by Sean Boling
Chapter Four
We had been a rather tight-knit family before moving to The Ranch. We went on a lot of road trips together to aquariums and amusement parks and saw movies together. We ate dinner together while watching television shows that we could all agree on before we would go our own ways before bedtime with books, websites, or movies that appealed to our more specific tastes. But there was always a “good night” before turning in. There was an “I love you”. There was a familiar sense of humor that we shared. It may not have been funny to anyone else, but certain phrases that made us laugh developed organically from situations we encountered. At a baseball game one day we overheard a mother and father explain to their children why vulgarities were being shouted all around by declaring, without a hint of irony, that “not everyone is as nice as us”. We adopted the phrase as a family motto of our own, with plenty of irony attached.
But my parents started to believe the motto. The irony evaporated, and they really did seem to think that not everyone was as nice as us, and that our version of niceness defined the word “nice” for society. Maybe it was their jobs, which I had never really thought of much before; it was just a place they went for the day to make money so we could do all those things together. They were on staff at an insurance company and investigated claims; Dad was more of the type who was out in the field inspecting sites and interviewing people, while Mom was more of a forensic accounting type who looked for suspicious numbers buried in someone’s paperwork. They had always shared the occasional anecdote of chiselers great and small, but it was usually intended for laughs or eye rolls: some dimwit trying to swindle his way into some money, because apparently he thought that having money would show the world he wasn’t really a dimwit.
The anecdotes became more frequent, however, and became full-blown stories told with agitated hand gestures and raised voices by Dad, and sometimes Mom. They would preface and conclude each yarn with assertions of how much it made their “blood boil” or how “infuriating” it was, and how the world is “such a mess” and “going to the dogs” (or “downhill”, or “to hell”). And they never understood it. “I don’t understand it,” they would say every time. But in spite of not understanding it, they knew who or what to blame. They would profess theories that blamed music or the web, politicians or schools, a turning away from the values they had grown up with.
And their vision became so filled with examples of the dregs of humanity that they felt like the best thing was to get as far away from humanity as possible. But since finding a new job was something that scared them just as much as the people they were exposed to by working at that job, they sublimated their inaction by moving us to Rancho Hacienda. So while I gathered that most of my friends’ families moved here thanks to the seduction of home ownership, mine seemed to do so in the interest of protecting me. Though I imagine not having to rent anymore while protecting me at the same time had its appeal, too.
I also got the impression from talking to my Rancho friends that they were already accustomed to having a certain amount of distance from their families, and that moving out to Ranch Ranch merely extended that distance. Their parents were already working multiple jobs and leaving early and coming home late, and they wanted something to show for all that hard work; something like a house, something they assumed would be a safer investment than the kids they already had, which were so far producing disappointing returns.
I wasn’t sure whose situation was preferable, mine or my friends’: to have had family ties and lost them, or never had them at all. I thought perhaps my folks and I would still be able to maintain some sort of connection on the weekends. Even when it was apparent that on those weekends they would be too tired and everything would be too far away to plan many getaways, I assumed we would still have our in-home bond. But I started to feel like our bond had simply been a summer romance; we had met under ideal circumstances and kept in touch upon separating, but each visit seemed to douse what we once had. Unlike what I imagine often happens to a lover in a long distance relationship, however, I never much brooded over the situation. Aside from reveling in my newfound freedom at The Ranch, I also took solace in knowing that my parents were still close with each other. They continued to work together and regard themselves as some sort of crime fighting duo, a line of defense between us nice people and those others. I was the third wheel in the house. But I was grateful to them. They had wanted to protect me, and in the process of inadvertently setting me free helped me understand how little I wanted to be protected.
I initially figured it was this protective instinct that motivated their evasive answer when I asked them about our house. They didn’t want to worry me. Then it dawned on me that I was probably overestimating my effect on them, and more than likely what really drove them was crushing embarrassment. Regardless, it was hardly necessary to eavesdrop on them in order to uncover the truth, so obvious was their attempt to cover it. But I wanted to hear them talk about it, see if they were being any more honest with themselves than they were with me. Besides, I wanted to start practicing and perfecting my reality checking, which sounded so much more palatable than “spying” or “snooping”.
“…I just wasn’t sure if Nick could handle it,” I heard Mom say as I lied on the floor near the base of their door, just to the side of the frame, so as not to cast a shadow. In order to avoid stepping on any creaky floorboards, I had slid there on my stomach, pulling myself along by extending my arms in front of me, then dragging my body forward with a little help from my knees, as though doing pull-ups while lying face down on the ground.
“I know, I know. I wasn’t sure, either,” Dad agreed. “But then how could we know at this point how he would react to anything?”
I had been prone there for several minutes waiting for them to say something related to my pursuit, and now that they finally were, I had to regain my concentration, as their discussions of work and their minor physical ailments had nearly put me to sleep.
“What do you mean by that?” Mom said.
“We don’t know him. That’s what I mean. We don’t know him anymore.”
Dad’s assertion led to a bit of a pause. Mom ended the brief silence. “I’m not sure I would go that far.”
“We don’t.”
“We don’t need to talk to him every day to know him.”
“We haven’t talked to him in two years.”
“He’s our son,” Mom was getting more defensive. “We know him.”
“Two years is like, twenty percent of his life.”
“It’s less than that.”
“Okay, fifteen? What’s one-sixth? You’re the numbers person.”
“We know him,” she held her ground. “Kids are who they are when they come out of the womb.”
Another hesitation, and this time it was Dad who broke it up. “He’ll find out eventually,” he steered away from the point about whether they knew me. “Everyone will find out soon enough.”
“Everyone will be in foreclosure right along with us.”
Dad let out a long sigh. “How could we have been so stupid?”
“It wasn’t that stupid. I showed you those studies about home ownership and self-esteem, and how it builds communities.”
“You got those from the Rancho Hacienda sales rep.”
“I did some independent research.”
“But the math, honey. The math.”
“The math was fine,” she snapped. “I just didn’t think hard enough of what the payment would actually look like with the new rate in place. I mean, a few percent more doesn’t seem that big of a deal from a distance…” She proceeded to get more worked up. “And I didn’t think the value of the house would drop so low, and I was too loose in figuring out how much our commute would cost, and I just wanted it to work, because I wanted a house, so I made it work, because I deserved a house, god dammit! I worked hard, I’m a good person, I did nothing wrong…” She stopped and I could hear her catching her breath.
&
nbsp; Dad tried to soothe her by saying “hey” and “shhh” several times each. “I’m not blaming you,” he finally said. “I wanted it, too.”
They were either lying in each other’s arms or on opposite sides of the bed. The pause was so long I almost started crawling back to my room when I heard Mom say, “Well, like I said, we all wanted in. Nobody wanted to be left behind.”
“I never thought I’d succumb to peer pressure as an adult,” Dad seemed to say more to himself than to Mom. “That’s supposed to be kids’ stuff.”
“From the womb,” Mom reminded him of her earlier point. “From the womb to the playground to adulthood. You’ve been in the business long enough to know that. You’ve studied enough people.”
“But I thought I was smarter than them.”
Mom sounded like she appreciated the opportunity to laugh. “You just have stronger morals.”
“Yeah, I only defraud myself.”
I heard them kiss and Mom muttered something mischievous about putting those morals aside for a while, which immediately inspired my departure crawl. It was much faster than my arrival, with a lot more squirming.