by Mark Levin
Door slam.
Roger forced a smile. “She’ll get over it. You’ll see.”
Rebecca frowned. “All I want is for this vacation to be halfway decent. Is that too much to ask?”
“No,” Roger said. “And it will be. You’ll see.”
He gave his wife a quick kiss, then turned down the hall.
“Sorry to hear you’re unhappy, Maddy, but it’s time to move! On the road in twenty minutes!”
The chips were down. On the homestretch, the family went into overdrive.
Remembering they hadn’t eaten breakfast, Roger threw four frozen bagels into the toaster oven and set it to high. Outside, Benji lugged the trash into the garage for pickup and fell backward into the garden when the neighbor’s Corgi yapped loudly against the chain-link fence that separated the two homes. Terrified, he crawled back to the house and slammed shut the door.
“God,” Maddy said. “You make Napoleon Dynamite look like a stud.”
“Lay off,” Benji said, gasping for breath. “I’ve got cynophobia. Fear of dogs. It’s a diagnosed condition.”
“Your conditions have conditions,” Maddy said, and whipped off a furious text to Grace: Tried to talk to Mom. She totally doesn’t get me.
In the master bedroom, Rebecca made a last-minute decision to pack a pair of sneakers.
“Ready then?” Roger said, running in from the kitchen. “Let’s load this sucker and hit the road.”
Easier said than done. Full to the brim, the larger suitcase wouldn’t close. In seconds Roger had the two kids in the room. With some quick negotiating, each family member agreed to take out one article of clothing. Even then, Benji had to sit on the suitcase before Roger could manage to snap it shut.
“Yes!” he shouted. “Done!” He stood tall, grinning wildly. “OK, Hitchcocks! Five minutes and counting! Who wants to help me roll this bad boy into the car?”
The answer was obvious—Benji wanted to help. But the boy never had a chance to open his mouth. An ear-splitting wail of a siren filled the house. The four Hitchcocks stood still, stunned. Maddy whispered what everyone was thinking.
“The smoke alarm.”
Rebecca’s face clouded over. “Not another port- a-stove?”
Roger’s eyes went wide. “No, the toaster oven! The bagels!”
He barreled out of the room, Benji hot on his heels. In the kitchen, a small but smoky fire was burning in the center of the toaster oven.
“Tell me this isn’t happening!” Roger cried. “Not on the day of the house swap!”
In a flash, he unplugged the oven from the wall.
“Here!” Benji said, and tossed him two oven mitts.
In seconds, Roger had them on his hands, picked up the still smoking oven, and ran frantically for the backyard. There, father and son stomped on it until the fire was out, leaving it a charred, smoking heap.
Roger wiped his brow and patted Benji on the back.
“That was close.”
“Yeah, Dad. Wow.”
Roger smiled. “Nice work, wingman.”
Benji nodded. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Uh, Roger? Benji?”
Father and son turned toward the house. Rebecca and Maddy were by the door to the backyard. Standing behind them, in a well-tailored gray suit, was a handsome man with salt-and-pepper hair. Walking out the door was an elegant woman with impeccable makeup in a stunning blue dress. Gripping her leg was a boy, about six years old, in a plaid shirt, shorts, and sandals.
“My apologies if we are early,” the man said in a thick French accent. “But our plane caught strong headwinds.”
“Isn’t this simply wonderful, dear?” Rebecca said, forcing a smile. “The Vadims are early!”
Chapter Four
Exactly three hours and twenty-two minutes later, a Boeing 737 took off from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Crammed together, side by side in the second-to-last row, sat the family Hitchcock.
“We’re golden,” Roger said, glancing at his watch. “We should make our next flight with an hour and twelve minutes to spare.”
But no amount of advance planning could ward off bad weather. Though Chicago skies were clear, thunderstorms around the Philadelphia airport delayed their landing, which meant the family barely had time to stop for a cheesesteak before sprinting for their connecting flight to Miami.
“Made it!” Roger called, flopping into his seat, again in the second-to-last row. “Every trip needs a little drama, right? Worry not! From now on, it’s all us!”
Once again, the father who had worked so hard to ensure that the vacation went off without a hitch had spoken too soon. Though the weather had cleared, mechanical problems with the plane’s air-conditioning system kept the flight in the gate for three hours. Rebecca wasn’t pleased. By the time the family landed in Miami, she was a woman on a mission. “One more flight,” she muttered, stalking out of the plane toward the ticket agents. “One. More. Flight!” With a flurry of well-timed tears and a few choice words, Rebecca booked her family on a direct flight to Paris—no extra charge.
“Nice, honey!” Roger said. Truthfully, after fifteen years of marriage, he still found occasional exposures to his wife’s “take no prisoners zone” slightly terrifying. He laughed nervously. “Next time I’ll let you make the arrangements.”
By that point, there was no one in the family—not even Benji—who felt confident that there would ever be a “next time.” Exhausted and stressed, the family was barely on speaking terms. As the Paris-bound 757 took off from the Miami airport, Rebecca leaned back in her chair, snapped a black mask over her eyes, and curled up in one of the airline blankets. Roger sighed. Even on the plane, she instinctively turned her back on him. Needing to feel the glow of some sort of family affection, he glanced over his shoulder to the seats directly behind them. Benji was deep into a book on Einstein, and Maddy was rereading her text in-box.
“Hey, Mads,” he said.
As expected, she didn’t look up or reply. Undeterred, Roger simply soldiered on.
“So we’re off, huh?” Roger said. Like his wife, he never knew quite what to say to his daughter. Not anymore. It was painful, considering that she had once been a certified daddy’s girl, the parent she ran for with a scraped knee or a nightmare. “Reading anything interesting?”
Maddy’s eyes remained glued to the screen.
“How my parents are ruining my life.”
Swallowing hard, Roger made a quick decision to backtrack from his daughter and focus on his son. Benji was always good for an encouraging word.
“Hey, wingman. How’s it going?”
Benji frowned. “Not too good.”
Roger blinked. Perhaps this was even worse than he had feared. Had the troublesome early phase of the trip dampened his enthusiasm for all things Parisian?
“What’s wrong, sport?”
As it turned out, something more consequential than a family vacation was on his son’s mind. With a worried frown, Benji tapped his book. “Einstein just discovered the theory behind nuclear fusion.”
“So?”
Benji’s eyes went wide. “So? Dad, nuclear fusion paved the way for nuclear weapons.”
Roger nodded. There had to be some sort of good spin to put on that.
“True, buddy. But think of all the good things Einstein invented, too. Like the lightbulb.”
“That was Edison.”
Roger forced a smile. Wrong—again.
“Of course.” With nothing else to say, he went for the old standby. “Try to get some rest, OK, buddy?”
Benji nodded but kept reading. Roger faced back forward. For a moment he considered trying to chat with his wife. But he could see by the gentle rise and fall of her blanket that she was already asleep. With nothing else to do, Roger leaned back in his chair and tried to get comfortable. Might as well get some shut-eye himself, he thought. Everything would be better with a little rest.
Not surprisingly, Maddy didn’t share her father’s optimism
. As his seat angled sharply toward her lap, she finally looked up from her cell and grimaced. So far, the trip had been even worse than she had anticipated: a knock-down, drag-out horror show. And not just the flights and the delays. The actual travel had been cake compared to the true nightmare that had occurred at their home after the Vadims’ arrival. Maddy winced. She should have known how it would go. How mortifying it would be to watch her father fall all over himself, vainly trying to impress people twenty times more cultured. Even worse, trying to speak in French!
“Meeting you is fantastique!” he had said while giving them a quick tour of the house. “Now let’s observez ma sal de bain!”
To their credit, they had tried. But the Vadims simply hadn’t been able to suppress a smile.
“What’d I say?” her father asked.
Even the C-minus student knew.
“You asked them to observe your bathroom,” Maddy said grimly.
Then things got worse. Not only were the Vadims unfailingly polite, sophisticated, and well groomed—they were also disgustingly in love.
“Here’s la chambre principale,” Roger said.
In her parents’ master bedroom, Beatrix Vadim’s eyes lit up. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Xavier Vadim kissed her square on the mouth—the kind of kiss she had imagined herself doing in the shallow end of the town pool with Noah Willis.
And there was even more to come. Moments before the Hitchcocks were to leave, Maddy rounded the corner to her bedroom and stopped dead in her tracks. Standing before her was a girl who could have walked off the movie set of The Addams Family. Her clothes were black leather. Her skin was pale. Her dark hair was streaked red. Henna tattoos ranged up and down her arms. Maddy saw that one of them was a picture of a skull. Underneath were the words “Mon Papa.”
“Ah!” Monsieur Vadim called down the hall. “I see you’ve met Veronique!”
Though Maddy prided herself on having cultivated a harsh edge, a single glance made it clear that Veronique had taken teen angst to a place that was truly frightening.
“Maddy,” her father said. “Say hello!”
“Uh, bonjour,” Maddy said.
Veronique scowled. Clearly, she was just as unhappy to be relocated to Chicago as Maddy was to go to France.
“Veronique!” her mother called down the hall. “Be nice!”
To that, Veronique reached into the inside pocket of her leather jacket. For a moment, Maddy thought her new roommate was about to hand her a present. Instead, the girl pulled out a tube of black lipstick, relined her lips, and walked into Maddy’s room. “Ah!” she cried with a thick accent. “Quel dump!”
Now, as Benji read beside her and her parents fell into a deep sleep, Maddy reread a string of recent text messages to Grace.
U think Noah likes me?
N’s smile is like the sweetest cotton candy.
Then the text she had written a month earlier, a message that still made her wish she was the size of a tree toad.
Noah IMed Janice in English!!! Does he like her? I am too ugly to live.
Maddy cringed. How utterly desperate. And how wrong she had been. Who would have thought that Noah liked her? She stared wistfully out the window. Pre-boy life was so much easier. It didn’t matter what she wore, what she said, or what music she liked. Now she had to reinvent herself every minute. With a mortified sigh, she scrolled through another group of old texts. Then she started to laugh. At least her boy-obsessed self led to some funny exchanges.
Grace: I saw Noah thru locker rm. door – no shirt.
Maddy: Awesome. Did he have MADDY tattooed on his tricep?
Grace: No, his chest.
Maddy: I have to see that.
In truth, Maddy had imagined much more than seeing Noah Willis shirtless. There was their first kiss, slow and warm; their election as school fair king and queen; their wedding in center field at Wrigley Field, officiated by Bono. Maddy smiled. Embarrassing, perhaps, but sometimes mere texts weren’t even enough to express the full range of her feelings. Occasionally, she liked to put pen to paper, ruminating on Noah’s various virtues. Her latest was a poem, “Ode to a Noah,” that concluded with these heartfelt lines:
Beauty is Noah.
Noah, beauty.
That is all we know on earth,
And all we need to know.
Suddenly, Maddy felt inspired to put more of her deepest thoughts on paper. But before she could add to her growing opus on the most popular boy in junior high, the busy day took its toll. Despite her best efforts to stay awake, Maddy found herself drifting off—with her cell phone open on her lap.
She awoke what seemed like moments later, her face pressed hard into the side of the seat. Now that the plane was well on its way overseas, the overhead lights were off. Flying through smooth skies, the plane felt completely still, as though it were hanging suspended in space rather than moving forward. For a moment, Maddy didn’t know where she was. Once she got her bearings, she shook herself and tried to get comfortable back in her seat. She had been having a wonderful dream. She didn’t remember it in total, just a few choice details. The shimmer of pool water. A brilliant smile. A tricep. If she fell back to sleep quickly enough, maybe she could recapture the magic.
But just as she was closing her eyes, she noticed something. Actually, she noticed something’s absence—the weight of a phone in her hand. She sat up with a start and looked to the floor, then instinctively glanced to her right. Just as she thought. Sometime after she had dozed off, Benji had decided that the personal life of Maddy Hitchcock held even greater interest than that of Albert Einstein.
“What are you doing?”
Benji’s response was everything Maddy might have hoped for. The loud gasp came first. Then he burst out of his chair—or tried to. Held down by the seatbelt, he flopped back against his seat, his glasses now up on his forehead.
“Is your life so dull you need to live through mine? Gimme that!”
She grabbed the phone and looked to see what message Benji had been reading. To her relief, it wasn’t one about Noah. Still, it wasn’t a text meant for Benji’s innocent eyes:
OMG my parents R so getting a divorce.
“Mom and Dad?” he stammered. “Getting a divorce?”
“Benji! That wasn’t for you to read.”
Benji had more pressing worries than the dubious moral footing of reading someone’s texts without permission.
“It can’t be,” he said. “How do you know this?”
“I just know, all right?” she said. “I don’t live in a bubble like you. You still wake up every morning at the foot of Mom and Dad’s bed. I live in the United States of real.”
Even as she chewed him out, Maddy almost felt bad for him. Benji looked truly shaken, as though his world had just crumbled in his face. His glasses were completely askew. But she was too mad to go soft. Unauthorized text-reading could not be tolerated.
“Just tell me,” the boy squeaked. “Is it that they don’t do their Saturday night date night anymore?”
“That’s one of them.”
“What else?”
Maddy sighed. “They don’t kiss. At least, I don’t see them. Have you?”
Benji thought about it, straining to remember some sort of recent lip-on-lip parental contact. Nothing. He shook his head.
“No,” he said.
“Yeah.” Maddy sighed again. “Me neither.”
Brother and sister were quiet for a moment.
“They used to all the time,” Maddy said.
“I know,” Benji said. “Remember how Dad used to pick Mom up and twirl her around his head fireman-style and how she would laugh?” Benji shook his head. “Dad would never move out, would he?”
“Well, he wouldn’t,” Maddy said. “It’s Mom I’m worried about.”
“Why?”
“Well . . . ”
“What? Come on! You saw something. I can tell. What was it?”
“Listen, Benji,” Maddy said. “Just fo
rget I said anything, OK? I’m probably wrong.”
“But you . . . ”
“Forget it, OK?”
Maddy buried her face back in her phone. Benji knew better than to keep at her now. His best hope was to wait until they landed, then pester her all through Paris until she broke down and told him what he wanted to know. Of course, that didn’t help him now. Especially since Maddy’s words had rung true. For instance, why did his parents sleep on opposite sides of the bed? And when was the last time his father had done the fireman lift to his mom? He couldn’t remember.
As Maddy scrolled down her list of texts, Benji looked through the seats to his parents. They were both asleep, and his mother’s head was resting on his father’s shoulder. Benji knew it didn’t really mean anything—sound asleep, his mother would have been happy to put her head on any reasonably soft place—but it still gave him hope. Yes, his father could be like a camp director on caffeine and his mother treated life as something to worry about rather than enjoy. But maybe this trip could bring them back together.
Benji picked up his book. If Einstein could figure out how to split the atom, anything was possible.
Chapter Five
No doubt about it. Benji took after his dad. The boy could find the good in everything. That’s all Maddy could think as she clung to the backseat of a careening cab, sandwiched between her father and brother. The moment after landing, the rain had started. Now, through the downpour, Benji was jabbing a thumb at the rain-streaked windows, madly pointing out the Parisian sights like a tour guide gone native.
“Look, Dad! Look! I mean, Regardez, Papa! L’Arche de la Défense! Paris is freaking awesome, isn’t it!”
Maddy had to admit it: The city was beautiful, even in the rain. She had never seen a wide, open street like the Champs-Elysées or a monument quite as striking as the Arc de Triomphe. But even as she took in the sights, Maddy couldn’t help thinking about her friends back home, those girls and boys whose parents didn’t break the bank to give their children some sort of summer cultural experience. Grace’s father didn’t care what she did over the summer, just as long as she stayed out of his hair. Deep down, Maddy didn’t want a father that uninvolved. She was lucky to have parents who took her to Europe. But it was hard to focus on the sights with visions spinning through her jet-lagged mind of Grace moving in on Noah. To make the scenery even harder to appreciate, the cabdriver was really moving—which was making her insides move, too. Of all the bad things Maddy had inherited from her mother, car sickness was her least favorite.