By the Time You Read This (18 page)

28

D
R.
B
ELL WAS ONLY
trying to help, Melanie understood that. He was a wonderful doctor, even with those funny little tics of his, the way he was always rolling his shoulders and shaking his head. Half the time she expected him to woof like a big mutt. And he kept that funny little antique engine on his desk. He had even showed her how it worked one day. As he named the parts and flipped the levers, he was like the best kind of father, the kind she had never had.

So, he was sincerely trying to help, but Melanie wished he hadn’t set her such a difficult piece of homework. How do you write a suicide note when you’re not actually planning to kill yourself? Three or four weeks ago she could’ve written one, no problem. Three or four weeks ago the only thing that had stopped her from killing herself was that she didn’t have the energy.

Down the hall she could hear her roommates Rachel and Laryssa laughing about something. Melanie and Rachel had been best friends when they were younger, but over the past few years Rachel seemed to have cooled a little—no doubt because Melanie was always so depressed. She and Laryssa were very different from her, always with their doors open, always heading out to some social event or other.

Melanie had just started studying English Literature this year at the university, and she decided, now, to think of her suicide note as a literary rather than a therapeutic exercise. When she had been close to offing herself, she had composed—in her head, at least—several suicide notes. Sometimes they were addressed to her mother, sometimes to her stepfather, sometimes to the natural father she had never known, and sometimes to the world at large. But she had never actually written one down.

It wasn’t exactly a literary form you could study up and learn from the pros. She had read Sylvia Plath’s
Ariel
poems—one long suicide note, as far as she was concerned, a letter from a Lady Lazarus who decided she would just as soon step back to the other side. A suicide of white-hot anger.

And then there was Diane Arbus. Melanie had been struck by her pictures of freaks: the man with the flea circus, the transvestite, the Jewish giant. Clearly the photographer had felt like a freak herself. On the whole, Melanie felt more like an Arbus than a Plath; she had the feeling she and Arbus would have been good friends.

In any case, Melanie thought, I’m not a poet. I wouldn’t have a clue how to write like Plath even if I wanted to. And all Arbus had written, before taking an overdose and cutting her wrists, was “The last supper …” It was as if she didn’t want to bother anyone with a note. The last supper.

Well, Melanie had just had a peanut butter and jam sandwich, and she wasn’t about to write “The last lunch” and bring it in to Dr. Bell. She had the feeling he already thought she might be a little dim; she wanted to impress him.

It’s just too painful to go on …
she wrote. That would be to the world at large, she supposed, as if the world cared. It was about as uninteresting a thing as you could possibly say, also the truest. It stated the case, so why waste words? Perhaps that was why a lot of artists committed suicide. It is, if nothing else, the most eloquent and yet economical statement. Words might be redundant.

Dear Mom
,

This is going to hurt you terribly, so I want you to know beyond a shadow of a doubt. IT ISN’T YOUR FAULT. Whoever my father was, he did a bad thing by leaving you alone to have a baby, and I think you did a great job, considering. Much better than I would have done. You made one mistake, marrying The Bastard, as we call him, but I realize now you were a single mom, alone with a little kid, bored and afraid with no joy in your life, and when he came along offering love and protection and a few laughs it must have been the most tremendous rush. He hurt you terribly, and I’ll never forgive him for that…

No point telling her mother what The Bastard had done to her. Not in a suicide note.

I’m so sorry to repay all the care and comfort and joy you gave me in this awful way. But I seem to suffer from terminal sadness the way other people suffer from terminal cancer. My quality of life is gone. I can’t enjoy food or sunshine or even sleep anymore. I wake up each morning with nothing but dread and weariness. And even though I see a wonderful psychiatrist, I understand now that there is no hope of recovery
.

It was almost dark now. The house was quiet: Rachel and Laryssa had either gone out or settled down to study. Melanie remained in the gathering gloom, pen poised in the air, and fell into a blank space. She did that sometimes, sat absolutely still, staring into space, her mind an empty white mist. Sometimes an hour would pass, sometimes two. This time it was only half an hour.

So she got up, went down the hall to the bathroom. Tiny dabs of brown and black and blue dotted the sink, as if it had developed multicoloured measles. Laryssa had obviously been experimenting with makeup again. She was always revising her face, Laryssa, which was something Melanie might do if she could ever stand looking in a mirror long enough.

When she got back to her room, she pulled out her cellphone.

“Mom?”

“Hi, Mel. You want to come over for supper? I’ve got lamb pie in the oven.”

“Um, no, that’s okay. But I was wondering if I could borrow the car for a little while.”

“Of course. I don’t need it this evening. I do want it back tonight, though. I need it for work in the morning.”

“Yeah, I only need it for a while. Just wanna go out to the Chinook with some friends, and it’s such a drag waiting for the bus.”

“You know, if you lived at home, honey, you’d actually have a lot more freedom.”

“I’m too old to live at home, Mom.”

She put on a jacket and walked the few blocks to her home, as she still thought of it. She would never think of the boarding house as home, no matter how kind Mrs. Kemper was. Her mother asked her all sorts of questions about her classes and her roommates, and it took forever to get away.

But now here she was, parked a little way down from The Bastard’s place, waiting for—well, she wasn’t quite sure what for. His car was in the driveway, and the lights were on inside the house. It didn’t look like the kind of place where a single person would live, far too big and suburban-looking.

If he came out, she would speak to him. Just come on out of there, you Bastard, and I’ll tell you exactly what I think of you. Let me tell you what it cost me, the things you did to me. How I’ve felt sick and ashamed and guilty my whole life. If he came out, she would tell him how she could not so much as kiss a boy without thinking of The Bastard, seeing his face in front of her, his penis, his huge hands. The hands that had gripped and probed and bound. The hands that had held the camera.

She would tell him how she could not use the Internet these days without wondering if her pictures were on it somewhere. Why else would he take all those photographs? She would tell him how she burned with shame to think of them. Even now, the shame crept up her back and over her shoulders and up her neck like a rash, burning her ears.

She thought she would be sick, but the wave of nausea became a wave of sorrow rolling upward through her chest and into her eyes until the tears prickled. She would not cry; she refused to cry. She stared at the brick house with its big yard and its big garage and she thought, you Bastard, if you have a new wife in there, I’m going to tell her everything. I’m going to tell her exactly what you did to me, and she’ll leave you and maybe even report you to the police, which is what I should have done years ago.

Yes, I hope you have a wife. I hope she’s young and beautiful and I hope you adore her, because when I’m finished, she’s going to drop you so fast you’re going to feel your ribs break.

“Arch your back, honey. Come on, Mel. Arch your back. That’s right. Oh, you look so beautiful like that!”

The camera clicks, clicks, clicks, as he moves closer, closer, sometimes only inches away. And then more instructions.

“Okay, lie down on your belly and pretend you’re asleep.”

The smell of bleach on the hotel sheets, sheets creased and crisp, not the comfy kind at home. Sunlight spills through the windows along with rollicking music from the fairground: calliopes, organs, glockenspiels and rock music. The shouts of children whooshing down the waterslide, the screams of young mothers on the Tilt-A-Whirl, the Slingshot, the Wild Mouse.

“Daddy, can we go on the Wild Mouse?”

“Soon, baby. Just close your eyes now.”

Click, click, click
.

With eyes closed: “Daddy, now can we please go on the Wild Mouse?”

“Soon, Mel. Okay, let’s pull that sheet a little lower.”

Click, click, click
.

“Daddy, you promised.”

“I know, sweetheart. Oh, you look so beautiful, I could just eat you up!”

Click, click, click
.

A frolic then, sloppy kisses on her neck, and tickling her ribs till she can hardly breathe. Such fun! And then he leaves her breathless and excited.

She jumps off the bed and looks for her shorts and the rest of her clothes.

“What are you doing, Mel?”

“Getting dressed. I wanna go on the Wild Mouse.”

“Honey, we’re going to go on the Wild Mouse, just like I promised. But right now you have to get back on the bed.”

He hoists her from under her armpits and lowers her back where he wants her. He isn’t wearing any clothes now, and she knows what’s going to happen. She knew it all along but didn’t want to think about it. She wanted this trip so bad. WonderWorld!

“I don’t want to be in bed now. I want to go on the rides. You promised.”

“I’ll make a deal with you, Mel. We’re going to go on the rides. But which rides we go on depends entirely on you. Now, you can earn each ride by doing certain things for Daddy. You do one thing, you get the Tilt-A-Whirl. You do another thing, you get the Slingshot. And if you do something really super special for Daddy, you get the Wild Mouse. But first let’s snuggle up close.”

He holds her tight, and it’s like a boa constrictor wrapping itself around her chest.

“You remember what I said about this, right, honey? About it being our secret?”

“I know.”

“You can’t tell Mom or anyone. No one. You remember?”

“I remember.”

“Never, ever, right?”

“Never, ever.”

“And what will happen if you do?”

“The police will come and take me away and put me in a home for bad girls.”

“That’s right. And we don’t want that, do we. Okay, now we’re going to be special, special friends.”

More than a decade later and Melanie’s in her mother’s car watching The Bastard’s house, hoping he’ll come out.

She roots around in her backpack for a Kleenex, finding an old crumpled pack. She wipes her eyes, blows her nose. She never cried back when he was doing those things to her. Well, only once or twice when he actually hurt her, his full-grown body too large for her not-yet-developed one.

But mostly he didn’t hurt her, physically. WonderWorld. How she’d wanted to go there. All her friends had gone, and raved about it. And then, as a surprise for her eighth birthday, he took her. Somehow he had arranged it so her mother hadn’t come with them. Melanie had been so excited, she hadn’t worried about anything. It was like waiting for Christmas.

But the minute they set their bags down in the hotel room, a sourness grew in her stomach and she felt shaky all over. She hadn’t had a word for it back then, that swampy feeling in her belly. That dread. That fear, chemically enhanced with excitement. Her heart was in complete confusion because, when he did those things to her, he was also so
nice
. Attentive. Kind. Funny. He’d do anything she wanted—play with her dolls, have tea parties with imaginary guests—as long as she did what he wanted.

Then there were the fishing trips. He would take her out to the smaller lakes with a flat-bottomed boat. He was good at showing her how to attach the hooks and lures. He was patient, teaching her to cast the line from the small rod he bought for her. He showed her how to clean the fish they caught and how to fry them up so that they tasted wonderful.