Still Life with Tornado(61)

All this.

My life.

Mom is completely lost because she doesn’t know what Earl is talking about. Earl is trying to wipe a drip of greasy cheese out of his dusty beard and Mom holds his Coke can for him.

“I can’t say I miss you in the ER, Earl, but I worry about you.”

“My son’s up at Drexel now. He’s doing great.”

“College already?” Mom says. “My God. It’s been a long time.”

“He’s going to be a teacher,” Earl says. “Just like his old man.”

“You’re a teacher?” I ask.

“I was. Twenty-five years. Taught middle school.”

“An art teacher?” I ask, thinking of Miss Smith. Thinking of how much I want Earl to be my art teacher.

“History,” he says. Then he turns to Mom. “Helen, you know I think I saw your boy down on Pine Street? He looks good!”

Mom stops eating her pizza. I stop eating my pizza.

Earl keeps going. “He filled out. Last I saw him he was scrawny. How old is he now?”

It’s like they’re two old friends. I ask, “How long have you guys known each other?”

Mom says, “Bruce lives in Oregon now. You must have seen his double.”

Earl looks at me. I can’t say anything. I take a bite of pizza. Earl takes a bite of pizza but he keeps looking at me. Mom’s frown is deep in her forehead. It looks like a scar between her eyebrows.

Earl says, “The first time I met your mom you probably weren’t even born.”

Mom says, “You had pneumonia. You let it go too long.”

“Your mom saved my life,” he says.

“She saved your life?”

“Saved my life,” he says.

Mom eats her pizza. She knows Bruce is in town; I can feel it. Maybe mothers have an extra sense or something. Maybe they can tell when their son is in town and no one has told them.

Earl looks back at me. “I’d be dead.”

“You were dead,” Mom says.

“That’s when I saw the light. When I got my calling.”

Mom nods. “Thank God I walked in. That other nurse had no idea you were about to tank.” I think about this. I wonder if Mom has noticed that I’m tanking. I don’t think she does.

“So, you were a history teacher,” I say. “So how’d you end up—um—here?” Mom and Earl look at me funny. I add, “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“I gave up all my possessions. I freed myself from all my responsibilities.”

“Oh,” I say.

“I got laid off. I sold everything I had to pay hospital bills.”

“The other way you said it sounded nicer,” I say.

“The truth will set you free,” he says again.

“But aren’t there places that could help you? You could totally get a job at one of those learning centers,” I say.

“I have a job,” he says. “You know I have a job. You’ve been following me around watching me do it.”

“You’ve been following Earl?” Mom says.

“Her and her sister. I didn’t know you had another one,” he says.

I look at Mom. “Ten-year-old Sarah.”

She goes to say something but she just eats another bite of pizza instead. Earl does, too. I pick my slice up and am about to shove the crust into my mouth but I say, “Mom, Bruce is here. He’s staying at a B and B. I had dinner with him last night. Sorry I lied. I just didn’t want to make you angry.”

I don’t know why I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m scared to make my mother angry. My emotions are smaller than they should be. I’m the one who should be angry, but I’m cranky or upset. As if a sixteen-year-old can’t be angry for real.

A tear crawls down Mom’s cheek. It moves so slowly I can’t figure if it will drip onto her pizza or if it will be absorbed into her skin before it does.

Mom says, “So while you’re skipping school, you follow Earl around?”

“Just for a few days.”

“Other days she goes up to places she shouldn’t,” Earl says. He looks at me. “That’s a dangerous place, that old school.”

Mom is entirely confused.

“It’s better than real school.”

Earl chews and thinks on this a minute.

Mom says, “Something happened in school and she won’t tell me.”

They both look at me. I shove the crust into my mouth and when I’m done chewing, I say, “There is no such thing as an original idea.”

Earl says, “Who told you that?”

“My art teacher.”

He shakes his head. “Is she an artist?”

I never thought about this before. I’ve never seen anything she made. Mom goes back to eating her pizza. I want to tell Earl everything. Instead I just answer his question.

“I don’t think so, no,” I say.

He nods, slowly.

Mom says, “How long has Bruce been in town?”

“Yesterday.” Earl and I say this in unison. He says it calmly. I say it with anger. He looks at me and smiles and I have no idea why. It doesn’t make me any less angry. I wonder if Earl was following me and not the other way around. And this is art. Everything is art.