A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life (4 page)

FOUR

You know how they say that after women give birth, a chemical is released in their brains that causes them to forget the pain of childbirth so they’re able to face it again? That’s sort of what it’s like for me with winter. Even though I know that the turning of the leaves is just a harbinger (one of my favorite SAT words) of the endless months of snow and slush that lie right around the corner, I just love this time of year. Our street is lined with fire-engine-red trees, and when I stand on the sidewalk, it’s literally as if I am viewing the world through rose-colored glasses. I’m waiting for Cleo to pick me up for school.

She’s late. Typical. When she arrives she seems totally frazzled. She has a mug of coffee in her hand—not even a travel mug, just a white porcelain mug with hearts on it that says
SOMEONE IN SAVANNAH LOVES ME
—and a brush sticking out of her damp mass of curly hair.

“Hold this.” She hands me the mug and shifts gears, and we’re off.

She’s yanking at her hair with the brush, muttering obscenities, and finally she just gives up and tosses it in the backseat. She sees me eyeing the mug.

“My grandma, obviously. But I think it pushes the boundaries of cheesy to such an extreme that it actually cycles all the way back around to cool. Don’t you think?”

“I buy that.”

Then Cleo launches into the daily Darius report, which mostly involves her making excuses for his poor behavior. I’m getting a little talked out on the whole Darius thing, and I don’t mean to sound uncharitable or to imply that Cleo is totally self-absorbed, which she’s not. Cleo’s a great friend, and we’ve probably spent as much time talking about my situation with Rivka as we have about her situation with Darius. But there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of change in the daily soap opera that is Cleo and Darius, and yet we dissect each exchange like it’s a passage from
The Great Gatsby
(which I did finally read and which is a kick-ass book). Here’s what’s important to know: They’re “going out,” although he doesn’t call her his girlfriend—much to her annoyance. They don’t hold hands or anything like that at school because he thinks that stuff is stupid. I have to admit that I kind of agree with him on that one. And, most importantly, they haven’t had sex yet. There’s a lot of behavior that pushes the boundaries to the extreme, as Cleo might say, but they haven’t had actual old-fashioned sex, or what they might call “intercourse” in sex ed. I’m glad because I don’t trust Darius to stick around for long and I worry about Cleo getting used, but at the same time I kind of wish they’d do it because those are the details I want to hear about.

I tell Cleo about the huge fight I had with my parents last night over the Rivka Situation. They’re driving me crazy. For weeks now, at every opportunity, they drop hints they think are subtle but are far from it, and I guess they got tired of me ignoring them because last night they sat me down for a talk.

I hate my parents’ talks. I hate the way they look at me. Particularly Mom. She gets this attitude like she’s the lawyer and I’m on the witness stand. I feel like screaming at her that even though she spends most of her time at work, she’s home now, and I’m not a client or somebody she’s trying to sue or even one of her volunteers spending my Saturday in her service arguing with local shoppers about the First Amendment. I’m just her daughter.

Dad is much easier to take in these situations, but that’s probably because he sits there and lets Mom do most of the talking. Come to think of it, that can get pretty annoying too.

“All right. Fine. What?” That’s how I started our talk.

“Honey,” Mom said, “you know we don’t like to tell you what to do—”

“Well, then don’t.”

“But we really think that you should at least give Rivka a call.”

“See? You just did it. You just told me what to do.”

“She wants to talk to you.”

“So?”

Mom looked at Dad. He looked down at the floor.

“She might have things to say that are important for you to hear.”

“Like what? If she had something so important to tell me, she wouldn’t have waited sixteen years.”

“Honey, she hasn’t waited sixteen years. We’ve told you before that we’ve been in touch with her since you were born. She’s always known about you. She always wanted to know about you.”

“Stop,”
I shouted at her. I pulled my knees to my chest and put my head down. I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to hear that she’s been calling, that she knows that I go to Twelve Oaks, that I broke my wrist when I was five, that I was the scarecrow in the seventh-grade play. That is none of her business. I am none of her business.

When I lifted my head from my knees I saw that Dad was still looking at the floor. Suddenly it occurred to me that maybe there was a rift in this united front.

“Why don’t you say anything, Dad? Why are you just sitting there?” I asked.

“I don’t know, kid. This is tough for me. I hate to upset you.” Mom shifted away from him on the couch. His eyes were heavy and sad. Looking at him, I could see all the hours they’d put in on this topic, and I could tell that it hasn’t been easy on him.

“Well, congratulations. You managed to upset me anyway. Thanks a lot.”

I picked up the remote control and turned on the television, signaling that, from my perspective, our talk had come to an end.

Mom held out a piece of paper. “Please, just take her number.”

I took it partly to shut my mother up, partly because of the circles under my father’s eyes, and partly because no matter how hard I try to fight this, there’s that curiosity again, rearing its ugly head.

I stormed out of the living room and slammed my door a full three times just to make certain my parents could hear it. I turned the volume on my stereo up to eight, four notches higher than what is allowed in my house. I sat down at my desk, booted up my computer, and did some Internet research. Here’s what I learned: Rivka’s number has an area code and three-number prefix that I believe lands her somewhere on Cape Cod.

Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA, planet Earth.

I put the number in my drawer not knowing if or when I’d ever make this phone call, but I hoped that taking the piece of yellow scrap paper into my possession was a big enough step that I’ve earned the right to be left in peace for a while.

After school today I have the first meeting of my new club, the Atheist Student Alliance. My guidance counselor, Mr. McAdams, tells me that this isn’t going to win me a coveted spot on any of the Ivy League admissions lists and that this wasn’t exactly what he had in mind when he told me I needed to get more involved in after-school activities. On the other hand, he was so excited when I told him I joined the school newspaper that he actually burst into applause. It was kind of embarrassing. The poor guy seriously needs to get a life. Okay, I know what you’re thinking. So maybe my motive for joining the staff of the
Oaks Gazette
wasn’t purely the love of the printed word, but I’ll have you know that I’m really into being on the school paper. And this has absolutely nothing to do with Zack Meyers because I still haven’t had a conversation with him as remotely involved as the one that morning at the market.

My first assignment was to write a story on this sophomore kid who won the statewide science project competition. I know that sounds boring, and if you just write a story that says here’s this kid and here’s what his project was and he won a $500 cash prize, that
is
boring. But what I learned in working on this article is that everyone has an interesting story to tell. This kid’s father is a professor at Brandeis University, and he spent a year living in Tanzania when his dad was on sabbatical, and that’s where he got the idea for the farming experiment that won him the science competition. He always had a terrible phobia of bugs, but what he learned in Tanzania was that bugs can be used for positive purposes. So this kid started experimenting with planting and using bugs in the soil, and just like that he overcame his lifelong phobia and won a $500 prize. See? The story has adventure, mystery, and triumph over adversity. My article was like a mini-biography. It was a pretty good story, and I’m sure if I had more time and more print space I could have written a lot more about this kid, who at first seems like a total geek but has a life story as interesting as anyone else’s, at least as interesting as that of anyone else from Twelve Oaks.

Susan Linder was assigned to take the pictures for the article, not Zack Meyers. But what I’ve managed to learn in my short time at the
Gazette
through both observation and careful questioning of other staffers is that Zack and Amy Flannigan are not going out; they are just best friends who do everything together.

The meeting of the Atheist Student Alliance is taking place in the same room where I have my calculus class, which seems fitting to me because I don’t see how anyone with a mathematical mind can believe in God. It just goes against logic. The group is pretty small and also pretty diverse. I mean diverse in the sense that there are kids from different grades and social circles here. There isn’t a whole lot of racial or even economic diversity at Twelve Oaks, which I know is something that’s always bothered my parents, and that’s why ever since I was pretty young I’ve gone to a city-run summer camp in Boston. I’ve come to agree with them, and now I work there as a counselor. But looking around the room, for such a small group, there is a fair amount of diversity in here. Jasmine Booth-Gray is here. Also Minh Clarkson, my friend who was adopted from Vietnam, is here—the one whose parents have always told him that God sent him to their family. Do they know he’s a member of the ASA?

Heidi Kravitz is the president, so she runs the meeting. She tells us that on Columbus Day there’s going to be a rally in front of the town hall in support of the town seal and that we’re going to be part of a counterdemonstration. I debate whether I should chime in that my mom is the lawyer who is bringing the case, but this is my first meeting and I don’t want to look like I’m bragging or anything, so I keep quiet. We’re organizing the counterdemonstration with the Young Democrats, and I’m sure if there were a Jewish Student Alliance or a Muslim Student Alliance on campus they would join us too, but there is no such thing not only because, like I mentioned, Twelve Oaks isn’t exactly a beacon of diversity, but because there is a ban in our school charter against religious groups operating on campus. So there isn’t even a Christian Student Alliance. I’m pretty psyched for the demonstration, and I’m just praying in my not-believing-in-God kind of way that I run into that woman from the Organic Oasis so that I can give her a piece of my well-informed mind.

Cleo and her mom are coming over for dinner tonight. Dad is in the kitchen using every bowl, knife, and kitchen utensil imaginable. Jake comes home from soccer practice (my little brother the jock) and heads upstairs for a much-needed shower. I’m sitting in the living room going through more SAT vocabulary words. I don’t have to do any studying at all for the math part of the SAT, so I figure if I can give all my time over to the verbal part, then I can probably get a high enough overall score to make up for my late arrival to the world of extracurricular activities. Here’s one:
insensate
. Wouldn’t you think that means furious? Well, it doesn’t. That is the word
incensed. Insensate
means having no feeling at all. Who can keep this stuff straight?

From the kitchen Dad calls out for help. He’s making lasagna, and because Dad can’t seem to do anything halfway, he’s making the noodles from scratch. He’s already kneaded and flattened the dough into long sheets of pasta, and now there’s some process that involves dropping them in boiling water and then quickly plunging them in ice water. This requires more hands than Dad’s two. I wonder if all this is a sign that things at work are going slowly for Dad. He’s a cartoonist who does political cartoons for magazines and the
Boston Globe
. I know this sounds like he should be really funny, and Dad is a lot of things, but funny isn’t one of them. He’s a great cook, I’ll give him that. He can kick my butt at Scrabble. He has a halfway decent singing voice. But funny? Not my dad.

I offer to help like a dutiful daughter. I wash my hands in the sink, and then we stand there side by side: first the boiling water, then the ice water.

“So what’s new at school, kiddo?”

Why do parents always ask such lame questions? Adults always complain that their kids never talk to them, but if they open up conversations this way, what do they expect? I give him the stock answer.

“Not much,” I say. But then I decide to take pity on him. He has flour on his nice linen shirt. “I had my first Atheist Student Alliance meeting today.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“And how was that? Tell me about it.”

So I tell him all about the meeting and the demonstration coming up, and he looks at me as if he’s going to explode with pride. You’d think I’d told him I got 2400 on my SATs. Go figure.

The lasagna is now ready to be assembled. I help him build the layers.

“Have you given any more thought to making that phone call?” Dad keeps his eyes fixed on the mound of grated cheese. I’m cornered. I’ve let my guard down. I should have seen this coming. I’ve been avoiding these situations with my parents for precisely this reason. We were having a nice time. Why did he have to ruin it?

“Yeah. I have,” I say. “And what I keep thinking is this: Why are you on my case about this? Why do you care about this so much? Why can’t you leave me alone?” I pause. He stands motionless. “Unless, of course, you’re trying to get rid of me.” I say this last part knowing that it isn’t true but wanting to inflict some kind of pain on Dad, to give him a small dose of what I’m feeling.

“That’s crazy. Don’t even joke like that. Ever.” He wipes his hands on his apron and finally looks at me. I can see that I’ve succeeded in my mission. He looks wounded. “My job is to protect you. That’s my main responsibility in this world. So it goes against my instincts to push something on you that seems to upset you so much. But I also want you to have every opportunity that’s available to you. I want you to know everything about yourself that there is to know. Things that your mother and I can’t help you with.”