by James Zerndt
“Uh-oh, babysitter’s in trouble.” She hands Dustin the rest of her pile, kisses the top of his head. She doesn’t see it, but Dustin looks straight at me, smiles like he’s just won something. “Bring those up when you’re finished, and I’ll make us something horrible and tasteless to eat, okay?”
“Okay,” Dustin says, and, when Jerusha turns to head upstairs, my little brother leers at my girlfriend’s butt.
Extra spin cycle.
“Fold them you will,” I say in my best Yoda voice, but Dustin only raises an eyebrow. “Just come upstairs when you’re finished,” I say in my normal, everyday, defeated voice. “We’ve got some stuff to talk about.”
*
Three plates sit on the counter.
Each of them filled with government-rationed food. Tonight we’re having what I normally refer to as diaper paste. There are also pills: vitamins, organic steroids, and neuro-enhancers all laid out in assorted colors.
“I’ve asked for some time off,” I say and take my plate from Jerusha.
“You’re welcome.”
“Sorry,” I say. “It looks great.”
“Not for dinner, you jackass. For watching Dustin.”
I set the brown, steak-flavored pudding down and make a move to hug her. But she turns her back on me.
“I think the more time he spends away from that ridiculous place you call work, the better.”
“They were Drying a Leftover today,” I say.
Jerusha sits down. “Lovely.”
“The guy seemed decent enough. Not like some of the others they bring in.”
“Remind me again why I’m with you.”
“They’re not all angels.”
“They’re not all dirt either.”
I take a seat in Dad’s old spot, wait a few beats since I know all too well how these conversations end up. “Just so you know, it made me sick.”
“Good to know you have a breaking point.”
“Look, I’ve got D to think of. It’s a little easier being noble when you’ve only got yourself to worry about.”
“You are so delusional.”
“What?”
“You know damn well you joined the Water Idiots out of spite. It was the last thing your parents would have wanted you to do.”
“That’s not true.”
“Sounds to me like you’re trying to convince yourself of something.”
I shrug, shovel a glop of mush into my mouth.
“Don’t get all pissy. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just miss the person I knew in high school. Whatever happened to him? The nerdy guy who always had his nose stuck in a book?” Jerusha pokes my leg under the table with her foot. “Besides, you know you want to quit and join forces with me anyway.”
“Robin to your Batman?” I say and stir my paste. “I don’t think so.”
“Fine. You can be Catwoman then.”
“Gee, thanks,” I say, and, before I know it, I’m picturing Jerusha in black vinyl and fishnet, on all fours, purring her way towards me across the kitchen floor. It takes a few seconds for me to remember what we’re talking about. “I’m not quitting,” I say. “Just taking a break. Actually, I was thinking of taking D to California.”
“Where your parents supposedly are?”
“I haven’t exactly thought it all through yet.”
“Really? You haven’t thought it all through yet?”
“I know how it sounds. I just want to spend some time with him before I tell him.”
“So, what, you get to California and say, “Surprise, Dustin, your parents aren’t here?””
“Easy. He’ll hear you.”
“That’d be better than what you’ve got in store for him.”
“Just trust me on this.”
“Quarantined, doing top-secret research in California.” Jerusha shakes her head. “You ever lie to me like that, Thomas, and I swear I’ll castrate you.”
“It was necessary.”
“And I wouldn’t need a very large knife either.”
Something about the way she says it actually makes me squirm in my seat.
“Anyway,” I manage to say. “I was sort of thinking just me and Dustin would go. You know, do the whole sibling thing.”
Gauging by the look on her face, I’ve miscalculated.
Badly.
Jerusha gets up from the table, says, “Gives me the creeps him being down there all by himself.” She opens the basement door. “Dustin, get your butt up here!”
“Like I said, I haven’t thought it all through yet.”
“Send me a postcard.”
“Jerusha, I didn’t think you’d want to go.”
“How are you going to get there? Hitchhike?”
Dustin pounds his way up the stairs.
“I hadn’t really gotten that far yet.”
“Well, get there.”
Without so much as a thank you, Dustin grabs a plate from Jerusha, starts wolfing down what the general population still generously refers to as food.
“I’ll figure out the details once we--” I start to say, but stop once I notice Dustin still standing there. “D, sit down. Just because Mom isn’t here doesn’t mean you get to act like an animal.”
Dustin looks at Jerusha.
She nods and he takes a seat.
“A plan would be nice is all I’m saying,” she says and Dustin stops inhaling his food just long enough to ask what we’re talking about.
“I’m not sure,” Jerusha says. “Why don’t you ask your brother.”
He’s so small sitting there, so oblivious, so vulnerable and stupid and I hate that I know, hate that they stuck me with all of this just because I happen to be a few years older.
It’s beyond bullshit.
All of it.
And I want nothing more than to say the two words that have been on the tip of my tongue since all of this started.
But I can’t.
Instead, I take a swig from my water bottle and do the exact opposite.
“You want to go visit Mom and Dad?”
*
“You’re wasting your time, you know.”
Jerusha’s multi-tasking: playing a friendly game of Scrabble with Dustin while simultaneously being a bitch to me.
“And why’s that?” I say, thumbing through my dad’s old Road Atlas.
“That world no longer exists.”
“The roads still do.”
“Some,” she says. “But my guess is they don’t have the check points listed.”
“No, but he’s got the charging stations penciled in.”
What started out as charging stations for the electric cars we all had to switch over to soon turned into check points: places with armed guards that check your Citizen card and question you about your destination.
The only other thing marked on the map is a place called Twink’s Auto Repair. There’s a star with a circle around it.
An address.
1436 N. Spoon Rd.
Why would Dad single out this specific repair shop?
Dustin, not paying anybody any attention, lays down the word F-I-S-H.
“How much?”
“Triple word. Twenty-one.”
Jerusha double-checks, then jots down the points. “You know fish aren’t extinct, right?”
Dustin cocks his head, looks at her, then at me to see if she’s messing with him.
“You believe everything you hear, Dustin?”
“Yes.”
Jerusha studies her letters, no doubt debating which conspiracy theory she’s going to rant about next. Truth is, nobody really knows what happened to all the fish. Or why it stopped raining. What we do know is that we’ve been cut off from the rest of the world. That is, if there is a rest of the world. The government says it’s for safety reasons, to secure our remaining “water funds.”
So we can focus on Operation Green.
They even shut down the internet. Cut all the wires. Shot down the satellites. Whate
ver. All I know is it doesn’t exist anymore. Now we can all focus our energy on Going Green, on conserving water, on doing our part for the country.
Lucky us.
Those are the facts.
These are not:
-North Korea blew up the rest of the world and then, accidentally, itself. America is all that’s left of a wasted planet.
-They siphoned off the ocean, sealed off Arizona and Utah, sprayed the Grand Canyon with rubber coating and turned it into a massive reservoir.
-God turned off heaven’s faucet as punishment for our sins.
-Aliens are now in charge of the world and are conducting behavioral experiments on us.
-The rest of the world has cut us off, blacklisted the United States, water-sanctioned us as punishment for past environmental atrocities.
-Our government is controlling the weather.
Jerusha subscribes to and espouses upon various versions of these depending on the mood she’s in. I told her I’d try to find her a soap box at an antique store, but she didn’t find that funny. Instead, I got a lecture on how the government denies us soap so that we constantly feel dirty.
So our self-esteem is kept at a manageable level.
Low enough to ensure cow-like passivity.
I don’t mention soap boxes anymore.
“Our government would have you believe that only a handful of animals survived the drought, correct?”
“Yeah. I mean, correct.”
“I thought that once, too. But then I met some people who told me a different story. A story I think makes more sense.”
If any of this came out of my mouth, Dustin would turn me in for heresy. But from Jerusha, it’s gospel.
“So they aren’t all dead?”
“No. Didn’t Thomas ever tell you about Noah’s Ark?”
“No,” he says like I’ve done him some huge injustice.
“Well, once upon a time, the world was going to die and there was this old guy who built a hugantic boat. And on this boat he had one boy and one girl of every kind of animal.” She pauses, checking to see if Dustin’s still paying attention. “So this old guy brought these animals to a special place where they could all live and have babies.”
“Where they could screw?”
He’s paying attention.
Jerusha cocks her head, looks at me like I told him to say that.
“What?” I say and shrug. “He could have heard it anywhere.”
“Thomas says people like to screw. That’s where all the babies come from.”
“Good to know, Dustin,” Jerusha says and gives me a look that says I’ve lost any shot of her ever babying my brains out. “Anyway, our government took some of the animals to a special place where they’re keeping them until this man-made drought ends.”
“So how come we never see them?”
“Because it’s a secret.”
“Why?”
“Because the President and his friends don’t trust us anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re afraid.”
“Of what?”
“More riots.”
“Oh.”
I lean over, sneak a peek at what Dustin’s got in the way of letters. He could spell B-A-C-O-N if he knew what it was.
“Do you remember eating meat?” I ask him.
“No,” he says in that same tone again, like I’m single-handedly responsible for denying him yet another of life’s pleasures.
“You know you used to be a big fan of pork chops back in the day.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it was pork chops. But maybe you’re right.”
Jerusha shakes her head at the two of us, spins the board toward her. She plays like Mom, lingering over the possibilities like it’s a chess match, then, just when you’re about to start chewing on your tongue, she’ll lay something down like D-O-O-R.
“While I’m young,” Dustin says.
“While you’re obnoxious,” Jerusha says and plunks down T-R-E-E.
“How much?” Dustin asks.
“Eight.”
Jerusha takes out a pencil with a shoestring attached to the end, holds it in her hand like a lonely chopstick and starts wriggling it.
She does this whenever she’s nervous.
Or irritated.
When I asked her about it once, she told me it was a game she used to play with her cat. After the cat died, she said the habit never did.
They’re both staring at the game in silence, Jerusha waiting for Dustin to go, her face so serious, so beautiful, that at first I don’t hear Dustin ask if she’s coming with us.
“Wasn’t invited,” Jerusha says and the teasing of the ghost-cat intensifies.
“But we can’t make it there without you,” Dustin says, arms now folded across his chest. “Thomas doesn’t know anything.”
“Hey,” I say. “I know stuff.”
“How are we going to get there then? We can’t fly. And we don’t have a car.”
“I thought we’d go Kerouac style.”
Dustin gives me a blank look.
Well, a blanker look than usual. I try again.
“I thought maybe we’d hitchhike.”
“Like beg for rides?”
“Yeah, like an adventure.”
“Like a lame. I want to drive,” Dustin says and looks at Jerusha the same way he used to look at Mom when he wanted something.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “But I don’t think I should be a part of this.”
“Jerusha,” I say, finally coming to my senses. “Please. I’ll do anything you want, just don’t--”
“Me, too,” Dustin says, cutting me off. “I’ll even let you win.”
“Thanks, but you happen to be kicking my ass by about a thousand points right now.”
“Whatever,” he says and folds the board up, the tiles all land-sliding together. “You win. You’re going with.”
The pencil routine ends. “I’ll have to ask my parents if I can borrow their car.”
I try to remain cool, but the truth is I have the bizarre urge to smother Dustin in kisses, tell him he’s the best little brother anyone could ever be stuck with.
*
Dustin’s in the basement, digging through boxes, looking for my collection of Star Wars figures. I made the mistake of mentioning them after we watched Empire Strikes Back in Jerusha’s garage last night.
Dustin, of course, loved it.
Can’t stop imitating the entire cast now.
Yoda being his favorite.
Kiss my ass you will, Thomas.
When I told him he could take three keepsakes on our trip, I was hoping maybe he’d take a rubber ducky, a favorite photo, something personal just in case we don’t make it back.
“I found him,” Dustin says, holding Yoda up when he finally emerges from all the clutter. “And this.”
In his outstretched hand is a book.
I’d almost forgotten about it.
A thin book of poems Mom wrote in her twenties. Just before Dustin was born. I read them once, back before all this happened, but, to be honest, didn’t really understand most of them.
“Mom’s poems,” I say and take the book from him.
There’s a sheet of yellow paper wedged in the middle.
“Did you read this?”
“No,” Dustin says and sticks Yoda in his front pocket, his little green head poking out. “I just saw Mom’s name on it.”
“You want to take the book with you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know they’re poems, right?”
“Yeah. Mom’s poems.”
“Okay,” I say and when he looks down to adjust Yoda’s arms, I pocket the yellow piece of paper. “We can read them together if you want.”
“Likely, it’s not,” he says, taking the book from me and heading for the basement again.
“Jerusha will be here soon,” I call after him. “Hurry it up.”
; I hear something muttered in broken Yoda, something I’m guessing would make the Jedi master himself blush. But I ignore it, go up to my room so I can read the yellow piece of paper in private. It’s what I thought it was.
The note I never found.
Not Mom’s best work by a long shot. I swallow down every painful word before putting it into an envelope. The envelope I put into my backpack.
There’ll be a time for this, but now isn’t it.
When I come back downstairs, Jerusha’s standing in our living room, two shiny jackets draped over her arms.
She’s early.
A first.
“Everything still a go?” I say as she tosses what were once our Water-cop jackets on the couch. There’s a silver panel of some sort on the back of each of them now.
They look like a pair of puffy sardines.
It’s a good thing we’re going on vacation.
“I told my parents I wanted to go to a Water-cop convention in California. That it was some sort of recruitment deal. They drank it up, gave me both their Juice cards.”
Jerusha picks up one of the jackets, holds it open so I can stick my arms in. “I was going to wait until Christmas, but...”
It’s more comfortable than I expect, the silver panel thin, hardly noticeable.
“I call them pee-coats. Get it? Pee-coats?”
“Like they’re made from pee?”
“Like they’re personal Recyclers.” She opens the jacket, and, sure enough, on the inside there’s a tube that drops down. “See this? It’s a pump. Your stuff fills up the jacket and the solar-panel heats it, converts it to water. You’re basically a walking canteen.”
“And the chemicals go...”
“Here,” she says and opens a flap in the neck. “You just dump them in and the sun does the rest. Only trouble is they aren’t exactly female-friendly yet. But I’m working on that.”
“My very own catheter-jacket,” I say, not sure if I love or hate it. “Just what I always wanted.”
“You’ll thank me if things get rough.”
Dustin skulks into the living room dragging his backpack, apparently suffering from a massive case of poop-in-the-pants.
Jerusha, as always, takes the bait.
“What’s wrong, honey? Aren’t you excited to go?”
Dustin doesn’t answer.
“Careful, D,” I say. “You’re about to step on your lip.”
He squints at me, his attempt at a glare. “I can’t find Chewbacca. I want Yoda and Chewbacca.”