Frank Portman - King Dork

“Is that a Suzi Quatro–Joan Jett kind of thing?” I said. She had no idea what I was talking about, but I had a feeling she didn’t really care what I had to say on that or any other matter. It was just part of her general method of trying to overwhelm me with confusing data and erratic moods and to keep me just a little off-kilter at all times. It was working, too.

I never had any idea what she was thinking, whether she was glad to hear from me, whether she had lost interest in me, or anything. The Fog of Deanna was exhausting.

The coming Thursday was Thanksgiving, and I knew I couldn’t call or visit on that day, which worried me a little.

How was I going to make it through a whole week without any contact? I was already walking around with that punched-in-the-stomach feeling almost all the time, unable to eat or do much of anything, and I knew it would only get worse.

Then something happened that made even the Fog of Deanna look comparatively easy to navigate.

P OI NT-B LAN K AT YOU R OWN R I S K

It was my fourth session with Dr. Hexstrom, the day after my second Deanna Schumacher experience.

I have to admit, my interest in The Seven Storey Mountain was dwindling. It was pretty slow going, and I already knew the ending, which is that the guy ends up deciding there’s 230

more to life than fast times and goes into a monastery. Plus, there’s this part where he starts heaping praise on the Doors of Perception guy, so I was kind of disappointed in him. It’s weird how all these guys seemed to know each other. There was even a quote on the cover of The Seven Storey Mountain from the Brighton Rock guy, saying something like “the best way to read this book is with a pencil,” whatever that might mean. It must have to do with their all being weird Catholics.

But maybe there was more to that guy than The Doors of Perception indicated. I made a promise-to-self to try one of his other books—maybe they weren’t all poorly written, self-important, desperately trendy drug memoirs. Not that I had much time for that at the moment: what with the Timothy J.

Anderson investigation, band practices, learning to mispronounce vocabulary words from Catcher in the Rye, psychoanalyzing Sam Hellerman, being on the receiving end of secret sheet-covered Catholic-schoolgirl blow jobs and of inept parental suicide prevention schemes—well, I was a busy man these days. So I set The Seven Storey Mountain aside with The Naked and the Dead to finish later, and boldly started on La Peste, CEH 1965. But it took me around two hours to translate the first page, and even then I wasn’t too clear on most of it, so I put that aside, too, and decided to pick up Slan where I had left off, where the freaky slan kid wakes up to find he’s been chained to a bed by this creepy old lady. In a way, Slan was a lot like The Seven Storey Mountain or Siddhartha with all the religious stuff taken out. Same basic idea. Kind of an improvement, if you ask me.

Now, as much as I enjoyed discussing slans and monks and drugs with Dr. Hexstrom, I wanted to try to steer things in a different direction for this session. Basically, I just decided to point-blank her on some questions I was tired of wondering when we were going to get to. And because I knew that 231

a Hexstrom could be kind of hard to steer sometimes, I wrote them down on a sheet of paper and handed it to her when I walked in.

a) When are you going to get it over

with and put me on medication so that my brain chemistry will match everybody

else’s brain chemistry and there will be no reason for further strife and

unpleasantness and we can all die happy?

b) Why do you think my mom freaked out

over my song about how Yasmynne Schmick

hadn’t decided whether to commit suicide just yet? When are we going to get

around to discussing that? And what did

you think of the song? Not bad, huh?

c) Do they have to put a notice in the

paper when someone dies, or is it

optional?

I hadn’t meant to put (c) there, but I wrote it without thinking and decided in the end not to cross it out. I almost added another question, too, for my own personal information, about what base oral sex counts as, but thought it might be better not to get into it. As for (c), though, maybe Dr.

Hexstrom would have some ideas.

She did, though she gave me a funny, Jimenez-Macanally–esque look and wanted to know why I was asking. I showed her the Timothy J. Anderson card and told her how we couldn’t find any funeral notice in the paper on or around that date.

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“I don’t think you have to put a death notice in the paper unless there’s some legal reason,” she said, “such as if there’s no will. I’m not a lawyer, so don’t quote me. But a funeral notice or obituary is usually done to make sure that everyone who might be interested knows and can make plans to attend.”

“So if you didn’t list it in the paper, it would be because you didn’t want anyone to know it was happening and didn’t want anyone to attend? Because you wanted to keep it quiet?”

She gave me the look that said: “don’t be so melodramatic.”

“Or maybe,” she added aloud, “because you couldn’t afford to pay for an announcement.” Well, the card did look a bit on the cheap side. Or perhaps the whole thing had just slipped their minds. You can forget to do a lot of things when someone dies.

She gave me a look that said: “why are you so interested in this Timothy J. Anderson anyway?” I told her that the card had been in one of my dad’s books and then gave her the look that said: “I feel like I don’t know anything about my father or who he was or what he was like, and I’m grasping for any clue, no matter how trivial or far-fetched or even delu-sional.” Well, it was true.

She eyed the card dubiously. “Why are you so sure it’s from a funeral?” she asked.

Because it looked a bit like my dad’s funeral card. And because of Tit’s note, of course, but I was keeping Tit’s note to myself, so I couldn’t mention that. Dr. Hexstrom said she didn’t quite know what to make of the card. Usually, she said, they put more information on them, like the dates of birth and death. The single date was hard to interpret. She also pointed out something about the card that I hadn’t noticed, which was that the left edge didn’t look quite the same as the 233

other edges. It had a slightly different color and was perhaps less evenly cut. I could see what she was getting at, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before. Once it was drawn to my attention, however, it really did look like it had been cut off, like it had originally been the front face of a folded-over card. What had been on the other side? Presumably more information, like the dates of birth and death and so forth. And what had happened to it?

She added that they also make cards like that for memorial services or masses that could be held long after the death or funeral, sometimes years later, and that cards of that kind can commemorate other important events that may not even be deaths. I hadn’t realized any of that. So even if it was for a funeral, it was possible that Timothy J. Anderson died earlier, maybe even much earlier than 3/13/63, and that we hadn’t searched early enough for the obituary. Tit’s note had mentioned a funeral, but the date was fake, and it could have been from any time. And it may not have even been a funeral. In which case, Timothy J. Anderson was not the dead bastard.

If not, who the hell was the d. b.? Man, these (devil-head) retrospective investigations into a deceased parent’s personal effects can suck the life right out of you. My brain was starting to hurt. I sighed heavily, and so did Dr. Hexstrom, just a bit, unless I’m mistaken.