by Jeff Zentner
We fall silent again for a while, passing fast-food joints and auto parts stores. Something’s begun to gnaw at me. Rubbing like a shoe that doesn’t quite fit. It’s like when you get that weird anxiety that you think you could trace back to something specific you remembered or heard, but you can’t quite retrace your steps in your mind. Maybe I’m picking up Delia’s energy.
“Don’t let him hurt you again.”
“Who? My dad?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you were talking about Arliss for a sec. Because of his text.”
We laugh.
“Could you imagine?” I say. “Delia. Protect your heart from Arliss. Guard it away and do not let him betray you again.”
“I certainly shan’t allow Arliss to break my heart. I’m so distracted tonight. Sorry.”
“Understandable.”
We near Delia’s trailer. I feel her nervousness congealing. “Are you good? Do you want me to hang with you?” I ask. I know Delia’s a survivor, but it doesn’t stop me from always wanting to save her.
“I’m fine. I’m going to help Mom clean the house. It’s kind of a dump because neither of us has had time.”
I doubt very much that Delia’s mom hasn’t had time. But I don’t say anything. Delia’s really protective of her mom.
We pull up in Delia’s driveway. Her mom’s palm- and tarot-reading sign is illuminated and casts a soft white glow on their patchy lawn. Delia hops out and retrieves the tub from the trunk. “Good show tonight,” she says to me.
“You too,” I say. “Good luck with the PI thing.”
“Yeah. Check your schedule and see if you could do ShiverCon. I’m serious.”
“I know. You have our next movie picked out?”
“Not yet. Got a couple ideas. Bye, Buford!” Delia waves to Buford, who looks up, regards her woefully, and slumps back down when he sees that no treat is forthcoming. “Okay, later,” she says to me.
“Call or text if the thing happens and you’re freaking out.”
“Will do.”
I watch her lug the tub to her front door, walking at a slant in the pale light of the sign. That’s Delia in general: walking at a slant under the weight she carries.
I hope she’s going to be okay. I really do. With some people you can’t tell. It’s hard when you care deeply about someone who has a lot of bad luck. You wonder how long you can stand between them and fate.
I’ve come to believe that everyone gets five or six perfect days in their life. Days with not a single wrong note or thorn, days that ripen like a peach in your memory as years pass. Every time you go to bite it, it’s juicy and sweet.
I’ve had one. I was seven and it was October and my birthday. I opened presents that morning. It seemed like I got twice as many as any year before. I’d heard my parents talking about a bonus my dad received at work. I got books and comics and toys. At the time it seemed like enough to make a wall around me.
My dad and I spent the morning playing Mario Kart. I won again and again and again. I couldn’t lose. It didn’t occur to me at the time that he was letting me win, but it does now. My mom wasn’t around during all this. I don’t remember what she was doing. Maybe making my cake. Maybe she was still in bed. She was going through one of her dark times, and when that happened, she didn’t get out of bed much. It must have been one of her bad days. She couldn’t simply decide not to have one of her bad days on my birthday. My dad said he wanted a daddy-daughter day. Maybe Mom was why.
But even without her and just my dad, it was still a perfect day.
We played Mario Kart until we got hungry, and then he took me to Cicis for pizza. He challenged me to a contest of who could eat more. He told me I could eat whatever I wanted, so I think I got one slice of cheese pizza and then six slices of dessert pizza. I won this game too. Again, I suspect he let me win.
After seemingly hours of feasting like depraved Roman emperors (who were at Cicis for some reason), we returned home. With great ceremony, Dad began picking out videos. These were the forbidden fruits. The ones he and Mom watched only after I was asleep. The scary ones. The ones he’d promised I could watch when I was old enough. On that birthday, I was old enough.
We’re not talking Rob Zombie or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre here. For my first foray into horror, we watched a bunch of episodes of Dr. Gangrene. The gentle, silly humor of the segments interwoven with the movie diluted to a manageable degree what few frights the cheesy movies held. Still, I spent hours in a haze of delicious adrenaline, tension and release, snuggled up tight to my dad. He smelled like dryer sheets and cigarette smoke. We sat like that for hours, gorging ourselves on Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, gummy worms, and grocery-store-brand grape soda, my favorite.
I loved every second. I knew even then something was writing itself onto my heart, changing me. Making me.
I dozed off at some point. I don’t know how sleep overcame the excitement of the day and all the sugar I’d eaten. I finally crashed, I guess. I woke up and I was in our front yard and it was crisp and dark. We didn’t have Mom’s palm-reading sign then. The air smelled like the sweetness of fallen apples right before they turn. I felt the sky yawning above me. But I wasn’t afraid because I could still smell my dad too, and I was in his embrace. I didn’t feel small because somehow all that emptiness above me made me feel large and protected.
“Look up, DeeDee,” he whispered in my ear, and I could feel the scrape of his stubble on my cheek. “The sky is amazing tonight.”
I did, and it was. The stars seemed to dance, there were so many of them, turning the black of the sky to a deep blue. I felt like if my dad let me go, I would fall upward into them, weightless.
“You cold?” he whispered. “Wanna go back inside?”
I shook my head.
“When did you get so big?” he asked. “But you’re still my baby as long as I can hold you.”
I gazed heavenward. The moon was bright too. Almost full. It turned the vapor of my breath silver. I shivered.
He kissed me on the cheek. “Happy birthday, baby doll.” He took me back inside and put me in my bed and stroked my face until I fell asleep again.
For the next year, almost every night, we watched his shows together. Horror hosts showing terrible movies and doing goofy skits. We watched even on his bad days—the days when, like Mom, he couldn’t get out of bed. He didn’t seem to have as many as Mom, but he had his too.
Mom got worse. To my seven-year-old self, it didn’t seem like they were fighting an unusual amount. But then again, I had no point of comparison. By my eighth birthday, he had left. He never told us why. I guess he was doing worse than I thought.
I wish I could have hated him. It would hurt to cling to that, like gripping a thorny branch. But it’d be something more solid than what I had—the memory of love.
And because I won the genetic mental-health lottery, I had plenty of bad days too. Like the ones Mom and Dad had. For years and years.
I almost didn’t make it.
But instead of not surviving, I got on some medication that made me feel right, and then I started making a dumb show on TV Six with my best friend, and that was something I could hold on to.
* * *
•••
I go around to the back door and open it quietly because I saw Candy Tucker’s Dodge Challenger parked in our gravel driveway, which means my mom must be doing a reading. The smoky spice of incense hitting my nose confirms this. I set down the tub by the door and pad through our kitchen, the sink filled with unwashed dishes and mounds of unopened mail on the table.
“DeeDee?” my mom calls from the living room. “You don’t need to tiptoe, we’re all done in here.”
“I got a new man,” Candy calls out in her bourbon-sanded alto. “Needed your mama to tell me if he was worthless like the last one. And the one before him.
And the one before him.”
I enter our candlelit living room. Shadows dance on the knickknacks, paintings, photos, and thrift/antique store arcana that cover nearly every horizontal and vertical surface. “And?”
“Looks gooooood!” Candy says with a salacious grin. Behind her my mom makes a pained “mmmmmmm” expression and flashes me the “so-so” sign. Candy gives a long, hacking, wet cough.
“He’s a lucky guy,” I say.
“Tell that to my last three husbands,” Candy says, rising from the small table where my mom does her tarot readings. “I been meaning to catch your show, honey, but it seems like I’m never home when it’s on.”
Candy Tucker is decidedly not the stay home watching public access on a Saturday night type. Say what you will about her lack of romantic success thus far; she is a firm believer in taking control of her own destiny in matters of the heart.
“It might not be your thing. We have a niche viewership.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll love it. I think the world of you and your mama.” She pats me on the cheek in a whiff of Febreze and cherry car freshener. “Bye-bye, Shawna, I’ll see you when I see you,” she says to my mom, giving her a hug and a quick peck on the cheek before fishing her dragon-shaped vape pen from her purse.
We wait until we hear the roar of her engine starting before we say anything.
“It’s bad, huh?”
Mom facepalms and shakes her head. “I told her the truth. Said, ‘Look, Candy, there are promising signs, but I’m not seeing a lasting relationship here.’ ”
“And Candy heard: ‘There are promising signs—’ ” I keep moving my mouth but don’t say anything.
“Pretty much.”
“Job security for you, at least.”
“Pretty much.”
“I’m starving. There anything to eat?”
“I ordered pizza earlier. It’s in the fridge.” Mom follows me into the kitchen. Under the harsh fluorescent kitchen lights, she looks a lot more spent than she looked in the more forgiving candlelight of the living room. “How was the show tonight?”
“Good. The Idiot Twins brought one of their friends who’s like a karate expert and he did some cool stuff during Dance Party.”
“Idiot Twins?”
“Colt and Hunter. Also, they told us they knew someone with a basset hound for the dog wedding. So they show up with the karate expert and his dog, which is a beagle. And guess what their explanation was? ‘We thought beagles turn into basset hounds when they get older.’ ”
“Bless their hearts.”
I pull the cleanest-looking plate off the pile of unwashed dishes, rinse it, put a couple of slices of pizza on it, and put it in the microwave. “Bless them indeed.”
My phone, which I had somehow managed to forget for a few minutes, buzzes. I yank it from my pocket so fast I almost rip the vinyl. (If that’s indeed what these pants are made of. I’m having doubts.)
Josie: My Instagram keeps recommending videos of turtles having sex. Why.
Me: OMG HAHAHAA (I HATE YOU RIGHT NOW BTW)
Josie: WHY DO YOU HATE ME? IS IT BECAUSE UR JEALOUS OF HOW SENSUAL INSTAGRAM THINKS I AM?
Me: I haven’t heard back on the Thing. I thought you were the Thing.
Josie: Awwww. Sorry boo.
Me: It’s ok.
Josie: How are you?
Me: Meh.
Josie: I feel you. Seriously though, why does IG think I want to watch turtles boning.
Me: I DO NOT KNOW OK. IT’S A MYSTERY. NOW I SERIOUSLY CANNOT DEAL WITH MY PHONE BUZZING AND IT NOT BEING THE THING.
Josie: Ok DeeDeeBooBoo, love u. Let me know when you know about the Thing.
Me: Def will. Love u, JoJoBee.
I pull my pizza from the microwave, excavate myself a space at the table, and sit. I start picking letters off the top of one of the stacks and opening them. “Mom?” I say, reading a bill.
“What is that?”
“From the power company. Says this is our final notice.”
“Thought I paid that.”
“Clearly you did not unless I misread and in this context ‘final notice’ means ‘Hey, we finally noticed that you do a phenomenal job of meeting your financial obligations, so we just wanted to say great job!’ ”
“Oops.”
“Yeah, oops. Where’s the checkbook?” I’ve known how to write a check since I was eight. It was not a skill I was happy to acquire. It made me feel like an orphan every time I had to be the mother to my mother.
Mom walks back to her room, returns with the checkbook and a pen, and hands them to me. I start writing the check.
“Boing,” Mom says.
I stop. “What does that mean? Is this check going to bounce?” I ask without looking up.
“Kidding. It shouldn’t.”
“It’s funny because financial ruin!” Her joke would be a lot funnier if our utilities hadn’t been cut off in the past for bouncing checks. But the right corner of my mouth pulls upward in spite of myself.
“I got my paycheck from Target a little while ago, and Candy paid me tonight in cash. Oh! And I sold another piece from my Etsy store!”
“Which one?”
“The necklace with the mouse skull.”
“Blessed are the spooky weirdos.”
If this check bounces, I will feel even more guilty about having paid a PI several hundred dollars to track down my dad.
I finish writing the check, put it in the envelope that came with the bill, and study Mom’s face. “Hey,” I say gently. “You okay?”
She sighs. “I’ve been having bad days lately. Can’t get out of bed.”
“I noticed. You taking your medication?”
She looks away and taps the table, like she can run out the clock.
“Mom. I’m not just going to forget that I asked you a question.”
“I’m on hiatus.”
“You don’t go on hiatus from taking mental health meds.”
“I was feeling better.”
“You were feeling better because of the medication.”
She lifts her hands in surrender. “My prescription ran out.”
“So you get it refilled.”
“Wanna watch a movie? They put the Rob Zombie version of Halloween on Netflix.”
“Mom. Are you listening to me?”
“Yes. Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“I’ll refill my prescription and start taking my meds again.” Her face is wan and tired.
“Thank you.” I take a bite of pizza, pull another letter off the stack, and open it.
“We can go through that later. Get your dinner and let’s watch Halloween.”
I’ll say this for my mother: she’s very good at making me feel less lonely in this world, even when she has no energy to take care of herself. But I need to make sure I’m being heard. “I do not want to have to bathe with baby wipes because our water’s been cut off because, like, our water bill is sitting—”
My phone buzzes.
I walk in the front door, Buford jingling behind me, and follow the sound of the TV to the living room, where my dad sits, with no particular light of interest in his eyes, watching a show about sharks. My mom’s curled up next to him, reading. My younger sister, Alexis, sits cross-legged on the end of the couch, texting or Snapchatting. Buford slinks over to his bed in the corner, refusing to make eye contact with anyone.
I squeeze in between my mom and Alexis, who huffs in annoyance.
“Hey, Jo,” my mom says. “How’d filming go?”
“You need to wash your face,” Alexis says.
“You need to go put on vampire makeup like me. Your face is too plain.”
Alexis hmphs and goes back to her texting.
> Mom stink-eyes us. “Josephine, Alexis, I hope y’all are not going to ruin my peaceful Friday night with bickering.”
“She’s the one—” I start.
Mom puts down her magazine and gives me the look I imagine she gives her jailbird clients when she is thoroughly not having even a little bit of it. “How often do I care who started what?”
“Never,” I grumble, then slump back and start texting Delia to tell her that Instagram thinks I love watching turtles hump.
“My question earlier was not rhetorical,” Mom says. “How was filming?”
“Fine,” I mutter, not looking up from my phone. “We mostly didn’t screw up.”
“This the episode that’s gonna make you a star?” Alexis also fixates on her phone.
I delicately reach over with the toe of one of my witchy black stilettos and kick her phone out of her hands.
Alexis mewls indignantly. “Mom.”
“When I become famous, I’m going to have my bodyguards do that. You’ll be on your phone and they’ll come up and be like boop and kick it out of your hands. And I’ll watch and laugh,” I say.
“I’m so sure you’re gonna make enough money doing your corny show on channel six to hire anyone.”
“I’m mo mure you’re gonna mew mew mew to mire manyone,” I say in a high-pitched voice.
Dad uncrosses his arms from over his belly. “All right, now. I’m going to start taking away phones and car keys if this fussing at each other doesn’t stop. Y’all heard me?”
“Yes,” Alexis and I say in unison.
“We were having a perfectly pleasant evening until you two started in,” Mom says.
“Well, I was having a perfectly pleasant evening until I saw Alexis, so she’s obviously the problem.”
“I don’t care that you’re eighteen. I’ll send you to your room,” Mom says.
I read Delia’s reply to my text. Oopsie. I shouldn’t have texted her with trivialities while she was expecting a big email.
“Although,” my mom continues, “Alexis has made a worthwhile point, in a roundabout way.”
I roll my eyes. “I am going to my room. You don’t even need to ask.” I begin to rise.