Please Ignore Vera Dietz(4)
Author: A.S. King

I get to the railroad tracks and when I slow down to clear them, a drugged-up woman comes out of the shadows and pulls her sequined boob tube down, and I look at the road and keep driving. I try not to think of my mother and make a mental note to stop taking Jefferson Street into town.

The Cotton Street order is a minute late, but they don’t seem to notice or care. The guy doesn’t even look at me, and gives me a twenty and mumbles, “Keep the change,” which translates into a two-dollar-and-four-cent tip for me. Rare for a town run. Two more stops on my way back to the store—one family with hyperactive children who pocket a dollar of my tip, and one old man who ordered a large hot Italian sandwich and pays in exact change. He smiles at me and cocks his head upon realizing I’m a girl.

“Be careful,” he says.

I drive back the long way, over the mountain on the dangerous S curves, toward the enormous, glowing, gaudy pagoda that watches over our town. Most people think the pagoda is a cute tourist attraction and a quirky addition to our otherwise boring little nowhere city. I think it’s a monstrosity. But then, I grew up just down the road from it, and I know the story behind it. As I climb the hill and shift down, the motor roars with effort. I finally reach the top, pass the red neon eyesore, and coast down Overlook Road, past my house.

The light in the den is on and I can see the morphing glow of the television. Dad is probably ignoring whatever muted movie is on Channel 17 while skimming the day’s paper. He never turns the sound on when he doesn’t have to. I asked him once why he doesn’t just turn the TV off.

“Something about it makes me feel like I’m not alone,” he said.

I bet there are millions of people who’d agree with him, too. Not me. I’d rather feel something for real than pretend it’s not what it is. (Which Zen guy said, “If you want to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water”?)

A BRIEF WORD FROM KEN DIETZ (VERA’S DAD)

My mother did the best she could by herself. Didn’t stop me from becoming an alcoholic. Didn’t stop me from dropping out of high school and knocking up the seventeen-year-old girl next door. Didn’t stop me from wondering what life would have been like with a father, either. I think losing a parent robs confidence from a kid. With Vera, I’m trying to find ways to teach her how to grow her own self-esteem. I’m not sure if it’s working, but it’s all I have. Because my father left when I was three, I have no idea what a father is supposed to do, so I’m winging it.

One day, when I was a kid, I found a videotape of The Midnight Special TV show from 1973 at the bottom of my mother’s underwear drawer. That was back when she used to work as a secretary at the local plumbing contractor’s office. I read the label on the front. It said CALEB SR., which was what she called my dad on account of my oldest brother being Caleb Jr. I popped it into the VCR and watched it. Billy Preston played a few numbers, and behind him was my dad, a long-haired skinny white hippie playing his horn. Aside from a few pictures in worn envelopes, this was all I would ever have of him because when he left, he didn’t leave a phone number or an address. I watched that tape until it finally wore through. I bought every Billy Preston album there was, and grew my hair long.

Vera doesn’t know how lucky she is to have had the most important years of her life with her mother.

About two months before Cindy Sindy found out she was pregnant with Vera, we went up to the pagoda and climbed out onto the rocks perched high above the city. We’d been dating on and off since junior high, but had only just started to take it to the next level, in the back of my crappy Ford Tempo. Cindy Sindy was a year younger than me, so I was eighteen at the time and she was seventeen.

“Do you know the story of this place?” I said.

“I think you mean, do I care?” she said, folding her homework sheet into a paper airplane.

“You live in this town and you don’t know the pagoda story?”

“Nope.”

“Do you want me to tell you?”

“Nope,” she said, snapping her gum.

She launched the airplane and it caught a current and circled down toward the town, like a promise of something good. We watched it together until we couldn’t see it anymore. I held my hand out for a piece of homework. She gave one to me and started folding the next one. We flew homework airplanes for two hours, daydreaming about who would find them and where they’d land and wondering if anyone would see them in flight, like we were seeing them. Free. Daring and swooping with the currents—the way we felt as teenagers in love.

Then Vera came.

The beginning was hard, but we got through it. Once I quit drinking and started making decent money at the little accounting firm I’d interned with, we bought the house on Overlook Road. Cindy Sindy said it was sacred because it was so close to the pagoda, even though she never cared enough to hear its sordid (and very not-sacred) history, and I liked it because it was secluded and far away from the trashy suburb we’d both grown up in. The three of us climbed trees and planted gardens together. Cindy Sindy raised a brood of chickens one year and sold the organic eggs at the local farmers’ market. We taught Vera about nature and ecology. We took walks, hiked, and stayed healthy.

Then, when Vera was twelve, Cindy Sindy left me. She never called or wrote or cared again—just like my dad.

When Vera turned sixteen, four years after Cindy Sindy left, I brought her up to the pagoda and flew paper airplanes with her. I asked her if she wanted to know the story of how the pagoda was built, and she said yes. So I told her, and it was like everything was right in my life again. I watched the planes soar down toward the city, and I felt redeemed and whole. I remember thinking, Kenny Dietz, you have finally grown up, son.

I estimate that I spent over $2,300 on self-help books, workshops, and videos to make myself into the man Cindy Sindy wanted me to be. But all it really took was seeing Vera all grown up—nearly the same age as her mother when we sat in the very same spot, doing the very same thing.

She asked me about her grandfather, and I showed her The Midnight Special Billy Preston video on YouTube, and she thinks I look like him. I don’t think I do, because I got my mother’s brown hair, but she claims I have my father’s eyes. Either way, I became an alcoholic like he was, the same as his father was, which my mother told my brothers and me about five years too late. That’s why I’m telling Vera everything about me and Cindy Sindy now. I’m giving her a chance to evade her destiny. The trick is remembering that change is as easy as you make it. The trick is remembering that you are the boss of you.