Skin

by Adrienne Maria Vrettos

  I tap with one finger on Karen’s door and listen. She stops throwing the ball and says, “What.”

  “It’s me,” I say, wishing I had a more convincing argument for her to let me in.

  Go away.

  Again with the basketball. Thud, thud thud.

  “Dad didn’t come today.”

  The ball stops again, the bed creaks as she rolls off, and she opens up the door a crack. Her face is splotchy, puffy.

  “That sucks.” She sniffs. “Did he call?”

  I shake my head. Karen opens the door farther and pulls me inside by my shirt, closing the door behind us. She’s been ignoring me since the whole doing-it-with-Amanda incident last week.

  “Dad’s become an asshole. Don’t you ever get like that Donnie, don’t you ever be an asshole.”

  I’m still not sure how I actually got into Karen’s room, so I just nod. She studies my face.

  “Donnie, you should ditch those kids you hang out with.”

  I look at her.

  “I mean, Donnie, do you even like them?”

  I shrug, racking my brain for a way to keep her talking, a way to keep her from kicking me out.

  “Now get out, I don’t want Mom coming up here. She’s an A-hole too.”

  I nod as Karen reaches behind me, opens the door, and backs me out of the room.

  Mom’s coming up the stairs, and Karen’s face starts to get splotchy again, her eyes narrow.

  “Mom, I told you I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She says this before Mom’s even at the top of the stairs.

  “Karen, I don’t understand what you’re so upset about. So she said that you were—”

  “MOM!” Karen’s shriek makes both Mom and me jump, and the slam of her door makes us both step back.

  “Donnie, please go put water on for pasta,” Mom says.

  Karen’s door swings open and her red face juts out. “I am not eating any goddamn pasta!”

  “Karen, this is ridiculous. You’re not fat. Ms. Stephans was just trying to . . .”

  “To what? What, Ma? What was she trying to do? She called me FAT!”

  “She did not call you fat. She called you curvy.”

  Karen slams the door again, and Mom says the rest of her sentence to the hinges, “There’s a difference.”

  Karen opens her door a crack and presses through the narrow opening. Her eyes are wild.

  “I’m not going to school tomorrow. I can’t see those girls. I can’t let them see me. Mom, you can’t make me go. I’ll die. I’ll die if I have to go. I want to change schools. I want to go to school with Cousin Bobby in Chicago. School just started, I won’t have missed too much. Mom, don’t make me go to school. Don’t ever tell anyone what that teacher said about me, don’t ever tell anyone. Promise me, okay? Promise me you won’t ever tell anyone what that woman said? Because it’s not going to be true anymore. I’m not going to let it be true anymore.”

  Mom gently pushes open the door, reaches to take Karen by the hand. She leads her past me into the bathroom.

  “Sssshhh now. You need to calm down, Karen. You need to calm down now.”

  “Promise me first, Mom.”

  They close the door to the bathroom. The faucet turns on for a moment, and then off again. Mom’s going to wet a washcloth and put it behind Karen’s neck. I listen at the door.

  “Promise you what? Cousin Bobby isn’t even in high school anymore. They finally graduated him and he’s going to community college. And no, you can’t go to college with him.”

  “Momma, don’t make me go to school tomorrow. I want to stay home. I have to stay home.”

  “We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”

  A faucet is turned on again and I can’t hear what Karen says.

  I don’t turn the stove on under the pasta pot. I can tell Mom and Karen are in it for the long haul. So I put the pot of water on the stove and do a crossword puzzle at the table, listening for signs of them stopping.

  When Amanda comes into the kitchen, I know that Mom has called in the big guns. In the past few days I’ve felt Amanda’s anger at me cooling. I could tell it was more of an effort for her to ignore me the way Karen did. I think about telling her that sleeping with her, even if I just made it up, only made me popular for half a second. I’m back to being the kicked bucket.

  She sits across the table from me.

  “How is she?”

  I shrug and look hard at the newspaper. Amanda moves to get up, and I ask, “So why’s she’s freaking out?”

  “It’s so dumb,” Amanda says quickly, sitting back down. “Karen’s so frigging dramatic. I can’t believe your mom called me to help calm her down. Karen’s going to lose it when she finds out.”

  “So what happened?” I ask again.

  “We got our gym uniforms today, and Ms. Stephans had us all in the locker room trying them on. She was making everyone stand in front of her so she could make sure we’re not wearing them too tight or too loose, and when it was Karen’s turn, she said, ’If you’re lucky enough to be as curvy as Karen here, you can go a size up.’”

  “So?” I say, but I think that maybe Karen’s like me. Maybe she’s happiest when she’s slipping through a crowd. Maybe she knows the same thing I do, that nobody can bother you if they don’t know you’re there. My stomach lurches when I think about how it must have felt, to think you’re invisible, and suddenly have all those eyes looking at you, instead of looking right through you.

  “So,” Amanda says, like I’ve missed something really obvious, “Ms. Stephans sucks, and Karen’s a freak about her weight. She thinks she’s fat. She keeps going on diets. Don’t tell her I told you. I’m going upstairs. Karen’s going to freak.”

  12

  Dad surprised us by coming home for the weekend. He actually scared the crap out of Mom when he came in, because he came up the back porch, through the sliding glass door, and into the kitchen. Mom was doing dishes and caught his reflection in the window over the sink. She screamed and spun around, ready to crack his head open with a soapy pan. By the time Karen and I ran into the kitchen, Dad had pulled Mom into a hug and taken the pan out of her grip. Mom was saying in a shaky voice, “You said on the message you weren’t coming home.”

  “Do I need an appointment to come to my own house?” Dad asked softly. “Well then, get your calendar, go to today, October second, and write ’Dad’s coming home,’” Dad said, and I could hear how he was trying to keep his voice friendly. “Kids, go on into the living room and let your mother and I talk for a minute.”

  Karen didn’t move, so neither did I. She looked at Mom till Mom said, “Go on now.”

  Then she turned and walked out, and I followed.

  When they came out of the kitchen, Mom declared a family fun night. Seriously, she said, “I declare a family fun night!” It’s so obvious this is all about Dad. There’s no way we couldn’t hear him and his grumbly whine when they were in the kitchen, annoyed that we hadn’t planned a night of board games and heart-to-heart talks for him. We didn’t even know he was coming home. Asshole. Knowing he put Mom up to this, making her be the jerk that has to fake enthusiasm, Karen and I both make a (sort of) big deal about being excited. I hate to see Mom like this. She’s like an open wound waiting for salt.

  Tonight “family fun night” means watching TV together, which differentiates it from every other night only because Dad’s here. A commercial comes on for a chain of ice cream places.

  “Don’t we have stuff for sundaes?” Dad asks.

  Karen and I lock eyes. You might think he was talking about ice cream. But we know that what he just said loosely translates into: “You are a rotten wife and you deprive your family of love by not keeping sweetened dairy products ready to serve at all times.”

  “We did, but we don’t anymore,” Mom says. Translation: “Shut the hell up, you thankless bastard. Were you not here for the ’family fun night’ declaration?”

  “It’d be nice. Su
ndaes,” Dad says, like it’s a deep thought, “Especially for family fun night”

  Why’d he have to emphasize that last part?

  “Well, let’s go out and get some,” Mom says, standing up, trying to stifle one of her tired sighs. “Friendly’s is still open.”

  We all know Dad won’t go for it. It’d be too easy.

  “I’m not going to Friendly’s with you,” Karen says. I glare at her. She shrugs. She’s not helping.

  “We’ll get take out,” Mom says, holding a hand out toward Karen. “No one will see you with your horrible, embarrassing parents.”

  “Why don’t we just make them here?” Dad says this like it is the most reasonable thing anyone’s said all night.

  “I told you, we don’t have the stuff to make them,” Mom snaps, giving up on Karen and pulling me up off the couch by my arm. She tells me to get my coat.

  “Why not?” Dad asks.

  It’s like seeing two cars slide on ice, knowing they’re going to collide, and all you can do is watch.

  “Why not?” he asks again.

  “You’re honestly asking me why we don’t have ice cream sundaes at our house?” Mom puts all her effort into sounding incredulous.

  “Yes,” Dad says, and then, “Sit down, Karen,” when he catches her standing up and heading toward the stairs. Karen tried to make her exit too early. Maybe he’s been gone so long she forgot the rules. We have to wait till they’re so into tearing each other apart that they don’t notice us leave.

  “Why don’t you go make yourself brownies or Popsicles or popcorn, or any of the other five hundred billion things we have to eat in the house?” Mom’s voice is almost at fight volume.

  “I just don’t understand why we had stuff for sundaes and now we don’t.” Dad has a fight voice too, except it’s the opposite of Mom’s. He keeps his as quiet and calm as possible. It means that if Mom’s voice raises above a whisper when they fight, she sounds like a raving lunatic.

  The rage in Mom’s eyes tells us we’re free to go. Karen grabs her coat and heads for the front door, for Amanda’s. I watch her walk out and then I go upstairs and lie on my stomach in the hallway outside of my bedroom so I can see through the space between the railing. It’s warmer than the stoop would be, and it’s not like Karen would sit out there with me anyway.

  “Because!” Mom’s so mad she’s shaking. “Because I bought all the stuff for sundaes three weeks ago, when you were supposed to come home and you didn’t. So, since then Karen and Amanda ate all the cherries and got bellyaches, the bananas went bad, Donnie ate the ice cream, and I dropped the goddamn jar of chocolate sauce and it broke.”

  “We could have gotten more,” Dad says. I can’t see his face from where I sit, but I can hear he is full on into a man-pout.

  “Goddamn it!” Mom yells. “Why do you do this? Isn’t it enough that you’ve got us all here tonight! Why do you have to ruin every attempt I make to pull this family together? Watch the movie! Enjoy that fact that you are here and you are with your family! You can’t make us be like those families you used to watch on TV! I know that’s what you want, but that’s not real life, and I can’t give that to you! These ideas you have about what a family should be, you hinged them on the wrong person, buddy. I didn’t sign on for this.”

  She starts pacing around the room, straightening up and slamming things. “That’s not what I want for my life. I don’t want my sole purpose to be making sure there’s chocolate sauce and ice cream, or to take some satisfaction in the way laundry smells when it’s done. My sister Janice and I worked ourselves to the bone cleaning up after Daddy when Mom died. I lived that life once, and I don’t want to do it again, and yet . . . here I am.”

  Mom looks around like she’s been brought here against her will.

  “Well I’m sorry I didn’t have a ’real’ family when I was a kid,” Dad says. “I’m sorry all I had was television to show me what a family should be, and I’m sorry you feel so trapped in our life.”

  Dad had a weird sort of growing up. His mom and dad died when he was eight, and there was no one to take him in except for his grandmother. She lived in an old folks home, just for women. They let him move in as a special exception, so he grew up surrounded by old ladies. I think it seriously messed him up.

  “If I’d had a real family,” he says quietly, “I’d know how to be a real father and not drive my own children out of the room every time I come home.”

  “You are a real father.” Mom sits next to Dad on the couch, touching him on his arm. “I don’t know why you can’t just be real with them.”

  “What is that?” Dad asks, leaning away from Mom. “To be real? What do I teach them? How to clean dentures and play bridge? There’s nothing I can teach them.”

  Mom folds her hands in her lap and thinks for a moment. She says in a slow, soft voice, “It’s sad you didn’t know your dad, it’s terrible they put you in that place with those old women, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn. Why don’t you even try? Can’t you just try?”

  13

  Mom tells us during breakfast. She waits till we both have our mouths full of cereal, and says, “Guess what? Your dad’s coming home for the day.” I look at Karen and see that, like me, she’s frozen midchew. Dad hasn’t been home since what Karen and I secretly refer to as the Family Fun Night Massacre. We just turned to the November page on the calendar. But we’ve been talking to him on the phone every few days since it happened. Karen’s started to refer to him as Phone-Dad and keeps her conversations with him short and snappy, until the end when I can tell he’s said he loves her, and Karen goes silent and then mumbles, “I know you do. Me too,” and holds the phone out toward me saying, “It’s Phone-Dad.” I don’t care if our conversations are short or if he asks different combinations of the same five questions every time, I’m just glad he calls at all.

  Karen manages to swallow her mouthful of sugar-free, fat-free, taste-free cereal and asks, “He said that? He said he’s coming today?”

  Mom gives an overly enthusiastic nod in response and starts to clear the table.

  “Interesting,” Karen says, raising her eyebrows at me. I look at her and think, Shut up shut up shut up. She won’t ever give him a chance. He’s been gone so long, and she’s going to ruin it before he even gets here.

  “So, Mom,” Karen continues in the voice she uses when she wants to sound like a really mature, really reasonable person, “why is he coming home?”

  Mom gives what’s meant to be a happy shrug in response, but I can tell she’s stopped breathing.

  “I mean,”—shut up shut up shut up—“do you really want him to come over? Can’t we just keep Phone-Dad instead?” Karen’s starting to laugh out loud. “That way we can just hang up on him when—”

  Mom’s hand shoots out over the table. For a second I think she is going slap Karen, but instead she cups Karen’s chin in her hand and stares hard into her face. It actually shuts Karen up for a second.

  “Karen,” Mom says, “this is the part where we all try really, really hard to keep our family together.”

  Karen pulls her face away from Mom’s hand and gives a fake laugh.

  “God, Mom. I know that. I was just joking.”

  “Well, your jokes hurt. He’s still your dad.”

  “If you say so,” Karen mumbles, trying to give me a conspiratorial smile.

  I ignore her and watch as Mom bursts into tears. Karen goes pale and rushes to where Mom is standing with her arms straight by her sides, her head down and her hair hanging over her face. Karen crouches down a little so she is looking up into Mom’s face, saying, “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean it. Mom, I’m really sorry.”

  Mom just keeps shaking her head, looking at the ground. Karen pleads what I am thinking, “Oh God, Mom, please look up. Look at me, Mom.” Karen carefully lifts Mom’s chin with her fingers till Mom’s red face is staring at us both. I don’t realize I was holding my breath till I exhale. I’m so relieved that
it’s still her face. I was terrified that it had turned into something else. I wish I could get up from the table. I wish I could . . . participate. I’m rigid, my joints are soldered in this position. I manage to wrench open my jaw and say, “You made her cry.”

  Karen scowls at me.

  “You’re going to ruin—” My voice is a growl, but before I can finish my sentence, Mom says in a shaky voice, “You kids . . .” Mom sputters, “You need to know that just because your Dad and I are taking a break from each other, doesn’t mean we’re taking a break from loving you.”

  That’s it. I’m done. I get up and leave them in the kitchen. I don’t need to sit here and listen to them making things real.

  • • •

  When Dad gets here, Mom has us sit in the living room. I understand. We can’t be in the den because then we could watch TV and ignore each other until we found something to fight about. We can’t be in the kitchen because either Karen would start complaining that all we ever eat is “fat food” or Dad would start rifling through the fridge, and we’d have the Family Fun Night Massacre, Part 2: I Thought You Bought Cheese Dip. So we sit in the living room because it’s the only room in the house our family hasn’t broken up in. Yet.

  It’s not going well. Dad’s sitting in an armchair facing the couch where I sit wedged between Mom and Karen. Dad’s asking Karen and me careful questions, and we keep our answers short and smooth—with nothing to snag there’s less chance of a fight. Dad’s running out of ways to ask us how school is, and since he already told us work was “too busy,” and since it’d be too weird to ask him about his apartment or what he does at night or if he has cable or eats pizza Friday nights like we used to together, we don’t ask anything. The silences between his questions get longer and longer, and Mom hasn’t said a word because I think this visit is supposed to be about Karen and me and Dad. I can feel that everyone is about to scatter and I know it’s up to me to stop them from bolting from the living room. We are standing on the edge of a cliff, looking at swirling, rolling water below. Behind us is a fire that will soon engulf us, and in front of us is a long drop that we may not survive. I know the fire will kill us, but there’s a chance we could survive the fall. I look at Dad, who is starting to get up from the armchair with his eyes on the door, and I say to myself, I’m going in.