by Sean Boling
Chapter Eight
The bus stop the next morning was filled with the usual competitive conversations about being able to do something better than someone else, the hurling of insults at Chris and the rest of the high school leftovers standing as far off to the side as they could while still being able to catch the bus when it came, the throwing of rocks as far out into the fields across the street or as hard into the wall behind us as possible, and the whipping of each other with young branches pulled from trees on the way to the bus stop. I was a bystander for the most part, however, as I tried to work my way through my fears of my parents being around once more. I thought if I figured out why I was scared, then I could start to address the problem. But I couldn’t get that far. I wasn’t sure whether I was more scared of losing my independence, or scared that I would discover my parents and I had completely lost touch, had nothing to say to each other, and from here on would be unofficially estranged.
I decided it would help to engineer some peer feedback to see how my friends would feel if put in the same situation, with a follow up question concerning their views on what it would be like if all the parents were to reappear. Of course it actually was a possibility in the event my parents’ movement should catch on; but I preferred to think of it as a remote possibility, an unlikely event, while wanting to conceal my parents’ role as potential instigators, so I presented the situation as purely hypothetical, something I just happened to be thinking of, at opportune times individually whenever I could catch someone by themselves for a moment, or at least in small groups if there were some potential respondents whom I couldn’t seem to corner one-on-one. For the kids from The Barrio, I kept the focus on Ranch Ranch, since their living situation was not in flux, and asked how they would feel about coming over and spending their usual amount of time on our side of the wall should the proposed scenario come to pass.
The results were reassuring in the sense that everyone seemed to feel the same way I did, and unsettling for the same reason. No one was able to offer even a modicum of hope. The consensus of the kids from The Ranch side of the wall was that having their parents back, and all the parents for that matter, would be a lot worse than the last time the parents had been around during normal parenting hours, back when we all first moved in. They were there to monitor us, yes, and we were bored, true, but the parents were happy, as their euphoria over being home owners was still waxing. If they were to return home now, it would be in defeat, under duress, and their monitoring of us would be branded by frustration and lashing out rather than a newfound sense of duty and over-protectiveness. The dread expressed by so many when it came to their parents’ state of mind actually provided the one reassuring result from my study: for all of my parents’ charades, at least they had not sunk into the same level of despair that it seemed many of the others had. I may have been afraid of not being able to talk to them, but I was not afraid of them.
The Barrio kids, meanwhile, expressed little interest in spending time within the walls of The Ranch should our parents come back in full force. They had never been comfortable using the front gate; being put on camera and having someone track the frequency with which they came and went was not appealing from their perspective. And they couldn’t imagine that hopping fences or burrowing through tunnels was going to be looked upon kindly from our parents’ perspective. So it was going to be one-way access for the most part should the return come to pass.
Some of those I interviewed dovetailed into ideas on how to make it work, ways to acclimate to having a family again. They imagined that if we all played outside as much as we had been, maybe even more so, then perhaps the parents would be so impressed that we weren’t hunkered down over computers or in front of the television that they would leave us alone. We could convince them through our actions that we had this under control, that we were not the disappointed, churlish souls who had accused them of dragging us here against our will. The place had nourished us, taken us back to one of those simpler times that so many older people seem to think is so great. None of us could pinpoint when exactly those times were, but we assumed it involved playing outdoors and making up games and being in perpetual motion until nightfall. We would probably have to ease up on the level of violence and degree of difficulty when we knew some of them were watching, but so be it. They would love us for it. We would show them that their decision was not a total failure. We could help them spend their remaining days at The Ranch in relative happiness without having to actually spend any time with them ourselves. Our circumstances could go on as long as possible and make theirs as satisfying as possible.
Their contingency plans had me feeling a bit better about what was left of our future, as once again, much like that morning, I found myself pondering on the outskirts while my friends darted around the asphalt playground in waiting for the bus to pick us up on its way back from High School Town. I may have looked more glum than I felt, as Miggy came over and asked me if I was okay.
“Fine,” I responded in an upbeat tone that may have been overcompensating.
“So your parents’ plan is to hold out, then, eh?” he said.
I looked at him as if to ask how he knew.
“I wasn’t the only one you asked all those questions,” he answered my expression.
“I was trying to be sly about it. Did everyone else notice, too?”
“I don’t think so,” he assured me. “So we can start high school together, then, yeah?”
“It makes it more likely,” I appreciated the light he was shining on the situation.
“Cool,” he said.
“And,” I added, “I think I’ll want to spend a lot of time over at your place, if you don’t mind.”
“Mi casa, su casa,” he laughed.
“What, you can’t use ‘tu’ with me?” I kidded. “I thought we were friends.”
“We must be if you honestly feel like you don’t want to move out of this place,” he said, mixing in some seriousness.
“Tell me about it,” I agreed. “I was too busy hating it when we first moved here to ever imagine I’d hate to leave.”
“As if it’s about the place,” he said. “I mean, look at it.” He disdainfully scanned the horizon. “Dude, seriously. Look at it.”
I wasn’t sure if he was fully crossing over into sincerity or not, so I split the difference with a low hum that could be interpreted as either a knowing laugh or commiserating sigh. He continued to look out into the distance as he pursued his point.
“And High School Town ain’t much better.”
I knew the situation now and remained quiet as he proceeded.
“The only chance I ever had at moving out was if our neighborhood got condemned. I used to wish for that to happen until I realized how hard it would be for my family to find another place to live.”
He turned his attention to me. “Just keep in touch, man,” he said. “That’s all that matters. Whatever happens, just keep in touch.”
“I will,” I said, feeling both grateful and guilty.
We said nothing more until the bus arrived.
Miggy and I were the first to board, and as I reached the top step to turn down the aisle, my chest heaved and body froze before I could fully process what I was seeing: sitting amongst the scattered high school leftovers was Dulce. She didn’t see me, though. She didn’t see anyone, because she was staring at Chris, who stared back at her with matching adoration. They shared a seat and doted on each other, looking like an awkward vampire with the only victim he could manage to seduce.
Just to be safe, I found a place to sit way outside of her potential sight lines.
“Do you think she told her father why she didn’t need a ride today?” Miggy said as he slid into the seat behind me.
“I’m sure he approves,” I replied, continuing to look at them and hate myself for doing so. “He can’t possibly think she could do any better.”
Blaine sat next to Miggy. “What the fuck,” he said in wonder as he stared a
t them along with us. “This is suddenly a very awesome bus ride.”
We held our gaze until they stopped staring into one another’s eyes and started slurping the insides of one another’s mouths.
“And...we’re done,” said Blaine as Miggy and I muffled our screams. The three of us spent the last few minutes of the bus ride suppressing our laughter with tears spilling down our cheeks. As we pulled to a stop between our two worlds, it occurred to me that I hadn’t yet surveyed Blaine about a parental invasion, and that doing so could be an effective way to bring up what I had wanted to ask him yesterday on our ride home from the lake.
I suggested we let the overheated couple get off first and I instinctively obscured my face as casually as possible when they passed us. Their attention remained on each other, however, and neither of them would have seen me had I waved and called their names.
Miggy was the first to say what I got the impression we were all thinking now that they weren’t making out and we could just watch them walk down the aisle:
“Good for them.”
“Maybe it’ll mellow her out,” I added.
“For now. Does Chris have a sign in front of his house?” Miggy asked.
“No,” said Blaine, who then appeared to have some sort of revelation that aroused him to leap out of his seat and dash for the exit.
Miggy and I looked at each other and shrugged without actually moving our shoulders.
We disembarked and spotted the reason Blaine had bolted: he had caught up to Lana and was walking beside her, finally making his move.
“Time’s running out,” I commented on the proceedings.
“Huh,” Miggy thought aloud. “I didn’t think Blaine’s house would be foreclosed. But I guess maybe it is.”
“Looks that way.” I stopped short of confirming that I knew it was, deciding to keep my nighttime reality checking to myself. I didn’t believe Miggy would think any less of me for my voyeurism; quite the contrary, I suspected he may want to join me or ask me to report on future findings. So I kept private my invasion of others’ privacy for purely selfish reasons (though I decided to classify my reasons as “logistical” rather than “selfish”).
These thoughts of facades and the pursuit of romance against the clock had me longing for our unadulterated phase on The Ranch. I asked Miggy and then some of the other boys if they’d be up for a dirt bike rally out on the prairie behind my fence in about ten minutes, and most agreed it was a fine idea.
I considered walking along with Miggy and the rest of the Barrio boys down the alley and taking the tunnel or hopping my fence, but saw Blaine steering Lana toward the Arturo Gate, away from Dulce and Chris, so I decided to walk through the main entrance instead with my fellow Rancho Ranchers.
I brought up the rear as we approached the front gate. Carl, whose nickname “Nub” had caught on and become permanent since the electric fence incident the previous year, was the first one to arrive at the keypad. He punched in his house code and we all filed through before the gates had swung completely open. Nobody screamed into the camera anymore. We just shuffled past like factory workers heading in for a late shift. I was glad we were going to release some frustrations out on the savanna on our bikes in a few minutes. I was also glad that Nub had not developed a fear of electronic fencing and laughed quietly to myself at the thought.
I didn’t bother going inside my house. I went through the side gate, grabbed my bike that was leaning against the door that led into the garage, dropped my backpack by the sliding door in back, and swung around several times with my bike in hand like an Olympic hammer thrower before letting it fly over the fence.
Someone yelled “Fuck!” on the other side. I sprinted to the fence and propped myself up on the top beam to see what happened. My bike was several feet away from Miggy and a couple of the Barrio boys, JD and Chuy. They had one bike between the three of them.
“You almost hit us, dude!” Miggy hollered.
“Why are you standing so close to the fence?” I half-laughed and half-hollered back. “You know the routine.”
And as if on cue, another bike flew over the fence two lots down from us. Then another from a few lots up from us. In the distance behind the most recent bike landing, Nub came riding around the corner from the far end of the development.
“It’s like one of those fountains in Las Vegas, man,” said Miggy. “We should set it to music.”
“Maybe some more of that Banda you like to dance to,” I said as I joined them on the other side.
The other kids laughed. “You dance to Banda?” said JD. “What are you, man, like forty years old?”
“Dude,” added Chuy, “it’s like one of those movies where an old person and a young person switch bodies. So who are you really, your dad?”
“Your grandma?” I piled on.
“Your mom,” Miggy shot back. The Ranch boys were just pulling up on their bikes and were able to howl at the mother reference without having any idea what we were talking about.
“If I knew my mother at all I’m sure that would really hurt,” I said, guiding us out of the trash talk and into the rally. We stuck with the usual course: out over the embankment toward the train tracks, hitting the plywood ramp we had set up on this side of the tracks to jump them, and then on the way back after the turn jumping the tracks without the aid of a ramp, just pulling up on the bike as hard as possible, before riding back over the embankment towards our houses and making the turn for the next lap.
We modified the usual lineups, though, since the only other boy from The Barrio who owned a bike had failed to show up. Each race was a two-on-two, with one of the Barrio boys sitting out, and two of us from The Ranch sitting out, while one of us Ranchers who was sitting out would lend our bike to Team Barrio. Not that it was a team event; each heat was individual, but each individual tended to be influenced by their neighborhood. Barrio riders tended to be more aggressive, as though they had nothing to lose, but then got flustered easily when events weren’t going their way. Ranch riders tended to be less daring, but able to roll with setbacks more unflappably, as though they could absorb the occasional loss. There were always exceptions to the stereotype in any given heat, of course, as was the case when Miggy and I found ourselves in front of the other two riders during the final lap of a heat in which we were competing.
He was on his bike and I was on mine, so we were both familiar with our equipment. We had conquered the previous laps flawlessly, distancing ourselves from Nub and JD by practically working as a team: one letting the other take the lead during the turns to prevent any bumping and consequent wipeouts, then fanning out side-by-side as we would take on the tracks and the embankment, shifting our body weight in unison over the dirt mound and getting air simultaneously over the tracks.
But as the boys on the sidelines yelled to remind us that it was the final lap, our teamwork ceased and the manners we had been minding evaporated in the dust that rose from under our tires and twisted in the wind. Our bikes started swinging more dramatically side-to-side beneath us as we pedaled upright. We drew closer together, our arms bumping each time our handlebars would thrust toward each other. Rather than let our bodies go slack and allow our bikes to glide over the embankment, we took it as a jump, barely giving us enough time to recover and hit the ramp in front of the tracks. We tangled briefly as we landed on the other side, managing to right ourselves in time to take the next turn, which we skidded through, each of us putting our left foot down to keep from falling as we came out of it looking momentarily as though we were riding scooters. I doubted we could gather the speed necessary to hop over the tracks on the way back, so I decided to try a double hop: one to get over the first rail, followed immediately by another one to get over the second rail. It actually worked, while Miggy tried the standard jump over both, but as I suspected, didn’t have the speed to make it. His back tire caught the second rail and he wobbled enough to give me an opening. I picked up speed and figured I could make the conservati
ve play and roll over the mound. As I reached the other side, I was stunned by Miggy landing next to me, having taken the offbeat tactic of jumping it, somehow managing to gain the necessary speed after his troubles on the train tracks. So once again we were in a dead heat heading to the final turn, the three boys cheering us on. I had the inside track and leaned into it first, but only by a split second. I could feel the bike sliding out from under me, but knew if I braced myself with my foot it would be over, so I tried to hold on, but to no avail. I lost control and slid into Miggy, who managed to steady his bike after I swiped his back tire as I skimmed past. He yawped for joy as he rode between the two faux adobe shingles stuck vertically into the ground that served as the finish line, while I screamed in frustration and pain. I picked up myself and then picked up my bike, tossing it aside in disgust as JD and Nub passed me and were greeted by Miggy doing a celebration dance that looked a lot like the one he choreographed to the radio in his backyard. This one was shorter, though, and ended with him flipping me off. I tried not to laugh, but couldn’t hold out any longer once he added a crotch grab in my direction. I flipped him off in kind and limped my bike to the finish line, flattered that the guys thought it was the best race they’d seen in a long time, and proud that I was injured.
I even thought I heard the wind whispering my name for a moment as I reached the hyped-up little crowd, but looked in the direction my friends were looking and saw my dad approaching. If not for the row of tract homes behind him and his dress casual work clothes, he could have looked like some mythic character in a Western, or Lawrence of Arabia.
“So that’s your dad?” Miggy asked, never having seen him.
“That’s him,” I said, figuring that if he was home this early, at least part of my parents’ plan was already set in motion.
“So that’s what those two shingles are doing there,” he said as he reached us. “Always wondered when I saw them from the upstairs window. I never get a chance to see what goes on here in the daytime with my usual hours.”
He looked back at our house and I could see my mom looking out that same window. He looked back at us and greeted me. “Hey, Nick.”
“Hey, Dad.”
So they were both home. This was not looking good.
“Guys…” he addressed my friends, who mumbled a variety of vague replies.
“Now, I’m supposed to be scolding you right now,” Dad continued. “So bear with me here for a moment while I wave my arms and look pissed off, and don’t laugh or smile. Play along. Look serious.”
The guys got a real kick out of that, and were only able to play the part by looking down and hiding their giggles rather than performing. I was perfectly capable of appearing stoic, however, since it wasn’t an act. If Dad was this jovial, he and Mom must have gotten close to everything they wanted, if not all of it. I had parents again, at just the age and under just the circumstances kids tend not to want them.
In my peripheral vision I saw movement in our second story window, and looking to it saw that Mom had disappeared. In the midst of his pantomiming Dad turned and saw the empty window as well.
“Okay,” he stopped gesturing and started talking again, “The coast is clear. Now, I see you guys are having trouble with the turns. Well, at least Nick and…?” he looked in Miggy’s direction.
“Miggy,” said Miggy.
“Miggy, right. Nice to meet you. At least Nick and Miggy are, and they look like pretty darn good bikers.” He grinned at the two of us before continuing. “…So I assume everyone could use some tips on the turns. I don’t know if Nick’s told you, but I work in the insurance industry…”
“Why the fuck would I tell them that?” I thought, feeling myself transforming into a typically hostile adolescent, as though my chemical ingredients turned volatile when parents were added to the mix.
“…and so I investigate a lot of accidents, and one thing I can tell you that I’m sure you’ll be taught in Driver’s Ed class someday, but will come in handy in the meantime on your bikes, is to steer into the skid, rather than correct it. Can I borrow your bike for a moment, Nick?”
He held out his hand and I nodded. It took a few seconds for him to realize I wasn’t going to bring it over. He jogged a few paces to get it, giving no indication he was irritated with me, and straddled the bike to demonstrate his point.
“So you’re coming around a turn, and you feel yourself start to lose control…” He tilted the bike and started to jiggle it underneath him, feet still on the ground. “…Your first instinct will be to steer away from trouble rather than face it. It’s a natural reaction. But that’s not what you want to do…” He continued to push the bike in the direction he had used to simulate the skid. “See? It just makes it worse. The problem gets more severe. You feed into it. What you want to do…” He righted the bike and started to imitate a skid again. “…is go with it. Face the problem. See?” He guided the bike in the same direction as the fake skid. “Even though you won’t be heading in the direction you want right away, at least you’re going straight again, and can get back on track once you’ve regained that control. Thanks, Nick…”
He rolled the bike out from under himself and spun to face us, holding the right handlebar with his left hand, waiting for me to come take it. I just nodded again. He smirked and maintained his grip as he addressed us:
“I know you’ve all heard the expression ‘go with your first instinct’, yes?”
The rest of the boys grunted various forms of “yeah.”
“Well this is one case where that is not at all true. But there is another expression you may have heard that is very true in this case. You’ve heard the one that goes, ‘face your fears’?”
A few of them made agreeing noises.
“That’s the one you want to keep in mind on those turns. If you don’t face your fears, if you steer away from trouble rather than face it, those problems are only going to get worse. Clear?”
The guys didn’t exactly hoorah their approval, but definitely seemed to appreciate the lesson. They nodded and smiled and the sounds they made indicated satisfaction. Then as if to usurp any remaining power I had to convince my friends what a phony he was, Dad encouraged them all to practice for a while and then come over to our house for a barbeque in an hour. He punctuated the invitation with “Just hop the fence!” and finally got the exultation from them he had so badly wanted during other parts of his speech. I felt like the fan of a visiting team in a stadium where the home team was enjoying a blowout victory.
Dad turned to me and smiled, though I have to admit he did not seem to be gloating. “Let’s check that leg out,” he said. “Mom’s orders.”
I slumped over and told the guys I would see them later. They barely acknowledged me as they haggled over who would be in the next heat, and as I turned to join Dad for the walk home, he cracked “As long as I’ve got your bike, I’ll go ahead and walk it for you.”
I looked over to see if he was at last recognizing my role as the antagonist in his production, or maybe even preening, but any leak in his bearing had been plugged by the time I started studying him more closely. He just looked at me a couple of times as though he was auditioning for a commercial in which he would play a father, and asked me if my leg hurt. I told him it didn’t, naturally, but had difficulty getting over the fence, and allowed myself to wince as much as possible as Dad handed the bike over to me and my face was hidden from both his view and Mom’s, who stood in the sliding glass doorway.
Mom offered to help, but I didn’t want to take off my pants in front of her and said I’d take care of it. She insisted that I at least put on a pair of shorts and allow her to inspect the wound after I had addressed it.
I put on the shorts first before I went into the bathroom to sit on the edge of the tub and clean my leg, as I assumed it would not take her long to barge in on me. The area to the outside of my left shin initially looked pretty grisly with all the dirt, pebbles, and blood obscuring the thinness and super
ficiality of the cuts, so I was glad my mom did not succumb to motherly nosiness until I had completed the initial scrub.
“How is it, tough guy?” she asked, lurking in the doorway.
“About what I expected,” I told her. “We’ve been taking care of ourselves out here for years.”
My intent was to sound rugged, but realized it sounded accusatory to her, based on what I noticed about the musculature of her jaw and her eyebrows as she insisted on taking a closer look at my wound without asking. I tried to think of another way to put it without having to apologize, to explain that all I meant was we appreciated the chance to grow up so quickly, or become so self-sufficient, or free, or whatever it was we were, but I couldn’t come up with a phrase that would placate her while allowing me to feel as though I did not give in, so I just let her inspect my leg and needlessly run a washcloth over it a few more times.
“Dry it off and come on down,” she said as she wrung the water out of the washcloth into the empty tub. “Your father and I would like to talk to you about something.”
I knew what it was, of course, and wasn’t looking forward to having my fears confirmed. But on the other hand I was curious as to how honest they were going to be concerning their motivation.
When I arrived downstairs, Mom was in the kitchen organizing buns on a tray and chips in a basket, while Dad was out on the patio trying to remember how to operate the gas grill. They each greeted me as though I had just arrived, Mom with a trilling “Hello” and Dad with a big edgy smile and wave through the glass door and a signal that he would be inside in one minute, or one second; one something.
I sat on the loveseat opposite the couch, figuring they would want it that way: the couch serving as a roomy pulpit that would allow them to proclaim without having to stand, to gesture freely, and leave plenty of space for them to take turns leaning in and out at me.
Dad let out a satisfied whoop from the patio. He had managed to get the grill fired up, which Mom took as a cue to take their places on the couch, she arriving a few seconds before he did.
“We’ve decided to make some changes,” Dad started, looking at Mom to see if that was an adequate introduction. She encouraged him to go on using only her forehead.
“At least for a while,” he qualified. “See, it finally dawned on us that we’ve been spending way too much time away from home. The commute, our jobs…it’s not that we wanted to, but that’s just the way it happened. We’re sorry.”
“That’s okay,” I shrugged. “You’re not the only ones. Don’t worry about it.”
“But we do,” Mom took her turn. “Just because everyone else does something doesn’t make it right. So we looked into getting some time off, giving ourselves more time to be together as a family. How does that sound?”
“Great,” I tried to say as convincingly as possible, since it was clear they weren’t going to attribute their inspiration to foreclosure, and I had some questions I wanted to ask that needed to be presented rationally rather than petulantly if they were to be effective.
“The way it’s going to work,” said Dad, as relieved as Mom was about my response, “is that we’re taking half days like today until the end of the school year next week, and then full days off once you’re on vacation. Cool, eh?”
“Very,” I played along.
“But we can get the party started this weekend,” Mom kicked in. “Since we won’t be so tired thanks to the half days, we’re thinking we’ll head to the city and over to the coast on Saturday for the day, sort of a pre-graduation party, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I kept it up.
“Yeah, baby!” said Dad, clapping his hands and non-verbally asking Mom for a high-five as they started to get up. “We’re back!”
“I was just wondering,” I cut into their celebration, “Why did you decide to do this now?”
“What do you mean?” Dad said, hanging onto his smile.
“I mean why now? Did something happen?” I asked as innocently as possible while they sunk back into the couch cushions. “Something at work? Did one of you almost die?”
Each hoped the other would think of something to say. Dad gave it a shot.
“Nothing like that,” he stalled. “We just thought it was about time.”
“The reason is because we miss you,” Mom trumped his effort. “We miss you and we love you.”
We stared at one another for several seconds. They could not run from the red letters much longer. It was going to be hammered into our front yard eventually. And when it was, that’s when I would strike; the moment that sign hit the ground, I would hit them with everything I had wanted to say for the past few weeks.
“Well okay, then,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
They bounced back up out of the couch and resumed their self-regard as though the last forty five seconds never happened.
I stayed seated for a while and watched them prepare for the barbeque, wondering if they were putting it on merely to be “cool parents”, just as the high school leftovers had tried to be cool in the early days of our reintroduction to the wild, or if Mom and Dad had accurately assessed how accustomed to the parental void we had become and were trying to defuse the blowback created by their filling of that space. I decided that the most likely conclusion could be reached by underestimating them, and that they were just trying to present an enticing front. If they did understand the potential for animosity, that was a conversation of theirs on which I had yet to eavesdrop.
I left them to their preparations and went upstairs to look out of their window at the race course and catch the last few heats before my friends came over. The dust and the distance made it difficult to see who was doing what, but the intensity was perfectly clear; the soundless fury coming through the glass as they dedicated themselves to winning a race nobody else would ever see or read about, a result that would be forgotten even by us, the most important thing being that we were there, completely there, without a thought as to why we were doing it. Occasionally a certain maneuver, a jump or a bold pass on a turn, would have me exclaiming out loud, “We do that?” and laughing in disbelief at how stupid it looked through my parents’ window, compared to how natural it felt in the midst of it.
This made me wonder how viable our emergency plan was, to show off our love of playing outdoors, if the seat I had now was going to be the typical perspective of the adults we would be trying to impress. Even when we played basketball it bordered on looking more like rugby at times. I could easily see us being relegated to tempered versions of our favorite games, our beloved outdoors becoming anodyne by decree, and all of us surrendering to our rooms and our computer screens, still being aggressive dicks to each other, but via poorly-spelled comments instead of a plastic whiffle ball bat to the head.
And even if we ended up being nice from one screen to another, I wondered how legitimate it would be, how honest; if it would be another flaw that did not discriminate by age. I couldn’t imagine Blaine’s parents ever sharing anything other than pictures of themselves enjoying the fruits of their ability to take out a loan, or my parents ever seeking comfort or help regarding their mistakes, because according to what they and every other parent presented, there are no mistakes, only pictures of food and of places and of their loved ones enjoying those things. I had found more truth in a few hours’ worth of sneaking down hallways and into backyards than I had in years’ worth of social networking in any of its forms, live or electronic.
The dust was settling out on the fallow plain as the last race was run and the guys were heading for our fence line, looking like an invasion by a small army of unarmed child soldiers. I hollered down to my parents that they were coming, then before going downstairs stopped by my room to put on some pants and cover my scrapes. I preferred not to draw attention to my loss, as gratifying as it was to sustain an injury in the pursuit of victory.
I arrived in time to see the boys storm the yard, dropping over the fence one at a time. As Dad turned from the grill to w
ave at them, I half expected one of the gang to jump him while the rest seized control of the house as if it was an embassy in a hostile country.
But what really happened was that my friends devoured hot dogs, chips, and sodas and gave no indication that the prospect of parents colonizing our territory had ever bothered them, like guard dogs distracted by an intruder throwing them some raw meat. It was weird hanging out with them in my house as opposed to the train platform, or the woods by the factory, or the construction site, or the streets; the closest any of us got to each other’s living room while traveling in packs was the garage.
Combined with my parents orbiting the perimeter and guarding against any of us running out of something to drink or eat or looking even slightly less than thrilled, I started to feel less of the volatility that characterized my reaction to Dad interrupting our dirt bike rally, and more of the self-consciousness that had characterized my life before we moved to Ranch Ranch, back when I read books and graphic novels and surfed the web and the satellite channels, back when I was withdrawn and usually in my room. I had never really thought of it in those terms back then, had never considered why I may have felt like being alone so often.
So that was it, then? Self-consciousness? Being watched? Had I grown up enough to make those kinds of self-evaluations?
I tried to smile more often than I felt like smiling, as I didn’t want my friends to think me unwelcoming or angry with them for being in our house, but I was so bad at manufacturing a smile that when I really did feel like smiling, I imagined it was coming across as insincere, that my performance wasn’t what it should be according to everyone around me who could see me and judge me. My parents would gesture at me to “smile” whenever our eyes met, pointing at their own baring of teeth and tracing the shape of their lips in the air in front of them. I couldn’t believe how quickly this was happening, how I could go from feeling the way I did when I was flying over the train tracks, to feeling like I did when I felt safest in my room.
I managed to secure a position in various circles of conversation often enough and imitate how others were reacting convincingly enough to keep any of my friends from asking what was wrong. Mom suggested all the boys call their parents and invite them over to pick them up and join the fun when they arrived home from work, that we would watch movies and keep the grill lit until the parents came, and that we had wine and beer ready to break out on their behalf.
The Ranch boys lined up at our kitchen phone to take turns leaving messages for their moms and dads. The Barrio boys hung back.
“You can invite your parents, too, you know,” Mom assured them. “We don’t mind.”
“That’s okay,” Miggy adopted the role of spokesperson. “Walking through the gate feels kind of weird. And it would be stupid to drive such a short distance.”
“They can jump the fence,” said JD, which made us all laugh.
“Yeah, they should be pretty good at that,” said Nub, which made us all nervous.
“Why don’t you at least call and let them know where you are, and when you’ll be coming home,” Mom suggested. She then continued to stomp on the fuse Nub had lit by offering everyone another round of whatever it was they were currently lacking, and rattling off some names of movies we had in the living room collection.
After Miggy, JD, and Chuy left messages in the kind of rapid Spanish that always killed any dreams I had of becoming bilingual, we languished on the couch and watched a movie I could remember being very excited about seeing when it was released a few years before in a movie theatre, back when we lived near one, and was now just another title on our shelf filled with superhuman feats of computer-generated skill. I was not only tired like the rest of my friends, but relieved that I could just sit with them all and stare at what passed for a historical milestone in our young lives while our food digested and our bodies recovered. I assumed everyone’s parents would also be too tired to do much when they came over, but that was hardly the case.
Evidently none of them had received an invitation to do anything other than sit for the last two years: sit at work, sit in their cars, and sit and take it as the bad news came at them. After all that sitting, the tug of free wine and beer had them speaking too loudly and laughing too readily before they had even finished their first few sips. Miggy, JD, and Chuy excused themselves soon after the parents started wading in.
“Tell your folks ‘thanks’,” said Miggy, not wishing to interrupt the burgeoning party.
“Take me with you,” I joked.
“You need to chaperone,” he smiled. “These people are ready to get crazy.”
I chuckled, but none of the other guys seemed to hear it. They were buried in the couch and focused on the screen, intent on ignoring what was happening with their parents on the other side of the room. The Barrio trio slunk past the glass door and over the fence.
The movie was not quite over by the time the half-dozen parents on the guest list had made it into the kitchen and started infiltrating the living room area, which didn’t matter because all of us had started rubbernecking what was happening to the grownups and ignoring the screen, anyway. I imagined the expressions on my friends’ faces were much like mine when I was first privy to what my parents were planning as I held my ear to their door.
“This is really happening,” Nub said in a bewildered whisper.
We watched them bob and weave around each other, embrace and form pairs and trios, talk directly into each other’s ears and listen a little too intently to what the other was saying, looking more like they were deciding whether they would want to have sex with that person rather than actually listening to them, every one of them with a drink in their hand. They opened the door that led to the garage, then opened the garage door, and flagged down the other commuters arriving home from work, holding up their drinks and waving them over and yelling “Party!” and “Yeah!” and “Whoo!”
And many of the passers-by complied, rushing from their house to ours in a matter of minutes, some bringing half-cases of beer they had left in the refrigerator or bottles of wine that had been standing on their countertops, the number of cliques growing, their memberships turning over, everyone getting to know each other once again, commiserating without sadness, too interested in the thrill of saying “fuck it all” to worry about the future or mourn the passing of their dream. And this was on a Monday.
“Besides mine and yours,” I asked Nub. “Do you know whose parents are whose?”
“Nope,” he said, gazing at the scene that now surrounded us. Every once in a while some adult would look at us and raise their glass or bottle in our direction and shout something inane.
“So which ones are your parents, anyway?” I asked him.
“That guy over there is my dad,” Nub directed my attention to an otherwise-trim guy sprouting a belly who was talking to a woman while running his fingers up and down the front of his polo shirt as though he was wearing a tank top and hitting on a girl during Spring Break at a beach bar.
“And that woman over there is my mom.” She was sitting on the counter at the other end of the kitchen, holding court with my Dad and some other dad, making queenly gestures that indicated a running joke involving her being on a throne while they were subservient to her. The other dad seemed to appreciate the chance to flirt, while my Dad appeared to roll with it out of necessity while seeing it as a chance to impart some information, as though he was running for Congress.
“I think I remember them from when we were all moving in,” I said, believing I had to say something.
Mom, meanwhile, was working the room making sure everyone was happy, or at least sublimating their pain, which was easy enough, but at the same time taking a moment with everyone she encountered to grasp their shoulder or their forearm and say something intended to be meaningful. At one point when she was close enough, I heard her direct the phrase “recapture the sense of community we had when we first moved in” to a particularly amped-up father before he gave her a s
oused hug and asked her how her marriage was doing. She politely replied that it was fine and suggested he needed to start drinking water.
None of the kids came over with their parents to join the party, and those of us bearing witness on the couch started to feel like we were intruding, so the guys excused themselves and went home without bothering to tell their parents, and I went up to my room.
Later that night I awoke to the sounds of my parents having sex so loudly I could hear them, which is something I had always managed to avoid hearing up until then.
At least I assumed it was my parents.