Along for the Ride(69)

I just looked at him. From the living room, I could hear Laura chanting.

‘My little sister,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Staying out all night with a boy. Seems like just yesterday you were playing Barbies and skipping rope.’

‘Hollis, please,’ I said. ‘Mom considered Barbies weapons of chauvinism, and nobody’s skipped rope since 1950.’

‘I just can’t believe,’ he said, ignoring this, ‘you’re growing up so fast. Next you’ll be married and bouncing a baby on your knee.’

I ignored this, walking past him to the stairs, but it didn’t stop him, not then, and not the mornings that followed, when he always managed to be waiting for me, opening the door as I came up the front walk. One day he was actually sitting on the porch when we pulled up, necessitating both an introduction and a conversation with Eli.

‘Nice guy,’ he’d said, when I’d finally wrangled him away. ‘What’s with the scars on his arm, though?’

‘Car accident,’ I told him.

‘Really? What happened?’

‘I don’t really know, actually.’

He shot me a doubtful look as he pulled the front door open for me. ‘Seems kind of weird, considering how much time you two spend together.’

I shrugged. ‘Not really. It just hasn’t come up.’

I could tell he didn’t believe me, not that I cared. I’d long ago stopped trying to explain my relationship with Eli to anyone, including myself. It wasn’t any one thing, but many strung together: long nights, trips to Park Mart and Builder’s Supply, pie with Clyde, bowling in the early morning, and my quest. We didn’t talk about our scars, the ones you could see, and the ones you couldn’t. Instead, I was having all the fun and frivolousness I was due in one summer, night by night.

Now, my mother took another sip of her wine as I left the bathroom, heading back down the hall. Thisbe’s door was slightly ajar, and I could hear her waves, steady and crashing, over and over again.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘frankly, I’m glad to hear you’re not getting involved with someone. The last thing you need before you head off to Defriese is some boy begging you to stay with him. A smart woman knows a fling is always best.’

There had been a time when I liked my mother to think we were similar. Even craved it. But hearing this, I felt a weird twinge, something not settling right. What I was doing with Eli wasn’t like her and her graduate student(s).

‘So,’ I said, shaking this off, ‘how’s Hollis doing?’

She sighed, loud and long. ‘He’s insane. Completely insane. I came home yesterday and do you know what he was doing?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Wearing a tie.’ She gave this a minute to sink in, then added, ‘She had him interviewing for a job at a bank. Your brother! Who this time last year was living in a tent on the side of a mountain in Germany!’

It was just too easy to get my mom off my back these days. One mention of Hollis, and she was off and running. ‘A bank,’ I said. ‘What’s he going to be, a teller or something?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said irritably. ‘I didn’t even ask, I was so horrified. He did volunteer, however, that Laura thinks employment might help him to be “more responsible” and “prepared for their future together”. Like that’s a good thing. I don’t even think this is a relationship, it’s so dysfunctional. I don’t know what to call it.’

‘Call it chicken salad.’

‘What?’

Too late, I realized this had slipped out, without me even realizing it. ‘Nothing,’ I told her.

I heard footsteps, and looked down the hall just in time to see Heidi and my dad coming upstairs. From the looks of it they, too, were having a pretty intense conversation: my dad was throwing his arms around, his annoyed face on, while she just shook her head. I eased my door shut, switching my phone to my other ear.

‘… ridiculous,’ my mom was saying now. ‘Two years of culture and travel, and for what? To sit and process deposits all day long? It’s heartbreaking.’

She really sounded sad. Still, I couldn’t help but say, ‘Mom, most people Hollis’s age have jobs, you know. Especially if they aren’t in school.’

‘I didn’t raise either of you to be like most people,’ she replied. ‘Don’t you know that by now?’

I had a flash of myself the night before, standing at the Park Mart with Eli, in the toy section. He’d stopped by a big display of rubber sport balls, pulling one out and bouncing it on the floor. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘Hear that?’

‘The bouncing noise?’

‘It’s more,’ he told me, ‘than a bouncing noise. That is the noise of imminent pain.’

I looked at the ball, still moving up and down under his open palm. ‘Pain?’

‘In dodgeball,’ he explained. ‘Or kickball, if you were playing the way we did.’

‘Wait!’ I said, holding up my hand. ‘I have played dodgeball. And kickball.’

‘Really.’

I nodded.

‘I’m impressed. And they aren’t even indoor sports.’

‘Oh, it was, actually. At school, in the gym.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘What? It’s the same game.’