Keep My Parents Out of This

This excerpt continues the serialization of Diary of a Heretic, the novel, which portrays the rise and fall of a contemporary spiritual movement that blossoms suddenly, and briefly, around Malcolm Tully, the owner of a coffee shop/donut house across the street from a terminal of Chicago’s El tracks.

July 30 (continued)

As I hung up, aghast at my chat with Mom and Dad, a picture flashed to mind:  Carlos who wears a headset round the clock now, telling his computer to, “Make a note to interview the parents. Get ’em on tape.  Get ’em to sign a waiver.”  Two seconds later Carlos in the flesh clicks on his Treo, and says guess what, verbatim?!

If I didn’t know better (and honestly, Dear Diary, I still do know better) I’d think the string of real-life events had gotten snarled up with my messiest most nightmarish imaginings.  In my head, Carlos makes a note, and immediately in real life puts it in writing:  asterisk, word, exclamation point.   A few weeks from now—I know—good old Mom and Pop will turn up on a talk show.  I can hear them now:

My mother:  “He was the most compassionate child there ever was.  Even as a baby he had fits of empathy anytime he saw a homeless person.”

My father: “Malcolm is my only son.  And as much as he mystifies me, I have to respect his new direction.”

My mother: “You have to respect his new direction?  Please.  What about what you said the other night?  That one glimpse of that blinding light shooting from his head and you realized:  Malcolm truly is tapped into something we don’t understand.”

If only I didn’t see these coincidences mounting.  If only everyone and everything around me were not growing ever more predictable.

But then:  oh wait a minute—I get it! You’re downloading this!  Aren’t you, Carlos?  What an idiot I am!

No wonder you’re privy to my thoughts!  I was stupid enough to think you were reading my mind, when actually, it’s so obvious!  You’re reading my journal!

So okay.  That being the case:  Pay attention!  This next thing I really want you to get, Carlos!  Let this be your mantra, and maybe we can still avoid the cataclysm we’re obviously careening for:

KEEP MY PARENTS OUT OF THIS!

Don’t bother to argue, my pet, my lover, tormentor, baby, honey, muffin, because I know what you’ll say.  Believe me, my worry here has nothing to do with my own embarrassment (which via your plan, really does grow huger and more drastic by the minute) and everything to do with right and wrong.  Really.  It would be wrong to suck my parents into the NANM.  They are a hundred times more naive than me.  Think of that, Carlos!  Mom and Dad, not to mention, God forbid, my sister Deirdre can not stand up to your high-voltage temptation.  They’re not like me.  It would never occur to them to agonize over selling their souls.  Because, in my parents’ case, they have never doubted that their souls are not locked on their own private straightaway to heaven.  Because, one, they tithe to the Church, and two, they would never, in the darkest, deepest night of their lives, admit to anything that might differ with the Pope.  Whereas in my sister’s case it’s the opposite. . .  and that’s only half of it:  Life is hard enough on Deirdre.

So for all intents and purposes, Carlos, let’s say my parents and my sister don’t exist.  Swear they don’t exist and I’ll give you sixty cents on every dollar I rake in.  Call your lawyers, we’ll put it in writing.

Or scratch that.  God, am I dumb!  Fact is, you must do what I say, Carlos!  Leave my parents out of this or I’ll make you sorry.  Thunder, lightning:  Uh-oh, buddy, I’ve seen the light!  I can ruin you, Carlos!  Care to count the ways?

--From Diary of a Heretic, a novel by Kathleen Maher, copyright 2007