“Both, I guess,” Lindy said, and her tone softened up a little. She sounded genuine for a moment, even a bit wistful. “I always thought your sister was so cool, you know? I totally worshipped her when we were growing up. She had those big sunglasses. She had those big boobs. She made me want a sister so bad. I couldn’t believe it when she died. But then, on the other hand, I totally could. She was cool. She seemed nice. It made sense. Nobody gets what they deserve.”
It is funny to think back about your life.
Whenever I do it, scenes like this baffle me now, the way I was always listening to the wrong thing. Maybe that’s all a childhood is? When Lindy was telling me Meagan’s secrets, for instance, or when she was idolizing Jeffrey Dahmer, I wasn’t really listening to her at all. All I was thinking was, Okay, so how does this affect me?
As another example, I can remember a short time after my parents’ initial separation, when they attempted to get back together. This was the fall of 1985 and I was ten years old and, earlier that day, Randy and I had made a bet about who could score the highest on a computer game we both owned called Bruce Lee, played on the Commodore 64. We would call each other after each round, two kids in heaven, and compare our performances. That evening, my father came over to the house unexpectedly and he and my mother gathered us all into the kitchen. They sat us down at the large oaken table and they looked uncomfortable, almost shy, standing there before us. My father said, It’s not going to be easy, kids. But we’re going to give it another shot.
Hannah said, Mom. Is this really what you want?
My mom said, Of course, honey. We love you kids so much. You know that, don’t you?
I said, Can I go now?
Or another time, much later in life, when my mother told me she had been feeling a little confused lately, and that she had almost gotten lost in her own neighborhood. She was living alone, then, and I had briefly moved out of town for work. I was in my late twenties and, like most, considered myself busy. My mother and I still spoke often and visited on the holidays, and yet I secretly believed that she was so devastated by my departure from Baton Rouge that she was conjuring up ways to get me to return to her. Small guilt trips about some downed limb in her yard. Strange symptoms that matched vague illnesses she’d heard about on TV. She was not yet sixty years old, often had lunch with friends, and looked great, so I thought she was making it up to reclaim me. Every child, I hope, thinks this highly of themselves.
And so I would say things like, “I don’t know, Mom. You seem pretty sharp to me.”
“Thank you, honey,” she’d say. “That’s sweet.”
She was right. That’s all it was.
I did a similar thing on the phone with Lindy that night. Drunk or not, there she was, talking to me about my dead sister, recalling her in specific ways that become so much rarer with time. Yet I barely even listened. “Do you remember all those gold bracelets she used to wear?” Lindy asked me. “Those big pink hoop earrings? I used to beg my mom to buy me that shit.”
“Is that why you would have gone with me to the dance?” I asked her. “Because you liked Hannah?”
“I don’t really know if I liked her,” Lindy said. “It’s not like we hung out. I just saw her. I just worshipped her. You know how it is. And your mom, my God, she looked so fucking sad.”
“So, is that what Melinda’s was about, too?” I said. “You felt sorry for me?”
Lindy groaned.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. Why do you have to analyze everything?”
“I don’t,” I said. “I just think about it sometimes, about that night.”
“Well, you should stop,” she said, “because all that night was really about was drinking way too much vodka and about how much people fucking suck. My date made out with some skank in the laundry room. I passed out in the goddamned grass. It was horrible. I had to walk home. I fell asleep on the stairs. When I woke up, my dad was crying. I didn’t know that shit was written on my face.”
“You should have gone with me,” I said. “Matt Hawk is such a dick.”
“No,” Lindy said. “Matt Hawk has a dick. A great dick. That’s his problem.”
I wanted to vomit. I wanted to jump off a cliff.
“Why do you say stuff like that?”
“What?” Lindy said. “I can’t talk about dicks? Guys talk about tits all the time.”
“I don’t.”
“That’s right,” she said. “I forgot that you’re a saint. I probably should have gone with you to that dance, now that I think about it. I probably should have been dating you forever. That way I wouldn’t have any problems. That way I’d just be this happy person with an assload of brownie points.”
“I’m no saint,” I said.
“Right,” Lindy said.
“I’m serious,” I told her. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
“Okay,” Lindy said. “Prove it.”