My twelve-year-old-sister, Zena, thinks having an unusual name is cool. But then, she also thinks that reading Us and People should count toward her Summer Literature List requirement. She loves signing things with her initials, because nobody else has them. ZIF. Zena Iris Flack.
She’d better hope that Mom doesn’t want us to change our names back to her maiden name, which is Timmons, because her initials will then be ZIT. Monograms will be a problem. (My middle name is Frances, so I’ll just go from AFF to AFT.)
Zena comes upon me and Mom arguing about the lack of email and phone, and says, “Just relax, A. So we won’t have email, so what?”
We have this silly habit of calling each other “A” and “Z,” because Dad always used to refer to us as “A to Z.”
“Z, it’s a big deal. I need to stay in touch with people.”
“It won’t be forever. What, are you worried Dylan’s going to forget you or something?” she scoffs.
“No, of course not,” I bluff.
But of course I am. So, the thing is, I’m going to write to him whenever I can. And send postcards of all the tacky places we go. My friend Sarah and I came up with the plan: she, because she doesn’t want me to be out of touch for weeks; me, because I don’t want anyone to forget me. Not Sarah, not Dylan, not even Gloves.
The doorbell chimes, and it’s Grandma Flack. “Tamara. A pleasure,” she says to Mom. “All set for the trip?”
“Almost.” Without another word, Mom runs up the stairs to pack, leaving us to visit on our own. We always used to get along fine. Now it’s weird and strained sometimes, like my grandma is guilty of something because she took in Dad, but it’s not like I wouldn’t want her to do that. Everything just feels extremely formal.
We shrug and look at each other as Mom thunders off. “She’s busy,” I say.
“Oh, sure.” Our grandmother nods.
I wonder why my dad didn’t come over with her to say good-bye, but then I remember that the last time he and Mom saw each other was not pretty. Nothing was hurled except insults, but still. It’s not something you want to see twice in your lifetime, never mind thirty times.
My grandmother gives me an envelope. “This is from your dad,” she says, and inside is a hundred-dollar bill, which I have to wonder how he could afford and if it’s really from him, or really from her, trying to cover for him. “He wants you to have a great time on the trip, so here’s some ‘mad money,’ I think he called it.”
Mad money. Interesting choice of words. It’s a good thing Mom isn’t here, because she’d be furious at Dad for handing out money when he’s supposedly bankrupt. “What about Zena?” I ask. “Is she getting some angry cash for the trip, too?”
Grandma Flack laughs. “No, she can share yours,” she says. “She’s not responsible enough yet.”
Neither is Dad, I think. Not to sound pop-psycho like my mother, but I don’t necessarily know if age has anything to do with how responsible a person is. Unlike my mom, I keep my opinion to myself. But I also get this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach when I wonder why my dad isn’t on the scene to say good-bye.
“So . . . why didn’t he come by to see us before we left, too?” I ask.
“I think we both know why,” she replies. And although it’s true, that the last bunch of visits have been weird, and I don’t know how to feel around him now, and sometimes he just makes me nervous . . . I think he should keep attempting them.
“Um, I’ll go try to find Gloves,” I say.
I hunt around the house, in all of Gloves’s favorite hiding places. Speaking of hiding, sometimes I think Mom’s taking us on this trip just to keep us from staying in touch with Dad. In fact, maybe she’s planning to stash us in some new town where he can’t find us. Not that anything he did was so wrong, unless of course you prefer not having your life’s savings, your college fund, and your house, even, stolen out from under you and used to bet on slots, cards, horses, and God knows what else.
The whole blackjack craze. Dad got swept up in it. Like, literally, off his chair and onto the floor and into the dustbin of history. From there it was an easy trip to the horse track, etc.
There aren’t a lot of Flacks in town, so it wasn’t something you could pretend was happening to someone else. At all.
Grandpa Flack told me that at his bar, there was a new game invented called “Flackjack,” which was a version of blackjack that involved stealing from the kitty when the other players weren’t looking. He didn’t find it amusing and never went back to the place where he’d been a regular for twenty years.
Dad did things like this. He ruined things, kind of like when you throw a rock into a lake and it not only sends out ripples, it also lands on a fish and kills it.
That’s us. The dead fish.
I spot Gloves lying under my comforter, on the corner of the bed near the window, basking in the sun. She shouldn’t be a Wisconsin cat. She doesn’t have thick enough fur. I scoop her overheated body up and give her a few kisses, right on the white patch over her eyes. “Don’t worry, G. You’ll be fine,” I tell her. “Things are going to be weird, but I’ll be home soon. If you get lonely, Dad will be there.”
He’s the one who helped me pick out Gloves seven years ago at the Humane Society. He was also the one who suggested we take her back after she cried nonstop on the way home.
I find Grandma in the kitchen, visiting with Zena and picking up the bags of cat food and other Gloves supplies that I packed that morning. “Hey, Dad’s not in Las Vegas or something, is he?” I ask her.
“No, of course not. Why would he be in Vegas?” she asks, as if that’s the most illogical thing I’ve ever said. “He’s done with gambling,” she says. “You know that.”
“Right,” I say. He’s definitely promised to change, and I haven’t noticed anything suspicious lately, but it hasn’t been that long, either.
“So, I got you something, too.” She gives me a thin plastic sleeve of stamps. Two books of regular first-class stamps, a few sheets of postcard stamps, plus some plain white postcards, already stamped.
We’ve always had this weird, slightly psychic connection. “How did you know?” I ask.
“Know what?” she says.
“That I need stamps,” I say.
“Please. That bit about not bringing a computer along and springing for wireless, or giving you a phone? Ridiculous.” She snorts. “Penny wise, pound foolish.” She’s always saying this about my mother, which probably isn’t that cool a quality in a mother-in-law. Or an ex-mother-in-law, which I guess would be a mother outlaw.
I keep looking at her and wondering whether it was her who made Dad the way he is, or whether it was us, or whether it wouldn’t have mattered who he was born or married to—maybe he was wired from the womb to be a gambling addict.
“I wouldn’t last a day without emailing my friends,” she says.
“Yeah. Maybe I won’t, either,” I say. A day sounds about right, give or take a few hours.
“Also, it wouldn’t kill you to keep in touch with your father while you’re away,” she says. “Think about it.”
It wouldn’t kill me to keep in touch, but it might hurt, sort of like getting blood drawn. He lied about so many things that I still haven’t really been able to forgive him for, even though at one point I really did decide that he was a good person at heart, a good person with a really big problem. And forgiveness is what we need here.
But so far the only one who seems really open to that idea is Zena, who says he can’t help himself. I guess I understand that, but I don’t really think it’s an excuse.
Mom and I aren’t budging, but for different reasons.
She’s mad about the money, about his lying to her, about how he let everything spiral out of control before he told her what was going on.
And I’m angry about all that too, but I’m also mad about the reputation factor. First it hit the newspaper that he’d embezzled money from the motor vehicle department—which, face i
t, nobody loves anyway—to finance his gambling habit, after he’d spent all of our money. Then it was on the TV news, and they showed a picture of our house, which is pretty nice, I guess, which looks really bad if someone is stealing government money. Then the Fox News I-Team investigator came to the door and I opened it, not realizing who it was, and the reporter shoved a microphone in my face, and that night it was all over TV, with me saying, “No comment.”
When I got to school the next day, it seemed like everyone stood back from me, or whispered, or walked by me saying, “No comment,” and laughing.
A few days later, there was this big winter formal, and Sarah told me I had to still go, because I’d already bought a dress and because you can’t just give in when people try to shun you. Mom told me to go, and for some reason I thought I might cut loose and have fun. At the dance I was trying to be brave, so I asked Tony Miller if he wanted to dance. He said, “No comment,” and grinned at me, as if it were a hilarious and original thing to say. His friends started laughing, so I went into the bathroom to get away from them.
Unfortunately, I happened to be washing my hands at the same time a group of cheerleaders were fixing their hair and makeup. Sherry Hansen said, “God, Ariel, that’s so awful that now you’re, like, bankrupt; that must be so hard,” and another cheerleader tried to hand me a Kleenex, the whole time digging for sordid details, only being nice so they could get the scoop.
I went outside to get some fresh air after that, and Keith Johnson, who was standing there illicitly smoking, tried to commiserate with me by sharing stories of his brother in drug rehab. “Oh yeah, you have it so hard. That’s nothing. It’s nothing until he calls you from jail, or beat up in an alley.”
“Well, thanks, Keith. I’ll look forward to that,” I told him. “Thanks so much.”
Then after I stomped off in my heels, I felt really bad, because he really was worse off than me.
I spent winter break in hibernation. Going back to school afterward was one of the best and hardest things I’ve ever done. Fortunately there was a scandal involving a football coach and one of the previously mentioned cheerleaders, so everyone moved on to that and forgot about me and my problems. But not before I’d slipped down a few rungs on the cool ladder, rungs I’ve not managed to climb back up yet. I doubt I ever will. I’ve got zero upper-body strength. Zero upper body, actually.
I have these really angry thoughts and memories as I’m standing there smiling at my grandmother and clutching Gloves to me. I feel like such a hypocrite. How can I talk to her and make nice about this situation, but how can I not? It’s so awkward that sometimes I’d rather jump out the window than feel it all over again. It’s getting old and stale, like what happens to Gummi Bears if you open the bag and don’t finish them.
I start crying while I say good-bye to Gloves. I’ve got my nose buried in her black fur, and the thought of abandoning her for four weeks is too much. I rub her white paws. I think about how Gloves will be at Grandma and Grandpa Flack’s house, and how Dad will be there, too, and how we won’t be, and I keep crying. I’m overreacting and I know it, but I can’t stop.
“Pull it together already,” Zena says to me. “It’s only four weeks. And it’s only a cat.”
I glare at her through my tears as she hugs Grandma good-bye and then runs upstairs. “Thanks for the sympathy!” I yell after her. She should know that Gloves is not “only a cat.” She’s my confidante. Unlike my little sister.
“You can always write to her,” my grandmother says as she hugs me. “While you’re at it, write to me, too. It’s going to be as boring as your mother’s mac and cheese around here without you.” My mother is notorious for her bland cooking, heavy on the dairy. She once made a soup that my dad called “cream of cream.”
I laugh. “Okay, I will. I promise.”
“Promise?”
“Right,” I say, and she kisses my forehead, then gently lifts Gloves out of my arms.
As Gloves is being whisked away in a Pet Porter and plaintively meowing, the phone rings and it’s Dylan. I’m glad for the interruption. He thanks me for the Skittles, which strikes me as weird. Of course, he is perfect, so knowing that it would mean a lot to me is probably why he felt compelled to, because we’re in sync.
Then he says something not-so-perfect. “You know, whatever happens this summer . . . it’s cool, right?” he asks.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“We sort of have this thing, or we, like, had this thing at the end of the year, and that’s cool,” Dylan says, “but we won’t see each other for ten weeks, and you never know, you might meet someone on your trip.”
“Yeah,” I say slowly, kind of like a dying breath. What is he talking about?
“All I’m saying is that it’s going to be a long summer, so . . . don’t sweat it if something else comes up,” Dylan says.
I’m a little slow at this, but it dawns on me that he’s giving me license to see someone else, which probably means that’s what he wants to do. “Dylan, what are you saying?”
“Hey, lighten up. It’s no big deal, I just want you to have a good time. You know what they say about road trips.”
“No.” That they kill your relationship? Before you even leave town?
“Like, whatever happens on the road stays on the road. Or whatever.” He gives an embarrassed laugh.
“I thought that was Las Vegas.” Why does that city keep coming up?
“Really? Huh.”
“Dylan. I’m going on a road trip with my sister and my mom. Do you seriously think I’m going to do anything fun?” I ask. “I’ll be in every night by, like, eight. Watching TV in some motel and fighting about what shows to watch.”
We say good-bye and I hang up, and then I have that love him/hate him feeling again. I take that slip of paper with his address out of my pocket and stare at it. I have this urge to crumple it and throw it in the kitchen trash, but I don’t.
Anyway, even if I did, I’ve already memorized it, so it would be all for show, and nobody else is around.
Riding the range in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Fun for the whole family!
Hey Dylan,
Have fun becoming a cowboy.
Hope this will spur you on.
Okay, not funny.
(I saved this from a trip 2 years ago.)
See you in 10 weeks!!!
Ariel
P.S. Why Why oming? Couldn’t you pick somewhere closer?
Chapter Three
We leave at five a.m. in our old diesel VW Jetta. My mother drives as if her hair is on fire. As if we are seeing all fifty states—today. Before lunch.
We hit a bird at about six a.m. and all she, birdwatcher in a former life with my dad the full-time gambler and part-time ornithologist, can say is, “What kind of bird was that?”
“Pigeon,” I say, because I want to believe that only the ugly birds get hit by runaway middle-aged drivers.
Mom slams on the brakes and pulls into the emergency lane to stop completely; then she backs up, weaving a little. A giant truck lays onto the horn and veers into the left lane to avoid hitting us.
“You are going to kill us!” I say. “You realize that?”
“Just hold your horses,” she says, and she climbs out, searching for the wounded bird.
Zena and I watch her wander up the side of the highway, in the dawn. “She has this urge to save helpless things,” I comment.
“Helpless dead things,” Zena corrects me.
“I didn’t see anything,” Mom says as she climbs back into the car. “Maybe I didn’t kill it. Maybe the bird just bounced off the windshield and flew away.”
“Mm,” I say.
“Maybe,” says Zena.
Highly doubtful, I think. This seems like a really bad start to our trip.
We all settle back into our seats and prepare for the next roadkill experience.
Sometimes Mom floors it up to eighty-five; then she’ll get distracted and slow to sixt
y. I can’t stand someone who’s that inconsistent. If I can keep pace when I’m running and I don’t even have a speedometer, then why can’t she?
“Mother. There is such a thing as cruise control,” I tell her.
She glares at me, then laughs at herself, then switches it on, then off, because she can’t decide which she likes better: scaring others or saving gas money. She’s seeming a little scattered and out of control this morning, and I wonder why, and want to suggest to her that it’s because she’s feeling cut off with this no email/no cell phone rule, which should immediately be retracted.
I’m supposed to be allowed to share the driving, but Mom isn’t budging from the wheel, and we’re not allowed to stop until we nearly run out of gas. This is very unlike my mom, who is always very safe and doesn’t like to leave things to chance.
Mom’s not the risk-taker; Dad is. She’s changing on me, or something, right in the middle of I-94. Maybe she’s been reading her own books, especially those chapters about reinventing yourself in Change Your Wife, Change Your Life?
Yes, I’ve read her three books. No, they haven’t changed me.
I spend the first three hours of the drive doing some very significant highway dreaming.
I see: me and Dylan kissing good-bye in his room, which was very hot. Not the room, but the kiss. I wonder if he is thinking about it, too, if he’s on the plane, staring out the window, thinking of me. Maybe the plane is overhead right now. At this second. I gaze up through the sunroof, but it’s mottled because there was a light, spitting rain overnight that left lots of drecky polka dots.
I see: Dylan and me dancing at a party, but instead of us being on the edge of the dance floor, like we were at Spring Fling, we’re in the middle or maybe toward the stage, because we’ve just been crowned fall Homecoming King and Queen, because everyone’s forgotten my dad’s a heel and I’m popular again, even more so because I’m with Dylan now, and there’s a spotlight on us as we have this big, hot kiss.
Then the daydreaming stops because I actually fall asleep and do some very real dreaming, but unfortunately I can’t control these and so it’s not about Dylan; it’s about showing up to take an exam and having forgotten to wear any clothes and everyone laughing at me as I try to shield myself with my driver’s license.
The Summer of Everything Page 19