Still Life with Tornado(68)

Mom says, “Come on!” to me. I don’t know where I’m going, but I grab my umbrella from the handle of the coat closet and follow them.

We close the front door behind us and we sit on the front step.

There is a tornado in our house. The sounds are scary, but the three of us are okay. Mom is shaking her head. Bruce is sighing a lot. I’m just numb.

I pull out my umbrella and open it. There is a tornado of bullshit in our house. When it’s over, we will be okay.

Bruce says to Mom, “You can stay with me.”

“I work tonight.”

“He needs to be gone by the time you come home, then.”

They look at me. I’m watching two cockroaches scurry across the drain cover on the street. “What?” I say.

“That’s been the problem all along,” Mom says. “I can’t leave her alone at night.” This makes me feel like the problem-all-along but I decide not to think about it. Judging from the tornado in our house right now, I know she doesn’t mean it that way. We all know who the problem-all-along is.

Bruce says, “I can stay here. I mean, if that’s okay.”

“But you have to get back. You have a job, right? Or a family?”

“Mom thinks you got baptized in a river,” I say.

Mom looks confused.

Bruce says, “I’ll take a few weeks off. Not a problem.”

Mom says, “This is too much.”

A loud crash comes from inside the house. It sounds like Dad just pushed over a bookshelf or maybe the TV. We can hear him yelling. Cursing. Goddammit!

I think of Earl and his screaming and cursing. Dad is art.

We hear Dad approaching the door and we all instinctively stand up from the step. He yanks the front door open. He says through the screen door, “I’m sorry.”

We stand there. I decide we’re all thinking the same thing. I decide we’re all asking Who is he?

“Will you come in? Can you give me a chance?” This is art.

I decide that if I go in, I’m keeping my umbrella open.

Mom says, “I want you out by tomorrow morning.”

Dad says, “Give me a break! I just got fired.”

“You didn’t get fired,” she says. “You got restructured.”

“I got fired.”

Mom sighs. “So you lied to us?”

“It’s embarrassing when a man gets fired,” he says. Art. Art. Art.

“Where are you from, Chet? The 1950s?”

“I need you guys,” he says. He means me and Mom. He is pretending that Bruce isn’t here.

“Out by tomorrow morning,” Mom says.

“I still don’t hit you!” he says.

Mom says, “You don’t get it.”

I get it. The absence of violence is not love.

Bruce says, “Do you want to go inside and talk about this like adults?”

Dad ignores Bruce. He says, “Helen. Please. You can’t kick me out now. Sarah has two more years.”

“I’m fine, Dad.” I keep telling myself that I’m not the problem-all-along.

“You’re a kid! You don’t even go to school!” He pushes the screen door when he says this. He is fistfighting anything that isn’t human.

“I’m not coming in if you’re like this,” Mom says. I look at Dad-behind-the-screen-door. He’s scary. Scarier than I’ve ever seen him. He looks a little crazy, too. I wouldn’t go in if I were her, either. I’ve never been scared of Dad, but now I am. I can’t tell if it’s because of the meat grinder or the present situation. He did just beat up my house.

He says, “Then you go find another place to live. This is my house.”

Mom sighs. “Chet, you’re acting like a child.”

Dad mocks her with an exaggerated sigh. “Helen, you’re acting like a bitch.”

Bruce pulls out his phone and dials 911.

I can see through the screen door that Dad wrecked the living room. The coffee table is broken into two pieces. He’s pushed over the bookcase. He’s sweating and out of breath. His pants still look stupid.

Mom looks pained that Bruce is calling the police. Her hand is on her head—fingertips on her forehead, her thumb on her cheek like she has a headache. She stays in front of the door so Dad won’t stop Bruce from calling.

Here’s the thing, I think. You hope that you can get the rats out of your own house with things you can buy at the hardware store. But eventually, if they don’t leave, you have to call the exterminator.

None of us ever wanted it to come to this.

I look at Dad, now back in the living room looking for things to smash. He picks up the ceramic owl I made in elementary school and before he throws it, I scream, “No!” but he throws it anyway and it smashes against the tiles in front of the woodstove.

I loved that owl. Mom loved that owl. Dad loved it more than anyone.

The owl was the beginning of the dream. It was the night when we all sat around the dinner table and talked about how good I was at art.

First grade. That was the beginning of the dream.

Maybe before Lichtenstein painted Sleeping Girl he made an owl that was superior to his classmates’ owls. Maybe it was made out of dots. Maybe in that owl he kept his muse—the beginning of his dream. Maybe before the soap lady got buried in alkaline she had her own dreams, but now she’s just screaming forever over on 22nd Street encased and on display like art.