“Way early,” she said.
I was thinking we should sneak out and run for the hills, but Dad stormed in before I could say anything. We watched him walk into the kitchen and put his briefcase on the table. He took off his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. He loosened his tie, then stopped, as if he had just noticed the four of us standing there.
“What are you doing home?” I blurted out.
“I live here,” he explained. “And it’s dinnertime. It’s been a while since we sat down together, and—”
“We can’t eat dinner,” Hannah said. “It’s Homecoming tonight. We have to leave or we’ll be late.”
Dad put his hands up like a traffic cop. “Whoa right there, young lady. Who are you going with?”
Yoda raised his hand like he was in a class. “I’m taking her, Mr. Miller.”
Dad tilted his head to one side, confused. “Calvin?”
“Yes, Calvin.” Hannah grabbed Yoda’s hand and started for the door. “I’ll be home by eleven.”
Dad’s voice turned icy. “You do not have permission to leave.”
Hannah froze. Yoda swallowed hard.
“I’m going out, too,” I said, in an unfortunately high voice. I cleared my throat. “They’re going with me. We’re all going together. To the game.”
“Like hell you are.”
“Dad, I have plans,” I said, visions of every straight guy in school on their knees offering hot chocolate to the Goddess Bethany.
Mom stepped between us and picked up Dad’s jacket. “Look, Bill. I’ll cook a nice dinner tomorrow.” She folded the jacket neatly over her arm. “Why don’t you and I go someplace quiet, catch up with each other?”
“I want dinner. With my family. In my house. Tonight,” Dad announced. “End of discussion.”
“I’ll make some quick sandwiches and heat up some soup,” Mom said. “And we have leftover chicken. Extra crispy.”
Dad smacked the counter with his hand so hard that the bowl of apples jumped. He waited until the echoes died away before he spoke quietly.
“We have a freezer packed with food,” he said. “Please make me a decent dinner.” He picked up his briefcase. “Calvin is going home. Hannah can stay in her room until it’s time to eat. And Tyler? Mow that goddamn lawn.”
I weighed my options.
Was the chance to sit next to Bethany for a couple hours worth the guaranteed wrath of my father, which would include a night of bellowing rage, the total annihilation of my self-esteem, broken dishes, and possibly getting tossed out of the house?
Well, yeah, of course it was.
But it was not worth the nastiness that he would also inflict on my sister, who already had a tear slipping over the faded bruise from her black eye, and my mother, who was pouring herself the first tonic-free gin and tonic she’d had in weeks.
Yoda left.
Hannah slammed her door.
I stayed and mowed the lawn as badly as I could, as the streetlights flickered on, dreaming up one thousand and one ways to hurt the man who spawned me.
38.
Mom did it. She cooked a sit-down dinner for four: pork roast, baked potatoes, steamed carrots, and a side salad with your choice of dressing. Sure, it was nine P.M. by the time we got to eat, but you couldn’t rush perfection.
“Pass the pork, please,” Dad said.
Mom had decided to pass on dinner. She was passed out on her bed. The cover story was that she had a migraine. What she really had was enough gin to put down a horse, and a desire to shove that roast up Dad’s—
But no, honest, her migraines were always the worst when the seasons were changing. It had to do with barometric pressure.
Hannah passed the meat platter to Dad.
“Another piece, Tyler?” Dad asked.
Throw a potato in his face. Smash the platter over his head. Pick up the table, throw it through the sliding-glass door, then heave him out, too. Find a grenade…
“Butter, please,” I said.
Hannah passed me the butter.
I divided a half stick between two baked potatoes. Hannah had scooped out the inside of her potato and was mashing it on her plate. Dad cut his slice of pork. The knife squealed on the plate. Dad did not flinch. He cut and chewed, cut and chewed.
“How was school?” he asked.
Hannah spooned cold, overcooked carrots onto the potatoes. “Fascist.”
“You don’t even know what that means,” Dad said. “Heh.” (That was supposed to sound like laughter.)
“Yes,” Hannah said carefully, “I do. We’re studying it.”
Dad grunted.
Coming home at a decent hour, forcing Mom to cook, making jokes at the table: something was desperately wrong with my father. I studied him whenever he looked at Hannah. It wasn’t the bloodshot eyes, or the stain on his tie, or the twitch in his left cheek. It was what I got when I put those things together.
Ever smell the milk jug when you open it and you don’t think you smell anything funky, so you pour a big glass and you take a giant gulp and as soon as it hits your mouth you know it has gone bad and you spit it in the sink and race upstairs to gargle? And when you finally stop needing to heave, you realize that you did smell something funny at first, but you didn’t know what to call it?
That’s what I thought of when I looked at my father.
“What else are you studying?” he asked my sister. “How’s algebra?”
Hannah obliterated the carrots with the tines of her fork. “Algebra is fine.” She blended the carrots and potatoes together. “Not that you care,” she added under her breath.
“What did you say?” Dad asked. “Stop playing with your food. Is there a problem?”
Hannah pushed her chair away from the table. She stood up and let her napkin float to the ground.
“May I please be excused?” Her voice shook a little.
“You haven’t finished,” Dad said.
“I’m not hungry and I still have homework. Algebra homework.”
Dad made her stand there a full minute before he answered. “Fine.”
Hannah couldn’t hold it in any longer. As she bolted from the room, she said, “And I’ll check on Mom.” She started sobbing halfway up the stairs.
We looked at the empty doorway and listened until a door slammed overhead.
Dad carried his empty glass into the kitchen, dropped a couple ice cubes into it, and unscrewed a bottle. He came back carrying a full glass of scotch, his third. That was weird, too. He never drank more than one a night.
I reached for the pepper. “How’s work?”
“Pass that over here, will you?” he asked.
I handed him the shaker. “You’ve seemed, um, busy.”
He shook the pepper on his carrots. “That’s one word for it.” He put down the shaker, picked up his glass, and took a long, slow sip.
I waited, but he just sat there, elbow leaning on the table, glass in his hand, looking down at the spot where Mom wasn’t sitting. He turned the glass so the light from the chandelier caught and reflected off it. “Some of the branch offices aren’t playing by the rules.” He looked at me over the rim. “Playing by the rules cuts into commissions.”
“Why is this your problem?”
“Because I’m Compliance, and the feds are investigating….” He took a big slug of scotch and set the glass down heavily. “Enough of that. I’ve almost got it under control. Your last probation meeting is coming up, isn’t it?”
I shook my head. “Two more. One in a couple weeks, one in November.”
“I told you it would go fast.” He speared a piece of meat and put it in his mouth. “Another couple months and no one will remember it ever happened.”
Except the entire student body, police force, and anyone within a fifty-mile radius of my school.
“I’ll go with you,” he added.
“What? Where?”
He talked while he chewed. “To your probation meeting. The last one. I�
��ll make sure all the loose ends are tied up.” He cut the fat off the next bite of meat and pushed it to the edge of the plate. Dad hated the feel of fat in his mouth.
“You don’t have to. It’ll waste a whole afternoon. Maybe Mom could go.”
“Your mother and I have already discussed this. She said she told you.”
“I bet it slipped her mind—”
Out of nowhere he smacked the table with his left hand. “Dammit! She promised!” The veins running up the sides of his neck beat like writhing snakes.
“Whoa, hold on—Mom must have forgot. Her migraines. Dad? Are you okay?”
He took a deep breath and blinked. Then he stuck another piece of meat in his mouth. “Of course I am, what a ridiculous question. I was just surprised, that’s all.”
I looked at my plate so I wouldn’t have to watch him chew. “Is there any chance they won’t expel my record?”
“Expunge. The word is expunge. You keep your nose clean and you pull your grades out of the toilet, it will be like it never happened. This pork is tasty, don’t you think?”
Like it never happened.
Like my mother was lying down because of a migraine.
39.
Homecoming Friday Night Play-by-Play Action:
Looked at French book by Albert Somebody = .25 hours
Printed out English essay Yoda e-mailed = 2 minutes
AP Art History reaction paper = 15 minutes
IM = monitored constantly—the entire world was away
Doodled breasts in Government textbook = 20 minutes
Surfed online journals = when I got sick of reading away messages
Online porn = you don’t want to know
Snack = leftover KFC followed by handful of Turns
Thought about ripping out drywall with my bare hands = every other minute
AP Calc = .75 hours before I threw the book in the trash
Played Tophet = 5 hours
Level Thirty-Six in Tophet looked like Antarctica with the temperature hovering around seventy degrees below zero. I was confused. Hell was supposed to be too hot, not too cold. But level Thirty-Six was Inuit Hell.
I had to spend way too much gold on a fur-lined jacket, pants, and boots for Gormley. I sacrificed a spell to start a fire so he wouldn’t freeze to death. You couldn’t really die in Hell; you’d be reincarnated as a weaker being over and over again until you were reduced to a wormspirit.
My father’s Hell level had not shown up yet. Maybe it was being trapped in a office with a screaming boss whose butt you had to kiss day and night. Maybe it was coming home to a wife and kids who bolted for the door when they saw you. Or it was waking up every morning knowing you had to do the same exact thing you did the day before and the day before, like that guy who had to roll the boulder up the mountain over and over, except you’d know that when you died there’d be no relief, because you were already dead and this was what you won as the booby prize in the game of Eternal Soul Roulette.
I wondered what the devil would say to my father. Would they watch baseball? Discuss the bond market?
I fell asleep with my head on my desk.
Dad woke me up at five A.M. He was already dressed for work: black suit, white shirt, gray tie. He said he had to get to the office early.
I did not tell him it was Saturday. I wasn’t in the mood for a confrontation.
40.
On Monday morning my father went to his office again.
My mother ate dry toast for breakfast, then she went to work, too. She had to take pictures of the mayor’s terriers wearing red-and-green plaid vests.
My sister and I went to school. We learned that we had lost the homecoming game.
The perfect American family continued to lead their perfect bullshit lives perfectly.
41.
In order to convince Bethany that I was not a rude, disgusting pig, I spent homeroom apologizing one hundred thousand times for standing her up at the game.
“It’s okay,” she said again. “Honest. I get it. You’ve seen my mother. I understand parents who freak out, trust me. Is that a new shirt?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, praying that I had taken off all the tags. “My mom bought it.”
“I like it, but you know what, Tyler Miller?” She focused her eyes on me. The rest of the world was sucked away into a giant vortex, leaving only the two of us. “You are too old to let your mommy buy your clothes.”
“I am? I mean, yeah, I am.”
“You should go shopping with me. I’ll take care of you.”
Oh, dear God, will you ever. I was experiencing a noticeable lack of penis control. I slouched a little in my seat to hide the bulging evidence.
She didn’t notice. She turned around to ask Mikhail Roberts, sitting behind her, if he did the Chem homework. But she did not offer to take him shopping. Ha.
42.
Bethany flirted with me for the next two weeks. She also flirted with a soccer halfback named Stefan; Evan, who had the drum solo in the marching band; both of the Prakesh brothers; and Parker, the moronic sophomore who I put through the gym locker. I figured the only thing she saw in Parker was the Corvette he had been promised for his sixteenth birthday. Bethany was smart like that, always looking ahead.
If you lined me up with the other guys, you’d start singing “One of These Things Is Not Like the Others” from Sesame Street. The other guys, they all blurred into each other: rich, smart, athletic, and popular. Me, I stood out, the semi-bad boy guaranteed to bring some spice into her life.
Of course, there was always the chance that she was totally setting me up for major humiliation or that this was all mercy-flirting. But, honestly? I didn’t care.
You could tell that Halloween was just around the corner when the Christmas decorations went up at the mall. The weather finally turned cold, and girls started wearing turtlenecks that showed their belly buttons.
Bethany owned a black cashmere turtleneck. It was a little longer than the other girls’ but short enough to flash a quick hint of belly skin when she reached up to fix her hair. She was now touching me an average of 2.4 times a day.
The day the doctor gave her permission to play tennis again was the first day she hugged me. Hug #1. She hugged a bunch of other people, too, including all her girlfriends on the team, Zithead Parker, and both Prakesh brothers, but she was enthusiastic like that.
When I saw Mr. Benson at the courthouse that afternoon, he said I looked different.
“Got a girl?” he asked.
“Nah.” I shook my head.
“Nothing like a woman to lift a man’s spirits. Be safe. See you next month.”
The night of the first hug, I dreamed about beating Chip Milbury into a bloody pulp. He got in a couple of good shots; I lost a tooth and my mouth was bleeding. My last punch sent him flying off the roof we were standing on. We were so high in the air, I didn’t hear him land.
And then Bethany was in my arms, and she wasn’t mad at all that I had just obliterated her brother. I put my fingertips under her chin.
My heart beat so fast I thought I was going to die.
I moved in slowly…and kissed her pink cupcake mouth.
She kissed back. Harder.
I was thinking raw caveman thoughts, but this time it wasn’t about beating a guy to death. I wanted a woman, I wanted this woman.
I cradled the back of her head in my hand. A strand of her hair fell into my eyes. The universe was spinning, and this kiss was the only thing that mattered. Bethany opened her mouth. Her tongue glided over my broken teeth. We tasted like blood and frosting.
And I woke up.
The dream was a sign, a magical intervention by all the saints and spirits in charge of helping dweeby guys desperate for a girlfriend.
Those saints and spirits had nothing to do with decent grades, though, which is why the next day began with another Calc quiz. But I forgot about it as soon as I was out the door, because she was standing there, waiting for me.<
br />
I almost swallowed my tongue.
“Hey, Tyler,” she said.
“Hhhn,” I answered.
“Thought I’d come see you for a change. So, um, you going to the game tonight? ‘Cause I am. And then, well, then I’ll be at Rawson’s house—Josh Rawson? His parents are in Jamaica. It’ll be a great party.”
“Hhhn?” I asked.
She blinked her eyes in slow motion. I wracked my brain trying to come up with something intelligent to say, something that would make sense, anything to keep her standing close enough so that I could keep smelling her perfume because it was hitting my brain like crack cocaine.
“Hhhn,” is what I finally came up with, for the third time.
“You big dummy,” she said with an exaggerated sigh. “I want you” (she put her hand on my left forearm and slid it up under the rolled-up sleeve) “to go with me” (she stepped so close I could feel the heat coming off her body) “to a crazy Halloween party.”
I regurgitated my tongue and looked around at the crowded hall. “You’re not joking, are you? I mean, you know what I mean. You’re not punking me—nobody is filming this or anything?”
“No, silly,” she said. “Look, I like you. We’re not going out, but I like you, okay? I want to spend time with you. Are you getting the hint here?” Her fingers curled around my bicep.
“Oh, uh, yeah. Ah…”
While I struggled to remember a single word of my native language, the bell rang. Bethany pulled away from me. I shivered.
“You don’t have to pick me up or anything. I’ll be at the bonfire tonight, and then the game. See you there? If your dad doesn’t go off the deep end again, I mean.”
“Yeah, um–”
She was already gone, her ponytail bouncing down the hall.
43.
I was so desperate to make this night happen, I took the school bus home. The underclassmen stared at me like I had lost my mind. I nearly told them I had an almost-date with Bethany Milbury (I’ll see you tonight, right?), but that would have tempted fate, so I scowled at them instead.
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