Donorboy (12 page)

Is that mean? I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't want to see any of them on Jerry Springer or anything, but it's not like I am a good enough friend to be like maybe the 25-year-old guy who works in the record store might not be your best boyfriend choice.

And what about me? Was I jealous when Jen was talking about whatever boy she likes? I don't think so. Actually Jen is kind of starting to bum me out and I actually like Kate a little better. She is always sketching and she draws pretty fucked up stuff like skulls and horror movie stuff or metal album covers or something, but maybe drawing all that horrible stuff makes her happier in person because Jen is always bummed out which like I say I do like sometimes when I am bummed because then we can be bummed together but sometimes I would rather have a distraction. Anyway, I wish I could draw skulls or something because I would like to have something that made me happy right now or at least some place to put the sad.

Still failing but I did almost care when everybody was staying after to check their grades and I was like why bother. I am not an artist. I am not a shoplifter. I am not a goody goody going to Harvard early decision, not with these grades missy. I am not a druggy. I am nothing, I am just me, just Rosalind, just a block of sad with a girl around it.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: it didn't work

I just thought you might like to know which you didn't seem to notice because you were yelling at me so much but I did actually spend most of my time at that party crying. Which I am not pleading for leniency or anything your honor, but I just thought I would tell you that it wasn't fun, so it's not like there is too much danger of me doing it again. I thought it would make me feel better and it made me feel actually worse.

Is this ever going to stop? How long before you had fun again?

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: it didn't work

Rosalind—Thank you for writing. I really do appreciate it, and I suppose I must cop to your implicit criticism that I was more concerned with reading you the riot act than with whatever might have been happening to you at the time. Which apparently was a Weepy Drunk, which I am sorry to inform you is a Cassidy family tradition. (You do not bear the name, but you do bear the DNA, which I am afraid is where the Weepy Drunk gene resides.)

I have not forgotten your question. Bear with me.

It was not uncommon for my father to spend his off-nights getting plowed and then weeping about how much he missed Mom, what a bad father he was to me, he was sorry but he was a mess. I am not certain if he noticed when I stopped disagreeing with him.

But I digress. I, myself, had my alcohol experimentation, primarily in college, and I too found that on some occasions it made me feel good, while on others I would spend the entire evening crying into my red plastic cup full of foamy Milwaukee's Best because I wanted my mommy. So if you have learned that booze is a treacherous friend, you are well ahead of me. I believe I was twenty-two and a year out of college before I decided that I really couldn't trust drinking to excess, because the crying was even worse than the hangover.

As for when I had fun again—well, remember that I was nine years old. And
Star Wars
came out the previous summer. So I was one of these kids you may have heard or read about who saw the movie weekly for about a year and a half, and I used to be able to play Star Wars with my friends (almost inevitably getting stuck with the loser role of Wedge. Too shy for Luke, too wimpy for Han, too small for Chewbacca. I did score Obi-Wan a few times … but I digress.)

So, in some respects, I was able to have fun almost immediately, in the way that children can. And then I would cry in the evenings.

I put the crying away after a few months—honestly I don't remember—more than two, but fewer than six. And, as I said, I studied, which helped.

And then once I got into Penn (where I didn't really want to go and obviously didn't, but I applied as a sort of tribute to my mother), that is to say as I held the acceptance letter in my hand, it was like the dam burst, and I cried for what seemed like hours. Actually, I know for a fact that it was at least an hour because I happened to be watching a rerun of
The Big Valley
when the mail came, and when I looked up from crying, Channel Six news was almost over.

After that, I was more keenly aware of the sadness, and it bubbled up very frequently in college. See “Weepy Drunk,” above.

I suppose this is just a variation of what I told you before. All I can say is that it will get better. “Of course, she is sometimes a big pain in my butt, as I guess kids her age are supposed to be, but I am amazed to see this wonderful, strong woman peeking out from behind my little girl. I see her becoming the woman I still wish I could be. I am so proud of her.”

I can't offer you Mufasa, but that is what Eva wrote about you on your fourteenth birthday. Apologies if you've already been through the photo album and read it, and apologies too if it made you cry. I just want to encourage you, and I thought she said it better than I could.

Love,

Sean

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Re: it didn't work

It did make me cry but thank you all the same.

—R

Dear Fluffy:

Sean made me cry with his stupid nice e-mail, and the thing that made me really mad or sad or something was that I couldn't talk back. I mean, Mom says this nice thing about me, or anyway Sean tells me what it is and then I want to say, that's great, but I could use a little help here because I don't know how to do this, I don't know how to be this orphan kid, it's a hard knock life.

I thought maybe going to the cemetery would help since I haven't been there since it happened and anyway in the movies and on tv, that's where people always go to talk to their dead relatives, all, “well, Dad, I finally caught your killer so rest in peace.”

Kate asked me if I was going to the diner and I guess I wanted some sympathy or something so I was like no I am going to the cemetery to see my moms' graves, and she was like can I go with you and I thought that was pretty nice. I kind of think that she thinks the cemetery is a kind of metal place to go and maybe she can get some good death metal art ideas, but whatever, I don't have to go by myself, even though I kind of wanted to go by myself because if you are being a dork and talking to the air, all “Mom help me out here,” it helps to not have somebody there looking at you like you're a psycho, but maybe Kate wouldn't do that, but anyway I wasn't exactly super comfortable having a weepy heart to heart in front of her (not even a weepy drunk, ha ha though even now I probably wouldn't say no because what the hell, so far there is only a 50-50 chance I'm going to cry when I'm drinking which is actually a lot better odds than real life). But anyway we took the T to Forest Hills which by the way is not actually that close to Forest Hills Cemetery, we had to walk for like fifteen minutes but whatever, and once we got there it was a total mess and I wandered around looking for their gravestones because I remember where it was sort of but not really, so I got totally lost walking around all the dead people. Finally we found it and Kate without me even having to ask or anything said I'm gonna go sketch back there by the pond you can come and find me when you're done, and I thought that was pretty cool because I didn't know how to ask her to buzz off but then she did.

So I stood there for a while all “hello?” and not like I expected an answer or anything though that might have been nice, but really I just wanted to see if I felt any different, like they were listening to me or something. I didn't feel anything, and that made me sad, and so finally I was crying and I was just like I don't know if you can hear me but I need some help because this is really really hard and I know you didn't want to die but I'm kinda fucked up here and I need you to help me.

I don't know if they heard me or not, but they sure as hell didn't say anything. So that made me sad and I was crying and oh I forgot to mention that there were flowers on each of their graves which I thought was pretty nice of Karen to do because I guess I have been neglecting them or whatever but I didn't think they were there and I thought being there would remind me of when they died and it did so I don't think I'll be going back too soon.

Walking back to find Kate I saw outside the fence that there was the DYS lockup like right there next to the cemetery which is I guess where I would have gone if I had ever gotten arrested for the shod foot incident which I don't really know why I didn't except that maybe this hockey player kid was embarrassed that I cleaned his clock which I feel kind of proud of which I am ashamed of.

Anyway so the juvenile jail is right there next to where their graves are and I wondered if I could see their graves if I was there and isn't that an example of dramatic irony or one of the other kinds, or maybe it's like my situation writ large which is a good phrase, but anyway writ large in the geography of Boston, the big cemetery next to the big lockup because the one would lead right to the other, they ought to make a door in the fence or something.

I found Kate and she was sketching this girl who was in a glass cage, I mean it was a statue of the girl and she was all dressed up and Kate was like she was four and how fucked up is that, and I was like yeah, and it's too bad she's in that cage and it was funny because I really did feel bad for her, like she was really there in a cage even though it was just a hunk of rock in the shape of a girl, and now I'm like well how weird is that that I think I can feel this kid here but not my own moms.

And then Kate was like are you okay and I was like I am sad all the time and she said I'm sorry and that was pretty much the end of that but I was really glad she was there.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: détente

Well, we appear to have reached some kind of truce around here, which of course is positive. Rosalind appears to be reconciled to her grounding. Of course, this is at least partly due to the fact that she believes she is fooling me by hanging out with her friends between the end of school and when I get home. I simply didn't have the energy to try and find supervision for her during this time, and I figured that having her think she's getting over on me would make her more tolerable when I was home. So far so good, though I do of course realize the inherent danger in these three unsupervised hours. But I do like to think I would know if she came home drunk, and if the high school experience is consistent with what it was twenty years ago, it's fairly easy for a 14-year-old girl to get booze at a party and much harder outside of the bacchanal setting. Please don't debunk this if you know it to be a myth.

On the anxiety front, I have found that it is no longer limited to times when I am actively worrying about Rosalind, but, rather, appears to be running in the background more or less constantly. So, for example, I will be sitting at my desk preparing some documentation for a civil rights suit, and my heart will hammer for twenty or thirty seconds, ending whenever I can force myself to take a deep breath.

I have actually seen a doctor, Grandmother, so you do not need to fret excessively over me. (I will add that while I appreciate the concern you expressed, it was really the idea of falling over dead and leaving Rosalind alone that was the biggest motivating factor in getting me into the doctor's office.) (Well, to be brutally honest, it was even more selfish than that. I don't want to die before my daughter loves, or at least likes, me. Somehow “beloved coworker, barely tolerated father” sounds like an unsatisfactory obituary.)

In any case, due to insurance or something, I have my third new doctor in five years, and, as it turns out, she is a very attractive woman whom I judge to be thirty years old. (Do not worry, Grandmother, for I have taken your advice and am through with doctors.) She informs me that I am experiencing stress-related heart palpitations. She wrote me a prescription for Ativan, warned me of its addictive potential, and sent me on my way.

I have yet to fill the prescription because I know myself well enough to know that I would begin worrying about developing a tranquilizer addiction in addition to everything else. I am also fairly certain that I would sing the Rolling Stones' “Mother's Little Helper” more or less constantly. Actually that started as soon as I got the prescription, to the point where Rosalind recently asked if torture was included in her grounding sentence. “Doctor pleeeeeeze …”

So, having failed with the medical route, I decided to try something more contemplative. I stopped off at Forest Hills after work the other day to visit Sandy and Eva's graves. I brought flowers and spoke to them for a few minutes. Well, that is sugarcoating it somewhat. Actually I brought flowers and tried to talk to them but mostly found myself crying—this is too hard, I can't do it, boohoo, et cetera.

Then they rose from their graves and attempted to eat my brain; no, actually, I felt nothing from their end. The dead in general are terrible conversationalists.

Nevertheless, I went back yesterday afternoon. I did not bring flowers because I am too cheap and/or lazy to do that on a regular basis. I walked around thinking and trying to get some insight into what they might do in my situation. Of course, if they were alive, this would not be the situation. This is the kind of thing that Rosalind is fond of calling a conundrum. In any case, I asked for assistance again and once again was appalled at what death has done to these women's social skills. But I did feel strangely calm as I walked around the cemetery. I don't know whether to attribute this to the intervention of friendly ghosts or to the tranquilizing power of good landscaping, but I will take it.

I am rambling and putting off some boring paperwork. Thank you, as always, for listening.