For the next ten days I tried to forget about Noel and the sexy college vampire girl, forget about the disappearance of my mother (who didn’t answer her cell) and forget that my father was eating nothing but Doritos, Cheese Nips, Cheez-Its, Cheetos and other bright orange cheese-flavored snack foods, sitting on the couch and watching bad television. He even slept there at night, drooling orange drool onto the front of the same sweatshirt he’d been wearing for days.
I pretended everything was normal and excellent. I shot videos for my college application film, did my schoolwork, baked cupcakes for Meghan’s birthday and went out with Gideon.
He took me out to the movies a couple of nights, and to dinner. He was acting like a real live boyfriend right away. Calling me, showing up on time, holding my hand. He was very easy to be around, though I didn’t let him in the house or tell him what was going on with my parents. Instead, I treated being with him like an escape from the realities of my life and the things in my heart.
Gideon almost always had a paperback book in his pocket, philosophy or history, in which he underlined enthusiastically and which he pulled out to read if he ever had to wait for anything. Like if I went to the bathroom at a restaurant, he’d be reading when I came back. He was also studying Spanish and he had this funny instructional CD in his car. He wanted to learn Spanish because he planned to travel to South America with this charity organization to build latrines and help with immunizations and stuff.
So he was basically an awesome human, and yet periodically I’d think: Is there something secretly wrong with him that he wants to go out with a high school girl? And a neurotic high school girl, at that?
Maybe he seems like a normal guy but he’ll turn out to be an absolute psycho like Edward Norton in
Then I’d remind myself that I’d flushed my self-loathing down with all the poo, and tell myself I was a smart and pretty person and there was no reason why a hot college guy who wanted to go out with me was automatically a secret lunatic.
Truthfully, the only thing I could find wrong with Gideon was that he wasn’t the greatest kisser. He was slobbery and overly sex-tongue-y about it. And he smelled like patchouli, which isn’t bad per se but reminded me of my boss at the Birkenstock store, which was a very unromantic association.
One Saturday he drove me up to Evergreen for the day to show me around the campus. It was lush and green and had bicycles parked all over and leaflets posted up about open-mike nights and art shows and bands. I had never been on a college campus besides the UW, which is right in the middle of Seattle, and that’s so large and manicured and full of graduate-student future lawyers and stuff that it doesn’t seem like
“I don’t think I realized until now that this time next year I’ll not only be out of the Tate Universe, I’ll be out of my parents’ house,” I told Doctor Z later that week. “I’ll be living
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ll have to take care of myself.”
She just looked at me.
“What?”
More looking.
“I’m pretty much taking care of myself right now, since Mom left. Is that what you’re thinking?”
“It crossed my mind,” she admitted.
“Well, I just bring home take-out pizza and eat cereal for breakfast. It’s not like I’ve scrubbed the oven or anything.”
She nodded.
“Although I did clean the bathroom yesterday,” I admitted. “And I made Dad change his clothes and take a shower.”
“How did that feel?” Doctor Z asked me.
I hate it when she says shrinky things like that.
“I am trying not to have feelings about it at all,” I said. “And I’m succeeding pretty well.”
“Are you getting support from your friends? From Nora or Meghan?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t said anything.”
“Why not?”
“I’m sick of being Neurotic Ruby whose life is always in a crisis. I’m sick of self-loathing and self-pity. So I’m flushing it down,” I told her. “Crazy dad drooling Cheeto juice. Flush! Disappearing act by Mom. Flush! Dead Grandma. Flush! Noel with someone else. Flush! And then it’s like magic: no feelings!”
Doctor Z leaned forward. “I didn’t mean for you to pretend difficult situations don’t exist,” she said. “There are some things you can’t flush.”
Yeah, well.
“There’s a difference between letting something go,” Doctor Z continued, “releasing yourself of tension or a negative way of thinking—”
“You told me to flush and I flushed!” I protested.
“There’s a difference between stopping an obsessive thought pattern,” she said, “and denying your feelings or stuffing them down.”
Ag again. “You want me to do Reginald,” I said. “But I don’t want to do Reginald. I want to flush it all down and have a lobotomy.”
