Undiscovered Gyrl: The novel that inspired the movie ASK ME ANYTHING (Vintage Contemporaries) (22 page)

I made another abortion appointment for this Saturday at 10:00. I am so relieved. Just to make sure I really go this time, I drank two beers after dinner and am no longer worrying about how much I smoke.

Phone ringing. Somebody loves me. Stand by.

Affie. Inviting me over for dinner Friday night. I haven’t seen her once since my dad’s funeral. She sounded lonely. Seeing her will keep me from sitting home in my room and getting shit-faced on the eve of my abotion. Ha! Funny typo. Is that what sistas get? Abotions? Ha! Wait, they don’t. They have the kids. And then work three jobs to support them. They are brave. That’s what I would do if I weren’t a spoiled white girl.

•    •    •

I hate my guts right now. I am breaking up with myself. I am sorry Katie but I need space.

I was scared that it would be painful for me to be back in my dad’s apartment again. I thought when I saw his stuff I might really lose it. Well, I didn’t. Because none of his stuff was there! The place looked exactly the way it did the first time I ever had dinner there, way back when my dad and Affie first met. My dad’s TV chair was gone. None of his sports books were lined up on the window sill. Even the smell of his cigarettes had vanished!

I was so shocked I didn’t say anything. When Affie went to the kitchen to get me some Indian tea, I walked into the bedroom. His whole half of the closet was filled with Affie’s foreign robes. She had wiped my dad away like he never existed! I felt like puking. Not just because I was disgusted with what she did. Also because everything stank of flowery incense.

When Affie came in, I asked her what happened to my dad’s stuff.

“Goodwill.”

“You mean, you gave it away?”

“What else could I do? I certainly couldn’t sell it. It wasn’t worth very much.”

She was smiling in this dopey way. Like brown Mona Lisa with a mustache.

“I just thought maybe you might want to keep some of his stuff around to remember him by.”

“Oh, I’ll remember him, little girl.”

What did that mean? Was she being sarcastic?

I replied “Plus maybe I wanted some of his things. Did that ever occur to you?”

“Of course. I set a few things aside.”

She reached into a carved Indian box made of many different woods and pulled out a bundle of red velvet. I thought maybe she was going to give me something really special. I didn’t know what exactly but I had that fantasy. She opened the cloth and carefully handed me my dad’s wrist-watch, his driver’s license, his car keys on a Greenbay Packers key ring, and his wedding ring. The objects were so grimy and cheap—so him—it made his life and death seem even sadder. I started to bawl. Affie hugged me. I got snot on her dress and she didn’t care.

I hung out with her for another couple of hours, eating her surrealistic food and trying to think of things to talk about. It was difficult because we don’t have anything in common and I was still really nauseous. Right when I said I needed to go home and get some sleep, she said something weird that I didn’t understand.

She said “What a shame he didn’t leave that silly card where it was.”

“What card?”

“The one you gave him with his Christmas gift.” She pointed to the empty space where his chair used to be. “If he had listened to me, he’d be alive right now, sitting right there.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

She said the day my dad had his accident she was cleaning up and found the Christmas present I gave him at the bottom of his closet. She put the underwear and socks away and threw out the box. Later that night my dad freaked out because inside the box was the card I gave him. She didn’t understand what the big deal was. If the card had meant so much to him, why hadn’t he saved it? They had a big fight about it. Affie admitted to me that she was a little jealous he cared so much about the card because he never cared about hers.

She went to bed angry. In the middle of the night she heard him moving around in the dark, putting on shoes. She asked where he was going at midnight and he said “To pick through the garbage, like your cousins back in Calcutta.” When she woke up an hour later, the room was windy and freezing. She got out of bed and walked to the kitchen. The back door was wide open. That’s when she saw him lying at the bottom of the wooden steps.

I started crying again. I think Affie assumed I was crying because I believed my card had led to his death and I felt in
some way responsible. I was actually crying because I thought my dad never read my cards. But I kept writing them anyway because it’s the polite thing to do. Now I knew he read them in private. Does this mean he loved me in private too? Why else would he go outside in the freezing cold? Did he secretly save all the cards I gave him? If so where are they now? Did Affie give them to Goodwill? But if he loved me how come he never asked me a single question about my life? How come he never hugged me or said nice things? How come we never did anything together? The saddest thing was that I knew I would never know the answers to any of these questions.

After I stopped crying I told Affie some of my theories about why my dad was so mean to me. She semi-agreed with one of them. She thinks after I became a young woman it made him uncomfortable. But not because I look like my mom. She doesn’t think I do. She thinks he was just uncomfortable because I am so beautiful. WTF? I had no idea what this meant. Did she mean he was uncomfortable because he was attracted to me?! It was such a disgusting thought I didn’t even ask her to explain. I just said I was dead tired and had a doctor’s appointment in the morning, which was true. I cried all the way home. I wanted so badly to call Paul for comfort, but I knew it was impossible.

This morning I woke up thinking that in about two hours I would be getting an abortion, but my mom showed up at my door and said she had made me a 10:00 appointment to see Dr. Elaine Sherman. Turns out my mom’s known for a long time that I stopped therapy. She was going to just let it slide but I’ve been acting so offensively lately that she changed her mind. When I started to say no, she said either I go to therapy or I can pack my bags and move the hell out.

The second I got into Dr. Sherman’s office I started bawling. I told her that lately I’ve been crying way too much and that I have been thinking about killing myself and that I need some meds to make me stop.

She said “You’re not clinically depressed. Depressed people don’t cry the way you are. Depressed people sit in the dark unable to move a muscle. You don’t need drugs. You’re grieving. For your dead father. For your lost innocence. You need to keep crying until you run out of tears.”

Whoa, right?

I kept on sobbing without even saying anything and that was fine with her. She handed me a box of Kleenex and just sat there watching. (Pretty easy way to make money.) Later
she asked me if I ever got an answer to my letter to Mr. Silaggi. I told her I never wrote it. She handed me a pen and paper and told me to start writing. I told her I couldn’t. She said “Of course you can.” Well she was right. I did it easily. She liked it very much. She told me that whether I mail it or not is irrelevant. All that matters is that I have now put my feelings into words.

If you care, here it is:

•    •    •

I was too scared to tell Dr. Sherman about my pregnancy. And why bother if it’s going to be terminated anyway? I told her I would see her in two weeks. She said why not next Saturday and I said because I have a previous engagement.

I can’t believe what I just did. I walked to the corner and mailed the letter to Mr. Silaggi at his lake house. I wonder if he goes there anymore. He is probably dead and the letter will bounce back.

Since some of you asked, all I wrote in my dad’s card was “From your favorite and only daughter, xoxox K.” Nothing worth cracking your skull over.

Driving around in the warm rain today I did something you will think is stupid but was probably the smartest thing I have ever done. I went to Elysium Books. For those of you who discovered my blog recently and are too lazy to go back and read it from the beginning, I used to work there but I had to quit when my mom’s fiancé found out that my boss, Glenn A. Warburg, was a registered sexual
offender. My mom ordered me to quit my job and I obediently did.

Anyway, driving around today I thought about Glenn and how wonderful I felt whenever we talked. He made me feel intelligent, serious and full of potential. He was such a positive influence on me and that’s exactly what I need right now. I need transcendence! The next thing I knew I was turning the steering wheel and heading toward his store. I parked two blocks away so that I would have time to think it over and back out.

As I got closer and closer I got more and more scared but then I saw the warm light shining from inside his shop and I instantly stopped worrying. I felt safe. I just knew that no matter what terrible crime Glenn committed in the past, he had changed. I trusted my heart. I cupped my hands on the foggy window. Way in back, the door was open and I could see Glenn typing away on his computer. I felt so excited, like when you dump a boyfriend but then decide to get back together with him. Instead of just calling to tell him the good news, you show up at his bedroom window in the middle of the night and completely blow his mind. That’s how I felt before I rang the bell. When Glenn saw me standing there, he was so happy. He gave me the hugest smile ever.

“Why, if it isn’t my favorite person in the whole wide world!” he said.

He hurried me inside and hugged me like I was his long-lost daughter. Considering I only worked for him for like a
week, this was very sweet. We sat down in the back office and he gave me a cup of hot mint tea and a handful of vanilla cookies. He told me to tell him all about my life. I told him everything except the sexual stuff (that doesn’t leave much! ha!) and for a while that was okay but then he started smiling at me in a really suspicious way.

“Katie, something’s wrong. Come on, what is it? Spill the beans.”

“How come you know everything?”

“Because I’m older than you are. When you’re older, you’ll know everything too. Especially about young people. It’s easy to read kids.”

I liked being called a kid. Everyone is always telling me how mature I am and I’m sick of it. Plus it’s not true. Inside I am six.

“Before I tell you,” I said, “there’s something we need to talk about first if we’re going to be true friends.”

“Okay.”

“I didn’t quit for the reason I gave you. I quit because my mom’s fiancé found you on a registered sexual offenders website.”

Total silence.

I looked at him, scared of what I would see. His whole face had changed. But not in a freaky serial killer way. In a nice way. Everything was softer and more innocent. Like he was relieved not to have a secret anymore. Which made sense. What’s worse than keeping a shameful secret?

“I wondered about that,” he said.

“I wanted to talk to you about it, but my mom would have grounded me until the end of time.”

“She was worried about you.”

“Hello? I’m a girl.”

“I noticed. Then why are you here? What changed?”

“I missed you. And things have been terrible lately. I thought maybe you could give me some advice.”

“I’d be happy to. If I can.”

“But first you have to tell me what you did. What your sex crime was.”

Glenn just stared then pointed to the Kent Lights sticking out of my purse and asked if he could bum one.

“You smoke?”

“I’m what’s known at Nicotine Anonymous as a periodic.”

“You start and stop?”

“That’s right.” He lit one up and inhaled deeply, smiling like he was breathing in an entire bakery. “Well, I guess the first thing I should tell you is that when I was your age I was a mess. I drank vodka for breakfast and never met a drug I didn’t like. I robbed houses and sold pot for a living. I was busted for both. To avoid jail time I joined the Marines.”

He laughed at the face I made. It was really hard to picture him with a buzz cut and a machine gun.

“After I was dishonorably discharged I moved to California. The desert. The military had changed me. I was still a
mess, but now I was a violent one. One night I got hammered and went to the house of a young prostitute I knew. She was expensive and I couldn’t afford her. She knew it. She tried to push me out the door. I demanded a drink. I remember her handing me a bottle. Then I blacked out. Later, when I woke up in jail, I had no choice but to take the girl’s word for what happened. And the word of the emergency room doctor. I didn’t rape her in the way most people would define the word. But I beat her up pretty badly, and there was a sexual act involved that I’d rather not go into.”

“How long were you in jail?”

“Thirteen and a half years. I educated myself. I was released seven years ago this August. Haven’t touched a drink or a drug in almost fifteen.”