Miss Me When I'm Gone

chapter 47



“My Favorite Lies”

Upstairs at Aunt Dorothy’s

Emerson, New Hampshire

So it seems Shelly was smarter than everyone realized. She thought of a little charade to carry on when she was only seventeen years old. That charade was the “Bruce or Keith” conundrum. It was one or the other of these two guys—the doofy, good-hearted one or the smart and serious one.

Everyone who knew her stared and squinted when I was a kid, trying to figure out which. Odds were on Bruce because I’d turned out more academic than my mother. But she would never tell.

Reader, it was apparently neither of the two. Yes. Neither!

I don’t think Judy or Diane or even Dorothy ever had any clue. Or even my mom (Linda). No, part of Shelly’s trick was to convince them of it so naturally they’d easily repeat it themselves, long after she’d gone. They’d repeat it like a secret, like real gossip. They’d find it delicious for years to come—that Shelly didn’t know who the baby daddy was, didn’t want it to be either of them, so was never willing to find out, or perhaps, just knew and would never say.

So that years and years would go by, and once the two had been ruled out, the real one would have slipped away. He’d be long gone, never to be found out.

Is this how you always wanted it, Shelly? Or was it everyone else—Judy and Diane and everyone they spoke to—who created and perpetuated that myth for you? How much did you actually say, and how much did they assume? Where am I supposed to go from here, Shelly? Who am I to ask when everyone close to you tells the same phony secret?

And who to look for when it could be anyone? They say there was a time when you’d happily lay a guy for the price of a few drinks. Or do it in the car on a second date. (Should I believe them, Shelly? Was that really you?)

And I choose to take this as a gift from you. My favorite lie—of yours, or of those told about you, I can’t even determine anymore. Because either way, I can be anyone now. My father is the man married to your sister. The genes, for what they’re worth, come from the clouds, from some nowhere man I’ll never meet.

I’ve named this page after a George Jones song. But guess what, Shelly? I’m not listening to it as I write. And I’m not eating a Twinkie or a Twizzler or any of the shit you and I used to eat together, though when I revise this I’ll probably say I was.

No, I’m just sitting upstairs at Aunt Judy’s, sucking on a stale cough drop, wondering if it was you or someone else who decided to spin it this way. How much control did you have, Shelly? How can I ever know?