Mallory's Camera

Burrowing down into Anita Shreve's Testimony (thank you, wailaki! And happy birthday in advance), the perfect book for me in my miserable, distracted, heartbroken state. No stylistic fireworks; though Shreve breaks the narrative up into solo performances from each of the plot's key players, the sentences themselves are easy – in no time at all you look up and find you've read 150 pages.

It's also interesting in terms of its subject matter since an incident very like the one that sets the novel's events into motion may have taken place at Monterey High School in early September.

I say may because, of course, without seeing the video-taped evidence myself, without talking to someone who had seen the video, it's impossible to know how much is truth and how much is overactive teenage imagination.

What I do know is that early in the fall Robin told me a tape had been circulating which showed two senior boys raping a freshman girl. The senior boys apparently were arrested; the girl is still in school though she tried to commit suicide by drinking nail polish a few weeks after the incident itself.

What's interesting is that the Monterey High School parent community was never informed.

"But that's horrible!" I said.

Robin made a face. "I should never tell you anything."

"That poor girl. What did the school do?"

"I think they got arrested. Anyway they aren't in school anymore."

"That poor girl."

Robin rolled his eyes. "I knew I shouldn't have told you anything. It wasn't their fault anyway. She wanted to do it. They were really popular. She wasn't."

The mind boggles. There is a reason why Pol Pot populated his armies with 14 year olds, I remind myself: adolescents are absolutely amoral. No sense in affixing blame: I was amoral when I was 14 and most likely so were you. The concept that other people think and feel and bleed just like themselves is utterly alien to a 14 year old.

Nor is this a public school vs. private school dilemma. At RLS, I remember, there was this beautiful young girl I glimpsed in the parking lot sometimes when I was picking Max up from the school. She had a tragic presence surprising in someone so young. "Oh, that's _______ _____," Max jeered when I asked him who she was. Ah! The daughter of one of the local restaurant barons. "She's a slut."

In other news, I had written the Cannery Row Company a particularly pathetic email on Tuesday. There I was in my green velvet curtains: if Scarlett O'Hara had owned a hot sauce store instead of Tara… Liquidity problems can always be solved but at a certain point liquidity problems turn into solvency problems, and solvency problems can not be solved even though the difference between liquidity and solvency is only one of degree. The Little Store reached that point months ago; the only thing that's kept it going is my guts and determination. God damn it! People love that store! Yesterday we made three sales: one for $140, one for $96, one for $87. But see – those were the only three people who came into the store.

I cannot make people come to Monterey.

So yesterday I just thought: this is ridiculous. It's like putting off a cancer operation, right? You don't want them to lop off your breasts but you know you'll feel healthier after they lop off your breasts. And eventually you'll heal. Or so they tell you…

So I called up the Cannery Row Company leasing director, the guy responsible for receiving my rent checks –
And may I say right here and now that for all that I've dissed the Cannery Row Company over the years, they have been amazingly patient and gracious with me these last few months. They haven't evicted me. They've continued to make me feel like a valued tenant.

Anyway, _____ wasn't answering his phone so I left him a phone message. I have no idea what I said. I know I'd been crying all morning. You're an idiot, I kept sneering at myself. This is business. You are not your business. Except in an odd sort of way I knew I was my business. "This store is like a museum to your personality," Max told me once, wrinkling his nose. And that was absolutely true. Every time someone came into the store and exclaimed, "This is such a charming place!" – and when there are people around this happened at least five times a day -- it was a personal affirmation.

I blubbered on at some length in the phone message. I do remember mentioning that on Thursday we'd made exactly $11 – that's because exactly one person came into the store. I do remember repeating that my heart was breaking – why the fuck would they care about that? thought the logical, unaffected part of my mind. This is a business transaction, you dumb bunny! They want their money! They don't care about your emotions.

Then I hung up and began reviewing my suicide options.

What my suicide options always come down to is: I can't do that to Robin.

I mean, if Robin is ever going to evolve beyond his present amoral mind set, it's going to be because I'm available to coach him on the proper way to treat other human souls. Without me, Robin's lost.

So I began to draw a bad Chagall-esque fantasy of a Venice mask shop.

The phone rang.

I ignored it.

Someone left a message.

I wanted to ignore that too but afore-mentioned logical, unaffected part of my brain made me listen to it. It was _____: "We want to meet with you in the new year. Let's talk after the 29th."

Huh.

Naive to think they'd be willing to work with me. (Although what's really galling to my inner four year old – since we're channeling multiple personalities here, that's the part of my mind that stamps its foot and screams, "This is so unfair!" – is that I'm essentially being punished for something that's really their fault. They should be doing something to make people come to Monterey!) Perhaps in the spirit of the Christmas season, they are deferring the mean things they have to do until after the ghost of the Baby Jesus has sat around in people's hearts for a week or so.

Whatever, we have three more weeks.

Good thing? Bad thing? Honestly I don't know.