The Serious Kiss

by Mary Hogan

  “Why?”

  “So I can wallpaper my kitchen with it.”

  He laughed, thinking she was joking. That’s what Mom told us when she brought the large industrial roll of wallpaper home. We laughed, figured she was joking, too. A week later, we were eating every family meal in a Friendly’s restaurant dining room. Mom’s explanation: “Diners make me feel happy.” Then she added, “Besides, nobody will see it but us.”

  Who would have thought Zack Nash would be sitting on one of our vinyl chairs at our faux-wood table in our Friendly’s dining nook? It was simply too hideous to imagine.

  “We’re actually just starting construction,” I explained, a trickle of sweat slowly making its way through my hair. “That’s what you heard. The beginning of renovation. The banging part of it. Yeah, the, uh, constructionists won’t start up here for, God, like two weeks or something. That’s what they told us, anyway.”

  Constructinists? Ah, geez.

  Zack just stared.

  “Libby! My Orangina!” Dad called from the living room. At that moment, I loved him more than I could express.

  “Right away, Dad!” I called out. Then I excused myself to the garage to wrestle with the Costco tower.

  Only in the dark, cool dampness of the garage could I begin to breathe again. I shut my eyes, leaned against the door, inhaled deeply, and blew it out. I started to feel calmer, more human. Everything’s going to be okay, I said to myself. Zack probably didn’t even notice that Dad was blotto. Dressed in his robe at four in the afternoon? That could be considered artistic.

  As good luck would have it, I didn’t need to dismantle the Costco tower after all. I was able to wriggle my hand underneath all the piled-up stuff and pull out three Oranginas. Then, to be on the safe side, I pulled out two more just in case my dad or Zack wanted seconds. My heart was actually returning to its normal beat when I pushed through the door and made my way back into the kitchen.

  Pwoosh! The pop top on the beer can sent a fine beer spray into the air. I saw my father’s Adam’s apple bob up and down and heard his swallow as he gulped a mouthful of brew. “Never mind about the soda, Lib.”

  I nearly dropped all five Orangina bottles right there in our Friendly’s kitchen.

  “What are you doing in here, Dad?”

  He responded with a deep, belly burp.

  “We have to study! Zack has been here too long already. We need the table. He has an essay due tomorrow.” I so frantically rattled off all the reasons why my dad had to leave, I didn’t notice he’d begun to cry.

  “I’m gonna miss this dump,” he said, sniffing.

  Zack seemed unfazed by the horror unfolding before our eyes. “My mom felt the same way,” he said, gently, “before our kitchen renovation.”

  “Zack, we have to leave,” I blurted out. “Now. Right now.”

  “Good times . so many good times . ” Dad slapped the palm of his hand on the table so hard Zack, Juan, and I all jumped. “Right here at this very dinner table.”

  “Zack, you’re going to get an ‘F’ in that essay!” I was practically screaming at him. Juan Dog got scared. Yip. Yip.

  “Chill out.” Zack stood up and slung his backpack over his shoulder. My dad tightened the terry cloth belt on his robe, stood up, too, then fell back in his chair.

  “You’re good people, Jackie,” he slurred as his ruddy, flushed face squeezed up into another outbreak of tears.

  Ah, geez.

  Just take me now, God. A single thunderbolt to the head.

  “Where are we going?” Zack asked as I shoved him out the front door.

  “How about Chatsworth Park?” I suggested, my dry mouth smacking.

  “Chatsworth Park? Isn’t that a little far?”

  “Why don’t we just walk for a few minutes,” I said quickly. “We can walk and talk . about your essay.”

  “Okay,” Zack said dubiously.

  Grateful beyond belief, I exhaled. My heart was still racing, but outside the house I felt considerably calmer. Like the stillness after a tornado twists through a trailer park, I felt strangely peaceful though wrecked. Six inches away from the boy that I loved, my emotions were too spent to freak me out.

  “Good, good,” I said. “Let’s walk.”

  So we walked. We passed a 7-Eleven mini mart and a bunch of kids in baggy pants hanging out by the ice machine. We passed a doughnut shop that smelled like vanilla and baked sugar, a dry cleaner’s that reeked of chemicals. It was hot out, but I wasn’t sweating any more. The warmth actually felt good for a change. I exhaled.

  “Writing an essay is like having an argument you win,” I said after we’d walked in silence awhile. “You start off stating how you feel about something or what you want to prove, then you prove it. At the end, you say, ‘See? I told you I was right.’”

  Zack chuckled. I loved it when he chuckled.

  “What is your essay supposed to be about?” I asked.

  “Passion,” he answered, and a spark of electricity shot through my entire body. “We’re supposed to write an essay about something we feel passionate about.”

  Please God, don’t let his essay be about Carrie Taylor.

  “I want to write about pitching,” he said, “but I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Pitching? Like in baseball?”

  “Yeah, like being a pitcher and standing on the mound and knowing the entire game is in your hands. To me, that’s passion.”

  I knew all about that. I saw Zack pitch a game once, last year. Nadine made me go to the inter-school game because she had a crush on the third baseman. I barely noticed any of the players; my eyes were locked on the mound. Zack Nash stood there, in his snug uniform, twirling the baseball in his fingers, hoofing the ground with his cleats, adjusting the bill of his cap, slyly glancing over his shoulder at the base runner. Then he reached high over his head, brought his hands back down to his heart, and catapulted the ball across home plate. It was mesmerising. Yeah, I knew all about the passion of pitching.

  “The pitcher’s mound is the centre of the universe,” he said quietly. “It’s the top of Mount Everest. When you’re up there, there’s an eerie kind of silence. I mean, you can hear the crowd, but they’re sort of background noise, like rain falling or something. What you really hear is the catcher, speaking to you with his hands, his eyes. He knows you, everything about you. He’s concentrated on your every move. He can tell if you’re upset just by the way you grip the ball. He knows how to calm you down. He knows what you’re going to do even before you do it. It’s totally close, that relationship, like best friends. I mean, the way we communicate, the way we know each other, it’s almost like love.”

  I was speechless. I wanted to be a catcher, his catcher. I longed to communicate silently with him, with my hands and my eyes. I wanted to drown out all the background noise and concentrate on his every move.

  “My girlfriend thinks I’m crazy,” Zack said, laughing. “She says baseball is just a dumb game.”

  “That’s because she’s just a dumb blonde.”

  That’s what I wanted to say. But of course I didn’t. The mere mention of his “girlfriend” totally ruined the spiritual moment I was sure Zack and I had just shared. Instead I blurted out, “You don’t need me, Zack.” Then, frantically editing myself I added, “I mean, you don’t need me to help you with your essay. You’ve got it all right there.”

  “Right where?”

  “That stuff you just told me, that’s poetry. That’s passion. That’s writing. Just write it down.”

  He thought for a moment. “Thanks,” he said finally. “I’ll do that.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I waited for more, for him to say, “I never noticed how beautiful you are and how smart. How could I have missed it?” Instead he said, “I’ve gotta go.”

  “Go?”

  “I have an essay to write.”

  I burst into laughter – way too loud for the joke. Zack had that perplexed look on his face ag
ain.

  “Thanks again, Betsy,” he said.

  I didn’t correct him. When Zack Nash called me “Betsy” it sounded like poetry.

  EIGHT

  October was the month from hell at the Madrigal house.

  It was the longest stretch of silence I can remember. It scared everybody. Even Juan Dog didn’t dare interrupt the tension in our home with a bark or a whimper. It was that bad.

  “Libby, please pass the McNuggets,” Mom would say.

  “Libby, when your mother is finished selecting her McNuggets, could you please pass them back to me?” Dad would say.

  “Libby, when your father is finished with the honey-mustard sauce, could you please pass it to this end of the table?”

  “Libby, if your mother isn’t using the barbecue sauce, could you please hand it to me?”

  My arm would reach right and left across the table, and I’d watch my parents not look at me or each other. My mother deliberately chewed her food as if each bite were packed with explosives. Dad washed chunks of food down his throat with mouthfuls of beer. I don’t think he chewed at all. Rif kept his head down and was the last to arrive and the first to leave. This went on for days, almost two weeks, in fact. One night, overcome by the stress of witnessing the disintegration of our parents’ marriage, Dirk burst into tears.

  “My best friend is joining the Boy Scouts and I can’t even go with him,” he wailed. “You need a parent’s permission slip!”

  Mom said, “I’ll give you a permission slip, honey.”

  Dad said, “Libby, if your mother is finished taking her pizza, could you please hand me another slice?”

  Early Saturday morning, I was awakened by the unmistakable sound of a buzz saw coming from the garage. I know what that sound means; I watch crime TV. Petrified, I lay rigid in my bed, my heart thumping out of my chest. My God, he’s done it, I thought. I listened for screams, imagined the worst. I couldn’t even cry for my mom, not yet. The shock was too fresh.

  Rif peered out his bedroom door just as I did. We both looked terrified. Dirk wasn’t there. Had my father taken him, too? Were we next? The blood drained from my face and pooled somewhere in the lower part of my stomach. Rif whispered, “Follow me.” I swallowed, followed, too scared to be left alone. We tiptoed down the hall, toward the hideous, high-pitched whine of the buzz saw. Rif held up his hand to stop me before we reached the door to the garage. Then he asked, “Ready?”

  I nodded, but I wasn’t ready at all. Paralysed by the thought of seeing what I was about to see, I clamped my eyes shut as Rif blasted open the door.

  “Good morning, kids.”

  Whistling and clear-eyed, Dad was cutting segments of chair spindle. Uncle Randall’s chair was upside down on his workbench, porcupined with clamps.

  “Hand me that wood glue, would ya, son?” he asked Dirk.

  Stunning us both, Mom appeared with a steaming cup in her hand. “Coffee, Lot?” she asked.

  “Ah.” He sighed, reaching to hug her. “My angel of mercy.”

  Clearly, they’d worked things out.

  I remember every second of that day, every millisecond. My family seemed to glow around the edges. My dad was my dad again. He was funny, charming, silly. We couldn’t stop smiling. Mom made lemonade, and ham-and-cheese sandwiches from scratch.

  “Just a little snackywacky to keep body and soul together,” she chirped. She served them on a tray in the garage where Dirk was helping Dad fix Uncle Randall’s chair so he could earn a Boy Scout merit badge.

  I brought our old radio out and plugged it into the socket over the workbench. Mom turned to an oldies station and danced with my father when “My Sharona” came on. Even Rif tapped his foot. I felt so happy, I wanted to cry, just burst into tears the way I sometimes do when Oprah does a story on a woman who digs herself up from the depths of despair and finds true love in a soup kitchen. I wanted to kiss every member of my family and hug them hard with my full body the way Oprah hugs her inspirational guests.

  That night, Mom cooked dinner. And I helped.

  “Could you please plug in the George Foreman, Libby?” she asked. I lit up. My brothers and I had pitched in to buy Mom a Lean Mean Grilling Machine a couple of Christmases ago, but she had only used it once. “If only I could throw it in the dishwasher,” she said, by way of lame explanation. “Who has time to hand wash a grill?”

  Happily, I plugged George in and ripped up a head of lettuce for a salad. Romaine, not iceberg. I even made a vinaigrette from scratch. Mom marinated five chicken breasts and told me to pour five glasses of milk.

  “Five?”

  “Daddy’s drinking milk with us tonight,” she said. This time, when she said, “Daddy,” it sounded perfectly right.

  Everything was perfectly right. Mom asked, “Need any help with your Fright Dance costume?”

  I couldn’t believe she even knew about it. Stunned, I stammered, “No,” and Mom walked over to me and encircled me with her arms. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed the top of my head.

  “Everything’s going to be okay, sweetie. You’ll see.”

  In my mother’s fleshy arms, smelling her smell, I felt like a kid again. I remembered a time she took me to a motherdaughter fashion show at a fancy department store in Encino. I wore white gloves and black patent leather shoes. She wore a pink dress that made me think of bubble gum. We ate little sandwiches that had no crusts and watched women parade by us in the most beautiful clothes I’d ever seen. Mom was beautiful, too. As I gazed up at her, I thought, When I grow up, I want to be just like my mom.

  That was when we were two girls in a family of guys. We read Family Circle magazine together and clipped recipes. We went shopping at the mall and ate ice cream cones. That was when Dad drank only one cocktail after work, and Mom ate salads. I was young and things were simple.

  It felt like we were back there again.

  With the grilled chicken breasts and homemade romaine salad on the table, my family held hands in a circle and said grace. Well, Rif, Dirk and I mumbled grace because we’d forgotten the words. At the end, before “Amen,” Dad bowed his head and said, quietly, “Thank you for my family, this food, and the strength to be a better dad.”

  I nearly burst into tears.

  After so long, it felt so . so . normal.

  Then, the police came to the door.

  At first, Mom was actually relieved it wasn’t a bill collector.

  “Does a Richard Madrigal live here?” the uniformed officer asked my parents. Mom’s face abruptly fell to the floor.

  “We call him Rif. My son, my younger son, my other son, couldn’t pronounce ‘Rich’ when he was a baby, and, well, the nickname . ” Mom was babbling.

  “Are you Richard’s parents?”

  “What has he done?” Dad asked.

  Rif leaped up from the dinner table and dashed to his room. I didn’t move a muscle. I wanted to hear everything the cops were saying.

  “Your son has been identified on a surveillance tape in a shoplifting incident.”

  “Shoplifting?”

  “Apparently he took several cartons of cigarettes.”

  “Cigarettes?” Mom’s mouth fell open. “My son doesn’t smoke.”

  Upon hearing that, I stood up and bounded down the hall to get Rif in his room, but he’d already escaped out his bedroom window. I saw sneaker footprints in the dirt of our backyard.

  Winnie, the neighbour’s dog, was barking her guts out.

  Deflated, I plopped down on Rif’s unmade bed. Couldn’t we ever have a family dinner that wasn’t a freak of nature?

  The Chatsworth Police Station looks more like a library than a police station. The low, beige brick buildings are lined up neatly with one another. Law and order, I thought when my dad drove up with all of us in the car.

  “Libby and Dirk, you stay home,” Mom had said earlier that evening after Rif came home and confessed. Well, he didn’t officially confess until Dad swatted him on the head and a cigarette butt shot out l
ike a popped kernel of corn.

  “No way am I staying home,” I’d said.

  “Me, either.” Dirk was scared of going to a real-live police precinct, I could tell. But he was more scared of missing a family outing. They were so rare in our family.

  So, it was about eight that night when the Madrigal family piled into the car and drove to the edge of the San Fernando Valley to the police station to turn Rif in. On the way, of course, we stopped for fast food. No one had been able to eat Mom’s home-cooked meal with Rif’s impending arrest stressing everybody out.

  “You never know what kind of crud they’re going to feed you in jail,” Mom said testily to Rif. Then, to the intercom at the drive-through window, she shouted, “Four Whoppers, four large orders of fries, a chicken sandwich, no bun, four regular Cokes, and one Diet Coke.”

  Some things never change, even when your big brother is a perp.

  In the lobby of the precinct, Dirk and I sat on a bench while my parents disappeared with Rif and a detective. They were gone for about an hour. I have to tell you, it wasn’t as exciting being there as I’d imagined. I spent the first fifteen minutes examining the colour head shots of past and present police chiefs. I bought Dirk another Coke from the vending machine. The rest of the time, I pretty much watched him swing his legs back and forth under the bench. Dirk said, “I sure hope I never get arrested.”

  I shot back, “People don’t just get arrested, you numbskull. They commit a crime and they get caught. If you don’t want to do the time, don’t do the crime.”

  Instantly, I regretted my tone. It wasn’t very sisterly, to say the least. I’d always tried to protect my sensitive little brother from my insensitive family. And here it was me being mean. I reached over and put my arm around Dirk’s shoulder as he hung his head, still swinging his feet.

  “Everything is going to be okay, you know.”

  He nodded unconvincingly.

  “It is,” I said. “I swear.”

  Please God, I silently prayed, Let what I just said be true.

  Finally, my parents emerged from the interesting section of the police station, walking behind Rif. “Community service,” he grumbled, “and counselling.”