Crush

by Gary Paulsen

  (3) When they argue, Mom always says the same thing: “You hear me, but you never listen.” Dad looks as confused as I feel when she says that. Listen, hear, what’s the difference?

  So, listen to Tina and hear what she’s saying. Or at least look very intense and nod a lot.

  (4) Mom and Dad are happiest if their favorite food is involved. Mom relaxes when she has a stash of chocolate peanut butter candies, and Dad gets mellow after deep-dish pizza.

  Ergo, find out Tina’s favorite food. Hope it’s something simple like burgers, not weird like those hairy little kiwi fruits.

  In summation: Don’t annoy her, listen—and hear—her, and feed her. Except for the listening/hearing part, it’s kind of like having another cat. And I am an excellent pet owner.

  But then it struck me that my parents are nothing like me and Tina. I needed more information about male-female interaction than what I’d seen. I needed to watch my parents on a date. The trouble was, I was pretty sure my dad hadn’t asked my mom out on a date in seventeen years, and if I suggested it to him, he’d think I was bonkers.

  I was stuck until I decided I’d set up a surprise date for them at home that I could observe.

  I’m brilliant.

  I really am.

  I spent the rest of the school day planning everything.

  After school, I dipped into my savings from both my jobs and stopped at the grocery store for supplies. I had a sense that creating the right atmosphere was important to the perfect date. I got floor cleaner out from under the sink and stepped on two wads of paper towels. Then I sprayed and shuffled over the stickier, grimier parts of the kitchen floor until the parts that the overhead light fell on shone clean. Good enough. I walked through every room spritzing Springtime Fresh deodorizer and I cleaned the cat box, even though it was in the laundry room in the basement and not likely to stink up the living room. No one had remembered to do this for at least a thousand evacuations. Poor kitty.

  I ran around the entire house with a laundry basket, picking up books, dirty mugs, empty chip bags, old newspapers, piles of mail, shoes, socks, jackets, sweaters, phone chargers and wet towels. I shoved the basket in the garage. I’d deal with all that stuff later. Or never.

  Just as I was coming back into the kitchen from the garage, the doorbell rang.

  “Hi, Dutchdeefuddy. You forgot about babysitting me.”

  It was Markie, my preschool neighbor. His mother was in the car, and she waved goodbye as she zoomed down the driveway. Markie’s parents had recently decided to get a divorce, and they think I’m a good influence on him. Markie’s a great kid, but I understand his mom’s relief at getting away. He’s high-maintenance. He’s curious and he has a lot to say, about everything—he kind of sounds like the inside of my head, which is probably why we get along so well. He makes up words when he doesn’t have the right ones, like dutchdeefuddy, which means “best most favorite buddy in the world forever.”

  I was just as glad he was there, though, because I had to get dinner on the table and I needed a sous-chef. “C’mon, Markie, you can help me make a special dinner for my parents.” He flashed me a thumbs-up and headed to the drawer in the kitchen where we’d put an apron for him when he helped me bake cookies awhile back.

  “What’re we making?” He was all business, pushing the little step stool over to the counter where I had laid out all our supplies and rolling up his sleeves. He didn’t wash his hands, but then again neither did I.

  “Spaghetti.”

  “I love sketti. It’s like eating warm white worms. ’Cept they don’t wiggle in your mouth like the brown ones. In the yard.”

  “Well, sure, but what I really like is how easy it is. Any idiot can boil water.”

  He nodded like he spent a lot of time worrying about preparing meals.

  “Oh,” I said, “and don’t eat any more worms from the yard; that can’t be good for you. Okay?”

  Markie shrugged, clearly reluctant to make any promises.

  “We’re going to serve baby carrots as our vegetable because I don’t like salad.” I pulled a serving bowl out of the cabinet.

  Markie scrunched up his face and gagged in support.

  “I also got crescent rolls in a tube because food that comes from a tube is genius.” I slammed the container on the side of the countertop and the seal broke, oozing out soon-to-be rolls. Markie clapped for the sound and visual effects. “Here, you can roll up the little triangles—see, here’s how—and put them on the pan while I get the spaghetti started.”

  A few minutes later, after I’d struggled to open the sauce jar and measured out the spaghetti into the boiling water, I turned back to Markie and the pan of mushy dough blobs. I’m optimistic by nature, but there was no way anything that shape was going to bake into anything even remotely like little crescents. Maybe we’d invented a new culinary trend—bread nuggets. Oh well, nothing a big slather of butter wouldn’t help. I put the butter dish on the dining room table and then, just to be sure, I melted some in a small bowl and gave Markie a brush to paint the gooey roll-like entities.

  “Markie, everything tastes better brushed with melted butter.” Besides, my parents would be dining by candlelight, and with any luck, they wouldn’t have a clear visual on what was in front of them.

  “Hey—dessert?” Markie asked. “Dinner has dessert. If it doesn’t, it’s lunch.”

  “Good point. I’m on it. You might not know this, but romantic dinners require more than one dessert—that’s how you know it’s not just another dinner. So I bought fresh strawberries to dip in melted chocolate. And we’re also making cookies from a tube because that goes with the rolls in a tube. I looked for a main course in a tube, but that’s not invented yet.”

  “Bummer.”

  We wound up eating more of the raw cookie dough than we got on the pan, and I kicked myself when the sugar rush made Markie hyper. But then I remembered something I’d seen at the movies and handed Markie the bunch of roses I’d bought at the grocery store when I’d been buying food. Generally, the kid breaks everything and leaves a trail of crap behind him as wide as a migrating herd of buffalo, so scattering rose petals was the perfect job for him. Plus he got to burn off some energy running through the house, singing and flinging petals.

  He’s a tough little booger, didn’t complain about the thorns, except for: “Hey, you didn’t tell me these flowers bite!”

  “They’re part tiger.”

  He growled at me, tossed another handful of petals and dashed out of the kitchen again, still singing. A singing child is a happy child. I don’t know if I read that somewhere or made it up, but it makes sense to me.

  Man, if I’m half as good at romance as I am at child care, Tina won’t know what hit her.

  The oven timer dinged and I took the food-item-formerly-known-as-crescent-rolls and the cookies out of the oven. I inspected them. Not too burned to eat. So I scraped them onto serving plates. I stirred the simmering sauce and poked at the boiling pasta and called Markie to help me determine if the spaghetti was fully cooked. I scooped a tongful of noodles into a bowl and let Markie hurl them at the refrigerator to see if they stuck. I couldn’t remember if you wanted them to stick or slide to the floor, so I was happy that we seemed to have a 50-50 thing going. I drained the rest of the noodles, dumped them in a bowl and poured the bubbling sauce into a gravy boat. If I had things my way, we’d use a gravy boat at every meal.

  “Food is always better if you can pour stuff on it—ketchup, melted cheese, chocolate sauce,” I said to Markie. Might as well give the kid some essential culinary information. Kids on my watch leave with valuable information and important life lessons under their belt. I don’t even charge extra for the enriched educational experience.

  I carried the food to the dining room while Markie set the table. He put three spoons and no knives at every place setting, even though I told him only two people were going to be eating dinner and they could be trusted with butter knives and forks. He looked s
keptical. With kids, you have to pick your battles, so three spoons it was. I lit the candles.

  We studied our work.

  Everything looked exactly like I’d planned it, except for the silverware. Plus, it was perfect timing. My folks should be home from work in a few minutes; my big brother, Daniel, had hockey practice; my sister, Sarah, was at work; and Mom and Dad would assume I was over at Markie’s and they had the house to themselves. Monday just happens to be the only day of the week they always get home at the same time. The gods of love were smiling on me. My parents were walking into a love shack and didn’t even realize it.

  I heard their cars pull into the garage. I grabbed Markie by the back of his shirt, yanking him off his feet, and carried him under my arm like a football, hitting the stereo’s On button for the mood music as I hurtled past and ducked into the coat closet near the front door.

  Once we were both crouched inside the closet with the door shut, I gave Markie my portable DVD player and earphones to keep him occupied—and silent—while I made my observations. I didn’t have any kiddie movies, so I slipped in Animals of the Serengeti. Markie’s eyes widened as the camera panned over the desert and the stampeding herd of wildebeests. Good choice, Kev! The kid’ll learn some fun facts about wild animals in Africa, as well as the principles of scientific research.

  I clutched a pad of paper and a pen for notes. Through the slats in the closet door, I had a view of the living room and the dining room, and I was ready to have my parents teach me all there was to know about romance.

  We heard a key in the front door.

  I handed Markie a banana and peeled one for myself. Quiet food for purposes of observation. And bananas are brain food.

  The door opened and my parents stepped into the house.

  “Why are these rose petals all over my living room floor?” Mom dropped to her hands and knees and started crawling after the trail of petals, picking them up and examining the carpet for damage. “You have no idea how much it’s going to cost to have those stains steam-cleaned out of the carpet.”

  “The cat is sitting in a bowl of spaghetti on the dining room table!” Dad yelled.

  Oh. Well. I could congratulate myself on the forethought I’d shown in not pouring sauce over the noodles. Furry noodles were gross, but a tomato-covered feline streaking around the house would have been worse than flower stains on the carpet.

  Dad made a grab for the cat, who sprang out of the serving dish, knocking it to the floor and tipping over the candles. From the closet, I watched the candles set the basket of buttery bread nuggets on fire.

  Dad grabbed one of Mom’s good linen napkins to beat out the small fire. But the rolls were more kindling than carbs, and Dad’s fanning action fed the flames and set the napkin on fire. Things got kind of scary for a second, especially when he slipped and fell flat on his back on some noodles, a smoldering napkin in his hand. He struggled to his feet, grabbed the water pitcher I’d set near his place and dumped ice water all over the table.

  “What’s going on in here?” Mom was standing in the doorway, clutching two fistfuls of smushed rose petals, watching my father ruin all my hard work.

  “I was trying to put out the fire the cat started.”

  “There is no possible response to that statement.”

  Dad shrugged and gathered the corners of the tablecloth like he was trying to contain and lift the mess.

  “That is my grandmother’s antique linen tablecloth! Don’t even think of using it like a drop cloth.”

  Dad shook his head but looked confused.

  “Go get me a trash bag from the kitchen”—Mom pushed the petals into his hand—“and throw these away. I’ll start picking through this disaster.”

  Teamwork. My parents were clearly demonstrating the key ingredient in any successful relationship—working together through a crisis. In a strange and frightening way, this date was turning out even better and more informative than I’d planned. Markie, who had been fast-forwarding through the documentary—the kid has the attention span of a hummingbird—whispered, “Oh no, the hyena is swallowing a whole baby pig.”

  “Do we have any antihithtamine?” I heard my father call from the kitchen. “I think the thraw-berrieth I juth ate are making my tongue ith. Thee, I can’t thpeak clearly. Dothe my thkin look thplothy?”

  Oops. I’d forgotten Dad was allergic to strawberries. My bad, but then again, I’m only fourteen; what was Dad’s excuse for eating berries in the first place?

  Just then the kitchen smoke detector set off a horrible whining screech. If there are tormented souls wailing in Hell, this is what they sound like.

  “I’ll open windowth,” Dad hollered over the noise. “Where ith all thith thmoke coming from? Who did thith?”

  “Ouch!” I heard my mother yell as a pan dropped. “The burner was still on! One of my best pots got scorched. And what the … the oven is still on too, and”—she coughed twice—“something … turned into smoking ash on the bottom.”

  I’d thought a few rolls might have tumbled off the baking sheet when I took them out of the oven. I’m a little bit chicken about burning myself so I always move really fast near the oven, and there are usually some food casualties. It’s not like me to leave appliances on, though; I’m very conscientious.

  Hey! I couldn’t see my parents in the kitchen. But I could hear; it wasn’t hard to imagine the scene.

  “Here, take two of these and drink some water. You’ll be fine.” Mom must have handed Dad allergy pills and turned her attention back to the mess. She’s not the most sympathetic person I ever met. “What is all this? I left a perfectly clean kitchen this morning and came home to a room full of dirty dishes and a small fire on my dining room table and billowing smoke everywhere.”

  “Tharah and Daniel and Kevin all had planth after thchool,” Dad said. “Do you think dinner fairieth cooked for uth?”

  “I like the way you leap to the most logical conclusion, Michael, but no, I doubt that’s a reasonable explanation. Maybe it was Buzz?”

  “No, your thithter thayth cooking maketh her nervouth and thath why eating out wath invented.”

  “Look at this mess.” Even from the closet I could hear Mom sigh as she moved between the wreck of the dining room table and the disaster that was the kitchen. I had meant to clean up everything later, while they were supposed to be sitting at the table, staring into each other’s eyes.

  “I didn’t even know we had thith many panth and ditheth,” Dad said.

  I was trying to figure out if I should (a) stay in the closet and keep observing, (b) sneak out of the closet, the house and the neighborhood, move to another state and pretend I had nothing to do with this catastrophe or (c) emerge, claim responsibility and take over cleaning duties, when Markie exploded right next to me like a flock of ducks after the first shot.

  He leapt to his feet, sobbing, flew screeching out of the closet and zoomed into the kitchen, waving his arms and screaming.

  “What is going on here?” Mom scooped him up, sat at the kitchen table, and started cooing comforting words to him.

  I answered from the doorway: “Apparently, I should have taken into consideration the suggestion on the box that this film was not recommended for children under twelve.”

  “What film?”

  “The horrible one where baby animals get eaten,” Markie sniffled. What a wuss, I thought.

  “Why did you let him watch something like that?” Mom glared at me.

  “So we could hide in the closet and spy on you,” Markie answered for me, although not with the word choice I’d have selected.

  Mom patted him and stared at me in shock.

  “Why were you thpying on uth?” Dad asked.

  “I wasn’t spying, I was observing. I made dinner and everything.”

  “By ‘and everything’ I assume you did not intend the mess, the fire and the hysterical preschooler,” Mom said.

  “Well, no, not those parts.” Who did she think would plan
something like that? I turned to Markie: “You don’t feel permanently scarred, do you, big guy?” He shook his head.

  “What wath all thith? In the planning thtageth, that ith?” Dad looked around at the disaster.

  “I was trying to set up a romantic date for you two.”

  “Why on earth would you do that?”

  “I want to learn more about romance. Strictly through observation, of course. Eventually, I’d like to experience it myself. I arranged a romantic date for you so I could watch and learn.”

  My parents gave each other a look that even Teddy the cat could read: You take this one. I saved them both the trouble and jumped back into data collection mode. “What’s the most romantic thing you can say about each other?”

  I started cleaning up, hoping to impress them with my industriousness, and Markie snuggled into my mother’s lap. Good thinking, little one, I said to myself; moms are always more calm and reasonable when someone small is cuddling them.

  “Even after all these years, he still puts the toilet seat down,” Mom said, looking happier than I would have guessed the memory of such a gesture would make a person.

  “That doesn’t sound like much.”

  “It does if your bare butt has ever been plunked into the toilet bowl in the middle of the night.”

  “I see your point. Dad?”

  “Oh, my turn, uh, give me a thecond here, um … I can’t dethide whith element of your mother ith motht thpecial and, uh …” I swear he was breaking out in a sweat. Either that or he was having a secondary allergic reaction to the strawberries.

  “I never ask him what the most romantic thing about our relationship is,” Mom said. And she answers the tricky questions for him, too.

  Dad looked relieved that he didn’t have to come up with anything. Mom looked hungry. Neither one of them looked madly in love with the other.

  It’s official: there is no romance in this house. My folks are very practical people. But the last time I’d meddled in my parents’ marriage, they wound up in couples’ counseling. So I guess you could count this date and Q&A session as a success.

  For a guy with my track record.