“Split pea,” she says carefully. “I think you’ll like—”
“Mom, can you pass the salad?” I interrupt, pointing to the big glass bowl of spring mix. “And the balsamic?”
My dad looks at the table. “It’s right in front of me,” he says. “I’ll do it.”
“That’s okay,” my mom says quickly, knocking the salt-shaker over. “I’ve got it.” She reaches over my dad. Her sleeve is precariously close to the candle, with its orangey-yellow fire tongue.
“Judy,” he says sharply. He turns to her in his wheelchair, and the napkin tucked into his shirt falls to his lap. “You don’t let me do anything.” His eyes flash like they used to when he’d catch me sneaking out of bed at night. The anger would pass quickly, and he’d let me watch TV with him, or he’d tuck me back in with his big yellow flashlight. I wish the monsters I have now were more like the ones that dissolved in his light. “You don’t let me do anything at all,” he repeats.
“What?” My mom pauses with the salad bowl in her hands. “Of course I let you do things.”
“Then let me have it.”
He reaches his hands out and looks down at them as if he’s just noticed how they shake. It’s not a caffeine shake or a muscle-exhaustion shake; it’s a violent trembling by a brain with no regard for how a hand needs to function. He continues to stare at them, and I wonder what he’s telling his brain to get them to steady themselves. I wonder if he sounds angry or sad or patient.
“I’m already holding it,” my mom is saying. “I’ll just give it to Cham myself, since I’m here.”
“No,” my dad says firmly.
“You know what,” I pipe up, reaching for the bread basket placed neutrally to my left. “I don’t really want salad. Spring mix is kind of a hoax. No offense, Mom.”
Relief washes over her face, and she sets it down quickly on the tablecloth. A tomato gets jostled around, but otherwise order is restored. She’s placing her plaid napkin on her lap when my dad clears his throat.
“Please pass me the salad, then.” His hands are shaking more the longer he holds them out.
As my mom extends the bowl to him, I keep thinking about that elephant in the room. Either we are hunting it, or it is hunting us, and I don’t know how long we can coexist.
“Thank you,” he says when the bowl finishes its journey across the table. His knuckles are white and it wobbles a bit. Just when I realize I haven’t been breathing, it settles into his palms. “There,” he says. “Now, did you want this, Cham?”
“Yeah, sure,” I say carefully. “Maybe if I just—”
The bowl slips from his fingers and falls onto the ceramic dish, sending salad and glass and blue pieces over the table and floor.
“Dammit!” he yells, pushing back from the table. “Dammit,” he says again, and his voice breaks. I bite my lip until I taste blood, and the iron nauseates me. He throws his napkin at the table and it catches the edge, then falls to the floor.
“Get me out of this chair, get me out of this sweater.” He rocks back and forth, but the wheelchair is locked and doesn’t budge. “I want to get out of everything. I’m sick of being sick and what it does to you girls, I can’t take care of you, I’m useless and a burden and—”
He’s crying. I’ve never seen my dad cry. His face has new formations. It loosens a rock and triggers an avalanche of sadness in me. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. My mom jumps up to help him with his sweater and knocks her chair over. Her face freezes in a wince.
“Don’t help me!” my dad hollers, squirming away from her hands, which are reaching toward his shoulders. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Just let me get to my room.”
He struggles to undo the brakes on the wheelchair, then pushes back, but nothing happens. “It’s caught on the rug,” he says, looking down at the red and navy-blue designs. “Dammit, will you help me with this—”
My mom is already kneeling on the ground as he rocks back and forth in the chair, never finishing his sentence. Maybe he was going to end it with rug or chair, or maybe he didn’t intend to finish it at all. Maybe the things we need the most help with can’t be articulated, because to say them would give them more power than they already have over us.
“Can I do something, Dad?” I push my chair back and walk toward him tentatively as my mom pushes his chair from behind.
He shakes his head and looks down at his shoes. They’re brown with Velcro straps because last year was the last year of shoelaces. “I’m fine, I’m sorry to—I mean, I’m sorry, I’m just sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s okay. Salad is a stupid food anyway.” I open the sliding door for them. The hallway is peaceful except for the rubber wheels dragging over the wooden floorboards. My mom pushes the bedroom door open. “Give us a minute,” she says.
Back in the dining room with a garbage bag from under the sink, I pick glass and lettuce off the floor. Just a few more months until I can get out of here.
The doorbell rings and I walk toward the front door quickly, relieved that one of the health aides is here to get my dad ready for bed. It used to be weird having all these strangers in our house, back when it first became too much for my mom to take care of him and work full-time. Now my dad likes the company, and it’s good for all of us to have someone to act like everything is okay, even though it’s not actually okay.
I click the latch open, and my heart falls from a very tall building in my body. Brendan’s grinning on my doorstep.
Like the doorstep of my house.
6
Days ’til prom: Still 83
I SHIFT BACK AND FORTH UNDER THE PORCH LIGHT, WHICH IS threatening to give me second-degree burns. “Uh, what are you doing here?” I ask Brendan.
“Oh, sorry, Cham, I must have the wrong house. I’m a Beth Israel volun-cheer.” He sets his container of hot drinks down on the porch and checks his phone.
“Well, good luck finding—”
“Nope, this is the right one.” He picks up the drinks with a little tap dance that sloshes cocoa out the holes in the lids.
“You must be the volunteer with the hospital,” my mom says, coming up behind me. “I’m sorry, I forgot you were coming today. Come on in. My husband’s just getting to his room.”
I close the door behind Brendan. My chest is full of horses. They’re trampling me in their race to keep these people and places separate. Brendan comes from the world of things happening, and this is the world of things I can’t believe are happening. And yet here he is, holding out his hot drinks, and it’s their steam that’s crossing over first, from that world into this.
Dear Universe,
Wanted: A giant claw to come down and pluck Brendan from my house because he is an intruder from my other world, and home is my other other world, which is only safe for me, my family, and carpenter ants, which are like family, given that they eat all our food.
As we walk down the hall, my anger toward my mom rises. “I go to school with Brendan,” I hiss, as if she hired him specifically to embarrass me. Seeing as you can’t hire a volunteer, you probably can’t fire one either. She shoots me a death look.
“Remind me about this program, Brendan,” my mom calls over her shoulder.
“It’s just to follow up with anyone who’s had major surgery in the last year,” he says, no singing, thank god. “Your husband had his knee done a few months ago?”
“Yeah,” my mom says. “He hates hospitals, but we got him there for that.”
She continues to lead him down the hallway of my awkward years, and I follow.
“Is that you?” Brendan laughs, pointing to the picture on the wall with my worst orthodontia situation.
“Shut up,” I grumble. The closer we get to my dad’s door, the more sick to my stomach I feel.
“Mr. Myles?” Brendan says as we step into the warmth of my dad’s room. He likes the heat turned up to sauna levels, which makes the pee smell more noticeable, but I guess one polite thing the disease does is dull the
sense of smell. “I’m here with Beth Israel Volun-cheers. We tell jokes and deliver beverages.” His face brightens. “Oh, hey there. I remember seeing you a few months ago.” He looks between me and my dad. “I didn’t know this was your dad!”
I cross my arms and nod, my ears feeling very hot, probably because of the thermostat setting and nothing else. I watch Brendan’s face and wait for him to laugh or say something or I don’t know what exactly.
“How are you feeling?” Brendan looks at my dad earnestly. He makes direct eye contact with him and uses his normal voice, unlike some of the aides who get cheerful and animated in a nauseating way, like Dad’s a kid or something.
“I feel fine,” my dad says sternly. He rolls up his pant leg and shows Brendan the scar. “I’m recovering pretty well, just surgery on my knee from an old motorcycle accident.” The muscles of his face tighten into a smile. “But I could always use something to laugh about.”
“Here to serve,” Brendan says. My dad presses the button on the bed, and it sits him upright slowly. Brendan hands him one of the cups of cocoa, but then sets it on the table that’s attached to the bed as he realizes Dad won’t be able to hold it.
“Cham and I go to the same school,” Brendan offers. “We have English class together, but it’s more of a think-deeply-about-your-life course because our teacher likes philosophy.”
“Oh.” My dad frowns. “In my riding days, I tried to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but it put me to sleep.”
Brendan smiles. “Yeah, it’s not something I’m always in the mood for. We talk a lot about life and death and—”
“Actually, Brendan,” I interrupt, “I need to ask you something about the homework. Can you come here for a sec, and then you can get back to your cheering?”
“Er—” he says. I pull him into the hall.
“Look, I don’t know what a volun-cheer is, but you need to go.”
“Uh, I can’t really—” he says tentatively, and I sigh. I didn’t really expect him to leave.
“Fine, but please don’t mention this at school.” I look back at the closed door, then think better of it. “Let’s go to the kitchen, okay?”
“I wouldn’t bring up your dad’s patella at—”
“Not the knee stuff. It’s the other stuff,” I say as I walk down the hall and close the sliding door behind us.
In the kitchen Brendan leans on the counter. “I’m confused.”
“Just don’t tell anyone at school he’s sick. He was diagnosed a few years ago, but he’d rather think it’s brain damage from this motorcycle accident and, yeah, we just go with it.”
Brendan looks up at me with wide brown eyes. “Wow, I’m sorry. That must be so awful for him.” I feel a jab of guilt. I hardly ever think about what it’s like for him.
“Is it Parkinson’s?” he asks, and the word hits me with all of its letters. Parkinson’s is the Voldemort of our household. Beyond being the disease-that-must-not-be-named, it is the disease-that-we-shall-not-acknowledge-exists.
I kind of nod and kind of shake my head, hoping he’ll get that I mean yes. He grimaces. “I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do to help—”
“It’s fine, thanks.” I jerk my thumb toward the steak knives that are all perky and upright in their wooden holder. “Just like if you tell anyone I’ll kill you.” It’s meant to be a joke but it comes out a little serial-killerish.
“Listen, Cham,” he says gently. “My brother was really sick for a while. And it sucked. And I was really lonely ’cause I didn’t tell anyone about it. If you want to talk—”
“Thanks,” I say, “but I should go.” In the quiet kitchen something passes between us. I don’t know what it is, but I feel it as it goes. It’s as big as a bus and as quiet as the space between songs.
“Well, I should go back in there.” Brendan turns, his tutu brushing against the cabinets, then spots a picture on the wall. He laughs. “That can’t be you.”
“Nope, it’s not.” I cover the photograph of myself ass-naked at the beach with a diaper on my head. Baby’s first nudie. “Gotta go, bye.”
I head for the front door with my eyes down.
“See you, Cham,” Brendan calls, and he disappears down the hall. I don’t know if Brendan can cheer up my dad, but maybe he can distract him, which is the next-best thing.
Once I have my sneakers on, I text Gene.
going for a run wanna join? C
G yeah! meet at the usual?
be there in 10 C
Outside there are old patches of ice and snow as winter lingers before it goes. With my foot crossed above my knee I bend toward the frozen ground. Space opens in my hip as I stretch one side, then the other, one hamstring, then the other. By the time I take off running, there’s enough space in my body to hold me. I pick up the pace. It’s as if I’m running out of one world and into another. Soon I’ll enter the realm where Gene and I count how many people got mega-wasted at his party, and the only sickness will be the drunk kind that fills bathtubs with throw-up. I will kiss Gene and he will talk about his last track meet that’s coming up in a few weeks and maybe I’ll hint about things like prom and it’ll just be us and our hearts and our lungs.
Dear Universe,
I like cold nights we disappear into.
I like when our shadows touch.
I like the metallic taste in my mouth from his mouth from his lungs.
I like Elvis songs playing in my head as I move.
I like what his spandex hints at.
I like everyone tucked in their houses and us escaping toward each other.
I like my heart taking up the drums.
I like procrastinating.
Seriously, I like it so much I put off procrastinating.
I like college essays with incomplete endings.
I like imagining us dancing into freedom on prom night.
I like you.
Clap once if you like me too.
7
Days ’til prom: 65
EVERY SO OFTEN I GET A PING OF EXCITEMENT WHEN I LEAVE the house for school in the morning. I walk up the street, avoiding December’s ice patches that are continuing their midlife crisis into February, and I’m happy about catching the bus. Obviously, I don’t like school. I’m not in second grade. But as annoying as the rules (and the teachers who just love catching us breaking those rules) are, school is exactly what I need sometimes. There are so many lives going on all around me in the crowded hallways and the deafening cafeteria, and I’m just another girl with a plaid skirt and a backpack on. At home I’m my parents’ daughter, and who we are is as much a part of the house as the furniture is.
It gets claustrophobic. My mom decides to embark on a special cleaning project of the cleaning products. My dad puts the milk back in the oven. At school I’m free of all that as I walk past Mr. Garcia’s office, with the countdown to graduation and the vending machine with the condoms that wave as I pass, as if to say, Look at how intact your virginity is! At school it’s nice to be no one specific, just talking about prom and working on my Spanish so that when I arrive in Nicaragua, I can say a little bit more than Me llamo Cham. Unfortunately, the ping of excitement doesn’t usually last the whole school day, or even through homeroom. One opening of my in-box, and the ping often turns to a thud of Oh, shit.
E-mail received at seven o’clock on Tuesday morning but not read until this morning because it’s impossible to find a good secretary these days:
Hi, Cham,
Just a reminder that your college essay is due Friday. Looking forward to reading it!
Thanks,
Evelyn
Dear Universe,
In light of this recent e-mail, could you please send me a celestial Uber before last period? Gotta leave the world real quick. Do me this solid, and I will not make any more desperate requests for Gene to ask me to prom in such a cute way that kittens everywhere shit their pants. I will even write my college essay. Or try to.
; “How is everyone doing?” Evelyn asks when last period is upon us. (The celestial Uber is decidedly not coming.)
“Good,” a few people say throughout the room. It’s unnecessarily hot in here. I look over at Abigail, who’s fanning her face as she takes notes on her iPad.
“She hasn’t even said anything yet,” I whisper, and pull my long frizzy hair over my face like a curtain with secrets behind it.
Abigail tucks her short hair behind her ear and rolls her eyes at me. “Doesn’t mean I don’t have notes.”
“Thank you for turning your essays and book projects in,” Evelyn says, avoiding eye contact with me. Shit.
“I’m hoping to have them graded by next week. If you haven’t turned yours in, please do ASAP so I don’t have to spend the weekend grading. I do have an outside life, you know.” She smiles at us. “In the meantime, we’re going to focus on philosophy. Let’s get into some dialogue and try this again with more energy: How is everyone doing?”
I cough. It’s sad when such low enthusiasm is so evenly distributed throughout a room. I look down at my fingernails and wish they felt more. Evelyn paces in front of her desk. Then her eyes light up as she points to the back of the room. “Yes, Brendan?”
Heads turn. Brendan’s tie has a gravy stain on it, proof that the cafeteria wasn’t lying about its online menu: It was, in fact, Thanksgiving Thursday. Again. On Friday. “I feel a little blasé about life,” Brendan says with his cheek smooshed into his hand. He drags out blasé so it’s like blaahhhh-zay.
“What does that mean?” Doug asks, then looks over at me with an eyebrow raised. I shrug in a cool way because it’s very important that Doug likes me, understands how extraordinary I am, tells Gene I deserve a prom ask-cute, etc.
“Blasé means ‘over it,’” Josie calls out before Abigail can get her hand up. Abigail frowns at the split ends in her hair, which she always does when she’s annoyed. There haven’t been any updates on valedictorian.
Dear Universe Page 6
