King Dork (30 page)

would have to do is tell him about me and I’d be dead almost instantaneously. Also to say: “If my father found out how you took advantage of me, he would bash your fucking head in

and you’d go to jail for twenty years.” I doubted she was right about the specifics there, but I got her point. But then she laughed, as though she had only been kidding, and told me, in the softest, most feminine manner, that she was glad I

called. At one point she got really quiet and said that sometimes she hates who she is and feels there’s no way out, and she sniffled like she was trying to hold back the tears. But just as I was starting to say I totally understood what that felt like, intending to offer some words of comfort and encouragement, she just started laughing.

“Are you okay?” I said, after a confused pause.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said with a kind of

venom in her voice. “You’re the one who can’t take a joke.”

She had been making fun of my attempt at a cool and digni-

fied (devil-head) demeanor, I guess.

Sam Hellerman had been wrong about Deanna

Schumacher in every respect but one: she was kind of a psycho freak.

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Now, what you have to understand is that the whole

time, Amanda was standing in the doorway glowering at me

and chanting “get off the phone, get off the phone” with ever-increasing volume. And Little Big Tom and Carol had

crowded around to observe the novelty of clumsy little Chi-Mo trying to talk to a female. It was hard to concentrate, and I was nervous enough to begin with. So I can’t rely on my interpretations of Deanna Schumacher’s words or the awkward

pauses between them or the tone of her voice. In warfare

there’s a thing called the “fog of war” where everything

around you is confusion and chaos and no one is able to see the big picture till it’s all over, and even then everyone has a different memory of it. It was like that. The Fog of Deanna.

Somehow, though, amid the confusion, it was established

that she wasn’t being ignored, at least not by me, and that she didn’t really intend to go through with any orders for my execution, though I still got the impression that she was mad at me somehow. She kept saying “I’m glad you called,” though, which was a good sign. I truly had no idea what was going

on, but it was beginning to dawn on me that having no idea what’s going on is a more or less defining part of the whole coupling process.

Somehow it became clear that no one in this situation

would mind all that much if I were to visit again. At least, that was the conclusion I reached when she said that Mondays

and Thursdays were best, as that was when her boyfriend

worked late. Okay, I’m game. “Don’t disappoint me,” she

added, which I knew was from a movie, but I forget which

one. Then there was an operator-assisted emergency break-

through on the phone from one of Amanda’s friends.

“I’ll have to call you back,” I said, and she said,

“Whatever, Tom-Tom,” in her pissed-off voice, and then she switched to the polite voice again and said, “Be sure to tell 228

your mother and sister hello from me.” I was going to say

something like “Okay, then,” but she had already hung up.

I know I said I was going to call her back, but I honestly didn’t know if I could take another one of those chats anytime soon. Amanda pounced on the phone as soon as I set it down. My mom was laughing and smoking, asking who I had

been talking to in a teasing tone that was eerily similar to the one Deanna Schumacher had employed to ask if I had used

and forgotten her. And
she’s
the one who claims not to want me to attempt suicide. I’ll never understand women, no matter whose mom they are.

Little Big Tom tilted his head and said, “Mojo working!”

I resolved to take the GED and emancipate myself as

soon as possible, just so I could safely use the phone again.

But I think you have to be sixteen.

I ended up visiting Deanna Schumacher again the follow-

ing week. It went pretty much the same way as before—a psychotic conversation, followed by making out, ending in a

blow job. We had some more time left on the pumpkino-

meter this time, so I decided to risk it:

“So your father’s a Santa Carla cop.”

“Peace officer,” she said absently. She was straightening

up the room. “Or he was. Not anymore.”

“And he knew my dad, you said.”

“Yeah, I told you that already. Can’t you shut up about

my father for five minutes?”

That was about all I had the strength for. Something

about her tone told me I wasn’t going to get too far with this line of inquiry.

When we switched to other topics, things went better.

I mean, I learned some interesting things about Deanna

Schumacher. She liked to talk about herself, though she

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wasn’t all that interested in hearing a person’s comments in reaction to her statements, which seemed intended primarily for effect.

“One thing you have to understand about me,” she said,

“is that I’m totally into Stoli.” Ah, I thought—the relationship deepens. She also said at one point that she “likes girls” even though she was mostly into guys.

“Is that a Suzi Quatro–Joan Jett kind of thing?” I said. She had no idea what I was talking about, but I had a feeling she didn’t really care what I had to say on that or any other matter. It was just part of her general method of trying to overwhelm me with confusing data and erratic moods and to

keep me just a little off-kilter at all times. It was working, too.

I never had any idea what she was thinking, whether she was glad to hear from me, whether she had lost interest in me, or anything. The Fog of Deanna was exhausting.

The coming Thursday was Thanksgiving, and I knew I

couldn’t call or visit on that day, which worried me a little.

How was I going to make it through a whole week without

any contact? I was already walking around with that punched-in-the-stomach feeling almost all the time, unable to eat or do much of anything, and I knew it would only get worse.

Then something happened that made even the Fog of

Deanna look comparatively easy to navigate.

P OI NT-B LAN K AT YOU R OWN R I S K

It was my fourth session with Dr. Hexstrom, the day after my second Deanna Schumacher experience.

I have to admit, my interest in
The Seven Storey Mountain
was dwindling. It was pretty slow going, and I already knew the ending, which is that the guy ends up deciding there’s 230

more to life than fast times and goes into a monastery. Plus, there’s this part where he starts heaping praise on the
Doors
of Perception
guy, so I was kind of disappointed in him. It’s weird how all these guys seemed to know each other. There

was even a quote on the cover of
The Seven Storey Mountain
from the
Brighton Rock
guy, saying something like “the best way to read this book is with a pencil,” whatever that might mean. It must have to do with their all being weird Catholics.

But maybe there was more to that guy than
The Doors of
Perception
indicated. I made a promise-to-self to try one of his other books—maybe they weren’t all poorly written, self-important, desperately trendy drug memoirs. Not that I had much time for that at the moment: what with the Timothy J.

Anderson investigation, band practices, learning to mispronounce vocabulary words from
Catcher in the Rye,
psychoanalyzing Sam Hellerman, being on the receiving end of

secret sheet-covered Catholic-schoolgirl blow jobs
and
of inept parental suicide prevention schemes—well, I was a busy man these days. So I set
The Seven Storey Mountain
aside with
The Naked and the Dead
to finish later, and boldly started on
La Peste,
CEH 1965. But it took me around two hours to translate the first page, and even then I wasn’t too clear on most of it, so I put that aside, too, and decided to pick up
Slan
where I had left off, where the freaky slan kid wakes up to find he’s been chained to a bed by this creepy old lady. In a way,
Slan
was a lot like
The Seven Storey Mountain
or
Siddhartha
with all the religious stuff taken out. Same basic idea. Kind of an improvement, if you ask me.

Now, as much as I enjoyed discussing slans and monks

and drugs with Dr. Hexstrom, I wanted to try to steer things in a different direction for this session. Basically, I just decided to point-blank her on some questions I was tired of wondering when we were going to get to. And because I knew that

231

a Hexstrom could be kind of hard to steer sometimes, I wrote them down on a sheet of paper and handed it to her when I

walked in.

a) When are you going to get it over

with and put me on medication so that my

brain chemistry will match everybody

else’s brain chemistry and there will be

no reason for further strife and

unpleasantness and we can all die happy?

b) Why do you think my mom freaked out

over my song about how Yasmynne Schmick

hadn’t decided whether to commit suicide

just yet? When are we going to get

around to discussing that? And what did

you think of the song? Not bad, huh?

c) Do they have to put a notice in the

paper when someone dies, or is it

optional?

I hadn’t meant to put (c) there, but I wrote it without

thinking and decided in the end not to cross it out. I almost added another question, too, for my own personal information, about what base oral sex counts as, but thought it might be better not to get into it. As for (c), though, maybe Dr.

Hexstrom would have some ideas.

She did, though she gave me a funny, Jimenez-

Macanally–esque look and wanted to know why I was ask-

ing. I showed her the Timothy J. Anderson card and told her how we couldn’t find any funeral notice in the paper on or around that date.

232

“I don’t think you
have
to put a death notice in the paper unless there’s some legal reason,” she said, “such as if there’s no will. I’m not a lawyer, so don’t quote me. But a funeral notice or obituary is usually done to make sure that everyone who might be interested knows and can make plans to attend.”

“So if you didn’t list it in the paper, it would be because you didn’t want anyone to know it was happening and didn’t want anyone to attend? Because you wanted to keep it quiet?”

She gave me the look that said: “don’t be so melo-

dramatic.”

“Or maybe,” she added aloud, “because you couldn’t af-

ford to pay for an announcement.” Well, the card did look a bit on the cheap side. Or perhaps the whole thing had just slipped their minds. You can forget to do a lot of things when someone dies.

She gave me a look that said: “why are you so interested

in this Timothy J. Anderson anyway?” I told her that the card had been in one of my dad’s books and then gave her the

look that said: “I feel like I don’t know anything about my father or who he was or what he was like, and I’m grasping for any clue, no matter how trivial or far-fetched or even delu-sional.” Well, it was true.

She eyed the card dubiously. “Why are you so sure it’s

from a funeral?” she asked.

Because it looked a bit like my dad’s funeral card. And

because of Tit’s note, of course, but I was keeping Tit’s note to myself, so I couldn’t mention that. Dr. Hexstrom said she didn’t quite know what to make of the card. Usually, she said, they put more information on them, like the dates of birth and death. The single date was hard to interpret. She also pointed out something about the card that I hadn’t noticed, which was that the left edge didn’t look quite the same as the 233

other edges. It had a slightly different color and was perhaps less evenly cut. I could see what she was getting at, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before. Once it was drawn to my attention, however, it really did look like it had been cut off, like it had originally been the front face of a folded-over card. What had been on the other side? Presumably

more information, like the dates of birth and death and so forth. And what had happened to it?

She added that they also make cards like that for memo-

rial services or masses that could be held long after the death or funeral, sometimes years later, and that cards of that kind can commemorate other important events that may not even

be deaths. I hadn’t realized any of that. So even if it was for a funeral, it was possible that Timothy J. Anderson died earlier, maybe even much earlier than 3/13/63, and that we hadn’t

searched early enough for the obituary. Tit’s note had mentioned a funeral, but the date was fake, and it could have been from any time. And it may not have even been a funeral. In which case, Timothy J. Anderson was not the dead bastard.

If not, who the hell was the d. b.? Man, these (devil-head) retrospective investigations into a deceased parent’s personal effects can suck the life right out of you. My brain was starting to hurt. I sighed heavily, and so did Dr. Hexstrom, just a bit, unless I’m mistaken.

“Now (a),” she said evenly, pointing to the note. “I’m still not sure you need that kind of medication.” And I was sure she was right: the kind of medication I would need was not a straightforward issue, and it might take years to figure out.

Maybe that medication hasn’t even been invented yet. Well, let me know when you’ve got it. I’ll be right here.

Then she pointed to (b) and said she had found the sui-

cide song very interesting. I resisted the urge to ask which part she liked best. Maybe we could cover that later. For now, 234

I really wanted to know about my mom’s freak-out. Had she

said anything to Dr. Hexstrom to indicate where the hell she had been coming from, or why this, out of all the Chi-Mo