my shit at a Ruby Tuesday. But in my defense, that waitress knew what she had done.

  Defense Mechanism Number 1 is crucial and happens every morning without fail, right here in this bed. Before I leave the safety of my crisp, white sheets and the soft, warm comfort of my purple flannel duvet, before I head out into that harsh, cruel society known as Los Angeles, California—home of the beautiful and the clinical—I make a plan.

  This plan is important. It is the plan of the day. It doesn’t take long, but I have found without The Plan, horrible things can happen. I’m likely to end up sitting on a curb beside a taco truck on Sunset Boulevard, crying over a carne asada burrito, wondering where my marriage went. It doesn’t matter how much pain I’m in, I still have an awareness that people can see me, and I couldn’t take knowing that to someone I’d just become the Weeping Burrito Girl.

  The Plan keeps me from tangents. It keeps me from having to just float out there. Ironically, I learned this from Matthew. He liked planning, order.

  Likes. I have to stop talking about him as if he’s dead. He’s still here. Just not here.

  I hope he’s not dead. First of all, that’s going to look really suspicious. And second, I’m not really sure how I would be supposed to act at the funeral of my estranged husband. Would everyone think that I was secretly enjoying myself? Of course they’d think that, deep in the evilest parts of their hearts. Who wouldn’t?

  Look, as far as I know, today, right now, Matthew is alive. And if he’s not, I had nothing to do with it.

  Okay, so I’ve definitely decided I need to figure out what I’m going to do about my marriage before my husband dies.

  I suck in my cheeks and tilt my head back on my pillow, trying to stretch out my face. For the past two weeks, I’ve been waking up with a feeling that someone has slammed a hammer into my skull. It has gotten worse every night, and this morning it hurts to open my mouth even the slightest bit. I wonder how long I can go without talking to anybody. Could I make it through an entire day, even if I left the apartment? That sounds like such a glorious luxury, being a mute. How wonderful not to have to keep answering the worst question on the planet: How are you holding up?

  I lurch myself up and over until I’m in a seated position. I make my feet touch the floor as I decide on the plan for today.

  Okay. Leave the bedroom. Make coffee. Write email that you will be late for the office. Do not check your email to see if Matthew wrote. Go to Dr. Benson’s office for this jaw pain. Go to work. Come home and hide.

  Once The Plan is firmly in place, Defense Mechanism Number 2 will often be itching to take over.

  Defense Mechanism Number 2 is a little more complicated. It took a while for me to be comfortable with it, and I’ve pretty much sworn myself to secrecy about it. If anyone else learned about Defense Mechanism Number 2, I would be put in the rather vulnerable position of having said person possibly think I was unhinged. Certifiable. But when I tried suppressing Defense Mechanism Number 2 I learned that it’s not really up to me. I mean, it’s me, but it’s not me.

  Sometimes, for no other reason than to get through This Hour Right Now, I have no choice but to pull myself out and narrate my own life, to myself, in the third person. I know it’s me, but somehow, this way, it can also not be me, and that makes it so much easier to deal. That’s Defense Mechanism Number 2.

  So, look. I sleep, I drink, and sometimes a male voice in my head tells me what’s happening to me. Perfectly understandable, considering.

  In my head he sounds like a dad. Not my dad, but someone’s dad. Half folksy, half serious, a man who’s already lived a life and knows that this one I’m in is just going through a rough patch, nothing more. He kind of sounds like Craig T. Nelson. Well, really he sounds like John Goodman. This is probably because when I was a kid I told a bunch of my friends at school that I was related to the dad on Roseanne, and if they didn’t believe me they could just check out our last names, which were exactly the same.

  So when things get rough, when I don’t know what’s going to happen, when The Plan can’t protect me, I let Uncle John do the talking. I let him go on in his stomach-stuffed voice like I’m tucked into bed waiting for one last story before I close my eyes, and soon everything’s going to be okay.

  Sometimes I even start to believe him.

  2.

  Charlotte Goodman lets the voice in her head take over as she swallows three ibuprofen with her second cup of coffee. She sits down to her laptop with the intention of sending an email that says she won’t make it to the office until close to lunch. At some point Charlotte will send that email, but not until she takes a quick, masochistic glance for a name in her inbox she has absolutely forbidden herself from checking for.

  It is the name of one Matthew Price, a man who is her legal spouse. This means he is her husband. For now. And the last thing she should be doing is waiting for him to write. She shouldn’t wake up in the morning hoping that this time there’s communication from him. It is getting rather embarrassing how Charlotte wakes up every morning with new hope that somehow she will know without a shadow of a doubt that he wants her and needs her. So right now, Charlotte shouldn’t be looking for Matthew’s name. In fact, the whole point of having The Plan was to follow it, and one of the items on today’s plan was not doing what she’s now doing.

  Charlotte quickly scans the names in her inbox, squinting the entire time. This way it doesn’t count. She didn’t look right at it. She barely registered the names that were there. She didn’t even take the time to delete the spam.

  So why does Charlotte continue to search for a name she actively tries to avoid? Our beloved heroine would love to know the answer to that question herself. She’s tried all manner of ways to break her addiction to information on Matthew’s whereabouts.

  This has much to do with why Charlotte has been popping anti-inflammatory medication for breakfast. It is also why she is currently letting the caller trying to reach her on her cell phone go to voice mail. Charlotte knows the only person who calls at this hour is her mother, a woman whom Charlotte is unable to deal with at this particular time, or that particular time, or any particular or unparticular time.

  Charlotte feels the need to think to herself at this point that the narration of her life by John Goodman most likely doesn’t sound like the actual John Goodman, but it’s how the voice feels inside her that’s important.

  Charlotte isn’t sure whom she’s trying to placate when she makes mental excuses for her own strange behavior. She supposes it’s not unlike how people check behind them after they stumble, in case someone saw them almost fall, so that everybody silently recognizes that the one who tripped had something tangible to blame, and isn’t just bad at walking.

  The narration of Charlotte Goodman’s life is important for times like now, when she’s driving across the city to Dr. Benson’s office. Sometimes she wishes she could montage the boring, mundane parts of her life when she’s alone with her thoughts. Skip ahead to the next part and get the day over with in a matter of forty-seven minutes. To be honest, Charlotte doesn’t prefer spending time with people; it’s just that they make the minutes pass faster than when she’s on her own. Other people are distractions.

  Roughly an hour after Charlotte has swallowed those ibuprofen, she
’s in Dr. Benson’s cramped office. This is where she no longer needs her narrator.

  Dr. Benson has his hands on either side of my face, pressing my temples, threatening to cause a cerebral cave-in. Standing inches from my head, he’s staring me down like he can see through my skin. Like he’s scanning my insides with robot laser eyes. The intensity of his gaze has caused me to stop breathing, worried that even a single exhalation could cause the results to be skewed.

  Toned, tan, thin, with the kind of face on which you have to actually go searching for a physical flaw, Dr. Benson’s exactly what one imagines a Beverly Hills doctor would be. While I find it very comforting to have my health observed by a perfect example of The Human Body, it’s still amusing that someone would bother to get a medical degree when he’s already successful at resembling a Hollywood actor. What a decision Dr. Benson must have had to make at one point in his life. “Do I make a lot of money saving lives with these hands, or do I make a lot of money pretending to save lives with this face?”

  I force myself to detach from the hypnotic pull of Dr. Benson’s apparently well-calibrated ocular diagnostic tool and focus instead on my file folder, which is tucked underneath his arm, jammed dangerously close to the dampness at his pit. For a moment I consider reaching out to snatch the folder to safety.

  “TMJ,” Dr. Benson concludes, breaking the silence in the room.

  The disappointment in my sigh is unmistakable, but it’s nice to finally breathe again. “Really?”

  “TMJ,” he repeats, with a distant tone in his voice, as if TMJ is a girl he used to know who doesn’t come around anymore, one who never knew how much he loved her.

  For the briefest of moments, I do worry what people are going to say when they find out my jaw pain is due to something associated with excessive gum chewers and those who give blow jobs. Anybody who knows me knows I didn’t get it from either. At least not recently. But that doesn’t stop me from being offended when Dr. Benson concludes: “You must be grinding your teeth in your sleep.”