“Sure.”
“You’re a doll. Now,” she says, clapping her manicured hands together, “put me to work, Denise. What can I do to help?”
Sienna follows me to the dining room, where I attempt to anchor the balloon bouquet. “Let’s go to your room.”
But before I can respond, my mother cries, “Louise! Ice!” And I’m sent to the deep freeze in the garage to collect a bag of ice cubes. When Sienna tries to tag along, Sunny intervenes. “Make yourself useful, Sienna. That tray of cold cuts needs to be put out, and you can put those chips and pretzels into bowls.”
People continue to stream into the house for the next twenty minutes. Finally, at 4:55 p.m., Sunny’s cell phone rings. This is the cue that Keith and my dad are just minutes away. “No, I don’t need you to pick anything up for dinner,” she says, winking at the assembled guests. “We’ll see you soon, hon.”
“Okay, everyone!” my mom cries to the fifty or so people milling about the living room and kitchen. “Find somewhere to hide. They’ll be here any minute.”
When everyone yells “Surprise!” it’s obvious from my dad’s expression that he had no idea. He actually tears up a little as he hugs my mom. “When did you do all this?” he says, taking in the crepe paper streamers and the “Lordy, lordy, look who’s forty” banner I’ve tacked up.
“Happy birthday, Dad,” I say, elbowing my way through the crowd to give him a hug.
He kisses the top of my head. “Thanks, sweetheart. And thanks for helping your mom with all this.”
Suddenly Sienna is tugging at my sleeve. “Let’s go to your room.”
“Sure.” And leaving the adults to their festivities, we sneak away.
When we are safe behind closed doors, Sienna flops on my bed. “I can’t bear to watch my mom get all drunk and flirty again. It’s, like, so sad.”
“I know,” I say to commiserate, although thankfully my mother does not get drunk and flirty.
Sienna changes the subject. “What are you going to wear to Audrey’s party?”
I perch on the corner of my bed. “I don’t know yet. What are you going to wear?” While I’m not completely without personal style (thanks to ELLEgirl), I don’t have Sienna’s natural flare for fashion. Really, the girl has a gift. She can throw on long beads or a leather belt and look both retro and hip. When I’ve tried to mimic her approach, I end up looking like a refugee from a 1970s punk band. Sienna knows what’s cool before it’s even cool.
“We should go shopping,” she says. “I want to get something really cute. There’re going to be lots of hot guys there.”
“Yeah?” I am interested. “Like who?”
“Daniel Noran, Jake Lawrence, and those guys.”
“Oh.” My voice conveys my disappointment.
“Oh right,” Sienna teases, “they’re not your type.”
“Shut up,” I say, slapping at her playfully. But she’s right. I’ve never gone for those good-looking, popular guys who wear designer polo shirts and drive sports cars. Since these guys don’t go for me either, this has worked out quite well so far.
Sienna continues, “What is your type anyway?”
Chewing on my bottom lip, I ponder this question. I don’t exactly know, but I’d like a guy who is artistic, passionate, and intelligent, with a dark sense of humor and an appreciation for theater, film, and music. Unfortunately, there seems to be a serious shortage of this type in Langley. The only one who even comes close is Aaron Hansen, but given the fact that he is possibly even punier than my brother, dating him would be physically impossible. And of course I could never admit, even to Sienna, that the king of the drama nerds comes closest to my ideal guy!
Finally, I answer. “Well, I don’t really know, but I’m sure I’ll find him when we move to New York. There’ll be lots of—”
Suddenly, my door flies open and there stands my brother. “Get lost, you freak!” I scream before he even has time to open his mouth.
“Mom needs you downstairs!” he yells back angrily.
“Okay. Get out.”
“Fat bitch!” The door slams behind him.
“I guess we’d better go help out.”
Sienna drags herself off the bed. “Yeah, I guess.”
My mom makes a beeline for me the moment I enter the kitchen. “Oh, there you are! Take this wine,” she says, handing me an open bottle of red, “and make sure everyone’s drinks are filled. Sienna, you can take the white.”
As I make my way through the crowded house refilling glasses, it really doesn’t seem like anyone needs more booze. Most of the guests are talking way too loudly and making inappropriate jokes, a sure sign they are well on their way to drunksville. But I play the dutiful daughter, smiling at my dad’s friends as they marvel at the fact that I am looking so grown up and compliment me on my helpfulness.
An hour or so later, my mom is at my side. “We’re going to have the cake now,” she says breathlessly. “Round everyone up and bring them into the dining room. Where is your dad? Go find him, Louise.”
“Do you want me to round people up or go find dad?” She shoots me a look that says I’d better work on my multitasking.
“Troy!” she calls for my brother, who is inhaling Doritos with Brody. “Go downstairs into your dad’s office and get the cake. It’s sitting on the filing cabinet.”
“Okay.” He starts to bound away.
“And be careful with it!” she calls after him.
Wandering through the house, I inform our guests about the upcoming festivities. “We’re going to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and have the cake now,” I say. “Has anyone seen my dad?” Finally, I head outside to the back deck, where a handful of smokers have congregated. My dad isn’t among them—not surprisingly, since he doesn’t smoke, but I thought he might be chatting with Keith, who is what he calls a social smoker. “We’re going to have the cake now,” I say.
“Okay, fun’s over,” Keith jokes, butting out his cigar on the railing. “Back inside, everyone.”
Returning to the dining room I notice that only a few people have actually heeded my call for cake. My mom is beginning to look a little concerned that her well-orchestrated event may not proceed as planned.. “Where is Troy with the cake?” she says to no one in particular. “Louise, did you find your dad?”
I’m about to respond that Dad is MIA when Troy suddenly bursts into the room from the basement stairwell. The first thing I notice is that he is cake-less. Before I can comment on his short attention span and inability to focus on simple instructions, I notice the look on his face. Never before have I seen such horror on my brother’s features. My mom catches it too and instantly says, “Troy, what’s wrong?”
But Troy doesn’t stop to explain. He runs through the living room and out the front door into the frigid night.
CHAPTER FIVE
What happens next is almost too hard to believe. It’s like some prime-time dramedy, except it is too sick and twisted for television. Okay, maybe it could run on HBO, but there’s no way my mom would let me watch it. My mother is obviously concerned. Not only has my brother forgotten the birthday cake, but he’s run out into the cold February evening wearing nothing but a T-shirt. “What the heck …” she mumbles as she hurries toward the front door. She’s only gone a few steps when my dad suddenly appears from the basement.
“Troy!” he calls, looking around frantically. “Where’s Troy?”
“He just ran out the front door like a bat out of hell,” my mom says. “What’s going on with that kid? He’s going to catch his death if he doesn’t get back in here soon.”
My dad doesn’t respond but runs to the front porch. “Troy!” he calls. “Come back, son. Please, come back!” I follow my parents, also wondering what is up with my brother. But then, nothing Troy does really surprises me. In fact, I almost feel a little smug. I’ve been telling my parents for years that Troy has serious, undiagnosed mental problems, and his current actions just seem to confirm it. The panic in my dad
’s voice is a little alarming though. And it is this tone that has drawn a number of party guests to gather around the front door, murmuring with concern.
“I’m going after him,” my dad finally says, coming back inside and heading to the closet for his coat.
“I’ll go, Len,” my mom says. “It’s your birthday. You stay here. Louise, go get the cake.”
As I turn to head to the basement, I see Sunny Lewis-Marshall lingering at the back of the crowd. Her face is pale and tears are streaming untouched down her face. My mom notices her too. “Sunny?” she asks, going to her. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh god, Denise,” Sunny moans.
“Sunny …” my dad begins, something almost threatening in his voice.
My mom looks to him and then back at her weeping friend. “Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on here?”
“Denise … oh god, I’m so sorry.” Sunny sags a little as she grasps my mom’s hands.
“Stop it, Sunny,” my dad commands. “Not here. Not now.”
“For god’s sake, Len,” my mom snaps. “Someone had better tell me what sent my son running out of the house right now or I’m going to lose it!”
“I’d like to know too.” Keith Marshall’s hulking form has materialized.
Suddenly, Sunny collapses to the floor. “I—It just happened!” she wails, clutching at her husband’s shins. “I didn’t mean for it to happen! We were wrong! We were so wrong!”
I am still trying to piece together what she’s talking about when Keith punches my dad in the face. As I mentioned, Keith is what you’d call burly, while my dad is more sinewy. My dad staggers backward, crashing into our next-door neighbors, the Van Leusdens. (I can tell by their horrified expressions that they won’t be asking a girl from such an unstable home to cat-sit for them again.) Blood begins to pour from my dad’s nose, spurting dramatically all over Mrs. Van Leusden’s blouse. She lets out a high-pitched shriek of horror, as does my mom. Keith turns his attentions to the crumpled form at his feet. “You bitch! How could you?”
Everything seems to move in fast motion after that. The general consensus is that my dad needs to go to the hospital, and apparently, so does Keith (he thinks he might have broken a finger on my dad’s cheekbone). As the four of them jostle out the door, still crying and bickering, my parents manage to find time to turn to me and say, “Find your brother, Louise. If he freezes to death, we’ll blame you.” Okay, maybe they didn’t say those exact words, but that is the gist of it.
Lucky for me, Troy is not far away. When he saw the party guests making a mass exodus from our home, he returned through the sliding patio doors. Soon, the only occupants in the deserted living room are my brother and me, and Sienna and Brody. “God,” I say, fumbling for words in the awkward silence, “major drama.”
Surprisingly, Brody is the one who responds. “Weird …” is all he says.
After a long pause, Sienna says, “We’re gonna get going.” Although her dad’s minivan is still parked at the curb, he hadn’t thought to leave the keys. Sienna dials her cell. A few minutes later, Audrey shows up in the driveway in her mom’s Volkswagen. With a brief “See ya later,” Sienna and Brody make their exit.
So now I am sitting facing my brother across a table strewn with empty wineglasses, half-eaten dips, and bowls of chip crumbs. While Troy and I rarely have a discourse that doesn’t revolve around being too fat or too skinny, deep down I can admit that he is my brother and I therefore harbor some loving, familial feelings toward him. “Are you okay?” I ask.
“I guess.”
“Do you want a Coke? Or some chips or something?”
Troy makes a face. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat again.”
I restrain myself from cracking a joke about him disappearing into thin air. “What did you see downstairs?”
“You don’t want to know.”
I don’t, but I sort of do. “Just tell me,” I say. “I’m in eleventh grade. I can handle it.”
He looks up at me and his eyes are shining with unshed tears. “I walked into dad’s office and I saw him standing there. I thought he was upset at first, his face was all twisted and weird. And then I saw Sunny. She was kneeling in front of him and … I think she was—”
“STOP!” I say. My skin has begun to crawl like I am covered in ants. I stand and begin to scratch myself frantically. “God, why are you telling me that? That’s sick!”
“I know it’s sick!” Troy snaps. “You said you wanted to know.”
He’s right. I had said I wanted to know. But I really thought I would handle whatever he had to tell better than this. I’m almost seventeen! I hang around with a fairly sexually experienced group of girls. I mean, I know for a fact that Jessie and Audrey have both given and received head. And Kimber actually considers herself quite gifted in the oral sex department. Sienna and I are really the only holdouts. So while my personal experience is nil, I’ve developed a fairly laid-back attitude toward blow jobs and such over the last couple of years. But this is entirely different! How can you be expected to be laid-back when the blow job in question involves your dad and your best friend’s mom?
But I suddenly remember that I’m the mature one here. I need to pull myself together. “I’m really sorry you had to see that,” I say.
“Too bad you didn’t see it instead of me,” Troy says quietly.
“Why?”
“Because I’m never going to eat again.”
Despite the gravity of the situation, he’s still an idiot. “Oh, shut up. Think about what this means for mom and dad.”
“Do you think they’ll get divorced?”
“I don’t know. They might. But you never know. Maybe they have a more untraditional kind of relationship. I saw this thing on The Tyra Banks Show and it said a lot more people are swingers these days.”
“You think Mom and Dad and Keith and Sunny are swingers?” Troy looks like this revelation might cause him to dive off the nearest bridge.
“Well … I doubt mom would be into that …”
“It wouldn’t really work then, would it?”
“True.”
“And why would Keith have punched Dad if this was just normal Saturday-night behavior?”
I don’t like how Troy is suddenly sounding like the wise one here. “Uh, Troy,” I say, “I think I know a little bit more about sex and relationships than you do, since I actually have several friends who have sex and relationships—” But my diatribe is cut short by a sudden noise. My brother and I stare at each other as we hear the whir of the garage door opening and a car pulling in.
Eventually, my mom makes her way into the dining room, alone. From the look on her face, it’s evident she is not a swinger and this was not just normal Saturday-night swapsies. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her face splotchy. Without a word, she pulls out a chair and sits next to me.
“Kids, there’s no easy way to tell you this so I’m just going to lay it on the line. I hope you’re both mature enough to handle what I’m about to say.” She clears her throat. “Apparently, your father and Mrs. Lewis-Marshall …” My stomach drops uncomfortably. We have never called Sunny Mrs. Lewis-Marshall, and the words have a certain finality to them. I can see my mom’s point though. I guess when someone blows your husband at the surprise birthday party you planned for him, you feel on less friendly terms. “… have been having a … physical relationship. Your father won’t be living here anymore. I’m sorry.”
“Oh god,” I say, starting to cry.
Troy jumps up. “Fucking bastard!” he punches the wall. Luckily, his puny arm has little impact on the drywall.
“Troy! Language!” my mom cries angrily. “Just because your father has deserted us, this family is not going to dissolve into anarchy. You two need to be strong. I—” Her voice cracks. “I need you to be strong.”
I go to my mom and hug her. We hold each other, sobbing for what feels like an hour. Part of me feels like I’m too old to be blubbering
like a baby about this, but another part of me is just so incredibly sad. When the feeling of our tear-slicked cheeks rubbing together is getting a little uncomfortable, my mom takes a deep breath. She pulls away from the hug and wipes at her face.
“Look at this mess,” she says, surveying the aftermath of the party. “I’d better get busy.”
“I’ll do it,” I say, looking at her drawn face. Of course this is hard on me, but it’s even harder on my mom. Not only has her husband left her, but she’s been betrayed by her best friend too. I only have to deal with the fact that my dad, whom I have always loved and adored, is a cheating scumbag.
My mom looks up at me and the gratitude in her eyes tells me I’ve chosen the right course. “Oh, honey,” she says, her voice quivering. “Thank you for being so strong. What would I do without you?”
“Get some rest,” I say, giving her another quick hug.
Alone in the kitchen, I begin to remove all remnants of my dad’s birthday party. Normally, I’m fairly environmentally conscious, but nothing is recycled tonight. I chuck out the paper banners, the beer bottles, the chips and leftover dips. I slit the balloons with a knife, letting the helium quietly seep out of them so as not to wake my mom. Normally, Troy and I would have breathed it in and made funny voices, but he’s locked in his room probably having some kind of psychological meltdown, and I’m not in the mood. Finally, when three large garbage bags in the back alley are the only evidence that Len Harrison turned forty today, I head to bed. Alone, in my dark bedroom, I clutch my stuffed unicorn and cry myself to sleep.
CHAPTER SIX
The next morning, my dad calls the house around ten. My brother answers. “You fucking bastard!” he says, dropping the receiver like it was scorching his hand.
My Parents Are Sex Maniacs... Page 3