American Girls(42)

“Those girls had choices.”

“Okay, they had choices, but Susan Atkins said that he could see right through her when he met her. And she wasn’t the only one.”

“Anna,” Dex said, “never underestimate the power of telling a person exactly what she wants to hear.”

He was talking to me like I was an idiot. And he was missing the point.

“But what about the White Album? He thought the Beatles were talking to him, like they had some kind of psychic connection. Have you read all the stuff that he thought was written directly to him? Did you read that one of the lawyers thought that Manson stopped his watch in the courtroom? Don’t tell me I’m crazy, but sometimes it seems like it’s more than a coincidence. Some of it’s, I don’t know, it’s just weird. What if he was right?”

Dex sat up straighter and closed his computer. “You mean right about hiding in a hole in the ground and starting a race war by having a bunch of crazy white people kill other white people? Was he right about every garden-variety racist comment that came out of his mouth? Oh, yeah, and did you miss that part of Helter Skelter where he called Hitler a ‘tuned-in guy’ out to ‘level the karma of the Jews’? That dude wasn’t exceptional. He was paranoid, actually insane, and straight-out racist. Is that what he might have been right about?”

My face had probably gone blotchy and red, shamed by the stupidity of my brain-mouth connection. Everything I wanted to say kept coming out wrong, and now I sounded like some dumb bougie suburbanite, so white that it had bleached my brain. I couldn’t handle two of my sister’s boyfriends thinking I was no different from a Manson girl.

“No,” I said. “You know that’s not what I mean. It’s just creepy, that’s all. Have you read these lyrics? I mean, ‘Sexy Sadie’? Did you know that’s what Charles Manson called Susan Atkins? Sadie. That’s weird, right?”

Dex shook his head and walked to the other side of the room. Next to his bookcase, there was a cardboard box full of old vinyl albums. He closed his eyes, held his hand in the air, and then reached into the box dramatically, like he was drawing numbers for the lotto.

“Here we go,” he said, pulling out an old LP from the back of the box. “Beastie Boys, Licensed to Ill, perfect. So let’s say that Charlie wakes up in 1987, Reagan’s in office, there are homeless people everywhere, he’s still a white boy, and black men are still plucking his nerves, but he’s about to talk to one of the great frat-party bands of the decade. The Beastie Boys.”

I started laughing, because it did sound stupid.

“Licensed to Ill. Clearly that refers to a race war. The Beastie Boys, being white and from New York and not having discovered Buddhism or feminism yet, are letting Charlie know that he has license to do whatever his little cracker heart desires. ‘Brass Monkey.’ Well, that funky monkey probably needs to be taken down, but maybe, because it’s brass, it’s strong and it’s going to rise up first, while he hides in some subway hole, right? ‘She’s Crafty.’ You know Charlie probably’s gonna use that on at least five ladies that he found at the Greyhound terminal. ‘Fight for Your Right to Party’?”

“All right already,” I said. “Maybe that just proves you’re as crazy as Charles Manson.”

We were both cracking up when Delia came through the door. She’d auditioned for the reality show earlier in the day, which was supposed to be about young actors in Hollywood trying to make it in the business.

“What are you clowns doing?” She took a box of tofu curry out of the refrigerator and ate it with the door open. “It feels soooooooo good in here. I think my air conditioner is on the fritz. I was dying on the way home.”

She had another friend, another producer, who had encouraged her to try out, and I could easily imagine my sister, face earnest against some white screen, her name and shaved-down age in bold letters underneath, talking about how hard it was juggling a boyfriend, an ex, and a delinquent half sister. I wondered for a minute how many sketchballs Delia really knew, if there might not be a coven of crazies stalking her apartment, waiting to see if she’d crack. She moved around the kitchen like she was still auditioning, striking a pose against the sink, the countertop, the silverware drawer. Maybe threats didn’t seem real to her because nothing did.

Dex went into the kitchen as well and kissed her even though she had food in her mouth.

“Nice,” my sister muttered, still eating.

“How’d it go?”

“Terrible,” she said. “They kept asking me about our sex life.”

“And I’m going to pretend I’m not here,” I said. “But just in case it matters, try to remember that I am.”

“You wouldn’t have believed the other people there. One woman wasn’t wearing any underwear, and don’t ask me how I knew but suffice it to say that everyone knew. Everyone. I don’t know what my friend was thinking. They asked me how I felt about orgies.”

“Gross,” I said.

“I don’t know if it’s gross,” she said. “It’s more Roman than anything, but it’s not my thing. Can you imagine if I took Dex to an orgy?”

Dex looked like someone had thrown up in his mouth.

“Have you been to an orgy?” I asked.