Читать книгу My So-Called Ruined Life - Melanie Bishop - Страница 7
ОглавлениеIt’s one thing to lose your mom shortly before your sixteenth birthday. It’s another thing to know she was murdered. When they decide it’s your dad who did the murdering, nobody cares that you disagree. He is hauled off; you are farmed out. If you are wondering about now how this could get any worse, try living with this fact: you and your mother had not been getting along—barely speaking—for almost two years.
Saying it in second person doesn’t make it better. This didn’t happen to you, it happened to me. But some hypothetical you can use the terms “mother” and “mom,” which aren’t words that have come out of my mouth for some time. Since we’d stopped speaking, I’d referred to her as Carla. Like some distant relative, a second cousin twice removed, maybe someone I’d never even met. Therefore, someone I couldn’t possibly miss.
While I know there’s no way my dad did it, apparently dads far and wide are capable of this. If you watch TV shows like Dateline or 48 Hours, you know how common it is for people to kill their spouses. Mostly it’s men who kill their wives, but it happens the other way too. In fact, the minute someone is murdered, they will look first of all at the spouse. Some don’t even pretend to be grief-stricken. A man on the show calls up 911, says my wife’s dead on the floor, and doesn’t shed a tear.
I don’t watch these shows because they’re good. They are, in fact, some of the worst journalism you can find. I watch because my father is on trial for the murder of his ex-wife, Carla, and there are reporters in the courtroom. These so-called reporters from 48 Hours and 20/20 and Dateline have tried to talk to me. I watch to prepare myself for when my own family’s tragedy shows up as entertainment on prime-time TV.
The shows are terrible—even if the topic is riveting. They repeat everything a minimum of five times (I’ve counted), and after each commercial break they review the tale from the beginning, in case someone has decided to tune in mid-show. They flash the same pictures on the screen, over and over—the woman, beautiful and happy, smiling with her children. Family portraits where you’d never dream someone was thinking of killing someone else in the photo. And then there are the graphic crime scene pictures—blood-soaked carpets and mattresses, a body on the laundry room floor. They interview friends of the deceased who usually say something like, The minute I heard she’d been killed, I knew it was him. Sometimes, if the producers of the show are lucky, the friend is able to provide a letter in which the woman wrote those very words: If ever I turn up dead, he’s the one who did it! I fear for my life every day. That sort of thing.
Lots of the people who commit these crimes do so because they have fallen in love with someone else and think the only way out of one marriage and into another is to kill the spouse who stands in the way of the new, improved model. Again, this stuff seems obvious to me, but who would want to become the new wife of a man who just offed the first one? What’s to stop him from later doing the same thing to you? And how is it that people get married to someone they’re later going to want to kill? Why does a woman ever stay married to a man who makes her fear for her life? And why, as in many of these badly televised cases, does the husband think the only way out of a marriage is to murder the wife? Hello? People! Ever heard of divorce?
My parents had been divorced for two years and separated for four. My dad had no other lover, not that she would’ve cared if he did. She’d fooled around for their whole marriage, and, to use Dad’s saying, would not have had a leg to stand on. She’s the one who wanted the divorce in the first place, and their split was what they call “amicable.” So it doesn’t add up. Everyone you talk to in this town is pretty much of the mind that they rushed to accuse my dad, because when there are gory-ass murders of gorgeous women, people want someone behind bars—now.
I don’t go to court every day like my dad’s brothers do. At least one of them is there at all times—they do shifts. I’ve gone twice, and that was enough. Everyone thinks I don’t go because it’s a horrible thing for a kid to see and think about. But 1) I am not a kid. I’ll be a junior next year. And 2) I’m not so delicate that I couldn’t face it if I wanted to. And 3) Hard as it is for people to fathom, I am over the initial shock of all this—the murder was a year ago last month: June 12th. A year is a very long time. I don’t go because I hate all the whispering about the poor daughter, and because I get tired of dodging those nosy reporters, but mostly because it seems like a waste of a summer, and I already lost last summer to this whole ordeal. I’ve got stuff I want to do. Besides, I think it’s more helpful to my dad if I visit him, when we can have conversations, than it is to see him during the trial, when even smiling at the defendant from across the room is discouraged.
Among the many horrible things about this situation is all the therapy that gets forced on you, and I’m not even opposed to therapy in general—I think it’s great and necessary and everyone should try it at least once. But enough can be enough. Pretty much everyone thinks I should be in therapy for the rest of my supposedly ruined life. I’m supposed to turn out a whack job. The relatives on both sides of the family are concerned: if I’m upset, they worry about me; if I’m not upset, they worry about me. There are only so many times you can rehash the story with a therapist, telling her how it all felt every step of the way. It starts to be as boring as Dateline.
Probably the worst of the aftershocks was when my boyfriend, Jasper Finch, broke up with me. His parents put me up for the first month after it all happened. The Finches are good people. But it freaked them out—I mean, who wouldn’t be freaked out by a murder in their neighborhood? Everything that had been great between me and Jasper got overshadowed by it. Nobody wants to date a girl who has 1) mandatory therapy, 2) a mom in the grave, and 3) a dad in jail. I give people the heebie-jeebies. I’m a walking reminder of the whole mess. Ruin.
Here’s a story about the kind of dad my dad is. When I graduated from 9th grade, the last year at the junior high, we were driving home from the ceremony and Dad said he had a surprise for me. (My mom had been at the ceremony, too, but we weren’t getting along so I didn’t say anything to her. I noted she was there, though.) I knew if there was a graduation present forthcoming, it would be from Dad, and sure enough, he started acting all sneaky on our way home. He wanted me to guess. He is very big on guessing games, and never considers that I might’ve outgrown them.
“A car,” I said. This was a joke, because 1) I was not old enough to drive, and 2) we didn’t have that kind of money.
“Right,” he said. “Hot Wheels, how’d you know? Those little speedsters—and I got you the race track, too.”
“Sweet,” I said, going along with his joke.
“Guess again,” he said.
“A mountain bike.”
“Ah,” he said. “We’re doing the transportation category. Next you will guess boat or plane.”
“Boat wouldn’t be bad. One of those kayaks that you can take out on Lake Travis or Town Lake?”
“Well, Tate, I apologize, but it’s not a boat. Nor an airplane. And not a choo-choo train, either.”
“Just tell me already,” I said.
“I want to see if you can guess. Come on, use your ESP.”
He and I used to believe we had mental telepathy together. We could send each other telepathic messages. What color am I thinking of? Which number between one and ten? Guess what we are having for dinner. If I concentrated hard enough, and really envisioned my thoughts merging with his own brainwaves, I almost always got what he was thinking. He would brag about this to his colleagues.
“I’m rusty,” I said. “How about giving me a hint?”
“It’s something you want so badly you can’t even think of it, because if you thought of it and voiced that guess and then it was wrong, you wouldn’t be able to stand the disappointment.” He looked at me then, for emphasis. The signal light we were stopped at went from red to green. “I’ll go so far as to say…”
“Dad,” I said, motioning with my chin toward the light. “Go.”
The green light registered and he drove through the intersection before finishing his sentence.
“I would go so far as to say you probably think it’s impossible that I would give you this particular gift at this particular time,” he said.
There was only one thing he could’ve been talking about.
“You better not be lying,” I said.
“I have never lied to you, you know that.”
“Well, the only thing that I can think of that I have really, really wanted, like since I was thirteen, that you have always said was out of the question, is the guest house.”
“Hmmm…” he said. And then, “Should we stop for some Thai take-out?”
“Dad! Don’t change the subject!”
“I’m not,” he said. “Rather, I am asking my daughter who just graduated from junior high with honors, if she would like to pick up a celebratory meal, the first that we will share in her new living space.”
I let out a big scream. He told me to keep it down.
“You’re not kidding?” I said. Suddenly everything out the car window was animated, more imbued with color, not the same drab view I’d seen every trip home from school for years.
“Tate, I would never be so cruel as to kid about something like this.”
He told me he had planned it for a couple of months. That as soon as the recent tenant, a college student, had moved out after spring semester, he just wouldn’t readvertise it. He always filled it with students he knew from the community college, where he was on faculty. He said it was a financial risk, not having a renter in there—but the finances were not for me to worry about. That was his responsibility. As long as I continued to be mature and responsible and keep the place tidy, he was happy to give me this new freedom and privacy. “You’ve earned it,” he said.
When we got out of the car at Thai Castle, I assaulted him with hugs. Thank you thank you thank you, Dad. He was right—I would’ve thought this was impossible, out of the question. Ever since the divorce, and paying for our house and Carla’s house, and doing more work with his non-profit, which didn’t pay as well, money was tight. He absolutely needed the rent from the guest house in our backyard in order to make the mortgage payments.
He assured me that he had a new source of income. Some consulting work on the side.
“Like I said, the finances of our household are mine to worry about,” he said. “Now, see if you can guess what I’m going to order.”
“Dad, that is not challenging in the least. You will have Pad Thai. You always have Pad Thai.”
“Is that your official guess then?”
I nodded, as Dad held the door of Thai Castle open for me. He’s big on the whole gentleman thing. Chivalry, he always reminds me, is not dead.
“Let me tell you what I think you’re going to order,” he said a little too loudly, like he was talking to a four-year-old. I let Dad know telepathically that we were in the restaurant now, and I was embarrassed to play the guessing game with people around. We were not the only family hitting this popular eatery, post-graduation.
“I’m embarrassing you?” he said. “Of course I am. We’ll stop the shenanigans. We’ve got a public image to maintain.”
And right then the woman showed up at the register to take our order, and Dad said, “My daughter will have the tofu with veggies.” He looked at me for confirmation. I nodded. There are four things on this menu that I like, but he guessed it; tofu with veggies was what I was planning to order that night. Proud of his telepathic gift, he continued: “And I think I will have the Massaman curry, spicy.” The waitress actually had to scratch Pad Thai off of the order tablet where she’d written it in advance. She and I looked at each other, like Lo and behold, the creature of habit has ordered something new!
“What?” he said. “A man can’t change his mind? A man can’t branch out and be adventurous? It’s a new era,” he said. And then, “We’re celebrating Tate’s graduation.”
When we got home, he had the guest house ready. He’d set a nice table with my favorite tablecloth. It’s blue, and has yellow chickens and white hens in a pattern all along the hemline. As a centerpiece, he had this cake holder pedestal thing, an antique from his own grandmother—mint green depression glass—and right in the center were two perfect replicas of eggs, one white and one yolk-colored, made out of Play-Doh. When I was little, he could make anything with Play-Doh and these so closely resembled real eggs, I only knew they were imposters by their distinctive Play-Doh smell.
“Oh my God!” I said, taking in a deep whiff. “Where did you even find Play-Doh?”
“They still make it,” he said. “Compliments of Hasbro. Go ahead and choose one.”
My dad is big on rituals. We used to play this game when I was little where he would take a small toy of mine—a roly-poly person from one of those Fisher Price farms, or one of my collection of dinosaurs, or a spike heel from Barbie’s vacation wardrobe—and bury it in a ball of Play-Doh. And then he would make it into a shape, like a block or a sphere or a big triangle, or even something more difficult, like a bird or a banana. He’d make another one identically shaped, in a different color of clay. I had to guess (guessing is always part of Dad’s games) if it was the red triangle or the blue one that held a toy inside. He was great at making the two shapes identical, one with hidden cargo, one without. I would use my telepathic powers to figure out which one held the toy. I used to think I really did have ESP, because I was right about half the time. But I know now how silly that was—the odds were always 50/50.
I went after the white egg, pretending to crack it on the table edge, just to humor Dad, then pulling it apart into two hunks, revealing the key to the studio, my very own new house. He had wrapped the key in cellophane so the Play-Doh wouldn’t stick.
While we ate, he explained to me that he would always be moments away in the main house, and I should always feel free to sleep in my room there if I wanted to. I could go over and eat whatever he was having for dinner, or I could fix something in my own kitchenette. It’s what every teenager dreams of—freedom, privacy, autonomy. A door that locks.
But the point of all this is, my dad, always afraid that Carla wouldn’t do enough for me, doubled up on goodness. His main goal in life is to give me a really solid childhood, a really terrific start. This insanity that’s going on now, so out of his control…well, it’s killing him to think how it’s affecting me.
I was only in the guest house for three weeks when our world fell apart.
After a month at the Finches, when Jasper broke up with me, I couldn’t stay there anymore. They would have kept me, but it was sad and humiliating and I had already lost a lot. You cannot live with the family of your ex-boyfriend, hello. Once I convinced Dad and my Aunt Greta to let me move back into my guest house, they convinced the other relatives who’d taken up the business of hawking over me. So the deal is, for now anyway, someone from my mom or dad’s family is in the main house at all times. They take turns. And I get my little studio in the back. This took a lot of convincing. Everyone is waiting for me to completely disintegrate. Delayed reaction to loss. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.
I intend to make more of this summer than I made of the last one. I have goals up on a chart in the studio. I had them written in my notebook but my best friend Kale said write them bigger and put them on the wall where they will stare at you every day. So I did.
1. Learn to Swim laps
2. Do some kind of volunteer work
3. Research colleges (and study for SATs)
4. Go camping with Aunt Greta
5. Find a part-time job (save money!)
6. No more boyfriends till I figure out my life (give it six months)
7. Be there for Dad (visit, bring favorite foods)
8. Redecorate studio (paint, get cool furniture)
9. Keep it neat (or else they will take it away!)
10. Become a vegan (and buy vegan cookbook)
Obviously Kale influenced #1 and #10. She’s vegan and has been trying to get me to join her. And she’s learned to swim laps for meditative reasons. She tells me there’s nothing like the calm and the rhythm you reach after the first mile. You find your buoyancy, apparently, and it’s heaven once you get the hang of it. If it works for Kale, I’m willing to try it. Kale named herself after her favorite leafy green. Up until tenth grade, Kale was Karen. She never liked that name.
My name’s Tate—Tate McCoy—and I like it just fine.
