“Forget the car,” I said. “We can move to the city and I’ll take cabs like Holden.”
“I didn’t know you had a friend named Holden.” Mom forgot all about their argument. She’d cooked homemade spaghetti sauce. She does stuff like that to avoid the pesticides and gunk that’s added to food to make it look perfect. Anyone can see that perfect is stupid. Things in the real world aren’t supposed to be perfect. Look at people. Start with Adam and Eve. Reality is the apple. Perfect doesn’t compute when you’re dealing with humans. How else can you explain things like teenage pregnancy and child abuse, and diseases like AIDS? Or leukemia?
Back to the day of the car argument. Mom had even peeled the tomatoes herself because she was on a no-salt kick. (Food with no salt is disgusting, actually, but you can’t tell that to my mother.) She’d read that the salt in canned vegetables can turn the arteries of a twenty-year-old into the arteries of a sixty-year-old.
“Overnight?” Dad joked, but she’d already given the canned tomatoes to the homeless shelter.
Nick was trying to eat like a real Italian by sucking up the individual noodles. Little red flicks sprayed everywhere. That totally distracted Mom, who forgot she’d asked me a question because she was so busy mopping up the blips of sauce with a dish towel.
“I’m not really hungry.” I had to change the subject. Explaining about Holden would have been tricky. Joe’s the only one that even knows I read the book ahead of the class.
Mom looked like she wanted to scream. “You have to eat.” Although she didn’t actually scream, she spoke so loudly that even Nick stopped fooling around.
Like we hadn’t been eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast and lunch for years at that point. Peanut butter is the world’s best food according to Mom, one thing we agree on. Or used to. Only at that point I’d lost ten pounds in three weeks, so even I was starting to suspect something wasn’t right.
“Holden, huh?” Dad said. “Leave it to someone in Essex County to name their kid after a storybook character.” He put his arm around Mom’s shoulders—chummy all of a sudden, the argument forgotten—and squeezed, the way grown-ups do when they’re trying to cheer each other up.
It made me sick that he could dismiss Holden’s whole deal as a storybook. Holden lived through that painful stuff. And he’s not the only kid who has. Why do grown-ups always think what kids feel is fluff and can’t possibly be significant?
Last year a boy at the middle school hanged himself. The semester before he’d forged his father’s name on his report card after his father insisted he get better grades. Then he failed a course. When the school scheduled a parent-teacher conference, he must have figured the truth would come out. All the parents and teachers walked around in a fog like they had no clue what had happened, but the kids understood how the boy could have felt like he’d never be what his father wanted, that kind of hopeless over nothing ever changing.
Same thing with Holden. It’s not like he’s being a baby. Or whining about not getting a candy bar. Hard enough to figure out the world, much less the crazy way the adults have screwed it up. Insisting things like grades are so important and not caring whether you’ve actually learned anything. It never crosses their minds how scary it is for us to think we’re going to have to work around their messes or might even have to fix the world.
If I hadn’t been so glad my parents weren’t arguing for a change, I would have called Dad on the storybook jab. I hate it when adults put down kids for being inexperienced. Like we can help that we haven’t lived as long as they have.
Anyway, after the Holden crack Dad was smiling and doing that massage thing to Mom’s shoulders. He didn’t even notice me. Snuggling is something they do less and less. I didn’t want to spoil that by starting an argument over Holden.
Dad leaned over her shoulder, their heads touching. “Remember when we read that book? In Mr. Nolan’s Humanities class. And your best friend, Rose, decided to run away to New York City.”
“I was so jealous of Rose Pelletier.”
My father pressed his lips into a pout of perplexity. “You wanted to go to New York?”
Mom shook her head. “Her uncle brought her that beaded vest from India and she always managed to get the seat next to Lewis Murray in the back row.”
“She was a cutie.”
Cutie? I groaned. Didn’t they hear themselves?
But to be honest I was glad they’d forgotten about me. It’s wearing to be the center of attention for every little thing you do or say. Nick took the opportunity to scrape his spaghetti into the trash. Before Mom and Dad could say anything or even notice, he was out kicking the soccer ball against the side of the cabin. I slid out from the table too, turned to clear my plate, and they were kissing. See what I mean about my dad?
Fast-forward to late August.
“Daniel,” Dad yells again without noticing I’m right behind him. When he’s this focused, it must be something serious. He’s usually patient, an advocate of letting things happen naturally. He believes he has all the time in the world. Because his job is editing textbooks, he can do it anywhere. Lucky for us, with the floating house.
“Yeah, Dad. What’s up?” When he reaches out to ruffle my hair, I duck. “Dad.”
“Listen, your mother needs to do some grocery shopping and she thought you might want to go into town with her and get a haircut before school starts next week.”
“You said I could grow it as long as I wanted.”
“For the summer. You don’t want the high-school teachers to think you’re lazy, do you? Shaggy won’t cut it.” He laughs at the pun.
I groan. “Mom said she didn’t want me at the school anymore. You know, with all the germs.”
“We’re still talking about it.”
“You had long hair in high school.”
He looks surprised.
“Your yearbook,” I explain.
“Well, right, but there was a war going on. It was a statement.”
“Rwanda’s not a war?”
He hesitates long enough that we both know I’ve got him. Finally he reverts to standard parenting fare. “You won’t get into college if you don’t impress your high-school teachers.”
“You did fine without college.”
“I did night school. It’s the hardest way there is to get a degree.”
“I thought this was your dream life. You and Mom are always saying how lucky you are not to be in the rat race like Leonard’s dad or Mr. Hanaday.”
“Mr. Hanaday’s the president of a bank. No one wants to be Mr. Hanaday. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about being a bank president.”
Mom’s voice whips around from the front deck. “Stieg, you promised.”
“Promised what?” I ask, little stabs of pain starting to pulse behind my right eyebrow. If she’s using his real name, it’s important. His nickname is Red. For his hair, not his temper. And, if he were being one hundred percent honest, for his politics.
Dad kneels to straighten the mooring line. He stutters something about my math skills and ends the conversation before I can add the ultimate barb. Why do I need a haircut ever again? I’m not going to live long enough for college.
About now you’re probably wondering what I look like. People always do that with books, try to figure out whether someone has curly hair or who’ll play who in the movie. I sure as hell can’t play myself. (It’s okay, you can laugh. Sicko.)
Without giving too much away, I look like my mother. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not. Dad says it is. She’s blonde like the models you see in travel ads for Sweden. I’m one of the few people who know that her hair is dyed. I’ve seen her—after we’re supposed to be asleep—when she squeezes the tube of dye and sits under that blue plastic cap with the stiff bow at her chin. It’s a concession to the establishment she hates to admit.
Even without that gunk, though, she’s not old enough yet to be all gray. I don’t think the hair coloring is because she’s
vain; she’s just not brave enough to accept that time is passing in a way she can’t control. It’s funny to think of your mother not being brave. In storybooks mothers are always the Mama Bears protecting their young.
Both sets of my grandparents are dead, but they were all real blondes, Scandinavians, double vowels in their mostly unpronounceable names. Joe says we’re lucky that Mom had her own ideas about names. We could have had weird names like Dad’s or military names like Helmut with double dots over the vowels. I figure Mom’s insistence on blonde hair is one last little throwback to that heritage. It would fit with all her reincarnation mumbo jumbo. She wears her own hair long and usually loose like Mama Cass on the cover of the Mamas and Papas record in their collection. A favorite of theirs. You can tell from the squashed corners and the white splotches where the print has worn off from handling. Of course, the fact that they know all the words when those songs come on the radio is another dead giveaway.
While I’m talking to Dad about the haircut, Mom comes around from the back deck. In her bathing suit—from behind where you can’t see all the worry lines on her face—she could be twenty-something. Once, when I was about thirteen, I had a friend who kept on making cryptic comments about how hot my mom was, until I beat him about the head and neck with my backpack one day. You can’t have kids mixing up things like that with adults. It’s too weird. It’s not right. After my father broke up the fight, neither of us would tell him what it was about.
Don’t get the idea I’m a violent person. I’m not. Even if I wanted to be, I couldn’t be violent with peaceniks for parents.
“Daniel, sweetie.” Mom spreads her words out like honey dripping off a spoon. She has that Southern accent that stops strangers dead in their tracks. People are expecting a dumb blonde and then it shocks them when they realize how smart she is. “Don’t argue with your father. We’ve been through all this. School is your work. And as long as you’re in school, they can’t draft you.”
“Jeez, Sylvie, they don’t draft fifteen-year-olds. Certainly not in peacetime when they’re not even running a draft. We’re talking about a haircut. Not a new world order.”
After Mom parks the Subaru Wagon on Main Street, she gives me a ten-dollar bill. “Don’t forget the change, but give the barber a dollar tip, please. At those rates they can’t be making a living wage.” She’s like that, always worried about someone else when her own clothes are from Goodwill and she reads her favorite magazines at the library.
She riffles through papers on the front seat, obviously fixated on what else she has on her list because she’s left the motor running. A real no-no with pollution and global warming. “Listen, Danny.”
Mom is the only one who gets away with calling me Danny. I get out and bend down to the window.
“I’ll be an hour or so. Last stop is the library. If you get through sooner, you can wait in the car. Or come in and find me…no, that’s not a good idea. Just wait in the car.”
Like hell. Lately I hardly ever have free time in town. The list of places I want to go, to see what’s happening and to be seen, grows longer every day. Even without The Disease, summer vacation’s a killer when you live on a houseboat.
Mack is luckier. His house is two blocks from the barbershop, two blocks from all the places kids our age hang out in Essex County. The Laundromat, Parr’s parking lot, the elementary school playground, the fishing pier, the library. Last week a family with twin girls moved in next door to Mack, the subject of several late-night phone calls between him and me. Though I have yet to meet the twins, Mack and I have been working through a plan to convince my mother to let us take them to the band concert. The weekly band concert at the community college in Warsaw is a favorite of my parents. Music events are an exception when it comes to organized events. As Mom would say, Closest thing to culture in this godforsaken wasteland of the Northern Neck.
After the haircut I should have enough time to cut across the motel parking lot to Mack’s. Plenty of time for a good look at the twins. He’s already told me they’re easy on the eyes. This may be my last chance to meet them face-to-face before September. Before the rest of the high school scarfs them up, and Mack and I won’t be able to get close enough to even talk.
When I come into the barbershop, the bell over the door jingles. It surprises me every time. And every time I jump. The chairs are full. The usual old geezers, each with three hairs to cut. It’s a good thing, because their hearts probably can’t take much more excitement. A mother with a baby in her lap and two little boys. They’re fighting over the chair with the torn vinyl seat. I’ve seen kids put half-eaten Life Savers down that hole. They can have that chair.
“Forty minutes,” the barber with the toupee announces. Both kids stop and stare at me. They’re afraid I want their chair. Ha. The other barber keeps right on cutting, so serious, so intent on getting it right. He must be related to my dad.
“Can you hold my place?” I ask the old one, he’s in charge. Mom wouldn’t want me to take a chance on little-kid germs. “I’ll be right back.”
“Leave your name.” He points to a pad by the phone.
Freedom.
Mrs. Petriano answers the door. “Daniel, what a pleasure.”
Mack says when his mom first heard about The Disease, she cried all night. If someone else’s mother feels that way, someone who knew me before I got sick, I can’t be but so lame.
She holds the door open wider. “Mack’s next door.”
“With the twins?”
She nods. “Would you like to come in and have some ice cream while you’re waiting?”
“I might go knock. Do you think that’d be okay?”
“Oh…of course. Of course.” She looks at me with big eyes as if it never occurred to her before that two girls my age might interest me more than ice cream. I feel bad for Mack. His mother’s in for a big shock when she finds out he’s not a virgin.
The house next door is identical to Mack’s on the outside. All one level, cinder block. White with green shutters and some kind of gray stone walkway and front steps and those little half-windows sunk into the grass along the front and side. I can hear U2 rumbling underground. They must be in the basement.
No doorbell. When no one answers the knock, I knock harder. No luck. I peer down into the half-window and scream over the U2, “Mack.” Instant silence.
Then his face pops up two inches from mine by the glass. “Daniel.” Some conversation in the dark space behind him. “Come around back.”
The twins’ house has one of those slanted basement doors like my grandmother had at her little farmhouse in Urbanna. She always kept these ancient slatted baskets of apples and potatoes and turnips on the steps, like they did on Little House on the Prairie. Which we were forced to watch during Thanksgiving vacation. Grandma’s basement was spider heaven. Mom would send me down to get whatever Grandma wanted because Mom has a thing about spiders. A major thing.
She’s not the only one. Three years ago, right before Grandma died, Joe and I collected a jar of creepy crawlies from her cellar stairs and threatened to put them in Nick’s bed if he didn’t stop following us. It was very, very effective. A chink in the golden warrior’s armor.
The metal door into the twins’ basement flies open and bounces against the concrete wall. “Shit.” The voice is female. From the murky underground a girl motions me down the steps. Long dark hair and a great tan. If there are two of her, this may turn out to be the best haircut I’ve ever had.
“You’re Daniel?” Like she expected a gargoyle instead of a boy.
“Mack told you.”
She nods. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry.” I look right into her eyes as I put out my hand to shake, an absolute prohibition laid down by my mother the minute she read the first chapter of the first book on AML. “I’m so glad to meet you, Sorry.”
The girl laughs. This could be all right even if she does know the truth about me.
“It’s Meredith, actually. And
my sister, Juliann.”
A second girl, same long legs, same tan, but with short hair, appears with Mack right behind. Juliann gives a little wave. I nod back.
“Blabbermouth.” I hook fists with Mack and tug, but he lets go.
“They’re in tenth with us,” he says.
“You lie.”
The basement is set up for a party. A ping-pong table at one end, two couches and an ancient TV at the other. The lamps have colored light bulbs in them—mood lighting. And there’s a fridge in the corner. Too cool.
“Who brought you in to town?” Mack knows if it’s my mother we’re on a tight schedule, but if it’s Dad, we’re golden.
“Mom.”
“Rats.”
“Do you want a Coke?” Meredith says and flicks her hair over her shoulder, that thing girls do. They’re both wearing those shirts with the thin straps and there are no bathing suit lines on their shoulders. Too bad it’s the last week in August, and not June with a whole summer of beach and boats ahead of us.
“Coke’s perfect.” I say. My mother would go ballistic. Coca-Cola is a product of the devil.
Mack sits and Juliann perches on the arm of the couch at his end, her long legs swinging. His grin is as wide as the river. I know what he’s thinking. Evil dude.
“You been over to see the high school yet?” I ask. Mack blinks to warn me I’m working too hard.
“It’s so small,” Juliann says. “We were at Albemarle last year.”
“Sounds French.”
“Indian,” Juliann says. “It’s huge.”
Meredith hands me the cold can. “Haven’t you ever heard of it? State football champions two years running.”
I shake my head and fight the urge to shoot Mack a frown. Her reference to football makes it crucial to ask some background questions. A girl’s interest in football players cuts the odds on social possibilities for fringe guys like Mack and me. How he managed to get a girl to say yes to the big question still shocks me, a story for another day.
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