“I’m Catholic,” I reminded her. “I get Latin.” Then I gave her a gentle shove, and she shot down the zip line, toward her grandfather and the nervous engineering students waiting to catch her.
“It’s a quarter mile,” said the engineering student, who had been waiting all this time to answer my question, “but it feels a lot longer!”
I pulled up the rear, shouting and whooping as the landscape of Prospect Park shot beneath me. This kidnapping was a winner! The zip line did exactly what it was supposed to do—it filled our senses and souls with excitement. It reminded us what it meant to be alive. For twenty shining seconds there was nothing but me, the wind, and the fifty feet between me and the ground. The engineering guy was wrong. It felt too short!
By the time I arrived, Crawley had already recovered some of his usual demeanor.
“So, whaddaya think?” I asked.
“I’m only mildly impressed.” From him, this was a five-star review.
“It was . . . exhilarating,” Lexie said. I could tell she hadn’t cared for it. When you’re flying down a zip line, I suppose sight is a sense worth having.
The students lowered us from the platform, working hard on the pulleys like medieval sailors, and as we descended, Crawley said to me, “As usual, you’re missing the obvious.”
“Excuse me?”
“With regard to your not-quite-dying friend—you’re missing the obvious.”
I crossed my arms. “So tell us. We await your brilliance, O Ancient One.”
For once he ignored my sarcasm. “It’s not that he wants to die—it’s that he needs to be sick. The sooner you find out why he needs to be sick, the sooner you can solve this mystery and return to your mediocre existence.”
I didn’t respond, because as much as I hated to admit it, I knew he was right.
“Now,” he said, “take me back to the other tree, so we can do that again.”
***
Crawley contacted the parks department shortly after the kidnapping and offered to build a zip line tourist attraction in Prospect Park. He got the blessing of the city, and wouldn’t you know it, the zip line was already in place. Any minute he’ll be making a hefty profit from it.
“The difference between you and me,” he once told me, “is that when I look at the world, I see opportunity. When you look at the world, you’re just trying to find a place to urinate.”
***
When I got home that afternoon, I decided to play Sherlock Holmes and figure out why Gunnar needed to be sick. I did some in-depth research on Pulmonary Monoxic Systemia.
Although the disease is almost always fatal within a year of diagnosis, huge strides were being made in research recently, and there were early reports that test patients were living longer, healthier lives. The leading research and all the hopeful results were coming from Columbia University Medical Center, right in Manhattan.
I thought about Dr. G. The thing with the Dr. G website is that you can throw out the same basic symptoms, and each time it would diagnose you with something else. I wonder how many diagnoses Gunnar had gotten before he convinced himself that this is what he had.
And wasn’t it convenient that all the hope for Gunnar’s illness lay right here in New York?
Before I could think about it much further, I got a call from my father. He needed me to work at the restaurant. The Crawley kidnapping had exhausted me, and it was the last thing I wanted to do today.
“There are laws against child labor,” I told him.
“Aren’t you always telling us you’re not a child?”
“What about my homework? Is your restaurant more important than my education?”
“It’s our restaurant, not just mine—and didn’t Christmas vacation start today?”
I knew he had me.
I showed up at seven and did my job, but the whole situation with Gunnar never left my mind entirely. Sure, it was vacation, but there was a big fat Gunnar-themed rally waiting for me when vacation was over. I was irritable, but maintained an air of professionalism for most of the evening. Things would have been fine if it hadn’t been for the single certified idiot at table number nine.
He arrived at around seven-thirty with a scowling wife, and two kids who wouldn’t stop fighting. From the moment he sits down, this guy starts complaining. His fork has spots on it; the wine isn’t cold enough. The appetizer came out too late and the main course came out too early. He demands to see the manager, and my father comes over. I’m standing there, refilling water glasses, after having been chewed out by the guy for not having refilled them the instant he took a sip. For him I don’t bother with skillful pouring.
“How can you call this a restaurant?” the guy complains while his kids kick each other under the table. “The service is lousy, the food came out cold, and there’s a horrible stench in the air.”
Well, first of all, the service was perfect, because my mother was his waitress, and she is the queen of quality control. Secondly, I know the food was hot, because I served it myself, and nearly burned my hands on the plate. And third, the horrible stench was coming from his son.
But my dad—he gets all apologetic, offering free dessert, and discounts off the guy’s next visit, and such. That just makes me angry. See, my dad used to work in a big corporation, full of guys like this, so he had developed an idiot-resistant personality. I, on the other hand, had not. All I had going for me at the moment was a big pitcher of ice water.
This is why I could never get a job as a busboy in a restaurant my family didn’t own ... because, for the first time in my water-pouring history, I missed the glass. In fact, all the water in the pitcher missed the glass, and found the top of the guy’s head instead.
After I was done pouring the pitcher of ice water on him, he finally fell silent, and stared at me in total shock. And I said, “I’m sorry—did you want bottled water instead?”
To my amazement, the rest of the restaurant started applauding. Someone even snapped a picture. I was ready to take a bow, but my father grabbed my arm. He grabbed it hard, and when I looked at him, the expression in his eyes was not one of gratitude. “Wait for me in the kitchen,” he growled. Very rarely did my father speak in growls. When he was mad he usually yelled, and that was okay. Speaking in growls was not. I hurried off to the kitchen, sat on a stool, and waited, feeling more like a little kid than I had in years.
Christina came up to me. I don’t know if she saw what happened, but I’m sure she guessed the gist. “I made a swan for you,” she said, and handed me a folded napkin.
“Thanks,” I said. “Got any Himalayan mantras I can recite for the occasion?”
“I’m beyond that now,” she told me. “I’m into chakra points.” She massaged some spots on my back that failed to relax me, then went to fold more napkins.
Dad did not come back to talk to me at all that night. He just let me stew on the stool. Mom would occasionally pass by to pick up orders and would scowl, shake her head, or wag her finger. Then eventually she gave me a plate of food. That’s how I knew Dad was truly, truly angry. If Mom felt sorry enough for me to feed me, it meant I was in a world of trouble.
Eventually Mom just sent me home, because she couldn’t stand to see me sitting there so miserably on that stool.
Before my parents got home that night, I got a call from Old Man Crawley, who must have had spies in the restaurant again.
“Did you actually pour a pitcher of water over a man’s head?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” I replied. I was too exhausted to make excuses.
“And did it feel good to do so?”
“Yes, sir, it did. He was an idiot.”
“Was this a premeditated attack on your part?”
“Uh ... no, sir. It was kind of... spontaneous.”
He paused for a long time. “I see,” he finally said. “You’ll be hearing from me.” And he hung up. He didn’t even bother to torment me with how much I had disappointed him—that’s how bad this was. I c
ouldn’t help but feel that “you’ll be hearing from me” were among the worst possible words to hear at the end of a conversation with Crawley. It was even worse than “you’ll be hearing from my attorney.”
This water incident might have meant a whole lot of bad things—including retribution against my father somehow—after all, it was Crawley’s money that got my dad’s restaurant going. Crawley could shut it down with a snap of his fingers, and I wouldn’t put it past him to do it.
***
Dad did not punish me when he got home. He didn’t punish me the next day. He just avoided me. It didn’t feel like an intentional cold shoulder—it felt more like he was so disgusted, he just didn’t want to have anything to do with me. It wasn’t until Monday that I found out why.
On Monday the news had a headline that read:
BUSBOY BAPTIZES BOSWELL
And there it was, not on page four of the school paper, but smack on the cover of the New York Post—a full-page picture of the idiot from table nine, drenched in water, and me holding the empty pitcher. It was the picture taken by one of the other diners that night.
Getting your picture on the cover of the New York Post is never a good thing. It means that you’re either a murderer, a murderee, or a humiliated public official. This time it was option three. The idiot from table nine was none other than Senator Warwick Boswell, and I was the one who had humiliated him.
That morning my father was already scouring the classifieds for job opportunities, as if he was expecting the restaurant to shut down in a matter of days.
“Dad, I’m sorry...” It was the first time I tried to breach the silence between us, but he put up his hand.
“Let’s not do this, okay, Antsy?” He didn’t even look up at me.
That’s how it was for most of Christmas vacation. And it hurt. See, in our family we fought, we yelled, we gouged at one another’s feelings, and then we made up. Our fights were fiery—never cold, and it got me to thinking about what my mom had once said about hell—how it’s all cold and lonely. Now I knew she was right, because I’d rather have fire shooting out of my dad’s mouth like a dragon than suffer this nuclear winter.
My dad and I used to be able to talk. Even when something was bad, even when we were ready to strangle each other, we could talk. But not now.
Let’s not do this, okay, Antsy?
Entire species died in that kind of cold.
14. Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me, Think I’ll Eat Some Worms
Christmas came and went uneventfully, which, considering the previous set of events, was a good thing. For reasons that may or may not have been retribution for missing Thanksgiving, most of our relatives had other plans. We could have gone to Philadelphia to be with Mom’s side of the family, but with Aunt Mona coming on Christmas Eve, we had to pass. Then Aunt Mona calls at the last minute to tell us she can’t come till after New Year’s. Typical.
“It wouldn’t be a visit from Mona,” Mom said, “if she didn’t ruin the plans we made around her.”
“She did us a favor,” Dad responded, because he was simply too burned out to travel all the way to Philly anyway. Besides, he never spoke out against his sister, no matter what the situation. It was a sore spot with Mom.
“You watch,” said Mom, “when she does come, she’ll show up without any warning, and expect us to drop everything.”
Christmas morning lacked the magic it usually had. At first I thought it was just me getting older, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that wasn’t the case. The tree was trimmed better than ever—but that was just because Christina and I worked hard to make it so. There were fewer presents under the tree, since there wasn’t a horde of relatives—but that would have been okay. What really made it hard was that Dad was clearly not present in the moment, as they say. His thoughts were on the restaurant, his future, and I guess our futures, too. He was all preoccupied, and that made Mom preoccupied with him. I could tell that Mom resented the air of anxiety in our lives lately, but still did everything she could to get Dad to relax. I wanted to tell him to just get over it, but how could I? After all, I was the cause of his latest stress bomb.
The day after Christmas I went to give Kjersten her Christmas gift. Was it crazy for me to think we could have a somewhat normal relationship, in spite of all the abnormal stuff around us? Going there didn’t feel right. I wasn’t ready to face Gunnar—I didn’t know how to talk to him, because I knew every word out of my mouth would be another way of asking why. Why did he need to be sick? Why did he let it go so far? Why did he have to draw me into it? The Great Gunnar Rally was planned for the day after we got back to school. The speech I was supposed to deliver hung over my head—and I resented Gunnar for putting me in that position.
When I arrived on their street that day, there was no denying the neighborhood’s collateral damage. I moved past looming lawns of death, trying to gauge how bad it was. The dust bowl had already spread halfway down the block. All the evergreens were yellow, and everything that should have been yellow was that strange bruise shade of brown. Men were standing out front looking at the devastation, and their wives looked on, watching to see if their men would break.
The only thing green was, ironically, right on the Ümlaut door. A big green Christmas wreath ... but when I got closer, I could see it was plastic.
Gunnar answered the door.
“I’m here to see your sister,” I told him.
He looked at the wrapped package in my hands. “She’s upstairs.” Then he walked away. I should have let him go, but whether I like it or not, my mouth has a mind of its own.
“You’re still not cyanotic,” I said to him. “But if it’s that important to you, you can buy some blue lipstick and pretend that you are.”
He turned to me then. I could tell he was hurt, even though it didn’t show in his face. Part of me felt glad about it, and another part of me felt ashamed for saying something so nasty. I found myself mad at both parts.
Gunnar gave me a cold gaze and said, “That would have been much more effective if you bought some for me as a Christmas gift,” then he left.
“Wish I had thought of it,” I shouted after him. Actually, I had thought of it, but I wouldn’t sink so low as to get him a cruel gift. Besides, I didn’t want to be seen buying blue lipstick. Even if no one saw me, there are surveillance cameras.
I found Kjersten up in her room watching Moeba, a zany cartoon about ethnically diverse single-celled organisms in Earth’s primordial ooze. It seemed odd that she’d be watching this. In fact, she was so absorbed, it took her a moment to notice I was there.
“Antsy!”
“Hi.” It came out sounding like a one-word apology.
She stood up and gave me a hug. “You’re not having much luck with photographers lately, are you?” I could see the special Antsy edition of the New York Post on her desk.
“No,” I admitted, “and now there’s an animated version on the YouTube.”
“Could be worse,” she said, although downloadable e-humiliation is about as low as it gets.
The moment became awkward, and she glanced back at the TV, where Moeba was punching out a dim-witted Paramecium.
“I used to love this show,” she said.
“So did I,” I told her. “When I was, like, eight.”
She sighed. “Things were simpler then.” Then she turned off the TV. “So, is that for me?”
“Oh ... yeah,” I said, handing her the gift. “Merry Christmas.” Again, I sounded like I was apologizing for something. It was annoying.
“Yours is still under the tree,” she said. I hadn’t even noticed a tree downstairs.
She opened up her package, to reveal a NeuroToxin jacket.
“It’s from their Bubonic Nights tour. Look—Jaxon Beale’s autograph is embroidered on the sleeve.”
“I noticed,” Kjersten said. “I love Jaxon Beale!”
In case you’ve been living on a desert island, Jaxon Beale, former g
uitarist for Death Crab, is the guitarist and lead singer of NeuroToxin.
She thanked me, and put the jacket on. It looked good on her, but then, what didn’t? It made me feel good that I could, at least for a few minutes, break her out of a world of repossessed cars, furious neighbors, and a brother on deathwatch.
“You want to do something today?’ she asked.
To be honest, I hadn’t given the day much thought beyond handing her the jacket. “Sure,” I said. “How about a movie?”
“Something funny,” she said. “Let’s make it something funny.”
“Why don’t you pick—there’s a whole bunch of new movies at the Mondoplex.” Then I added, “You can even drive. I’m over that whole macho thing about riding shotgun with my girlfriend.”
This was, I realized, the first time I used the word “girlfriend” with her. I watched to see if her reaction would be positive, negative, or neutral. It was negative, but not because of the word “girlfriend.” Her problem was with the word “drive.”
“We can’t drive. My dad borrowed my car this morning.”
I wondered if he had borrowed it to go gambling, but decided not to ask. “Your mom could drive us ...”
“My mom’s spending the holiday with family in Sweden, and she parked her car at the airport.”
Why, I wondered, would she choose to pay for airport parking instead of just leaving her car for her husband to use? Again, I decided it was best not to ask. The whole family was a can of worms waiting to happen, and I, for one, was not going to supply the can opener.
“Sweden, huh?” I said. “Sounds like fun—why didn’t you go with her?”
“It’s Sweden, and it’s winter—isn’t that reason enough?”
“I bet there’d be snow.”
“Snow, and ice, and eighteen hours of darkness. I hate it.”
“Well, I’m sure it’s a whole lot better than Christmas in Brooklyn.” She shrugged gloomily, so I tried a different tack. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t go, because now we can see each other all vacation.”
That made her smile, and it wasn’t just a polite smile, it was a real one. I silently reveled in the fact that she actually did want to spend time with me. We bundled up against the windy afternoon, braved the neighborhood dust bowl, and took a bus to the Mondoplex.
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