By the Time You Read This

28

DR. BELL 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.

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

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.

Of course, it wasn’t free. In the tent at night, she had to earn all that attention and instruction and fun. In the tent, she was expected to pose and perform. In the tent, her job was to please him. And he was always finding new ways for her to please him.

One day, years later, her friend Rachel had shocked her by opening some images she had discovered on the computer she shared with her older brother. Rachel had clicked from one to the next, wide-eyed and giggling and appalled and fascinated. They had both been twelve years old at the time.

“Oh, gross!” Rachel would cry.

“Oh, gross!” Melanie would say too, trying for the same tone. But she could tell she wasn’t seeing the pictures the way Rachel was seeing them. It was obvious from her shock and amazement that Rachel, unlike Melanie, was innocent.

“Do people really do that?” Rachel cried. “It’s so disgusting!”

“Weird,” Melanie said.

“This is just like the most perverted stuff I’ve ever seen! I think I’m going to barf!”

No, Rachel had never seen such things before. But Melanie had not only seen them, she had done them. She’d been doing them since she was seven years old.

Occasionally a shadow rippled across the curtains in the picture window. A man’s shadow.

“Come out,” Melanie said in the car. “Come out, you Bastard, and I’ll tell you what I think of you now.”

That day with the computer images had put a distance between her and her best friend. Rachel had been so disgusted that Melanie was forced to wonder, What would she think of me if she knew? She would be horrified, repulsed. She wouldn’t want anything to do with Melanie ever again.

A new fear had slithered into her heart. Here were all these pictures on a computer: images of ordinary people, some of them teenagers. For the first time Melanie worried that there might be hundreds of pictures of her on the Internet, just waiting for a friend to discover. She had lived with that fear of discovery ever since.

All those pictures, countless pictures. Because it didn’t happen only on special trips. Even at home, whenever her mother was out for a couple of hours, The Bastard would come after her. When hugs and attention were no longer enough, he’d use money. How about some cash for that new CD? Could there be a pair of Lucky Brand jeans in your future? We’ll just have to see how things go. A few days later her mother had asked about those jeans: Those are expensive. Where did you get the money for those?

“Oh, Mel helped me tidy up the basement,” The Bastard said, “and I gave her some money towards them.”

Then there was that time on the boat, that beautiful cabin cruiser The Bastard had borrowed from someone. The three of them in the same cabin, cruising around Trout Lake for days. Mom and The Bastard sleeping on one side, Melanie on the other. She would have been about eleven. In the middle of the night she had awoken with a start. He was sitting on the edge of her bed with his hands in her pyjamas, her mother not three feet away. He must have put some drug in her wine. That night Melanie earned a new pair of Nikes.

And now the sick Bastard was coming out of the house. Five years hadn’t made much difference to his appearance. His jacket was different, a light blue nylon windbreaker, and he had a baseball cap on his head. He never used to wear baseball caps. He came a few steps down the driveway, tilting his head back—breathing in the cool evening air. He stopped, hands in pockets, waiting, stepped over onto the lawn to examine some flaw or other.

Just like a normal person might do, Melanie thought. As if you’re just like everybody else.

She put her hand on the car door and took a deep breath. She would tell him, oh boy, would she tell him. Then she stopped.

A woman came out the side door of the house and joined her former stepfather. She was pretty, maybe forty, with dark hair curling to her shoulders. Her denim jacket and khaki trousers looked good on her. She still had a real figure. Better-looking than Mom, Melanie thought, and it made her sad.

I’m going to tell this new wife everything, absolutely everything. Even if he denies it, even if he calls me insane, she’s going to know it’s true. That pretty face of hers will crumple in shock. The happy gleam in her eye will turn to suspicion, anger, loathing.

Melanie opened the car door. There was no other traffic, no other pedestrians. The happy couple were turned back toward the house now, their postures expectant. Well, here’s something they won’t expect.

Melanie was twenty yards down the road from them, crossing at a diagonal. She ordered her heart to calm down. She did not want to look crazy; it was important that this woman believe her, that she sound rational. Her pace was brisk, businesslike, a young executive headed to a meeting.

The side door of the house opened, and a little girl came out carrying a Nerf ball and paddle.

“Where are we going?” she said in a piping little voice.

“We’re just going for a walk,” the woman said, “it’s such a nice night. You won’t be able to see that ball in the dark, though.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Okay, hon, but you forgot to close the door.”

The little girl stopped and turned back to look at the house.

“Go on and close it, sweetie.”

The girl went back toward the house uncertainly.

“I’ll do it,” The Bastard said, and headed toward the girl.

The blast of a car horn made Melanie jump. Her feet literally left the ground for a split second. She turned just as a car stopped less than a yard from her knees.

“Sorry,” she managed to say. She headed back to her car. “Sorry, sorry …”

The man in the car shook his head and drove on.

Melanie got back into her mother’s car, quivering. The key refused to fit into the ignition. All three members of that pathetic family were staring in her direction. She finally managed to start the car and drove past them, face averted, pretending to fiddle with the radio.

Her pulse pounded in her ears, and she missed the turn back onto Algonquin. She pulled into the parking lot of a Mac’s Milk and sat with the motor running, trying to catch her breath. The Bastard had a new daughter, seven years old or thereabouts. The Bastard had another little girl.