To: condorboy
Date: Sunday, February 5—7:01 PM
Subject: Re: what’s the opposite of angst?
Dear Connor,
I have angst oozing out of my pores that puddles on the ground. I should mop it up and sell it to nice, well-adjusted kids like you.
My mom started talking to me again. I think it was probably only because Gennifer and Karen came over for dinner last night, but it’s still a start. Maybe it’s also because my brother ended up in jail again, so she realizes that I’m not all that bad in comparison.
Jesse got caught buying heroin from an undercover cop. He totally wins the award for most-fucked-up member of my family. My mom told us all over dinner, and my sister just put her head in her hands, and Karen said something like, “It’s obscene that they’re going after the users instead of the dealers,” and I think I dropped my fork on the floor. My dad just looked at his plate, sadly shaking his head.
“He’s at the King County jail right now,” my mom said. “You all can go visit him if you want.” She did not say “we.” No one said anything. “His attorney is going to try to get the judge to order him to go to rehab instead of getting jail time.” Karen sat there nodding, and Gennifer was shaking her head, and for some reason I started crying, and no one even seemed to notice. I don’t know why. I wasn’t feeling particularly emotional, and then all of a sudden I saw Jesse on the floor like I found him when I was little, saw him lying in the hospital bed with tubes in his arms. And then I started thinking about before he was like that, when he was just a normal, pimply fourteen-year-old who no one really worried about. That’s the weirdest part—he was just so normal, like he got Bs in school, never really got in trouble, had a few friends he did things with. Then it was like, all of a sudden when he was around my age, something just broke. All of a sudden, everything seemed to piss him off and he would walk around in these rages all the time. And then he just started hiding from everyone, which I guess is when he started doing drugs. I started thinking about how my grandmother killed herself before I was born, how my mom is such a perfectionist it’s impossible for her to feel joy, then of course there’s my brother, and then it just hit me—my family is cursed. It’s written into my DNA to self-destruct.
I got up and went to the bathroom and tried to distract myself long enough to stop crying. But every time I thought I was getting a handle on things, I’d start thinking about my brother when he was around twelve and I was six and he’d humor me by coming to my stupid tea parties, and he was always so patient, and he’d even make his voice all high and pretend to talk for my stuffed animals, and he’d compliment the invisible tea and say what a wonderful time he was having. That was a different person from the guy who’s in jail right now. And what does that mean about how I’m going to turn out? How different am I going to be from that girl you knew this summer? You may have been the last person to see her.
I was able to get my shit together enough to sit through the rest of dinner. My sister kept looking at me and raising her eyebrows and telepathically asking me what’s wrong, but I’d just smile and mouth that everything was fine. The subject got changed to what they’re doing to prepare for the baby, which is something everyone can agree is a lovely topic of conversation. We’re so tragically modern. Or would it be postmodern? Jesus, Isabel, shut up.
I spent the rest of the evening lying on the roof in my sleeping bag. Did you realize there was a meteor shower last night? A big, cosmic rock pile collided with our atmosphere. It’s kind of sad how something that seems so magical is actually a bunch of burning garbage hurtling through space. Luckily I didn’t realize that until afterward, when I looked it up. That night, I was still pleasantly naive. I could still get excited about burning space garbage. I could believe it was a bunch of shooting stars. I could believe it was something to wish on. Every couple of minutes, I’d see one, but it was always just out of my vision. I would only ever just barely catch some movement out of the corner of my eye, but by the time I shifted my focus, the star would already be gone. I have never seen a shooting star straight-on, never fully in focus. It’s like I’ve always just missed them. And I guess that’s just the nature of them, because space is a such a big place, and it’s impossible to know where to look.
Love,
Isabel