Jill Emerson - I Am Curious (Thirty)

Something Liz said. I should get a good settlement from Howard because I gave him the best years of my life. What a worn-out expression!

But it’s probably true. The best years of my life. The best years of my life are over now.

What’s left?

I’m a little better.

Silverblatt says we can get alimony of around ten thousand dollars a year or we can get a full cash settlement of somewhere between twenty-five and fifty thousand dollars. That seems much too high to me. Why should Howard have to pay me that kind of money? It would be different if I had his children. But I don’t. And I’m fully capable of supporting myself. In fact I think I can probably earn more than he does.

I didn’t know what to say. Silverblatt also said he thought we should settle as soon as possible, and should go for the cash, because if Howard happened to smarten up and find out what I am doing for a living and spend a little money on detectives he could probably divorce me right off the bat and not pay me a cent.

I suppose I’ll tell him to take the money. But I don’t even know what I’ll do with it.

Liz says a John of hers is perfect if I come into a lot of cash. He’s a broker and he does fantastically for her, and another John took some of her cash and put it into an apartment house in Borough Park that she never sees but gets money from four times a year.

Went shopping, bought clothes I’ll probably never wear. Why bother?

Oh, it’s something to do. I didn’t feel like a movie.

Wow, what a glamorous life.

Saw David on the street today. I don’t think he saw me, or if he did he didn’t recognize me, which is possible. I have changed since I knew him.

I really thought he and Arnold were dead. That Eric had killed them. I couldn’t ever figure out a reason why that might have happened, but I believed it.

I wonder why they disappeared.

I almost went up and said something. Like hello, for example. But I don’t know, I didn’t really have anything to say to him. What was there to say? There was a time when I really would have wanted to spend more time with those two, but they weren’t around then, and now—

I have to feed Herringbone.

Herringbone is my kitten. I’ve had him for a week and I’m doing everything possible to spoil him. It’s amazing how intelligent cats are. When I brought Herringbone home he was six weeks old and small enough to fit in an evening bag, but he knew instantly that he was supposed to pee and crap in the litter pan. And he never makes a mistake.

Herringbone doesn’t have any balls. If a cat has balls when he grows up he runs around pissing on everything and it stinks. The faggot at Precious Felines explained all this at great length. He was a good deal more cultured about it, let me add.

I wonder if he knew I was a whore?

Of course I don’t wear a sign. Nor does he wear a sign announcing that he’s a faggot.

Anyway, you have to castrate cats to make them behave. Same as men, I guess.

Why did I write that?

Oh, stop looking for hidden meanings, Giddings. Haven’t you figured out yet that the more you learn about yourself the less you like yourself?

This is boring. I’ll go feed Herringbone. He loves me and I love him.

Everybody needs somebody, right?

I heard that on the radio today, not for the first time, and suddenly I can’t get it out of my head. I thought I would drag the book out and write it down in case it’s trying to tell me something. If so, I can’t get the message.

It’s Columbus Day.

Yes, you’ve come a long long way, all right.

All the way to the end.

When I found this and opened it and started to read I didn’t remember exactly when I had given up writing in it. There was no sudden decision to stop making entries.

It was more like an unanswered letter. At first you just put off answering it, and then you try to avoid thinking about it and file it in out-of-the-way places because you’re embarrassed and angry at yourself for not having answered it yet, and in the long run it never does get answered. I don’t know what it was in particular that made me stop writing in this diary after the Columbus Day entry.

Actually there’s nothing surprising about it. What’s surprising is that I kept the diary going as long as I did. Talking to myself through this book.

Much good it did me.

I can hardly recognize the woman who wrote those early entries. She expressed herself differently, she saw the world and herself differently.

She was so afraid of growing up.

Or growing old.

Or something.

Thirty. Magic number. Well, today’s the day, and I don’t feel any different. And if the mirror thinks I look any different than a day ago, well, it keeps the secret nicely.

Thirty.

What an odd document this is, what a record of what a fractured life. Howie has his divorce now and I have my money in the bank. In the bank? In the hands of experts who will turn money into more money.

Wonderful.

But what’s the money for?

I know why girls have pimps. To keep themselves broke. Because if they aren’t broke they won’t go out and hustle, and if they don’t go out and hustle they take too-long looks in their mirrors, and they see too much, and they have nothing to do but brood about it.

I guess I don’t like being thirty.

I guess I don’t like being me, at any age.

Oh Jesus fucking Christ, why was this book there today, why did I have to pick it up and read it? Howard and Edgar and the kid with the snow shovel and Eric and Susan and David and Arnold and everyone else, the ones I wrote about and the ones I didn’t, the ones I remember and the ones I’ve forgotten. And that last entry, You’ve come a long, long way. I really needed that shit today.

It’s all downhill from here. It has to be, where the hell else can it go? What do I look forward to now? Grandchildren? A trailer camp in Florida?

Not bloody likely.

Be a good time to end it. Get off the stage while they’re still applauding.

Why not?

No guts.

Guts? It doesn’t take guts. First you dope yourself up a little with a couple of Dilaudids and then you have a few drinks of wine and then you swallow the sleeping pills. Once you’re drunk enough to be brave there’s nothing much to it, and you don’t hate yourself in the morning because there’s nobody around to hate.

But who’d take care of Herringbone? And it wouldn’t be fair to involve him in a suicide pact. He should have some choice in the matter.

I don’t think I’ll do it. The hell, I’ll wait until next year.