Still Life with Tornado(15)

“I’m making fettuccine Alfredo,” Mom says.

“As long as there’s garlic bread,” Dad says.

“You make the garlic bread,” she says.

“Okay,” he answers.

Then silence until Mom plugs her phone into her headphones and plays heavy metal and I hear the thumping bass-drum triples of Lars Ulrich a room away. And if you think night ER-trauma nurses who listen to Metallica are original, you’re wrong. A lot of her coworkers are metalheads, too. She says metal makes them feel more at home when they’re away from the chaos of car accidents, crude drunks, and strokes.

Dad hates metal. He makes the garlic bread. I hear the oven door open. I hear the oven door close. I hear him set the timer. He says, “That’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”

She says nothing because she can’t hear him through her headphones. If she does hear him, she probably just nods. I can’t see them. I can only hear them.

I move to the upstairs hallway and listen to Dad talking on the phone in his room. He has a room. Mom has a room. I never thought of this as unusual.

I can’t hear much. I hear him say “I’m sorry” twice. I hear him say “Good-bye.” I don’t move when I hear his doorknob turn. I don’t care if he sees me. I congratulate myself for being original compared to most eavesdroppers.

“Oh. I didn’t see you there,” he says.

“Me neither,” I say.

I want to ask him who he was saying sorry to, but I don’t.

? ? ?

Fifteen minutes later, I’m cracking black pepper onto a steaming plate of Alfredo and crunching a piece of garlic bread. I wait for dinner conversation between them, but there is none. Between bites, they only talk to me.

“Where’d you go today?” Dad asks.

“Just walked around town,” I say.

“You should have told me where you were going,” he says.

“I had my phone. You could have called,” I said.

Dad nods and shrugs.

Mom puts her hand under the table for a second and I think she’s wiping it on her napkin, but her napkin is on the table next to her plate.

“I saw the museum ticket on your dresser,” Mom says. “So you’re skipping school to look at art?”

“You were in my room?”

“Delivering laundry. Can’t afford drones. Yet,” she says.

“What are you going to do about school?” Dad asks.

“I’m going to get expelled,” I say.

“Great life plan,” Dad says.

I shrug and nod.

Mom looks at me a little too long and then takes a deep breath. Before she can say anything, I say, “I think I’ll just drop out this week if that’s okay with you.”

“It’s not okay with me,” Dad says.

Mom chews on her garlic bread.

“You can’t go to college if you don’t have a diploma,” Dad says.

Mom says, “Picasso didn’t have a diploma.”

Dad shrugs. Mom puts her hand under the table. I just eat my food because no matter what they say, I’m not going to school.

? ? ?

I stand in the study while they do dishes.

Mom says, “Did you unload the dishwasher?”

Dad says, “No.”

Mom says, “What did you do all day?”

Dad says nothing. I picture him shrugging.

Mom turns off the water and says, “I have to get ready for work.”

When she walks through the study, she does it backward with her hands aimed at Dad in her sweatshirt pockets until she sees me. Then she turns around and walks normally through the living room and goes upstairs to take a shower and get ready for work.

? ? ?

I don’t think they love each other. I don’t think they even like each other. I can’t figure out what to think about this, but I feel instantly lonely.

Since I deleted my profile on The Social, I don’t have anything except real life. And this is my real life. Anyway, by the time I deleted my profile everyone I’d connected with disconnected from me. Vicky-the-grand-prizewinner posted some crazy stuff about how she was accused and how she was innocent and how anyone who knew what she was talking about should block the accuser.

I didn’t accuse anyone of anything.

I just asked the same questions anyone else would have asked.

Vicky-the-grand-prizewinner is lucky I didn’t ask more questions about other things. Because there were other things.

It’s a long story.





MEXICO—Day One: Vomitorium



Day One, when we arrived at the resort and checked in, a man was supposed to take us to our room but instead he took us to a desk claiming that he had to “show us around the resort map.” Mom and I had to pee, but we sat in the chairs in front of the desk because we were told to. Dad kept his eyes on our luggage, which was stacked on a cart and sitting next to twenty other carts. The lobby was wide and open. There were cushioned benches, ceiling fans, a bar, a baby grand piano, the sounds of foreign birds. Paradise.

Bruce was still okay then. He was excited to come on vacation with us. He’d just finished his first year of college. He said he really needed the break.

The man behind the desk, Alejandro, talked so fast none of us could keep up. He wasn’t talking about the map or the resort. He was talking about the opportunity we had as a family to increase our vacation potential. It wasn’t a time-share, he said. It was a vacation club. After listening to him for ten minutes, we had a raffle ticket and breakfast appointment at ten the next morning for—we weren’t sure. But we could finally go to our room and pee.