A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me (28 page)

I just sat there blinking at him. Nothing he was saying made any sense.

“We'd like to start in the home study program,” Dad said, after a minute. “And I think we can safely say we'd like to skip the rest of middle school. We'll have to talk about the college thing.”

“All right,” said the bald man. “Let me get some forms together for the home study program, and there's nothing to fill out about skipping the next grade—we'll just put that in his file.”

“Thanks,” Dad said, standing up and shaking the bald man's hand.

“Yeah,” I said, from where I was sitting. “Uh. Thanks.”

I followed Dad out to the car in a kind of daze. This was all totally ridiculous. Out of six and a half years of public school, I'd attended a grand total of about four. I'd never gotten better than a B average. Pretty much every kid my own age who'd ever offered an opinion on the matter had told me I was an idiot, and the teachers at Stevens had wanted to put me in special ed. I never really trusted the IQ test I'd taken in sixth grade. I figured I'd either gotten lucky or Mr. Adams had somehow falsified the score. And now here was this bald guy in a tie telling me I was such a mutant genius that I didn't even need to be in school if I didn't want to be. There was no question in my mind that I was worthless and stupid. Not being able to figure out why these bureaucrats kept lying to me about it was freaking me out.

“Well, that's pretty cool,” Dad said, as we got into the car.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

 

42

Dad and Bruce didn't work for the cleaning service for very long. After about six weeks of cleaning up crime scenes and abandoned buildings, they got a call out to a mansion in El Cajon, a desert suburb of San Diego. The way Dad told the story, the job was just to get the house ready for the owner's in-laws, who were going to be visiting from Colombia. Bruce started cleaning as soon as they got there, but Dad looked around a bit and couldn't help noticing all the lightly armed men who just seemed to be standing around not doing anything, or the way there seemed to be a glass-topped coffee table in every room. The house itself was newly built, and the landscaping was only just beginning. Dad joined Bruce and finished the job for the day, but when it came time to get their time sheets signed, he asked to talk to the owner of the home.

“He's busy,” said the man who'd been overseeing Dad and Bruce's work.

“We can wait a little while,” Dad said.

Eventually the homeowner came to see what Dad wanted. The man's name was Karl.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, when he came into the room where Dad and Bruce were waiting.

“Well,” Dad said. “I was actually hoping I could do something for you. I notice you're doing a lot of landscaping. I was a landscape architect in Seattle, and my partner and I work at a very reasonable rate.”

“Not to be rude,” Karl said, “but I can hire a landscape architect anywhere. What makes you special?”

“I'm a landscape architect. I can do the work that you need done around the house. I can keep my mouth shut. I won't see or hear anything while I'm working.”

According to Dad, Karl didn't need to think about it very long.

“You have references?” he asked.

“Felony possession with intent. In Eugene, Oregon. Nineteen seventy-five.”

“I'll check it out and get back to you.”

A week later, Karl called Dad and hired him and Bruce on as landscape architects at twelve dollars an hour, each. Cash. Plus expenses. Plus, every once in a while, he'd give Dad a goodie bag of drugs. The only condition was, Dad wasn't supposed to sell them. They were for personal use only; Dad the drug dealer was working for Karl the drug importer, and all he was doing was putting in garden irrigation systems, building decorative fountains, and taking care of the trees on the property. Karl didn't shit where he slept.

 

43

Under the home study program it usually took me about four hours to do all my homework for the week. After that, I spent most of my days down on the beach, which started at the end of our block. I had a $20 Styrofoam boogie board Dad had picked up for me at Target, but I mostly used it as a flotation device. On a low tide I'd go a half mile or so out to sea, then just let the waves carry me back in; then I'd swim back out and let the waves carry me back in. I could spend five or six hours doing that, three or four days a week. I kept the board with me as a kind of security blanket, in case I caught a rip or something. And to keep me from having to go down into the cold water, four or five feet under the surface. The feeling of those cold-water currents touching my feet was enough to send me into a panic. I imagined the water down there was black. I knew better, but that was what it felt like.

My dad got me a new bike for Christmas that year. I outgrew it almost as soon as he bought it for me. I was about five feet ten inches tall when I was twelve. But I rode it anyway. Mostly I rode it around the neighborhood, but every once in a while I'd cross over into Mission Beach to the north, or south toward Sunset Cliffs and Point Loma.

When I got home I'd shower in my room. Go upstairs and get some food, then take it to my room to eat it. I ate on my bed while I watched TV. My room always smelled like rotting orange peels. I hated the smell, but my best efforts at cleaning were thoroughly inadequate.

I watched shows about families. Kids with brothers and sisters and friends. Sometimes, for reasons I didn't understand, I'd start crying while I was watching TV. It used to happen a lot during a Coke commercial that showed around Christmas: snow, people holding hands, lighting candles, and singing about how they'd like to buy the world a Coke. When I watched it, a strange sort of panic would grab me. A crushing fear that everyone else was off somewhere, together, and I was alone in my basement room. That I'd always be alone in my basement room.

If it wasn't too late, on nights like that I'd get dressed and go down to the beach. There were big concrete fire rings down there. College kids would burn scrap lumber in them, then stand around them and drink on into the night. Sometimes they surfed by moonlight. I'd stand near the fires, looking at people's faces, just soaking up the presence of other human beings. Listening to their conversations and their jokes. It was never enough, but it was better than nothing.

*   *   *

Once every other month or so a big windstorm would blow in from the ocean. I'd put on my swimming goggles, wrap a scarf around my face, and go outside to watch. Because we lived so close to the beach, the windstorms sent tons of sand blowing down our street. Sometimes whole cars would be buried.

If it happened at night, I'd bring my flashlight and watch the sand stream down the street, like giant white snakes. If it happened during the day, I'd go to the beach and sit down with my back to the wind. Then I'd close my eyes and wait for the sand to bury me.

*   *   *

Dad and I fought about my room. A lot. He said it was attracting bugs. I thought he was probably right, but I didn't care. Or I didn't seem to be able to care. Once he told me to clean it by the time he got home from work or else. I went upstairs to watch TV in the living room and fell asleep on the couch. When he got home, he came back into the house through the basement entrance, took a look in my room, and came upstairs. He didn't even bother to wake me up, just started hitting me while I was on the couch asleep.

But it was getting harder. Hitting me. We were the same height now, and I was heavier. He was still a lot stronger, but the time was coming when he wouldn't be. Once we got in a fight about cleaning while I was in my room. He was yelling at me and I was arguing with him and he snapped and threw a punch at my head. A big looping haymaker. I blocked it with my elbow. We were both pretty surprised. Then he swung with his other hand, and I blocked that one, too. He screamed in frustration, shoved me onto the floor, and ran out of the room.

*   *   *

I took karate for a little while. I wasn't very good at it, and I didn't get along with the other kids in the class. Or the teacher. Or his kids. Or any of the grownups at the school. So I quit after a couple of months.

I tried writing to my friends in Seattle. Mostly Gabe. I'd send him enormous sheaves of paper with ideas for D&D games, or new gaming systems based on movies I'd seen on late-night cable. Sometimes I'd call him long distance, just to have someone to talk to.

“My mom says we keep owing postage on the stuff you send,” he said. “She says to put more stamps on the envelopes.”

I tried to write Calliope, too, but I gave up pretty quickly. I didn't really have anything to say.

Dad and Bruce made a lot of friends. Sometimes, if they were having a party upstairs, I'd go up and hang out. Everyone was always nice about it, but then I'd say something inappropriate or weird, and Dad would kick me under the table or something to try to get me to shut up.

“Why are you kicking me under the table?” I'd ask.

Then everyone would laugh awkwardly.

My life was breaking off from my dad's in a way that was confusing to me. More and more, he and Bruce had their own lives upstairs. He lavished affection on the dog. He bought a bunch of birds—parrots and finches, budgies and cockatiels—and started referring to them as his babies. Meanwhile, he and Bruce started calling me “Prophet of Doom,” supposedly because I was always such a massive buzz-kill. Whatever we were doing, I could be counted on to point out what could go wrong or why something wouldn't work. They had a valid point, but I was twelve. Mostly it all just made me feel like I was in the process of getting divorced from the only family I'd ever known.

I started having trouble sleeping. I could go a few days with hardly any sleep at all. When I did sleep, it was usually from about three in the morning until noon. Then later and later, until I'd flip the clock and get back on a normal schedule for a few days.

I gained a bunch of weight. At five foot ten I was around 160 pounds, but it was soft weight, all baby fat. Whenever I did see Dad, he made a point of telling me how heavy I was getting. I tried sticking my finger down my throat, to make myself throw up after I ate. I'd heard about that on TV. Unfortunately I seemed to have virtually no gag reflex. I tried using some ipecac syrup that I got for free from the fire station a few blocks away, but the vomiting was so painful and it gave me such bad gas I never tried it again.

I had a horrible racking cough that lasted for three months. Dad said it was psychosomatic. Before it went away, my throat was so raw that I was spitting up blood. But then it did just mysteriously disappear, so maybe he was right.

Two or three times a month Dad would take me out to his boss's house in El Cajon, and I'd get paid $2.50 an hour to dig ditches or clear rocks out of the horses' paddocks. I used the money to order Domino's pizzas. There were no good toy stores in Ocean Beach, I didn't have anyone to play with, and I suspected I was getting too old for toys anyway.

*   *   *

Dad and Bruce liked to go on trips. Sometimes we'd go down to Tijuana, just the other side of the Mexican border, for shopping expeditions. I'd buy cheap souvenir bullwhips and throwing stars for a couple of dollars apiece. Dad would buy Mexican horse blankets, or semiprecious stones: opals, amethysts, and quartz crystals with veins of gold in them. Other times we'd go out to the desert, or we'd take a day trip to Torrey Pines Park.

We went out to Palm Springs a dozen or so times. Somewhere in the desert between San Diego and Palm Springs there was a truck stop that sold soft-serve ice cream. The place was always full of crusty old truck drivers, and the parking lot was always full of semis. The walls inside were covered with dried rattlesnake skins, from snakes that had been found dead on the highway. I loved it in there. And no matter where we were in the desert—even if we weren't actually going to Palm Springs—I could always find the truck stop. Dad was fascinated.

“Is it the lay of the land, or the direction of the sun or what?” he'd ask.

“I don't know,” I'd say. “I can just … feel it. The ice cream calls out to me.”

I liked the Palm Springs trips for other reasons besides soft-serve. Dad and Bruce and I would get a room in a cheap hotel we liked and take day trips up into the mountains around the town. Looking at the desert floor from so high up, I could see the shadows of clouds moving across it, and I saw mountain springs, and streambeds shining with quartz crystals, agates, and fool's gold. Palm trees hanging with dates. I saw caves, and bats, and coyotes. And mile after mile of pristine desert mountain streams, roaring through deep crevices in the exposed bedrock of the desert floor and tumbling hundreds of feet down the sides of mountains.

Then one night, after a long hike, I was sitting in the hot tub at our cheap hotel with my dad and Bruce and a few other guests, and this old lady kept staring at me and muttering under her breath. Eventually Dad and Bruce noticed her doing it, and Dad finally asked her what her problem was.

“It's just not right,” said the old lady, glaring at me.

“What's not right?” Dad asked.

“Letting a girl that age run around without her shirt on.”

I was twelve. Almost six feet tall. Overweight. I had shaggy, shoulder-length hair. And my voice hadn't changed yet.

Dad stared at the old lady, then sighed and closed his eyes. Did a thing where he massaged the bridge of his nose like it hurt. Scrunched up his face. Then opened his eyes and looked up at the woman.

“That's a boy,” he said. “That's my son.”

“Oh,” said the woman. “Oh! I—”

“All right,” I said, getting out of the hot tub. “That's great. Thanks.”

“Nice work, you nosy cunt,” I heard Dad say as I walked back to our room.