Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes

by Mary E. Lambert

  She rubs a hand through her colorless hair.

  “Yeah,” I say. “We’ll be back soon.” Then I hold my breath, waiting for the fireworks.

  But she only nods.

  She’s not stopping us. She’s not telling me no. I can hardly believe it. On a sudden impulse, I grab one of her hands, which is still balled into a fist. “Mom, you have to stop fighting every change we try to make around here.” Mom’s eyes widen. Whatever she thought I was going to say, whatever she thought I was going to do—this wasn’t it.

  “I’m trying. But I don’t know if I can,” she says. The confession is almost a whisper. I grip her hand more tightly.

  “Please,” I say. “I don’t want our family to be split apart. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

  She swallows. I can see the movement in her throat. She opens her mouth and makes a raspy sound, but she can’t seem to form a word. Then she pulls her hand from mine. My heart plummets to my stomach.

  Then Mom bends down, slowly because of her knees, and picks up a Beanie Baby. It takes her some time to choose one. Her hand hovers over several of them, before her stubby fingers close around a walrus.

  She straightens and holds the stuffed toy out to me.

  I take it automatically. I don’t understand what’s happening.

  “What?” I say.

  “This one is named Jolly,” Mom says. I’m not sure what words she couldn’t say seconds ago, but Mom seems to have found her voice again. “I don’t think he’ll ever be worth much. His tag got torn when your—” She huffs a few times, like she’s having trouble catching her breath “—when your father stepped on him one time.”

  “You want me t-to—take him to town?”

  She nods.

  “And leave him there?” I feel compelled to clarify.

  She nods again.

  “Okay,” I say. I whirl around and sprint down the stairs before Mom can change her mind or call me back. I’m too slow. I’m at the front door when I hear my name: “Annabelle.” I freeze. I knew it was too good to be true. I knew she wouldn’t let us leave without throwing some kind of fit. “Annabelle,” she says again in a strange, hushed tone. It doesn’t sound anything like her usual voice. I half-turn as she says, “Annabelle, I am trying.” I wonder if this means she’ll fight to keep me. And Leslie.

  “Okay,” I say.

  Her hands are clenched into fists again. “And, Annabelle, no matter what happens, please, please don’t hate me.”

  I close my eyes briefly. When I open them, she hasn’t moved. She’s standing in the exact same position. I don’t think she’s even taken a breath.

  “I don’t hate you,” I say.

  The Goodwill is in Chatham, but we go right through our own smaller town on the way. We’re driving down Main Street when Chad says, “I think Mikey’s working this shift. Wanna stop at Exploding Hoagie? He’ll hook us up with free drinks.”

  Chad parks, and as we stroll into the shop, Leslie pelts Chad with questions about his job, particularly the meat slicer, which strikes me as funny. I guess I’m not the only one fascinated by it. Even though I’m still a mess inside from my conversation with Mom, I force myself to laugh.

  “Can I try it when you’re working sometime?” Leslie asks.

  “No, I’m not even allowed to use it yet,” Chad says. “You have to be at least eighteen.”

  “Belles?”

  I stop laughing. Only one person has ever called me that. Drew is standing next to one of the window tables. Thomas and a few other guys I recognize from school are with him. My eyes dart to Leslie, who half shrugs and gives me a sympathetic look. I raise my hand and wave. I try to smile like I’m happy to see him and not like I want to die from embarrassment. I haven’t spoken to him since the Stair Incident. I tried to text him a few times, but I never hit send. Everything I wrote sounded lame or stupid.

  “Who is th—” Chad starts to say, but Leslie grabs him by the elbow and tugs him toward the counter, saying, “I want my drink.”

  As soon as I wave, Drew crosses the restaurant to come talk to me.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” he says again. He’s smiling ear to ear. He looks so cute, like he couldn’t be happier to see me, like I just made his whole day by walking into The Exploding Hoagie. Then I feel that I’m smiling back, smiling so widely my cheeks hurt. Smiling even as I curse myself. I must look awful. The I’ve-been-cleaning-out-the-garage kind of awful: sloppy ponytail, ratty T-shirt, world’s oldest pair of sneakers—ones with a hole in the big toe—paint-stained shorts.

  There’s an uncomfortable silence.

  I can feel Leslie and Chad and Chad’s friend Mikey and Drew’s friends all watching us. My mind races: What am I supposed to say? It seems like a bad time to go into detail about my family problems or to explain why I was shrieking like a banshee the last time he saw me.

  I’m about to blurt out See you later, but Drew speaks first.

  “I, uh, that is, Rae said that you were going to the cabin with her family this morning.”

  “You talked to Rae?” I ask, wondering why she never said anything to me about it.

  “I just texted her.” He shifts a little. “When I didn’t hear back from you the other day, I wanted to know if you were okay.”

  I take that in. “There was a, um, change of plans with the cabin and all.”

  “Well, is everything—you know—okay?”

  I’m about to nod and say, It’s fine. That’s what people are supposed to say, isn’t it? But instead the truth pops out. “Well, actually, it’s not. My family has some problems. I mean, you saw our house.”

  He tilts his head to the side, as if he’s thinking about this. “It’s cool,” he says.

  “No, it’s not,” I say. “It’s horrible. I didn’t want anyone to know.”

  He huffs a little. “I don’t mean cool like ‘good.’ I mean cool like ‘it’s all right.’ I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  There’s a pause, and I make a quick decision. He’s already seen the house anyway. Before I can change my mind, I shake my head and say, “My family’s all messed up. I’m kind of messed up.”

  It feels like an earth-shattering confession to me, but he just shrugs.

  “Who isn’t?”

  The words are unexpectedly sweet. They are just what I needed to hear. Without thinking, I throw my arms around him. Over his shoulder, I see his friends elbowing one another and making faces. Thomas is openly pointing.

  And if that isn’t awkward enough, Chad appears at my side.

  “So are you gonna introduce us?” he asks.

  I let go of Drew and jump back. Drew’s ears are red. Great. He’ll break into his Olympic speed-walking routine again any second now. I wish the floor would open up and swallow me whole.

  The universe doesn’t send a bottomless chasm, but it does send my sister. Leslie walks over and hands me a fountain drink. “I got you Sprite,” she says. “Hi, Drew. It’s good to see you again.”

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Have you met our brother?”

  Drew shakes his head, and Leslie introduces Drew to Chad, saying, “This is my friend Dylan’s cousin. Dylan and his family are our new neighbors.”

  Chad gives Drew a nod. Very macho. Then he crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m Annabelle and Leslie’s older brother. I’m a senior in high school.” He makes the words sound vaguely threatening.

  Somehow I survive the next three minutes and get Chad out to the car. Leslie follows us, looking like she’s about to pee her pants from trying so hard not to laugh.

  “What was that?” I ask Chad once we’re out on the sidewalk.

  “What?” asks Chad with an evil grin.

  “You know what!”

  “What do you want me to do when my little sister plasters herself to some guy in the middle of a restaurant?”

 
; “Wow,” says Leslie, still dancing with all the laughter she’s holding in. “Your face is so red, it’s practically purple.”

  “Shut up. Both of you.” I climb into the truck and turn my face toward the passenger window. Mostly so Leslie won’t comment on my red cheeks again. We pull away, and I happen to catch a last glimpse of Drew. He’s back at the table with his friends. He lifts his hand in a little salute. I smile and wave back. If my family and I haven’t scared him off yet, I guess nothing will. It’s good to know that real friends will stick with you, even through your crazy.

  But the happy feeling starts to fade almost as soon as The Exploding Hoagie is out of sight—because it dawns on me that Drew is just one more thing I’ll lose if we can’t fix things at home. If Dad doesn’t come home. If Mom won’t change. If Grandma Nora gets her way. If I end up moving a thousand miles away.

  We swing by the high school parking lot and drop our trash bags in the Dumpster. Then we head to the Chatham Goodwill. We pull up behind the store, and a man comes out to help us unload.

  “That everything?” he asks when we’ve stacked the last box on his dolly.

  “Wait, what about this?” Leslie has been sitting in the cab, and she sticks her head out the truck window, waving Jolly the Walrus.

  “No!” I practically shout.

  Chad, Leslie, and the man with the dolly all stare at me.

  “I mean, no.” I try to sound nonchalant.

  On the drive home, Chad and Leslie take turns choosing songs on the radio. I hold Jolly on my lap and stroke his silky skin, trying to figure out, after years of fantasizing about turning Mom’s Beanie Babies into a bonfire, why I couldn’t give away Jolly. Mom gave me permission, her blessing, to get rid of one. It’s practically miraculous. And here I am bringing a nonessential item back into our home. Voluntarily. Another miracle. I’m still fiddling with the stuffed toy as Chad turns up our long, unpaved driveway, and our weird day gets a little weirder. Apparently, it’s an afternoon for the miraculous. There’s a red suitcase on our front porch.

  Leslie points and shrieks, “Dad! It’s Dad!”

  Our moment of reckoning has arrived.

  Leslie all but mauls me in her rush to climb over me and out the passenger door. She dashes up the steps, but instead of running through the front door like I’m expecting, she runs down the length of the porch, right past the suitcase, and only then do I see Dad. He’s sitting in a chair at the far end of the porch. He stands up and holds his arms open. Leslie throws herself into them.

  “Dad, you’re back. I’m so glad you came back.” She wraps her arms around his neck.

  Chad and I walk through the mess much more slowly, less ready to forgive. My hands feel shaky and strange. I’m scared. Sure, he’s here. But I have no idea what he’s thinking. He might be here to tell us that he and Mom are breaking up. Or maybe he’ll think Leslie and I should go with Grandma Nora. And I don’t know if I’ll have the words to convince him that our family is worth saving.

  Dad sets Leslie on her feet, but she stays glued to his side. She hasn’t taken her eyes off his face, like she’s afraid he’ll disappear if she blinks. Chad and I stop a few feet away.

  “Chad, it’s good to see you,” Dad says.

  “Hi, Dad.” Chad doesn’t move any closer, doesn’t reach out to shake Dad’s hand or hug him.

  “Hello, Annabelle,” Dad says. Like Chad, I keep my distance.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  There’s an uncomfortable silence. He looks like he wants to hug us, but no one makes a move. Then Dad says, “I got your note.”

  This surprises me. I was assuming he must have decided to come home long before I hit send on the email. It’s, like, a ten-hour flight from London to Colorado, and it’s only been a couple of hours since I wrote to him.

  “How did you get here so fast?” I ask.

  Dad sighs. “I made it as far as the airport, and then … I never got on the plane.”

  “You mean you never left?” I ask.

  “No. I’ve been at Rob’s place.” Rob is one of Dad’s teacher friends. “He agreed to lead the UK tour this summer, so that I could come back and deal with things at home.”

  “Took you long enough,” I say.

  “I was hoping your mom might do better without me for a little while, but then I got your email, and I knew I couldn’t stay away any longer.”

  After days of silence from him, I didn’t really think my email would work.

  But it did. He came home. I asked him, and he came. Maybe I am broken. Maybe all of us are. At this moment, I can’t pretend to myself, or to anyone else, that I am whole and unhurt. I feel like I am shattering in a dozen different directions. I look from Dad’s hopeful expression to Leslie’s huge smile to Chad’s crossed arms, and I take a deep breath. I try to ask Dad why he thought things would get better without him. Instead, I do the one thing I’ve been fighting for days.

  I burst into tears.

  One minute I’m standing there all normal and mostly calm, and the next—without any kind of warning—I am sobbing: loud, wet, messy sobs.

  “Oh, Annabelle. Don’t.” Dad pulls me into his arms. I feel Leslie’s scrawny ones circle me, too, which just makes me cry harder. My shoulders shake, and I can hear the snot dance around with every deep, shuddering breath.

  Dad’s still holding me as he moves to sit on a wicker bench. He keeps me pressed to his side, and Leslie plants herself on my other side. I don’t know how long we stay there. No one says much. They just sort of quietly cluster around me and hold together the pieces while I fall apart.

  Eventually, Chad mutters something about moving the truck. His footsteps fade down the porch. I hear his truck roar to life, and then Chad’s footsteps return. There are still tear tracks on my cheeks when he gets back, but I’m calmer now. I look up from Dad’s shoulder where I’ve buried my face and watch my brother lean against the porch rail.

  Chad’s expression is carved in stone. He didn’t seem too happy with Dad before I had my little meltdown, but now my easygoing, carefree brother looks furious. As I quiet, still taking heaving breaths but not actually crying, Chad is the first to speak.

  “You shouldn’t have left us like that,” he says.

  Dad pats my back. He doesn’t defend himself.

  Chad continues: “Do you know what it’s been like around here? You haven’t called or emailed. I know you’re pissed at Mom, but she’s been a wreck without you.”

  I cannot believe that Chad, who’s hardly been around before today, is the one saying all this. I start to giggle, but it comes out as part giggle and part sob. I take a deep breath, trying to steady myself.

  He’s still not done. Chad motions in my direction, waving his hand in an up-and-down gesture. “I mean, look at this. You broke Annabelle. She never acts like this.”

  I lose the battle with hysteria.

  “But I already was broken. I just didn’t know it.” Those are the words I try to say. They come out in a mush of syllables and sobs and giggles. I’m laughing, but tears are streaming down my face again. So much for my ironclad control of my emotions. The more I’ve tried to push them away, the worse they are when they fight their way to the surface.

  Dad grips me by the shoulders. “Annabelle,” he says. “You’re starting to scare me. You need to get a grip.”

  “Should we get her a paper bag?” Chad pulls away from the rail. “Or slap her or something?”

  “No!” says Leslie.

  “No, no, I’ll be fine,” I say, and the words are more understandable this time. I bury my face in my hands and block everything out. I stay burrowed there for a few minutes and concentrate on my breathing. I hear voices but ignore them, and when I emerge from my cocoon, everyone is watching me. This time I feel much more in control and ready to talk. I pull away from Dad’s side, so I can look him in the eye.

  “Why didn’t you call us?” I ask.

  “I did,” he says.

  “No, you didn’t,” Chad say
s.

  “I did,” Dad insists, “but Nora convinced me not to call again.”

  “What? Why?” I ask.

  Dad heaves a big sigh. “I haven’t even gone back in the house yet,” he says. “Your mother doesn’t know I’m here. I’ll tell her everything I’m about to tell you, but please let me be the one to say it.”

  “Are you going to fight again?” Leslie asks.

  “Probably,” Dad says. “I wanted to come sooner, but Nora convinced me that it would better to stay away. She and your aunt Jill feel that I’ve been ‘enabling’ your mother. They convinced me that if your mom thought she really was about to lose everything, then she would be forced to change, and I was desperate enough to try it.”

  “But what about us?” Leslie asks. I’m surprised to hear Leslie say this. She’s usually so forgiving, so ready to avoid conflict and make peace. I keep forgetting that she has steel in her, that being soft or sweet doesn’t mean being spiritless.

  “I thought it would be easier just to stay out of touch with everyone.” Dad reaches over me to squeeze Leslie’s shoulder. “But I don’t know if I made the right choice.” He says it gruffly, as if he’s making a confession, and it’s a confession I don’t really want to hear. He sounds as lost as Mom did when she sat out on this porch, on those steps, talking to Grandma Nora. My whole life I thought parents were supposed to have the answers, and now I know that they’re just making it up as they go, too.

  “It’s just … ” Dad says. “I didn’t quite see how bad our home had gotten until that day. Then the newspapers fell and I found Leslie’s articles and I knew something had to change, but I didn’t know how to change it. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “What articles?” Chad asks.

  “I’ll tell you later,” says Leslie.

  A bird caws from one of the aspen trees. There’s a longish quiet, and I don’t know what anyone else is thinking about, but I’m thinking about Leslie’s nightmares and sharing secrets, and what will happen if our family is split up. Everything is messy and uncertain and scary, but whatever happens, I don’t want to just watch it all unfold. I want to do something.