Indestructible Object

by Mary McCoy

  “All of it.”

  * * *

  Max and I go around to the back of the building, the same way the landlady took my dad when she showed him the apartment. The rickety back staircase leads to a screened-in porch with a washer and dryer on it, and the doors to two apartments. I can’t remember which one is my dad’s, but there’s a dead plant on the shelf above the dryer, and my dad hasn’t lived here long enough to kill a plant. Then again, maybe the last couple who lived here abandoned it when they broke up horribly and left their weird relationship ghosts all over the place.

  While I’m trying to solve the dead-plant logic puzzle, Max has put his ear to the door.

  “They’re in here,” he says. “I can hear your dad’s records.”

  He tries the doorknob, which opens. I make a mental note to remind my dad to lock his door at night so people don’t wander in off the street.

  We enter through the kitchen, where the garbage can we bought at Target earlier that day is overflowing with paper plates and beer bottles. There are a couple of mostly empty boxes from Memphis Pizza Café on the counter as well. The clock on the stove says 11:34, so though we’re late, at least we’re before-midnight late. We cut through the kitchen, past the bedroom my dad had said could be mine. We go through the bookshelf secret passageway, which bypasses his bedroom. I expect to see my dad sitting on an upturned milk crate eating a slice of pizza and looking forlorn, while Sage sits by, exhausted from helping with the move, and only staying awake with my night-owl dad out of politeness.

  But when we come out the other side of the secret passageway, there is a small party in progress. A tame, middle-aged party, but a party nonetheless with records and pizza and beer and milk crates, and it doesn’t feel depressing at all; it feels nice and neighborly. I see my dad in the front room, adjusting the air conditioner. Sage is sitting on an orange velvet couch I don’t recognize, talking to Trudy from Java Cabana and her girlfriend, Kyra. Maggie is there too, talking to someone I don’t recognize, possibly one of my dad’s new neighbors. It’s an unusual guest list, and I wonder if he invited every person he ran into today. Then again, even if he did, they all showed up.

  Max freezes as soon as he comes out of the secret passageway, and I realize it’s the first time he’s had to be in the same room with both his parents since they arrived in Memphis.

  “Are you okay?” I whisper.

  “It’s fine,” Max says.

  Then my dad sees me, and from across the room, I see his face light up. He opens up his arms, and because my eyes are still red from crying like a little kid, I go running into his bear hug.

  “I didn’t think you’d come,” he says.

  “Dad…” I start to speak, but I don’t know where to go from there. The last time I saw him, I hadn’t been outed as a cheater and a liar. I hadn’t been worried about betraying him by digging into his life, his pain, and turning it into a story. I hadn’t known that my mom was secretly back in Memphis and apparently hiding out at his best friend’s apartment.

  I don’t know whether it would be better to tell him the truth or not. I look over his shoulder and try to meet Maggie’s eye for some clue, but she won’t even look at me, like she feels guilty for helping my mom keep her secrets.

  My dad doesn’t wait for me to figure out where to begin. He pulls back, studies me, and asks, “Are you okay?”

  “Not really,” I say, and then I start to cry again. “I’m sorry.”

  “What do you have to be sorry about?” he asks. “Besides being grossly late to my housewarming party, but that’s hardly anything to cry about.”

  “You never wanted to talk about the past, and instead, your past ended up spewed out into the world for anyone to hear, and I know you must hate that, and I’m sorry for all of it.”

  “I don’t hate it,” he says.

  “You said we needed to talk about it. Nobody ever says ‘we need to talk’ when they’re happy about something.”

  “I’m not happy with the way I’ve handled things,” he says. “Maybe that’s what I was trying to say. There was a joke I used to tell your mom, ‘Why would I talk about my feelings with you when I could just bury them in the backyard?’ Only she never thought that joke was very funny, and I don’t even have a backyard anymore, so what I’m saying is, it’s occurred to me that I may need to find a new place to put my feelings.”

  Max hovers nearby, trying to give us space for our conversation while also trying to look like he’s part of it, avoiding making eye contact with Maggie and Sage. My dad notices him and falls into hosting mode.

  “Come back to the kitchen with me,” he tells us. “I’ll get you something to eat.”

  I’ve barely eaten anything all day, and when I remember the boxes of Memphis Pizza Café in the kitchen, my mouth starts to water. We follow my dad back through the secret passageway, and in the kitchen, he gets us paper plates and pours glasses of sweet tea.

  And he’s just about to go back through the secret passageway when the bookshelf opens and Maggie comes through looking like she’s on a mission, and Max, whose mouth is full of garlic-and-tomato pie, dodges around her and cuts back through by himself, like his mom is invisible, and why would you acknowledge someone who isn’t there?

  Maggie is tiny, with a bouncy ponytail and bright red lipstick and a dress that’s printed with cats in rocket ships, and yet, when she’s as angry as she is with Max right now, all the cuteness of her style turns huge and ominous. She turns on her kitten heel and storms after Max through the secret passageway. I follow behind them, in case Max needs backup or moral support.

  Before Max gets to the other end of the secret passageway, the false bookshelf swings open from the other side and Sage appears. Max freezes, blocked in by both people he’d hoped to avoid, with no way to escape them.

  “Where have you been all day?” Maggie asks, livid. “Why is your suitcase sitting in the front room?”

  Max tilts his head back and sighs loudly.

  “I’m here now, aren’t I?” he says, ignoring both of her questions.

  Maggie turns around and sees me hanging back like we’re trying to melt into the walls.

  “Lee,” she says, “would you mind giving us a minute?”

  “I want her here,” Max says, so forcefully it seems to catch Maggie off guard.

  “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Max, but I’m sick of it.”

  “Which part of this are you sick of?” Max asks. He turns to face her, holding his shoulders back, his chin lifted. And yes, he’s wearing a tank top and vinyl pants and black patent leather boots, but when he straightens up and gives Maggie his star-pupil posture, I can see him projecting the Max she’s talking about, the sweet, preppy gay boy who attended formal dances wearing bow ties.

  I take a deep breath. He’s practically daring her to come right out and say it.

  “You’re different,” she says.

  “And different is bad?”

  On the other side of the secret passageway, Sage has been quiet, perhaps relieved to have someone else sharing Max’s anger.

  Before Maggie can answer, Sage clears their throat and speaks up. “Max, when you’re a parent, you think you know who your kid is. And when it seems like something has changed, the first thing you do is worry.”

  Max folds his arms across his chest and slouches into a pose that’s both indifferent and impenetrable. I can’t see his expression, but the earnest optimism on Sage’s face vanishes.

  “If there was one person I thought I could count on to understand this, one person I thought might know what I was talking about when I said, ‘The way I used to understand myself doesn’t feel true anymore,’ it was you, Sage. I thought you’d get it.”

  “I do get it,” Sage says, but their words are drowned out by Maggie, who bursts in.

  “But you didn’t say that to us. You started dressing like… I don’t even know, and you were awful to Niko, and started sneaking that girl into your room. And you didn’t
tell us what was going on with you; you just started treating us like we were the enemy.”

  I can see how angry Max is. He looks like he’s about to say things that can’t be taken back, and Maggie looks like she’s going to go there right along with him. There’s a reason my mom is tight with Maggie, and my dad is closer with Sage. They have similar fighting styles.

  “Her name is Xochitl, and if I’d believed you were capable of treating her like a human being, I might have let her in through the front door.”

  “You want to be mad and say I’m being judgmental, but really, I’m just looking at my kind, considerate, happy kid and wondering why he’s acting like such a jerk all of a sudden.”

  “That’s really loving and supportive. Thanks for the feedback, Maggie.”

  Maggie’s about to tear into him again, when Sage steps between Maggie and Max and meets Maggie’s eyes.

  “Honey, stop this,” Sage says, then puts their hand on Maggie’s shoulder. To my astonishment, Maggie backs down, and Sage turns to look at Max as well.

  “Nobody has acted perfectly here. But also, nobody has acted unforgivably. And so, Max, the question I have for you is, if we, your parents, can admit to you that we have messed up, what do you propose we do about that? What do you want?”

  Neither Max nor Maggie speaks. Maggie’s eyeing Sage like they’re a traitor, waiting to see what Max does, and I’m worried because I don’t know whether he’ll speak up or shut down. Max isn’t stubborn like Maggie is. He isn’t someone who goes out of his way to win fights by getting in the last word or proving he’s right. In fact, a few hours earlier, he tried to flee Memphis rather than face a conflict.

  After a long silence, Max finally speaks.

  “I’m not always going to be the same person,” he says. “I mean, I’ll always be me, but whatever it was that made you like me so much better before—being that person was crushing me. And I had to do something because I knew I was either going to be crushed, or I was going to explode. I guess I exploded.”

  Sage puts a hand on Max’s shoulder, and he doesn’t brush it off.

  “You didn’t explode, Max,” Sage says. “You bloomed.”

  Sage hugs Max, and I see his shoulders heaving as he sobs onto their shoulder.

  Sage holds out an arm to Maggie, who steps into the family hug.

  “I’m sorry, Max,” Maggie says.

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “Will you let me into your life, though?”

  “What do you mean?” Max asks warily.

  “I mean that I will love you always, but will you let me know what’s on your mind and how you feel about the world? Because if it seems like I liked you better before, maybe it’s just that I knew you better then. I miss knowing you like that.”

  “I’ll try,” Max says. “You don’t get to know everything, though.”

  “That’s okay,” Maggie says.

  “That’s how it should be,” Sage adds.

  “But we are here for whatever you want to tell us because we love you more than anything.”

  As Sage and Maggie wrap Max up in another hug, I realize that Max doesn’t need me there now, and I’m just intruding on a personal moment. I back out the way we came, to join my dad where I’d left him, standing in the dining room, awkward and alone.

  But when I push open the bookshelf, I see that he’s not alone at all.

  In that tiny room, a room you can hardly call a dining room because a single card table almost fills it up, my dad is standing face-to-face with my mom, and I can tell from the look on his face that she was not invited to the housewarming party.

  CHAPTER 36 Finish This with Style

  What are you doing here?” I ask.

  The last time I saw her, she looked fresh and crisp and together. Now she looks like she’s been sleeping in her clothes.

  “I was looking for you,” she says.

  My dad glares at her. “That doesn’t mean you can just show up here.”

  “I wasn’t planning on making a habit of it, Arthur.”

  I can tell that they’re winding up for one of their circular fights that take place about two kilometers west of the thing they need to discuss, so I step in.

  “You found me,” I say to my mom. “What do you want?”

  “I was worried about you,” she says. “I knew you were going through a lot right now, and I wanted to be here for you.”

  I want to believe that she missed me, that she wanted to take care of me after what happened with Vincent and the podcast, and that’s what brought her back to Memphis so fast. Maybe that’s part of it, but I’ve seen the VHS tape of her engagement party. And Harold knows I’ve seen it.

  “So you came home from New Orleans and decided not to tell anyone about it?”

  Her eyes widen in surprise, and I can see her trying to figure out how I know, who ratted her out, who to blame for getting caught.

  “How long have you been back?” I ask. “How long before you were going to tell someone?”

  She’s flustered for a moment because I never talk to her like this. I’ve always been an appreciative audience for her free-spirit spontaneity, not the person who was yelling at her for it. Finally, though, she plays it cool, like I’m the child with the wild, rangy emotions and she’s the adult with a rational explanation for all of this.

  “I needed a little more time alone to collect myself,” she says.

  I’m not buying it.

  “But you weren’t by yourself,” I say.

  “Lee, I’ve only been back in town for a few hours. I got a flight this afternoon.”

  “And then you went right to Harold’s apartment. Were you two getting your stories straight or something?”

  My dad tenses up. “What were you doing with Harold?”

  My mom pulls back like she’s been slapped and her cool I-don’t-have-to-explain-myself-to-you look fades, and for a second, she looks like she might cry.

  “He’s my friend too, you know.”

  My dad looks disoriented by this, though he does not dispute that it is true. Maggie has always been Mom’s friend, and Sage has always been Dad’s friend, but Harold has always belonged to both of them, insofar as you can assign the custody of a friendship.

  “He’s here, actually,” my mom says. “On the back steps.”

  “Why on earth is he outside on the porch like a dog?” my dad asks. “Why doesn’t he just come in?”

  “Would you want to walk into the middle of this?” she asks.

  He’s just on the other side of the door, and I’m sure he can hear them, sniping at each other, talking about him like he’s not even there. I slip out from between them and out the back door. I’d rather be sitting on the porch with Harold and the dead plant than trapped in a galley kitchen with my parents.

  Harold’s sitting on the back stoop where my mom left him, his knees tucked up to his chin, looking out over the parking lot.

  “I’m sorry, Lee,” he says. “Your mom was pretty upset when I told her you’d seen the tape.”

  “So she came back to Memphis to hide out in your apartment?”

  “She needed a few hours to think. She wanted to explain herself to you, but then you weren’t at the house, and we couldn’t find Max. We came here because it was the only other place we could think of where you might be at this hour.”

  “It’s been eighteen years,” I tell him. “Why did she have to track me down tonight?”

  He picks at the rust on the staircase railing, and it rains down on the steps in chunks so big, I’m amazed it doesn’t dissolve in his hands.

  “You’re her kid,” he says. “She cares what you think; she cares how you feel about things.”

  He looks down at his shoes again, then says, “Come on. We should go inside. I’m sure they’re done fighting by now.”

  I know he’s right. We’ve both seen enough of my parents’ fights to know their rhythms. My parents stop mid-sentence when we come in the door. I don’t even want to kno
w what they were in the middle of saying to each other.

  “Nice of you to join the party,” my dad says. “What were you two talking about out there?”

  “Lee has the videotape from your engagement party,” Harold says. He can’t quite look my dad in the eye, like he’s blaming himself even though the tape was in our house.

  My mom clears her throat and stands face-to-face with my dad, her back against the refrigerator, him leaning against the sink.

  “The thing is, Arthur, she’s already seen it.”

  “Oh, that explains why you two are so damn twitchy,” my dad says.

  “So I’m twitchy now?” my mom spits back at him.

  My dad ignores her and turns to me. “I take it that’s going in your podcast too?”

  “It doesn’t have to, Dad,” I say. I think about my parents, rubbing my shoulders when I was little and saying I am calm, I am calm. Right now, all I want is for them to do that to themselves.

  Harold nods to my bag where my recorder and microphone are.

  “How’d the sound quality come out, ripping VHS to digital?” Harold asks.

  My parents both turn and stare at him in astonishment.

  “How’d the sound quality come out?” my mom asks. “That’s what you want to know?”

  My dad can’t keep himself from laughing, and when he turns to look at my mom, something in his face softens. I can tell she sees it, and they size each other up, until finally my dad says, “So, how about it, Maya?”

  “How about what?” she asks tentatively.

  “Shall we listen to it for old times’ sake? Go back to the spot where it all went wrong?”

  She squints like she’s trying to get a read on him, trying to figure out whether he’s messing with her, or being cruel, or whether he’s serious about this.

  She sees the smile in his eyes and decides to call his bluff.

  “Yeah,” she says, slow and drawling like a cowboy in an old western movie standoff. “We should.”

  “It’s my party,” he says, “and I say it’s time for a show.”

  She folds her arms across her chest, sticks out one of her hips, and smirks, while my dad smirks back at her, and I see something friendly and conspiratorial between them. They could always do this. When their old friends were around, they could rally and turn into this wacky, happy couple. Maybe their marriage could have worked out if all these people were constantly around, eating hamburgers in our backyard and frying bacon in the kitchen, and they had an audience to show off for—the carefree and bohemian domestic hipsters. The Spitfire and the Derelict. The Poet and the Playwright.