“And what do you mean, ‘someone like Zelda’?” I asked.
Pearl didn’t raise her voice. She put her chin on her hands and her elbows on the table. “Yes, what do you mean by ‘someone like Zelda,’ Gert?”
That was when Gert’s phone buzzed.
He crumpled up the napkin on his lap and rolled it into a ball and put it on the table next to his plate, which still had a lot of food on it. “I need to take this,” he said, holding up his phone.
He pushed his chair back and walked out of the dining room. I watched him go, and once I turned back to the food I saw that Pearl was watching me.
“Mom,” Marxy said, “you’re doing the thing where you have a staring problem again.”
“I’m not staring. I’m just curious. Can I ask you a question, Zelda?”
I nodded. “You may ask me a question.”
I did not get to hear what she was going to ask me because Gert came back into the room and said we had to go.
“Now?”
Gert said that our time was up.
“I am enjoying dinner,” I said. “We never have food like this at home.”
Pearl smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment, Zelda.” Then she addressed Gert. “If this stuff is making you uncomfortable, then maybe it’s time for you to grow up. Marxy and Zelda are comfortable talking about sex.”
“I’m putting on my coat and then we’re gone,” Gert said to me. He nodded at Pearl before he walked out.
“I love talking about sex,” Marxy said.
Even though Gert is part of my tribe and we always have each other’s backs and are loyal, I didn’t want to leave with him. I wanted to keep eating dinner.
“He’s wound up pretty tight, isn’t he?” Pearl asked.
I nodded. “Very tight.”
Pearl asked Marxy to go to the kitchen and get some Tupperware containers, and to start clearing the table.
“Already?” he asked.
“And take your time,” Pearl said. “I’d like to talk with Zelda for a minute.”
Sighing, Marxy tucked in his shirt and started to pick up one of the plates.
Pearl touched his arm. “And start with the chicken, please. Do you remember how to put on the plastic wrap?”
He said he did and went to the kitchen. Gert called from the other room and said he’d see me in the car. I sighed.
“Can I ask you a question, Zelda?” Pearl asked.
“Shoot.”
“What was it like before you and Gert moved out on your own? It’s my understanding, from the things Marxy has told me, that your mother passed.”
“Battling cancer,” I said. “She was very brave.”
“I had a cancer scare myself. Breast cancer. You should get screened for it regularly, by the way.” I blinked and asked what that meant. “It means having a doctor check to make sure. Do you know how to examine yourself?”
I shook my head.
“If you ever have a lump. Here.” She touched her chest. “You need to go to a doctor.”
Marxy came to take more of the food away and asked why we were touching our boobs.
“Nothing. Girl stuff,” Pearl said.
“Mom drank alcohol when I was inside of her, and then she got cancer and we had to move in with Uncle Richard.”
“Uncle Richard.”
I nodded. “He and Gert were not friends. They fought a lot.”
“And you and Uncle Richard?”
“I didn’t like when he hurt Gert.”
Marxy brought in Tupperware containers and started putting food in them. She asked Marxy to get a plastic bag, and when he came back she put all the Tupperware containers into the bag and spun the top, then tied the arms of the plastic bag.
“How do you know how to do those things?”
Pearl laughed. “My mother was pretty strict when I was a kid. I learned every kind of domestic thing you could think of.” She paused. “Domestic means—”
“About home and family. It was one of my Words of Today.”
“Exactly.”
I hugged Marxy and said I was sorry about Gert again, and Marxy gave me a kiss on the lips but didn’t French.
“Have a good night, Zelda,” Pearl said, handing me the plastic bag. “And tell Gert we should talk more. Seriously.”
* * *
Gert was sitting in the car, the window down, smoking a cigarette. He threw it on the ground when he saw me coming.
“Thanks for being a total fuck-dick,” I said, getting in the car and slamming the door.
“Yeah, well.” He started the engine. I reached over and turned the engine back off. He looked at me and threw up his hands. “Look, I’m sorry. That all just came out of nowhere. You should have told me. What happened to the rule about telling each other important things?”
“What about not telling me about school? You broke the rule first. Also I didn’t know we were going to be talking about me and Marxy having sex.”
“Can you stop saying that?”
“Sex?”
Gert said that the conversation was over. “I don’t know what kind of perverted bullshit Dr. Laird says to you, but I’m going to have a talk with him.”
“I am going to have sex.”
“We’ll see about that.” He turned the car on.
“It’s my legend.”
“Not under my watch. No way, nohow.”
We started driving. It was very dark on Marxy’s street and even when we got out of his neighborhood it was hard to see the city now. I did not like how Gert was acting. He was looking out the windshield, even though it was being a mirror and you had to look through your own face to see the other cars. The way he was looking gave me the feeling he didn’t want to be with me. It was not one of our rules—giving a silent treatment. Even if he wouldn’t see me, I tried to make THE LOOK.
“I’ll get my own apartment,” I said. “With Marxy.”
“And where are you going to get the money?”
“I’ll get a job.”
“Doing what?”
I crossed my arms. “I can do whatever I want.”
“You don’t have a job, you don’t have any references. Do you even know how much having a place costs? Do you know how to pay the bills?”
“I can learn.”
Gert snorted.
“Why did you do that?” I said.
“Do what?”
“Make that noise. You don’t think I can learn.”
While we drove, his phone started buzzing, and before he could grab it I got to it first.
“Gert’s phone?” I said.
“Don’t fuck around,” Gert said, trying to grab the phone away from me. We stopped at a light and it changed and he had to start driving again.
“Five ten,” the voice on the other end of the phone said.
“Gert is an asshole,” I said to the person on the phone. “Did you know that?”
“Zelda, I’m serious. Give it.”
Gert got the phone away from me.
“I think the person hung up,” I said.
“What did they say?”
“Some numbers.”
Gert pulled the car into the parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts. He was dialing a number on his phone and then put it to his ear, waiting for someone to answer. Nobody answered. He said I needed to tell him what the numbers were.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Five something.”
“Five what?”
“I’ll tell you if you turn the car around and drive back to Marxy’s.”
“Five what, Zelda? This is important. Five eight? Six? What?”
His phone buzzed again. Gert picked it up and listened. He reached across and opened the glove compartment and took out a pen. Then he pointed at my feet, where garbage from McDonald’s was in crumpled balls.
I did not know what he wanted.
“Napkin,” Gert said, covering up the phone with his hand. He wrote some numbers on the napkin, and hung up the phone.
We started driving again. “You’ve got limitations,” Gert said. “It’s a fact, I’m sorry to say, but it’s true. Do I wish things were different? I do. But, Jesus Christ, Zelda. If you got pregnant, what would happen then?”
“I’d have a baby,” I said, not very loud. “That’s what would happen.”
* * *
Gert parked on a street behind a school that was closed up, with boards in the windows. Gert would not tell me why we were there, or who we were waiting for. He just told me I had to stay in the car and then went outside.
Before he did he clicked the button to lock the doors so that I couldn’t get out. These are called child locks, and because I am not a child I know that there is a secret way for me to get out if I need to, which is the button on the driver’s door, beside where Gert’s knee goes when we drive.
He walked out toward a playground. I could see Toucan, and the Fat Man.
When Gert came back he had one of the gym bags. He opened the trunk and threw the bag in. He got back into the car and turned it on.
“Why do you have to keep doing what Toucan says?” I said. “I think he’s a villain.”
We drove away from the school and back toward home.
When Gert got mad he always drove fast, and I could tell he was mad because he went through stop signs without stopping fully. He had no right to be mad. I was the one whose dinner he had ruined.
That was when a police car came up behind us. The sirens shouted at us and Gert looked in the mirror. The police car stayed behind us, the lightbulb on top of it spinning around and around. Gert pulled over the car.
“Fuck,” Gert said. He hit the steering wheel with his hand before turning the car off. “Motherfucker,” he said.
The police car parked behind us. I turned around to see it better and Gert told me not to turn around. Gert closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He hit the steering wheel again with his hands. The policeman stayed in the car and did not come out right away.
“This wouldn’t be happening if we were still at Marxy’s having dinner, instead of fuck-dicking with Toucan.”
The policeman got out of the car and started walking up to our car.
“Just,” Gert said, rolling down his window, “just don’t say anything. Okay? Be quiet.”
The policeman was tall and skinny and pulled his belt up a bit when he walked.
“I’m serious,” Gert said one last time while the policeman walked toward us. “Just don’t say anything.”
The police officer leaned over the car. His flashlight made my eyes hurt. He asked if Gert knew why he had been pulled over. Gert said that he didn’t know.
“You went through at least two stop signs,” the officer said.
Before Gert could say anything, I said, “My brother is a shit-heel who doesn’t like to talk about sex.”
The policeman stared at me. Then he asked Gert to step out of the car. Gert reached across from me and took out some papers from the glove box.
I was so mad at the way he behaved during dinner that when Gert got out of the car, I got out of the car.
“Miss,” the police officer said.
“He thinks he is the king of everything, but he’s not.”
Turning to the police officer, Gert said, “She has cognitive issues.”
The officer kept chewing his gum and said, “Is that right?”
The policeman took the papers from Gert and flipped through them. He told us to go back into the car, and we both did, and he went back to the police car with the papers. Gert got mad and asked what the fuck was I thinking.
“I told you not to say anything.”
“And I told you dinner was important and you ruined it.”
We stopped shouting when the police officer came back and handed Gert his papers. He said he would let us go with a warning. After the policeman drove off, Gert did not start the car right away. Then he opened the car door and got out.
I asked him why we weren’t going home.
Gert took three steps toward the side of the road and stopped.
After a while he bent over and threw up.
chapter ten
I did not want to talk to Gert for the rest of the night. It was a silent protest, like what Gandhi did to the British people. Vikings can use their swords to defeat enemies, but there were other ways too.
Before bedtime, Gert knocked on the door of my bedroom. I told him he couldn’t come in but he opened the door, just a little, anyway. I spent all night sending apologies to Marxy, who did not respond.
“Can we talk for a second?” he asked.
“No.”
“Well, too bad.”
He came in and sat down on the spinny chair at my desk. “I’m sorry. I already said it ten times.”
“Say it a million times, see if I care.”
I turned away from him and faced the white wall. There was a piece of old tape stuck there and I scratched it off. Gert did not leave the room. I kept scratching even though the tape came off very fast.
“Can you stop that?”
“No.”
He sat on the bed. The springs that lived inside of the mattress creaked. “You know, I spend so much of my time making sure you have everything you need.” I could smell his armpits. His deodorant had stopped working. He said, “You think this stuff comes with a rule book? I have no fucking idea what I’m doing half the time. Can you cut me some slack for once?”
He touched my back between the shoulders, which gave me an electric shock and made me even madder for the way he screwed up the dinner with Marxy.
“You stink and are a villain and you lied to me and acted dishonorably,” I said, and without looking I grabbed something off the table beside my bed and threw it at him. The something ended up being my alarm clock. He must have not been watching, or maybe the room was so dark that he couldn’t see it, because the alarm clock hit him in his face and bounced off the bed and onto the floor.
His hand went up to his face and he turned away.
“Screw the shit-off,” I said.
“Fuck,” he said, holding his face. He kept his hands there so that he looked like he was wearing a mask made of his fingers. Then he took his hand away and the fingers had blood on them, and his nose had blood on it too.
I did not mean to make him bleed and tried to tell him that.
He was gone and slammed the door before I could get all the words out.
I turned on my “Sounds of the Ocean” music that lets you think you’re at sea. The music has dolphins and whales and birds and the waves crashing, so it’s easy to imagine being on a boat with Vikings, rowing somewhere under the sun. If I imagine hard enough I can almost smell the ocean.
I didn’t mean to throw the alarm clock at Gert’s face. I just meant to throw it somewhere.
After a while I opened my door, very quietly, and stuck my head out to see what was going on. Gert’s door wasn’t closed all the way. I went into the hallway and stood outside his room.
The bedside lamp was on, and Gert was hunched over on the edge of his bed. Sweat made his head look like he’d dipped it in a bowl of water. His tattoos were now a very weird green color in the light and made his arms and chest look dirty. I couldn’t see my favorite tattoo of his, an eagle, a very powerful bird, that he has on his chest. Even though he was getting fat, he still had muscles on his shoulders and arms, big muscles with veins that reminded me of worms just under his tanned skin.
I thought maybe he was thinking about how he was going to get mad at me, for throwing the clock and hurting his face. Then I heard him. He was crying. Not just normal crying. He was crying very seriously. His body started shaking. The green tattoos crinkled as the muscles under them got big and then small.
&
nbsp; He looked up and I saw that his nose had a bandage taped onto it with Scotch tape. The air was thick and felt like it was about to rain.
“Góðan dag?” I said quietly, opening the door a little bit more.
Gert made a throaty sound and said, “Close the door.”
I opened my mouth and started to say words that I didn’t know wanted to come out, sorry and things like that. He stood up and said, “CLOSE THE DOOR,” in a really loud voice that Gert only uses when he’s very serious, so I closed the door and ran to my room and put my pillow over my head.
* * *
The morning after our fight, I woke up and remembered that I had been a shit-heel. One of the rules that Gert and I had was that he would never hurt me, and I would never hurt him, in combat. We could say villainous words, but fighting with our hands or other weapons was not allowed. I had broken a very important rule by hitting him with the alarm clock.
The Word of Today I picked was very powerful, since I looked it up especially and did not use the special calendar that tells you what the Word of Today is supposed to be.
It was supposed to be collateral, which was okay but not the right word. I wanted to find a special word to say sorry, and so the Word of Today was contrition, which means feeling bad about something you did and feeling “contrite.”
“I am contrite for hitting you in the face,” I said to myself. “I feel contrition for hitting you in the face. People who hit members of their tribe who they love should have contrition.”
I went into the kitchen and Gert was making breakfast. He had a Band-Aid on his face.
“Morning,” he said. There were eggs in the frying pan.
“Good morning,” I said. “I have contrition for hitting you in the face with the alarm clock.”
“You have what?”
“Contrition. That’s a special Word of Today. It means—”
“I know what it means.” He cracked another egg onto the pan and scooped up the first egg onto a plate.
“I’m sorry I hit you with the alarm clock,” I said.
“I know you are,” he said. “And I’m sorry for what happened, that I messed up your dinner.”
“You didn’t mess up our dinner,” I corrected. “Pearl and I had a very good talk.”
When We Were Vikings Page 10