Trust Exercise(66)
“And how did you come off in it? How are you depicted?”
You’ll be surprised that she had no immediate answer. She herself was surprised. All those years of work naming her feelings, climbing down the dictionary definition’s ladder into the dark dusty tomb of a word’s origin, yet she couldn’t lay hold of one word to give David. “Incompletely,” she said after so long a pause David must have forgotten the question. He laughed with too much amusement, as if she’d been witty.
That night in the Mexican restaurant-caravansary Karen told Sarah about David’s manic campaigns on behalf of her book, which she hadn’t intended to do. As already stated Karen hadn’t known, arriving that night at Skylight Books, what exactly she would do, apart from stimulate herself with the reunion and respond accordingly. Still, much as she hadn’t known what she would do, there were things she’d felt sure she would not do. She certainly wouldn’t stoke Sarah’s belief in the superior dramatic arc of her life by describing David’s manic devotion to publicizing her book. Yet no sooner had they agreed that Sarah would be Karen’s dresser than Karen said, “I think it’ll mean a lot to David that you’re involved in one of his shows. He was so excited when your book came out, he acted like it was his child. He got it put on the CAPA marquee.”
“He did?” Sarah said, looking queasy. Another item on her list of crazy things that had happened to her on her book tour: unwanted proof that this place that she’d written about actually existed.
“‘READ the critically acclaimed novel by a CAPA alum, available at bookstores everywhere!’ Yeah, he went all out. He didn’t tell you? I would have thought he’d have written to you.”
“I had no idea. No, I never heard from him. I was hoping I would.” This did not sound convincing.
“You could have written to him.”
Sarah grimaced like a child. She was certainly drunk, her anxiety and illogical pleasure burning brightly in her cheeks. She dreaded to hear about David but longed to hear more about David’s devotion. “Scared,” she said, in a little-girl voice, of the prospect of writing to David.
Karen gave her a don’t-be-silly look. “Why?”
“That maybe the book pissed him off.”
What could have? The book’s revisions and excisions seemed designed to spare David’s feelings. But Karen didn’t say this, let alone reveal that David had not even read it. “Are you kidding? He’s so proud to be a fictional character.”
“So he liked it?”
“He loved it. If there was anything he didn’t like about it, it’s that you didn’t write about him even more.”
Sarah’s laughter trailed off; there was no more evading the subject. “And what about you?”
“Me?”
“I worried that it might have felt weird to you, reading that book. Too familiar.”
“You worried about that?” said Karen, in tones of amazement. “Did you really?”
“I did. I mean, I do. I mean, I’m worried right now.” Nervous laughter erupted from Sarah again.
“Well, it didn’t feel at all familiar. I mean, you changed a lot. Wouldn’t you say? If you were worried that I’d recognize myself in your book, I didn’t.” Did Karen here lie, by omitting some facts? She merely spoke literally. I’ve said I recognized myself in Sarah’s story easily: recognized as in “identified” myself. I didn’t recognize to “acknowledge validity of.” I didn’t recognize to “accept.”
Sarah failed to recognize the kind of recognition I meant, as I knew that she would. Sarah’s face bloomed with relief. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am,” she said.
* * *
MEANWHILE, AMONG the girls, surprisingly it had not been Joelle’s house but Karen Wurtzel’s that became the headquarters. Notice how, unique among all the CAPA kids, all the English kids, and even in contrast to Martin and Liam, Karen gets a last name. An ugly one, that sounds like German food. It has the effect in the story of making her seem unfamiliar and distant, not invited to the party. Aside from “Wurtzel,” though, the sentence mostly is true, with some lies of omission, like the bulk of what Sarah has written. Likely it matters to no one but Karen that it was her own mother who turned their house into a crash pad, not just with permissiveness but a hard-fought campaign. She’d started with Karen’s official guest, whose designation, like the others, we won’t bother to change back from Lara, prying her away from Karen with confidences and cigarettes and staying up all night watching TV. Once the other English girls began coming around, the mother we’re fine to call Elli—it captures her well—kept it going by keeping the fridge stocked with wine coolers and cookie dough. Elli doled out advice on love and sex, loaned her makeup, hair accessories, and clothes. Astrological signs were explained. The Tarot was consulted. Soon Karen’s bedroom was hosting a nightly slumber party at which her mother was the guest of honor and Karen the least welcome. Karen went to sleep in Kevin’s room, which earned her the girls’ mockery and contempt. And so Karen took extra shifts at her job after school, set her alarm for extra early in the mornings, was simply gone, disappeared, every time the English girls needed a ride.
Elli tried to smooth it over by driving the girls to school in the morning on her way to her job, but she couldn’t take off work to pick them up when the school day was done. A hodgepodge of people—David, miscellaneous Juniors and Seniors the English girls started going out with, even a creep of a cabdriver Elli strung along who did her countless favors in the hope of getting laid—got the girls from school to wherever they went after school, and from there to Karen’s home at the end of the night. It was a pain in everyone’s collective ass, it pissed everyone off, because Karen with her adequate car could have always driven the girls where they needed to go if she hadn’t been such a sulky hypersensitive bitch.