“Is she done with high school?”
“Just graduated. Was going to Rocky Mountain College here, but her dad withdrew her.”
“Maybe I can chat with her about her options,” she says, and I stand up and kiss my mom on the cheek.
“Thank you,” I say.
Dad and Turk return after going to two AA meetings back-to-back, and Dad looks glassy-eyed and wasted. I notice his legs as he sits on the couch. They are so skinny. It makes me think of my grandfather, and how thin and frail he probably was at the end of his life.
“I don’t think this is going to work for me,” he says.
“You don’t need to think,” Turk tells him. He’s sitting on the other couch. I’m in the doorway, just listening. “Not right now. Just go in with an open mind and listen.”
“It won’t work. Not if we get to the point where I have to pray.”
“God wants you to be quiet.”
Dad squeezes his eyes shut. “Did you just tell me to shut up? Did you just tell me God wants me to shut up?”
“No,” Turk says. “Be quiet. There’s a difference.”
That night we have dinner as a family. Mom grills chicken breasts and Turk helps out in the kitchen, boiling corn on the cob and slicing tomatoes for everyone.
Mom sits next to Dad at the table and cuts up his food for him. The look in his eyes as he watches her care for him tells me he still loves her completely. And when I see how tender she is as she tucks a napkin into the lapel of his shirt, I see that she loves him too.
“Delicious,” my dad says.
“Thanks,” says my mother. “I’m glad you like it.”
“So when we head back to New York, where are Aisha and Dad going to stay?” I say, half kidding and half not kidding at all. I expect my mom to stare daggers at me for saying this, because obviously we don’t have the room. Unless Aisha sleeps with me and Dad sleeps with her…. Well, come to think of it.
“We’ll see,” Mom says.
“For the record,” I note, “that’s not a no.”
“Let’s be here now,” she says, and I don’t snort but I want to.
I savor the tart of the tomato against the roof of my mouth. “Can we get a dog when we go back to New York?”
“I would say that’s down the list of priorities quite a ways,” she says.
“Ours is a family that could use a dog. That would help.”
As Dad talks a bit about the drunks at the meeting and the things they said, and Turk keeps shaking his head and saying, “Anonymity, Matthew, anonymity,” I think about how amazing it is that we’re having dinner together as a family. Before Aisha arrived, Dad ate in his room, and Mom and I were like two ships passing in the night. Even after, we were this weird, fractured household. How did this happen?
I love it. I love sharing food with all these crazy-ass, totally imperfect people like me.
My mom stabs another piece of corn and puts it on my dad’s plate. “How are you doing?” she asks Aisha.
Aisha says, “Scrambled.”
I reach over and squeeze her arm. “Scrambled how?” I ask.
“I’m sad, but also I’m done,” she says. “Like truly done with them. And I’m done letting them own God. Nobody gets to use God as a weapon against me anymore. I just fucking reject that stuff. Nobody owns my God.”
I know my mom wants to say, “Language,” but she doesn’t. Turk smiles. “Good. Good for you.”
“You should trademark God,” my dad says.
Mom exhales. “I love you, Matthew. I do. But shut up, please. Really.”
My dad smiles and zips his lips closed.
Apple, meet tree, I guess. Because the sad truth is that the trademark comment came into my head too. So I zip my lips shut too, and my dad laughs.
Aisha says, “I think that’s the worst thing you can do to a person. Make them believe that whatever you think about them, that’s what God thinks too.”
That makes me remember Pastor Logan, because the one thing that has not happened today is the thing I most want to see. I want to know what in the world he was thinking, keeping what he knew a secret from my dad for so long, all while continuing to pretend to be this close, caring friend of the family.
“The pastor,” I say to Turk. “Let’s ambush him. I’ll go with you. Go over there and just watch his eyes pop out of his skull when he sees you. I want him to burn.”
Turk shakes his head. “I get it, but no. I don’t think so.”
I’m shocked. Outspoken religious rebel Turk? He’s not going to confront the pastor? I look over at Aisha for support, and she seems game.
Turk takes a drink of water. “Explain this to me. How did you find me? How did all this get started?”
I describe going over to ask the pastor a few questions, and Aisha seeing one of Grandma’s boxes. I tell him what it took to get the box, and how Pastor Logan came so close to catching me in his attic that he nearly sat on my head. My mom looks like she’s going to have a heart attack. My dad laughs.
“So do you want the twelve-step reaction to all this?” Turk asks.
This shuts my dad’s laughing up, and I shake my head. “No thank you, please,” I say, and I cut off a piece of chicken breast and stuff it in my mouth with my fingers.
When no one else says anything, I relent. “Fine, go ahead,” I say.
“We talk about cleaning up our own side of the street. We ask the question, ‘What’s my part in this?’ I cannot change someone else. It isn’t my job, actually, to tell the pastor what he did wrong. I’m happiest if I do the best I can do, and leave the rest to God.”
I stick my finger down my throat dramatically and look at Aisha.
She isn’t laughing. “That’s like me and my dad,” she says. “I can’t make him do the right thing. I just have to take care of me.”
“You got it, dear,” Turk says, putting his arm around her. “That’s it exactly.”
Aisha gives me a gloating look and sticks her tongue out at me.
“Teacher’s pet,” I say. “So I’m supposed to just let God punish him, as if God sits around punishing people for their ways?”
Turk shakes his head. “What business is it of yours whether he’s punished?”
“Well, he should be.”
“So you’re God now?”
I shrug. “I’d be a good one.”
“No doubt,” Turk says. “But maybe for now, you can figure that the pastor is punishing himself. You don’t think he feels a little bit guilty about his role in all this?”
I think about it. The pastor has been taking care of my dad for years. Of course there must be some guilt in there. I’d never thought about that before.
So after dinner, I go over to the pastor’s by myself.
He answers the door in his red-and-white striped pajamas. “Carson,” he says.
“I’m just here to say sorry for stealing that box.”
He sucks in his lips. “I had a feeling you might be responsible for that.”
“It was wrong of me to steal it, and I’m sorry. But the stuff in it belongs to my family, so we’re going to keep it.”
He lowers his gaze to the ground. “Do you know?”
I nod. “My granddad’s lover is next door.” I want the word lover to scald him.
“I’ve prayed about this,” he says. “I’ve prayed and prayed.”
I have so many things I want to yell. The rage is heating my chest from the inside. But Turk said not to. So I don’t.
“I promised your grandmother. It was her dying wish. She did not want your father to have to deal with who his father was.”
It’s like an apology without the apology. Instead of just saying sorry, which I would actually like to hear, all I’m getting is a rationalization.
So I put my trembling hand up. “Nope. Not interested. None of my business.”
I walk away with the pastor still standing there at the open door.
WHEN I WAKE up in the morning, I find my nose b
eing tickled by a bunch of rubbery strands. I sit up, and Aisha is standing there, a proud look on her face.
“Behold, the new, improved, softer Porcupine of Truth!”
I look down. Aisha has replaced the broom bristles with rubber bands that appear to have been cut in half.
I shake my head. “And you did this because —”
“Hey. Porcupine two point oh is a great improvement. Far fewer God-related injuries. Puncture wounds and the like.”
“I do prefer the softer version,” I admit, picking her up and turning her over and over in my hands. “I mean, who likes being attacked by a truth porcupine, after all?”
We take her upstairs to show Turk, who is breakfasting and thrilled with the change, since he had been one of the first to mention his discomfort with our bristly deity, on the plane.
“I like a God that is more approachable. Less prickly,” he says.
“True dat,” Aisha says.
He picks it up and admires her handiwork. “Finally, the rubber meets the God,” he says, and we look at him funny. “It was supposed to be a play on ‘the rubber meets the road.’ Sorry.”
“My grandpa would have had a better one,” I say, and Turk nods.
The Billings Zoo has some animals. Not like a ton, but some.
It also has some damn beautiful paths to walk down, and probably the biggest change, when I go back for the second time, exactly two weeks after the first, is that I notice this.
That, and I have my family around me.
Some of my family can’t be here. My dad, because it would just be too much for him. My mom, because she’d rather be with my dad. But Aisha and Turk are definitely my family now, and I certainly don’t feel close to alone anymore.
“You know how the sika deer got their name?” I say.
“I’m truly afraid to ask,” Turk replies.
Aisha hijacks it. “It was this one deer. A doe. Got totally tired of being around only other deer. Where were the walruses? The goats? She whined and whined until the other deer shunned her, and then she started her own breed: ‘sick-a deer.’ ”
Turk puts his arm around her. “Are you sure you don’t have a little Smith blood in you?”
“If only,” Aisha says, and she half rolls her eyes at me to show me she’s basically kidding, that my people aren’t so great either.
I elbow her in the ribs. “Hey. Anytime you want to decide that you’re straight and take my name, you know where to find me.”
Sometimes we make up stories about the animals as we walk, and sometimes we just look at them. I hate that they’re locked up; I really do. But I am also really glad I get to look at animals, because they make me think about what it means to be an animal. I am one. Sometimes I’m all up in my head, which is a very human place to be. Other times, I’m ruled by my body, and that’s okay too, I guess. I stare at the Siberian tiger and think about how powerful he is, and also how powerful I am. I never knew. I always thought I had zero power in this world. But look where I am, and who I’m with. I have to have at least a little power to change things if I got here with these awesome people.
It’s not like my life is perfect. I mean, my dad. That’s not perfect, obviously. Mom still talks like I’m her patient about 50 percent of the time. This morning she told me that it was important to feel my grief about my dad even now, that there’s grief even now. She’s right, but you know? I’d really rather have a hug. The difference is, this time I said that, and she looked a little annoyed, but she did give me a hug. Progress.
Our path diverges, with one sign pointing toward the bighorn sheep to the right and another toward the Canada lynx to the left. We follow Aisha to the left.
“It’s hard with my dad, because I’m just getting to know him, and what if he dies?” I say. “I don’t know if anyone can quite understand what that’s like.”
Turk stops walking. I turn around and realize that of course he knows what that feels like.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay,” he says. “Your grandfather was an idiot sometimes too.”
We walk in silence some more. I think about my grandfather. Who might have been an idiot, but Turk loved him anyway. So did my dad. So did my grandmother. That makes me feel happy and relieved, because apparently I have idiot tendencies too. It’s a Smith thing, I guess. And it’s okay. More and more these days, I’m realizing that I might be crazy, but I’m loved too. I don’t think I ever really knew that before, but I do now.
We stop for ice cream at this outdoor stand on Broadwater Avenue that Aisha recommends. I get a chocolate peanut butter cone that starts dripping immediately.
“So when should I break it to my mother that I’m flying back to San Francisco with you?” I say to Aisha between frantic Gomer-like licks. “That you and I will drive back?”
Aisha looks at Turk. Turk looks at Aisha. My stomach drops below my shoes.
“So here’s the deal,” Aisha says. “Can I tell him?”
Turk nods.
“So I’m actually going to stay in San Francisco,” she says.
“You are?”
She smiles, a beautiful, warm, happy smile. “I mean, I have no place to live here. And you’re going to go back to New York at some point.”
“But maybe you can come. With me. With us,” I say. “My mom said —”
She shakes her head. “This makes more sense. I can take care of Turk, and then maybe enroll in community college in the fall. Next year, if my grades are good, who knows?”
I feel like my body is going to cave into itself. I don’t want to feel these feelings.
“No, no,” Aisha says, seeing my expression. “It’s a good thing, Carson. We’re family now. Don’t you get it? I’m staying with your grandfather. We already told your folks. Your mom agrees. You can come visit any time you want. Turk will pay. And when you’re done with high school, if you wanna, you can move to San Francisco too. But for now, you have to be with your dad and your mom. Because you have a dad and a mom. Understand?”
I nod slowly. What two seconds ago felt like a kick in the gut is beginning to feel different. Like I can see how Aisha’s life will unfold, and it’s better, so much better than it was.
“Not to mention I could use the help,” Turk says. “My days of grocery shopping need to be over. If Aisha doesn’t show up, I’m about six months from a nursing home. Seriously.”
I simply can’t speak, because I’m so overcome with the emotion of all that’s happened in less than three weeks. Aisha’s life. Totally changed. My life. Totally changed. My parents. Turk. All the lives impacted, and maybe it’s not perfect. Maybe my dad will die soon. Maybe my mom is not the perfect mom. But despite all that, there’s change. Surprising, messy, wonderful change.
“I’ll call you every day,” Aisha says. “This isn’t good-bye, Carson. I mean, it will be, in a few days. But you will never be without me. I’m gonna be there on your phone and on your Skype ’til you’re sick of my ass.”
“Never,” I say. It’s ironic. I could not have been closer to people physically than I was in New York. Sometimes on the train, you’re pushed up against them. And yet I never really felt connected to people until I came West, where there are so many fewer people to connect with.
I guess in some ways, my grandfather and I took the same trip. Neither of us felt connected at the start, and by the end, we did. To me, that’s a huge thing. Because now that my heart is full, I just want my heart to stay full always. Even if it means losing my dad, I’d rather have him in my heart and then miss him than not ever have him in my heart.
Turk has to run to the bathroom. As we sit there, licking our cones, I try to imagine Billings without Aisha. It’s impossible.
“I’m gonna miss the shit out of you,” I say.
Aisha holds her cone away from her, then leans over and hugs me tight with her other arm. I bury my face in her neck, making sure not to douse her with my own cone.
“I’m gonna miss the shit out of y
ou too,” she says.
I keep on hugging her for what feels like a long time, and what’s funny is that it doesn’t feel like a long time, really. It feels just about right. A long, right hug.
“I’ve never had a friend like you,” I say, finally pulling back.
“Black?” she says, raising an eyebrow, and I laugh.
“Exactly. That’s exactly what I meant.”
She smiles that Aisha smile, the one where her whole face gets involved. “I’ve never had a friend like you either. And we’re family now.”
“Yeah. We’re family.”
“In fact,” she says, rubbing her chin, “now that I’m kind of like your grandfather’s husband’s sort of daughter, I guess I’m like, I don’t know, your mom.”
I crack up, and I feel so much joy when she laughs too. Seeing Aisha laugh is like seeing something you only get to see a couple of times in your life. A waterfall or a meteor shower. Except you get to see it all the time if you’re lucky enough to be with her.
“I’m calling you Mommy from now on,” I say.
“Awesome. Imma hold you to that.”
That night, lying on a brand-new air mattress (thanks, Grandpa Turk!), I stare up at the ceiling that I cannot see and think about things.
I think about God. Is there a God? I prayed for help when we were sleeping in the park in Reno, and help came, in the form of an idea to do improv. But who’s to say I wouldn’t have gotten that idea without praying?
But is it possible that all this just happened randomly in the last few weeks, that I randomly met this girl, and we randomly came across this stuff, and we randomly set out on a quest, and by doing so, all our lives were forever changed?
I really don’t know. I don’t know what to think about God. Part of me wants to believe. Part of me has to believe. Part of me cannot believe.
Maybe that’s God, right there. The thing that lets us believe three different things all at once, three ideas in conflict, and yet it feels rational and normal and okay. Maybe that’s not God. Maybe that’s just my brain.
I remember what the meditation lady said in Wyoming. How prayer is like talking to God, and meditation is like listening.
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