Please Ignore Vera Dietz(16)
Author: A.S. King

“Yeah, but what does that mean, you know?” I ask, although I’m not asking. We’ve been through this before.

“It means you’ll get a better job,” Aunt Kate says while shoveling a forkful of mashed potatoes smothered in sauerkraut into her mouth.

“It means you’ll look better on paper,” says Uncle Caleb—Kate’s husband, Dad’s oldest brother.

“I don’t care about how I look on paper.” I am so hungover I want to die. My head is throbbing. My eyes are still bloodshot. Dad either noticed and is saying nothing, or he really is the most inattentive man in the world, like Mom used to say.

“Well, you should,” Aunt Kate says.

I look down at my plate of pork and sauerkraut. This is proof that life is totally surreal here in our little Pennsylvania Dutch county. Who makes pork and sauerkraut a traditional lucky meal on the day after the year’s biggest traditional drinking binge?

“I don’t see what the difference is, as long as she gets a good education,” Dad says.

The table goes quiet and we get back to eating our good luck for the year. We are maniacal about it now, since six years ago, when we tried to change the tradition and had venison stew instead. That was the year Mom left, Jessie got sick with appendicitis, and Maw-Maw died. Last year I skipped it because I had the flu and what happened? I lost Charlie. Twice.

Anyway, I think Dad’s right. What difference does it make what college I go to? There are idiots at Yale whose fathers get them in. There are illiterate football players at all of the state schools. Bottom line—the only thing I care about is how much my education will cost. Because Dad has made it clear that I am paying.

Which may seem cruel, but it’s not.

Sure beats being one of those kids at school who don’t yet understand what “college loan” means. You know the ones. They think it’s free money. Think their parents will cover it. Or they just don’t think. Then suddenly, at twenty-two, they get the payment booklet and discover that they owe a hundred grand, and they can’t buy groceries or health insurance because of the school they picked—all so they could look good on paper. (And they still can’t locate Florida on a map.)

Sorry. Not me. I’d rather pay class by class at community college, and deliver pizza at night while I live cheap in Dad’s house. Then, when I graduate, I can actually start fresh, rather than starting with a hundred-thousand-dollar stone around my neck.

Jessie has her heart set on Penn State. She’s one of those college football fans who chant “We are … Penn State.” She has no idea what she wants to do outside keg parties and blow jobs. I know that sounds harsh, but Jessie is just—Jessie.

Most of the family eats quickly and goes back to watching football on TV. I look at my watch and decide to save myself from any more unsaid criticism.

“Sorry to eat and run, but I’ve got to work at four and I need to do some stuff at home first.”

Before anyone can say anything, I have my coat on and am out the door.

I pull into our driveway and sit in the car for a second. The woods are still covered in a shallow layer of snow, and though everything is dead and brown, there are birds and squirrels making it move and sing. Birds always remind me that spring will come, and the brown will be green, and the dirt will sprout a million blades of grass and scrub where ticks will live and crickets and cicadas and spiders. The stream between Charlie’s house and our house will fill up with the snowmelt and then slow to a trickle. In summer it will barely be there, and the crayfish will hide in the wet mud under rocks until the next rain. Salamanders will dry out and die next to fish that never made it to the lake in time.

Something about death reminds me of birth, I guess. I have my own version of afterlife now that Charlie is dead. There is one. People there can see you and they live on in the things around us. In the trees. The birds. Like that feeling you get when someone behind you is staring at you—I get that all the time, but it’s Charlie who’s staring. From up there, or over there, or wherever it is that he went.

Since I developed this idea, I sometimes joke with him when I eat things. I say, “Charlie, if you’re part of this Big Mac, I’m really sorry.” Then I eat the Big Mac. Because it’s possible, isn’t it? Isn’t anything possible? Charlie the pickle? Charlie the woodpecker? Charlie the raindrop?

I took three Tylenol at Aunt Kate’s house and I feel better, but my mouth feels like something died in there, and I can’t get it to feel normal. I’ve got an hour before I have to leave for work, so I stupidly go to my dead-rodent-smelling room and set my alarm for 3:45 and sleep.

When I get up three snooze alarms later, I feel worse.

I rush to the kitchen, scarf down a granola bar, tuck my hair into the Pagoda Pizza hat to hide how one side is plastered down with drool, and run out the door.

Right when the cold air hits and the door slams behind me, I hear it through the trees.

“You’re a f**king idiot, you know that?”

“You’re lucky I don’t kill you right now!”

I don’t know where they are. Back deck, where Charlie and I used to play Uno? The front porch, where raccoons used to shit on the doormat because Charlie said it had some weird chemical that communicated “Shit here” in Raccoon? The upstairs balcony, where Mrs. Kahn would go every Saturday morning to beat the small sheepskin rugs they had in their bedroom?

I can see movement through the trees, but rather than think about it, I ignore it, like I should. As I drive to work, though, I wonder about every house I pass, because I’ve read the statistics—haven’t you? Which of these houses hold the wife beaters? The child abusers? The ra**sts? The drunks and gamblers? Which of these houses hold the parents who hurt their own kids? Where are the signs? Wouldn’t it be nice if there were big flashing signs to warn us about these people?

When I get to the main strip, I remember James and our kiss last night. He’s not the kind of guy I can bring home to Dad and call my boyfriend. I can’t take him to the prom.

Because I barely ate anything at Aunt Kate’s, I go to the McDonald’s drive-thru and get a Big Mac. Because Charlie could be a pickle, I say, “Sorry, dude,” before I bite into it.

HISTORY—AGE FOURTEEN

Charlie and I were sitting in our normal spots in the Master Oak. The leaves were nearly all fallen now, and the forest allowed the autumn sun rays to press through. He climbed two limbs up and reached into a gnarled old knot that had doubled as a squirrel’s nest. He pulled out a box pack of Marlboro Reds and swung back down into the crook where he usually sat, and unwrapped the cellophane. He banged the pack a bit on his hand, coaxed a smoke out of the middle of the front row, and popped it into his mouth. Fourteen, and I’d guess Charlie was already at a pack a day.