Dear Universe

by Florence Gonsalves

  “Nice to meet you,” my dad says, and it is obviously not very nice at all.

  “Cake?” another Donna asks, coming around with a slice that says Fight in pink icing.

  “Why do I have to keep this old lady company?” my dad whispers to my mom. Vivian is putting a bright T-shirt on and trying to hand me another one too. She also keeps calling me her “sweet Carla,” which, honestly, is kind of nice.

  “Because we are being proactive,” my mom says.

  “Judy, is this your husband and your daughter?” yet another Donna asks. “So nice to meet you both. Cham, I hear you’re about to graduate from high school. Where are you going next year?”

  “No idea,” I say, wishing I could wrap this T-shirt around my head and shrink to a size that requires a microscope to find. “I might take a year off or something.”

  “That’s the first I’ve heard of this,” my mom says with an eyebrow raised.

  Donna laughs and slaps Mom on the shoulder. “I think that’s a great idea. More and more kids are doing it. Gap years are fantastic. They have so many programs out there now. You have your whooooooole life ahead of you.” The way she extends the word, it sounds less like an opportunity and more like a life sentence.

  “Come on, Cham, Scott,” my mom says. “It’s time to do a lap. When Aunt Bridget gets here, I want her to see us involved.”

  Right, because this is a performance. The important thing is that people see us as involved. My mom pushes my dad over the turf of the football field, and I follow. We shuffle along into the music and the bright colors and the smell of hot dogs. There’s a table with raffle tickets and people playing Frisbee and tents scattered all over the turf. I guess this sort of thing makes people feel happy. Some people, I mean.

  Dear Universe,

  Pump the brakes on your enthusiasm. I want to be tolerant and stuff, but I can’t stand people rallying behind the cure for a disease as if the disease is a dragon and we are mighty princesses, deserving of everything in the mighty freaking kingdom. Fight Alzheimer’s! Fight Parkinson’s! Yeah, let me go sharpen my knife. Everything is just something surviving because something else is dying. It’s not like our side is “right.” We’re not the freaking royalty or the chosen ones. We’re just people, and we’re here because a bunch of horny DNA succeeded in getting it on. My dad isn’t “brave,” and we aren’t “good people” (but maybe you knew that already). He’s stuck in his bodily situation like we all are, except his is worse, more confining, inevitable. I know I need to do something, but this is not it. If I must wear this color orange, at least let me stand in traffic.

  “That girl looks like you,” my dad says. He waves at some girl who does not look like me, and she smiles and waves back. I think she feels bad about his wheelchair, which makes me hate her, and then myself for assuming that.

  “Isn’t that your friend?” my dad says suddenly, looking toward the entrance to the track. “What’s his name? Victor?”

  “I don’t have a friend named Victor,” I say, but then I look around and realize who my dad’s talking about. My heart involuntarily flings itself against my chest. Brendan is pitching a tent with Gill School colors and setting up lawn chairs under it. He looks up and waves at me uncertainly.

  For a second I am frozen. Though I’d quite like to hop aboard a spaceship and ditch both worlds entirely, it’s been exhausting keeping the two separate. Something about this collision feels inevitable, maybe even destined to be by the powers of the universe. I’m a strong girl and all, but I’m no match for the sun, moon, stars, and space debris.

  “Uh, I’ll be right back,” I tell my parents. I head to the Gill School tent quickly, feeling nervous and exposed, like I don’t have anything on, not even this stupid orange T-shirt. Speakers are blasting pop music. Josie and Danika brought face paint, and it’s pretty much a party, the iPad in Brendan’s hand working like a bouncer to check everyone in.

  “Hey, Cham,” Brendan says curiously. “I didn’t think you were coming to this.”

  “Uh, yeah, my mom didn’t give me much of a choice.”

  Helga and Gene come through the gate by the concession stand. Behind them a pack of seniors march in. Jared and Marquis are wearing gratuitously large backpacks and holding big shopping bags full of snacks. “Why are there so many people from school here?”

  He cocks his head. “Didn’t you get the e-mail? We changed our volunteer event to this one.”

  Between my mom looking back over her shoulder at me, and Helga and Gene looking into each other’s eyes with no regard for me, I can’t really process what Brendan’s saying to me. “Wait, why did it get moved?”

  “Someone suggested it’d be more… supportive… so we changed it,” Brendan says. “I mean, Student Council did.” He avoids my eyes by bringing his face very close to the iPad in his hand. I feel like I’m on a carnival ride with none of the fun and all of the nausea.

  “What? Why?”

  “Well,” he starts, “someone came forward and asked—”

  “Was it you?” I ask, shielding my eyes to look at him. Ahead of me Danika is painting a butterfly on Josie’s cheek; behind me, my parents are talking to one of the Donnas. The world just isn’t big enough for all these worlds.

  “No, it wasn’t me,” he says. “And if I knew you were going to be here, I would have told you. I swear,” he adds quickly, and his voice sounds nervous, as if he’s lying.

  “This doesn’t mean anything to them.” My voice quavers. “It’s just something to check off to soothe their guilt and graduate and move on.”

  “I know, Cham, I’m sorry—”

  “So it was you?” There’s a fire building in my throat. “After all the things I told you about wanting to keep this stuff private, why would you do this? And not like warn me?” My spit tastes like acid and the putrid stuff left over after vomiting. “I put so much trust in you. How could you just go against me like that and get the school to change the event?”

  “Cham, I didn’t—” His voice is strained. I back up, wishing I could draw a heavy cloak around myself to keep everything out.

  “I thought you understood. I thought of all the people in their own worlds, you understood my world.” My mom and dad pass again, and I wipe my eyes quickly, as if jamming my fingers in there can keep the tears back. “I don’t think you know me at all, and it’s better that way. I just wish I never told you anything—”

  “Cham.” Abigail’s voice is behind me, and the next thing I know, she’s standing beside us. “What’s going on?” Her face is a contorted tissue.

  “Hey,” I say. “Nothing. It’s just that Brendan changed the event and—”

  “What? I’m the one who asked school to change it,” Abigail says, looking between the two of us. “In your driveway yesterday, you said it felt better talking about your dad’s Parkinson’s and like airing all that shit out, so I thought—”

  “So you thought, Hey, let’s get the whole school here?” She winces at the sarcasm in my voice, but I don’t care. “How could you think this is something I’d want?” I ask incredulously. “It just blows my mind.”

  “Cham, you’ll feel better if you face things,” she says, shifting back and forth, nervously adjusting her ponytail. “When I was talking to your mom, she said you guys wanted to be more proactive as a family, and, I don’t know, I wanted a grand gesture to prove to you that we’re here for you. I feel like a terrible friend for not knowing what was going on. I just want you to be okay, and I thought that if—”

  “That if you forced everyone from school to come here without telling me that I’d somehow be grateful for all the ‘support’?” I put air quotes around the last word, my mouth tasting more and more like bile.

  “I’m sorry that you’re pissed, but isn’t it better not to hide anything?” Her face is desperate for me to say yes, but my body is populated by nos. “You don’t have to keep doing this alone, Cham.”

  I shake my head at her. Way in the back of my mind a vo
ice is saying Let her in, but the anger has piled up like bricks, and it’s hard to get even her genuine kindness through. I look over at the track, trying to locate my parents among so many chipper bodies. Brendan has been silent the whole time, the iPad limp in his hands, but now he raises it. “I should go check on things,” he says, breaking the awkward silence.

  “Wait,” I say to his back. My brain feels like it’s overheating. He turns around, his face uncharacteristically solemn. “I’m sorry I blamed you. I just figured—”

  “Why did you think it was Brendan?” Abigail asks. Her voice is deadly quiet now, which it is every time she’s about to burst into tears. I take a deep breath that honestly feels quite shallow. “Why would he know anything?”

  I look at the two of them, feeling caught between them or caught in a lie or caught in something I don’t fully understand, but it’s something I can’t break free of. It’s stretching me out in every direction, and I don’t know where I’ll rip first. “He—he found out by mistake a couple months ago,” I stammer, my voice strangely high-pitched. “I’m sorry, I know I should’ve told you, but—”

  “He’s known for months?” she says incredulously. “I just don’t get why you could tell him and not me.”

  I look at Brendan and he looks at me. Our eye contact and the things we know and everything from the last few weeks create a bubble that only the two of us live in. I don’t know if Abigail can sense it. I sigh and usher her over to the side of the track. I look behind me at Brendan, who’s headed for the snack table in his bright yellow tutu. The answer reveals itself to me at the same time I reveal it to Abigail: “It’s just so easy with him. I don’t have to compete with anyone else: not Helga, not Hilary, no one.” I step out of the way of a woman with a stroller who is very determined to end Alzheimer’s by power walking. “Because I feel comfortable with him.”

  Abigail bites her lip, seeming totally confused. I can’t see my face, but I have a feeling I look totally confused too. “I don’t know, okay? Maybe because one time we laughed about dying and it made the whole thing seem less scary. I’m not intimidated by him, and that makes it easy.”

  “It’s because I’m a loser,” Brendan fills in. I hadn’t noticed him walking back toward us. “Sorry to interrupt, but Mr. Garcia is looking for you, Abigail.” He swings the bag of cups and ponchos he’s holding, and the centripetal force sucks me in.

  “You are not a loser,” I say, feeling my cheeks flush. “You’re sweet and weird in a great way, and you’re like the bag that’s strapped to a horse’s butt during a carriage ride. You just totally get my shit.”

  “Cham!” my mom calls. She’s looping past us and waving while my dad kind of scowls and kind of waves. She cuts across the track nearly tripping a tall man with a foam brain hat on his head.

  “Hey, Brendan!” she says. “And Abigail, nice to see you again!”

  My dad gives a halfhearted wave, but honestly, he looks miserable. We all do.

  “Mom, Brendan, Abigail, I appreciate the effort, but let’s go. Dad, we are getting you out of this hellhole of enthusiasm.”

  The music is still playing, and the people are still walking, and absolutely everything continues despite my decision to leave. “Come on, Dad.” I nudge my mom’s hands off his wheelchair. “We’re going home.”

  “Oh, good,” he says, rubbing his hands together. “Nice to see you kids!”

  “No, we’re not, Cham,” my mom says. “We signed up for a time slot to walk, we bought tickets, and we are staying.” She locks his wheelchair with the metal handles that dig into the wheels.

  My dad gives me a look like For the love of god, get me out of here.

  “No, Mom. This isn’t up to you. It should be up to Dad.” Brendan and Abigail talk together, then back away quietly. I lean on my dad’s wheelchair and undo the locks. “Come on.”

  My mom sighs and takes her keys out. “What do you want to do, Scott?”

  “Well, now that you’ve finally asked me,” my dad says, sounding suddenly less tired, “I’d like to get the hell home already.”

  Inside the house, my mom still has her coat on as she takes her cleaning supplies out. I come over just as she’s trying to get revenge on the countertops. “Mom, stop. You’re scrubbing the enamel off them,” I say.

  “Just a little spot here.”

  “Judy,” my dad calls from his room.

  “Just a second,” she says.

  She’s going at the poor tiles with her elbows out, and her sponge is starting to tear. I touch her wrist gently. “Mom, come on.”

  “I’m getting it, Cham.”

  “Judy!” my dad calls again, louder this time.

  “I’m coming, Scott!” she hollers back. “Just one—” In making her way down the cabinet with the paper towel, she notices I’m still wearing my combat boots.

  “Cham,” she says, her eyes flashing, “why the hell didn’t you take your shoes off? I’ve been cleaning and cleaning and—”

  “Mom, you gotta stop cleaning,” I say quietly, taking the spray bottle out of her hand. “I’m sorry about my shoes, but it’s a mess out there, a rainy, muddy mess, and the cleaner you try to make it, the more obvious it is when the shit gets in.” I look out the window at the tears the sky is throwing at us. “The shit always gets in.” I pull at one of her rubber gloves. Her hands are cracking open under them, which happens when skin soaks too long in soapy water. “Please, for the love of linoleum. Stop. Scrubbing.”

  My mom sort of smiles, but it’s a smile that couldn’t bench-press a tooth. “Someone’s gotta keep things in order around here.”

  My dad wheels in with his shirt half on. “Didn’t you hear me calling?” he says angrily. “I almost fell. Why were you ignoring me?”

  “I can’t always be there immediately,” she says too loudly. I inch toward the stairs, sensing the mood turning. “I’m trying, but I can’t always—”

  “Well, maybe if you didn’t waste time doing things I don’t want to do, you could actually take care of me when I need you.” He scowls at the floor, then uses the arm that isn’t in the shirt to pick at something on the tile.

  “Dammit,” he mutters after a few tries. Then he licks his finger and wipes the crumb on the counter.

  My mom intercepts him. “Don’t put that there! Don’t you see I’m cleaning?”

  “You didn’t care that I didn’t want to go,” my dad says, abandoning the crumb and returning to the sleeve of his shirt. “You forced me into the car. You talked with Cham about me like I wasn’t there. I should’ve stayed here, let you two do whatever walking you wanted to do.”

  My mom takes her gloves off and throws them on the counter. “Well, what am I supposed to do? I’m doing the best I can here. I’m doing this all by myself.”

  “So, let me do something,” he cries. “You never let me do anything.”

  “Because you can’t do anything!” she screams. Her shoulders slump, and she slides to the ground with her face in her hands. My dad pushes his other arm through his shirt, and the only sound in the room is the fabric sliding over his head.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed it,” she says softly, “and I’m sorry, Scott, if you felt ignored. I want you to have as much say in everything as you can, but sometimes I have to step in and make decisions.”

  He crosses his arms. “I’m never going to one of those things again. And no more hospital or doctors. I don’t care if I have a stroke. I’d rather lie there and die than go through that prison again. They wanted to poison me,” he says, his voice rising like he might cry.

  I touch my throat, hoping to push the lump in it down, but it’s getting bigger and bigger. My mom crawls over and puts her head in his lap. At first his arms are stiff, but then he touches her hair. I turn away and make for the stairs. All the things I haven’t felt, every instance ignored, every time I was an asshole when really I was just scared, every time I looked away, comes rushing up my esophagus. This is what I was afraid of. To see how it
hurts and then to feel it: from my dad, from my mom, from myself. I want to hide in my room if I’m going to cry, because if I start crying I might not stop. But at the last minute I bow my head and squat down next to my parents.

  “Hey, Dad?” I say, but my voice hardly makes a sound. Why is it so hard to show the people we love the most how much that is? Why is it so hard to show how scared we are and just the vastness of it all, how much there actually is inside me, and all of us? It’s like there’s a whole universe in there.

  I wrap my arms around him, resting my cheek on the back of his sweater. His arm jerks a little under mine, and I can’t keep it in anymore. Everything from the last few years and the last few months and the last few days condensates. I cry like the first day I was born. The tears lead to more tears, and eventually I get into some deep belly crying and hiccuping.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I say, voice muffled in the soft fabric. “I’m so sorry.”

  17

  {APRIL}

  Days ’til graduation: 17

  HERE’S THE THING ABOUT HIGH SCHOOL. AND TIME. AND herpes. (Okay, everything, I guess.) It doesn’t need my help. Even if I stop counting down the days to prom, the days still get closer to prom. Even if I look away while my dad gets sicker, he still gets sicker. Even if I start a rumor that Helga has herpes, she doesn’t actually have herpes. (I didn’t start that rumor, okay?)

  What this doesn’t apply to is my college essay. Even with Brendan’s help, I can’t seem to get past Dear College Admissions Person. The e-mail I send to Evelyn is so pathetic there’s no need to include it in my senior year time capsule. Let’s just say I’m finally using my dad’s sickness to my advantage. No need to shake the Magic 8 Ball and ask it if I am going to hell. The answer is yes.

  Hey Evelyn,

  I’m sorry that my essay is late. Again. I was hoping to turn it in this week, but my dad is dying faster than usual, so I’ve been trying to help my mom take care of him. I haven’t had any extra time to work on the essay, and even though Brendan was a good tutor, I don’t think I’ll be able to pass it in yet. I know me going to Nicaragua depends on getting it in, but my parents need me right now, and I need to prioritize family over schoolwork. Could I get it to you by the last day of class? Thanks.