by David Amsden
“Now? Are you sure? Right now?”
—very quietly, in this whisper so her dad couldn’t hear. But it wasn’t like she really seemed to care about anything when it came to Ray, because when she got off the phone the first thing out of her mouth was—
“I’ve gotta go.”
Ray didn’t even answer. There was a split second of quiet, then he went on talking about whatever he was talking about. I don’t know what it was because I was just sitting there zoning out. I do that a lot, kind of forget I’m supposed to be actively participating in what’s going on. What’s even worse is sometimes I feel like I’m just zoning out, sitting there practically dead, but then it turns out I’ve been talking the whole time. If you want to know the truth, I tend to make myself the center of whatever’s happening.
“It was fun,” Stacey was saying to me now. She grabbed her glass, drank the rest in one sip. Then she put her hand on my head. “See you in ten years or something.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”
I haven’t seen her since. I wouldn’t mind knowing how she’s doing. I just don’t know who to ask.
“She’s a good girl,” Dad said a little later, after Stacey had gone upstairs, changed into a tighter pair of jeans, ran out the front door. It was right when the door shut that Dad spoke. “You’ve got a good girl, Ray,” he said again.
“She’s a fucking slut,” Ray said.
Dad didn’t say anything. He looked at me carefully, with this face to let me know two things: one, he didn’t agree with Ray on this point, and two, he was too much of a coward to say anything about this out loud. I know I should have at least said something, but I didn’t. So the only person left to talk was Donnie, who took a sip of his wine with that stupid straw, and then said—
“Anyone ever hear the one about the Honda?”
This new house of Ray’s smelled of paint-thinner. He hadn’t lived there long enough for it to have that family smell, different everywhere, but always very clearly the smell of people related to each other. I mean, this place was antiseptic. And it was so clearly a shoddy job, the construction. The banister wobbled when you went up the stairs. Most of the doorknobs practically came out in your hand. And I guess the wood floors were real, but they looked more like they’d been rolled out, then glued down. You were supposed to be so into the idea of this place, that you didn’t notice you just moved into a piece of shit.
But it’s so quiet right now, the four of us at the table. I told you about how my senses would suddenly just shut down, focus real hard on one thing. Well, that’s what it’s like right now. Close your eyes and you can hear all this in the house, all these mistakes. It’s all you can hear. Come on, listen: like if a real serious storm came—the place would disintegrate, and we’d be sitting at this table, right here in these chairs, drinking this wine, in a pile of dirt looking out at the smoothest roads and driveways in the world.
And that turpentine, paint-thinner smell. God, it was getting so strong now. I swear my eyes were even watering up. Like I was actually crying, when Ray said—
“Oh God it’s late.”
“Jesus, it’s one o’clock,” Dad said.
“It’s that time.”
“It was that time three hours ago,” Donnie said.
“Hey, feller,” Dad said to me, “speakin’ of that Honda, how’s about I borrow the keys, to give Donnie a ride home.”
“Maybe I can drive,” I said.
“Oh I’ll drive,” Dad said.
“I think I better drive.”
“Haven’t you been drinking?” Dad asked.
“I only had one glass of wine. I’m fine.”
“Sure?”
“There’s no brie on any of my socks,” I said.
“Well, I’m going to bed,” Ray said. “Night.”
And then he just up and left. That was it. I haven’t seen him since. I don’t really care what he’s up to either.
“So you want to drive Donnie, just the two of you?” Dad asked.
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“Oh you know where he lives, it’s just up around—”
“No,” I said. “I just can’t.”
“Well why not?”
“See, with my learner’s permit, I need you in the car,” I said. “I can’t drive without an adult.”
The backseat of the Prelude was tiny, like designed only for the asses of hyperactive teenage girls. But since Donnie was pretty drunk it didn’t seem to bother him, even though he was fat as hell. He just laid down, took up the whole thing. And the whole time he kept shouting—
“We’re in the Honda! We’re in the Honda!”
And each time it would only impress Dad even more.
“I know, I know!” he’d yell. “Can you believe it?”
“The infamous Honda!”
“Ray seemed like he was in a bad mood,” I said at one point.
“The infamous!” Dad said.
I didn’t say anything else really, during the drive to Donnie’s, because he and Dad were so engaged in each other, all revved up. And on the way back I had a few things I felt like bringing up but I didn’t say anything because Dad was asleep at that point. But the thing I want to tell you is when I actually got my license, a few months later, there was this time where I was driving down my street, Nelson Street, really late, and I just started thinking about this night, sort of thinking about Dad in general. And before I know it I’m going eighty miles an hour, running all the stoplights, straight past my own home, just oblivious. And suddenly I’m slamming on the brakes, turning sharp to avoid this parked car that somehow got right in front of me. I drive straight into a tree. Every window breaks. The hood flies up and shatters the windshield. The side mirror clips some branch, flies into my window, shatters it. Glass got in my mouth, small pieces I could only feel. This girl I was trying to feel attracted to at the time was next to me. I had forgot all about her. Then I heard her screaming, all panicked. You know, the way girls get. But don’t worry. She was fine.
FAMILY TRIP
I probably wasn’t even two years old when the photo was taken, but that didn’t seem to be comforting Mary at all. The second she saw it, she got all sorts of hostile.
“Joe, what is this?” she was saying. She was looking at the photo. She was Filipino, so even though she spoke English perfect, it always came out too fast. Everything she said sounded defensive.
“What’s that, dear?” Dad asked.
“This,” Mary said. “What is this? What is this?”
“Gimme a minute,” Dad said. He wasn’t in the room with the rest of us yet.
“This,” Mary was saying. She was starting to lose it. I swear to you, Mary was always starting to lose it. “Joe,” she was saying. “This, this, this!”
Dad comes into the room now. We were at his sister’s house in Massachusetts, Aunt June’s, were up for Easter, had just arrived after a long drive. I hadn’t seen any of my family on Dad’s side for about three years, since high school started and Dad moved away. So when he called up and asked do you want to come up, I said sure. We were sitting in the guest room now, with the queen-size bed for Dad and Mary, me sitting right there on the bed with Mary’s kid, Melanie.
I’d like to tell you that I was thrilled to see my family on Dad’s side, I really would, considering I hadn’t seen them in years. But I’d be lying. With Dad not around anymore, I’d started liking him less, sort of forgot what he looked like sometimes, saw his background as something smart to avoid. I got into being a part of Mom’s family, who were all these very smart types, doing like ten crossword puzzles a day, working real jobs, all that. I mean, no one on Dad’s side ever went to college, don’t think they really knew what it was, and here I was, talking after school to a guidance counselor about how if I get my grades up a little there’s a chance I could find myself at a decent college.
Mostly, I was just psyched to drive from Maryland to Dad’s hick home in Jersey on my own. I wasn’t curi
ous to see where he’d been living all these years. I was seventeen now, had been stuck driving for a year in Rockville, where you’d hit a red light every three minutes, where you were never really going anywhere. See, Mom had been making money, and bought me this used Honda Prelude, but I didn’t have it anymore. I totaled it the year before, like ten minutes after I turned sixteen, because this girl I didn’t even like was annoying the hell out of me and I ended up in a tree. Now I had this twenty-year-old BMW, super hip, this black 528, plenty of chrome, red leather seats. We picked it up because it was cheap, supposedly couldn’t go all that fast. But on the Jersey Turnpike I swear I got the thing up to ninety without any trouble.
Dad had pretty much stopped coming down to Maryland completely at this point. I was fine with this. I mean, he had this whole life up in Jersey now, with this woman, this little girl, and I was pretty okay with the idea of not knowing him anymore. He was actually going to some sort of college even, one of these specialty get-ups for middle-age people, to learn how to be one of those people who take blood before you see the real doctor. A vascular technician. It was one of those jobs that Sally Struthers never used to be quiet about on television. Remember them? Like gun repair.
On top of this, Dad was working the graveyard shift at a place called the Ding Dong Deli. So he was busy as hell, I understood. He’d call up every now and then, I guess like twice a year at this point, always when family stuff came up. You should have been on the line during one of these chats. The beginnings were always so awkward. Neither of us knew how to say even normal things. We didn’t know how to say hello right, couldn’t figure out how to ask how are you. Eventually, this settled, and Dad would bring up some family gathering, ask if I had any interest. This Easter was the first time T.J. wasn’t going to be around. He was staying in Florida this year. That’s why I went. It turned out he’d actually been arrested. He went to jail, and it was still against the law for me to see him.
“Hey Mom, what is it?” Melanie was now asking. She was around nine, I think.
“Joe, what is this?” Mary was still saying. She was talking so loud still. It was like she didn’t know Dad was right there. And he was even touching her.
“I think I’m missing somethin’,” Dad said. “What’s going on?”
“This photo is what I mean,” Mary said.
“Mom,” Melanie said. Everything she said sounded sad and whiny. She had these glossy buck teeth that made it hard for her to speak like a normal person. Every syllable involved a lot of saliva. On the outside of her mouth, I mean. “Mom,” she said again. “What’s the matter, mom? Are you crying?”
Like I said, I wasn’t even two when the photo had been taken. I looked over at it and I couldn’t remember that day, or even that time. It was one of those cheesy professional portraits, Olan Mills or whatever. The background was a bunch of fake trees, not plastic and three dimensional, just like a big poster smeared with fake trees. It was supposed to be all pretty and tranquil, the beginnings of the most spectacular fall in the history of the seasons. There was fake sunlight. The leaves on the fake trees were orange, red, brown, yellow—
“Oh relax,” Dad was saying now. “Just relax. Please.”
—and then, in the foreground, was Dad and Mom. They were just standing there.
“Please,” he was saying. “Let’s just calm down here.”
You should have seen how funny the two of them looked. They were smiling. Dad looked so young. He was around twenty-three, I guess, very thin. Mom was a little older. She looks exactly the same today, because Mom’s the type of woman who spends the first half of her life looking older than everyone else and then the second half looking ten times younger.
“Come on honey,” Dad said.
They were looking straight out, sort of vapid and forced. And in between them, all wrapped up in this white blanket, was a little baby. It had the kind of relaxed look babies get. Like stare at them forever, and as long as they keep that look, you’ll never know if they’re about to start laughing or crying. I can still pull off that look, at least for a little bit. Then I start laughing. I’m pretty much always laughing, just so you know.
And I know that baby was me. But I mean it was so long ago that I couldn’t remember any of it and didn’t care about it at all, which is a lot more than I can say for Mary.
She was actually crying.
“It’s no big deal,” Dad was saying. He had his arm around Mary. She was shaking. You could see this more because of how Dad’s arm was moving, in these erratic up-and-down jolts. I was sitting on the bed with Melanie. She tapped me, looked right at me. I could tell she was hoping for an explanation. She had only known me for about eight hours and already she looked to me for answers. I just shrugged.
“It is,” Mary said. “Yes, it is a big deal. These photos are everywhere! They’re all over the place!”
The lady had a point. Aunt June, like most of Dad’s family, was into the idea of photos. She probably spent thousands on frames every year. Every wall was covered. And it’s true: June was a bit behind the times. What I mean is, a lot of the pictures were from when Dad and Mom were married and I was a baby. I admit I had noticed it myself walking down the hall to the guest room. But, like I said, there wasn’t much to it. They were pretty much strangers. You know, like the photos that you get when you buy the frame.
But Mary wasn’t seeing any of it quite like this. She was talking so loud that I guess Aunt June heard her, because right now she was coming into the room like someone was on fire and asking—
“Is everything all right? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Dad said. “All’s fine.”
“What’s wrong?” Melanie said. It didn’t matter who she was talking to because no one was listening to her. “Dad what’s wrong?”
“Sure?” June said.
“Yeah,” Dad said again. “All’s just fine. We’re just tired from the drive,” he said. “But, hey, can I talk to you for a second?”
“Oh, of course,” June said.
So Dad gets up now, leaves Mary staring at the picture. She was very focused on it, the way some people are in museums when they look at art. I don’t mean jackass tourists, or the jackasses who are there just so they have something to talk about at dinner. Mary was like the people who just go and stare at the art, really look at it hard. That’s how Mary was, except she was shaking. It was like she wanted to learn something from this picture of my parents. She wanted it to tell her something.
I was kind of glancing at it myself, I admit. I was just sort of curious to see if I’d suddenly remember that day, because I can’t really remember anything from when they were together, most of the time I can’t even believe any of it really happened at all. I just remember the time at the airport. But they weren’t really together then. They were just married.
Dad was whispering something to June now. Her expression changed, got sort of empty looking in this serious way that Dad’s family didn’t get very often. Then, suddenly, this big smile starts riding her lips, and she says—
“Oh, dear, that’s not a problem at all.”
“What’s not?” Melanie said. “Dad, what’s not?”
“Are you sure?” Dad asked.
“Of course I’m sure,” June said.
“Sure about what?” Melanie said.
“Thanks so much,” Dad said. “Seriously, thank you.”
“Thank you for what?”
Settled in now, or as close to settled as I figured I’d feel, I decided I’d give Melanie a tour of the house. I hadn’t been in that house for years, but I have a pretty flashy memory when it comes to houses, so I knew my way around fine. I figured we could look at all the pictures and I’d tell Melanie about the people in them. I figured it would be a fine way to unwind. Maybe we’d even bond or whatever.
Because of Mary, and her little episode earlier, all the photos of me and Dad and Mom had been turned around. The ones of just Mom had been taken off the walls completely.
So me and Melanie are walking down this hallway, and it was pretty funny what ended up happening. Melanie’s stopping at every one of the pictures. She already knew everyone in them. She didn’t need me to give her any history lessons. My tour was completely foiled. Like right now, when Melanie’s looking at a photo of my grandparents, and she’s saying—
“Oh look, there’s Grammy and Grampy! There by the lake next to their house. I love Grammy and Grampy! Have you ever been to that lake?”
“I have,” I said.
“Grampy took me fishing there once.”
“I haven’t been since I was like your age,” I said. “Catch any fish?”
Grammy and Grampy were pretty old and sick, and didn’t make it down from Maine anymore. To this day, the last I’ve seen of them was when I went up with Mom for Christmas. But they’re still alive. I mean, they sent me that photo of Mike graduating from the military. I really can’t get over that he’s in the military—
“Oh and look,” Melanie was saying, moving on to the next photo. “There’s Cousin Will!”
I didn’t really mind her ignoring my question. She was just a kid.
“That’s Will?” I said.
“Will’s so funny!” Melanie said. “I love Will!”
It didn’t look anything like Will. The last I knew him he was around ten, a few years younger than me. He was one of my favorite cousins, all sorts of scrappy, with this bright orange hair, a million freckles. Cousin Mike had stopped coming up to Maine completely because he was pretty much a full blown delinquent. Stacey didn’t come anymore either, because she’d stopped talking to Ray, and the rest of the family, too.
That was it with them, so if you want to know more, I’m sorry.
But back in the day when Mike used to come up, me, him, and Will would go to the lake by Grammy and Grampy’s, to catch frogs, of all things. I mean, if you met me now you’d never think I was the type of guy who grew up catching frogs at a lake in Maine. You’d maybe even think I was doing my homework all the time or whatever. But that’s exactly what we did. We’d catch them, then throw them out into the water far as we could. It wasn’t as boring as it sounds. They’d hit the water and just lay there, all stunned. Then you’d see these ripples around them. They were moving again. You knew they were okay.