I open my mouth and I talk nonstop for seventy-one minutes. It’s a little sloppy at first, but at least Dad sits back down. I’m aware that I’m telling four stories at the same time, and that Mom and Karen and Dad are all starting to look at each other and laugh because this is how I used to be when I was kid—the second anyone gave me any sort of attention, I’d start in on a story about my pet elephant or how I captured the tooth fairy in my clothes hamper, and I’d talk till I ran out of things to say or Karen put her hand over my mouth. It’s the same thing now—if I can keep talking, they’ll keep listening. They’ll stay. I narrow in on one story at a time, and for over an hour they hear about secret service agents lost in the woods, about tightrope walking champions, about kung fu masters and specialized firefighters that dash in and out of burning buildings rescuing kids. As I talk, I watch it get dark outside, and see a light early-November snow turn into a freak early-November blizzard. I watch Dad lean back in the chair and relax. I watch his eyes saying things to Mom, and her eyes answering. I watch Karen as she tucks her feet under her and curls against the arm of the couch, her arms folded in front of her and a happy look on her face. I watch my reflection in the window, and know that I am looking at a hero. I’m the one that’s saving us all.
At seven thirty P.M. Karen exchanges a glance with Mom and sits up, saying, “Mom, I’m starved. Can we eat?” I’m grateful. My throat is sore, my stomach is growling, and I’m not even sure what I’m saying anymore. I’ve kept Dad here so long that the snow has piled too deep for him to leave, and he’ll have to stay overnight for the first time since before we left for the lake house last summer. The rest of the night passes quietly. We eat together, watch TV together, and I go to sleep feeling like a final puzzle piece has been clicked into place. In the middle of the night I get up and look over the upstairs railing into the den below. Karen tiptoes out of her room and stands next to me. We are looking for the same thing, but I know we are wishing for opposites. Karen looks down into the den and gives a triumphant look in response to my frown. Dad is sleeping on the couch. Mom is still sleeping alone. I raise my chin. I don’t care. I still saved us, even if for just a little while.
The next morning Karen and Amanda are under blankets in the den watching talk shows, which means I’m in the den watching Amanda watch talk shows. As soon as the TV announced that school was canceled this morning, Amanda crossed the street through two feet of snow, wearing her pajamas and slippers under her snowboots and winter coat. She and Karen have plans for an all-day UnSlumber Party, and since it’s daytime, they can’t kick me out of the den. I’m ready to tell them, “It’s my den too!”
Dad’s been up since before it was even light out, swearing at the snowblower in the driveway. Mom’s in the kitchen talking on the phone to either Aunt Janice or Maddie from the lake, saying, “I told him he should have come home sometime this fall and gotten that stupid snowblower ready for the winter.”
A commercial comes on, and Karen gets up and stretches, glancing out the window.
“Oh, my God!” She runs over to the window. “Amanda, come look at this!”
“God, it’s so weird,” Amanda says, standing next to Karen.
“What?” I ask, and look between them out the window. Our dads are crouched over our snowblower. Amanda’s dad’s explaining something involving a wrench.
“Amanda,” Karen says in an awed voice, “you realize this is really the first time they’ve even talked? I can tell by the way he’s holding that wrench that your dad, like, loves my dad.”
Amanda nods in agreement. “Your dad’s like the son he never had.”
“Maybe they’ll start going on man dates,” Karen says, “like ice fishing. Your dad can show mine how to shoot bears or chew tobacco.”
Amanda laughs. “My dad doesn’t shoot bears. He hasn’t been hunting since we moved here. I bet they’ll just talk about carburetors and hot-water heaters.”
“Man dates are next,” Karen says, shaking her head.
“When you think about it, it’d be kind of sweet.”
“What?” Karen laughs. “For our dads to be platonic lovers? If they got married we could be sisters.”
“Well, I mean, your dad didn’t have a dad, right? And my dad didn’t have a son, so there.” Amanda gives a satisfied smile. “They’ll fill up holes in each other’s lives.”
“I guess.” Karen looks at me. “Maybe Dad will teach you some of that manly-man stuff, Donnie.”
I shrug. Part of me hopes he’ll start getting Amanda’s dad to teach him stuff so he can teach me and not feel like such a failure. And part of me thinks he’d rather just have a dad than be one. Great, this means I have to grow up and find some burly dude to be my pseudofather and teach me how to change oil and grill steak. I shake my head and feel Karen’s and Amanda’s eyes on me.
“Let’s go pajama sledding!” Karen says. “Donnie, get your pj’s on, you’re coming too.”
Sometimes, it’s like it was at the lake.
14
It’s taken a week for the snow to melt, and now everything is a slushy, icy mess. My ears started hurting yesterday, and since then I’ve spent all of school resting my head on whatever table I’m sitting at. The good part is that my ears are so filled up with gunk that I can barely hear my teachers. Today at lunch Bean poked me in the side and said, “What’s wrong with you?” because I was too worn out to defend myself against whatever bullshit he and Chris were saying about me. I didn’t answer, so they got up and left me in the cafeteria. The lunch lady had to wake me up so she could wash the table.
I manage to duck Mom after school and almost all night, till I pass her coming out of the bathroom. I can tell she’s stopped walking once she’s passed me. I almost make it to my room before she says, “Donnie, come here for a minute.”
I hate how there’s no doubt for her that I’ll come when I’m called. I go in my room and close the door.
“I know there’s a boy with a fever in there!” Mom says through the door, knocking.
Since dinner my skin has been heating up, becoming too tight on my body. She thinks just because she gave birth to me she can sense any time I’m sick.
“Donald LePlant, you know I can sense these things. Open up and let me take your temperature.”
I call out from where I’ve flopped on my bed, “If you know I have a fever, why do you have to take my temperature?”
“Now I know you have a fever, because you only talk back when you’re temperature’s above a hundred and two. Open the door.”
I don’t answer. I hate how Karen can swear at Mom, slam the door in her face, ignore her for days at a time, but the moment I ask a legitimate question, I’m “talking back.”
“Do you want to have to go to the ER tomorrow?” she asks. “Because you know that’s what will happen if you don’t take medicine tonight. Remember last time? You wouldn’t let me get near you, and you ended up with a double infection, and we spent all night in the emergency room. You missed two days of school and, you know, I think that’s why you got a D in earth science last year.”
If she’d just let me keep my own medicine, not dole it out to me like I’m a drooling idiot-five-year-old, then I could take care of this myself.
“Earth science can kiss my ass!” I yell, and I hear Mom smother a laugh. I get up, open the door, and say, “It’s not funny!”
She makes a serious face and nods, but I can tell she’s still laughing at me with her eyes. She loves making a fool out of me. I start to the shut the door. She holds it open with her hand.
“Wait, wait, Donnie, I’m sorry. It’s just so rare I get a rise out of you. Karen tells me every other minute the ways I’m ruining her life, but you, you wait till you can’t control your mouth to say anything apart from ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘fine’ or ‘good.’ It’s just . . . funny. Can I please feel your forehead now?”
I tip my head out the door so she can press her hand against my face. She squints her eyes and tips her head
to the side, holding her breath. Mom thinks feeling for a fever is a talent, but I’m so hot I bet I have that wavy hot-pavement vapor coming off my head. She pulls her hand away and says, “I knew it!” There’s no way to argue with her now. She felt the proof in the palm of her hand. I open my bedroom door all the way and fling myself face down on my bed while she starts clomping around, cleaning my room, and giving her whole Western-medicine-has-destroyed-my-son monologue. She doesn’t stop talking, even when she goes into her bathroom to get my medicine or when she manages to change the sheets while I’m lying on my bed. She’s swearing about how she can’t believe she has to put me on antibiotics again and she never should have let my doctor put me on such heavy medication when I was just a baby. She says it made the ear infections come back stronger, so the drugs had to be stronger, and now they’ve got us over a G-D barrel scaring her to death, saying if I don’t take the medicine then I’ll become profoundly deaf.
When she’s done shoving clothes into drawers, slamming the drawers shut, and lining my shoes up in the closet, she says, “There,” and immediately launches into her other favorite monologue, which is about how a sick person in a messy room makes her want to scream. It reminds her of when her granddad got sick and nobody knew, and when she and Aunt Janice went to visit one day, he was laid up in bed and his house was filled with garbage, and she thinks that’s why he didn’t get better, that’s why he died.
Mom gives me my medicine, pulls the covers up to my chin, shuts off the light, and closes the door, almost all the way. She sticks her head back in my room and says, “No son of mine is going to a be pill-popping antibiotic junkie buried up to his neck in a messy room. Sleep tight.” She closes the door behind her.
“The movie was fine. I’m really tired.”
I wake up and look at the clock. I’ve slept for an hour. I listen for Amanda’s voice in the hall but hear only Karen saying, “Amanda went home and I’m going to bed. Night, Mom.”
“Okay, good night. Don’t wake your brother, he’s got an ear infection.”
I hear Karen snort. “What else is new?”
I think I fall asleep again, just for a second. I wake up because I hear Mom open her own bedroom door and tap softly on Karen’s.
“Karen, you have to see the little snowman I got for Aunt Janice . . .” I hear her turn Karen’s doorknob, open the door, and scream.
“JESUS! My God . . .”
I’m standing in the hall before I realize I’ve jumped from my bed and run out of my room.
Mom’s staring at Karen’s closed door, her hands over her ears. Dad’s coming out of their bedroom. When did he come home?
“What the hell are you doing here?” I ask him, and realize that I still have a fever.
I laugh at the stupid offended look on his face. After a second he says, “Oh. Your mom mentioned you weren’t feeling well.”
I do an equation in my head. Fever equals the right to say whatever the hell I want. I should call Chris and Bean and scream insults at them until they disintegrate. But first I should say something else to Dad. I try to think of something that will really knock him down. Or maybe I could actually just knock him down with superhuman fever strength.
“Joseph, she’s as thin as a rail!”
Mom’s ruining my moment by banging with her palm on Karen’s door. Dad rolls his eyes and leans down close to Mom, like she’s a child speaking too softly for him to hear.
“What now? What happened?” he asks.
“Joseph!” Mom screams. “She’s so skinny you can see her bones! Karen! Open up!”
She bangs more with her fist and frantically rattles the door handle. All I can think of is the tapeworms we studied in science, how they get inside you, eat your food, and grow bigger while you get skinnier and skinnier. How you have to take them out by twirling them around a ruler, straight out of your stomach.
“Oh, God, what do we do? Joseph?”
“Get a ruler!” I yell. I know why they don’t listen. They think it’s the fever talking. Little do they know the fever has opened up stores of genius no one ever knew I had.
Dad hates it when Mom gets “excited.”
“Don’t get excited, Diane,” he says.
“Don’t be a dickhead, Dad,” I say. They both ignore me. Long live my fever!
He steps closer to Karen’s door.
“Karen!” He barks. “Come out here. Now. Karen!”
Mom makes fists with her hands and holds them up against her mouth. She looks at Dad with wide eyes.
“Maybe we should call the police,” Mom whispers.
Dad snaps his head back to glare at her. I make siren noises that ricochet around us, echoing off the walls.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Diane,” Dad says over my sirens, “why would we call the police? What would we tell them?”
Mom shakes her head. “I don’t know, Joseph, I just thought . . .”
“We don’t need the police to get our daughter out of her room, Diane.”
“Yeah, Dianel” I say. They ignore me. Maybe I’m actually still asleep in bed, and this is a fever dream.
“Karen!” Dad yells. “Step away from the door
“Oh, for God’s sake, Joseph!”
“I’m going to kick it in!”
This makes me laugh, loud and long.
“Damn it, Donnie,” Mom yells, finally looking at me. “Go back to bed!” She turns to Dad. “Joseph, your knee! Karen! Open the door before your dad pops his knee!”
I start to laugh again till I see how Mom grabs at Dad’s arm as he kicks the door twice. I jump at the sound, all the laughter sucked out of me. The doorjamb makes a sharp cracking sound as it splits, and I cover my head with my hands and hum. Hummmmmmmmm. The second kick opens the door, and I think they’ll both rush in like cops, but they just hover in the hall, peering in at Karen. She’s in bed, lights off, covers up to her chin, trying to look undisturbed by the fact that her door is hanging by one hinge and the harsh light of the hall is glaring on her face.
“Karen, we know you’re awake. Get up.” Dad finally steps into her room, switches on the light, and stands with his hands on his hips at the foot of her bed. “Your mother says you’re too skinny. Sit up so I can see you.”
“Joseph!” Mom’s hands are pushed out toward Dad, trying to catch the words as they fly out of his mouth. “You don’t . . . Why would you say that!”
Karen still lies with her eyes closed, although now her jaw is set tight so that it pulses on the side of her face. Dad looks calmly from Mom to Karen. His words are slow, quiet, measured.
“We need to not get hysterical here. We need to discuss what is happening. You need to let me—”
Mom interrupts and asks him, “Do we take her to the hospital?”
“To the hospital?”
“Well, I don’t know!”
For the first time Dad sounds a little unsure of himself. “Is that what you do? Take her to the hospital?”
“I don’t know . . . ,” Mom whispers. “She’s so small, you didn’t see her. The way her skin is . . .”
Karen sits up, making a shadow on the wall. She swings her legs over the side of the bed and looks squarely at my parents.
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here. I’m fine. I’ve been stressed out over my science test. That’s all. It’s all over now, I took the test today.” She stands up and turns, like she’s going to close what’s left of the door and go back to sleep. She looks like she is how she always is, annoyed. But she can’t pull it off, because a second after she stands up, she crumples down onto the floor.
• • •
“Hello,” I say, and my voice comes out a raspy squeak. I say it again louder, “Hello,” and the word gets swallowed up by the sound an empty house makes. They have been at the emergency room for two hours with Karen, and I have been sitting here, straight-backed on the edge of the middle couch cushion, for one hour and fifty-four minutes.
When you’re alone like this, time will sh
ow you its tricks. Like taking four minutes to click from one thirty-four A.M. to one thirty-five A.M. Or moving from two A.M. to two thirteen A.M. when you swear you just looked down and scratched your ankle for a millisecond.
I say, “Ha!” when the clock does that last trick.
You can’t argue with a clock. Time can mess with you as much as it wants. I still have a fever. Without touching them, I try to feel what my ears are feeling.
Any injection in there? I think.
“No,” they answer back, like naughty kids. “No one here but us ears!”
Definitely a fever. I’m going to take more medicine.
“No!” screams the empty house, and the clock, and my ears. “You’ve sat here for one hour and fifty-nine minutes, and you can’t get up now. Besides,” they all chant, “there are ghosts in the house. Better sit here with us where you’re safe. If you look in the mirror in the bathroom, you are going to see behind you the rotting face of a corpse. You’ll look it in the eyes and it will scare you to death.”
“Well,” I say, “if you say so. You can’t argue with a fever.”
“Or time,” the clock says with an attitude.
I sit still for one more moment, then jump up and run to the bathroom before they can stop me. I don’t look in the mirror when I open it, I just take out the medicine and swallow two pills without water. When I close the mirror, though, I look into it, and I see the rotting-face man. His skin is gray and half-eaten. It hangs off in patches. He’s wearing a really nice suit.
“Hello,” I say.
He says, “Ugggghhhh.”
“Well,” I say. “I’d better get back. You know how the clock gets.”
“Ugggghhhh.” He nods in agreement and what’s left of his nose falls off. I leave him to find it, and I go back to the couch. The clock and the house and my ears are not speaking to me.
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