Please Ignore Vera Dietz (Page 41)

Please Ignore Vera Dietz(41)
Author: A.S. King

I stopped hiking after that and spent my free time inside, reading. As the nights grew warmer and the leaves filled the gaps in the forest, I started to sit out on the deck and look at the stars at night. One night, about two weeks after the Master Oak/dog shit episode, I saw the light go on in Charlie’s tree house. I heard talking. More than one person. Then I heard giggles. Girlish ones.

No matter how hard I tried not to think about it, I knew he was ha**ng s*x with Jenny Flick up in that tree house. It killed me, because that was our tree house. (Because it was me he was supposed to be ha**ng s*x with.)

I felt evil again for a second. I felt like telling everyone that he sold his dirty underwear. But could I ever respect myself again if I stooped to their level?

By mid-May, it had become glaringly obvious that I needed a job.

Dad picked up an application from Zimmerman’s and left it on the table with two others. One was from Martin’s, the department store at the Pagoda Mall, where, at best, I’d be stuck behind a cash register all day, swiping cards and saying “Debit or credit?” The other was from the pizza delivery place we ordered from back on Valentine’s Day.

“Why’d you get these?” I asked, holding up the extra two. I was sick of him manipulating me with his calm, innocent suggestions.

“I figured it’d be good to have more than one choice,” he said.

“I’m not working at Martin’s,” I answered.

“Okay.”

Why didn’t he argue like a normal parent?

“If I apply for the pizza thing, will you let me have Mom’s car?” It was worth a try. I was five months from eighteen. He’d said he’d consider it the last time we talked. Plus, we’d worked hard to get in all the driving hours I needed to get my license, and I’d passed with flying colors.

“Let’s just see, first.”

“But it makes a difference on the application, Dad.” I waved it in the air toward him, rudely. “I have to tell them the make and model and insurance company.”

He looked surprised, and confused, and he went into his office and pulled out the car’s manual.

“It’s a ’99 Sentra.”

“Make?”

“Nissan.”

“Color?”

“Geez, Vera. You know what color it is,” he said.

“Insurance?”

“Write in ‘N/A’ for now.”

No matter how hard I tried to piss him off, it wasn’t working. Anyway, I wanted to work at Zimmerman’s pet store. I had always wanted to work at Zimmerman’s pet store. I didn’t want some stupid pizza delivery job, and I resented the fact that, like Charlie’s dad, he was going to give me a reward for doing what he wanted me to do. That was unacceptable.

“So what should I write in the space where it asks me why I want the job?”

He sighed and sat down at the table. “Vera, I’m just trying to help you,” he said. “If you don’t want to fill out any of them but the one for Zimmerman’s, that’s fine.”

“Okay,” I said, pushing the other applications over to him.

“There’s no need to be a smart-ass.”

“Then stop trying to manipulate me.”

I could tell from his face that I’d hurt him, because he really was only trying to help. I remembered that this was the kind of thing Mom would have said. In fact, it’s exactly what Mom did say. A million times.

The next morning as I waited for the bus, I saw Charlie pull his bike from the garage and start it up. He left it running for a few minutes, went into the house, then came back out and went into the garage again. When he came out with an extra helmet, the one I used to wear, I remembered our ride up to the pagoda back in January. How he’d kissed me, and how tightly I’d held him from behind on the way home.

Then Jenny Flick appeared at the forest’s edge, her hair still tangled from sleep, and she slipped the helmet over her head and climbed on. As they drove by me—up the hill rather than down, which was not the way to school—she put up her middle finger.

GROUNDED, COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY—PART 2

Family meeting number three out of four. Mom comes up again, even though neither of us did our “Write something about Mom” homework.

DAD: I just don’t want you to make the same mistakes we did.

ME: You mean she, don’t you? You mean you don’t want me to make the same mistakes she did.

DAD: (Fiddling with the zipper on his favorite Cape Cod sweatshirt.) I want you to have a fair shot, Vera.

ME: Look at me, Dad. Am I anything like her? Do you really think I’d ever be so desperate as to take my clothes off for money?

DAD: I hope not.

ME: Hope? Hope?

DR. B: She’s quite a responsible young woman.

DAD: (Still fiddling with zipper.) I don’t want to fail her.

ME: Fail me?

DAD: Your mother was failed by her mother. By her father. By everyone in her life.

That means him. That means I failed your mother, which just isn’t true.

ME: Not you.

DAD: (Silent.)

ME: Mom walked out on us, remember? Because she never got over her own baggage, not because of you or me, right?

He’s silent.

ME: Seriously. I’ve been reading your self-help tomes, too, you know. The one on the breakfast bar—The Power of Ownership, or whatever it’s called. Remember? The part about intellectualizing everything? How people who can’t face their own negative emotions intellectualize things? Doesn’t that remind you of her?

DR. B: (Raises eyebrows.)

ME: That’s not your fault.

DAD: (Sighs.) How the hell was I supposed to know how to raise a girl by myself? How was I supposed to teach you how to be—uh—how to be—

ME: Honorable?

DAD: Yeah. And safe.

ME: I am.

DAD: (Silent.)

ME: You did just fine.

DR. B: She’s a confident, smart young woman, Ken.

DAD: So why is she drinking and screwing a twenty-three-year-old?

I’m raging. I’m a tiger. I want to scratch his eyes out. I’m a shark and want to bite him with my five rows of razor-sharp teeth and twist him around in the water.

ME: (In the most disgusted tone I can muster.) I AM NOT screwing ANYONE, Dad.

Dad rolls his eyes.

DR. B: Ken?

DAD: (Sighs and kisses his teeth.) You’re not, huh?

ME: No.

DAD: (Rolls eyes and smirks.)

ME: You know—I used to think you were different. But now I see you’re just like every other jaded so-called adult I’ve ever met. You think you’re so f**king smart.