CHAPTER NINETEEN
Saturday night, Greta took Max out. It had been a long time since they watched Voyager together, and it almost felt like their time away had paused a real starship crew somewhere in the Delta Quadrant. It felt natural to be sitting with him again in the musky bar, chatting between episodes.
“To being almost out of this shithole,” Greta said, holding up her mug to Max.
He clinked it against hers and then noticed the bartender’s stern glare. “Not this one, Bruce. We’re almost done with our PhDs.”
Not “almost,” but it felt that way. No more teachers, no more books, only the existential dread of producing the most thorough research of your professional life.
Bruce went back to polishing mugs with a dirty rag, which, in Greta’s opinion, seemed like a metaphor for something. Neither Mikey’s clientele nor decoration had changed much from the last time they’d had a beer together months ago, with one exception. The bar now boasted an additional three hundred channels of bad television. Even the country music had been silenced to make way for this new arrangement. Greta, who had grown up without cable TV, was always amazed at the wide variety of stupidity on at the same time. Bruce seemed amazed too, but in a more positive way, flipping to a new station every time a commercial threatened. Mud wrestling flipped to bull riding, but eventually televised skeet shooting won out. Greta had to guess some sports were just hard to find advertisers for in the first place.
Max rested his mug back on the counter. His raised eyebrow matched the angle of his collar. Greta had always hated the idea of short-sleeved dress shirts on adults, and denim shirts for that matter, but somehow the combination of both made Max look like a print-ad model of himself. “Now that it’s summer, we could probably safely find a different place to drink and watch TV,” he said under his breath.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Greta asked.
“Where’s the fun in this?” was his response.
“One”—she ticked the number off on her fingers, taking his question seriously—“no one talks to us. Two, cheap drinks. Three, world-broadening perspectives.” She made a gesture to the television, which was displaying a score for a sport she didn’t know existed.
“Just seems like Iowa to me,” he said.
To Greta too, to be honest. She didn’t want to admit to Max that the men in this bar reminded her a little of her father, the smell of sweat and wood chips and smoke that came off them. Ames had plenty of polished-top bars, but this one was rough in a way that made her ache. “Yeah, well,” she said, settling on the easy answer. “We’re Iowans, right?”
He just laughed into his beer. “Have you even had a conversation with my parents?”
She examined her beer so he wouldn’t see her blush. “Why?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Well, my mom is originally from California. She was kind of a hippie before I was born, but I think Iowa knocks that out of you. You’ve seen how she dresses now. Dad’s from Xi’an. China. He’s only been here for—” He paused, doing mental calculation. “Thirty-three years?”
“Only,” Greta said. “Was that your age plus a year?”
“Plus two years, thank you very much.” Max smiled again, a different light in his eyes talking about his family. Greta liked that light, which dispersed the dustiness of Mikey’s instantly. “Believe it or not, though, he wanted to name me Bruno. My mom overruled him, thank God.”
Greta spit out a mouthful of beer, then wiped her lips. “No,” she gasped, laughing. “Bruno?”
“My mom lived in San Bruno and worked at the airport when he came over. She’s fourth-generation Chinese—her family had been settled in the area forever. Anyway, she worked at the lost-and-found counter. He lost a bag, and she found it,” he said simply. “My dad made me take Mandarin growing up, even though he doesn’t speak it at home. Just when we go visit family or I call my grandparents. I was sure the only reason was in case I ever met a girl in an airport that needed help.”
“But if she was German, she’d be out of luck,” Greta said.
“Maybe I’m not meant to fall for a German girl,” Max said, directing the full weight of his smile at Greta now. It disarmed her.
“Or maybe German girls just don’t need help.”
“I’m sure that’s why I didn’t learn German instead,” he said, his voice stoic. Back on solid ground. Back to the tone where she could get a foothold. “Anyway, tell me about that Meg thing.”
And she did, relieved at the change of topic. Relieved at the dark room and the receding blood from her face.
* * *
Uncle Ritz had landed, and Danny couldn’t hide his grimace. Franz was likewise intensely creeped out by the immense stuffed goose their dad had taxidermied years ago. The thing had been named after its favorite snack crackers, but Greta always thought of the beast as a monster that chased her and Danny as kids. Franz leapt to the hypothetical rescue, yipping at the thing on the way in the apartment. Despite both Danny’s and Fritz’s protests, Greta perched the goose on top of the sprawling IKEA bookshelf that divided the dining space from the living space. The bookshelf itself now contained Greta’s textbooks and fantasy novels. Some duplicates between Danny and herself, Greta realized as she stacked her collection, but that just showed the distance that had grown between them in the past few years with Meg in the picture. They hadn’t even known what books the other was reading.
Danny napped on Sunday afternoon while Greta settled the things from her storage unit. Even when he was awake, Danny sat for hours on the couch, sometimes with the television on, but sometimes not. The mornings that weekend, she watched the closed door to his bedroom, wondering what time he might emerge and what mood he might be in. Saturday, the time was ten and the mood was sunny. Sunday, the time was eight and the mood was grim. The inconsistency made Greta wish she could throw on a disguise and waltz into the caregiver meeting. Hey guys, she might say. I wasn’t really caregiving before. I was care-watching, but now …
When she tried to return to the group, she noticed Meg’s car parked in Greta’s usual spot, and drove away immediately. The unfairness struck her. Why should Meg get to stay in the caregivers’ group even though she left him? She went so far as to search for another local group to join, but discarded the idea as just as unlikely as an animal adapting well to an entirely new habitat. Whale, meet desert. She had barely transplanted successfully once—if she could call that relative comfort with strangers a success.
Strangers were better than Martha, though. She would rather go to a million “get to know you” sessions, play a zillion ice-breaker games (oh God, the humanity) than eat dinner with the woman who had birthed her. Greta decided dinner would be gazpacho. Worst situation: she could suck up her bowl with a straw and disappear into the backrooms of the apartment—a closet, if necessary. Then Martha and Danny could talk about whatever in the world Martha and Danny actually had in common besides genetic code.
She hadn’t thought about their Hansel and Gretel costumes since the month after Danny’s aneurysm, but as she chopped apples for salad, her brain replayed past memories. Hansel and Gretel, kicked out, left to wander. That was Danny and her in a nutshell. She didn’t know if Martha was the neglectful mom in the story or the big bad witch, ready to eat them up.
The first thing Greta noticed was how nice Martha looked when she arrived. Nice in a fake sort of way. Martha had combed her hair in a bouffant. She wrangled the rest of her dark hair into a messy bun, and her mole had been concealed under pancake makeup. She seemed to be trying to appear younger and to impress, and it made Greta anxious. Danny gave a one-armed hug as he ushered Martha inside.
Greta opened the windows of the apartment to let the May air seep in. “I hear you passed your prelims,” Martha said. “So this is a celebration?”
“I can fill you in on anything malarial.”
“Fabulous,” Martha said. “A medical pursuit after all, huh, Gret?”
“More about the mosquitoes th
an the disease. If you’d like to know, it’s actually the anatomy of a mosquito that makes them such a good vector for transfer.” The bowls of gazpacho were already set on the table. “Let’s eat.”
Danny stood next to Greta. He tried to keep Martha across the bookcase divide in the living space. “We don’t have to rush.”
Greta had already taken a seat at the dining room table. “Well, the soup’s getting warm, so I think we should.” Greta unfolded her cloth napkin with a flap.
Martha didn’t raise an eyebrow as she took the seat next to Danny. She scanned the apartment with wide eyes. “Looks different. I see the goose came home to roost.”
“I hate that thing,” Danny said, his voice flat.
“It bit me at least once,” Martha agreed.
Greta swallowed a spoonful of soup and began to feel more charitable toward the goose. She passed the bowl of apple slices to Danny.
Martha cleared her throat. “Tell me more about your research.”
“Okay. Some types of mosquitoes actually require a blood meal in order to produce their eggs,” Greta said. She rested her spoon across the bowl like a bridge and picked up a slice of apple. “Others can produce a first litter, if you will, on sugar alone.”
Danny’s spoon lowered. He looked a little green. Maybe Greta did understand how he used to see colors that weren’t there. “Do we have to talk about mosquitoes?”
Greta continued, gaining momentum. “And actually, the antennae on female mosquitoes detect all sorts of odors, not just of humans as feeding targets but also for egg-laying spots. You know, does this smell enough like home for them to plop their young into.”
Martha refused to waver. She tore off a hunk of bread and dipped it in the soup. “This is good. Garlic? A little balsamic vinegar?”
“You’ll have to ask the chefs at the co-op,” Greta said. “Anyway, a mosquito, once it lays its eggs, will have to recoup for a while, feed again, before it gets to mate and lay another whole set of eggs. Somewhere else, by sniffing out a spot again. Crazy, isn’t it?” Greta slurped her soup. “I mean, shit, if I know why mosquitoes can’t stick around long enough to find out if their eggs hatched okay, help them figure out what to do when no one asks them to prom—”
“You got asked to prom,” Danny said.
“By Jacob Alwitz. I wasn’t going with Jacob Alwitz.”
Martha swallowed her mouthful of bread. She folded her hands in front of her and stared Greta squarely in the eyes. “Alright, Greta. Let me have it.”
Danny cut in. “Can’t we have our first dinner without someone wanting to call the cops on us for disturbing the peace?”
“No,” Greta said, pulling herself together again. She mimicked Martha’s posture, leaning forward and staring at her. “It’s a good point. Danny, did you ever tell her how things were after she left, or were you so grateful for the crumbs of her attention that you didn’t bother?”
Danny’s eyes narrowed. She couldn’t tell if he was angry or thinking, but she knew he wasn’t happy.
“We’ll never get past it if we don’t have it out,” Martha said. “So out with it.”
“You left us. You chose Kurt. Why do you think you can dictate terms to get back into our lives?”
“I don’t.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Maybe I’m here for whatever … crumbs you can give me. After your father’s death—”
Greta shook her head. “You don’t get to talk about Dad.”
“No,” Martha said, her voice and eyes both ice, “I do. I had been with your father since we were both seventeen, but when he came home from the Gulf, he was different and I wasn’t. I didn’t know how to help him.”
“Help him with what?” Danny spoke for the first time, channeling Greta’s question.
“He didn’t show it to you kids. I think he would have hid the moon from you if he thought it shined too bright through your window. Stress. Bad memories.” Martha ran a hand over her hair, and the strands that came loose flipped backward. “I don’t know.”
A memory, different from her mother’s, pinged in Greta. The doctor reviewing the coroner’s report with them. Hypertension, aggravated by smoking. Unusual, the doctor said, in someone as young as he was, as fit. Before his death, their father stood a solid one hundred eighty-five pounds, with a chest like a metal door.
Greta swallowed the memory back. “I don’t think it was just Dad.”
Martha pulled on the edge of her blouse. “I got us into a lot of trouble financially. Debt.”
“What are you talking about?” Greta’s tone pulled Martha’s chin up. She caught Martha’s eyes. “I saw you leave with a man. That day. Remember? That day—don’t try to lie. You were running away with Kurt.”
“Kurt. My bookie. It wasn’t love, but it wasn’t not love. Does that make sense? I wasn’t thinking clearly then.”
“But you are now? That’s a newsflash from the woman who let her son with a brain injury drive a car—”
“I asked—” Danny cut in.
“This is not about that,” Martha said. “Leave Danny out of this.”
“You don’t get to dictate what ‘this’ is about. ‘This’ is about my life and Danny’s and the royal fuckup you made of our lives by running out of them when we were fourteen.”
“You can’t blame me for everything that has ever happened to you, Greta,” Martha said. “I’m sorry, but I’m not actually that powerful. I don’t control everything.”
“You can’t even control yourself, obviously, so how could you?” Greta shouted.
“I had a problem. I—I couldn’t think most days. I mean, I haven’t gambled in years now—but when it was bad, it was bad. All I thought about. I racked up a lot of debt.” Martha’s eyes had crow’s-feet around the corners, which she had tried to dab concealer over. It didn’t work. As if answering a question nobody asked, Martha continued. “Blackjack. Dog racing. I tried to quit, but I wasn’t in a good place. The time I took Danny after piano lessons. Do you remember that, Danny?”
Danny hadn’t said anything, and, unlike Greta’s, his gaze searched his bowl like it was a Magic 8-Ball. “Yeah.”
“What time?” Greta asked. “What do you mean?”
“We drove to Jefferson and I left him in the car. Hours. It was hours. You were old enough to sit in the car, I thought. I knew you’d be fine. I kept thinking about that time when I finally got help, the look on your face when I got back to the van and there you were, curled on the back seat.”
“I didn’t know about this,” Greta said.
“I thought that you would be better if I left. I thought … well, I thought a lot of things. I’d been thinking about them a long time before I met Kurt, before I started gambling. I know that doesn’t excuse anything. I got help, and now I’m trying to rebuild—”
“If Danny hadn’t gotten sick—”
“We probably wouldn’t have seen each other, Gret, but Danny and I were already talking again.”
“But you didn’t tell him about the debt, did you?” Greta asked. It only took a glance sideways to get confirmation. She remembered those first days after Dad’s death, buried in bills and letters from creditors. Debt didn’t die, and it couldn’t just pack up and leave either. Unlike mothers. Danny had to drop out of Oberlin because of that debt. Greta had negotiated with creditors to make time lines for paying it off, which it finally was. In the aftermath, Danny had to give up his dream.
Danny’s face purpled, like those thoughts ricocheted in his head too.
“You okay, Danny?” Martha asked.
“I thought you were in the hotel. That night in Jefferson. After you left, I thought that you were meeting that man, you know that?” Danny said, his voice quiet. “And I never told Dad. I never told him.”
Martha’s face softened, gaze lowered. “I left because I was afraid of what having me around would do. To you. To both of you. I wanted to come back a winner. For such a long time, I thought it was coming, ju
st around the bend. Next hand. Next race. Something.”
No further response from Danny except to put his spoon on the lip of the bowl and look down at his lap. It churned in Greta’s stomach. “That’s dinner. Bye,” Greta said.
Martha put her spoon beside her half-empty bowl. “What?”
“We’re through here.”
Danny pushed his chair back from the table and, a second later, slammed his door closed behind him.
PART THREE
SUMMER
“What makes things baffling is their degree of complexity, not their sheer size … A star is simpler than an insect.”
—Martin Rees, “Exploring Our Universe and Others,” Scientific American, December 1999
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I’m staying in the car,” Greta said.
“All day?” Danny stared at her from the passenger seat. “Because this is a lesbian thing?”
“I don’t have a thing against lesbians.”
“Sure.” He sounded one-fifth convinced.
“I don’t. I just don’t like weddings. Any weddings. Plus, it’s pouring.” A freak June rainstorm, heavy and wearing dark clouds, didn’t seem all that celebratory to Greta. She stared out the windshield at the pocks in the parking lot, filled with rainwater, the blacktop a terrain of isthmuses and islands.
“There’s a tent. Want me to carry you across the puddles?”
“Sure—your doctor would love that.” Greta sighed. “If I come, it’s only so I can see Franz with a bow tie.”
“I knew you loved him,” Danny said.
“I just love bow ties.”
Five minutes later they hoisted equipment on their backs, dodging raindrops on their way under the canopy. The tent was the largest one Greta had ever seen, and the inside was strung with hundreds of strings of pale green lights. Rows and rows of folding chairs stood in strict formation facing a raised platform, and to the side of the platform was a folding table with a folded card on top: Danny Oto, DJ.
The only other occupants of the tent jerry-rigged speakers and installed changing tents in the back. Even with a tarp underneath her flip-flops, the ground felt swampy and uneven. Greta was afraid of dropping the equipment, but she made it to the table without breaking anything. “You could have dressed nicer,” Danny murmured, kneeling to plug in an amp. “Sweatpants?”
The Butterfly Effect Page 19