“Well, that’s the point. Every generation thinks their way was the best way.”
“But the home for wayward boys… that was actually cool. It was a place to go. Then they tore it down and now there’s nothing.”
We step aside for a set of cyclists.
“So you’re from New York or something, right?”
That’s a good sign, Mary Kay. A show of actual social skills! “Yep,” I say. “And it was nothing like this. My library is a good example. We had homeless people in there, crackheads… now that was scary.”
“At least it’s real. Everything here is fake, fake, fake.”
She tugs on the straps of her backpack and I’m so relieved that I’m an adult. What a nightmare it is to be a teenager, to think there’s a place where everyone isn’t fake, fake, fake. “Sorry,” she says. “I’m just mad. My mom always goes crazy before Thanksgiving but this year she’s crazy-crazy.”
Crazy in Love. “Oh?”
“We always stay here but now she’s dragging us to Arizona to see my papa.”
I wish I had backpack straps to grab because this is news to me. Be cool, Joe. “Well, maybe Phoenix will be fun.”
She just grunts—yeah right. “So what do you do for stupid Thanksgiving?”
Franzen essays and frozen pizza. “I might hop a ferry and volunteer at a soup kitchen.”
She waves at a woman raking leaves and the woman waves back and we are normal. This is normal. But then Nomi gives me what the kids call “side eye.” “but you said you hated the city. You know there’s no soup kitchen here, right?”
“Hate’s a strong word, Nomi. And I like it here, but on a day like that, it’s nice to get out there and help people in need.”
She just stares ahead. “People never say that love is a strong word.”
Is she high? No. She’s just overdosing on Klebold poems and loneliness. “Huh. Why do you think that is?”
“Whatever. I’m just annoyed cuz my mom told me not to say I hate her but she took my Columbine again and I have all these notes in it and I do hate her for that and dragging us to Phoenix. Anyone would. And don’t tell me she’s just looking out for me. You’re wrong. She’s a hypocrite. She’s mad because it’s Columbine. She wouldn’t be mad if I was into some stupid story about horny babysitters and I’m sorry but Columbine is the best. It is the book.”
And now I miss being a teenager, that salty conviction that you have found it, the thing that makes your mind make sense to you. You’d want me to be compassionate, so I tell her I get it, that I too love that book. She just looks at me. Suspicious Meerkat eyes. And no wonder. Adults lie all the time, but not this one!
“All right,” I say. “The part that really stuck with me was all the Eric stuff, fooling his probation officer, how easy it was for him to convince all these so-called smart adults that he was okay. That’s the problem with this country, the Injustice System is pretty ineffective.”
I want to talk about incompetent social workers but the Meerkat doesn’t care about stupid Eric and this is why she doesn’t have friends, because she doesn’t understand that people take turns. She’s back to ranting about Dylan’s poems and this is my chance to save her, to help her.
“I get it,” I say, because that’s the first rule of helping any kid. You have to validate their feelings. “But I think your mom’s upset cuz… well, this therapist I went to once, he told me that sometimes we all get a mouse in our house.”
“Are you a slob?”
I picture her going home and telling you I have mice. “No,” I say. “See, it’s a metaphor. The mouse is something you can’t stop thinking about or doing.”
“And the house is your head. Yawn.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s a little simple but the point is that when you get really into something, it feels good. But it’s not necessarily good for you. I’ve been there a buncha times.”
She is quiet. Kids are a relief, the way they just shut down and think when they feel like it. And then she looks at me. “What was your thing?”
Women. Terrible city women. “Well, when I was a kid it was this movie called Hannah and Her Sisters.”
She turns her nose up at me and oh fuck that’s right. Melanda. “Eew,” she says. “That’s Woody Allen and he’s on Melanda’s DNW list…”
“Do Not Watch?”
“Yep,” she says. “And he’s at the top. Like the tippity top.”
“Well, your teacher is sure on top of things.”
“She’s more like my aunt.”
Melanda is the mouse in your house. “Well, my point was… that movie was my Columbine, the thing that changed my life. See, I lived in New York but I didn’t live in that New York and I wanted to live in that movie. I stole that tape from Blockbuster, watched it every second I could.”
Nomi responds by repeating that Woody Allen is bad, just like his movie and I won’t fuck up like I did in the diner. “Okay, but does Melanda think it’s okay for you to read Dylan Klebold’s poems?”
She growls at the trees above. “There is literally no comparison. He was my age.”
“Okay… but you have to admit, he did some terrible things… Explain why you think that’s okay.”
No kid wants a pop quiz and she groans again. “It just is.”
“Look, Nomi.” I am channeling Dr. Nicky. “We got off track. I was just trying to tell you that it’s not always good to have a mouse in your house, no matter what the mouse is.”
“Did you really read Columbine? The whole book?”
I’m not RIP Benji and I never lie about books, especially with my potential stepdaughter. “Yep.”
“Did you also read all the stuff Dylan wrote that’s online?”
Kids do this. They bring it back to them, especially a kid like Nomi, younger than her age, going to school every day in those glasses—so wrong—and wishing that some maladjusted boy or girl is writing poems for her but knowing it’s not possible because she’s watching too closely. She picks at a hangnail. “You know how he writes a letter to the girl he loves and tells her that if she loves him, she has to leave a blank piece of paper in his locker?”
“Yeah,” I say. “But he never gave her the letter.”
“But he wrote it,” she says. “And that was sweet.” I hope some exchange student with buckteeth moves here this year and rocks her world and she crosses her arms. “Anyway, I’m still not gonna watch a Woody Allen movie.”
“Well, that’s fine. Do what you want.”
“So you don’t care?”
I laugh off the question and maybe I’ll go back to school and become a guidance counselor. “Look, Nomi. It’s like this. Who cares what Melanda thinks? Who cares what I think? You only need to decide what you think.”
She kicks a rock. “Well I can’t watch any movie tomorrow anyway cuz we have our stupid family bonding.”
I’m not a part of your family but I am a part of your family and I force my voice to be steady, as if I’m asking for directions. “What’s that mean for the Gilmore Girls?”