DECEMBER 21, 8:16 A.M. EST
A Shout-out for Backup
Gentle Tweeter,
In death as in life I am betrayed by my peers. This girl we find canoodling so freely with my very married father, until recently she professed to be my devoted friend and mentor in Hell. It’s likely that she’s also violated her Halloween curfew, but how she can manifest a physical body and carnally interact with the predead is a mystery.
To my remaining friends still lodged in the fiery underworld, I make a special request. Unbeknownst to you—smarty-pants Leonard, athletic Patterson, misanthropic Archer, and dear little Emily—during the normal course of events in Hades I inadvertently made contact with my living-alive parents. It was by telephone, an accident, and they were understandably upset about speaking to the daughter they had just buried. To quell their weeping I offered my mom and dad some advice on how to conduct their lives. This advice, most likely, will land them in the Pit.
Please, my underworld friends, if my parents die during my yearlong absence, please protect them. Make them feel at home.
DECEMBER 21, 8:20 A.M. EST
The Tryst, Continued
Gentle Tweeter,
Seeking forensic proof of my parents’ lust for each other, as a predead child I would pillage the dirty laundry. The pong and sogginess of damp bed linens served as the physical evidence that my mom and dad were still in love, and these lustful stains documented their romance better than would any florid handwritten poetry. Their carnal discharges proved that all was stable. The squeak of bedsprings, the slap of skin against bare skin, these spoke a biological promise more lasting than wedding vows.
In those revolting smears of bodily fluids was writ proof of our mutual happy ending. That, it would seem, is no longer the case.
“For the love of Madison,” gasps my father’s voice, “are you trying to fuck me to death, Babette?”
Those familiar eyes framed in turquoise eye shadow, edged in mascaraed eyelashes, they’re the flesh- eating flowers of a Venus flytrap. Her earlobes strain with the weight of dime-size dazzle-cut cubic zirconia. Making her voice a bedroom purr, continuing to gaze upon me in my lightbulb, the young woman, Babette, asks, “Do you miss her?”
My father responds with silence. His hesitation stretches to a cold eternity. At last he asks, “You mean my wife?”
“I mean, do you miss your daughter, Madison?” prompts Babette.
Gruff, indignant. “You’re asking if I
“No,” Babette says. “Do you
After a long beat, his voice wry with chagrin, my father says, “I was stunned to find out that Heaven even existed….”
“Madison wouldn’t lie,” says Babette, baiting me. “Would she?”
“This is going to sound terrible,” my dad’s voice begins. “But I was even more surprised to hear that Madison got past the gates.” A chuckle. “Frankly, I was dumbfounded.”
My own father thinks I ought to be in Hell.
Stranger yet, I suspect that Babette can see me. I’m certain she can.
Quickly, dryly, my dad adds, “I could imagine Madison getting into Harvard… but Heaven?”
“But she’s there now,” says Babette, even as she sees me here, trapped on Earth, hovering within an arm’s length of their adulterous postcoital dialogue. “Madison spoke to you from Heaven, didn’t she?”
“Don’t misunderstand me,” my dad says. “I loved Maddy as much as any parent ever loved a child.” His silent pause here is long and infuriating. “The truth is that my baby girl had her shortcomings.”
As if making a token effort to resolve the topic, Babette says, “This must be painful for you to admit.”
“The truth is,” says my dad, “my Maddy was a little coward.”
Babette gasps in theatrical shock. “Don’t say that!”
“But Madison was,” insists my dad, his voice exhausted, resigned. “Everyone saw it. She was a spineless, gutless, weak little coward.”
Babette smirks up at me, saying, “Not Maddy! Not spineless!”
“Those were the empirical findings of our entire team of behavioral experts,” my dad’s voice affirms dismally. Downhearted. “She hid behind a defensive mask of false superiority.”
The statement roils in the cramping bowels of my brain. My ears gag on the words
“Those eyes of hers watched everything and they judged everything,” my father declares, “especially her mother and me. Madison decried every dream, but she never had the courage or strength of convictions to pursue any vision of her own.” As if laying down his sad trump card he adds, “Nothing led us to believe poor Maddy ever had a single friend….”
That, Gentle Tweeter, is an untruth. Babette was my friend. Not that she’s such a great endorsement of friendship.
Too quickly, too gently, Babette says, “We don’t have to discuss this, Tony.”
And too fervently, my dad responds, “But I do.” His voice simultaneously righteous and defeated, he says, “Leonard warned us. Decades ago. Long before she was born, Leonard said Maddy would be very difficult to love.”
Narrowing her eyes, grinning up at me, Babette prompts, “Leonard? The telemarketer?”
With an almost audible shaking of his head, my father says, “Okay, he was a telemarketer, but he made us rich. He warned us that Madison would pretend to have friends.” My dad laughs quietly. He sighs. “Over one winter break Madison spent the school holiday entirely alone….”
Oh, for the love of Susan Sarandon, I can’t be hearing this! My ghost brains bloat and ache, stretching, painfully, the swollen belly of my memory.
“She told her mother and me that she was spending the holidays with friends in Crete,” he continues. “And for the next three weeks, she did nothing but eat ice cream and read trashy novels.”
Gentle Tweeter, fie! Ye gods!
Babette’s voice sounds syrupy as she coos, “A pretty girl like Madison… That’s impossible.” Her urine-hued eyes, however, guffaw heartily at my expense.
“It’s true,” says my dad. “We watched her over the entire holiday via the school’s security cameras. The poor, lonely, fat little thing.”
DECEMBER 21, 8:23 A.M. EST
A Former (?) Friend…
Gentle Tweeter,
Such a nature boy is my father that his copious grunting regales us. Volcanic blasts erupt, not muffled by
