“For what?” She frowns over at me.
“For the picture that’ll be stuck to Mom’s fridge for the next thirty years of him with that odious haircut.”
Grayson raises his chubby hand to his head while Maggie scowls. “Lark, I swear to G—” She clamps her mouth shut with obvious effort. Bear saunters in from the direction of their bedroom wearing his royal blue uniform shirt with the Schlumberger logo over the breast pocket.
He eyes me sideways. “Little brother, are you pushing my wife to lose her religion?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Mmm. Those look good, baby.”
I roll onto my back again, trying to muster the will to actually get up. “I’m just mapping out the consequences of her choices.”
Bear frowns at me. “What choices?”
I jab a finger at Grayson’s head. “Beatlemania.”
Bear looks at his son as if he’s seeing his absurd haircut for the first time. He turns to Maggie. “I thought we were going to get his hair cut before pictures?”
“We?” Maggie brandishes the spatula in a way that makes me concerned for my brother’s eyesight. “I leak milk from my boobs every time I hear Lola cry. Do you want that to happen to me at Supercuts?”
Bear’s mouth falls open and he flicks his gaze down to her generous breasts before making eye contact with her again. “N-No. I—”
“You want his hair cut?” she snarls. “You can take him.”
He nods. “Yes. You are right. My love.” As soon as Maggie turns back to her pancakes, Bear tries to shoot lasers out of his eyes at me.
That’s my cue to get up. I fling the blanket off me, and Bear’s eyes bug.
“Jesus, Lark!”
Maggie looks over and shrieks before shielding her eyes with the spatula. “Lark, why?!”
I look down at my boxers.
Oh.
“It’s just a little morning wood. What’s the big deal?”
“Lil’ mownin’ wood,” Grayson echoes, almost to the tune of I’m a Little Teapot.
“GAH!” Maggie screams.
“Grayson!” Bear barks.
“Lil’ mownin’ wood,” Grayson sings again. If nothing else, three-year-olds are great mimics. Musical, too. “Woody mownin’ wood…”
Maggie uncovers her eyes and screeches at her son. “Grayson McCarthy Bienvenue. Stop singing that.” She aims her demon face at me, wielding the spatula like a pitchfork. “And you. Put some pants on!”
Bear grabs her elbows from behind. “Turn around, honey.” He looks at me with a wild mix of distress and hysteria. “Lark, man, close your fly.”
I look down again.
Oh.
Oh shit.
It’s not just a little morning wood. And why the hell did I say little? My boxer fly is gaping open, and nothing about it is little.
I grab the blanket for cover and jump to my feet. “Sorry, Mags. Sorry.”
Snatching my duffel bag off the floor, I head for the bathroom. Grayson follows.
He stands in the entrance, keeping me from shutting the door.
“Hey, buddy, can you give me a minute?”
He eyes me sagely. “You gotta pee-pee in da potty?”
I scratch my jaw. “Yeah.”
“Need my stool?” He points to the plastic step stool next to the toilet.
“Nah, dude,” I say, chuckling. “Just some privacy.” I actually don’t mind pissing in front of him. Bear and I have both done it before. The three of us have peed side by side in the woods by Mom and Dad’s.
Taking a leak outdoors is a male rite of passage.
But given the morning wood song, I’m thinking Maggie wouldn’t necessarily approve at the moment.
“I’ll just shut this for a minute.” I grab the edge of the door and slowly close it, hoping Grayson will take the hint. Aside from being musical mimics, three-year-olds aren’t so good at taking hints. “Can you step back there, buddy?”
My nephew takes two steps back, but since his feet are only like four inches long, his steps are pretty small, and it still feels like I’m about to close the door in his face. “Be right back,” I say when I can still see his face through the narrowing gap.
I shut the door and latch the lock.
“Unca Lawk?” It sounds like Grayson is pressing his mouth right into the door jamb.
“Yeah, buddy?” I lift the toilet seat.
“I gonna get a haiw cut.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I tell him and start to piss.
“Unca Lawk?”
“Yeah, little man?”
“Are you pee-peeing?”
“Um… sure am.”
“I can heaw it.”
It’s really great that Bear and Maggie are letting me stay on the couch, but I need to find a new place. Like today.
So far, my search on Zillow and Rent Lafayette has been a total bust. I want a place close to campus but now that we’re two weeks into the semester, there’s just nothing. No apartments. No rent houses.
“Das a lot of pee-pee, Unca Lark.” Grayson practically shouts it this time, and Bear’s voice carries through the house.
“Boy, get away from that bathroom door.”
I don’t have class until ten this morning. That gives me a good three hours to hunt for a new place.
When I’m dressed and presentable, I step out of the bathroom to find Bear laying places and Maggie carrying her platter of steaming pancakes and jug of syrup to the table.
Okay, there are upsides to crashing here.
“Mmm, Maggie you are my queen,” I tell her.
She smirks her satisfaction as she sets down her creation. “Have as many as you want. There’s more batter.”
Bear forks the top three off the stack and drops them on his plate, but I know which side my pancake is buttered on. I take the next three and lay them on Maggie’s plate. Now her smirk melts into a touched grin.
“Aww,” she coos.
“Least I could do.”
“You see that?” She gives my brother a saccharine smile. “He served me first and said it was the least he could do. What about you, honey?”
Bear gapes with a mouthful of pancake. He chews and swallows, glaring flamethrowers at me. “Margaret, if you’re telling me you want me to start every morning by flashing you my dick and then putting the breakfast you made on your plate, consider it done.”
Her hand is a blur as she smacks his elbow. “Stop. Grayson will hear you.” But she’s cracking up. And then she looks around. “Where is he anyway? Grayson?”
She tosses her napkin on the table and stands. “He’d better not be waking that baby.”
“Look, Mama!”
Maggie turns around and gasps.
Bear and I look up.
Grayson is standing five feet away with a menacingly large pair of scissors in his hand. The fringe that covered his forehead is just… gone. Just a few stubby spikes stick out the top of his head, but the rest is still draped in bowl-cut.
“Drop those scissors right now.”
Grayson obeys at once, and I don’t blame him. Maggie’s ice-cold tone would make me drop a load. Scissors clatter to the floor, and my now-balding nephew pokes out his lower lip and proceeds to cry.
Maggie narrows her eyes at me, and all I can think about is that time I got bit by a water moccasin on the banks of the Bayou Teche. Right before that sucker bit into my calf, he looked at me just like that.
Bear’s wife raises a trembling finger at me. “You. This is your fault.” Then her finger slices the air like a fencing foil as she aims it at my brother. “And your fault. And one of you is going to fix it. Before pictures.”
Bear points his loaded fork at himself. “I have to be at work. We have a safety meeting at eight a.m., and if I’m not there, I can’t go offshore next week.”
Maggie’s head swivels in a way that reminds me of the demented doll from that horror movie franchise that’s been around for like thirty years.
“You,” she seethes, and I expect to see foam leaking from her mouth. “Are taking him to get a haircut and then dropping him off at school.”
“Yes, I am,” I say, nodding.
And then I’m going to find a place—even if it’s a cardboard box—to move into. Today.
I learned something this morning. It’s hard to find a barber shop that’s open before eight a.m. Even the one in Wal-Mart doesn’t open until ten. I have Analysis of Geo Data with Dr. Dixon at ten, and I don’t intend to miss it.
My phone tells me that Pete & Ronnie’s Barber Shop opens at nine, so Grayson and I get there by 8:45.
The old guy who opens up the small barber shop takes one look at Grayson and says, “High and tight?”
“High and tight,” I echo with a nod.
Grayson’s eyes go wide. “Will it hurt?”
“Nope.”
He doesn’t look convinced.
When the barber sets him on top of the booster seat and settles the drape over him, he winces. “Not too tight,” Grayson whimpers.
The gray-haired barber’s chuckle is like a crackling fire. “Not too tight, son.”
It’s a credit to Grayson that he doesn’t shoot out of the chair as soon as the barber touches the buzzing clippers to the back of his head. Instead he just breathes a shaky breath and watches in fascination as his straight brown fringe falls to the floor.
Only then do I take out my phone, snap a few pictures to harass Maggie with later, and get to work checking on rental properties.
No apartments to be found—at least none within five miles of campus.
Two houses. One is a two-bedroom on East 3rd Street. Right next to the Salvation Army Family Thrift Store. The picture of the house shows a huge No Trespassing sign on the front door.
No, thank you.
The next one is a five-bedroom on Girard Park Drive. It has a hot tub and a lap pool. And the rent is about a semester in tuition.
“Maybe if I had twelve roommates,” I mutter to my phone.
Then it hits me. A roommate. Maybe someone near campus is looking for a roommate.
A quick search on Roomies.com is less than encouraging. Too many damn people are looking to rent a room. I thumb past all of those and finally get to the listings of rooms available.
And the third one on the list is a house on St. John Street. Just a half-mile from campus.
The house in the picture looks like it’s seen better days, but the rent is great.
I scroll down, find the contact number and tap it.
I glance up to check on Grayson. He’s making faces at himself in the mirror. The sides of his head are buzzed and the barber is working on the top.
The line rings.
“Hello?” A woman answers. I can hear a loud TV in the background. Cartoons?
“Um… Hi. I’m calling about the room. Is it still available?”
Beep-beep-beep.
I check my phone. Sonofabitch dropped the call.
I punch in her number again. Grayson kicks the barber chair with his heels, making his head bounce around.
“Be still, buddy,” I tell him. “Let the man do his job.”
Grayson stills. The call rings.
“Hi—”
“Hi, sorry about that—”
“You’ve reached Stella Mouton. I’m probably with a client. If you’d like to make an appointment for a cut or color, please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m free… Beep.”
A cut or a color?
“H-Hi…” I stammer. She’s with a client? Not if she works at a salon around here. I know because none of them open until ten. And if she is the rare exception, do her clients watch cartoons at full volume?
I glance back up at Grayson. Then again…
I realize with a jolt the damn voicemail is recording my dead air.
“I… um… I just called about the room, but we got disconnected. I’m a geology student at UL—I’m a senior,” I hurry up and add so she doesn’t think I’m some freshman in the middle of Rush ready to trash her house to impress my future frat brothers. “I’m… kind of in a bind and looking for a place—but it’s nothing bad. My girlfriend and I broke up and… shit, you don’t need to hear that….Um… the name’s Lark. Call me back. Thanks.”
I jab the red circle and contemplate downing the blue cylinder of Barbicide.
“Fuck.”
The barber scowls in profile and Grayson jolts.
“Das a bad wowd, Unca Lawk.”
Shit.
“Yeah, yeah it is, Grayson. I shouldn’t have said it.” Because if Grayson blabs to Maggie, she’s going to roast my balls on a spit. “Sorry, buddy.”
“S’okay, Unca Lawk,” Grayson says to his reflection. “It gonna be okay.”
I try calling Stella Mouton once more before Analysis of Geo Data and once after Geophysics, but the call goes to voicemail both times. I have to meet with two of my classmates from Stratigraphy to work on a group project on depositional sequences, and we stay in a study carrel at Dupre Library for two and a half hours.
It’s after five o’clock by the time I’m walking back to my car at Stokes Hall. I check my phone, and I have a missed call, but it’s from Bear.
Nothing from Stella Mouton.
“Shit.”
I tap Bear’s number, and he answers on the first ring.
“Hey, man. Thanks for calling me back.” I hear the screen door creak behind him, so I’m guessing he just stepped outside. “How’s it going?”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” He sounds like he’s expecting more.
“Yeah. Just leaving campus.”
Silence.
“Where you heading?”
I halt in my tracks. I was heading over to his place, but I’m just starting to pick up the strain in Bear’s voice, and maybe heading over there isn’t such a good idea.
“Everything all right?”
Bear’s sigh is epic.
“Uh oh,” I mutter.
“Yeah… um. Maggie called me crying after she picked up Grayson from school.” Bear clears his throat, and I can almost picture him dragging his hands through his hair in agitation. “She said he doesn’t look like a baby anymore, and she’ll never be able to look at his Pre-K3 pictures without having her heart ripped out.”
I swallow. “Oh.”
“She… she started crying again when I got home just now—” His voice lowers to a squeaky whisper. “Lark, I don’t think it’s gonna stop anytime soon. You know, postpartum hormones and all…”
“Right.” Maggie’s scary when she’s yelling, but it’s also diverting—like listening to a true crime podcast while having your teeth cleaned.
Maggie crying—for any reason—is torture.
And it’s not just for any reason. This one’s pretty much on me.
“Right,” I say again. “So maybe I should find somewhere else to crash tonight?”
“That’d be great,” Bear says in a rush. “No luck on an apartment yet?”
I don’t bother telling him about Roomies.com and Stella Mouton, but I do make a decision. “I’m going to check out a place right now.”
“Oh, cool.” His relief is embarrassing. “Still, you probably won’t be able to move in today. Maybe not even until the first.”
I wrinkle my nose. He has a point. The first is nearly a month from now.
“Mom would probably love to have you home for a couple of—”
“Shut your mouth.”
Bear laughs.
Well, at least he’s laughing. Maggie’s crying. Grayson’s practically bald, and I’m homeless again.
Signing off, I vow to myself that I’ll sleep in my Jeep before going to my parents’ house.
I reach my 2002 Jeep Cherokee. Yeah, it’s seen better days—around the time I was in elementary school—but it runs more than it doesn’t, and it’
s great to take out in the field. My furniture and shit are still in the apartment with Zoe, but the back of the Jeep is piled nearly to the ceiling with stuff I wasn’t about to leave behind—especially in the state Zoe was in the night she threw me out.
I unlock the Jeep and do what I’ve been doing every time I’ve entered it since the break up. I check the floor of the backseat, which is reserved for my specimen collection and perspex cases. I’m not embarrassed to admit I’m a rockhound. Even if my collection of minerals, natural gems, and fossils didn’t have monetary value—which it does—it would still have been the first thing I took from the apartment.
Everything’s as it should be, but I’m ready to get my collection both behind closed doors and under my nose. I think better. I study better. I integrate better when I can see the fluorite sample I picked up in Upham, New Mexico or hold the ammonite fossil from Blanchard Springs in my hand.
Most people have the wrong idea about geology—and about rocks in general. They think the study of the earth and soil and rock formations is boring. But that’s impossible. Minerals tell a story. A slab of shale holds secrets. If you learn how to read them, how to listen to what they are trying to tell you, you can dig into the past and peek into the future.
Before the industrial revolution, population distribution followed agricultural abundance. But since then, population density has shifted toward mineral deposits. Just look at Silicon Valley. And take radon gas. If you’re buying a house in Minnesota, a test kit can predict your chances of developing lung cancer from the radon in your basement.
What’s boring about that?
I just wish my hunk of variscite could tell me where I can find a place to live. But since it can’t, I fire up the Jeep’s engine and head to St. John Street. Even with Johnston Street and University clogged with cars, it takes just minutes.
I spot the house immediately. The three story beast stands out like a vein of copper in a cliffside. I park on the curb and try Stella Mouton’s number again. Just in case.
The call goes to voicemail again. This probably means she’s already rented the room, but why not call me back and tell me so I can get on with my life?
I get out of the Jeep and cross the long front walk. The house is white with gray trim, but it’s long overdue for a paint job. The shutters on the first floor windows are real, but by the look of their rusted hinges, I doubt they’d actually close in the event of a hurricane.
Dream House Page 6