Every Other Weekend

by Zulema Renee Summerfield

  Hoss hunches down and leans in real close. It’s clear the thing is long gone—there are ants already exploring its mouth. But Hoss just stands there, hands on his knees, peering into the cage. It occurs to Nenny that maybe he’s seeing more than a dead lizard, maybe he’s seeing something else, something only an old desert hermit could see—the face of God breaking through a cloud, angels in descent, that kind of thing.

  But then he says, “I’ll be damned. Sure is,” and yanks it out of the cage. Then, unexpectedly, he chucks it as far as it will go. It makes a high, swift arc over the line of cages, landing with a dull thump in the far-off sand.

  * * *

  The rest of the tour lasts about a century. Even Mom is visibly glad when it’s over, though she thanks him profusely and presses a five-dollar bill into his hand. Tiny keeps shouting, “G’bye, Hoss! G’bye!” as Kat closes the van door. And of course old Hoss continues standing there, one hand up like So long! See you next time! He’s probably standing there still, favoring that one leg, waving and waving goodbye.

  Happy Trails

  THE TRAILER park where Windsor lives in Apple Valley is called Happy Trails, but there’s nothing happy about the place. There aren’t even any trails, just rutted dirt roads. Trailer parks, you never know what you’re gonna get. Gramma B’s was manicured and pristine, each trailer with its own rock garden or collection of ceramic gnomes.

  Happy Trails is different, though. There’s not a decorative anything anywhere. It’s the kind of place where men smoke on their porches, alone or in lonely groups, and kids kneel in the dirt lighting matches, watching them burn. A couple of girls walk barefoot in the road, and when they see the van, they giggle like it’s some big secret, the van, this great divide. Mom starts to roll up her window but then stops, leaving it halfway. Other adults would roll the window all the way up, flick the visor down and pretend the sun was in their eyes, find some reason to not have to look at people who have a different kind of house or live a different kind of life. Not Mom. Mom treats everyone the same.

  Windsor’s standing on the porch when they pull up, as if waiting for them or waiting for something, anything, who knows. She starts waving high and big, like landing a rescue plane, a wide smile on her face, the tassels on her leather jacket swinging back and forth.

  “There’s your mom!” Mom says, waving back, though Windsor’s only two feet away.

  “Well, hiya!” Windsor calls. She and Mom always hug like old friends, which is odd when you think about it. “Where’s my baby?” she coos, opening her arms for Charles. He doesn’t even flinch, just goes right into the curve of her and lets himself be hugged, even hugs back.

  “Hello, girl,” she says to Kat, who steps forward into her embrace. She says hi to Rick, and they do this side-hug thing that’s reserved but not without affection.

  Windsor turns to Nenny and the boys. “Hi, guys, come on in. I’ve got brownies and lemonade. Tiny, you like brownies and lemonade?”

  The inside of the trailer is damp and cool like the stifled gut of a cave. It’s clean, but maybe not always, and furnished in a haphazard, piecemeal way: a fraying couch spruced up with some afghans, a few vases with fake roses here and there. The TV is on but muted. Matlock silently rattles his jowls. There are pictures of Kat and Charles everywhere, some the same as they have at home, others Nenny’s never seen before. There’s also photos of Gramma Sadie, their other grandma, who takes them to The Nutcracker every year and other places and events they loathe. There’s a lot of photos of a lean, dull-eyed girl about Kat’s age, who must be Becca. She’s Gabe’s daughter, and the only thing Nenny knows about her is that she has a tattoo and hates Gabe as much as Kat and Charles do. Nenny sometimes imagines Kat and Becca painting their nails and chewing gum and finding photos of Gabe and scratching out all the eyes.

  “Gabe’s at the store,” Windsor says, as if they’ve come to see him, as if they’re holding their breath.

  “It looks nice in here, Windsor,” Mom says. There’s something phony in all of this, the whole thing—Windsor’s outsized affection, the hugs, the small talk—as if with their subtle theatrics Mom and Windsor can deflate the terrible awkwardness in the room.

  Nobody’s sure what to do. The two moms chatter away about nothing while Rick listens politely, twirling his hat on his fingers. The kids kind of linger by the door, except Kat, who’s in the kitchen getting brownies—which is, like, Kat helping without being asked? This is a historic moment. Someone should make a plaque.

  The brownies are dusty, or anyway that’s how they taste. Slowly the boys leak into the living room, and Kat starts flipping through a magazine. The grown-ups talk about the stupidest stuff, and Nenny briefly wonders if this is how they’ll spend the rest of eternity: talking about nothing and waiting like broken glass.

  Then a car door slams.

  “There he is!” Windsor chirps, though not brightly enough to hide a slight crack in her voice. When Gabe walks in, Nenny realizes she’d been expecting a monster—barrel-chested and shirtless, with storms and the deaths of small children raging in his eyes. But he’s not—he’s just a wiry little flea of a man, with a push-broom moustache and glasses that take up half his face. Supposedly he’s been at the store for nearly an hour, but he comes in with no bags.

  “Well, howdy, all!” he crows, letting the screen door slam. Windsor grows visibly tense. On the couch, Charles does and undoes the limbs of Megatron, his back to the door, elbow on Kat’s knee. At home they hardly talk, but now they’re practically snuggled up, neither of them looking at Gabe.

  “Hi, honey,” Windsor sings, and they share a big phony peck.

  “Rick, how are ya, bud?” Gabe asks. He shakes Rick’s hand but gives him no time to respond. “Marie, good to see you,” he says to Mom, and they do a clumsy half shake, half hug. Gabe tips his chin around the room. “Kids, good to meet ya. Charles, good ol’ Charlie.” He reaches to tousle Charles’s hair, but Charles ducks his hand. If Gabe notices, he doesn’t show it. He doesn’t even say hi to Kat, like he’s wise enough not to.

  “So how was the drive?” He goes to the fridge to get a drink, and the way he does it is like Look at me, in my house, drinking my beer.

  “It was fine,” Rick says. “No traffic.”

  “Oh yeah? That’s good.” He talks too loud and slurps too loud, leans on the counter with his hip.

  “We went to the zoo. That little desert zoo” is Mom’s contribution to this painful exchange.

  “Yeah? The zoo?” The way Gabe talks, it’s clear he’s learned how to show interest when really he could give two farts.

  “Oh!” Windsor pipes in. “I’ve always wanted to take the kids there. It’s on my route.” The conversation drops then like a hole in the floor. The silence is profound.

  “Well, all right. You wanna talk or what?” Gabe suddenly blurts, as if the quiet is a personal insult.

  “Yes, let’s talk,” Rick says, all business. “Kids, why don’t you go and play outside?”

  Outside, Kat flicks her hand and says, “Whatever,” and stomps down the stairs. They know better than to follow her around. There’s nowhere to play, really, so they just wander. Nobody’s saying much, except Tiny, who blabs on and on because he doesn’t know when to shut his hole. “I wonder what show they’re watchin’ in that house. Or that one? You think they’re watchin’ the same thing? What do you think it is? Who’s the Boss? What time is it? I bet it’s Who’s the Boss?”

  “Shut up,” Charles says, so sharply that Tiny does.

  Charles finds a stick and starts tapping things with it. Not hitting, not smacking, just tap mailbox, tap big stone, tap bumper on a truck. Last summer, last June, Charles tackled one of the trailer park kids and punched him, over and over, until the kid’s face was bloody and some of his teeth had fallen out. It took three adults to pull Charles off. When he came home at the end of the weekend, Mom and Rick sat him down for a solemn talk, but he didn’t even defend himself, didn’t really say a word. Thing
is, the kid had dropped a runt into a bucket of paint thinner. When he put the lid on and refused to take it off, Charles beat the shit out of him. Didn’t matter. The puppy still died.

  “Look,” Bubbles says, because there’s a hornet’s nest in the park’s only tree. They take turns trying to peg it with rocks.

  When they get back to the trailer, the grown-ups are all standing on the porch and Kat’s pulling open the door of the van.

  “So?” Charles says to her. He’s still holding that stick like it’s the only thing he’s got.

  “So nothin’,” she says back and yanks her overnight bag from the van.

  “All right, kids. Let’s go!” Mom calls, her voice cheery as though something’s been resolved—which seems impossible because Gabe’s still standing there, holding his beer. Why had they even come? Driven all the way out to Apple Valley, bothered with that miserable zoo? Obviously Rick hadn’t seen anything damning, and what was he supposed to do? Ask? Rummage through drawers? Short any real evidence, the only thing to do was shake the guy’s hand and go home. It’s not like it’s illegal to be an asshole.

  The sad thing, though, the part that will stick with Nenny for years, is how different Kat and Charles are when Windsor comes to Kensington Drive. They seem to orbit her at a careful distance, at once drawn to her but wary of getting too close, like planets that circle lest they collide. Here, though, at Happy Trails, they’ve become toughened and hard-hearted and cruel. Windsor keeps choosing Gabe, over and over, for whatever reason, and it’s a betrayal each and every time.

  Kat and Windsor are still on the porch as they leave. Nenny watches them through the window of the van. Whenever people say how much she looks like Windsor, Kat wrinkles her nose and makes noises of disgust, but it can’t be denied—same flaxen hair, same grey-green eyes. Both have their arms crossed and they’re not saying much, they’re not even looking at each other, really. Who knows how long they’ll stay there, the thing between them a storm, Windsor on one step and Kat on the other, like a cloud casting a shadow on another cloud.

  Matt Er Horn

  A FEW days later Mom’s shouting, “For Chrissake, Charles! That’s enough!” because he’s always dumping more sugar into his bowl—sugar on the Cocoa Puffs, sugar on the Trix, sugar on the Lucky Charms—when out of nowhere Tiny leaps out of his chair and starts shouting, “We won! We won! We won!” He’s looping and whooping around the room, and they all look at one another like What is going on? Finally Mom crouches and catches him mid-lap. “What did we win, honey? What did we win?” Without answering, he breaks free and bolts upstairs and comes back with these box tops, there must be hundreds of box tops spilling from his hands. He’s like a clown with all that bubbling, incomprehensible glee. Finally they manage to piece it together: if you collect a certain number of box tops, General Mills will send you and your family to Disneyland. Turns out, Tiny’s good for something after all.

  But when Rick gets home, he immediately starts reading the fine print. “Says here we’ve still got to pay a fee.” And there’s finer print too. General Mills will send you and your family of four, not four rug rats, two exhausted parents, and a snotty talk-back teen. Guess General Mills never got the memo. News flash: the nuclear family doesn’t exist anymore. The nuclear family got nuked.

  But who’s listening to Rick? Fine print, shmine print. They’ve never—if you can believe it—been to Disneyland before. Dad took Nenny and the boys to Knott’s Berry Farm after the divorce, but it is not the same. It’s fine if you like stupid kid rides and jars of jam. Knott’s is filled with old people who just love jars of jam. The only redeeming thing about it is this tilty room where water pours up instead of down, but still. It ain’t Disneyland. Disneyland’s right across the street, and if you think it doesn’t hurt to be that close and not go in, you’ve got another think coming. It hurts you in the back of the jaw. Hurts you right in the teeth.

  Point is: it’ll be the best day ever! They’re going to Disneyland! And this? This is what happiness feels like. Real happiness, real joy, is your brother waving a bunch of box tops around. It’s your other brothers stomping on the couch, chanting, “Matt Er Horn! Matt Er Horn!” Not one but three glorious little words. It’s your sister already squealing into the phone, and Mom without a worry in the world, playfully pulling Rick’s arm. Matt Er Horn! Matt Er Horn! And Rick, though he’s the most tightfisted son of a gun in the world, Rick just nodding and smiling a little bit, because it’s already decided you’ll go.

  The Crappiest

  Place on Earth

  NENNY’S NOT positive, but she’s pretty sure the definition of rebellion is wearing a Knott’s Berry Farm T-shirt to Disneyland. She imagines the horror on Mickey’s face, those dark rumored tunnels where surely they’ll drag her the minute she arrives. When they get there, though, nobody even notices—or if they do notice, they don’t care. Other things too: Mom gets all caught up in the bank of gift shops at the entrance, then insists they all stand in front of the castle for a family photo. They have to wait for Tiny to quit being a jerk and making jerk faces, and for all the other families to stop walking into the frame, and it takes about ten years before they get to their first ride. It’s Alice in Wonderland, and for the record, it’s super lame. In fact, a lot of the rides are lame. It’s like they’re designed for children by children or something. And that’s not all: Small World gets stopped and everyone on it sternly warned because the kids in front of them keep sticking their hands in the water, Space Mountain is closed, Rick gets all weirdly enchanted by this dumb movie in Tomorrowland where the narrator keeps saying “In the future…” as if the future isn’t right now, because it’s all shots of microwaves and cars and stuff that already exists. They break to get hot dogs, and there’s this band singing on a stage, and when they sing “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”—which is Nenny’s absolute favorite song of all time—she runs up to Mom and says, “Mom! Whitney Houston is here! She’s singing on that little stage!” But before Mom can even open her mouth, Kat snorts and says, real loud, practically screams, “You idiot! That lady’s white,” and the people around them all start laughing and Nenny wants to die, she just wants to die right there, because she doesn’t know what Whitney Houston looks like and that seems like the kind of thing you ought to know. Then, to top it off, the stupid lady at the hat shack spells out NANNY on her mouse ears, and Mom goes, “It’s fine, it’s fine,” because there’s about a billion kids waiting for their ears and you can tell Mom’s tired and doesn’t want to stand around anymore. Some kid gets diarrhea in the Tiki Room, like serious explosion, and it takes the staff about two hours before they realize it and open the doors. When they get outside, Charles yells, “More like the crappiest place on earth!” and that sets Rick off, who yanks him aside and spanks him, kinda hard. Charles starts crying, and Charles never cries. Kat is so over it by then she just keeps saying, “Oh my god. Oh my god.” By the time they get to the Matterhorn ride in Fantasyland, no one’s singing “Matt Er Horn” anymore. It’s like they forgot they even had a chant. It’s actually scary as hell, all those glowing red eyes, and when they get off, boom: Bubbles starts puking, really just puking all over the place. The guy who works the ride—his name tag says SVEN, but you can tell it’s fake—he’s nice about it and all, even keeps up his stupid Matterhorn accent, “Oh, nooh! Looks lyke ve’ve had un accident,” but gives it up when Bubbles heaves again and this time ralphs on the guy’s shoe.

  In short? It kind of sucks. Disneyland kind of sucks.

  Except, maybe, for this: there’s supposed to be an evening fireworks show over Tom Sawyer Island, and they get there early and land a good spot. Mom’d wanted to go home when Bubbles got sick, but Rick said no way and reminded her of the fee. Bubbles seems fine now anyways, asleep in a ball on the grass. They’re all sprawled on a little hill, and Mom’s sitting by Rick, and when the fireworks start, she leans into him and he puts his arm around her. Nenny watches them out of the corner of her eye and realizes she’s ne
ver really seen them like this before, affectionate and totally at ease. She can’t decide if it’s nice or strange, but when the fireworks start and everyone’s face becomes beautifully lit, she realizes it’s nice, all this, and not strange at all.

  It’s fleeting, though, the niceness. With all the dumb people, it takes like an hour just to get out of the stupid parking lot. Of course, the instant they hit the freeway, Bubbles pukes again, right there in the car.

  December 9

  AND THEN, the phone rings. It’s December 9th, just a few agonizing weeks until Christmas. Their wish lists are already taped to the fridge. Bubbles wants an Erector set and a new belt. Kat wants a dual cassette radio, which isn’t cheap. Tiny wants the Ghostbusters fire station, and Charles—big surprise—wants the entire G.I. Joe Tiger Force Brigade. What Nenny wants is simple: she wants to lie, for hours, under the tree, with the quiet of the lights dancing on the branches, her face round and bent in a million bulbs, and for that to be the only feeling in the world. Just the endless colors of Christmas nights. Mom can crawl under too, and maybe she laughs when the needles get caught in her hair, or finds and holds Nenny’s hand. Tiny will probably see their legs poking out and get jealous—he can come if he promises not to be dumb. Bubbles of course can come because he’s always easy and nice. Charles can come too if he lets his inside doors stay open and doesn’t act mean. They all scooch their bottoms so everyone can fit, even Kat, if she’s in one of her new, rare, singing moods. She just joined the choir at school and now sometimes she sings, just for the heck of it, and even Nenny has to admit it’s pretty and unexpected, like smoothing crumpled tin. She can come if she sings “O Holy Night” in a nice way, a good way, a way that makes Mom cry but quietly, pretending like she isn’t. Even Rick. Rick can come too. That’s what Nenny wants, all seven of them, simple and unruffled and uncomplicated and unhurt, snuggling and giggling under the tree.