Apartment 1986

by Lisa Papademetriou

  “They have some.” I point.

  “I mean normal potato salad.” He reads the description. “Who the hell wants tarragon in their potato salad?” He puts a hand to his forehead, like the potato salad has just made him completely exhausted. “And why does the closest grocery store have to be so expensive?”

  “Because it’s Whole Foods?”

  He sighs. “It’s still cheaper than eating out, I guess.”

  “We’ll take half a pound of this,” I tell the guy, pointing to the potato salad, and then I turn to my dad. “It’s probably good. I mean, it’s potatoes.”

  “Okay.”

  “And we’ll just get a bag of lettuce and throw dressing on it.”

  “Okay.”

  “And maybe some fruit for, like, dessert. Desmond likes cherries. They have some.”

  “Okay.”

  I just take charge of the shopping trip and gather everything into the basket and my dad kind of trails around behind me and it’s a little depressing, to tell you the truth. So I am standing there in the produce aisle, trying to find a positive reframe while I grab the cherries, but my dad spots a Special of the Week, so we get grapes instead and head to the checkout line.

  There is a rack of magazines beside us. A very minimalist living room is on the cover of Conscious Furbishings, and my heart starts thumping madly. “Isn’t it great how 1980s stuff is coming back?”

  My dad looks at the magazine. “I think that style is more 1950s.”

  “But people really like 1980s stuff.”

  “Oh.”

  “Like Smurf collections are really in right now.”

  “Hm,” Dad says. He takes out his wallet and pays. Then we grab our bags and walk out of Whole Paycheck, and up Lexington Avenue. “Is there something you want to talk to me about, Callie?”

  “Well . . . I just. Remember Grandma Hildy’s friend Mr. Johnson?”

  Dad’s face is blank for a moment, and then he nods.

  “I kind of went by his apartment today, and it was . . .” I’m trying to think of the right words. “Well, it was weird.”

  Dad’s eyebrows shoot up, and he looks a little horrified.

  “Nothing bad happened!” I say quickly. “I didn’t even go inside. I was just looking for Grandma Hildy, and she was there—it’s just . . . like I said, it was a little weird.”

  My dad tips his head a little, but does not say anything.

  “It’s—well, the whole place is very 1980s.”

  “I thought you said that was in fashion.”

  “Um . . . well, it’s kind of . . . It’s just got an almost museum-like vibe? Like the Richmond Room?”

  Dad looks blank.

  “In the American wing?”

  More blankness.

  “At the Met. Only, instead of the 1800s, it’s, like, the 1980s. All the . . . stuff . . . is from then.”

  A little frown wriggled on my dad’s lips. “So—”

  “I don’t know. It just seemed weird.”

  “And her friend—what’s his name?”

  “Earl Johnson.”

  “Well—what about him?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like . . . did he seem weird?” My dad sounds stressed, and I feel like I can actually see his hair falling out of his scalp as we walk along.

  “I don’t know. I mean, he seems nice. Look, it was just odd, that’s all.” I don’t tell him Ms. Shaw said the apartment was a time machine or that everything in it—even the magazines—was from 1986. And I don’t mention about Grandma Hildy feeling younger and writing the wrong date on the check, because then I would have to mention the check, which is not happening.

  I really regret bringing it up at all. I don’t have any idea why I did. I felt like I wanted to talk about it, but then I started and I found out I didn’t, so there you go. How can I tell my dad that Grandma Hildy was dancing, and that it seemed like she was someone else, and I felt like I was underwater? You can’t tell dads stuff like that, or at least I’ve never heard of it.

  Dad stops right in front of me to look into my face, which makes me want to run into the frozen yogurt store next to us and hide behind the toppings bar. “Is there something else you want to say?” he asks in this way that seems to say that I had better say something.

  “Well . . . I think Mr. Johnson might want to . . . date . . . Grandma. That’s all. Maybe.” I wince a little. I look into the window, wishing we could just talk about frozen yogurt toppings. But my dad presses on.

  “Well, I think that if your grandmother wants to date, then she should. She seems a lot happier now than she ever was when my father was alive.”

  “Really?” I think about that. My grandfather died when I was three. I don’t really remember what my grandmother was like before then.

  “Look, she’s a grown woman. It doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  Dad looks at me a moment longer, and I say, “Should we get some frozen yogurt?” in the perkiest voice I can muster.

  Dad blinks slowly, as if he is finished inspecting my face. He doesn’t say anything, but he turns, and we both begin walking toward home.

  Back at the apartment, dinner is pretty tense. Desmond stays in his room and my mom just picks at her chicken. My dad stabs at his salad but doesn’t actually eat much. I make up for everyone else by snarfing ALL OF THE POTATO SALAD, because that stuff is awesome. Basically the best thing I’ve ever had, true story. I guess it’s the tarragon.

  Mom goes to the bedroom to plan her monthly mindfulness workshop, and I clear off the table because I am not going to go make Desmond do it, even though it is technically his turn, and my dad looks exhausted and stressed.

  I’m busy in the kitchen and do not hear him get up and leave of the room, but when I walk down the hallway later, I hear my mom saying, “—if they do get married?”

  My dad murmurs; I can’t really hear what he is saying, but it ends in, “—her choice.”

  Mom: “What if he’s just after her money?”

  Suddenly, my father’s voice gets very crisp. “It doesn’t matter; that money is for her, not me. Dad made that very clear when he said that I was too weak to handle responsibility, remember?”

  Mom: “George, what if this lawsuit drags on? We could be wiped out. How are we going to send the kids to college? How are we going to retire?”

  Dad: “I thought we were going to retire on your soap empire.”

  Mom: “That was mean.”

  Dad: “I’m sorry.”

  Mom: “If I had known about the hedge fund, I never would have left social work. I never would have left New Jersey!”

  Dad: “I know. I know; I’m sorry.”

  Mom: “New York City was your dream, not mine—you were the one who wanted to show your parents that you could make it on your own—”

  Dad: “That’s just it, Helen—I would rather starve than take money from her after what they did to Larry. If I succeed or fail, it’s without them—just like Larry.”

  Mom: “Well, what does she say about the fund?”

  Dad: . . .

  Mom: “Oh my god, you haven’t told her? Have you told her about the lawsuit? Are you going to wait until she reads about it in the newspaper, George?”

  And then there is more silence, and it is a silence that stretches on and on. It’s a silence that is deep, and somehow final, and it makes me feel strangely embarrassed, even though my parents don’t know that I am listening to them. It’s like that phrase—if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? And if the tree thinks it’s alone, and thinks it’s not making a sound, but somebody hears it anyway, does it count?

  I’m seriously asking, because I think that might be good on a T-shirt.

  I creep away toward my room, feeling sick to my stomach, and a little frightened, and wondering what “they” did to Larry. “They,” as in, my grandparents? “They,” as in, Grandma Hildy?

  And—what lawsuit?

  Do you know thos
e pictures that you can see two ways? Like, it looks like an old lady to half the people, and to the other half, it looks like a young one? Or, like, is it a pineapple or the Statue of Liberty—or whatever?

  For the first time ever, I wonder why my father barely ever talks to my grandmother. I wonder why we’re not supposed to take money from her. That has always just been the way it is. Now I see that maybe there’s more to it than I thought.

  And I wonder why I never wondered about it before.

  CHAPTER WHATEVER

  In which blah, blah, blah. I can’t even think of a synopsis right now—just read it yourself, okay?

  IT’S ALMOST BEDTIME, BUT I know I won’t be able to sleep. My brain is swirling, and that is making me think of those cyclones you hear about, the ones that pick up a car and toss it fifty feet and then crush a building and basically destroy everything and leave the whole town crying on TV.

  I mean, according to Althea Orris, those people’s bad thoughts manifested that mess, so I am a little worried that my out-of-control brain might cause some serious brain damage!

  So I decide to stop swirling and distract myself. My computer is sleek and silver and the exact same kind that every other girl in my school has, and I think it is so pretty and I really like typing on it. I do my homework on it, of course, but I also like to write stories. Sometimes I pretend that I am CEO of a fashion house or something, and I type up descriptions for the imaginary dresses for our catalog. Like this:

  “Made from artisanal silk fibers found on the banks of the Nile River, this Isis-inspired goddess dress is bordered with real pearls dipped in gold. One-of-a-kind and handmade by master craftspeople in some country where they make crafts like this (that I will Google later), you will look like a true Lady of the Evening in this dress. Available in three colors: Electric Midnight, Fusion, and Garrulous.”

  I do not mean to brag, but I think that I am very good at writing descriptions. Min agrees with me. She says that when she has her fashion house, I can write all the catalogs. Zelda will be the model. I think a job in fashion will go well with my YouTube guru channel.

  I also use my computer for PicBomb, although that is a secret because my mother thinks that anyone who is less than twenty-five and is on social media will be instantly killed by stalkers. When I log in, PicBomb tells me that one of my contacts has Joined the Community, which is creepy in a few ways. First, I do not like it when they remind me that they have access to my contacts in my e-mail. That is weird, and I do not know how to shut it off and it makes me feel like they have sent little spybots into my computer that are going to attack me in my sleep. And the second thing I do not like is the way that they refer to PicBomb as a “Community,” as if we are Amish or in a cult together or something.

  I click on the little person icon and see a photo of a familiar forehead and the name Anna Hernandez, and my heart feels like someone has blown helium into it. Of course I click accept, and I wonder if Anna got a smartphone. No, of course she didn’t get a smartphone. She’s still probably buying her sneakers at Discount Blowout. I guess she joined on her computer and is taking pics with her flip phone. Still, I kind of like this forehead selfie she posted. She has added a blue filter. I can tell she took the photo in her living room, because in the background I can see the giant fake swordfish on the wall that her father won in a raffle and always tells people he caught off the coast of Cuba. And I can see the clock that is seven minutes fast, so I know that she took the photo at 9:24. But I do not know if she took it in the a.m. or the p.m.

  I know everything in that room: the bookcase with the wobbly shelf, the tan carpet that Anna’s father always keeps superclean because he never lets anyone wear shoes in the house, the giant flat-screen TV that is constantly playing soccer—even in the morning—and the brown velour recliner that her brother always tries to slip into whenever Mr. Hernandez gets up for a snack. I can even smell that house. It smells like bacon, and like spicy men’s deodorant, and like Mrs. Hernandez’s dry shampoo, and like some kind of pepper that I never could quite name.

  I click the COOL symbol by the photo and wait for something to happen. Nothing does, though. The little red flag tells me that Anna isn’t on the site right now. Even if she were, what would I say?

  Hi, how are you? How’s Janelle? How Lucinda? How’s Leroy? Did you get my messages? I’m good. Not much going on here. Oh, well, Dad kinda lost his job. And there might be a lawsuit. Also, apparently my grandmother is a horrible person? Um, and I have kind of told my new friends that I know Beyoncé and I owe them money that I can’t pay back. Oh, and I’m failing history and Desmond is being bullied but . . .

  Ugh. She won’t even call or text back when I say that things are good.

  I close my computer.

  Desmond isn’t in his room, so I knock on the bathroom door and call softly, “Des?”

  “What?” His voice is echoey, bouncing off of the tiles.

  “Are you in there using the bathroom, or are you just reading?”

  “Reading.”

  “Can I come in? Just for a minute?”

  There is a pause, and then a click as he unlocks the door for me. The bathroom that Desmond and I share is really beautiful, but kind of useless. Our mom had it renovated and decorated before we moved in. She was really into the idea of decorating for a while, until it turned out to be a boring time suck, kind of like making soap. I guess, for some things, it’s more fun to think about doing them than it is to actually do them.

  Our bathroom has this shower with a huge showerhead that rains down on you, but instead of our old moldy shower curtain that we had in Jersey City, this has a half wall of glass. Not a sliding door, just a glass wall that only goes halfway. It’s pretty, but water splashes out of the shower and all over the floor on the daily, which is kind of sad, because that little wall has one job and it’s too much. There is also a kind of piano bench thingy that my mother used to display rolled-up towels on. She did that for about three weeks, then gave up, because who wants to always be rolling up towels for display? Now we just throw our bathrobes and stuff on the piano bench, usually. But Desmond also likes to read there, and that is what he was doing a moment before I came in. His tablet is facedown on the bench, and I assume he has been reading one of those stories he loves about the mouse and the other mice. I forget what they’re called.

  At least the bathroom smells nice, because we always use my mom’s lemongrass-ginger soap. “What’s up?” I ask, leaning against that stupid shower glass. “Are you hungry? You want some chicken?”

  “I got something for myself a while ago. Thanks.”

  “Why don’t you go read in your room?”

  “I don’t like my room.” Our mom also had Desmond’s room decorated before we moved in, and for some weird reason, the decorator chose an ocean theme, with lamp bases made of nautical knots and navy and white all over the place, and pictures of sailboats. Which is totally weird, because Desmond has this sort of pathological fear of lobsters and as a result really hates the ocean.

  Personally, I like his room and would prefer it to mine, which is brown and blue and has framed maps of New York City on the walls, and a dresser with “Brooklyn” painted on it. It feels kind of random, because I’ve only lived in New York City for less than a year, and I have never been to Brooklyn, but we were specifically told that the decorator had a “vision” based on having met us for five minutes, and then Mom consulted a colorologist, who predicted the shades that would bring harmony and make us all productive, so I guess I just have to wait for all of that inspiration and good color vibe to sink in. I keep expecting to wake up and like it one day. Everybody else who comes over does.

  “This bathroom is the coziest place in the apartment,” I say, and it’s weirdly true.

  “Plus, nobody bothers you when you’re in the bathroom,” Desmond agrees.

  I am very impressed by this observation and think it is totally mug-worthy, which makes me proud and a little envious at the same time.
Desmond scoots over and I sit down next to him on the bench. I put an arm around him and he puts his head on my shoulder. I can smell that he has been stealing my shampoo again, but do not mention it. “Are you worried about tomorrow?”

  Desmond shakes his head.

  I find it hard to believe that Desmond isn’t thinking about Simon, or about Principal Becker, at least. But his mouth is twisted and his nostrils flared, almost like a bull. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I would be worried.”

  Desmond sits up then, and looks right at me. “I’m not you,” he says.

  “I know that. I mean, like, obvi.”

  “No—I mean it. Everyone seems to be confused. I’m me.” My little brother points to his chest. “You’re you.”

  I look at him carefully, at his dark eyes that are so serious behind their thick lashes. A lock of straight brown hair is falling over the center of his forehead. He is serious; he really wants to explain this. But, I mean, obviously: I am me. He is him. This is, like, Tarzan stuff. Me Jane, right?

  I don’t joke, though. “I understand you, Desmond,” I say, and reach for his hand. His fingers feel fragile and small laced through mine.

  Small, but not as small as they used to be.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, I THINK?

  In which I wonder, “Who Let in the Rain”

  I LOVE WAKING UP on rainy mornings, but only when there is still time to snuggle down in my bed and look out the window. It’s fun to watch the water droplets drip into rivers, join other droplets, switch direction, branch off into rivulets, and finally speed down the glass to end in a big, fat splash at the bottom of the sill.

  Anna used to always wish that she lived in California, where the weather is sunny and warm. Not me. Not me, because I like to be cozy, and you can never really feel cozy inside unless the weather is bad—too cold or too wet or both—outside.

  But ugh, what I do not like is actually getting out of bed.

  Desmond is already up and dressed when I get to the breakfast table. He is watching one of his weird shows. Dad is reading the news on his tablet and gulping coffee, which whirrups down his throat. He is wearing a bathrobe, and his chest hairs poke out of it. Is it strange that some of his chest hairs are gray? His stubble is gray, too. The lines on his face are deep, and I’m realizing that my dad looks . . . old.