Without Merit(14)

Victoria has just resigned to pretending my mother doesn’t exist. The same way my siblings and I pretend Victoria doesn’t exist. We don’t see the point in befriending a woman we despise, simply because she’s the mother of our little half brother.

Since the day Victoria entered our lives, our family hasn’t been the same. And while we do hold our father accountable for half of our family issues, he is still required to love us. Which makes him harder to blame than Victoria, who doesn’t even like us.

Victoria scoops up the bananas and layers them over the top of Moby’s bowl of oatmeal. “Moby, come eat your breakfast!”

Moby crawls out from under the table and stands up. “I’m not hungry.” He wipes glaze off his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. There’s no hiding that he just inhaled a donut, and there’s no sense in trying to hide that I’m the one who gave it to him.

“Moby,” Victoria says, taking him in. “What in the world is all over your . . .” Here we go. “Merit! I told you not to give him donuts.”

I look at Victoria innocently just as my father walks into the room. She turns her attention to him, waving the knife in the air that she was just using to slice bananas. “Merit gave Moby a donut for breakfast!”

My father gently slides his fingers around her wrist and grabs the knife. He leans in and kisses her on the cheek and then sets the knife on the counter, finding me in his crowd of children. “Merit, we talked about this. Do it again and you’re grounded.”

I nod, assuming that’s the end of it. But Victoria doesn’t stop there, because a donut for breakfast is the equivalent to Armageddon and it deserves all the panic.

“You never ground them,” she accuses. She grabs the bowl of oatmeal and walks it over to the trash. She angrily scoops the contents of the bowl into the trash. “I’ve never seen you actually follow through with a single punishment, Barnaby. It’s why they act like this.”

They being my father’s three oldest children. And it’s the truth. He’s full of empty threats and very little follow-through. It’s my favorite thing about him.

“Sweetie, lighten up. Maybe Merit didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to give him a donut today.”

Nothing irks Victoria more than when my father takes our side over hers. “Of course Merit knows not to give him a donut. She doesn’t listen to me. None of them do.” Victoria chucks the bowl in the sink and bends to pick up Moby. She sets him on the counter near the sink and wets a napkin to wipe donut remnants off his face. “Moby, you cannot eat donuts. They are very bad for you. They make you sleepy, and when you’re sleepy, you can’t perform well in school.”

Never mind the fact that he’s four and isn’t even in real school yet.

My father sips from his coffee cup and then reaches over to Moby and ruffles his hair. “Listen to your mother, buddy.” He carries his coffee and newspaper to the table, taking the seat next to me. He gives me a look that says he’s not happy with me. I just stare at him with the hope that he demands I apologize, or asks me why I broke one of Victoria’s rules again.

But he doesn’t. Which means my no-speaking streak is looking good for day four.

I wonder if anyone will notice my taciturnity. Not that I’m giving anyone the silent treatment. I’m seventeen years old. Hardly a child. But I do feel invisible in this house most of the time and I’m curious how long it will take before someone notices I haven’t spoken out loud.

I realize it’s a bit passive aggressive, but it’s not like I’m doing it to prove a point to them. It’s simply to prove a point to myself. I wonder if I can make it an entire week. I once read a quote that said, “Don’t make your presence known. Make your absence felt.”

No one in this family notices my presence or my absence. They would all notice Honor’s. But I was born second, which just makes me a faded copy of the original.

“What’s going on the marquee today, Utah?” my father asks.

It’s bad enough all the ex-parishioners of this church still hold a grudge against my father for buying this house, but the marquee digs the knife in even deeper. I’m sure the daily quotes that have nothing to do with Christianity get under people’s skin. Yesterday’s quote said CHARLES DARWIN ATE EVERY ANIMAL HE DISCOVERED.

I had to Google that fact because it sounded too insane to be true. It’s true.

“You’ll see in five minutes,” Utah says. He downs the rest of his shake and pushes away from the table.

“Wait,” Honor says. “Maybe you should hold off on updating the marquee today. You know, out of respect.”

Utah stares blankly at Honor, which clues her in that none of us knows what she’s talking about.

She looks at my father. “Pastor Brian died last night.”

I immediately turn my attention to my father at that news. He rarely shows emotion, and I’m not sure what kind of emotion this will bring him. But surely it’ll be something. A tear? A smile? He stares stoically at Honor as he absorbs the news.

“He did?”

She nods. “Yeah, I saw it on Facebook this morning. Heart attack.”

My father leans back in his chair, gripping his coffee cup. He looks down at the cup. “He’s dead?”

Victoria puts a hand on my father’s shoulder and says something to him, but I tune her out. Until this moment, I had forgotten all about Wolfgang showing up last night.