What I don’t get is, what’s the big deal? What does he need more kids for? He already has me! Sure, I only see him summers and at Christmastime, but that’s enough, right? I mean, he’s pretty busy running Genovia. It’s no joke trying to make a whole country, even one that’s only a mile long, run smoothly. The only other things he has time for besides me are his girlfriends. He’s always got some new girlfriend slinking around. He brings them with him when we go to Grandm่re’s place in France in the summer. They always drool all over the pools and the stables and the waterfall and the twenty-seven bedrooms and the ballroom and the vineyard and the farm and the airstrip.

And then he dumps them a week later.

I didn’t know he wanted to marry one of them and have kids.

I mean, he never married my mom. My mom says that’s because at the time she rejected the bourgeois mores of a society that didn’t even accept women as equals to men and refused to recognize her rights as an individual.

I kind of always thought that maybe my dad just never asked her.

Anyway, my mom says Dad is flying here to New York tomorrow to talk to me about this. I don’t know why. I mean, it doesn’t have anything to do with me. But when I said to my mom, “Why does Dad have to fly all the way over here to talk to me about how he can’t have kids?” she got this funny look on her face and started to say something, and then she stopped.

Then she just said, “You’ll have to ask your father.”

This is bad. My mom only says “Ask your father” when I want to know something she doesn’t feel like telling me, like why people sometimes kill their own babies and how come Americans eat so much red meat and read so much less than the people of Iceland.

Note to self: Look up the words progenitive, omnipotent, and mores

distributive law

5x + 5y - 5

5(x + y - 1)

Distribute WHAT??? FIND OUT BEFORE QUIZ!!!

Wednesday, October 1

My dad’s here. Well, not here in the loft. He’s staying at the Plaza, as usual. I’m supposed to go see him tomorrow, after he’s “rested.” My dad rests a lot, now that he’s had cancer. He stopped playing polo, too. But I think that’s because one time a horse stepped on him.

Anyway, I hate the Plaza. Last time my dad stayed there, they wouldn’t let me in to see him because I was wearing shorts. The lady who owns the place was there, they said, and she doesn’t like to see people in cutoffs in the lobby of her fancy hotel. I had to call my dad from a house phone and ask him to bring down a pair of pants. He just told me to put the concierge on the phone, and the next thing you know, everybody was apologizing to me like crazy. They gave me this big basket filled with fruit and chocolate. It was cool. I didn’t want the fruit, though, so I gave it to a homeless man I saw on the subway on my way back down to the Village. I don’t think the homeless man wanted the fruit either, since he threw it all in the gutter and just kept the basket to use as a hat.

I told Lilly about what my dad said, about not being able to have kids, and she said that was very telling. She said it revealed that my dad still has unresolved issues with his parents, and I said, “Well, duh. Grandm่re is a huge pain in the ass.”

Lilly said she couldn’t comment on the veracity of that statement since she’d never met my grandmother. I’ve been asking if I could invite Lilly to Miragnac for like years, but Grandm่re always says no. She says young people give her migraines.

Lilly says maybe my dad is afraid of losing his youth, which many men equate with losing their virility. I really think they should move Lilly up a grade, but she says she likes being a freshman. She says this way she has four whole years to make observations on the adolescent condition in post–Cold War America.

STARTING TODAY I WILL

1. Be nice to everyone, whether I like him/her or not

2. Stop lying all the time about my feelings

3. Stop forgetting my Algebra notebook

4. Keep my comments to myself

5. Stop writing my Algebra notes in my journal

The 3rd power of x is called cube of x—negative numbers have no sq root

Notes from G & T

Lilly—I can’t stand this. When is she going to go back to the teachers’ lounge?

Maybe never. I heard they were shampooing the carpet today. God, he is so CUTE.

Who’s cute?

BORIS!

He isn’t cute. He’s gross. Look what he did to his sweater. Why does he DO that?

You’re so narrow-minded.

I am NOT narrow-minded. But someone should tell him that in America we don’t tuck in our sweaters.

Well, maybe in Russia they do.

But this isn’t Russia. Also, someone should tell him to learn a new song. If I have to hear that requiem for dead King Whoever one more time . . .

You’re just jealous because Boris is a musical genius and you’re flunking Algebra.

Lilly, just because I am flunking Algebra does NOT mean I’m stupid.

OK, OK. What is wrong with you today?

NOTHING!!!!!

slope: slope of a line denoted m is

Find equation of line with slope = 2

Find the degree of slope to Mr. G’s nostrils

Thursday, October 2,
Ladies’ Room at the Plaza Hotel

Well.

I guess now I know why my dad is so concerned about not being able to have more kids.

BECAUSE HE’S A PRINCE!!!

Geez! How long did they think they could keep something like that from me?

Although, come to think of it, they managed for a pretty long time. I mean, I’ve BEEN to Genovia. Miragnac, where I go every summer, and also most Christmases, is the name of my grandmother’s house in France. It is actually on the border of France, right near Genovia, which is between France and Italy. I’ve been going to Miragnac ever since I was born. Never with my mother, though. Only with my dad. My mom and dad have never lived together. Unlike a lot of kids I know, who sit around wishing their parents would get back together after they get divorced, I’m perfectly happy with this arrangement. My parents broke up before I was ever born, although they have always been pretty friendly to one another. Except when my dad is being moody, that is, or my mom is being a flake, which she can be sometimes. Things would majorly suck, I think, if they lived together.