she could “sign up for the writing club.” Caitlin lived with her parents, said “um” a lot, and had less than a rudimentary comprehension of scriptology. Maybe she was bored. I was about to give her directions to my house when we were interrupted by what sounded like her father in the background: “Who’re you talking to, Cait? It’s been forty-five minutes.”
I heard her say, “No one …” before she promptly hung up.
A few days later, Kirk and my mom returned from Nashville. For half an hour, we bleeped through their digital photos: jubilant smiles, sad khaki shorts, both of them flanking a painted guitar twice their height. Her, in a rare moment of unabashed laughter, her hand at her heart, a gaudy rock on her finger, a ring I didn’t recognize. Him, standing beneath a sign that read GRAND OLE OPRY HOUSE , his arms spread wide as if waiting for a huge hug. (See Exhibit A, Neediness.)
“Well,” I said finally. “Well, great. Now my news. Mom, I’ve been thinking about the next issue of the
Review
—” I looked at Kirk pointedly. “Kirk, could you …” I glanced at the door. Kirk. Door. He sat there like a dog that didn’t know its own name.
He told me that he and my mom had gotten engaged.
“Yeah, I get it. I’m not surprised per se, if that’s the responseyou’re looking for. But congrats to you both.” My mom and Kirk traded glances, communicating in the not-so-secret parlance of married people. “Can we move on?”
Kirk moved on to trashing the
Review
. He recommended that I shut down operations, because he and my mom would be married soon. My mom would be the wife of the CEO of Steak Shack Inc., and the CEO could not afford phone calls like the one he’d received yesterday evening from a board member who had threatened to “take action” if he caught me communicating with his twelve-year-old daughter again.
Accordingly, my mom would be withdrawing all money from my budget, thus halting operations.
I stared at her. Wincing, she rubbed her chest, where her skin had lightly burned. “Did you know she was twelve?” my mom asked.
“Obviously not, Mom.”
“Why were you talking to her for forty-five minutes?”
“Because,” I said, looking only at her, “she was listening.”
This prompted a certain tone of voice my mom takes when she thinks I’ve lost the bread-crumb trail to normalcy. She asked if I needed to talk to Dr. Fountain, a heavily perfumed shrink I’d been seeing off and on throughout the year. It always made my face burn when she brought up Dr. Fountain in front of Kirk.
“As I was saying.” Maybe I repeated that phrase a few times while flipping the pages of my notebook, in which my scrawl was deeply, deliberately engraved. “The next issue will be dedicated to Dad.”
In our two years of circulation,
The Scriptological Review
has published a biannual personafile on historical or celebrity figures.Each signature, each strand of unraveled scripts, has led to analyses of the type rarely recorded in the humdrum biography or rise/fall/rehab biopic. Some highlights include Benjamin Franklin (“If Left Is Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Right”), the Marquis de Sade (“Outer Loops and Inner Demons”), and Martha Stewart (“White Space 101”). In light of such figures, one might question the relevance of a personafile concerning my father, Prateep.
But this personafile has been long in the making, a goal of mine ever since the inaugural issue of the
Review
. My mission is to enlarge what my dad was reduced to, the five lines of an obituary, because we are survived not by memories but by what we leave behind in print or picture, and how are five stunted lines to span the breadth of a man’s life?
Take Exhibit B, a telling excerpt lifted from a letter sent by my father to my mother in the first two weeks of their marriage, after he had flown ahead of her to the United States. She would be following shortly, her first time leaving her family in
I heard her say, “No one …” before she promptly hung up.
A few days later, Kirk and my mom returned from Nashville. For half an hour, we bleeped through their digital photos: jubilant smiles, sad khaki shorts, both of them flanking a painted guitar twice their height. Her, in a rare moment of unabashed laughter, her hand at her heart, a gaudy rock on her finger, a ring I didn’t recognize. Him, standing beneath a sign that read GRAND OLE OPRY HOUSE , his arms spread wide as if waiting for a huge hug. (See Exhibit A, Neediness.)
“Well,” I said finally. “Well, great. Now my news. Mom, I’ve been thinking about the next issue of the
Review
—” I looked at Kirk pointedly. “Kirk, could you …” I glanced at the door. Kirk. Door. He sat there like a dog that didn’t know its own name.
He told me that he and my mom had gotten engaged.
“Yeah, I get it. I’m not surprised per se, if that’s the responseyou’re looking for. But congrats to you both.” My mom and Kirk traded glances, communicating in the not-so-secret parlance of married people. “Can we move on?”
Kirk moved on to trashing the
Review
. He recommended that I shut down operations, because he and my mom would be married soon. My mom would be the wife of the CEO of Steak Shack Inc., and the CEO could not afford phone calls like the one he’d received yesterday evening from a board member who had threatened to “take action” if he caught me communicating with his twelve-year-old daughter again.
Accordingly, my mom would be withdrawing all money from my budget, thus halting operations.
I stared at her. Wincing, she rubbed her chest, where her skin had lightly burned. “Did you know she was twelve?” my mom asked.
“Obviously not, Mom.”
“Why were you talking to her for forty-five minutes?”
“Because,” I said, looking only at her, “she was listening.”
This prompted a certain tone of voice my mom takes when she thinks I’ve lost the bread-crumb trail to normalcy. She asked if I needed to talk to Dr. Fountain, a heavily perfumed shrink I’d been seeing off and on throughout the year. It always made my face burn when she brought up Dr. Fountain in front of Kirk.
“As I was saying.” Maybe I repeated that phrase a few times while flipping the pages of my notebook, in which my scrawl was deeply, deliberately engraved. “The next issue will be dedicated to Dad.”
In our two years of circulation,
The Scriptological Review
has published a biannual personafile on historical or celebrity figures.Each signature, each strand of unraveled scripts, has led to analyses of the type rarely recorded in the humdrum biography or rise/fall/rehab biopic. Some highlights include Benjamin Franklin (“If Left Is Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Right”), the Marquis de Sade (“Outer Loops and Inner Demons”), and Martha Stewart (“White Space 101”). In light of such figures, one might question the relevance of a personafile concerning my father, Prateep.
But this personafile has been long in the making, a goal of mine ever since the inaugural issue of the
Review
. My mission is to enlarge what my dad was reduced to, the five lines of an obituary, because we are survived not by memories but by what we leave behind in print or picture, and how are five stunted lines to span the breadth of a man’s life?
Take Exhibit B, a telling excerpt lifted from a letter sent by my father to my mother in the first two weeks of their marriage, after he had flown ahead of her to the United States. She would be following shortly, her first time leaving her family in
Similar Books
