Still Life with Tornado(14)

Not like Chet ever put a knife to my throat or abandoned me like his father did.

But we wrecked Bruce. I didn’t want to wreck Sarah, too.

I called a truce. Chet shrugged. It’s what he does best. Shrugging. Even when he’s not shrugging, I see him shrugging. It’s like a mirage for me now. He’s got to have the most-toned trapezius of any man in Philadelphia. And I have the most-toned middle finger, which is saying a lot for Philly.

Every time he shrugs I just flip him off. A lifelong game of charades. Chet is always a person who doesn’t know what to do and I am always a person who is flipping off people who don’t know what to do.

I flip Chet off all the time and he doesn’t know it. Under the table, through walls, in my pocket, behind the curtain next to the couch. I grew up in a house where cursing wasn’t allowed and I wonder what my parents would think of me now, flipping Chet off all the time. I think they’d be fine with it.

My parents adopted me when they were quite old. Probably too old to be adopting a baby, but they loved me. They fought a lot as I got older because they’d just retired and were sick of seeing each other all the time. They weren’t mean.

Sometimes I think of my father’s stories about working on the big skyscrapers in Philadelphia—walking the iron girders fifty stories high and welding joists and climbing scaffolding—and I can’t figure out how I married a man who works in a cubicle all day processing paperwork and making deals. On one hand, it’s less dangerous and brings in more money. On the other hand, it causes a lifetime of shrugging.

Which has caused me a lifetime of flipping him off.

When we were still sleeping in the same bed back before Sarah was born, I used to sleep with one hand pointed at the back of his head, finger up. A truce is one thing. But I can’t live a lie.

Except I am living a lie.

It’s complicated.





Alleged Earl



Alleged Earl leaves the drawing on the grocery store wall unfinished. I get up and ten-year-old Sarah walks back up 15th Street. She says, “See you later!” She has her hair in braided pigtails. It was my favorite look. Maybe my mission should be to bring braided pigtails back into fashion. Maybe I can paint some pop art dots of braided pigtails and one day it will sell for forty-five million dollars. Not original, but at least it will be mine.

Alleged Earl puts his box of art supplies under his arm and it’s devoured by his coats and blankets. He shuffles when he walks. He’s not that old—maybe in his forties—so I wonder what’s wrong with him that he walks this slowly. I think about the stories Mom brings home about ulcerated feet and stuff like that. It makes me want to help him carry something, but then he yells out, “I don’t have to do what you tell me!” and I just walk a few yards behind him and stay in his shadow.

With Alleged Earl as my pace car, it might take me a half hour to round the corner and walk one block of Spruce Street. I wonder where he’s headed next. I wonder if he’s hungry, because I am.

It takes a whole minute to shuffle past the pizza place. It feels like an hour. My stomach growls. I want to ask him why he left the drawing unfinished. I imagine that I ask him and I decide his answer is Because I wanted to. Because I can do what I want. Because who cares if I finish it? Because none of your business, girl, go back home to your parents. Of course, I don’t ask and he doesn’t say any of these things. He just shuffles and occasionally stops to adjust his tinfoil headpiece or his box of art supplies.

When I see the people in the pizza place sitting at tables and eating, I picture Alleged Earl and me in there one day. Middle-class girl takes homeless man to pizza place = not at all original. I decide he’ll say no if I ask him. I can see the viral video on The Social already. She wanted to buy him a slice for lunch, but what he said will make you cry.

I decide he must know I’m following him, but he doesn’t seem bothered by it so I keep with him all the way to 17th Street where he starts to walk south. Past South Street, 17th isn’t safe. Once I see that’s where he’s going, I split off at Lombard Street and walk toward home. In my head I say good-bye and I decide he says Good-bye, Sarah. I decide he says See you tomorrow. It feels like the fish in Mexico. Fast friends. Someone to talk to. Except really it’s not.

I think about ten-year-old Sarah and how she said that last thing she said about my parents on the stoop. They never stopped.

I try to remember them fighting. They bicker over little things sometimes, like who should have called the principal, but I don’t remember fighting. I barely ever see them in the same place at the same time. I’m sixteen and have some sort of parents-fighting amnesia. Bruce said it in Mexico—You can always come stay with me, no matter where I am. Now ten-year-old Sarah said they fought all the time.

They can’t be lying.

Maybe I’m just pretending like I did with the fish in Mexico or with Alleged Earl today. Maybe I pretend my parents say “I love you” to each other when they pass each other between work shifts. Maybe I pretend that my family is normal when I know it’s not normal to have a runaway brother. Maybe my whole life I’ve been living inside of an imaginary painting. I can’t figure out how I feel about this. But I know I feel uncomfortable. All the time.





Standing in Random Places



I observe Mom and Dad during the two hours they have together. I observe them while standing in random places—the thing I do. I stand behind the door to the kitchen while they talk about dinner.