Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You (3 page)

7.

(THE UNSPOKEN)

Daddy is moving out for a while. You know that he has not always been happy lately and that he has been away traveling lately, and now he is moving out—for a while. Daddy wanted me to tell you first, because he will be telling you too, but when he tells you, he has requested—oh Merissa, this is important for both of us, for you, and for me, honey—that you do not CRY.

For Merissa's daddy, like many daddies—like many men, in fact, and boys—did not like to witness tears.

Especially, many men—and boys—do not like to witness tears for which they are responsible.

Tears are blackmail, says Merissa's daddy.

And how UGLY even a beautiful girl's face, contorted by tears! Snot-nose, runny eyes, twisty fish-mouth—Daddy will frown and back away when Merissa—(“The Perfect One”)—tries her tricks.

8.

“NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU”

“Merissa, honey—the important thing is, please don't think that this has anything to do with
you
.”

 

But Merissa did! Merissa
knew
.

Back in early September, when it began, Merissa
knew
.

(She hadn't told anyone. Not one of her friends. Not even Tink—and anyway, Tink had abandoned
her
.)

Carefully, bravely, Merissa's mother held Merissa's limp hand.

Mother and daughter sitting together at the kitchen table in stark morning sunshine and the household quiet—(Daddy had not returned the night before)—and outside on West Brook Way the dull grinding of the Waste Management truck and a clatter of trash cans like jeering laughter.

“—he says that
there is no one else
—or if there was, for a while last year, remember when Daddy was working so hard on that Northridge account—” Merissa's mother stopped short, as if suddenly realizing she was saying too much. The skin around her eyes was puffy and bruised-looking, and there was a sourish smell to her breath that Merissa realized had become a familiar smell evident when her mother drew close to her. (Had to be some medication she was taking, to help her sleep. Or for “anxiety.”) “Your father swears there
is not
—I want to believe him. ‘Just a trial separation,' he says. He'll be living on the other side of town in that new condominium village on the river—he ‘feels confined' with us, he says—he loves us, he says—but—”

Merissa saw her mother's mouth move, but Merissa was not hearing all that her mother said. This was so ridiculous! So embarrassing! Like a scene in Tink's TV soap opera
Gramercy Park
—(Tink had played a DVD of an episode for her girlfriends once, from a long-ago time when, in the story line of the saga, Tink had played a little girl of nine and her mother, Veronica, had played a neurotic rich man's wife, unrelated to Tink—the girls had laughed at the hokey melodrama, underscored by mood music, such sad, silly women whose lives were a tangle of disappointed marriages and love affairs)—except this was Merissa's
real life
.

Hopeless,
Merissa thought.
Both of us.

All Merissa's good news—even the early acceptance at Brown—what did it mean now?

Not a thing. Not a thing.

Whatever Daddy said about being proud of his little girl, loving her—not a thing.

Except, years ago, Merissa was sure he'd felt differently. As he had felt differently about Merissa's mother, and being married and a father.

And a long time ago, before she'd become the person she was now, when she'd been smaller, and
so cute
. When she'd been
Daddy's little girl
and he'd stared at her with love—pulling her onto his lap, whispering to her.

Who's my little girl? Beautiful baby girl.

This was before Morgan Carmichael had become so successful. Before he'd begun being
away
so many nights. Sometimes weekends.
Traveling—on business.

Because Merissa was not a baby now. She was thin—(thank God!)—meaning that you could see her ribs through her pale skin, and you could feel the vertebrae of her spine if you touched her spine—(which Merissa would not allow, if she could avoid it)—but she was definitely female: breasts, curly little hairs sprouting in her armpits, at her crotch, and on her legs.

And tall: too tall. For there were boys who were scarcely Merissa's height, who would never ask her out for that reason. Even with Merissa slouching—just a bit—there was no disguising this fact.

Last time Merissa's height was measured, she was five feet seven and a half inches tall. Her weight was 104 pounds.

That hadn't been for a while, though—now Merissa could not be examined for fear of the little wounds and scabs being discovered.

Don't touch! My body is my own secret.

She'd learned from Tink: Don't let the Enemy near.

Only friends—who have “proven themselves loyal”—can come near. But even friends shouldn't be entrusted with some secrets—

A secret can be too toxic to expose to a friend.

So, no one had known what Tink was planning.

That way, no one could stop her. No one could scream, scream, scream at her,
Goddamn you, Tink, we love you!

No one could betray her by telling Big Moms. Better yet, one of Tink's teachers at school.

It was obvious that what Tink had done to herself had been planned with care. Everything that Tink did, her creative efforts particularly, was planned with care and very little left to chance.

The fact was: Tink had been pronounced d**d—(Merissa could not think, still less say aloud, this terrible word)—on her seventeenth birthday, which had been June 11, 2011.

Pronounced d**d on a morning when her mother, Veronica Traumer, “Big Moms,” was thousands of miles away in Los Angeles.

Pronounced d**d at the Quaker Heights Medical Center to which she'd been rushed by ambulance, having been discovered, in her bed, not breathing and unresponsive, by Mrs. Traumer's housekeeper.

“Stop! Just stop.”

Merissa spoke aloud, frightened.

“Don't think of Tink
now
.”

It was just too sad to think of Tink. And it was just too frustrating to think of Tink. And you couldn't, frankly, think of Tink—if you'd been Tink's friend—without being very angry with her.

Merissa's father had not ever liked Tink. Though he hadn't said anything really negative or critical, you could tell—the way a man can smile sneering at the mention of a girl's or a woman's name so you know he isn't impressed.

Not even pretty. What kind of “TV actress” could that homely red-haired girl have been?

To her shame, Merissa had laughed with Daddy. As if what Daddy said, like some cruel, crude remark tossed out by a sneering guy, was funny.

You want them to like you—love you. You laugh at their jokes that aren't funny; you smile when they break your heart.

For it was certainly true, Merissa's father
did not like her to cry
.

Merissa's father
did not like her to be “emotional.”

Years ago when Merissa had been little, of course she'd cried—fretted, fussed, threw little red-faced tantrums—but only when her mother was close by.

If she'd dared to
act up
when her father was close by, he would make a cutting remark and walk out of the room.

Mom had joked, when Merissa was an infant, that any hint of
nursing
,
diapers
,
diaper changing
had been enough to make Daddy uncomfortable.

And Daddy had not ever liked the
infant smell
—baby formula, soaked diapers, baby talcum powder.

Who's Daddy's little button-nose?
Daddy used to tease when Merissa was freshly bathed, dressed, and
cute
.

But that was years ago. When Daddy seemed to have more time to be at home with his little family, and to
care
.

Merissa tried to remember when Daddy first began to seem not so much to
care
.

When Merissa had been in middle school, maybe. Eighth grade.

Already, she'd been too tall. Towering over some of the shorter boys.

Being pretty—(Merissa had always been “pretty”)—didn't matter so much if you were self-conscious, insecure. There were less attractive girls, like Brooke Kramer, who behaved as if they were good-looking and entitled to attention.

If Merissa had earned only “good” grades at school—B-plus, A-minus—her father wouldn't have been impressed. It took really Good News—top achievements—to get his interest. And even so, he rarely asked Merissa about her classes, her teachers, what she was actually doing/learning—he hadn't yet had time to read “Our Environment, Ourselves” as posted on the
Scientific American
website.

At Class Day the previous June, when Merissa Carmichael had been called to the stage as one of just five Quaker Heights “Outstanding Students” of the year, her father hadn't even been in the audience.

Of course, Merissa's mother had been there.

Virtually everyone's mother had been there.

Merissa's birthday was September 5. Not an ideal time for a birthday, so close to Labor Day.

Merissa had always felt deprived of attention, anyway of enough attention—too much happening at once at the start of the school year.

Her girlfriends helped her celebrate. And Mom always made a fuss over her birthday.

This year, Daddy had been
damned sorry
he had to be away—traveling on business to Chicago, then Atlanta. But he'd remembered to call Merissa on her cell phone just before dinner that night to wish her “Happy seventeenth birthday.”

“Thanks, Dad! I'm flattered you got my age right.”

There was a moment's startled silence at the other end of the line.

(Was Daddy's girl being
sarcastic
?)

“Just kidding, Dad. I'm really glad to hear from you . . . and miss you like crazy.”

Merissa's mother was disappointed, too. And maybe just a little surprised.

But determined to be cheerful and uncomplaining—understanding, upbeat.

“Daddy is really, really sorry, Merissa—you could hear it in his voice. It just breaks his heart to miss so many—to miss special times with his family.”

Merissa's mother suggested that Merissa invite her closest friends from school to have dinner with them that night, but Merissa said no thanks!

Her friends had already treated her to a really nice lunch at a restaurant in town, and they'd given her presents, and Merissa had told them that her birthday dinner was that night, just her mom and dad.

Merissa's mother persisted. “Well, maybe just call Hannah? She's such a sweet girl. . . .”

You don't know Hannah any more than you knew Tink. Or me.

“It's late notice, of course, but I'm sure that Hannah would love to come over for a while at least. There's plenty of food; we can eat in the family room, you could watch a DVD. . . . We could even invite Hannah's mother—she might be free, if her husband isn't home.”

“Mom, thanks! Sounds great, except I really don't want to ‘double date'—Hannah and me, and you and Mrs. Heller.” Merissa spoke lightly, but inside she was trembling with rage.

Wanting to tell her mother,
If Daddy doesn't love me, nobody else matters. What do I care about anybody else?

 

That night Merissa worked herself into an anxious state, unable to sleep. The little (secret) wounds on her body were smarting and hurting, and she was just slightly frightened that one or two of them were becoming infected—this was scary.

All kinds of crazy thoughts flew through her mind, and there came Tink to tease her—
What did you expect, Perfect One? Your birthday is soooo important to Daddy?

Tink was just jealous, Merissa thought. Tink hadn't any actual father anyone had ever seen, and Tink's mother, Big Moms, would have “sacrificed” any kid of hers to her “third-rate career”—as Tink had liked to say.

Sometimes, in front of her mother, Tink would make this wisecrack. And Veronica Traumer would say, hurt, “Trina, that is so
unfair
. It is so
untrue
. I want you to apologize immediately!”

“You mean, your career isn't third-rate? That's what I got wrong?”

Insulted, Veronica might stalk out of the room. The air would quaver in her wake and smell of a strong perfume. You would get the impression that Tink and her bosomy, brassy-haired mother were flinging TV dialogue at each other, not spontaneous and sincere words, and so it was okay to laugh.

In fact, you couldn't not laugh at most of what Tink said.

But Merissa didn't want to think about Tink right now. She was worried that her mother might do something ridiculous—like conspire to give a surprise birthday party for Merissa a day late and call Merissa's friends behind her back after all.

It was a crazy worry, but at two a.m. Merissa couldn't sleep, switched on a light beside her bed, and texted Hannah.

LET ME KNOW IF MY MOM CALLS YOU ABOUT A SURPRISE BIRTHDAY PARTY. I WILL KILL MYSELF IF THERE IS ANY SURPRISE PARTY FOR ME.

Of course, Hannah didn't text back until morning—after Merissa spent a miserable night.

HI MERS—WHAT SURPRISE PARTY? WHOSE?

Merissa was stunned; she'd been such an idiot. Texting such a message to Hannah! Revealing too much of her private life and actually saying
I will kill myself
, which was a really stupid and gauche thing to say, after Tink.