It was my dad who taught me how to ride in New York. My dad is, like, a serious fitness freak and used to go for twenty-mile rides on the weekends, all over New York, along the river, or wherever, which pissed my mom off because she was like, “All week long all you do is go to work, and then the first chance you get, you just head out on your bike. It’s like you can’t even bear to be around us for more than two or three hours at a time.” But he did teach me how to ride in Central Park, first on the Great Lawn, which is this green field in the middle (you can see the Metropolitan Museum on one side, a big wall of glass), and later alongside the reservoir, when I got a little better and stopped falling down.
Sometimes we even went biking together through the park—this was like the one thing we did together where I could tell he was enjoying himself, too. Actually enjoying himself, and not just being patient with me. But he never let me ride on city streets—there was too much traffic. Even in Central Park he made me stick to the footpaths, like a little kid; he wouldn’t let me go on the road. I got bored of my bike, and after a while it didn’t fit me anymore, I was too big, and I didn’t get another. Until now. But I remember how Dad used to bug me to go riding with him on the weekends, and then gave up asking me, because I kept saying no. I don’t know why, maybe I was taking Mom’s side, because we’d hang around at home together, making pancakes or something, while he went off by himself.
Seven
A FEW NIGHTS LATER, Mom wakes me up, coming in late and getting undressed. (She was sitting on the porch with Granma, drinking wine and talking. I could hear them as I lay in bed. Somebody mentioned Spencer—that’s my dad’s name. It feels funny to think of him like that, like he’s some guy with a name. Mom always calls him “your dad” to me. But I couldn’t hear much else; they had the radio on, too.) At first, I don’t say anything, but then she switches on a flashlight and starts reading a book under the covers.
“Mom,” I say. “Mom.”
She looks over at me. I can see her face in the glow. “Go to sleep.”
“I was sleeping. You woke me up.”
“I’m sorry, honey.”
She turns off the flashlight, and we lie there for a minute. “How long are we going to stay here?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, when we are going to . . . get a place of our own?”
“I told you already,” she says. “This is something we talked about. Right now, I’m looking for a job, and with Granma around, it’s just easier.”
“You said this was temporary, until we get our own place. That’s what you said.”
“I don’t remember saying that. I probably said a lot of things. You may have noticed, I’m kind of making it up as I go along. Don’t you like it here?” she asks.
“It’s fine but that’s not the point. I feel like . . . there’s stuff going on that you’re talking to Granma about, but you’re not talking to me. I’m almost thirteen years old. You let me bike around by myself. I can go to the stores, I mean. . . . You don’t have to treat me like a baby.”
“Nobody’s treating you—”
“Yes, you are,” I say.
“Ben, this isn’t just about you. And I like being here. This is a hard time for me, and it’s a big help . . . everything’s a lot easier for me with Granma around. I don’t really understand what’s going on. She loves you.”
“Of course she loves me, she’s my grandmother. She doesn’t have a choice.”
“That’s not how she feels about it,” Mom says.
“It’s just . . .” I don’t know how to explain what I’m thinking without being rude. “It’s kind of weird. . . .”
“What’s weird? I hate to break it to you, Ben, but what we’re going through, a lot of people go through. What’s happening to you . . . is not . . .”
“That’s not what I mean.” But I can’t say what I do mean, which is that Granma’s swollen hand makes me feel weird, and that I don’t always like eating her food, because . . . her house doesn’t always seem that clean to me. She doesn’t have a dishwasher and so we have to wash all the dishes ourselves, and Granma usually does it, and this isn’t the kind of thing she cares about very much. Sometimes when I eat breakfast I notice bits of dried cereal on the cereal bowl. That kind of thing. Back in New York, Maria kept everything spotless. But that’s not really what matters, that’s not what I want to talk about. Finally I say, “I miss you. I miss it . . . when it was just you and me back in New York.”
“It’s still you and me.” I can tell she’s upset: she’s sitting up in bed, and I can see her pulling her knees against her chest and holding them.
“No it’s not, it’s you and Granma. You don’t even make dinner anymore. I miss your food.”
“Forgive me, Ben. You sound a little spoiled right now.” Her voice is colder; she’s talking the way I sometimes hear her talk with her girlfriends, when she disagrees with them. “Don’t you like Granma’s cooking?”
“Of course I do. Just forget about it. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve got a lot going on right now, too. I need all the help I can get.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m just a spoiled kid.”
“You’re not a spoiled kid, you’re my beautiful . . .”
“I know you love me, Mom. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”
I think maybe the conversation is finished, so I roll over in bed, with my back to her; it’s easier for me to sleep that way, facing the wall. A few minutes go by, I can hear her breathing. But then she asks, “Do you miss Dad?”
I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but I can’t tell what she wants me to say. Also, I want to tell the truth. “I don’t know.”
“It’s okay to miss him.”
“Of course it’s okay.”
Now I guess I sound a little bit mad, but I don’t know how to say anything so it sounds normal. We don’t speak for a while; I can’t get back to sleep. It feels weird, lying there like that—I don’t think Mom’s asleep either, and eventually I turn around again. “Do you miss Dad?” I ask her, and she gets out of her bed and comes into mine. She creeps under the blanket.
“How could I miss Daddy when I’ve got you?” she says.
“Do you think he misses us?” I can smell the shampoo in her hair and the wine on her breath.
“I think he misses you,” Mom says.
“If he misses me so much, why did he go to London?”
“That’s got nothing to do with you.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“I mean, he wanted you to come, too—you know that, right? He wanted you to come along. But I wouldn’t let you. I said, you’re mine, all mine,” and she gives me a hug. We lie like this for a few minutes until she kisses me on the head and gets up. I feel embarrassed—it’s like I’m too big for her to share a bed with now. Like I was asking her to comfort me, so she did, but that’s not really what I was asking. I wanted to know what’s really going on, what she thinks about Dad and what Dad thinks about her, and what’s going to happen next year—the kind of stuff she was talking about with Granma.
One thing I like about Austin is Granma’s backyard. In New York, it took us about five minutes just to exit the building, but here I can walk right out of the kitchen and be outside.
There’s a big bamboo hedge between Granma’s garden and the next-door neighbors’. It’s kind of scratchy inside; last year’s leaves are still lying on the ground, and the bamboo stalks grow in all kinds of directions, so you have to fight your way through. Eventually I come up against an old fence, which is partly broken but must have been put there before the bamboo got so tall. I can see through the mesh into the neighbors’ backyard; a flat dodgeball has been left against their side of the fence, and when I look up, I see a trampoline—one of these big ones. It must have been there awhile, because the grass underneath it has turned to dirt.
I push my way out again and start to explore. There isn’t much to look at even though Granma’s yard is
pretty big. Just an old sycamore tree at the back, with a bit of rope dangling off a branch, like maybe it used to be a swing. There’s a garden shed, too, with all kinds of stuff inside, not just bikes and gardening tools but things Granma doesn’t need anymore but doesn’t want to throw out. Like a floor lamp with a dusty paper shade and an old rusty saw hanging from a nail in the wall. I also find cardboard boxes full of newspapers, a leather armchair with foam coming out of the seat, and a bucket of tennis balls.
If I stand on the leather chair, I can reach the saw. It’s still pretty sharp, and I wander outside again and squeeze into the bamboo hedge. If I cut down a few stalks, I can make a den, but it’s hard work—they break into these tough little strands, and at the end you always have to kick against the stump to break it off, and then pull it, while a strip of the bamboo peels away. But I make a nice little clearing, just big enough for me and maybe one other person. When I’m sitting inside there, nobody can really see me.
Mom comes out after a while. She has a towel in her hand—she’s wearing a swimsuit. Granma follows her, in a baseball cap, to keep the sun out of her eyes. It’s starting to get pretty hot, and I can see bits of dust floating in the light between the bamboo leaves.
“Where’s Ben?” Mom asks.
Granma takes a folding chair from the back porch and starts setting it up in the grass.
“Maybe he’s on his bike somewhere.”
“Did he tell you he was going out?”
“I don’t remember. He asked to be excused from the breakfast table.”
“That’s not the same thing. Do you think I should look for him?”
“He’s probably in his room or in the bathroom. Don’t worry about him. He’s fine.”
But Mom gets up anyway (she was lying on her towel in the grass) and goes to the shed. Then she lies down again.
“His bike is still there.”
“You worry too much, Jenny.”
“He’s not the happy-go-lucky kid he looks like. He tells me things he doesn’t tell you.”
“He doesn’t look like a happy-go-lucky kid.”
“That’s why I worry. We had a fight last night.”
“What about?”
But Mom doesn’t say anything for a while. Then she says, “Nothing much. Just what you’d expect. It wasn’t really a fight.”
The lawn looks very bright from where I’m sitting, and Mom and Granma are partly hidden by the bamboo leaves. But I can see them, too. Granma pushes herself up out of the lawn chair, and for a second I think she’s going into the house, maybe to check on me, but she stops at the back door and bends down. Then she straightens up and starts moving slowly around the patio. I can see a hose in her hands—she’s watering her flowerpots, and when Mom says something to her, Granma says, “You have to speak up. I can’t hear you.”
“I talked to that woman at the middle school today.”
“What’d she say?”
“Looks like I have a job.”
Granma keeps watering the flowers—she gives every pot a good soak. After a minute, she turns off the hose and walks slowly back to her lawn chair. Mom sits up in the grass.
“Aren’t you going to say something?”
“Are you sure you’re ready to go back to work?”
“I meant something like, congratulations.” Mom laughs.
“I’m happy for you, Jenny. Of course I am. I just worry about Ben.”
“He’ll be in school anyway.”
Mom lies down again; she puts her sunglasses back on. I’m sitting very still now because I feel like if I even move an inch, somebody will hear me. There are a lot of old bamboo leaves on the ground. It’s very dry; everything rustles.
“Kids get embarrassed by that kind of thing,” Granma says.
“What kind of thing?”
“Going to school where their mom works.”
“Well, at least I can keep an eye on him. Anyway,” she adds, after a minute, “I’m only part-time. He’ll hardly know I’m there.”
There’s a noise behind me, and I turn around slowly. Somebody’s jumping on the trampoline—it makes a sound like a rattle, but there’s also a kind of twangy noise, like picking a guitar. It’s a girl with short yellow hair. She’s wearing jeans but nothing on her feet, which even from where I’m sitting look dirty. It’s kind of hypnotizing, watching her go up and down—she goes pretty high. But then someone calls out, “Lunchtime!” and for a second I think it’s my mom, but it’s not. She’s still lying in the grass, but she sits up now and says, “Seriously, where’s Ben?”
“I don’t know,” Granma tells her, getting up. She sounds a little worried now, too.
“Ben!” Mom calls out.
Granma goes in the house and comes back out again. “He’s not in his room,” she says. “He’s not in the bathroom.”
“Ben!” Mom calls again. For a minute, they both go in the house—I can hear them calling my name, a little fainter now, and sometimes louder. I don’t know why I don’t say anything, I just don’t. Then Mom walks into the garden again, wearing shoes and a button-up shirt over her swimsuit. She goes to the shed to get out a bike, but she’s still shouting my name. The girl on the trampoline next door has gone inside, and I step out of the bamboo hedge.
“Jesus, Ben,” Mom says. She lets go of the bike, which falls down on the grass. “Where the heck were you? You scared the daylights out of me.”
“Just here,” I say. There are bamboo leaves in my hair, and my face feels dusty with dirt.
“What were you doing in there?” Mom says, and Granma comes out again. “He’s here, he’s here,” Mom tells her. “He was hiding in the bamboo.”
“I wasn’t hiding!”
“Then what were you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“How long were you there for?” Mom asks.
“I don’t know. I was just . . . making a den,” and I show her the saw.
“Jesus, Ben,” Mom says again, and then sort of hangs her head. “Calm down, everybody’s okay.” She’s talking to herself, and laughs. “Give me that for starters,” she tells me, and takes the saw away. “Where’d you find that?”
“In Granma’s shed.”
“It’s fine, Jenny. He’s fine,” Granma says. She’s standing on the back porch, holding the screen door in her hands. “Come on in, it’s lunchtime anyway.”
But as we walk inside, Mom turns to me again. “How long were you sitting there?” she asks quietly.
“I don’t know. A while. All morning.” But she doesn’t have time to respond before Granma tells me to wash my hands before sitting down to eat.
After that, I start hanging out in the den. Granma lets me take cups and plates out there, and even a little dingy rug from the front porch. I lay it on top of the old dead leaves, for something to sit on. Sometimes I take a book out there. It’s a good place to read—the bamboo stalks make tiger stripes of sunshine and shade. Nobody bothers me. That’s the funny thing about being on your own. Even though I get bored after a while, I don’t really like it when people . . . interrupt me, even though I’m not really doing anything important.
Sometimes the girl with yellow hair comes out to the trampoline, and I wait around to see if she’ll come. A whole morning might go by and I don’t see her, but then another time she’ll jump for hours, just going up and down and not even looking happy or sad, but just jumping.
I miss Jake. When he was around, I didn’t notice the way time passes. But now every day seems long.
Eight
DAD CALLS the night before school starts. It’s the third week in August and still incredibly hot. Even at night you just want to take your shirt off; even your skin is like too much to wear, it’s so hot. Everybody’s in a bad mood, and even before I get to the phone, Mom is shouting at him.
“You said you’d call yesterday,” she says. “I don’t care what’s going on at work. I need to know when . . . We have to prepare ourselves for these conversations. There are conseque
nces, right? I’m the one who has to pick him up off the ground afterward. This is like the last thing he needs right now. Why? Because he’s got school tomorrow. It’s his first day. He’s anxious enough about that as it is. . . .”
I’m sitting in the kitchen with Granma, and she looks at me, raising her eyebrows. “I guess that’s Dad on the phone,” I say, and she sort of laughs. Eventually Mom calls me into the hall.
“It’s your father,” she says, passing me the phone.
“Hey, kid,” says the voice in my ear.
“Hey, Dad.” All I can see is the front door, and my shoes on the mat, and Granma’s sun hat on a hook. It’s dark outside, but there’s a light on the front porch that shows the driveway. The front door has a kind of window in it; sometimes the sprinkler sends a whip of water against the glass. It’s funny to think that somewhere a few thousand miles away, my dad actually exists. He’s sitting in a room somewhere, he’s about to go to bed.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he says. “I was stuck in the office. When I told your mother I was hoping to call, I didn’t realize you’d spend all day sitting by the phone. . . .”
“Honestly, it’s fine. It’s not a big deal. I didn’t even know you were supposed to call.”
“Well, that’s not what your mother says.” After a pause, he says, “Let’s start this over. Are you nervous about school tomorrow?”
“I don’t want to go. Is that the same as being nervous?”
He laughs.
“When will I see you again?” I say. There’s a silence on the other end. I don’t want to break it, but it goes on long enough that I can’t help myself. “I know you’re busy. You’ve got a lot of work.”
“It’s true,” he says. “And Texas is a long way—it’s farther than New York. But we’ve got an office in Houston, which gives me an excuse. I’m hoping to come out after Christmas for a couple of days. . . . I’ve talked to your mother about this, too. I don’t think Christmas itself would be a good idea. Your life is confusing enough as it is. But maybe we can take a little trip. I don’t know, just you and me. That’s the plan, at least—that’s what I’m hoping for.”
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