Now Is Not the Time to Panic(4)

“Do you like it here?” Zeke asked me while I was taking out one tape and trying to put in another. And now we had to talk. I guessed I was okay with this.

“It’s fine,” I said, crouched over the VHS machine. And it was, honestly. What would I do in a city? Go dancing? Eat a fifty-dollar steak at some fancy restaurant? Well, I mean, maybe go to a museum. That would be fun. But I was sixteen. I lived inside of myself way more than I lived inside of this town.

“But,” he said, pressing me, “what do you do for fun?”

“This,” I said, frustrated, holding up a copy of Fright Night. What did he want from me? Did I have to prove to him that I was cool, that I didn’t belong in Coalfield? “Why?” I finally asked, turning it back on him. “Where did you come from that’s so great?”

“Memphis,” he said. “And it’s not so great, really. But, you know, there’s some okay stuff. Memphis Chicks baseball games. Mall of Memphis, you can ice-skate there. Audubon Park.”

“Well, okay, that does sound pretty cool. Ice-skating would be cool.”

“But,” he said, smiling, “here we are.”

“Why did you move here?” I asked him.

“I didn’t have any say in it. It’s messed up.” He kind of looked at me for a few seconds, like he was trying to decide what he would and would not tell me. And this intrigued me, that his story required editing. I got up off the floor and sat next to him on the sofa.

“My dad’s been having an affair,” he told me. “I guess he’s been having a few of them, because one of the women found out about the other one.”

“Oh, god,” I said.

“Yeah, and she called our house to rat him out, but I answered the phone. And she told me about how he was really a bad guy and was treating her wrong, and that I needed to divorce him and then get that other lady to stop seeing him, and only then would she think about staying with him, and I was like, ‘Ma’am, I’m his son,’ and she said, ‘Oh, honey, you have such a high voice,’ and I hung up.”

“Your voice isn’t that high,” I offered.

“Well, on the phone I try to be super polite, so my voice is soft. It’s no big deal. That’s not really what made me so mad.”

“No, I know, but still.”

“Yeah, thanks, but the point is, I got angry and I kicked a hole in the wall and my mom ran in and I told her what was happening. We got in the car and drove to my dad’s office, and she started shouting at him in front of other people, and then, well . . .”

“What?” I asked.

“I don’t really remember, honestly. Sometimes, when I get really stressed, I just kind of lose myself? Like I go into some trance, my ears start ringing. I feel kind of fuzzy and hot. And I can kind of be . . . destructive, I guess. Not often, right? But sometimes. Anyways, my mom says that I jumped on my dad and tried to claw his eyes out and some of my dad’s employees had to drag me off of him and hold me down. Like, they sat on me for a pretty long time. They said I was speaking in tongues or something.”

“Jesus, Zeke,” I said, but I kind of wished that I had been able to do that to my dad.

“My dad’s secretary asked if she should call the cops, and he said not to. He said we’d get me into a hospital or something, but my mom nixed that. She packed us up, and we drove here because this is where my grandmother lives. I guess my mom grew up here, but she never really talked about it, and she doesn’t seem so jazzed about being back. So we’re here until my mom decides what to do about my dad. She says we might be here forever or we might go back in a month. She just doesn’t know.”

“That sucks,” I told him.

“And, I don’t know, I want to go back home. I miss my house, you know? I have to go back to school at the end of the summer, right? But I don’t really feel like it would be so great if my mom just went back to him. Unless he really changed. But how long would it take for someone like that to change? It feels like it could be a long time.”

“My dad left us,” I told him. “Two years ago. He got his secretary pregnant, and he told my mom just a few days before their anniversary because the secretary was getting mad at him for not telling my mom, and then a few days later, he and this woman moved up north. I guess he’d been planning it for a while. He got a transfer. I think it was a promotion. I don’t know. He kept saying ‘a fresh start,’ but he meant for him and this woman and, you know, that dumb baby. It’s a girl. And you know what they named it?”

“What?” he asked.

“Frances,” I said. “That’s my grandmother’s name, his mom. I never even knew her; she died when I was little. But still. I mean, that’s my name.”

“That’s fucked up,” he admitted.

“I thought so,” I said. “My mom really thought so.”

“Does he call the baby Frankie?” he asked.

“I’m afraid to ask,” I said. “He sent us a birth announcement, and it was all fancy so it just said Frances.”

“Do you talk to him?” he asked.

“Never,” I said. “He sends us money because he has to, but I don’t talk to him. I’ll never talk to him.”

“I haven’t talked to my dad since we moved here,” Zeke told me. “I keep thinking maybe he’ll call, but he doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t have our number.”