Zen and Xander Undone

by Amy Kathleen Ryan

  “Remember that time we found the robin’s egg?” Xander says.

  Adam smiles. “Of course.”

  “Didn’t you want to kill it, Xander?” I point out helpfully.

  “I just wanted to see what was inside!”

  Even back then, when they were ten and I was eight, our personalities were fully formed. Xander was the scientist. She wanted to break the little blue egg open and look at the bird fetus inside. I thought we should leave it alone and let nature decide. But Adam wanted to save it. He did a whole lot of research on the Web, and he set up a light bulb over a shoebox full of grass clippings, and took hourly temperature readings, adjusting the distance of the bulb from the nest, gently turning the egg every few hours. We watched and waited. To pass the time we fought terrible battles about what to name it. Adam finally won, and we called it Beverly after his grandma. Xander told him it didn’t matter what its name was because it wasn’t possible the egg could have survived the fall from the nest, but he wouldn’t listen to her.

  A week after we found the egg, Adam called us in the middle of the night, his voice high-pitched and panicky. “Come over! It’s hatching!”

  We ran over in our slippers and nightgowns and watched as the little bird poked its way out of the egg, its tiny little beak cracking the shell a millimeter at a time. We were so still and watchful, I found it hard to breathe. When finally Beverly emerged, skinny and oily, we looked at one another like idiots. What now?

  Xander searched out some worms from Mom’s garden, and we minced them up with a razor blade. The baby ate them hungrily, but kept chirruping and squeaking. It didn’t seem happy.

  We tried everything. Eyedroppers full of water. Cut up grasshopper guts. Nothing seemed to work.

  Beverly’s chirping grew weaker and weaker, so the next morning Adam’s mom called the veterinarian, who called the local conservation office. Later that morning, a nice lady came by and took Beverly away. We felt like failures.

  We called every day for the rest of the summer, probably driving them crazy.

  Beverly survived. We even got to witness the day they let her go that autumn. Xander and I wore our Easter dresses from the year before. Adam wore a sweater and a tie. When Beverly flew away, Adam and I clapped, jumping up and down. Xander cried. That’s when she still had a sensitive bone in her body. I’m pretty sure it must have been her left ulna, which she broke later that year.

  “I wonder if Beverly is still alive,” Adam says as he tosses his Popsicle stick under the porch stairs where we always toss them. He looks at the maple tree in front of our house as if he expects to see her there.

  “That was pretty amazing, actually. The way you hatched her,” Xander says quietly. She can’t bring herself to look at him, but this rare compliment from Xander is not lost on Adam. He turns to her, an emotion on his face that I’m not sure I understand. All I know is that he never looks at me that way.

  After a long silence, Xander lifts her eyes to Adam’s, and smiles, fidgeting. Then she bolts up from the porch steps. “You guys. It’s almost noon. Let’s go to the bridge!” She jogs off down Olivander Street, toward the rail yard, which we nicknamed Hades because it’s got so many abandoned skeletons of trains, left to rust as the sumac and thistles grow up around them. Xander turns around and yells, “Come on!” at the top of her lungs. Adam and I creakily get up to follow her. He helps me stand and keeps his hand on my back as we walk. “You okay?”

  “Ugh,” I explain.

  “Where does she get the energy?” he mumbles.

  “She sucks the blood of babies when their parents are asleep,” I tell him.

  He gives me a cockeyed look. “You have a dark side.”

  That makes me smile. Finally someone noticed.

  Our town is cut in half by railroad tracks. Always at noon a big freight train rumbles through town, drowning out conversations with its whistle and bringing traffic to a complete standstill. Adam, Xander, and I like to go sit on the pedestrian overpass that runs over the tracks and watch as the train zooms underneath us.

  We get there just in time. Xander sits dangling her legs while Adam and I stand next to her, watching for the train. Six sets of tracks snake underneath us, some of them littered with dormant boxcars. The trees in this part of town are thick, and the bridge we’re on is so high that it looks like we’re floating over a sea of leaves waving in the wind. It smells green, and you can see forever from up here.

  We hear the whistle before we see the train. Adam squints at it.

  “What’s on it?” Xander asks.

  I peer through the haze at the long line of cars approaching us. “Looks like coal?” I say, and turn to Adam.

  “Lumber too,” he says. He has the sharpest eyes.

  “Okay, get ready!” Xander screams.

  The train roars toward us, its metal heart thrumming. Adam and I stand on either side of Xander. I grab hold of the railing and stare at the engine as it surges toward us, getting bigger and bigger so quickly! Just when it looks like it’s about to crash into us, Xander lifts up her shirt, screaming at the engineer: “Honk if you’re a pervert!”

  He couldn’t have heard her, but he responds with a few sharp notes of his horn as the train booms under the bridge, car after car blurring by, its thunder shaking our bones.

  When the train is gone, I say to Xander, “You don’t have to flash them. They toot their horn anyway.”

  “It’s a rush,” she says, no hint of apology or shame. “You should try it next time.”

  I roll my eyes and look at Adam, whose thin face is alight with a smile.

  He’s staring at Xander like he’s never seen a girl before.

  Nancy

  WE WALK BACK home slowly, each of us in our own thoughts. Maybe they’re thinking the same thing I am. That pretty soon we’ll be spread out over the East Coast. Adam will be going to NYU to study biology; Xander will probably go to MIT in Boston. And I’ll be stuck here, just me and Dad in a quiet house.

  Xander drives me nuts, but I still dread the day she leaves us. She’s practically my whole social life. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to have other friends. It’s just that after dealing with Xander twenty-four hours a day, I don’t have the energy for anyone else.

  “So, Adam,” Xander says with a sly look at me as she kicks at the little bits of gravel in the gutter. “What would you say if I told you that our mom might have had an illicit affair?”

  This makes me so mad that I punch her shoulder, which sends a bolt of pain through my back.

  “Your mom wasn’t selfish enough to do something like that,” he says angrily. Adam’s dad had an affair with a woman at work, another lawyer, and ran off to Boston to be with her. Adam goes to see him only four times a year, and when he comes back home he’s in a bad mood for at least a week. “Believe me. Your mom wasn’t the type.”

  “Then explain this.” Xander grabs his hand and pulls him over to sit on a park bench under a sumac tree. She tells him the whole story about how we stole the documents from Mr. Blackstone, and the missing statue. “Who do women give six-thousand-dollar statues to when they die? Statues of lovebirds?” Xander raises her dark blond eyebrows at him and waits for his explanation.

  He thinks about it, his fingers thrumming on his bony knee.

  I get impatient with them both and carefully lower myself onto the ground near them. It feels wonderful to be lying down. I look up at the sky, which is speckled with tiny clouds, and I realize that it’s been a very long time since I went cloud watching. That’s something I did with Mom when I was very small, only I didn’t know that I was supposed to be looking for shapes in the clouds. I just lay there, making up random stuff, like closets stuffed full of candy, or pirates with black eye patches. When Mom finally figured that out, that the stuff I was saying had nothing to do with watching clouds, she took me in her arms, laughing, peppering my face with kisses.

  “I see why you think she might have been involved with the guy,” he finally says, “
but how do you know she didn’t know him before she got married?”

  “That’s a good point,” I say. “She’s had that statue since before I can remember, Xander.”

  “When was the statue made?” Adam says.

  Xander has to think about it for a minute. She closes her eyes, probably visualizing the website she’d looked at, reading it all over again. Sometimes I’m so envious of her mind that I could cry. “The website said nineteen ninety-five. Yeah. That’s right. Because I remember thinking it was the same year Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman produced the first Bose-Einstein condensate.”

  Adam looks at me to see if I understand what she’s just said. I shake my head.

  “It’s a model that displays quantum mechanics on a macro scale, you doofuses,” she says, lisping like a nerd so we understand she’s really making fun of herself.

  “And when did your mom marry your dad?”

  Xander probes her memory, but I’m the one who can answer this time, though I don’t really want to say it. “Nineteen ninety.”

  “So John Phillips gave Mom the statue after she was married,” Xander says smugly.

  “After we were born,” I add softly. This question had teased at the back of my mind ever since we found out about Phillips. Now it’s certain. If Mom had an affair, she wasn’t just cheating on Dad. She was cheating on us.

  We’re all quiet for a few minutes.

  “Do you see?” Xander raises her eyebrows at Adam triumphantly.

  “I see,” Adam says impatiently, “but what I don’t get, Xander, is why you’re acting like you want it to be true.”

  I give Xander an accusing look.

  She blusters at us. “Of—of course I don’t want that!”

  “Oh, yes you do,” I tell her. “And I know why. Because if Mom slept around you don’t have to feel so bad about doing it too. But you’re going to be disappointed. Because she didn’t. She wouldn’t do that to us.”

  Xander blanches. “I don’t sleep with that many guys.”

  “Okay. So you don’t sleep with the guys,” Adam says, but bites his lip immediately, seeming to regret letting the words out.

  Xander pulls into herself, and I feel bad. “Xander, I think we should drop this right now,” I say to her, but gently, so she’ll know I’m sorry about what I said.

  She looks at me with narrowed eyes. She doesn’t forgive so easily.

  “Actually, Zen, I’m inclined to agree with Xander,” Adam says in his most reasonable-sounding adult tone. Lately he’s been getting on his high horse with us. It has always been annoying to Xander, and now I find it totally enraging. “Now that you know about this Phillips guy, I don’t see how you can forget about it. Besides, I’m sure you’ll learn that their relationship was innocent. Then you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

  Xander perks up at this, but she’s still mad. “I’m not a slut,” she tells him, wounded.

  He doesn’t answer. He just lets his eyes trail down her thin white tank top and back up to her face. He raises one eyebrow.

  “Bras are medieval,” she tells him before getting up and flouncing away from us. We watch her go until she turns around and yells angrily, “Hey prudy-boy, is your mommy home?”

  “Oh, man,” he mumbles before getting up and jogging to catch up with her.

  I’m not exactly thrilled either, because I know what she’s about to do. She’s going to ask Nancy.

  When I catch up, hobbling, Adam is trying to talk sense to Xander. “Let me handle it, okay? If we don’t do this tactfully, Mom’ll clam up.”

  “You think I’m not tactful?” Xander says.

  I snort. She turns around to glare at me.

  “I’ll ask her,” Adam says. “I know how to handle her.”

  To this, Xander says nothing.

  We climb up the front steps of Adam’s house to find Nancy sitting on the porch swing reading a horror novel. All Nancy reads is horror. She loves Stephen King, and she owns every one of his novels in hardcover. They take up three whole shelves on her bookcases. Right now she’s reading something by Clive Barker, biting her bottom lip with dread. We’re all standing over her, waiting. When she looks up at us, she jumps in her seat.

  “Jesus, Mom, didn’t you hear us come up the steps?”

  “Yeah,” she says breathlessly. “I did.” She picks up a huge tumbler of lemonade and takes a swig. “What are you guys up to today?”

  “Nothing much,” Adam says as he sits down in a wicker chair. She makes room on the swing for me and Xander, and we all start swinging together.

  “Wheee!” Nancy says as she kicks the swing higher, holding her arms over her head like she’s on a roller coaster. This is why I like Nancy so much. She’s goofy. “How are the hellions today?” Nancy asks as she pushes the swing even higher. “Starting up a rock band? Going on tour? Can I be a roadie?”

  “Actually, we were just wondering if our mother was a cheeky harlot,” Xander says casually.

  Adam drops his head into his hands.

  The swing creaks to a stop. Nancy’s floppy brown hair falls in her face. Slowly she smoothes it away.

  “Mom. The hellions have found something interesting about Marie, and we’re just wondering.” He looks at her level, so she knows he’s not kidding around. “Did Marie ever mention a guy named John Phillips?”

  “No,” she says without even pausing to think about it. She stands up and gives Xander a freezing glare. “I’ve never heard the name,” she says before turning on her heel and slamming through the front door.

  “She’s lying,” Xander says flatly.

  “You had to plunge right in, didn’t you?” Adam yells.

  Xander shrugs. “I thought she’d laugh.”

  “Why? It wasn’t funny.” He shakes his head before going in the house.

  I turn on Xander. “You’re the harlot, not Mom.”

  Xander jumps up and darts through the front door. I go into the kitchen to find her standing toe to toe with Nancy. “I’m sorry I said it that way,” she pleads. “Just tell us what you know so that we don’t have to think the worst!”

  Nancy starts mixing herself another glass of lemonade, shaking her head, staring into the yellow liquid. “How do you know about him?” she says quietly.

  Adam insinuates himself between Nancy and Xander, who he glares at until she backs away and sits down at the kitchen table.

  “They found his name in some papers,” he tells Nancy, using his most reasonable tone. “And she left him a very expensive item.”

  “The birds.” Nancy lifts her eyes to his face. Her lips are trembling. She doesn’t want to talk about this.

  “Yes,” I say. “How did you know?”

  “Because I’m the one who took them to the lawyer.” To Xander she says, “She didn’t tell me anything about him. She just told me not to ask questions, and to deliver the statue with a letter.”

  Her tearful eyes pass over me and Xander. She isn’t mad anymore. She’s looking at us with real love. “Girls, your mother was an honorable woman.”

  “I know,” Xander whispers.

  I can’t say anything, so I nod. I’m so furious with Xander for digging all this up, I could sever her carotid with a single strike. I really could.

  Dojo

  I LOVE THE SMELL of sweaty mats. And musty floorboards. And is that a touch of rancid turtle effluence?

  According to my doctor, I can resume normal activity. I wasn’t sure he remembered specifically that I’m a shotokan instructor, but I didn’t remind him. Being away from the dojo has me off kilter, and I’ve been crazy staying at home all day long with Xander obsessing about Mom’s supposedly illicit affair.

  Mark is in the office, tapping on the adding machine. He’s sitting with his back to me, his legs spread wide, so he looks like a Kabuki dancer. I try to sneak up behind him, but before I’m even halfway to the office he says without turning around, “Zen! Good to have you back!”

  “It’s good to be back!” I say, a
nd drop to the floor to do my stretches.

  Mark carefully folds up a bunch of receipts and stuffs them into an envelope. “We’re well into the black this month!”

  “Great!”

  He sits down across from me and starts doing stretches. His dark eyes trail my limbs appraisingly. “Still stiff?”

  “Yeah.” I push myself a little further, working against my sprain. I feel something give and I can stretch fully, but not without pain. I try to wipe my face clean, but Mark sees my grimace.

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this, Zen?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  He stops stretching and watches me quietly. I get more and more nervous under his gaze until he finally speaks. “Okay, but you’re here to correct form today. You’re not doing any moves.”

  “I can’t teach without doing moves.”

  “You can’t do shotokan with a ruined back,” he says sternly. He starts stretching again, but his face remains serious. “The most important thing you can do is take care of your body, Zen. That’s in shotokan and in life.”

  “I know that.”

  “You’re still in pain.”

  His gaze is so steady, I’m not sure if he’s still talking about my back or if now we’re talking about Mom. Suddenly I feel weepy, and I duck my head so that my hair falls in front of my face like a blond curtain. I feel a hand on my shoulder and look up to see Mark blinking away tears. “It’s been a rough year.”

  I nod. For a second, I’m tempted to tell him about John Phillips, because Xander’s obsession has started to rub off on me, but I can’t talk about it. It’s too raw. And I don’t want it to be real, even if I can’t stop thinking about it.

  “You’ve been very brave, Zen.”

  I push away my sadness, search for a topic other than Mom. I still haven’t told Mark about that guy I kicked, and it really is something I should discuss with my sensei, anyway. “Mark, I had a confrontation, and I used shotokan.”

  He leans away from me, waiting for me to say more.

  “A guy was messing with Xander, and I kicked him.”

  “Messing how?”