The Freak Observer
Page 10
To be honest, I wish I didn’t know about after-dinner science.
. . .
Somewhere, on the other side of the microscope’s multiple lenses, there are supposed to be tiny spheres floating and bouncing off each other. They are so small that they are unbound by gravity. I am to see them and observe their behavior. Then I will understand random motion and many other things. The only problem is, I can’t see any tiny spheres. I don’t want to confess this.
So I just start making things up. This is not good science. My heart is beating sideways and my hands are full of pins and needles. I drop my pencil and start sobbing. I try to stop, but I can’t. My hands are shaking and I can’t breathe right.
It’s just too weird for everyone. If it were in the cafeteria, someone would probably try to give me the Heimlich. But I’m not choking. I’m crying. There is no first aid for crying fits.
Mr. Banacek calls the office, and then he comes and stands by me. He says my name, “Loa, Loa, are you OK?”
I try to say yes, but I don’t have any breath for it.
The school nurse and the secretary from the front office come through the door. The two of them help me stand up and guide me away. Away from the tiny spheres I can’t see and the students who shouldn’t have to put up with this sort of shit while they are trying to learn.
I try to say I’m sorry, but that doesn’t come out either.
Eventually, they get me to the nurse’s room and help me remember how to breathe.
“Have you had panic attacks before?” The nurse is looking at me.
“No,” I say, “Never.” And it is true. I’ve never had anything quite like this before.
“Do you want us to call your parents? Do you want to go home?”
“No. I’m fine. I feel better. I just need to wash my face. I’d like to go back to class . . . in a little while. I’ll be ready.”
I need to figure out what sneaked up on me in physics. I have to go back in that classroom right away. I need to go in there and hold myself together. I may be ashamed, but I will apologize. I will ask Mr. Banacek for a practice data set so I can complete the assignment and learn what I need to learn. I will breathe slowly and I will relax the tension in my shoulders.
I can’t let this happen at school ever again, and I won’t.
. . .
And now it’s pigs.
There’s another postcard in the mailbox.
It is a photograph of four dark-haired girls dressed in pink. Pink tights, shiny pink leotards, pink gloves. They are all wearing pink lipstick and pink rubber pig noses. Their leotards are slit so you can see the row of big pink nipples running down their bodies like pig teats. There is fake blood on their throats, but it’s not nearly enough if this is supposed to be about cruelty to animals. There are piles and piles of magazines. It must be hard to stand on all that slippery paper—hard to keep balanced on a great big sloping stack of paper. There are meat hooks hanging from the ceiling, and the pink piggy girls are holding onto the hooks to keep their balance.
It reminds me of a bizarre setup on a reality show. The judges for the modeling contest are going to scold them all for porny poses—like they should be able to wear giant pink nipples and still be able to sell the shoes without making it about sex. After the scolding, the girl on the left is going to get voted off because she isn’t connecting with the camera.
I’m drinking absinthe in Prague.
Wish you were here.
Love,
Corey
Really, he wishes I was there? Dressed like a murdered pig?
I want to think that I understand what is going on, but I don’t really. Why is Corey sending me this kind of mail?
. . .
There are two web addresses on the back of the card, but when I check them on the library computer, they both come up 404, File Not Found.
Part of me just wants to throw the postcards in the stove and burn them up—problem solved. Part of me thinks they are pieces of information. I’ll need them somehow.
All of me wishes I never had to open the mailbox again, but I’m afraid what will happen if I don’t. I don’t want Mom or Dad to see what might show up next. I don’t want to have to explain what I can’t explain.
. . .
I used to enjoy chopping wood. It used to feel good to bring the maul down and split the round open. I liked using the ax to cut the pieces smaller. I liked using the hatchet to cut the smaller pieces into kindling. It is satisfying and analytical to just bust the problem into smaller and smaller pieces. It is mental, not just physical; you have to read the wood, see where it wants to split. Then I liked gathering up everything and taking it inside to the woodbox and seeing it there. I liked using it to build fires to keep us warm.
I used to enjoy it, but now the ghosts of Mom’s murdered chickens haunt the area.
I turned the chopping block over so I couldn’t see the bloodstains, but I know the blood is there. I picked up the little amputated chicken heads with their open beaks and surprised little chicken tongues and buried them in a deep hole with the chickens the weasel killed. I piled rocks on the spot so some woodland opportunist didn’t dig them up and drag them around. The case should be closed, but I don’t enjoy chopping wood anymore.
I still have to do it. I just don’t enjoy it.
That pretty much describes everything anymore.
. . .
Two postcards again, from Rome. At first the pictures just look like ugly architecture. The kind with too much frosting and not enough cake. Then I see. It isn’t a room decorated with plaster and gold leaf. It is a room full of bones. The arches are made of leg bones and skulls. Circles of pelvises and vertebrae are orbiting the ceiling. One postcard even includes whole skeletons dressed in brown robes propped up along the bony walls. Their skulls are bowed, and their bony little hands are hidden in their sleeves. I wonder how the skulls are attached. If they come loose, would they roll along the floor? Or would they shatter like eggshells?
I just do not want to look at that. So I shove the postcards into my pocket and start walking, fast, up the hill toward home. I try not to remember what they looked like, the skeleton puppets in brown dresses. I am not successful.
It is very hard not to remember something. It’s easy to forget but very hard not to remember on purpose. Maybe I should try to forget the irregular French verbs I’m supposed to know by Friday.
I know that I can’t choose not to remember. I can’t choose the slide show in my imagination.
I can practically hear my own neurons laughing at me. The little shits.
My brain is not my friend.
Corey is not my friend.
French irregular verbs are not my friends, either.
. . .
I’m cleaning up after dinner, standing by the sink rinsing out a cloth so I can wipe off the table and counters.
I hear Dad say, “It ain’t working.”
I go in the other room to see if he is talking to me. Maybe I can fix whatever wasn’t working. Maybe the two of us together can make it right.
Dad isn’t talking to me. He’s staring at the wall. There aren’t even any pictures of dead ancestors there. He’s just staring at a blank place on the wall. “Not working,” he says again, “Not working.”
There are a couple of possibilities here:
1) Dad is talking to himself. OK. People do that. Except Dad doesn’t. It isn’t his way.
2) Dad is talking to people who aren’t there. Not so OK. That might be more of a problem.
Whatever is wrong, I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how to make it work.
. . .
Someone is trying to frighten us by tampering with photos of my father’s funeral. In some of the photographs, there is blood on the face or neck of the man who is supposed to be my father in the dream. In some of the pictures, he is propped upright in the casket, but not exactly straight. He’s leaning to the point where he might fall out and onto the floor.
Every time I turn a page, the pictures get weirder and weirder. In one of them, my father is encased in a papier-mâché cocoon with a lumpy, blotted shape and winglike appendages. There are smears of blood and feathers on the outside of the cocoon. I can’t see my father, but I know he is in there, under all that glue and newspaper.
I try to explain to my dream mother. I say, “Someone is trying to hurt us.” But I can’t find the pictures that have been altered. They are missing from the album.
When I check to make sure that my dream Little Harold is OK, I see him outside. He is having a tea party. He is using the bloodstained chopping block for a table.
I am really, really afraid.
Both rigs, Mom’s crappy little Nissan wagon and Dad’s truck, are parked in front. Given their work schedules and everyone’s natural aversion to misery, this is weird. There must be some new craptacular emergency. I don’t even want to consider the possibilities.
I avoid the kitchen door. I walk around to the creek-side porch of the house.
When I reach the porch, it isn’t weirdly quiet. That’s a relief. Dead people don’t make noise. And there isn’t a screaming argument punctuated with breaking dishes. No domestic dispute in progress.
The TV is on in the living room, but the room is empty. I just stand there for a moment with the door open. I’m home, but whatever is happening isn’t my problem yet. I’m still between one state and another: knowing and not knowing, live kitty and dead kitty.
The fuzzy picture on the TV starts to flip and roll.
Little Harold blasts out of the kitchen fast as a garter snake with legs, “Ice-cream-a-ganza!” he yells.
It takes a minute to process his news. Especially since he piles into me so hard he almost knocks me on my butt. I think it is supposed to be a hug. Then he grabs my hand and drags me toward the kitchen.
We used to have ice-cream-a-ganzas when Asta was alive. We would eat ice cream for dinner and celebrate lesser-known holidays like First Buttercup Day or the Solemn Remembrance of the Last Yeti.
We haven’t had an ice-cream-a-ganza for a very long time.
“What are we celebrating?” I ask when I step into the kitchen.
“Your mom is going to the university,” says Dad.
He and Mom have dishes of melting ice cream in front of them. They also have Pokémon juice glasses full of Wild Turkey 101. Judging by the level in the bottle, they have been paying more attention to the whiskey than the ice cream.
“Sit down, Loa,” says Mom, “It’s an ice-cream-a-ganza.”
“Ice-cream-a-ganza,” says Little Harold. “We have Moose Tracks and Pumpkin. Do you want Pumpkin?”
“Pumpkin sounds good.” I know Moose Tracks, loaded with peanut butter and chocolate, is Little Harold’s favorite. Pumpkin is better than it sounds, anyway.
“I’m going to school,” says Mom.
That confirms what I thought I heard. Those are the words. What the hell they mean, I don’t know that.
“Your mom is smart. It’s time she went to school,” says Dad.
I could use a little of that Wild Turkey, but I settle for a scoop of ice cream. “Wow,” I say.
“You kids and your mom will be moving into town. That’ll make it easier. I’ll be staying here, to keep an eye on things, to make sure the pipes don’t freeze,” says Dad.
“Like, when? Next September?” By next September, the ice cream will be long gone and this particular plan will probably be long forgotten. A lot can happen in a year. A year ago, Esther was alive. A year ago, I was winking at Corey during debate practice.
“You’ll be moving during Christmas vacation. She’s going to be starting in the middle of the school year,” says Dad.
“Wow! Does she have time to take the tests and write essays and do all the other paperwork?” I wish I hadn’t said that. I’m afraid I might have broken the spell and now everything is going to unravel. If I’d kept my mouth shut, maybe we could have been happy, all of us, for one night at least. Or as long as the ice cream and whiskey lasted, anyway.
“They have this thing called ‘conditional acceptance’ for older students. I’m already conditionally accepted. I’m in. If I don’t get at least a C+ average, then I need to take some tests. But I’m not worried. I think I can pull that off,” says Mom.
“Your mom is smart,” says Dad again, and he smiles into his Pokémon glass full of whiskey.
“Your dad used the land as collateral and took out a bank loan to tide us over until my financial aid comes through and I get a part-time job,” says Mom.
Until this very moment, I thought college financial aid was like welfare. I assumed that my parents disapproved of it on principle. Welfare is something our family doesn’t do. We never got any help with Asta’s care, so I can’t wrap my head around them thinking financial aid is acceptable.
We don’t accept welfare, we don’t buy shit on credit, and we don’t eat anything with paws. I thought those were the rock-hard truths about this family, about who we are, but I may need to fiddle with the focus a little more. “We” may not be exactly who I thought. And that leaves “Me” a little fuzzy around the edges, myself.
. . .
It has been a long time since I climbed to the roof of the woodshed. I used to do it all the time when I was Little Harold’s age. The woodshed roof was my observatory then. Dad called it my castle and laughed about me being the princess of the kingdom, but he was wrong. I wasn’t any boring old princess. I was a star watcher. Mom used to save the cardboard tubes from the inside of paper towels and give them to me. I used them for telescopes.
It’s a fine example of little-kid weirdness, a cardboard tube telescope. The stars never looked any bigger or brighter. All it really did was limit the size of the sky.
But tonight the sky is bigger than I’ve ever seen it. It almost makes me dizzy, and it feels like the stars are rushing at me. I wish I had the security of a cardboard tube in my hand. Maybe, instead of looking at the sky, I would look at our house and my family in it. I think I might see a lot of things I’ve completely overlooked.
The woodshed roof is Little Harold’s territory now. I don’t know what stories he tells himself when he is up here. Dad calls him Tarzan. And he strung up a zip-line cable from a tree by one corner of the woodshed to the barn. I don’t know if Little Harold thinks he is Tarzan, but he spends hours skimming through the air and then dragging the pulley back to the woodshed for flight after flight.
I’ve never tried it. I know it will hold me, because Dad tried it the first day he put it up, but I’ve never tried it. Tonight, though, it seems like the way to go, so I reach out and grab it and lean forward. Then I’m rushing through the dark. I’m a shooting star.
. . .
The guy who shows us our family housing apartment has two things to say, and he says those two things over and over. One message is that we were very lucky that the place had opened up when we needed it and that we qualified to be first on the waiting list for that particular residential option. The other message is that he was sorry it isn’t nicer, cleaner, bigger, or more conveniently located to the laundry, parking lot, or playground. I get the feeling he is used to hearing a lot of complaints.
We don’t care.
I can clean a house. It won’t take long.
He says we can paint if we want to, but only if we get paint from the manager’s workshop. The approved colors are bone white, navaho white, antique white, and vanilla. He isn’t sure which of those colors are on the walls already. The difference between bones and vanilla is pretty subtle, I guess. We can get paint chips for comparison at the manager’s workshop. He has to emphasize that we are only permitted to use the approved colors. He looks at us and taps the wall for emphasis. Antique-vanilla-boneblank it is. So much for my evil plan to paint everything truck-stop-bathroom green or eggplant-milk.
; After he makes sure that the kitchen faucet really drips and it isn’t just not-quite-turned-off, he says goodbye and leaves us to explore our new habitat.
“Cable!” yells Little Harold, “We have cable.” He picks up the black wire and stares into the widget on the end like he can already see the wonders of KartoonLand.
“Don’t get excited,” I say, “It doesn’t work if you don’t pay the company.”
“Don’t get excited,” says Mom, “There are people living below us and on both sides. It’s not like at home. Take your boots off and stop jumping around. But we do get cable, just basic cable, just like we get water and garbage pickup. We only have to pay for power and phone.”
There are two bedrooms. Mom gets the small one and Little Harold gets the even smaller one. I will sleep in the living-dining-kitchen area. I’m OK with that. I have the entry closet as my own space, and I can sleep on a couch after everyone else has gone to bed. After we get a couch. It’s a plan.
The oven is unbelievably cruddy. The tub seal needs to be replaced. The closet bolts on the toilet are loose so the whole thing rocks when you sit down. We are supposed to have the manager schedule repairs. That’s what the guy said when he was fiddling with the leaky faucet. It will be faster if we just fix things ourselves. We will be outlaw toilet-bolt tighteners, even if we abide by the painting rules. It’s just the way we are. At least, I think that’s the way we are.
The three of us sit on the floor waiting for Dad. He is bringing our stuff in the truck so we can get all moved in today. The first truckload is the essentials, the basics. We thought we would look around and see what else we needed before we gathered stuff for a second load. Now, after seeing the apartment, it is pretty clear that one load of stuff will max this place out.