Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger

“Sorry,” he said when we had stepped out and were waiting for the valet to bring the car. “I didn’t expect it to be so boring.”

“It wasn’t.”

He looked at me like I was joking. “I haven’t had much time with Julio except for that stuffy, dreadful dinner my mother arranged at gunpoint,” he said. “Thank God we have more people at our Thanksgiving dinner. He’s not what I imagined my sister would bring home, and not because he’s half Latino or anything. He’s just too . . .”

“Too what?”

“Full of himself,” he said. “Compensating for an inferiority complex. It gets tired.”

“Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. I can see it clearly,” he replied, with uncharacteristic arrogance.

The car arrived, and we got in.

“Are we really going to Tina’s party?”

“I can’t take you to my house, and we can’t go up to your attic, because your father’s probably home or on his way,” he said. “It’s still early.”

I sat back like someone resigned to a fate.

“We’ll have a few laughs and leave,” he decided. “Okay?”

“Whatever,” I said.

We were both quiet during the drive to Tina Kennedy’s home. How complicated the world had suddenly become. When you’re very young, everything seems so simple, even what is good and what is bad. Too much candy is bad for you. Being clean and neat is good for you. Policemen are good. Criminals are bad. Not looking both ways when crossing is bad. Waiting for the green light is good. Most important, parents love their children; children love their parents. Grandparents are loving and kind, as are uncles and aunts. It’s all so simple. On your birthday, people who love you make you feel special. You get and give presents on Christmas. You wish one another love and happiness on New Year’s Eve.

You are told that someday you will be old enough to drive and stay out later, and someday you’ll fall in love, and you’ll marry and have children. Everything ahead of you looks good and wonderful. Yes, people get angry at each other, but those

who love each other apologize and are even nicer to each other afterward. Everything in the world seems organized; everything works the way it is supposed to work.

And then suddenly, one day, yes becomes maybe, and maybe becomes no. Black is also gray at times, and white might really be black beneath. Smiles are not always true. Sometimes they are empty, false. The lights are on in the houses you pass, but the people inside are cloaked in darkness. Nothing you hear, nothing you see, is necessarily true.

Getting older means learning how to leave with doubt and how to get home again.

In those years when they were shut up together in the attic, the Dollanganger children were rushed out of their childhood. Gradually, they had lost their chance to dream. What a horrible thing to do to your own children, I thought. Reading about it, reliving it, was making both Kane and me lose what little childhood faith we had left. I suspected now that this was truer for Kane.

What worried me the most was that by the time we finished the diary, we might not know who we were.

When we arrived at Tina’s, we could see the party was in full swing and quite unlike the party Kane had had at his home recently. Beer and other alcoholic drinks were in plain sight. The music was so loud you had to shout to be heard by someone standing beside you. A small group was already smoking weed in a room off the living room. How was Tina going to get away with all this once her parents returned?

The way we were dressed drew everyone’s attention. Kane’s friends began to tease him. Kyra and Suzette had nice things to say about my dress, but most of the other girls were smirking at me with the expression that says, “Who does she think she is?” They didn’t know we had gone to dinner before we had come to the party. Tina’s comment was that she would gladly give me something of hers to wear so I wouldn’t look so stiff and out of place. She looked well into a buzz of some sort, slurring some of her words. I was anticipating her pursuit of Kane.

When I looked at him, he seemed oblivious to everything going on around us. He just stood there like a disgusted chaperone, turning down offers of beer and booze and declining an invitation to smoke some pot. He brushed everyone off abruptly. Even I was surprised at the way he was ignoring his buddies. I saw the surprised and disgusted looks on their faces. When Tina put her hands on his arm, he pulled away from her so abruptly everyone around them stopped talking and drinking. I didn’t hear what he said, but whatever it was, it shocked her.

“What’s with Kane?” Suzette asked me.

“Nothing. Why?”

“He looks like he lost his best friend or something,” Kyra said. “Usually, he’s the life of the party.”

“Maybe he’s just a little tired.”

“From what?” Suzette asked, her eyes widening with some sexual suggestion.

“I don’t kiss and tell,” I replied, and the girls laughed. Tina was standing nearby, eavesdropping, so I spoke louder.

They asked where we had gone to dinner, and I described it and the restaurant. Kyra was the only one who had been there, with her parents on an anniversary. Of course, they wanted to know about Darlena’s boyfriend and what she was like, too. While I talked to my girlfriends, I saw Kane circle the living room, gazing at everyone, the couples dancing, observing like someone researching a primitive tribe, paying only half attention to anything anyone said to him, and then planting himself in a corner of the living room and sipping a soft drink. He stood back, looking aloof.