Please Ignore Vera Dietz Read Online Free PDF Page A

up for a trip through pastel suburbia. This time of year, it’s twice as fun because everyone has their Christmas lights up and is participating in the Who-Can-Flaunt-the-Tackiest-Collection-of-Obnoxious-Holiday-Bullshit Contest. This may prove me as parsimonious as my father, but who spends that much money on corny inflatable light-up Santa Clauses and spinning, singing reindeer? Who thought it was a good idea to mold plastic Nativity scenes that light up at night? Seriously. There are still children starving in Africa, right? There are still children starving right here in this shitty little town.
    I take as many suburbia runs as I can. Part of it is for better tips. Part of it is for safety, too. I can’t send James or the Potheads on every town run, but I can’t ignore the fact that I’m a girl. I never thought about this until I had a delivery on Maple Street during my first week delivering. I was about five minutes early, but the guy who answered the door said I was late. I knew I wasn’t. The sticker on the box said 7:32, and it was 7:55. I was seven minutes early. But he argued with me at the door, and when I told him to call my manager, he somehow got me to come in and walked me all the way through the skinny row house to the kitchen in the back, where I put the pizza down on so many skittering roaches, the box made a crackling noise. He got agitated then, when I reminded him to call my boss, and I realized I was so stupid to have ended up in this guy’s kitchen. Luckily, he wasn’t a crazy rapist. Luckily, he was just a poor guy who wanted free pizza.
    Though most people don’t even look at their pizza delivery person and most people never even figure out I’m a girl—especially in my steel-tipped boots with the Pagoda Pizza baseball cap down over my eyes—I still prefer suburbia. I guess it feels familiar or something. I know the roads. I know people who live there.
    I forget, until I drive by the high school on my way back from the burbs, where a thousand spinning, singing Santas live, that there’s a football game tonight. We’re playing Wilson, an old rival. The last Wilson versus Mount Pitts football game I went to, I was fourteen and Dad and I took Charlie with us. When we dropped him off after the game, I saw Mrs. Kahn was crying and seemed really shaken.
    As we drove out of Charlie’s drive, I said, “Dad? Do you think Mrs. Kahn is okay?”
    Dad said, “She’s fine, Vera.”
    “But she didn’t look fine, did she?”
    “Just ignore it,” Dad said.
    When he said that, I felt myself deflate a little. I’d spent the better part of my life hearing my father say “Just ignore it” about the loud arguments I’d hear coming through the woods from Charlie’s house.
    In summer, the trees cushioned us. I couldn’t see Charlie’s house and I couldn’t hear Mr. Kahn yelling. In winter, I could hear every word, depending on the direction the wind blew. I could hear every slap and every shove. I could hear him call her “stupid bitch” and could hear her bones rattle when he shook her. If I looked out at night, I could see the tiny orange ember at the end of Charlie’s cigarette getting brighter when he inhaled.
    “Ignore it,” my father would say, while my mother fidgeted in her favorite love seat.
    “But can’t we call someone to help her?”
    “She doesn’t want to be helped,” my mother would say.
    “She’ll have to help herself,” my father would correct. “It’s one of those things, Vera.”
    Dylan Pothead is smoking a joint in the parking lot when I get back. He holds it toward me, soggy end up.
    “No thanks, man.”
    “Suit yourself.”
    “Is it slow?”
    “Dunno. You tell me,” he says, giggling.
    There’s another reason I like James. He doesn’t smoke pot. Says it makes him paranoid.
    When I go in, it’s Friday night chaos. There are three different stacks of orders and the oven is packed with more.
    “Where are the rest of the drivers?” Marie asks, wiping