An Annoyance of Grackles (Applied Topology Book 3)

by Margaret Ball

  Possibly I owed it to myself as well.

  At least, thanks to Colton’s nice-guy instincts, I could forget about the problem for a few hours that night. On Friday afternoon, he’d surmised that Prakash was clinging to me because he thought everybody else was still annoyed at him for having been so rude and dismissive before.

  “He’s not wrong,” Ingrid said.

  “Come on, Ingrid. You don’t want to spend the semester feuding with the guy.”

  “How do you know what I want?”

  “As a favor to me, then? I want to be more – more like we were last fall. Almost a family. Being pleasant to one another.”

  Ingrid sniffed, but she didn’t actually turn down Colton’s new idea. The boy thought we could invite Prakash out for a Saturday night of live music, dancing, and beer. That would help him feel accepted, and once he felt accepted he would relax and realize that nobody in the Center held a grudge against him.

  “We don’t?” Ingrid queried.

  “You’re too kind and generous to keep making the poor schmuck pay for having made a bad start with us,” Colton told her.

  I don’t know where he kept getting this idea that the rest of us were nice people, but he pushed it with enough vigor to shame us into pretending to be what he claimed to see in us. The pretense was a lot easier once he mentioned that Two Tons of Steel was playing at the Broken Spoke the next night. “I’m going regardless,” Colton said. “They played Lubbock summer before last… “

  I liked them too, as did Jimmy, and even Ingrid allowed that if you were going to go out dancing you might as well have a band that played danceable tunes.

  Lensky and Prakash gave us blank looks. “Broken Spoke?” Lensky said. “Country music and line dancing?”

  “No. Two Tons of Steel is more…. “I groped for a comparison. “They’re kind of like what Buddy Holly would have done if he’d been a punk rocker.”

  “Who?” That was Prakash.

  I tried again. “Elvis meets the Ramones?”

  “Oh, Elvis!” Prakash said happily. “Hound Dog, isn’t it? Heartbreak Hotel? Very good.”

  “Who are the Ramones?” Lensky said.

  “Oh, just come along. You don’t have to dance if you don’t like it. And there’s beer.”

  I felt slightly guilty about leaving Andy alone with his Gameboy again, but he didn’t appear to be suffering; I brought home a sack of cheeseburgers which he wolfed down before getting back to the serious work of breaking past Level 7 of something called DeathVikings.

  The Broken Spoke did provide a good setting for mending fences: it was too noisy for conversation, so Prakash couldn’t annoy anybody even if he tried. While the opening band played, the Center for Applied Topology, individually and collectively, made a serious dent in the beer supply, occasionally shouting something stupid over the music. Then Two Tons of Steel came on with “Busted,” and Jimmy and Ingrid moved out onto the dance floor. Annelise and Ben joined them, and then Meadow started dancing by herself until Colton slipped up beside her and started copying her moves. I tapped my toe to the music until Lensky took the hint. We got in on the end of “Busted” and kept going through “Crazy Heart,” which had a stronger rhythm. Lensky started on some swift moves twirling me around the floor. I glanced at Prakash as we whirled by; he had forgotten his beer and was tapping one hand to the music. It really wasn’t going to be much of a fence-mending if we all abandoned him. I was about to go talk to him when he moved out onto the dance floor by himself and astonished us all.

  The man had some serious dance moves! As “Not that Lucky” started he just about took control of the floor. He put one hand out, steady, while the other one flickered in and out. Bent his knees and swiveled in time to the backbeat, slid across the floor around somebody’s girl and back to the center. He reached out and took my hand. “Thalia, dance with me!”

  “Tell him to remember I’m carrying,” Lensky grumbled as Prakash raised our hands and twirled me under his upraised arm and against his body. I spun out again; the music speeded up, Prakash caught my wrists and the next thing I knew, I was flying through the air.

  Lensky’s big, firm hands caught me and set me upright again. “What is it with you and men always throwing you into the air at dances?”

  That was an exaggeration. There’d been only one other such episode, and like this one, I hadn’t instigated it.

  Prakash didn’t seem to be bothered by having lost his partner. He spun in a dizzying circle with knees and hips and hands all moving to different beats, then caught Annelise’s hand and spun her in towards him. He didn’t try to throw her in the air, though. A wise decision; she was almost as tall as he was and not exactly sylph-like. Instead he bent her backward and almost kissed her. For much too long; Ben was starting to twitch when he let her go again. But that wasn’t quite the end of it; he sidestepped towards her and she stepped away, moving her hips like his. They circled halfway around the dance floor before he reached out for Ingrid and spun her to him. The same sequence followed, the prolonged not-quite-kiss and the stylized pursuit, except that Ingrid didn’t make much of an attempt at dancing away. Prakash came up behind her, put his hands on her hips and danced her around the floor until she broke away and spun back to Jimmy, flushed and laughing. By this time hardly anybody else was dancing; they were all enjoying the free show.

  “Remind me again,” Ben grumbled, “exactly whose idea it was to make this guy feel at ease with us?”

  “Not mine,” said Jimmy. “In retrospect, I’d like to go back to Prakash the Stuffed Shirt.”

  The band’s version of “Diggin’ the Boogie,” was coming to an end when Prakash spotted Meadow and took her hand. He turned and pulled and nothing happened. “Why you are not dancing with me?”

  Meadow stayed planted where she was, a short, solid girl with enough inertia to slow down a train, and the music stopped.

  Colton was smirking.

  “Where did you learn to dance like that?” Ingrid demanded of Prakash. Now that the band was taking a break, we could hear each other talk.

  “Bollywood,” he said. “I am great admirer of Bollywood musicals. Some moves I learned from watching Shah Rukh Khan in “Chayya Chayya,” you would say, “Shadow Shadow.” Classic dance filmed on top of moving train, no stunt men, no fancy editing! Of course Shah Rukh Khan getting too old for that now. But also I study moves of Ranveer Singh in Befikre. Many friends say I look like Ranveer Singh, only taller.”

  “I don’t believe he has many friends,” Jimmy said under his breath.

  Colton’s fence-mending party seemed to be delivering mixed results.

  Even Lensky complained a bit on our way home, though Prakash’s demonstration of being an equal-opportunity girl-grabber seemed to have reassured him somewhat. He did say that it served Prakash right when Meadow wouldn’t let him spin her around like everybody else.

  “Meadow has three inches and fifty pounds on me,” I said. “I can’t copy her methods of dissuading men.”

  “Didn’t see you doing anything at all to dissuade the guy,” Lensky grumbled.

  “What did you want me to do, break his nose? He was just in a good mood and wanting to dance with everybody.”

  “I liked it better when he was in a pissy mood,” said Lensky, aligning himself with Ben and Jimmy. “Do you want me to take you to your apartment?”

  That seemed like a serious overreaction. “To check on Andros,” he clarified.

  “No…. He ought to be asleep by now. And if he isn’t, I don’t want to know. Let’s just go on back to your place.”

  “It’s too bad you can’t just let him have your room at the apartment,” Lensky said, surprising me.

  “Why?”

  “I rather like knowing that you’re going to spend the night with me.”

  I spent most nights at the condo already, so this too surprised me. It was good to know he didn’t feel crowded, but I wondered if he was hinting that I ought to give up the apartment. That made m
e nervous; I wasn’t ready to burn all my bridges yet. We’d only been together a little over six months and I wasn’t sure where we were going. Didn’t much like thinking about it, either. Everything was good right now; I told myself to enjoy the present moment and not to brood over the future.

  I deflected this line of conversation by explaining exactly why Andros couldn’t simply move into my room. The whole family knew I had that apartment. I might have been able to get rid of Stevie last night, but I had only succeeded because I really hadn’t known Andros was there. Now that I knew differently, it would be almost impossible for me to lie convincingly. And they wouldn’t give up. Yanni, Stevie, Cousin Elias would all be dropping by at all hours, hoping to catch sight of Andros.

  I managed to keep talking along those lines until Lensky pulled into his covered parking space behind the condo.

  “Thalia, he’s your brother,” he said then. “I’m not going to try to tell you what to do. If you think your apartment isn’t a good solution for him, you’re probably right. In any case, it’s nothing to do with me.”

  If only that were true.

  Saying nothing was probably the best way not to be caught lying. Not to mention that I really don’t like lying to Lensky. But Dr. Verrick held that if you didn’t actually say anything untrue, merely allowed the other person to misunderstand what you did say, you weren’t really lying. At the moment I liked that definition.

  ***

  Mom was delighted to see me show up, unannounced, for Sunday lunch. Dad commented unfavorably on my manners: couldn’t I have called to let them know I was coming?

  Mom put a plate piled high with food in front of me. Dad asked if she thought I couldn’t feed myself now that I’d left home.

  I swallowed a couple of times and launched into my prepared speech. “I need to talk to you about Andros.”

  That was as far as I got before Dad’s fist landed on the table, rattling all the dishes. He shouted that Andros was no son of his, and the idiot boy needed to get himself back home at once!

  Have I mentioned that my father does not have a strong need for intellectual consistency?

  His need to be seen as the master of his family, on the other hand, is close to mania.

  When she could get a word in edgewise, Mom asked, “Have you seen him? Where is he? Is he all right?”

  “Yes, I’ve seen him. He is all right and he wants to come home.” Okay, a slight exaggeration there.

  “Nothing stopping him!” Dad yelled. “He can come back whenever he’s ready to beg my pardon!”

  “Where is he?” Mom implored.

  My hands were shaking. Ridiculous! But the prospect of openly defying Dad in his own house was making me dizzy. Part of me was afraid the world would end. The other part was afraid that once I started, all the anger and humiliation I’d been ignoring for years would come pouring out of my mouth and I’d be responsible for a permanent rift in the family.

  “I am not going to tell you where he is unless we can come to some agreement about how you treat him.” At least my voice didn’t shake. Yet. And the world didn’t end, either.

  Yet.

  Dad barked that it was none of my damned business how he disciplined his son. He went on to say that it was all my fault Andros had run away, that I’d always been a bad influence on the boy, that he’d known no good would come of letting me go to college, et cetera, et cetera. When he slowed down I repeated what I’d said, a little more forcefully.

  “If you talk to me – and shouting insults doesn’t count – maybe we can persuade Andros to come home.”

  “Hah! He’ll be back with his tail between his legs soon enough! The boy’s a weakling, he can’t take care of himself. And you aren’t going to come between us, Thalia! If you plan to help him, I’ll… I’ll disown you!”

  “Yanni, please!” Mom was weeping. “I’ve lost a son. Don’t make me lose my only daughter too!”

  Mom’s tears were a large part of why I never defied Dad. Seeing her like this made me feel like somebody was stomping on my own heart. I felt unbearably guilty for hurting her.

  Did I have to choose between Andros and my parents? How could he ask me to do this?

  I balled my hands into fists to stop them shaking and reminded myself that Mom and Dad were adults. Andros was just a kid, and he didn’t have anybody but me in his corner. Me and, maybe, some of my acquaintances.

  “Dad! Do you know why Andros left?” I could hear myself getting shrill. The hell with it. There was one person in this room who was responsible for the high decibel level of family conversations, and it damned sure wasn’t me. “He ran away because he was afraid that if you kept putting him down and bullying him he would hit you! And he didn’t want to do that! He wants to love and respect you as if you were actually a good father to him, but you keep tearing him down! What did you expect?”

  “I am his father! He owes me love and respect! Haven’t I raised him? Now he wants to whine because I’m trying to make a man of him – all right, let him snivel! Let him run and hide! When he gets cold and hungry he’ll be back and he’ll have learned to mind his manners!”

  “Right, because you’ve given him such a fine example!”

  “Thalia,” Mom almost sobbed, “what’s come over you? How can you talk to your father like that? He loves you, you’re breaking his heart and mine too.”

  My own heart was not doing so great either. I felt like a monster, making Mom cry like that. Oh, I’d gone about this all wrong. There must have been some way to have a quiet, civilized discussion and I’d failed to make that happen. Of course I had. No wonder my name as they pronounced it sounded like “Failure.” That’s what I was.

  I wanted to teleport right out of there before they could see how upset I was. Ever since this started I’d protected them from the knowledge of what I really did. Now – what did it matter if they did see me disappear, what did anything matter? Mom was right, Dad was right, all I did was damage the family. The best thing I could do was to go away and stop making trouble.

  That’s not the best you can do for Andros.

  Sometimes I hate having a conscience.

  “This isn’t about me. Hate me all you want, but think about Andros. Don’t you w-want him to come home?” Dammit, now my voice sounded all wobbly. Dad would never listen to me if I showed that I was on the verge of coming unglued.

  What the hell, he doesn’t listen to you anyway.

  I cleared my throat and continued. “He has a safe place to stay. And no, it’s not with me or with any of my friends. He would rather come home, he wants to come home, but he can’t unless Dad lays off him. Don’t you get it, Dad? He ran away because he respects you, because he didn’t want to forget himself and hit you. But you need to treat him with respect too.”

  Dad yelled and cursed and pounded the table for another half hour, but he couldn’t get around those facts: Andros didn’t have to come home, and he wouldn’t come home unless there were some changes. It was entirely possible that they would never see him again.

  I came in for a lot more abuse for encouraging a boy to defy his family, setting a bad example, the usual. That wasn’t so bad. I had a lot of practice in letting Dad’s tirades roll off my back. It was making Mom cry that really tore me up.

  We finally agreed that they’d meet Andros at Tino’s Restaurant that night – I felt strongly that a public place was necessary to inhibit Dad’s ability to throw a conniption fit – and they’d ‘talk.’ That was as much of a concession as I could get. I hoped it would be enough.

  After we agreed on a time for the meeting, I said a quick good-bye and headed out of the house. There was a convenient hedge just around the corner where I could duck out of sight and teleport home.

  “Home,” in this case, being Lensky’s condo.

  15. The sacred knucklebone of St. Elias

  Once there, I called Andros and told him when and where we were going to meet our parents. I also told him that yes, I definitely had a place wher
e he could stay if the meeting didn’t work out, and I wasn’t going to tell him where right now because it might be better if he couldn’t tell Dad any more than that he had somewhere to go.

  Of course he trusted my promise. I was his big sister. We might have squabbled, growing up, but he knew I was on his side.

  Good thing I was telling the truth about having a bolt-hole for him. He would have believed me anyway.

  Then I threw my cell phone across the room and very calmly smashed three mismatched saucers and a thrift-store bud vase I’d never liked anyway.

  “What did they do to you?” Lensky asked when I got a broom and dustpan to clean up the mess. He hadn’t stopped me breaking the dishes, which I appreciated.

  “Nothing. Just a lot of yelling. I don’t know why it got to me this time, Dad was a total pill for the entire four years I was going to college and living at home to save on rent. All that time I never fought back; I just kept my head down and stayed out of the house as much as possible. At least that way I wasn’t making things worse. Now – oh, I was trying to help Andros, and instead I made Mom cry and I made Dad lose his temper. I’m just no good with people.”

  “You’re pretty good with me,” Lensky said gently.

  “I seem to recall that you’ve been annoyed with me yourself, once or twice.”

  “Yes, well, I didn’t say you couldn’t be infuriating at times. But I do love you. And I suspect your parents do too.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. Dad obviously despises me. And I don’t think Mom will ever forgive me for taking Andros’ side. Andy’s,” I corrected myself. “But at least they’re going to meet us this evening. In a public place; maybe that’ll cut down on the yelling and table pounding.”

  “Where?”

  “Tino’s. Naturally since Mom cooks Greek food – well, Greek-American,” I corrected, remembering her fondness for dishes involving mini-marshmallows and Jello, “seven days a week, when they do go out to eat, it has to be a Greek restaurant.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “You can’t! They don’t know about you.”