DEAR ZOE
Philip Beard
Plume
Fiction
ISBN: 0452287405

• About the Book
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• Author Interview -- March 25, 2005
• Reading Group Guide

Chapter 1: Naming You

I have memories of you before you were even born. Maybe that's normal for mothers but I doubt big sisters feel that way too often. I just remember sitting around the kitchen table with Mom and Emily (who was barely four at the time) arguing about what your name was going to be and how that somehow made you into a real person before I ever saw your face. Mom asked Em and me for help because she felt like she had this power with names she had to be careful with. Her middle name is Tess and that's what she named me when she had me at only nineteen --- "With big hair and big dreams" she says --- and I think sometimes she's afraid that's why I'm turning out the way I am, so much like she was when she married my real Dad instead of how she is now with David.

I was five when Mom and David got married, seven when Mom finally got pregnant with Emily, and even I could see that she was becoming a different person, like a real grownup. She never looked glamorous anymore --- just pretty. She stopped wearing eye shadow and she got a blunt cut that made her look like someone from Connecticut. David had gotten Mom to start reading and she couldn't stop. They read every night and when Mom named Em after Emily Dickinson she felt like that's what she got --- this quiet, fearful child who clung to her and seemed to be lonely for no good reason from the day she was born. Never mind that everyone was naming their daughters Emily at the time. Mom had a certain kind of Emily in mind while Em grew inside of her and that's what she got. I was already nine by the time Em turned one and I could tell even then that she was smarter than I'd ever be. But Mom knew that life would be hard for Em, or that she'd make it hard for herself, and one child who already seemed to know there was sadness in the world was enough. You were going to have a name that would protect you from that.

I guess we didn't argue so much as we worked at it, Mom, Em and me. Em seemed to know that this was the first important decision of her life and she didn't fidget or anything. She just sat at the kitchen table with us every evening waiting for her turn. We would each suggest a name and it was the other two's job to say why it was a good or bad idea. Like I would say "Megan" and Mom would say that a Megan in her high school class got pregnant her junior year. Then Em would say "Jodi" because that was her best friend's name and I would remind her that the big slobbery dog down the street was named Jodi and so Jodi was out. Or Mom would say, "How about Jessica?" and Em would say that a Jessica in her preschool class eats paste and that would be enough. "Faith" was too religious, Mom said, and might make her prone to self-righteousness. "Hanna," even though it was becoming popular again, was an old woman's name. "Virginia" was a state, not a name, and ugly besides and even if you called her "Ginny" for short that was another dog name and you might just as well call her "Trixie" and get it over with.

We settled on "Zoe" for you not so much because we loved the name but because we didn't know anyone else who had it. Mom thought that would make you your own person. Confident, unique, independent. The weird part was it seemed like it worked. From the time you could crawl we called you "Z", not just because of your name but because that was the shape of your life, always darting from one thing to the next. It wasn't like you got bored easily. It was more like you'd see something else that made you even more excited than you already were and you just had to go do that other thing right away. We couldn't look away from you for a second.

It wasn't until we were studying family trees one day in school that I learned you and Em were called my "half-sisters," but I could never think of either of you as a half of anything. Mom and David and I always felt kind of pasted together until Em. She shared blood with all of us and made us a real family. She completed some kind of circle and when you came along you fit right inside it. It's different now. Now it feels like we're just the circle with nothing inside.

Even so, I pretty much knew when I went to live with my Dad for a while that it wasn't such a great idea. I love both of my fathers but it's strange sometimes because I don't really love either of them all the way. It's almost like they're one dad split in two. Mom left my Dad when I was only six months old and we met David when I was three, so he's really all I've ever known as far as a live-in dad, but it's still not the same as the real thing. David is the disciplinarian, the one who makes me rub some of the makeup off my face, the one who's saving for my college education. He never got to hold me when I was a baby and he'd never been a dad before he met Mom, so I think he just thought it was his job to make rules. He was totally different with you and Em, holding you all the time, talking to you like you were adults. I'm not mad about it or anything and I still love him, but it just doesn't feel the same when he hugs me as when my Dad does. My real Dad is a mess, but every hug from him feels like he's never going to let go. David always feels like he's trying to figure out when he's supposed to let go.

David likes to write and he wrote a story about me once. At least I guess to him it was about me but he got me all wrong. I mean, the events that happened were sort of like something that happened to me. When I was twelve I had this friend --- another stray, Mom would say --- who was always getting in trouble. Her dad had left when she was born and her mom had ditched her with her grandparents when she was ten to go out to California chasing some guy. She went through puberty pretty much pissed at the whole world. She was tall and had boobs by the time she was twelve and decided she liked me for some reason. When Mom suggested she didn't want me hanging out with Kasey anymore I called her a snob, but when she got arrested on our porch (where she'd brought three guys she'd met on work-release from the local juvy center) Mom didn't suggest anymore. She told me if she ever saw Kasey or heard her voice on the phone again I might as well get used to my room because she'd be sliding my meals under the door on a tin tray until I graduated from high school. In David's story he makes himself the bad guy and he and I make some connection out of the situation that changes our relationship forever. He sees that I'm not a little girl anymore, that there is real grown-up danger in my world, and I see that he is doing more than making rules for the sake of making my life miserable. I'm sure there was more to it than that, I'm not much of a reader, but that's what I got out of it. Anyway, like I said, he got me all wrong. The girl in the story is totally naive about her friend --- even though there are all kinds of warning signs --- until the event with the police, and it's only that event that changes everything. I don't think stuff happens like that. Nothing changes everything. I'd been afraid of Kasey for months and if Mom and David had known about some of the crazy stuff she did and tried to get me to do, it would have ended a lot sooner. But I was scared to stop being her friend too. I was happy when she was screaming at those cops because I knew I was out. It was the last in a whole series of events that ended our friendship. But nothing changes everything by itself. Even things that seem like they do. Like me missing the bus on what looked like any other September morning until those planes flew into the tallest buildings in the world. Even you dying, that same day, when I was supposed to be watching you. Or go back to the beginning, around the kitchen table. We could have named you anything and it would have all come out the same.

On the news they say that history is going to be separated by what happened before that day and what will happen after it. But they don't know what they're saying to me.

Chapter 2: David and My Dad

David I think is one of those people who's been wise since he was a little kid. He seems like he's always known how to live his life just so. I don't think I'll ever be like that. We both try real hard, David and me, but it just misses somehow, sort of like the story he wrote about me. It's not by much, which is why I think we both keep trying so hard, sort of like what Mom says marriage is like. She says it's like a job where you know the end product is worthwhile but sometimes you hate getting up early for it every day.

It's weird how I've lived with him just about my whole life but David is still this shadowy figure for me. Like I said before, I don't think he really knew how to be a dad until Em came along, and by then the way we were with each other was just the way we were. Neither of us has ever said anything but I think we both feel bad about that missed opportunity. I think maybe he wishes he could go back in time and hold me on his lap or rock me before bed or sit on the couch and watch Disney movies with me a thousand times over. But he can't. When I watched him doing all those things with Em and then you, I realized what was missing between us was physical contact. We spent lots of time together but I was just the little kid he played with and felt responsible for, not one he loved, at least not right away. I really believe he was doing his best with me when we all moved in together. He can't help it if his best is better now, or that loving a new daughter can't change how he is with me. So we're something less than father and daughter. It's not tragic or anything. It's just the way it is.

My real Dad is a disaster but he's my real Dad and I feel something for him that I could never feel for David, even if it's pity sometimes. I know I shouldn't feel that way. Pity is something you feel for people who are trying hard but just seem to be unlucky. My Dad's not unlucky and he's never tried very hard. I guess I feel sorry for him because he can't help being that way any more than I can help being obsessed with the way I look. I miss the bus at least once a week changing outfits or retouching my makeup, which makes David insane. He invents a new punishment every few months --- grounding me, adding months to when I can get my permit after I turn sixteen, taking away phone and Internet privileges --- all kinds of things even I have to admit seem like they should work. He still hasn't figured out that if I'm looking in that mirror and I don't like what I see, even the guys from the Gap commercials couldn't get me out to the bus stop. I have to give him credit, though, because he never stops trying, and he finally did hit on what would have been the perfect punishment if it hadn't been so cruel even Mom wouldn't let him do it. He said, "Tess, the next time you miss the bus, I'm taking away the makeup itself." He said it just like that, "the makeup itself," like he'd just discovered the very center of both the problem and the solution, which he had. Usually Mom didn't interfere when David got it in his head to "modify my behavior" in some way, she was too busy with you and Em, but the best thing about Mom being so young is she still remembers. She got him to stick with the permit thing, which is why I'll be voting before I drive.

My Dad never tries to change me which is one of the reasons I thought it might be good to go live with him for a while after you died. It's weird. I can't imagine him with Mom at all. He pours concrete or drives a truck when he feels like working. Mom takes tennis lessons and volunteers at the hospital two days a week. They seem like two people who would never meet in real life. Mom has told me how it happened, how she was just a kid herself trying to get away from her own mom and stepdad, that her "transformation" was a long and painful one. But I can't see her the old way so I can't see her with my Dad.

I have to give Mom credit for never talking bad about him around me because the older I get the more I can see how he must have made her insane. Once I turned twelve or so I started asking more questions about their relationship and she told me his biggest problem is that he thinks the world owes him something. He changes jobs every few months and there's always a story about how the boss promised him this or that and didn't deliver. Never mind my Dad only worked there for six months; he thinks he should be the foreman since he knows more than "all them little shits." Plus I also found out that whenever he's worked somewhere long enough the county attaches his wages because he owes Mom like $15,000 in child support payments. It's not that he never spends any money on me. He takes me shopping and buys me clothes and stuff but somehow when it gets taken out of his pay it's not for me but for "them government assholes." The thing is, he seems happy most of the time. One time he was driving a truck for an ice cream company and he dropped off like ten gallons and told Mom it was his support payment for the month. Mom has pretty much given up on that money anyway, so she laughed. David was pissed, of course. He sees my Dad the way the rest of the world sees him and he can't understand why Mom won't go to court to get her money. Mom says the whole thing with my Dad was so much like a different life that she feels out of place when she steps back into it, even to think about something like that. My Dad can't understand why everyone can't just get along. He knows he screwed up in letting Mom go but it's like he also knows he could never have handled the responsibility anyhow and that both of us are better off with him being the guy dropping off ten gallons of ice cream. Which we probably are.

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You weren't old enough to appreciate it, but seeing my two dads talking to each other is one of the funniest things ever. You'd think they'd hate each other but it's more like they're in some kind of contest to see who can climb the farthest up the other one's ass. The only time they have to talk is when my Dad comes to pick me up to go somewhere. I used to sleep over at his place at least one night every weekend but my Dad breeds German shepherds to make extra money and after I started getting my period the dog smell made me want to vomit. Also there were a couple of gang-related shootings in his neighborhood, so then we just started going out for brunch or to a movie or to see my gram or my cousins or something. He has a family the size of a small town. Anyway, do you remember how big my Dad is? David and my Dad are about the same height but David could stand behind him and you'd never know he was there. My Dad lifts weights almost every day of his life, even when he's working construction, and he has to buy all his clothes at a special store. You were even scared of him at first and you weren't scared of anyone, until he started getting down on his knees and calling you "the Big Z." Then you started flirting with him and talking a mile a minute like he was your best friend.

But even though he does stuff like that I don't think Mom has many fond memories of him. One time I asked her why she married him and she told me this story about how she was at a high school football game, up in the stands, and she spotted my Dad coming around the track with two of his weight-lifter buddies. She was supposed to meet him so she starts walking down the grandstand and sees this big group of guys, maybe ten of them, from the other school headed toward my Dad and his friends, and she could tell something was going to happen. She was really scared and started calling to him to look out and my Dad turns around and stops --- just starts watching this pack of wolves moving in. By the time Mom is down by the track the two groups are facing each other a few feet apart, like in a movie, and everyone in the stands has stopped watching the game. Someone in the middle of the group from the other school says something like, "You don't look so tough now, Nicky DeNunzio," and my Dad looks at him and doesn't even blink, Mom says, and he says, "You ain't got enough guys."

Mom wouldn't tell me much about the rest. There was a big fight and some of the guys from the other school got hurt pretty bad before they gave up and ran. She said she was never so scared in her life and that she should've known to stay away from him but when my Dad said that --- "You ain't got enough guys" --- she fell in love with him and thought he would keep her safe forever. She used the story as an example of how stupid she was, how she found out she was never really safe with him, but I thought it was kind of romantic.

Anyway, that was my Dad in high school. David was in the musicals. In his yearbook pictures he looks like he weighed about 120 pounds. Not that he still looks like that. But he listens to people like Frank Sinatra and Harry Connick, Jr., and James Taylor, and when my Dad comes to pick me up it's like David's back to being the skinny kid who got picked on by guys like him. He's always asking my Dad if he's "goin' liftin'" later, dropping the "g"s like he's always telling me not to do. Or he'll start in on the Steelers, who he couldn't care less about, and end up saying something that even sounds stupid to me, like "You know, Nick, they need to score more touchdowns or they're gonna be in for a long season." But the funniest part is that if they were still in high school my Dad would be dissing David all over the place, but since David is this hot-shot attorney and my Dad is basically a zero in the professional-life department, he's not even hearing how stupid David sounds because he's too busy sounding stupid himself: "Yeah, I think this new gig with the ice cream company is the big one. The boss promised me two months on the road and then he'll promote me to supervisor. If that happens and I can get Zelda and Keisha to drop two litters each this year, I'm movin' outa that shit hole. Yep, this could be the year." Jesus. Sometimes if I already have a friend over she'll come with my Dad and me and then it's all I can do to get us all out the door before David and my Dad start doing the brown-nose boogie right in front of someone who could make or break my entire high school reputation.