I started writing this book the summer after the death of Peter
Curran, whom I met when I was seven and had a relationship with
for fifteen years, right up until he committed suicide at the age of
sixty-six.
Hoping to make sense of what happened, I began drafting my life
story. And even during times I haven't worked on it, when it sat on a
shelf in my closet, I felt its presence in the despair that comes precisely
at two in the afternoon, which was the time Peter would pick me up
and take me for rides; in the despair again at five p.m., when I would
read to him, head on his chest; at seven p.m., when he would hold me;
in the despair again at nine p.m., when we would go for our night ride,
starting at Boulevard East in Weehawken, to River Road, down to the
Royal Cliffs Diner, where I would buy a cup of coffee with precisely
seven sugars and a lot of cream, and a bread pudding with whipped
cream and raisins, or rice pudding if he wanted a change. When I came back, he'd turn the car (Granada or Cimarron or Escort or black Mazda) back to River Road, back to Boulevard East, and we'd head past the expensive Queen Anne, Victorian, and Gothic Revival houses, gazing beyond the Hudson River to the skyscrapers' lights ignited like a thousand mirrors, where we would sometimes park and watch thunderstorms.
In one of his suicide notes to me, Peter suggested that I write a memoir
about our lives together, which was ironic. Our world had been
permitted only by the secrecy surrounding it; had you taken away our
lies and codes and looks and symbols and haunts, you would have taken
everything; and had you done that when I was twenty or fifteen or
twelve, I might have killed myself and then you wouldn't get to look
into this tiny island that existed only through its lies and codes and looks
and symbols and haunts. All these secret things together built a supreme
master key, and if you ask a locksmith whether there is a master key in
existence that will open any lock in the world, he will tell you no, but
you can make a key that will open all the locks in one particular building.
You can configure the locks beforehand to match the grooves of
the key in question, but it is impossible to design a key that will open
any preexisting lock. Peter knew this because he once created a master
key for a whole hospital; he was a self-taught locksmith, learning the
trade in libraries at night and on the job after bluffing his way in.
Picture a girl of seven or so, who loves red gumballs that come
from gumball machines but leaves behind the blues and greens; a child
whose sneakers are the kind with Velcro, not laces; a child whose legs
grip metal ponies activated by a quarter at Pathmark Super Center; a
child who is afraid of the jokers in a card deck and insists that they be
taken out before a game; a child who fears her father and dislikes
puzzles (boring!); a child who likes dogs and rabbits and iguanas and
Italian ices; a child who likes riding on the back of a motorcycle because
what other seven-year-old gets to ride on a motorcycle; a child
who hates to go home (ever) because Peter's house is like a zoo, and most
of all because Peter is fun, Peter is just like her, only bigger and can do
things she can't.
Perhaps he knew that human cells regenerate every seven years,
that after each of these cycles, a different person rises up from the old
nest of atoms. Let's say over the next seven years, this man, Peter,
reprogrammed this child's fizzing cells. That he cleverly memorized
her pathways to joy and followed her easy trails of desire, her cravings
for Creamsicles, going shirtless like a boy, loving the lap of a dog's
sweet pink tongue on her face and the sight of a rabbit crunching
something crisp and green. Later, he assiduously learned Madonna's
lyrics and, still later, the names of twenty Nirvana songs.
Four months after Peter died, I interviewed a corrections officer while
working as a feature writer for my college newspaper. At her apartment,
a studio in the Journal Square area of downtown Jersey City, we drank
chamomile tea and chatted. I mentioned that I was writing a book. She
wanted to know what kind, and I said it was about a pedophile and that
it was only a first draft - very rough so far. I asked her if she knew any
pedophiles in her line of work.
Excerpted from Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso. To be published in March 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright 2011 by Margaux Fragoso. All rights reserved.
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