I Like You Just the Way I Am (25 page)

“Oh my God! That’s hilarious,” Veronica said, transfixed by her new piece of pizza like she’d spotted an imprint of the Virgin Mary on it.

“I mean, she’ll know it’s from me, and she obviously knows Grandpa Norm never laid a hand on her, but I still think she’d get a kick out of it.”

“You gotta do it. The effort alone is impressive.” Veronica could barely contain her excitement.

So for the next two hours, the three of us worked on rough drafts of a letter. Mine read:

Dear Amanda,

I am the woman who took this photo. You were molested.

Love,

A Silent Neighbor

Veronica opted for a more friendly approach:

Hey Girl,

Longtime no talk. Hope you’re well.

PS. You were molested. Mall this weekend?

Jason went with the trusty stick figure explanation. He drew two people, with an arrow pointing at each. The first said: “You.” The second said: “Me molesting you.”

After much debate, I decided my draft sounded the least abrasive. I made Veronica write the note.

“But it’s my art!” Jason cried out as he ran back to the stripper pole and did an inverted crucifix.

Ignoring him, Veronica and I folded the photo and letter into the envelope, sealed it, and drove to the nearest mailbox. Under the blanket of night, the letter was sent and subsequently forgotten.

*   *   *

Two days later, I
was with Veronica in Century City, having lunch. My phone was on vibrate, but I could feel it going ballistic in my purse. I picked it up and heard Amanda on the other end.

“Jenny! Oh my god! Are you sitting down?”

I was slow to catch on.

“Did you get a letter in the mail today?” she asked.

Grabbing Veronica’s thigh, I started to breathe quickly. “No … Why?”

“I walked out to get the mail this morning and I opened this cute little envelope I thought was a thank-you note, and guess what it said? It said I was molested by Grandpa Norm!”

I had to cover the phone with my hand as I doubled over in my seat in anxious hysterics. Pulling myself together, I reengaged. “Well … were you?” I asked.

“I don’t even know anymore! I called Mom and she had no idea what I was talking about. But this does explain a lot. My need for control, my aversion to anal sex—”

As Amanda continued to spin out her theories, I found myself feeling guiltier and guiltier. I kept waiting for her to mention our ongoing joke about Grandpa Norm, or how she obviously knew the note was a prank. But she remained flummoxed and distraught.

Veronica cleared her throat and motioned for me to hand her the phone.

“Amanda, Veronica wants to talk to you,” I said.

I could hear my sister explaining to Veronica how, after opening the letter, she popped two Xanax, called my mom, and then the police. The note was turned over for analysis, and she hoped to know more about the sender later in the week.

“Is it really important who sent it?” Veronica asked.

“I need to know the truth! And the woman who took the photo claims to have answers!” She was yelling now.

I pulled the phone back from Veronica, who kept her head pressed against mine in order to better eavesdrop.

“Listen, Mand, I have to tell you something—”

“Were you molested too?” she sniveled.

“No,” I said in my most self-pitying tone.

“I guess I was always the smaller one. More vulnerable, better hair…” She trailed off, pleased that someone had chosen her over me.

“Amanda,” I tried again.

“Jenny, you probably don’t understand this because you aren’t a survivor, but I need to worry about myself right now. And my
self
was molested.” She was doing her first AA “share” now.

She talked for a few more minutes about the difference between a good touch and a bad touch before I interrupted. My irritation over her narcissism finally outweighed my shame.

“Amanda, I sent the letter.”

The phone went silent for several seconds before I felt awkward enough to keep talking.

“We’ve always had that inside joke about Grandpa Norm being a molester,” I said. “I thought you’d think it was funny.”

“We don’t have any inside joke about Grandpa Norm being a molester,” she said, seething.

Overhearing this, Veronica pulled away. “You didn’t have an inside joke?” she whispered. She looked at me like I’d just driven a truck over a box of kittens.

“Amanda, we
totally
had that inside joke about Grandpa Norm. Remember, his weird toothless mouth kisses?”

The line went dead.

I spent the next two weeks being sent directly to her voice mail. I had my mom call and remind Amanda that, yes, on occasion we joked about Grandpa Norm molesting people. But like molestation itself, Amanda claimed to have repressed the memory. She was furious I’d duped her in such a dark way and insisted Jason donate money to Childhelp as penance. Later we heard about her police report. Apparently, it was summed up something like: “No silent neighbor, just a mentally ill sister.”

A month passed, and Amanda and Larry finally agreed to come over for dinner. Halfway through dessert, Amanda grabbed her head like she was experiencing a posttraumatic stress flashback.

“Who does that?” she vented. “I mean, I knew you were sick, but I never thought you were
that
sick!” I could tell Larry wanted to laugh, but Amanda would have cut his balls off and fed them to him if he had.

“Would it have been less offensive if we’d used stick figures?” Jason asked. “For the record, I wanted to send stick figures.”

“Amanda, I’m the only person in the world who’d have access to your baby photos. Including our own mother. I thought you’d put it together.” I tried to plead my case, but Amanda wouldn’t budge.

The worst part was that every time she tried explaining how “unfunny” it was, Jason and I couldn’t help bursting into laughter. The whole thing sounded so ridiculous, and hearing it again, as told by Amanda, only seemed to make it funnier.

In retrospect, I guess I should have been more sensitive. But being sensitive is
her
job! I’m the fun, outgoing sister who sends molestation letters! It’s just the role I’ve assumed. What I really learned from this event was that not everyone appreciates my comic genius. Even though Amanda and I grew up with similar life experiences, we are very different people. She’s not hot enough to be molested and I totally am.

14.

Everyone Wants to Kill Me

For as long as I can
remember, I’ve always felt like everyone was out to kill me. And not like accidentally nab me with a stray bullet during an L.A. riot, but more like consciously abduct me, rape me, keep me in a box, only feed me products made with high-fructose corn syrup, and eventually turn me into a skin tuxedo. When I was a child, it made sense to carry Mace and a staple gun in my backpack in case I needed to fight off a child molester. But as an adult, my extreme paranoia has gotten me into more trouble than out of it.

I was raised by a single mom who, for the majority of my childhood, was on a date while my sister and I ordered happy hour fish tacos in a booth on the opposite side of the bar. From an early age we were warned by her of the pitfalls that came with being “absolutely adorable creatures who look just like their mother.” She reasoned that, as her offspring, we were clearly the two most attractive children alive, and therefore also the ultimate child-abducting murderer conquests. We grew up knowing to sound the alarm if anyone ever offered us candy, asked to drive us home from school, or showed up at the front door claiming to be Jehovah’s Witnesses. She’d tell us about little girls who weren’t half as attractive as we were getting stolen on their walks home from school and driven across the border from San Diego into Mexico to become sex slaves. We had a code word to signify distress (“forest”) and questions to ask if someone tried to claim they were a family friend. (What tattoo does my mom have on her butt? Answer: an Aztec sun, motherfucker! Anyone who really knew my mom knew how important her butt tattoo was to her. One of her musician boyfriends even wrote a song about it called “Lady with the Fireball Bottom.”) In fairness, I think my mom was trying to instill a sense of street smarts into Amanda and me. Instead, she made us into people who need sedatives to go to the dog park.

The real problem was that nobody was ever looking after us. Between work and dating, both our baby-booming parents were preoccupied with their own lives. As a result, Amanda and I were forced to look after ourselves, armed with the knowledge that mortal danger could lurk around any and all corners. The world is a scary place when you are young and on your own. Everyone is a potential predator, everything is a potential trap, and nowhere feels completely safe. That “bottom could fall out at any moment” mentality is how I live my life.

When I reached middle school, my fears about being abducted took a supernatural turn. I accidentally saw the trailer for a movie called
Fire in the Sky
. The film is based on the real-life account of a guy named Travis Walton who claimed he was abducted by aliens in the Arizona desert while working as a logger in 1975. Instantly, “alien abduction” topped the list of ways I might be killed. Even though Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix, seemed a little conspicuous for a spaceship sighting, I felt my compassionate understanding of other cultures and my near telepathic relationship with animals probably made it worthwhile for the aliens to take some risks. Before bed, I ritualistically checked all the doors in the house to make sure they were locked. Then I tied my blinds to the base of a nearby chair in a booby trap–like knot. Through extensive research, I’d learned that aliens preferred attacking from the inside out. Meaning: mind control. The loose rigging on the blinds wasn’t intended to stop the aliens from coming in; it was intended to stop me from going out. If they got inside my head, I’d be in a trancelike state and under their control. I needed something in the room to get tangled in, to startle me out of my hypnosis, and to remind me that I’m not emotionally strong enough to live in an intergalactic prison.

In high school, I gave up on waiting for my alien abduction and decided to focus my energy on malicious ghosts. When I’d visit California, I imagined they were the disgruntled spirits of eighteenth-century Spanish missionaries who felt my mom was cock-teasing her gardener. In Arizona, I assumed my house was built on a sacred Indian burial ground whose former inhabitants were offended by my dad’s flagrant misuse of the color turquoise. I could never stand in the bathroom with the lights off. I could never sleep with my closet door open. And I could
never
look in a mirror in my bedroom after midnight. I wasn’t really sure what a ghost could even do to hurt me; I just felt like actually seeing one would lead to my demise.

By college, I reverted back to the classic “rapist in a windowless van” paranoia. My therapist would often tell me that it was incredibly narcissistic of me to assume something so horrific and unusual would happen to me, but I figured she just didn’t know me well enough yet to realize how awesome I was. Also, she might just have been trying to get me to drop my guard in order to lure me into the basement of her building, where she likely kidnapped and kept her other attractive female patients chained to hospital beds in order to harvest their ovaries.

Once out of college and truly on my own, I practiced being a tough bitch to any and all nefarious-looking individuals.

EXT. BUSY LOS ANGELES STREET CORNER – DAY

A clean-cut, nice-looking STRANGER pulls up to JENNY in his car.

Stranger

Hey, do you know how I get to Sunset Boulevard?

Jenny backs away as she talks.

Jenny

No! I don’t live here.

Stranger

But …

Jenny

I said no! Get the fuck away from me! Fire!!!

Jenny runs off in the opposite direction
.

Without the distractions of school or a job, I had time to grow skeptical of other, more commonplace scenarios. I decided that I couldn’t do road trips through small towns, because at night the townspeople would obviously turn into
Deliverance
-esque hillbillies and butcher me. I couldn’t ride in taxis alone without being on the phone, because if I hung up, the driver would turn into
The Bone Collector
and, again, butcher me. I couldn’t valet my car, because when the vehicle was out of sight, a really limber carjacker would pretzel himself into my backseat (butchering optional). And I couldn’t travel to Florida, because a cop might pull me over on a deserted road in the middle of the night and sodomize me, then shoot himself in the leg and put my fingerprints on the gun. There were myriad death traps waiting for me right outside my front door. So I decided to play it safe by staying inside and becoming anorexic.

While I worried about homicidal maniacs, Amanda became a hypochondriac. Our phone calls usually went something like this:

“Hey,” I’d say.

“Hey.”

“I think the guy in the apartment next to me just said ‘bless you’ when I sneezed. Do you think he installed cameras in here when I was out, or do you think he’s drilled a peephole?”

“I think I have a blood clot. You should come over this weekend and pick out what things of mine you’d want in the event that I don’t make it.” Amanda would clear her throat dramatically. “Also, I think your apartment just has really thin walls. Has your super ever checked for asbestos?”

Amanda didn’t die that weekend, nor the weekend after that. And with age and Valium, her paranoia lessened. Mine, however, did not.

*   *   *

Jason moved to Atlanta
for the summer to shoot a movie. He was to be gone for three months, the longest he’d been away our entire marriage. On previous occasions, I’d usually find replacement husbands to stay in the house and protect me. For the film in Seattle, it was my recently divorced acting coach and his six-year-old son, who ended up calling me Mommy and tried to light Teets on fire. For the press trip to Brazil, it was my trainer, his girlfriend, and their mini fridge filled with HGH. But this time, it was my sister-in-law Veronica.