Dear zoe, p.1
Dear Zoe, page 1
A Book Sense Pick Selected for the Borders Original Voices Program Chosen as one of Booklist’s Best First Novels of the Year
“Whatever comparisons are drawn, there is no doubt that this book is a gem all its own.”—Bookreporter.com
“[Beard has a] ‘perceptive writer’s soul’ [and he] ‘peels away the layers of his protagonist’s anguish simply and sensitively.’ ”
—Washington Press
“The whole novel . . . rings with truth. By the end of it, we’re meditating on the ideas of loss and redemption, the ways in which personal tragedies get absorbed into larger ones, but never obliterated, never forgotten.” —The Buffalo News
“Affecting.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Lovely . . . moving.”—Publishers Weekly
“In his soulful debut novel . . . Philip Beard does a pitch-perfect impersonation but never sugar-coats the depths of a young girl’s despair.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Dear Zoe is an almost flawless novel of self-discovery and redemption. It is the sort of book that a generation can call ‘theirs,’ a book that captures the trials of adolescence and the aching numbness of America in the aftermath of 9/11.”
—The Press off Atlantic City
“Dear Zoe is a powerful story, told in an entirely engaging voice, about how a family gathers itself to move through confusion and tragedy toward discovering itself.”
—Frederick Busch, author of Girls and The Night Inspector
“Philip Beard’s instinct for voice is remarkable, and he writes with a compassion for his characters we can’t help but share.”
—Lewis Nordan, author of Wolff Whistle and The Sharpshooter Blues
“Applause to Philip Beard for giving us Tess DeNunzio—a sweet, wounded, whip-smart survivor—and her irresistible and haunting story, Dear Zoe. This book enchants as it jabs you in the gut.”
—Daniel Jones, author of Affter Lucy
PHILIP BEARD is a writer and attorney in Pittsburgh, where he lives with his wife, Traci, and their three daughters. This is his first novel. His most recent novel is Lost in the Garden.
PLUME
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Previously published in a Viking edition.
First Plume Printing, May 2006
Copyright © Philip E. Beard II, 2005
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from “Sweet Baby James” words and music by James Taylor. © 1970 (renewed 1998) EMI Blackwood Music Inc. and Country Road Music Inc. All rights controlled and administered by EMI Blackwood Music Inc. International copyright secured. Used by permission.
Cover art copyright © 2022 by Christy Fitzpatrick-Webb
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
The Library of Congress has catalogued the Viking edition as follows:
Beard, Philip, 1963-
Dear Zoe : a novel / Philip Beard.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-440-64954-7
1. Teenage girls—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Death—Fiction. 3. Loss (Psychology)—
Fiction. 4. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 5. Grief—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.E2525D43 2005
813’.6—dc22 2004057173
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
btb_ppg_141446055_c0_r1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Naming you
David & my Dad
Anniversary
Jess Construction
Roller Coaster
My Face
Yours
Banana Slippers
New Paint
David & Me
Justin
The Truck
Church
Just Wait
Em
Jimmy Freeze
My Dad
Soul Man
Travis
Stoned
Leaving Em Again
Dolls
Skycoaster
Mom
You & Em
Travis Chills Out
The Whip
Fast - Forward
Sixteen
Little Dance
Paper Doll
Picture
Home
Z
Acknowledgements
For all my girls—Traci, Cali, Maddy and Phoebe
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 grown-up. 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.
David & 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 itselff.” He said it just like that, “the makeup itselff,” 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.
