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  Do you think you are wrecking your life? I think I’m going to kick your ass. I don’t know if I have a life to wreck, but I know that the house sold for six hundred and fifty thousand dollars and that that money is mine when I turn eighteen, and so it’s not like I really need to bust my butt to make sure I get a good job or anything, and anyway I could die tonight, but I don’t think I will. But if I did die tonight and I had my nose in a geometry book, wouldn’t I think I’d wasted my life? I don’t know. What do you think? Why do you think you keep mentioning geometry?

  Because I fucking hate geometry, Denise! Arrrgh! I am totally skipping next week.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Over My Head

  Dave—Don’t worry: It’s not “Over My Head” like the Fleetwood Mac song, but, rather, over my head as in I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here. Rosalind appears to hate me, which is, I suppose, normal, or to be expected, or something. She was smoking in her bedroom last night. I did nothing but write her some ridiculous e-mail about how her moms chose me because some kid vomited on me at Paradise Lake.

  No, that’s not a joke. It’s actually what I wrote. I wanted to unsend it as soon as I sent it, but of course you can only do that on interoffice e-mails. So she wrote some snide response fueled by Karen, who also appears to hate me, though from what I have seen of that woman she is in no emotional shape to take care of a grieving teen.

  Of course, I am hardly winning awards in this category myself. Other than hooking her up with Denise and pretty much making her go, and providing a large stock of frozen vegan burritos (they are actually surprisingly good, and I recognize that coming from Mr. Bachelor Cuisine that recommendation might not mean much, but they really are tasty), I am just exactly the kind of dad to her that my dad was to me, which is to say none at all; I am simply the roommate who happens to pay 100% of the rent.

  I thought that taking her was the right thing to do. I certainly could have allowed Karen to take her. Perhaps I should have. I am wrestling with the idea that I took Rosalind for purely selfish reasons—to try to fill up the gaping hole in my life, to make me feel like my life is not a complete waste, to help me forget about my lack of success with the ladies since Marcia (could that be counted as a success? I suppose the jury is out). And so what I undertook for selfish reasons now just reminds me what a loser I am. Far from filling the hole in my life, it’s reminded me of how huge and well-defined that hole is and how my pathetic attempts at being a dad are not filling it.

  I am sorry to annoy you with pathetic whining. I have actually tried spreading this stuff around, but both Ian and Stephanie only ever make me feel worse, so you’re elected. Note that I did not call you, because I knew that you would yell at me to shape up and that you would be correct to do that, but I just wanted to revel in my loserdom here for a few minutes.

  Keep on rockin’

  —Sean

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Re: Over My Head

  Sean—Snap out of it! Shape up! Since I didn’t get to tell you on the phone, I thought I could at least give it to you on e-mail.

  Did I get from your e-mail that you have been writing to her about why her moms chose you, which is something you don’t actually know anything about beyond one half-drunken conversation?

  Why not tell her why you chose her? Doesn’t that seem like it’s actually more important information to her? Though I hid it well behind a wall of “oh my God, don’t do it, don’t do it, you are insane,” I was actually moved by what you told me about why you wanted her. Maybe she will be too. Or maybe she’ll murder you while you sleep. What do I know about what’s important to a fourteen-year-old girl? Eight years till Max gets to that age, and if he’s anything like me, he’ll probably still just want stuff with Spider-Man on it. And pornography.

  Superhero porn—we’d have the teenage-boy market sewn up. I’ll put together a business plan and get back to you. Keep ya head up,

  —Dave

  Dear Grief Journal,

  Goober, goober, gooberific, dorktastic, Sean is a loser. Tried to talk to me tonight and I was just acting like I didn’t even hear him and I could see him getting mad which I kind of liked.

  But then I felt kinda bad about the fact that I don’t have anybody to talk to so I sent Sasha this IM and I was all like I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch and she was all yeah you have been but it’s cool, and I was like, well, I didn’t write this but I was like oh sorry if my grief is inconvenient for you, and then she tried to write some dumb thing about English class, which I guess she didn’t notice that I have been sleeping through.

  Westerberg tried to talk to me about it after class, all I lost my parents too and I’m trying to give you space but I don’t want to add failing English to the problems you have right now, and I wanted to say, yeah, you’ve got problems, dude, like the fact that your class is a joke and I could sleep through it and still get an A, but I didn’t.

  I always think of this really mean shit to say and then I don’t say it and I don’t know if that’s good or bad because I pretty much feel mad all the time, so maybe if I really unloaded on Sasha or Westerberg or Sean or Karen or anybody but Denise it would help me not feel so grumpy all the time. Or maybe if I went back in time and got in the car instead of saying whatever Mom, I’m staying home where it’s less corny, then I’d be dead. But what’s funny is that even though I don’t really enjoy life very much I find that I don’t really want to be dead.

  Because for one thing you can’t smoke when you are dead and the smoking is definitely coming along, and now I start feeling kind of itchy during D block just waiting for the smoke, so that’s good. Jen is always there and I told her about Sean and about how he is a dork and Jen was like well my dad is a pussy who lets my mom beat him up and I said well I bet Sean would probably kill to get that close to a woman which is a mean thing I actually said because it wasn’t about the person I was talking to.

  Progress reports go home this week. I wonder what Sean will say when he sees that I am failing everything but English. I am passing English only because I read everything which is more than most of the humanoids in that class do. Or should I call them homunculi, which is another great word I learned from actually doing the reading. If I cared at all about sucking up I would have slipped that in when I was talking to Westerberg, all “I hate the homunculi in this class” or “how can I stay awake when some homunculus is asking a dumb question every two minutes.”

  But anyway, Sean will probably send me some other really wussy e-mail about how he doesn’t feel like my dad but he’s concerned. Whatever, loser.

  Speaking of losers, let’s talk about the girl who can’t cry because her moms are dead. Still nothing on the tears front, it’s like I am bored with everything except maybe smoking which is still too new to get boring and Jen who is also somebody new, but basically I am just bored bored bored and I really hate everybody including me, because what kind of daughter am I anyway. Mommy would kill me if she found me smoking. She’d be “in a state” as Sean put it, hopping up and down, all red in the face, all do you know what you’re doing, are you trying to hurt me don’t you know how my dad died?

  I’m sorry, Mommy, I’m not trying to hurt you, I just needed an excuse to stay in the bathroom. Except maybe I am trying to hurt you because I am mad at you too, I am mad at you two, that is an interesting homonym, or is it a homophone, but anyway you left me and you didn’t make any plans for me at all and so all of a sudden I have to be this grown-up who figures stuff out when I just want to be an idiot teen like Sasha and Sara and Kristen and pretty much everybody else.

  I’m sorry I said that Mommy I don’t know if you can read this or hear what I’m thinking or anything. I’m not mad, I just want you back. I just want you back.

  Progress—I felt that itch in my tear ducts even though nothing came out.
But I did make myself sad, and how fucked up is this but that kind of makes me happy.

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Me and You

  My friend Dave told me I was an idiot for sending you an e-mail about why your moms picked me (I did not tell him that I actually sent two), since, as he correctly points out, I don’t exactly have firsthand knowledge of their decision-making process. I am sure Karen is probably closer to the mark than I am; that would certainly explain why Sandy was always steering our conversations around to hereditary illnesses. Once I found that your grandfather Edgar had died of cancer, I decided Sandy had some hypochondria issues, but the idea that she was vetting me by asking if I knew anybody with Prader-Willi or St. Vitus’ dance makes more sense. (I don’t know if she actually asked me about those two, but they are illnesses that sound kind of funny to me. Though I dare say they probably are not funny to have.)

  So Dave suggested I tell you what I told him when I was deciding to take custody of you. I don’t like any of my verb choices for that action: “take custody” sounds awfully stiff, while “exercise my parental right” sounds good to my lawyerly ears but leaves out the significant emotional component.

  To wit: I looked at you and I saw myself. I don’t mean any kind of physical resemblance. I mean a biographical resemblance.

  When I was nine years old, my parents were probably on the verge of divorcing. Mom was in her first year as a public defender, and Dad was in his nineteenth year of the 1960s. At the time I didn’t really know anything about the relationship between my mother and father; I just knew that Mommy was busy and that Dad worked at night, so they never saw each other. This is probably why they stayed together as long as they did.

  Both my parents had been hippies in the sixties, but Mom seemed to be following the idealism thread of that decade by becoming a public defender, while Dad seemed to be following the substance-abuse thread by working as a bartender and weed dealer and consuming a rather significant amount of his own merchandise.

  One evening Mom was on the platform waiting for the subway, and, it being rush hour, there were several hundred people there, so no one was ever able to clearly discern what happened, but apparently there was some jostling, or an altercation between other people, or something. In any case, someone bumped into her and she fell and hit the third rail and died immediately.

  I remember waiting with Dad and watching him get increasingly angry and frustrated and talking to Mom out loud when he thought she was just late from work. He was angry and talking about how inconsiderate she was, and how he was going to be late for work. Then the phone rang and he got that look …

  I’m sorry—I thought I could write about this in detail, but I find that even twenty-six years later, it hurts too much. It never really hurts any less; it just hurts less often. I don’t know if that’s a comfort to you. I was certainly not comforted by anything anyone said to me in the weeks and months after Mom’s death. I was especially angry with my aunt Maureen, who told me that God has a plan. I wanted to tell her that if God’s plans include taking a nine-year-old kid’s mommy away, then God is a sick evil fuck, but I would not have said that at the time. Indeed, while I knew those words, I wouldn’t have put them in that order. But the idea was there. Perhaps you feel something similar. Perhaps you don’t. Perhaps I should be more circumspect in my choice of language with you. As I am making this fatherhood stuff up as I go along, I will make mistakes. Perhaps swearing is one of them. But if your high school is anything like mine, you hear much worse in the halls on a daily, and indeed probably hourly, basis.

  Well. To wrap up. I saw in the paper that your mothers had died, and I cried and cried for you. Or possibly for myself at age nine. In any case, I remembered being a little kid and missing my mommy and having essentially no parent, which sounds cruel to my father, but he simply didn’t do any parenting. I wanted to do anything I could to help you because I know something about how you feel and I know that you don’t deserve it, and because I love you. Perhaps tomorrow I will tell you about when I first saw you. So when Eva’s lawyer called and told me that she had died intestate and that my name was on your birth certificate, I really wanted to finally become your father instead of the donor.

  So far, with the exception of the burritos, I appear to be doing a horrible job. I am mindful of the irony of my complaints about my own father given my own abysmal performance, and so I have two things to say to you as I sign off:

  1. Please please please stop smoking.

  2. I have received your progress report. I myself was an indifferent student who became academically driven after my mother’s death, so I am not surprised to see a major change in this area. Nevertheless, I am concerned that your failing everything but English will close some important doors to you, so you and I will meet with your guidance counselor after school on Wednesday. This will, unfortunately, force the cancellation of your session with Denise this week, which I am sure will take some of the sting out of having this kind of meeting.

  By the way, I spoke to Denise, who informed me of your desire to “kick her ass” and skip your next session. After speaking with her for twenty minutes, I have a certain amount of sympathy for your point of view on both issues. Please let me know if you’d like me to find you someone else.

  I picked up several frozen enchilada meals from the same company that makes the burritos. I can only hope that they will rise to the high standard set by the burritos and that you will join me in finding out tonight at seven. Meet me by the microwave. I will be wearing a Boston Red Sox hat and a gray T-shirt.

  —Sean

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Re: Me and You

  Don’t worry about the fucking swearing. Why the fuck would I care about that shit?

  ps—I think God is a sick evil fuck.

  pps—Yes, please find somebody else, I really do hate Denise.

  ppps—Thanks.

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Breakthrough?

  Well, Rosalind spoke to me last night. Now, this was certainly not any kind of long, involved conversation—basically I heated up some frozen enchiladas and we ate in silence as usual, and she said, “Thanks for buying these. They’re good.” And I said, “No problem. I’m sorry I don’t really know how to cook.” She said, “It’s okay. We used to eat dinner like this all the time. You know, always a ton of stuff to do, everybody’s got work and committee meetings and soccer practice and whatever. No time to cook, no time to eat. We ate a lot of pizza.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose that’s pretty much how I eat too.”

  “I guess a lot of people do. Well, I have some reading to do. I’m going to my room.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Yep. See ya.”

  Now, I grant you this is not much in the way of a conversation, but after all that stony silence, it feels pretty wonderful. I was over the moon all night. I hope this is the beginning of a trend.

  —Sean

  Dear Grief Journal:

  Well, Sean is still a dork but at least he got me an appointment with someone named Lisa who is some kind of adolescent expert or something, or so he claims, and so Denise is gone which is okay, but I guess I really don’t know if she sucked as bad as I think she did or if I just hated her because she made me think about stuff I didn’t want to think about and asked really annoying questions all the time. Maybe they all do that. I guess I’ll find out if Lisa does or not.

  So I guess we have this big deal meeting with Mr. Mould about my lack of academic progress or whatever. It is funny because I am not scared at all, and that kid I was, that kid with the two moms would have been terrified, but I’m just like what the hell could you possibly do to me? Well, whatever, I don’t know. I really don’t want to be some burnout loser, I mean I did used to like getting A’s and feeling smart
and making Mom and Mommy proud, but now I don’t know. I don’t want to study. Or do anything else. I told Jen about my meeting and she told me that they will probably say the words “therapeutic setting,” because I guess she has a meeting about every other week where they try to get rid of her and that’s what they say to her all the time, or her mom or whoever, but anyway she told me a bunch of words that Mould will use and told me I should make a little bingo thing in my notebook so after he says “Therapeutic setting” and “not achieving to her potential” and maybe something like “very concerned because we consider ourselves a family here” I can check them off.

  Ugh. I still haven’t cried. Jen says she stopped crying too, that she used to cry every time she heard her mom and dad fighting, or anyway every time she heard yelling and her mom slapping the shit out of her dad, that she had this little room in her house she used to go to to cry and rock back and forth holding her knees, but now she just sits in her room and watches that plastic surgery show on cable and it’s just like the normal background noise. It’s like people who live next to the airport who don’t hear the planes taking off anymore. Anyway, that’s what Jen says but I don’t know if she actually knows anybody in East Boston or if she’s just kind of using that as an example. Also she is smoking in the bathroom at lunch and having therapeutic setting meetings, so maybe she should cry and not watch that show, even though it is actually kind of good. I’ve watched it a couple times before Sean gets home from work while I am not doing my geometry homework.

  I wish I could get some kind of grief-oplasty and be like that kid who got her ears pinned back, all “the kids called me Dumbo and now I am happy and have an ugly prom date because I got my ears pinned back.” Could I be like “I used to smoke in the bathroom and hang out with this girl who kind of scared me but I also liked and also I used to fail everything, but then I got my grief redacted and now I am going to the prom with some mullet-headed loser who will try to cop a feel in the limo!”