I Hate Everyone, Except You(2)

“I’m Jodi!”

“I’m Mike.”

“Hi!”

“Hi.”

“Bye!”

“Bye.” She ran off, back to the TV or her Barbies or the Milky Way she’d been sucking face with.

When it struck me that my mother could possibly marry this dark, hairy man—after all, he was standing in our foyer—I decided it was my responsibility to end their budding relationship immediately. Not for any personal reasons. I was just looking out for the best interests of my mother, who at the age of thirty was obviously experiencing some kind of midlife crisis. My biological father might not have been perfect—far from it—but at least he wore a suit to work and shaved every day, like a productive member of society. This degenerate was probably on welfare.

Mike attempted to make small talk. “So, what grade are you—”

“My mom’s dating a lot of guys,” I blurted. “Like, a lot.”

“Really.” He seemed unfazed, but it was hard to get a read through the aviators.

“Yep,” I said. “She told me last night that she doesn’t like any of them.”

Still no reaction. “OK,” he said.

“So, you’re wasting your time with her.”

“Am I?”

“For sure. It’s just, you know, I don’t want to see you get hurt or anything.”

“Gotcha,” he said, nodding his head. “I appreciate that.”

Like a cool breeze, Terri rounded the corner to where Mike and I were standing. Most of the time I took her appearance for granted, but she really was quite beautiful. Tall and slim with curves in all the conventionally desirable places. Her shoulder-length black hair was feathered, quite similar to Mike’s, actually, and she had big green eyes that were heavily mascaraed in the style of the time. Her smile always looked the slightest bit mischievous, even when she was wasn’t. Tonight she wore dark jeans, a white blouse, and a black satin bomber jacket. As she kissed him hello on the cheek, they struck me as a very exotic couple, perfectly styled to go to a discotheque or knock over a liquor store.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” my mom said. “I see you’ve met Clint.”

“Yeah,” said Mike. “We were just having a little chat.”

“About what?” she asked, looking at me.

“Stuff,” I said.

“What kind of stuff?”

“I was just saying how I got detention this week for running to the school bus,” I said.

“Why’d you tell him that?” I couldn’t tell if Terri was horrified or amused. She explained to Mike that I was having a hard time in this new school district. “That’s his second detention this month. He used to be the perfect student, until recently.”

“He seems pretty perfect to me,” Mike said. If he was being sarcastic, I certainly didn’t know it at the time, because I believed I was indeed as perfect as a ten-year-old could be. And why my mother would choose to go out to dinner with this man rather than stay home with me was beyond my comprehension.

Mike and Terri left on their date, and three years later we were a family of four (plus one in utero) living in a much nicer, less-crowded house and eating a lot of chicken cutlets.

Maybe we could go to Action Park some time in July, they said.

“July? I can’t wait until July! It probably opens Memorial Day weekend! I need to go then!”

My begging and whining did little to convince them that donning a bathing suit in 60-degree temperatures would be a good idea. We would make the drive to Vernon, New Jersey, in July.

Oh, shit, I thought. They’re coming too. I hadn’t accounted for that possibility. I had figured they would drop me off at the front gate so I could make new and gorgeous friends who loved me for my God-given potential to be cool. But now, Mike and Terri were coming with me and we’d have to walk around a water park together. In bathing suits. With my little sister Jodi in tow. Aw man, my life sucked so much I could barely breathe.

For the next two months I kept Action Park at an emotional distance, the way a kid thinks about Christmas in September or an adult thinks about that STD test they should probably get after a long weekend in Miami. The commercials would play every day, and I had no choice but to regard those wet teenagers as long-lost cousins who didn’t know I existed but who would embrace me as one of their own upon first sight.

July arrived, eventually, and brought with it a heat wave, as is typical of Long Island summers, and—after some gentle reminding on my part—we loaded into the Chevy Blazer destined for New Jersey. Mike drove, as usual, and didn’t seem to mind at all that Jodi and I sang along loudly to Donna Summer’s greatest hits album as it played on the built-in 8-track. He wasn’t a singer, he said, when we tried to cajole him into joining us.

“Mike! ‘Bad Girls’ is next!” Jodi yelled. “You can do the toot toot beep beep part! It doesn’t matter what you sound like! You just say toot toot awwwww beep beep!” He smiled and politely declined. She sang it instead, rocking her head back and forth while she did so. She also squinted her eyes and pouted her lips, in what I assumed was a prepubescent attempt at sexiness. I silently wondered if I should care that my ten-year-old sister was really feeling this song about street-trolling hookers. I didn’t.