We Are Still Tornadoes

by Michael Kun

  And thank you for admitting you think I’m good-looking. It’s mutual. (I don’t mean that I also think that I’m good-looking, but I think you are. And I’ll deny that, too, if you ever tell anyone.)

  I went back and reread “Daddy Issues” after getting your letter. I hope you don’t mind, but I showed it to Jane down the hall, too, and her response was, “That’s fucking amazing.” She helped me not to take it so personally. We all know kids whose parents are divorced, right? And the lyrics are good, Scott. Really good. They’re powerful. (And did I mention that it’s also ridiculous that you got me to do your English homework for four years when you can write something like that?! You are a total scam artist!) Anyway, please don’t throw the song away. You should play it. Maybe just not when I’m around.

  And speaking of rock stars, I finally have something fun to tell you about. My manager at the Pizza Pan also works for the university productions department, and he got me a job as an usher at the Joe Jackson concert last night! It was totally out of the blue. He had someone cancel on him at the last minute, and my training consisted of putting on a blue vest and carrying a flashlight. It’s actually kind of funny how much authority a blue vest and a flashlight will give you. My job was to remind people not to dance in the aisles, which was easy to achieve because I was paired up with a football player.

  Anyway, I don’t know much about Joe Jackson—I know he did that song called “Is She Really Going Out with Him?” but that’s about it. (And I only know that because you would sing it whenever you saw me with Todd. Always Mr. Subtle.) Anyway, everyone was really psyched to have a great time. And then Joe Jackson came onstage and basically started playing a piano recital. His first song was—and I kid you not—about cancer. Yes, cancer. The chorus went, “Everything gives you cancer.” He kept repeating that over and over again. “Everything. Everything gives you cancer. Everything.” You get the point. And it was not up-tempo. Not at all. Talk about a buzzkill! People started walking around, talking and chatting, anything to escape the dismal cancer song. And then Joe Jackson STOPPED. He stopped playing and told the audience to pay attention. Excuse me? You come to a college campus and are a complete downer and then call the audience rude? It did eventually get better—but, man, that was a terrible start to a concert. I kept thinking, “Remember to tell Scott not to sing about cancer, and not to yell at the crowd, and he’ll be a lot more fun than Joe Jackson.”

  So don’t sing about cancer, okay? But please do play “Daddy Issues.” I am so sorry that I’ll miss your big concert. I would love to be there to support you. I know you guys will be GREAT, and I can’t wait to hear all about it. And you have to tell me about everyone from high school and who hooked up or got drunk or thinks they are super cool now that they’re in college, or whatever. I know it will be a hugely busy weekend for you with the party and the after-Thanksgiving sales. I’ll call you from my aunt’s house. Don’t leave out any details!

  Love,

  Cath

  P.S. While you shouldn’t sing about cancer, you might want to think about hepatitis. If you rhyme it with “encephalitis,” and throw in a dose of syphilis, that might be a Top 10 hit.

  P.P.S. Be cool when you see Samantha, okay?

  P.P.P.S. I would’ve cried, too, you moron. And I would have loved every second of it.

  * * *

  AGEE’S MEN’S CLOTHING

  Where Men and Boys Shop

  EAST BLOOMFIELD, MARYLAND

  * * *

  November 24, 1982

  Cath—

  The song is retired. Gone. Good-bye. Adios. However you say “good-bye” in French. It’s done. I’m already working on some new lyrics for it.

  Case closed.

  We’re going to mostly play cover songs at the party anyway. We have some great stuff lined up—everything from the Beatles to Bruce Springsteen to the Cars. We may play that “Samantha Drew” song, though. I took your advice and changed the name to “Jeanie Blue” so Samantha won’t think I’ve been sitting at home all this time just thinking about her. And I’m not doing that. Anymore. As far as you know. (In fact, I have a great deal of evidence to prove that I’m not spending all my time thinking about her, and that I’m spending WAY too much of my time swapping letters with some other girl at Wake Forest.)

  Have a great Thanksgiving with your mom and your aunt. Give me a call when you get a chance. Just not during the football game, okay? And not when we’re playing at the party. And not Friday, Saturday, or Sunday when I’m at the store.

  Scott

  P.S. Hey, how’s Dorothy doing?

  November 25, 1982

  Dear Scott,

  It’s Thanksgiving night. I didn’t get another letter from you before we drove here, and your phone has been busy every time I’ve tried to call.

  I hope you and your family had a nice Thanksgiving. And I hope the party went really well last night. I especially hope that everyone loved your “Daddy Issues” song.

  This time at my aunt’s house has been so hard. My mom looks about 10 years older than she did just a few months ago. Somehow she’s both gaunt and puffy at the same time, if you can imagine that. It’s like her face is a different shape or something. And she’s trying so hard. Everyone is trying so hard. To be happy. To be cheerful. To be thankful. For something. Anything. It all feels fake and forced.

  So I basically shut down. At dinner, I couldn’t bring myself to speak. To add to the awkwardness. It was all I could do NOT to speak. Not to say the things I really wanted to say. Like—

  “My dad’s supposed to be at the head of the table.”

  “You’re not supposed to carve the turkey in the kitchen. You’re supposed to make a big show of carving it at the table. My dad is supposed to carve the turkey. At the head of the table. And make the plates. And he knows not to put gravy on my stuffing. Only on my potatoes. Why did you put gravy on my stuffing?”

  “My mother doesn’t drink vodka at the table.”

  “This turkey is cold. And dry. But Plum likes it.”

  “No, it’s not about time for ‘another round.’”

  “Stop asking if I want MORE. You are supposed to know what I need and say ‘Just another smidge to even things out.’”

  “Do not put that on my plate.”

  “Plum is going to have stomachache.”

  “Stop laughing like that. It’s not funny. Nothing you are saying is funny.”

  “Dear God, please make them stop.”

  “My family doesn’t act like this.”

  “We don’t get drunk on Thanksgiving.”

  “We don’t go from cackling to crying before the dessert plates are cleared.”

  “We don’t get tucked into bed at 5 in the afternoon.”

  “We don’t wake up and pretend that nothing happened.”

  “My family does not do these things.”

  Love,

  Cath

  * * *

  AGEE’S MEN’S CLOTHING

  Where Men and Boys Shop

  EAST BLOOMFIELD, MARYLAND

  * * *

  November 29, 1982

  Cath,

  Sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk at all over Thanksgiving weekend. My mom said you called while I was at work on Friday and that she had a nice talk with you.

  We played at the party on Wednesday night. It was a disaster. Oh, we sounded great. It’s just that no one wanted to listen to us. Everyone was too busy talking and catching up. It was like we weren’t even there. And Samantha showed up with her college boyfriend. She didn’t say a word to me. Seriously, not a word. She just sort of nodded at me while I was singing, then turned her back on us for the entire night. I dated her for more than a year, and all I got was a head nod. The hell with her. And I’m glad I changed the name in that song. You were right, she doesn’t deserve to have a song written about her.

  Thanksgiving Day was fine. I won’t bore you with the details—turkey, stuffing, my dad falling asleep on the couch watching the foot
ball game. Nothing special.

  Then I had to work 12-hour shifts on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I’ve never seen the store so busy, and I was wiped out by the time we got home Sunday night. The stuff that we put on sale is all the stuff from the summer and fall that we hadn’t sold yet, so we were just happy to get it out of the store, but you’d think we were giving away free money all weekend. There wasn’t a moment when I wasn’t helping at least one customer. It was crazy, just crazy, but kind of exciting. And my dad couldn’t stop smiling. On the drive home Sunday night, he slipped me a hundred-dollar bill and said, “Don’t tell your mother.” As if my mother would care. Anyway, I am now a very rich man. I have a hundred-dollar bill in my wallet. It has a picture of Benjamin Franklin on it, if you don’t believe me. He was the President once, I believe. Or maybe he was the King of England.

  Okay, I don’t want this to be weird, but do you know what’s going on with Dorothy? Did she go home for Thanksgiving? I tried to call her to wish her a happy Thanksgiving, but some girl in your dorm said she’d left already for the holiday. Please tell her I tried to call, okay?

  On a different note, a lot of people asked about you over the weekend, and everybody says hello. I might have told a few of them that you dropped out of college to join the rodeo. And a few of them might have thought I was being serious. So next time you come home, it would be great if you could arrive on a horse. And please wear chaps. Let me know if you need help ordering a pair.

  Let’s talk soon.

  Scott

  P.S. If I ever mention Samantha again, I want you to come home and hit me over the head with something heavy. An anvil should work, if you happen to have one. If not, I think Acme Products sells them. At least that’s where the Coyote always seems to go to purchase his anvils in the Road Runner cartoons.

  P.P.S. I don’t want to sound like a narc, but your dad stopped by your house on Thanksgiving Day with his pregnant skank of a secretary and took the big TV set that you had in your living room. We watched him from the living room window while he was sneaking around. What a douche. Someone should write a song about him.

  P.P.P.S. I’m joking. About the song, not about the TV. Or about your dad being a super-douche.

  WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY

  November 29, 1982

  Dear Scott,

  It’s Monday, and I’m back at school. I’m sorry we never got a chance to talk over Thanksgiving weekend. It was great to talk to your mom, though. I really missed coming over on Thanksgiving morning and helping her slice the apples for her pies. She’s such a sweet lady.

  I wanted to write again because my last letter was such a downer. I’m sorry about that. It was a hard day, but things got much better after that. The weather was perfect and I went for some long runs with Plum. (Did I mention that I love that dog?) We braved the crowds and went to the mall yesterday, which was wild. I thought about you and your dad stuck at the store all weekend. I hope it went well. My mother can work a shopping mall like nobody’s business. She has it down to a science. Her sister is equally impressive. Together, they are a retail force to be reckoned with, let me tell you.

  And we did some of my favorite mom’s-side-of-the-family stuff. We sat by the fire and played backgammon and cribbage and hearts. We found an old jigsaw puzzle and my mom and her sister sang Tom Jones songs. (“What’s new, pussycat? Whoa, whoa, whoa.”) It was actually pretty fun. But when it was my turn to sing, the only song I could think of was that Joe Jackson song about cancer. I’m not kidding. And the harder I tried to think of another song, the only song I could think about was the cancer song. And then I couldn’t stop myself from singing it. Yikes! Fortunately, everyone just thought I was trying to be funny, and I ended up telling them about what happened at the concert, and before you knew it, everyone was swapping funny stories about the things that have happened at concerts they went to. It was great!

  My mom was right to bring us there. Thanksgiving was hard, but it would have been much worse at home. After dominating the household in backgammon—I rock!—I almost felt ready to drive back to school with my dad on Sunday. But I was wrong about that. In a word, it was brutal. Or perhaps I should say that it had its ups and downs. You decide.

  First, my aunt insisted on fixing me a big Sunday morning breakfast. (Corned beef hash and a fried egg, in case you’re keeping track.) My dad showed up right as I was finishing, and my aunt said to me, “You just sit right there.” She opened the door, let the dog out, told my dad that I’ll be out as soon as I finish my breakfast, and slammed the door in his face. I could see him through the picture window as Plum gave him a complete proctological exam and rubbed blond fur all over my dad’s pants. (Have I mentioned that I love that dog?) Plum trailed him to the car and started barking up a storm. And then I saw it. It’s a new car. It’s a big, black Mercedes-Benz. My mom is going to lose her mind! She’s a nervous wreck about money, and he buys himself a Mercedes? I ran upstairs to hug her good-bye so she wouldn’t look out the window, and then I went outside. My dad gave me a hug like nothing was wrong and gave me that “little princess” nonsense again, then took my bag to the car. The dog was still going crazy, mostly on the passenger side of the car, and then I saw what looked like a big fluffy cat in the car. Only it wasn’t a cat. It was the Slutty Secretary with the biggest hairdo you’ve ever seen! I couldn’t believe it. I was not ready for that. I was really not ready for that.

  She said, “Cath-LEEN, it’s so nice to see you again!”

  My dad said, “No no, sweetie, her name is Catherine.”

  She said, “I’m so silly!”

  My brain said, “I think you mean ‘stupid.’ You’re so stupid.”

  All the while, Plum was still barking, and my dad was trying to get the car in gear. (Did I mention it’s a stick shift? He doesn’t even know how to drive a stick shift!) He finally got it into reverse and popped the clutch so hard that I flew forward and smashed my nose on the back of the seat.

  He laughed and said, “And we’re off!”

  She said, “Now, honey, don’t bleed on the seat. It’s real leather.”

  That’s when I realized my nose was bleeding, not a lot, just a little. I tipped my head back and felt the blood drip down my throat. It was sort of a relief to have to breathe through my mouth because I think she put on her perfume with a ladle. Or a fire hose.

  And then she started touching him. She was trying to brush the dog fur off his shiny black pants. (There’s no way he bought them at your dad’s store. They’re way too tacky.) She was turned sideways in her seat and was swatting at his pants and saying stupid things like “That’s right,” or “Yes, indeedy,” or “You got that right, buster!” while she stroked his leg or tapped him on the shoulder. Tap tap tap.

  But nothing he was saying was right, and he was definitely not driving right as we went herkety-jerkety up the mountain.

  He said, “I want us all to be friends.”

  My brain said, “You’re my dad. You’re not my friend. And she’s definitely not my friend.”

  He said, “I know it’s hard, but you’re old enough to handle it.”

  My brain said, “Old enough? My mother’s almost 50 and she’s not even old enough to handle this. Have you seen her lately, by the way? You know, your WIFE.”

  He said, “Besides, you always wanted a little brother or sister!”

  My brain said, “You talked me out of that, remember? You told me I was your princess. I was the only princess you needed.”

  He said, “Blah blah blah” about “financial arrangements” and “settlements” and “your mother really doesn’t need a lawyer” and a bunch of accounting stuff that I just couldn’t follow because my brain was saying, “Jesus Christ, lady, would you stop touching him, already?”

  I was breathing through my nose again and the perfume was killing me, so I said, “Could you please open the window?”

  She tapped him (again!) and mouthed, “My hair.”

  So he wouldn’t open the window ev
en though, clearly, she could ride the whole way home with her head stuck out of the window and nothing would put a dent in that bird’s nest.

  And then, for some reason, my dad started talking about their “relationship.” He said that “Whew, it just snuck up on us and well, unfortunately, we fell in love.”

  She said, “Yep, we fell in love.” Stroke stroke stroke.

  My brain said, “I don’t think ‘unfortunately’ is the right word there.”

  He said, “Blah blah blah, blah blah, blah blah.”

  And I kept thinking, “Unfortunately? Really?”

  He was still struggling with the car, trying to find the right gear for going down the mountain. He was coasting and then popping the clutch, and the engine was screaming and she decided it was a good time to talk about food.

  She said, “Do they feed you anything at that school of yours? You’re kind of skinny. I hope you’re not paying for a big meal plan. Ha ha ha!”

  I said, “I’m skinny because I run.”

  My brain added, “And because I can’t eat thinking about you sleeping with my dad.” [It’s possible that my brain may have concluded with a nasty insult, something along the lines of “you stupid slut-faced bitch,” but I can’t swear by it, because I started crying and things went a little sideways at that point.]

  The crying made my nose bleed again, and I tried to tip my head back, but between the crying and the perfume and car jerking along, well, I threw up. Yep. I vomited all over the backseat of my dad’s new Mercedes-Benz.

  He said, “Oh, Catherine.”

  I said, “Whew. Unfortunately, that just snuck up on me.”

  We had to pull over and try to clean up the mess using one of the sweatshirts that was in my bag. We had to keep the windows open the rest of the drive, and we didn’t talk at all. Needless to say, he didn’t give me a kiss good-bye when we arrived at school. I just mumbled something about needing to start studying for finals and walked away. And to tell you the truth, I’m a bit worried that my head is not in a “final exams” type of place right now.