Good Girl : A Memoir (9781476748986) (28 page)

As we turned and walked toward the bus stop that would take me back to JP, I snuck glances at him. “Why don't you just say whatever it is?” I said.

“It's not a very safe area. I'm your father, Sarah. It's natural for me to worry.”

I was so mad I almost stopped short right there. Instead, I threw my anger into my walk. How dare he worry about me
now
? And how dare he plant the seed of worry in my mind when I was otherwise so excited about my new apartment and new life there? I certainly wasn't going to yell at him. That was too scary. I'd never yelled at anyone in my adult life. But, for once, I did open my mouth:

“It's kind of upsetting to hear you say that now, when you weren't around to worry about me during all of the years when I really could have used a dad.”

“I know, Sarah, I'm sorry. But I'm going to make it up to you. What if I told you I had a key, a metaphysical key, and if I gave it to you, and helped you to master it, it would allow you to get anything you wanted?”

Judah. His name flashed up to the surface of my mind, even though I hadn't ever let myself think I wanted him truly, not beyond a casual lover.

“No, don't do that!” I said, genuinely alarmed.

He started to laugh.

“Most people would want to get everything they want,” he said. “But not you.”

“I'd just use it to try to get Judah back, and that would be a disaster,” I said.

“Why?” my dad asked.

“All his drugs, the other women.”

“I thought you said he got clean.”

“Yeah, but he doesn't want to be anyone's boyfriend. It wouldn't be fair to him.”

More than that, though, I was afraid to put one of my dad's cosmic theories to the test. I knew he believed we all have an energetic relationship with the universe that, when mastered, could result in something like manifestation, or “the Secret,” which would become all the rage the next year. I'd watched him do affirmations and seek enlightenment my whole life, all while he lost women, children, jobs, and thousands of dollars at the track, and yet, I still wanted—needed, even—to believe in him. And so my father did not give me the key, and I distracted myself from Judah's silence with writing and music and booze and boys in bands.

My newly intimate conversations with my father were opening up in strange and surprising ways. I was still getting used to having a dad around at all, and what a dad he was. We both loved to walk and often did so instead of taking public transportation because we both preferred the open air in all weather. His back was stronger than ever, but it still gave him trouble sometimes, and the walking helped. One day that summer, we crested the top of the Arboretum and sat down on a bench there.

“I really believe there's a nationalistic urge in people,” he said. “Like an instinct toward their own people.”

“Yeah, what do you mean?” I asked, idly admiring the pastoral view.

“Like, well, I found this one porn,” he said.

As the words left his mouth in his loud, booming voice, two sporty
hikers ascended the top of the hill on which we were perched and headed toward us.
Just another dad-daughter day,
I thought.

“Hungarian porn,” he continued.

“They make Hungarian porn?” I asked, too curious not to engage with him.

“I know,” he said, laughing, genuinely amused. “They make everything, I guess. But I was more attracted to these women than I've ever been attracted to a woman before. I think as a species we're attracted to those people who are the most like us.”

My dad had already told me on several occasions that he knew how to have tantric sex, and that he'd decided he was not going to have any more relationships in this life. His decision seemed like a sound one to me, given his history with women. Having my dad talk to me about sex didn't make me uncomfortable exactly. But with my dad, talking about feelings was more complicated. There was no one's attention I craved more, but his honesty could be off-putting.

One day we walked over the Mass Ave Bridge between Cambridge and Boston, talking about our relationship. “Well, I broke you, so it's my responsibility to fix you,” he said. I balked. Judah had a lyric like that. Something in the idea felt true to me; it was why I'd dared to write that letter to my dad in the first place. But it was an assessment of our relationship that gave him all of the power, and I wanted to have that power for myself. None of my struggles would be worth anything if I never felt free.

“You don't have to do anything,” I said.

“But I want to,” he said. “These issues you have with men. And work and money. They all come from your relationship with me. That's how it is with fathers and daughters, just like it was with Betty and me. She never knew how to give me love. And so she fed me. That was how she tried to get me to do what she wanted. And when I was older she let me smoke cigarettes and drink and do drugs. Because she knew if she gave me a place to do that, I wouldn't leave her, and she could get me to do what she wanted.”

I stared straight ahead, trying to unravel what he was saying and what it meant. He was my dad. But he was also a grown man who still blamed everything on his mother. I did not want to still be blaming him at that age. This was our moment to fix it, and we were both finally willing, but I still didn't know how.

M
y dad was obsessed with the fact that Asmara was coming to visit him for the first time since she and her mother had moved to Germany. When he first brought it up, he circled around the topic for nearly an hour, as I was beginning to learn was his way when he wanted to ask for something he was afraid he wouldn't get.

“I was thinking,” he said. “She could stay with you and Beth.”

“What?” I said. “Where?”

“On your couch in the living room.”

“Dad, I work in our living room.”

“Well, she's your sister, and I want you to spend time with her.”

My mind went red with rage. How dare he act like the responsible father, who only wanted what was best for my sister and me? She was basically a stranger.

“Let me talk to Beth about it,” I said, masking my real reaction. “She gets home from work late, and I don't want to put her out by having someone on our couch every night.”

I discussed it with Beth and Claire and a few other friends, feeling guilty for being a terrible sister, and also for letting my father down. But I couldn't find it in me to say yes.

“I'm sorry, Dad, I just can't,” I said. “It's too much.”

I had feared his wrath, prepared to be defensive in return, but he was extremely neutral, as usual, so I got defensive about that—what, didn't he really need me? Apparently, he didn't. He found her accommodations that he could, barely, afford.

When we met for lunch, he spent hours going over his preparations for her arrival, which did not help my jealousy. He did a dry run
out to the airport on the subway to make sure he would be able to get there in plenty of time to pick her up on the day her plane arrived. He even went to the American Express counter there and got information about exchanging money, in case she needed to do so. He obsessively revised his list of outings he was going to take her on, and he requested my presence for at least two dinners and one trip to the aquarium. I agreed but resented it.

I knew better than anyone else what my sister was going through as she tried to build a relationship with our dad. As her older sister, I should be nothing but supportive. And I was supportive, really I was. I just couldn't share him with anyone, even her, given how little of his love and attention there'd always been to go around.

I was a few minutes late when I rushed into the Ethiopian restaurant my dad had carefully chosen for dinner because, like my sister, it was named Asmara. My dad stood up when I walked in. A smile nearly broke out on his face, but he was too self-conscious about his teeth. My sister stood, too. She was lovely, like a dark-haired, Bavarian Brigitte Bardot. My father beamed at her as if she were a movie star. I suddenly felt sweaty and windswept and could hear the Big B's voice in my head: “Comb your hair! Put on more makeup!”

There was something inherently familiar about her.
Dad has a type,
I thought, as I noticed her figure was curvy in the same places as mine. And yet she was a stranger. As she endeavored to answer my questions about her flight, she grew flustered.

“But your English is very good,” I said, trying to encourage her and let her know how impressed I was with her courage in coming to America to meet her family.

As we ate, my father pulled back a little and looked at both of us.

“I'm just so happy,” he said. His voice cracked, his eyes misted over, and he stopped speaking and looked down. “The fact that I'm here having dinner with my two daughters. It's more than I ever could have expected.”

I smiled at him, hushing the dark nasties in my heart, letting him have his moment. He had earned it. Whenever I told friends or acquaintances how I was rebuilding my relationship with my dad, I inevitably happened upon someone who got a wistful look on her face as she wondered whether her own dad would ever be capable of such a thing, and then a crestfallen echo as she realized he would not.

Asmara studied him and then, maybe uncomfortable or embarrassed, looked away. I softened toward her. I had been lucky to know my father as little as I had as a child. She hadn't even had that. She'd never met Betty. Would probably never meet Mimi. I had no reason to be jealous.

When I later met them at the aquarium, my sister seemed exhausted and stressed. I had spent enough time with my dad to know that feeling well. When he went to the bathroom, I pulled her aside, feeling disloyal to him but wanting to help her.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It's just, John, he can be so much the child.”

“Yeah, I know. He's just so happy you're here. And he doesn't always know how to behave. But I hope you know I'm here for you if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” she said.

We quickly stepped apart as my dad rejoined us. When we walked through the North End, looking for an Italian restaurant for dinner, I felt closer to her, like maybe I'd found an ally. But as much as she and I were alike, we were also very different. While her mother had repeatedly taken her to an ashram in India as a child, she was very rooted in her Bavarian upbringing, with its lack of rebel counterculture. When I spoke about my novel, she looked at me. “But what will you do if it does not sell?” she asked honestly.

Kill myself.

“Write another one,” I said. “Many writers never sell their first novel.”

I was glad to have met her. But I also felt glad to get away, not because of her but because of my father, who was clearly enmeshed with her.

“I'll give you Asmara's address so you two can write letters,” my dad said as I made my farewells and prepared to walk home. Write, I would be happy to do. I just wanted a little distance from how I felt when I saw them together.

A
lthough I never could have admitted it to her face, Asmara's question about my novel had been on point. I'd contacted nearly a dozen agents, several of whom had been interested in reading the opening of my book. As I sent it off to them, I was buoyed with hope. But just as quickly, I was overwhelmed by polite rejection letters and despair. Cathy gently tried to suggest that maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't be too hard on myself because I'd essentially sent out a first draft of my book, and everyone knew the publishing world was incredibly competitive and maybe, just maybe, if I revised it a bit more, I'd have better luck. I appreciated her kindness and her courage to tell me the truth, even when I was glowering at her about how it didn't need to be revised. Either all or nothing, I thought it needed to go in the trash.

That fall Beth and I both rented our own studio apartments, mine in Cambridge. Mom and Craig visited soon after, and they brought me housewarming gifts, and my brother put together my new desk chair. I loved my neighborhood. Now I could stay out at the bars until last call every night and stumble home. And I did. Often it was fun, but things were getting darker. Two years earlier, when I'd first started as a music journalist, I'd been drinking a lot, but with my roommates, good friends, and casual acquaintances with whom I shared a great deal of affection, sometimes even with my editors, who always made sure I got home safe. Now many of those friends had moved away or were in relationships and leading quieter lives.

One night, I was out with a female friend who liked to drink even more than I did. We did shots, which I didn't normally do, and she left me in the back of a cab with a straitlaced, heavyset man she'd met outside the club. I suddenly felt very drunk. I was going in and out of focus, and then I was in the guy's apartment. The shadows of tree branches climbed the walls in the dim room. I didn't know what street I was on, or who this guy was.
This is how girls disappear
,
I thought.
This is how girls die.

I was afraid, really afraid, as I'd only been once before in a decade of partying, often on my own. I'd always been a part of a web that had kept me safe—all of those bouncers and bartenders who were like older brothers to me, and the girlfriends who kept an eye on each other. I wanted to get away from him, but I didn't want to make a scene for fear of embarrassing him.

He was close to me. His hand traced up my leg and under my skirt. His fingers slid inside my underwear, which embarrassed me because they were old and ratty—even though I didn't want him or this—and then he was touching me. I didn't want it. I didn't know what to do. I was so drunk I had lost coherent thought and language. The shadows fell across our bodies like the long claws of a big animal. I was trapped.