Richard Yates (24 page)

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a bad person. Dakota Fanning said she would go to therapy but that this was the last time. Her mother walked away.

They were in a neighborhood of three-story houses. Dakota Fanning showed Haley Joel Osment bruises on her arm.

She went in the therapist’s house. Haley Joel Osment sat alone in the car reading
The
Myth
of
Neurosis
which said psychotherapy was destructive to people’s self-esteem, often confused unhappiness with mental illness, encouraged excuses and dependency while discouraging hard work and will power. Dakota Fanning and her mother came in the car. Haley Joel Osment apologized for saying Dakota Fanning’s mother was a bad person. Dakota Fanning’s mother said something about Haley Joel Osment’s age. She said Dakota Fanning’s hair looked bad.

On the gravel parking lot outside the restaurant Haley Joel Osment stood by the driver’s-side window. “Thank you for letting me stay at your house and use your car,”

he said.

“Thank you for aiding my daughter in lying to me,”

said Dakota Fanning’s mother.

“That was bad,” said Haley Joel Osment after a second.

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

They looked at each other with vaguely neutral facial expressions.

Haley Joel Osment went in the back door of the restaurant which hadn’t reopened yet.

The next afternoon on Gmail chat he asked Dakota Fanning if she told her mother he was against lying and had been encouraging her not to lie. “I told her that you told me not to lie to my dad and that you are working to help me stop mhp-yates-01.indd 192

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lying for everything to anyone,” said Dakota Fanning.

“What did she say?” said Haley Joel Osment.

“She just said ‘I don’t want to talk about anything right now, my body is about to shut down.’”

“She thought I was being sarcastic when I said ‘thanks’

I think,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“Maybe, because she was sarcastic later. Yes. Don’t worry. She’s just a beast.”

“She kept saying ‘it looked bad’ about your hair, not that we didn’t keep our promise not to do anything that would upset her,” said Haley Joel Osment. “She was confused.”

“Yes. I don’t think she really understood what she was upset about or thinking.”

Haley Joel Osment asked Dakota Fanning what she did today and they talked about that a few minutes.

“Are you worried that I’m lying?” said Dakota Fanning.

“A little. If you lied to me today please tell me.”

Dakota Fanning said she didn’t lie today.

That night Haley Joel Osment emailed Dakota Fanning that his cell phone was broken and he missed her and Microsoft Paint drawings of Sean Strub wearing Aladdin on his head like a turban and a Buddhist Tyrannosaurus Rex fl oating in outer space.

Dakota Fanning emailed Microsoft Paint drawings of Werner Herzog fl oating in outer space thinking “I have too much experience in this business for this” and Werner Herzog riding the Loch Ness Monster with “our underwater ally” in black font and the fi lename werner.nessie.bff.jpg.

The email said her brother was supposed to be home from mhp-yates-01.indd 193

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college four hours ago but never showed up and that her mother yelled at her when she was exercising. “Thank you for letting me know about your cell phone,” said the email.

“I wish we could cook together. I feel alone. The beast is calm now and has retreated to the lair to watch
Sex
and
the
City
. I miss you. I want to hug you. Thank you for doing so many things with me during the week and driving so much. I’m glad we got to spend time alone. You can come for Thanksgiving. My mom said she invited you last week or something. She said ‘I’m not happy with either of your behaviors right now but he can come.’”

The next night they emailed many times about what

Dakota Fanning did between 12:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. that day. “I’m not sure if I want to come tomorrow,” said Haley Joel Osment in an email. “I feel uncomfortable when you aren’t nice to me.” Dakota Fanning text-messaged his email account about an hour later that her internet was broken. “I just realized my mom unplugged the router and hid it,” she text-messaged a few minutes later.

“Do you still want to come tomorrow,” she text-messaged.

“I don’t know,” said Haley Joel Osment in an email to her cell phone. “If you want me to.”

“It will just be a waste of your time. You decide. You don’t have to now, you can tell me tomorrow.”

“I won’t go then if you don’t want me. You decide.”

“I want you to come,” said Dakota Fanning.

“Okay,” said Haley Joel Osment. “I’ll come.”

Around 3:30 p.m. Dakota Fanning’s mother drove onto the gravel parking lot. Haley Joel Osment was standing outside.

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at him and said “Hi” from the front passenger seat.

“Hi,” said Haley Joel Osment. “Thank you for inviting me today.”

“Where’s your brother?” he said to Dakota Fanning.

“We don’t know where he is,” she said.

They talked quietly in the backseat a few minutes. Haley Joel Osment saw Dakota Fanning’s mother looking at his upset facial expression in the rearview mirror. She looked away. “Remember what I said about whispering?” she said.

“Dakota?” she said.

No one talked for about twenty minutes.

They arrived at Dakota Fanning’s uncle’s house in Goshen. About ten of Dakota Fanning’s relatives were standing in the kitchen. Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning stood near the front door looking down.

“I shouldn’t have come,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“I know,” said Dakota Fanning. “I shouldn’t have made you come.”

Haley Joel Osment thought about saying something

about that.

“Can we go outside?” he said and they moved toward the door.

“Where are you going?” said Dakota Fanning’s mother.

“We’re just going outside for a minute,” said Dakota Fanning.

“No you aren’t,” said Dakota Fanning’s mother. “That’s rude. Come inside and mingle. Have you talked to your uncle Mark yet? You know these people. Introduce them to Haley. I’m sure they’re all really interested in meeting your boyfriend.” She stared at Dakota Fanning. She looked at Haley Joel Osment. She walked away.

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“Let’s just stay inside,” said Haley Joel Osment.

They went upstairs into someone’s room. Haley Joel Osment sat on the edge of a bed and Dakota Fanning stood facing him. “What did you do between 12:00 and 4:00?” he said after about ten seconds.

“I told you everything,” said Dakota Fanning.

“You worked for thirty minutes then went to the store for an hour. What about the other two hours?”

“I told you everything. I didn’t lie. That’s all I remember.”

“Why are you crying?” said Haley Joel Osment.

“I didn’t lie,” said Dakota Fanning.

“What did you do for two hours?”

“I bullshitted around a lot. I told you what I did.”

Haley Joel Osment stood from the bed and sat cross-legged on the carpet facing away from Dakota Fanning. “If I were you I would calmly think about what I did,” he said.

“And then say it calmly so I won’t feel worried about if you’re lying or not.” He opened
The
Myth
of
Neurosis
and turned the pages. The book was upside-down. He turned it over and stared at the words. He stared at the paper. “I fi nished the work,” said Dakota Fanning standing behind him. “Then I went downstairs to make coffee. After that I decided to go for a bike ride. I told my mom I was going for a bike ride.”

“What did you do while the coffee was making?”

“I ate an apple,” said Dakota Fanning and was quiet for about ten seconds. “I decided I didn’t want to ride my bike.

I wanted to go for a walk. Then I went to talk to my mom to tell her I was going for a walk. I went back upstairs to get change and a dollar because I thought if I was going to steal something it would be better if I bought something also. I mhp-yates-01.indd 196

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was probably gone for about fi fty minutes. I looked in CVS

for a while until I found something small and expensive. I found the skin creams and I took two.”

Haley Joel Osment stood. He sat on the edge of the bed.

Dakota Fanning stood facing him looking down a little.

“If you were gone for fi fty minutes and you worked for thirty minutes then there would still be two hours where I don’t know what you did,” said Haley Joel Osment staring at the carpet.

“What time did I wake up?” said Dakota Fanning.

“Did I wake up at 10:00 or 11:00?” she said.

“Didn’t you have a half day of school?” said Haley Joel Osment.

“Yeah. We have the times wrong then. I didn’t start doing the work until 12:15.”

“Then just add fi fteen minutes. I still don’t know what you did for two hours.”

“I must have bullshitted around for a long time then. I told you everything.”

“Don’t say ‘bullshitted.’ That doesn’t mean anything.

You should tell me exactly what you did, not just say

‘bullshitted.’” There were noises outside the room. Dakota Fanning’s mother came in looking at Haley Joel Osment then Dakota Fanning. “What are you two doing up here?”

she said.

“What is this?” she said after a few seconds.

“You seem upset,” she said to Dakota Fanning.

“We’re talking,” said Dakota Fanning in an agitated voice.

“Come downstairs. It’s Thanksgiving.”

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“That means nothing to me,” said Dakota Fanning.

“It means something to me. Come downstairs and mingle. Don’t talk about this heavy stuff today. It’s Thanksgiving. Put aside your personal concerns for one day and think about doing something for me for once. Can you do that?”

Dakota Fanning’s mother went downstairs. “After I came back from the store I went to my room,” said Dakota Fanning. “I got the digital camera. Then I walked around to see where my parents were because I didn’t want them to see me taking pictures of the skin cream to put on eBay. The lighting was bad in the computer room and my mom was in the shower so I went in the hallway and put the skin cream on the fl oor and took pictures of them there. I took a long time doing that because I wanted the photos to be good.”

“So it was around 2:00 when you got back. So it took you fi fty minutes to put it on eBay?”

“No. I got back around 2:30, so it took me twenty minutes. Also, I didn’t bring the skin cream into the computer room so I had to keep changing the windows to look at the photo to get the details right for the listing. And that was when we were emailing. And we emailed a few times. So I waited between the emails.”

“What did you do while you were waiting?”

“Nothing,” said Dakota Fanning.

“What did you do with your hands?”

“I don’t know. Probably just pushed the antenna on my cell phone in and out.” Dakota Fanning was quiet a few seconds. “After that I went downstairs and got the mat out to do Pilates. I wanted to talk to my parents fi rst to see what they were doing before I started because they kept saying we were leaving soon. Then they said we were leaving. So I put mhp-yates-01.indd 198

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the mat away and waited for them.”

“What did you do while you were waiting?”

“I just walked around slowly,” said Dakota Fanning. “I checked the computer and walked around. I used the bathroom.” Dakota Fanning’s mother came in saying “Alright, what’s the problem here?”

“We’re talking,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“About what? Is someone going to tell me? No?”

“Can we have some privacy please?” said Dakota Fanning.

“Listen,” said Dakota Fanning’s mother. “If I had

known it was going to be like this I would have made different arrangements. Come down right now and talk to your relatives. This is extremely rude. Your uncle Kenny set up a really nice buffet for everyone, there’s a really nice potato salad he and Carol made themselves, come down and get some food and mingle. Right now. Immediately. I’m not going to say it again.” She went downstairs. Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning went downstairs. An aunt gave Dakota Fanning a cucumber from the refrigerator. Haley Joel Osment put pasta, lettuce, potatoes, caulifl ower on a paper plate and they sat on a sofa in the living room where about twelve people were on sofas or folding chairs watching TV and about six people were standing against a wall playing “Simon Says.” After about fi fteen minutes a 13-year-old girl over six feet and about 200 pounds who had been quiet with a depressed facial expression won and shouted

“Victory” more than once with her arms above her head while sometimes jumping. Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning looked at each other with excited facial expressions. “Victory,” said Dakota Fanning. “She said victory,”

said Haley Joel Osment and touched Dakota Fanning’s mhp-yates-01.indd 199

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leg and they grinned or smiled the next few minutes while sometimes saying “that was good” or “she jumped.” They fi nished eating and went to a small fenced-off room and sat on a two-seat sofa. They were alone except for a small dog which they played with for about thirty minutes. Haley Joel Osment pointed at a cut on Dakota Fanning’s arm and asked what it was.