Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes

by Mary E. Lambert

  I brush Leslie’s homemade spaghetti people from the table into the trash, where they lie scattered over napkins and pizza crusts. I stand there and stare at them, the casualties of our Family Game Night, for a long time. They remind me of the dead bodies scattered across the stage at the end of Hamlet.

  Then I shake myself out of it and shove the trash can back under the sink. Out of sight, out of mind. Once The Game of Life is all cleaned up, I rummage around under the sink where I hid our rat poison the last time this happened. Upstanding citizen that I am, I’m happy to do my part to stamp out hantavirus. I sprinkle the pellets behind some of the still-standing newspapers before re-hiding the poison. I don’t want Leslie to find it. She can’t even stand to swat a fly.

  I wash my hands, tidy up a little more, and wash my hands again. I end up leaving the board games stacked in the center of our kitchen table. There’s nowhere else to put them, and I’m not about to carry them back up to the Toy Catacombs. I don’t think Leslie wants to see me right now. When the kitchen is as good as it’s going to get, I meander down the hallway and pause at the foot of the stairs just outside the Forbidden Room. I really do wonder what Mom is keeping in there. Giant hair balls the size of tumbleweeds?

  Eventually, I decide to camp in the linens room, formerly the living room. I shove a bunch of towels off the couch, stretch out, and turn on the TV, hoping it will keep my mind off the rat.

  It’s a little after eight o’clock and even with the sheets blocking most of our windows, I can tell it’s still light outside. The sun hasn’t quite set, but I drift off anyway after only fifteen minutes or so of watching the Tanner family dance around and sing about how happy, wonderful, great life is.

  I hate Full House.

  The TV is off when I wake early the next morning. I am snuggled under an afghan, and I wonder who turned off the television and got me a blanket. I like that it’s an actual blanket, that whichever family member it was, they didn’t just throw one of the holey towels or old sheets over me.

  The little green lights on the cable box say that it’s 5:45 a.m.

  I dig down deeper under my blanket, wishing I could fall back asleep. You would think, if nothing else, that the sheets in the window seat would keep this room dark, but for the moment, it’s disgustingly bright. Why is the universe cruel enough to give us time off when the sun comes up at this ungodly hour, and then send us off to school all winter when it’s dark until practically noon?

  I am lying on the sofa, trying to find the energy to plod upstairs—Leslie’s room is really dark, as dark as the inside of a coffin, no matter the time of year—when quiet voices from the kitchen catch my attention. I recognize Grandma Nora and Mom. They don’t sound angry, but I can’t make out their words. I slide from the couch and inch toward the kitchen. I hesitate in the entryway with my blanket still wrapped around my shoulders. Mom and Grandma Nora are sitting at the table, steaming mugs in front of them. After last night, this is the last thing I expected to find.

  “If it’s any consolation,” Grandma Nora is saying, “Jill told me that I handled you all wrong.”

  “I don’t want to be handled at all,” Mom answers, but her voice is quiet and sad rather than angry.

  There’s a silence, interrupted only by the clinking of cups and spoons. The smell of freshly brewed coffee fills the air, and I’m filled with a sudden desire to pour a cup and join them at the table where they’re sitting and calmly sipping their coffee like normal adults.

  As the silence stretches on, I give in to temptation and tiptoe over to the counter. I grab a mug and pour what’s left of the coffee into my cup. Steam rises from the surface, and I inhale deeply before sidling over to the table. I feel their eyes on me, but Mom speaks as if I hadn’t intruded.

  “He hasn’t answered any of my calls,” she says, making my heart drop.

  Dad. I didn’t know she’d tried to call him.

  Whenever Dad leads the UK tour, he always calls to let us know as soon as his plane has landed. Usually, he calls Mom once a day. Usually, he emails us a couple of times a week with updates on his trip, or pictures or facts he thinks we should care about, things like a picture of a wicker chair and a note that says, “Just thought you’d want to know that the Sherlock Holmes Museum has acquired the chair originally sketched by Sidney Paget in his drawing of Holmes.” Leslie faithfully reads every letter of every note. I skim them. But it’s still nice to know Dad hasn’t forgotten us, that he’s thinking of us—even if they’re really boring thoughts.

  Maybe his flight was delayed. Maybe he hasn’t gotten to his hotel yet. Maybe he forgot to call because he’s sleeping off his jet lag. I wait for Grandma Nora’s reply, holding my breath because I’m scared she’ll make things even worse by ripping into Mom again. But instead of yelling, Grandma Nora turns to me. “Annabelle, it’s a lovely morning. Maybe you should take your drink out to the patio.”

  I can’t believe she’s trying to shoo me from the room. After their performance last night, I think I’m entitled to know what’s going to happen next to this family. To my astonishment, Mom seems to agree with me.

  “Annabelle’s fine.” Mom gives a halfhearted shrug. “She knows how it is.”

  “If you say so.” Grandma Nora’s every syllable drips with doubt. I clutch my mug more tightly, inhaling the warm air and letting the heat melt into my hands. A few more quiet seconds tick by before Grandma Nora speaks again. “You said yourself Richard goes on this trip every year. I’m sure things will work out.”

  “I’m not,” Mom says. Grandma Nora’s eyes flick over to me again, and this time I wonder if she’s right. Maybe I shouldn’t be sitting here. Did my mom really just admit that things might not work out? She’s never said anything like that before, at least not in front of me. And Mom’s not done. “He wants me to clean the house while he’s gone. He even gave me a list.”

  Another pause.

  Then Grandma Nora says, “Have you thought about trying to follow his list?”

  Mom gives a dry laugh. “I ripped it up.”

  More silence. More spoons clinking against coffee cups. I grip my mug so tightly I think I might burn my hands, but I can’t seem to let go.

  “He’s done this before,” says Mom. “But it felt different this time.” Another unhappy laugh. It ends on something like a sob. “Oh God, I think he might really leave me. For the kids more than for himself.”

  And if he does, Leslie will blame herself.

  Dad wouldn’t just give up and let our family dissolve, would he?

  Grandma Nora is right. I really shouldn’t be here for this conversation.

  “Then let’s see what you can remember from that list, and start cleaning.” Grandma Nora sounds more like herself this time: brisk, efficient, and ready to fix things.

  At these words, my hands twitch around the mug. Something is different in the kitchen this morning. It feels like hope. But it’s not the cotton-candy kind of hope. It’s more desperate than that. It’s a burning, scalding sensation. Afraid to even breathe, I wait for Mom’s answer.

  “Okay,” she says.

  Maybe Family Game Night wasn’t such a tragedy after all.

  I slip from my seat to rinse the coffee off my hands. Then I practically run from the kitchen. I want to dance and sing and shout the good news. For the first time—the first time ever—Mom has agreed to clean our house. But before I shout it from the rooftops, I want to tell Leslie.

  “She’s a little young for coffee, isn’t she?” I hear Grandma Nora say as I scamper away. “It stunts growth, you know.”

  I don’t stick around to hear Mom’s reply. I dash upstairs and peek in Leslie’s room. She is sound asleep, and she looks so peaceful that I decide to let her stay that way a little longer. Because as I stand there and survey the mounds of junk surrounding her bed, another equally pressing need occurs to me. This is an ideal time to take care of something I have to do. Have to, have to, have to.

  I am so excited that Mom has actua
lly agreed to clean up that I am almost careless while I perform my ritual. Grandma Nora’s suitcases are on the floor, and some of her clutter covers my desk, but it doesn’t bother me as much as it normally would. I walk the perimeter of my room, and I don’t find a single piece of garbage tucked under the mattress or behind the desk. I grab some clean clothes from my dresser and hop into the shower, a smile on my face.

  Once I’m dressed, I skip back down the hall to Leslie’s room. I don’t even braid or dry my hair. It’s dripping trails down my back and seeping into my shirt. But for once I don’t care. I cannot wait another minute to share my news. It feels like Christmas morning. No, it’s better than that. I stopped liking Christmas when it turned into an excuse for Mom to add more stuff to her collections.

  My stomach growls, but I ignore it and force myself to enter Leslie’s room. Normally, I avoid this place as much as possible.

  Poor Leslie. She was only four and a half when Mom started collecting seriously. For the first two-thirds or so of my life, I had pretty average parents. Chad had it even better. In elementary school we mostly had a mom who left the house. A mom who volunteered in our classrooms and taught Sunday school and cooked big family breakfasts on Saturday mornings. We had parents who read bedtime stories to us and tucked us in at night without having to swim through a sea of junk mail.

  We had a family who ate popcorn and watched old Disney movies together on Friday nights, and Dad only occasionally tried to explain things like why The Lion King is really Hamlet in disguise or how The Great Mouse Detective is a tribute to Sherlock Holmes.

  We had a family who ate off Mom’s fine china on holidays and birthdays, a family who sat around the dining room table in the Forbidden Room. I really do wonder what she’s hiding in there. Every tea bag my dad has ever used?

  Whatever Mom is keeping in there, I doubt Leslie can even remember eating a single meal in the ex–dining room. She’s had Mom and Dad at their worst for almost her entire life. Maybe that’s why she’s not bitter. She has nothing better to compare things with.

  But, in spite of all that, today I find myself wondering: If things can go from good to bad, why can’t they go from bad to good? I mean, if we used to be mostly happy, then why couldn’t we be happy again? It’s a scary thought; it’s hard to hope. I don’t want to be disappointed if I’m wrong, but right now I almost believe that we can get better.

  Inside Leslie’s room, it’s not easy to hold on to my hopeful feeling. I’m always a little shocked when I realize that the Toy Catacombs are every bit as awful as I remember them. In my mind, I make a lot of things worse than they actually are. Not Leslie’s room. I’m about to turn on the lights and start yelling my news, but I hear this little whimper and think that maybe she’s having a nightmare. I read somewhere—probably on WebMD—that it’s important to wake people gently if you’re going to wake them from a bad dream.

  So I creep inside the catacombs. I am halfway to the bed when I notice the demon teddy bear. It’s watching me from the mountain of stuffed animals. Leslie’s room is full of these massive piles, and the dark makes everything stranger, even more monstrous. The stuffed animals are a writhing mass of arms and legs and eyeballs. A sliver of light from the still-open door hits the white teddy bear, catching its red glass eyes. Who gives a stuffed bear red eyes?

  The demon-possessed teddy bear with the glowing red eyes is just the right amount of freaky that I take a quick sidestep, trying to put as much distance as possible between me and the stuffed animals. I overstep and crash into a largish mound of finger bones and ribs. I don’t think there are any actual bones in the pile, but there might as well be. It’s the Mound o’ Building Toys—Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys, K’NEX and wooden blocks—and it’s just as sharp and loud as I imagine a stack of finger bones would be.

  The sound of shifting plastic fills the room. Leslie whimpers again, but she doesn’t wake up. I scramble away from the Mound o’ Building Toys. I’m nearly to her bed now. One more heap to go around and I’m there. I put as much space between me and Doll Mountain as I possibly can. The dolls are even creepier than the stuffed animals. No wonder Leslie has bad dreams.

  Most of the dolls are naked. Their open eyes stare blindly into space like fresh corpses. Or zombies. Some of the dolls have vacant smiles. I can totally imagine them trying to eat my brains. Or rising from the bottom of a lake to exact revenge.

  I am so busy trying not to run screaming from the dolls that I forget to check where I put my bare foot. I step on a piece of sharp plastic. Probably a piece from the Mound o’ Building Toys. It hits the soft part of my arch.

  “Ugh!” I grunt, and grab my foot. “Oww. Oww.” I try a one-footed hop onto Leslie’s bed. I miss and collide with the side of her mattress, which causes me to bounce backward and land in Doll Mountain. It’s mostly squishy and rubbery. I should be grateful. It’s a lot softer than the Mound o’ Building Toys. But I’m not happy. The texture is too fleshy, too human-but-not. I start flailing around, trying to pull myself up out of this nightmare. I hear noises, and I’m not sure if they’re coming from me or Leslie.

  I shift positions and the dolls start raining down on me. I’ve been worried about a junk-mail avalanche, but now I know that I should have been worried about the dolls. I scramble to my feet.

  Bam-bam-bam.

  Things keep hitting me, and this time it’s not the dolls.

  “Aaagghh!” I scream, trying to whack away the missiles as they pelt me.

  “Aaagghh!” Leslie screams.

  She’s awake. Good thing I didn’t just turn on the lights or yell from the doorway. This has turned out so much better. So gentle and calm.

  Bam-bam-bam. I’m hit again.

  “Ouch! Stop it! Ouch!” I say. Leslie is standing on her bed. Bunbun, her stuffed rabbit, is lying at her feet, along with an array of ammunition: blocks, Matchbox cars, and small plastic toys, the kind that look like they came from a Happy Meal. Her arm is back as if she’s about to release another volley. I’m starting to think Bambi has more backbone than I gave her credit for.

  “It’s me! It’s me!” I say.

  Leslie blinks. She shakes her head.

  “Annabelle?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Who’d you think it was?”

  She drops her ammo. “I dunno. I guess I thought you were part of my dream.” She bends down to turn on her bedside lamp. I limp to the bed and sit. “Why are you up here?” she asks.

  “We’re sharing a room while Grandma Nora’s visiting. Remember?”

  “Yeah.” She sits beside me. “But you didn’t come up last night.”

  “I know. I didn’t think you’d want me around.”

  “I always want you around.” She reaches over and hugs me. I squirm, but Leslie tightens her hold. “Will you sleep up here tonight?”

  I nod. Then I remember the reason I came up in the first place. “Leslie, you’ll never guess—”

  The overhead light flicks on, interrupting my news. Grandma Nora and Chad are standing in the doorway.

  “What’s going on up here?” Grandma Nora asks. She looks concerned. “I could hear you both screaming bloody murder, even over the racket in the kitchen.”

  “Yeah,” says Chad. He’s in his boxers, and he doesn’t look concerned at all, just tired and annoyed. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

  “Sorry,” says Leslie. “Annabelle startled me is all. It was an accident.”

  “Whatever. Just keep it down.” Chad scrubs a hand through his hair, and he stumbles back toward his room.

  Grandma Nora gives us another worried look. “Annabelle, I really think you might be too excitable for coffee. And, Leslie, is that a frying pan in your bed?”

  I twist around. Half of Leslie’s queen-size is full of artillery. And it’s not just Matchbox cars and Happy Meal toys. There’s also a frying pan, a baseball bat, and—is that a hammer?

  We hear Chad’s door close, and Grandma Nora’s entire body stiffens. She reminds me of a hunti
ng dog. Underage coffee consumption and bedside frying pans forgotten, she turns and stalks toward my brother’s room. “Where do you think you’re going?” she calls after him. “It’s almost seven in the morning. There’s no need for you to go back to bed. Up and at ’em, boy. Why, when I was your age, I was already waiting tables. It’s time you—”

  I cross the room and close Leslie’s door.

  “No more weapons in your bed,” I tell her.

  “But it makes me feel safe.”

  Guilt, guilt, guilt. I’ve been so busy worrying about my room that I didn’t notice my little sister feels like she has to go to bed armed. “Well, it’s dangerous,” I say, pointing at the hammer. “You could really hurt yourself.”

  Leslie is fidgeting with her nightgown. “I really only sleep on half of my bed.”

  “Right,” I say. “But while Grandma Nora’s here, I’m going to sleep on the other half. And—” I pause dramatically until Leslie stops playing with the fabric of her nightgown and looks at me. “And when Grandma Nora leaves, you won’t need it anymore.”

  “Why? Are you moving in with me for always?”

  “Even better,” I say.

  “I’m moving into your room?”

  “No,” I say. “Even better.”

  “What?”

  Rather than answering, I walk to the stuffed animals and pluck demon teddy bear from the pile. Then I dig around in Doll Mountain, searching for the creepiest one I can find. It takes me a minute before I settle on an eyeless doll with Xs over her mouth.

  Leslie is at my elbow. “What are you doing?” she asks again and again.

  I pull the dusty curtain out of the way and pry her window open.

  “Leslie,” I say as I straighten up. I can feel my lips stretched into a huge smile. “It’s a brand-new day, and we’re cleaning up.”

  “No!” says Leslie. “We can’t. You were there last night. Mom will be so, so mad.”