“Which time are we talking?” Emma asked. “The time Kyle went head first into the barrel of peanuts, or the time the two of you set the tablecloth on fire?”
“The fire was an accident… and the peanut incident was on Kyle. He’s the one who wanted to know if he could breathe under all those peanuts. I was only helping him with his research.”
“And just so you know,” Kyle pitched in, “they packed those peanuts in tight.”
“Anyway, I just want a nice, quiet evening with my family,” Mom pleaded. “No fire trucks or CPR. Do you boys understand?”
A moment passed with neither one agreeing to the terms of the evening. It took a harsh glare from Mom to force reluctant nods from the troublemakers.
Dinner went on without incident, and as it wound down, Quinn wiggled restlessly in his chair. “Mommy, I want to give you my gift now.”
“Ahh, so sweet. Okay. I’m ready.”
“I’m going to sing you a song.”
Mom clapped, genuinely moved by the effort her youngest son was putting into her birthday.
With a mischievous grin, five-year-old Quinn began his own unique rendition of the Yankee Doodle song. “Yankee Doodle went to town, riding on a baby. Accidentally turned around and saw a naked lady!”
Eyes widening in surprise, Mom looked around to make sure no one outside of our family unit had heard his song.
“Quinny, where did you learn that?” Mom asked.
“Kindergarten.”
“Wonderful.” She and Dad exchanged amused smiles. “So happy the education is well-rounded.”
“Ooh,” Kyle teased. “Quinn saw a naked lady.”
My baby brother’s tanned skin flushed a bright crimson color, and he immediately backpedaled on his birthday song. “That didn’t really happen, though.”
“Uh-huh, right, sure,” Kyle goaded, not letting Quinn off the hook he was now dangling helplessly from. “Did you see her boobies and everything?”
The humiliation was too much for young Quinn to handle. With gritted teeth and clenched fists, my baby brother swung out, pelting Kyle with a series of punches. If there was one motto us McKallister boys lived by, it was that the quickest way to settle a conflict was through combat.
“Was that supposed to hurt?” Kyle blew on the area of his arm where the strikes had landed. “‘Cuz it felt like a bunch of bird pecks… but maybe that’s because you’re exhausted after looking at sooo many naked ladies.”
Quinn burst into tears, running to Mom for comfort as the rest of us boys laughed at his pain. Hey, we all had to toughen up at some point. Quinn’s education just started a little earlier, based solely on birth order. As the newest male member of the McKallister clan, he had to pay his dues.
“Kyle.” Dad grabbed him by the collar in an attempt to wipe the smirk off his twelve-year-old face. “That’s enough.”
Kyle had a quick wit as well as a propensity for trouble. Like me, he rarely learned from his mistakes. But Kyle took it to the next level, adding that extra little bit of comic relief to his performance. Really, he’d missed his calling. Kyle should have been a child actor because he could easily be mistaken for the bratty kid brother on any television sitcom series ever. Granted, I was a lot of work too, but at least I could sit through an entire dinner without uttering ‘naked lady’ like forty frickin’ times.
“Don’t blame me.” Kyle shrugged. “I was just pointing out the flaws in his composition.”
“SHUT UP!” Quinn screamed, raising the eyebrows of the patrons at the tables nearest us.
I swung my head toward Mom, knowing she’d never let such a display go unanswered, and I wasn’t disappointed. Lowering her voice, Mom leaned in, instantly transforming from mild-mannered mommy to scowling beast before our very eyes. “If I have to warn either of you again to be civilized in the restaurant, I’ll drag both of you by the ear into separate corners of the dining room. Would you two really like to face the wall in front of everyone?”
Ah, yes. She’d gone with public humiliation. Excellent choice. It had always been a favorite of hers. And, I must say, from past experience, it was a surprisingly effective punishment. Having faced that wall myself once or twice, I knew she wasn’t bluffing. If Mom promised us a toddler timeout in the middle of a restaurant, that’s exactly what we’d better expect. Only as a wily teen had I figured a way around Mom’s combatant parenting style – sneak out and ask for forgiveness later. It wasn’t the best strategy, as I spent a significant portion of my life on restriction, but again, that’s what windows and early morning escapes were for.
Both Quinn and Kyle heeded the threat, wisely sealing their mouths shut and adopting a shaky truce for the sake of their respective dignities.
Satisfied with their compliance, Mom smoothed out her dress and transformed into the lovely woman she’d been moments before the altercation. She was a frickin’ rock star when it came to parenting.
Focusing her attention back on her youngest son, Mom offered him the loving relief that only a mother could and he sank into her arms, nestling his head into her neck.
“Me next. Me next,” Grace said, her shiny golden locks glowing in the recessed lighting. She hopped off her chair and crowded onto mom’s lap beside Quinn. Just shy of four years old, she was the baby of the family, and unlike Quinn’s tough love indoctrination, Grace enjoyed around-the-clock adoration. “I drew you a picture.”
“Oh, wow. I love it,” Mom said, glancing around the table at her older kids with a comical grimace on her face. “Sweetie, is this… um… blood?”
“No, Mommy,” she said in the cutest little voice. “It’s red flowers.”
“Okay, right, now I see it.” More cringing. “Are those people lying on a concrete slab?”
Grace nodded, clearly not understanding the word as she rattled off all the names in our family. “That’s Mommy and Daddy and Mitch and Keith and…”
Mom interrupted her to hold up the picture so the rest of us could get our first look. It was a gasp heard around the room. Baby Grace had drawn a bloody massacre. Bodies with stick arms and legs broken at forty-five degree angles littered the wide-ruled canvas. Setting aside any worries about her mental health, we oohed and aahed the budding assassin and made her feel like the most talented artist ever to slaughter her family on a birthday card.
“Kyle,” Dad asked, prying his worshipping eyes off his baby girl, “do you have anything for your mother?”
“Yeah.” With zero enthusiasm, he pulled a wad of stapled papers from his back pocket and tossed it across the table.
“Not the coupon book again,” Jake groaned. “You get her that every year.”
“Stop it, Jake.” Mom elbowed him. “I love it. Kyle’s coupon book is the gift that keeps on giving.”
Kyle’s eyes rolled on cue. “Yeah, well, just so you know, I added a terms and conditions section this year. Now there are time limits. No more twenty-minute massages or unlimited compliments.”
Mom smiled. “Understood. Come here and give me a hug.”
“A free hug is on page four. You have to rip it out first, otherwise I’m not coming over.”
Mom laughed as she extracted page four and held out the coupon to Kyle, who made a show of being annoyed even though he dutifully accepted the coupon and hugged her. He even waited patiently as she smothered his neck in kisses before setting him free.
“Yuck. I need to come up with a different birthday gift next year – one that doesn’t involve slobbering.”
“Here,” Jake said, sliding a notepad over to our mother. “My gift.”
Mom opened the notebook and read whatever it was that Jake had written. Within seconds, her eyes misted over, and she placed a hand to her heart. When she was done reading, she didn’t say anything. Instead she slid her arm around his back and gave him a kiss on the cheek. See what I mean? Kiss-ass.
“My turn.” Emma reached into a bag with an ear-to-ear smile as she passed an immaculately wrapped gift over to our mother. My ey
es darted back and forth, taking in the unbelievable scene. Wait, what was happening here?
I glanced at my brothers, all of who wore the same horrified expression. Cheesy, stupid, last minute, homemade gifts – those were the rules.
Ripping off the gift-wrap, the birthday girl squealed in delight. “You didn’t!”
Emma clapped, her eyes glowing with excitement.
“The purse I saw in the store?” Mom giggled, then went so far as to hug the handbag to her chest and give it a little snuggle. “Emma, it’s simply gorgeous.”
Oh, no. No. There was absolutely no need for pomp and circumstance. Mom had always been fine with the bare minimum. My sister was single-handedly ruining everything we’d worked so hard for! How could Mom ever go back to ground beef now that she’d had a taste of filet mignon?
“Sweetie,” Mom said, scaling down her excitement as she demurred. “I don’t need something this fancy. It’s too expensive.”
Of course it was, EMMA. No money was allowed to change hands! Like I said – ground beef. That hugged purse was going to go back to the evil place it came from. That’s what my sister got for trying to show us up… no, for trying to bury us. Give it to her, Mamacita!
But Emma’s voice shook with emotion. “I wanted you to have it. I bought it with the money I earned from babysitting the neighbor kids. You’re the best mom in the world, and you deserve to have pretty things.”
Oh, no. Don’t do it! Don’t you dare cry! And then came the tears. Once sis employed the waterworks, I knew the boys and I were officially doomed.
“Oh, Emma, I don’t even know what to say. I love it so much. Thank you, honey. I’m so lucky to have such a thoughtful daughter.”
They hugged for an uncomfortably long time. Jake, Kyle, and I looked on in disgust. Emma had risen the bar – the one we’d now forever have to hurdle over.
I could no longer hold my tongue. “Um, I don’t mean to be a stickler here, but the rules state we’re supposed to give homemade gifts. Emma’s cheating.”
“No, Keith,” Emma answered. “It’s supposed to be heartfelt gifts, not homemade. You mixed up the words. Right, Dad?”
Dad jerked his head up like a skittish deer seconds before the fatal shot was fired. “Well, I uh… I…”
Come on, dude. I urged him with my eyes. Stand strong with your sons!
“Technically, Keith, Emma is correct. The word used was ‘heartfelt.’ You boys always just interpreted that to mean homemade, and since your mother seemed okay with pasta necklaces and Popsicle stick photo frames, I saw no reason to correct you.”
“Kids, listen, I love all my gifts. They mean the world to me.” Tears pooled in her Caribbean blue eyes. “When I was growing up, there was always a pile of gifts on the table on birthday morning, but no one was ever there to watch me open them. There was no love or joy. That’s why it doesn’t matter to me if the gift is homemade or bought. I just want the idea to come from a place of love and to have all of you right here by my side. That’s all I want for my birthday.”
I sighed. How nice for everyone that went before mom’s profound speech. Now I had to follow it up with my crap gift. I fumbled with my shell photo frame. Yes, it was a step above the Popsicle sticks, but not by much. Instead of Emma’s fancy wrap job, mine looked pathetic wrapped in paper towels and scotch tape. Out of options, I slid the gift across the table. “Happy birthday, Mom.”
She smiled as she peeled the wrapping back with meticulous fingers. Mom examined my offering, running her fingers over the delicate shells, ones I’d spent about thirty minutes collecting. Probably not my best effort, but no matter, because she appeared pleased regardless. “You made this?”
I nodded.
“It’s beautiful, honey.”
“Did you see what was inside?”
Mom checked the photo before bursting into a fit of hysterics. “Who took this?”
“I did,” Dad replied. “And might I add, I now understand why other species eat their young. It was a nightmare, Michelle. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get all six of these kids in the same shot? And then that one” – he pointed at Grace – “just when I had them all in place, boom, she’s gone, scaling the back fence. Her white dress was ruined. That’s when Keith suggested that instead of taking a perfect photo, why not take one as they really are – a bunch of shi…” Mom’s glare stopped the swear word from fully forming. “Poopheads. So, there you have it.”
In the photograph, each of us was mugging for the camera, but in our own unique way. In my arms, Gracie was hanging upside down in her dirty dress. Quinn was brandishing a plastic sword, a look of steely determination forever captured on his face. Kyle was performing the splits while suspended in midair. Jake was strumming an air guitar as his left pointer finger reached for the sky. Emma was showcasing her best Charlie’s Angels kissing pose. And there was me, wagging my tongue as my signature pirate hair blew in the wind.
We weren’t a perfect family, not by a long shot, but as Mom had just proven in her speech, perfection was overrated. She wanted heart. She wanted love. And she got all of that with her tribe of well-meaning delinquents.
“This right here, Keith.” Mom smiled. “This is what I’m talking about.”
8
Samantha: My Favorite Word
Keith was knee-deep in a geometry worksheet when he disintegrated before my very eyes. First from somewhere in the recesses of his throat came a pitiful groan, and then the fake cry, and finally, he buried his head in his arm and loudly declared, “I’d rather slam my flaccid penis in the car door than satisfy one more Pythagorean Theorem.”
Such meltdowns were not unusual for my lab partner, but this particular one had me chuckling behind my book. No one could say he wasn’t creative in his self-expression.
“Shhh, Keith, we’re in a library.”
“Who cares? It’s a ghost town in here.”
That wasn’t entirely true. There were a few hardcore studiers spending their after-school hours in the library. And each one of them was eyeing us now.
“What are you looking at?” Keith challenged, spooking the timid souls, who quickly disappeared back into their books.
Not satisfied with his tantrum, Keith rolled himself up on top of the long table and stretched out on his back, making a show of miming a very elaborate stabbing death scene. Only after his eyes had rotated back and his tongue had lobbed out was his sheer and utter misery accurately portrayed to his rapt audience.
It set off a frenzy of giggles in me that echoed through the room, although one glance around told me that not everyone was as entertained. One skittish student even packed up and left. The type of kids who frequented the library were still a bit uneasy having the infamous Keith McKallister in their midst.
“So mature,” I said, pushing his twitching carcass.
My lab partner had a way of easing my troubled mind. Before his flare-up, I’d been stressing hard over midterms and maternal tantrums. After his theatrics, I was smiling and breathing easier. It was hard to say why I completely relaxed around Keith, but I did. In fact I’d go so far to say I’d laughed more in those past weeks than I had in my whole life.
Shannon kept insisting I was falling for him, and although I vehemently denied it, there was no denying my crush. Keith was cute. He was funny. And he was the first boy to ever really want to know me. So yes, I had it bad, but I refused to admit it in words – not even to Shannon. Such an admission could only end in disaster because no matter how fun and flirty the boy was, he would never fall for a girl like me.
Still, that didn’t stop me from experimenting with different techniques to improve my overall appearance. Studying hair and makeup tutorials on YouTube had become an after school ritual, and I’d even started watching my calorie intake and upping my workout routine in hopes of dropping some of the extra weight I was carrying. Seven pounds were already gone, and my normally makeup-free cheeks were now dusted in a fine powder.
Not that Keith not
iced. He seemed oblivious to my transformation. To him I was just a buddy – no, I wasn’t even that. Buddies acknowledged each other in public. Keith never did. Outside of the safety of the library, we were strangers, and as much as I wanted more from him, I knew it would never happen. We were just too different.
I knew where I stood – on the outside, where I’d always been. And I was okay with our friendship remaining firmly in the educational realm as long as I could stay relevant in his life. Pathetic, yes, but that was the reality of being me.
Keith lifted his head off the table. “Why do you always have to say shitty words like that?”
“Like what? Mature?”
“Yeah. We’re seventeen. This is the only time in our lives we get to be imbeciles. Embrace it.”
“Hey, you’re using the vocab words in sentences. Way to go!”
“I can’t help it. You’re a bad influence on me.”
“Some might argue I’m a good one.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t hang out with those people. Anyway, I’m not itching to be a genius. How about we just aim for functionally competent?”
Keith’s fears of becoming a genius were unwarranted. He still had a ways to go just to make the ‘utterly ordinary’ category of scholastic achievement, as evidenced by some of his recent zingers like ‘So you’re saying Egypt isn’t a religion?’ or ‘Are you trying to tell me that parallel lines never meet? How do they end?’
“You want to aim that high?” I teased.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him, grinning that flirty smile of his. “You’re a lippy little thing today, aren’t you, babe?”
“Yes, I am. And stop calling me babe.” I pulled my arm out of his hold.
“Why? You are a babe.”
“Not according to my mirror, I’m not.”
Keith flipped over onto his stomach. “Well, according to my eyes, you are.”
A flush crept over my cheeks. His words registered, but they didn’t make sense. Not once had he ever indicated that I qualified for babe status. Why all of the sudden was he acting weird? I slid back in my seat, away from him.
Rogue Wave: Cake Series Book Five Page 8