Kids of Appetite

by David Arnold

  VIC

  I shook the snow from my boots and placed them by the front door to dry. Two black guitar cases smothered in Bat-Signals and The Cure patches sat in the hallway with mighty aplomb.

  Klint and Kory were here. Frank the Boyfriend’s kids.

  Since I’d knocked over a soup can pyramid in front of maybe the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen (or, if not the most beautiful girl, certainly the most striking, sweat-inducing one), the presence of Frank the Boyfriend—and his kids, who belonged in their own animated Tim Burton movie—was the last thing I needed.

  It aplombed me. Mightily so.

  Klint and Kory weren’t twins, but hardly anyone could tell them apart. They wore the same Goth-style clothes, and their teeth were far too big for their heads. I liked to imagine the roots had dug deep into their skulls, firmly planted in the space usually reserved for normal-sized brains. Like me, Klint and Kory had lost a parent to cancer. Unlike me, they used that loss as a reason to wear black makeup and start a band called the Orchestra of Lost Soulz. (I used my loss for much more sensible things, like seeing how hard one must push the edge of a credit card into one’s skin before one starts to bleed.) Mom offered them our basement as a rehearsal space, and just like that, they were regulars around the Benucci residence.

  As I said: mighty aplombing.

  I heard Mom now, in the kitchen with Frank and Klint and Kory. One happy family. With their happy family voices ringing like happy family bells from our happy family kitchen.

  Ding-dong-how-was-your-ding-dong-day?

  I set my backpack next to the guitar cases, hung up my coat, and started down the hallway. Mom, intent on not wasting another holiday, had begun baking and decorating the day after Thanksgiving. Pies, tarts, breads, cakes, puddings—“in the name of Christmas,” Mom said, probably a hundred times. I wondered if maybe Christmas could go by a different name this year.

  But hey.

  I could hardly blame her.

  Last Christmas was a bleak affair. The one-year anniversary(ish) of Dad’s death. There were no lights. There were no pies. There was no tree. So if Mom wanted to string lights from every corner and crevice of our house this year, decking our halls like some wild-eyed holiday elf, I was fine with it. There was, however, one piece of furniture that remained untouched by my mother’s voluminous cheer: the end table in the hallway.

  The end table in the hallway was nothing special.

  But what sat on the end table in the hallway was a thing of such momentous proportions, I could scarcely pass it without my knees buckling.

  My socked feet inched forward, seemingly of their own volition, until I was close enough to nudge the table with my waist—close enough to reach out and touch my father’s urn.

  My phone buzzed. I pulled it out, glanced at a new message from Mom.

  Where r u?

  The happy family voices rang from the kitchen. Ding-dong-how-was-your-ding-dong-day? I set my phone on the end table, and reached toward Dad’s urn, fingers stopping only centimeters away.

  Not being able to close my eyes made many things difficult: sleeping and blinking, primarily. But one thing people didn’t consider was envisioning, and how frequently people closed their eyes—not for long, more like a prolonged blink—when picturing a place or thing.

  It was a real problem for me. Until Dad taught me to go to my Land of Nothingness. He said the reason people closed their eyes when they tried to picture something was because they needed a blank place to start from. He explained what it looked like when he closed his eyes, how it wasn’t darkness or blackness, exactly—just nothingness. And only in a place of nothingness can somethingness be found, V.

  Now he was Nothingness personified.

  Now he was in a jar.

  I went to my Land of Nothingness, imagined the way Dad poked his head into my room before bed.

  Hey, V. You need anything?

  No, Dad.

  You good?

  Yeah, Dad.

  All right then. Good night.

  Night, Dad.

  The whole thing, like he was such a nuisance.

  Sock-footed in the oblivion of this dark hallway, one arm outstretched, I stood stuck between somethingness and nothingness, wondering how it was possible for this plain old urn to blaze like a desert heat.

  Dad died two years ago. And I still couldn’t touch the thing.

  * * *

  “Dynamite meal, Doris.” Frank eyed his sons. “Boys? Isn’t this meal something?”

  Klint cleared his throat. “Sure is, Dad.”

  Kory chewed, chuckled, nodded.

  “How do you get the little”—Frank poked at his potatoes, apparently unable to find his words—“crispy parts here . . . the sweet herbs . . . how do you get them so . . . ?”

  “Crispy and sweet?” asked Mom.

  Frank laughed, leaned over, and kissed her cheek. One arm shifted under the table in Mom’s direction. I choked and miraculously didn’t die on the spot.

  “I literally did nothing to the potatoes,” said Mom. “But I’d be happy to pass along your compliments to the chef down at the Ore-Ida frozen potato factory. I had been planning to make my world-famous lasagna, but someone forgot to pick up prosciutto.”

  Here, she aimed an eye at me.

  “Right,” I said, clearing my throat. “Sorry about that.”

  I pictured the face of the Stoic Beauty and knew I wasn’t sorry, not even a little.

  “I could have picked up prosciutto on my way home from court, sweetheart,” said Frank, serving himself more green beans.

  Frank loved to talk about court. Court this, court that. Talking about court made Frank the Boyfriend feel more like Frank the Racehorse.

  In reality, Frank was more of a French poodle.

  “In fact,” said Frank, “I called earlier to see if you needed anything, but you didn’t answer. I would have left a message, but—”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Someone, for reasons passing understanding, refuses to clear out her freaking voice mail in-box.”

  “I know,” said Mom, smiling ear to ear. “I’ll do it tonight. Okay?”

  Frank leaned in, whispered, “You’ll do it tonight, all right.”

  “Dad, gross,” said Klint.

  Kory chewed, gagged, shook his head.

  I took a sip of soda, wondering what would happen if I reached across the table right now and slapped Frank the Boyfriend across the face.

  Frank was everything my dad wasn’t: dainty, professionally successful, head full of hair. Subtlety completely eluded him. He was a loud-talking, green-bean-chomping lawyer who always wore suits. I’d never not seen the guy in a suit. He just really loved suits, I guess. And maybe it wasn’t momentous, but it sure felt like it, because Dad was a wear-his-sweatpants-to-the-grocery-store type guy.

  I was that type guy too.

  “So, boys,” said Mom. “How’s the band coming along?”

  “Oh,” said Klint, his eyes shooting toward his dad. “Um. Good, Miss B. Really, umm . . . good. Right, Kory?” He elbowed his brother in the ribs. Kory stopped chewing momentarily, focused instead on his chuckling and nodding.

  Frank scooped a third helping of green beans onto his plate.

  I don’t know. The man really liked his green beans.

  “Well, that’s just great,” said Mom. “Maybe we can hear something soon. Like a concert. Wouldn’t that be nice, Vic?”

  I raised my favorite thin-brimmed glass in a sarcastic toast, carefully drained the last of my soda, and stood.

  “Where are you going?” asked Mom.

  “Refill.”

  Klint dropped his fork onto his plate, stood, and grabbed my empty glass. “I’ll get it.” He disappeared into the kitchen, leaving us all to wonder what the hell had just happened. Klint ra
rely did anything nice, certainly not for me.

  Mom beamed. “That is so sweet of him.”

  “He’s a sweet kid,” said Frank, mouth full of beans.

  I did a mental checklist of undetectable poisons that might be found in our kitchen, things Klint could use to lace my drink. A minute later he returned, set a full glass in front of me, and sat down without a word. Mom continued talking, something about how happy she was to see us all getting along. I didn’t really hear her. I was too preoccupied with the fact that Klint had traded out my original glass for Dad’s favorite beer tumbler, the one with the Mets logo printed across the front. It had a thick brim, making it almost impossible for me to use without dripping liquid down my chin.

  “Klint and Kory have a special relationship,” said Frank. “Especially so close in age. They even share a wardrobe.”

  I grabbed the bottom of the glass but didn’t lift it.

  “Something wrong?” asked Klint, just the hint of a smile on his lips.

  Kory chewed, chuckled, nodded.

  Klint and Kory much preferred sneaky-mean to outright-mean. They didn’t make fun of my face the way normal mean kids did. They understood that lasting pain could only be dealt at the root.

  “Genetically speaking,” droned Frank, “brothers are just as close in DNA to each other as they are to a parent.” He took a bite of green beans as if it were a period at the end of his sentence.

  “Frank, you are a wealth of knowledge,” said Mom, either not noticing Dad’s tumbler or choosing not to acknowledge it.

  Ever since Mom got serious with Frank, ours had been a relationship of few: few words, few touches, few feelings. Much of her beauty had been spent during the Dark Days, but she still had an ample supply. Her hair, like her smile, was bright and young; the creases around her eyes had grown more severe, but what did people expect? From diagnosis to funeral, she’d waited on Dad hand and foot. The only three reasons Mom had left the house during the Dark Days:

  Groceries.

  Prescriptions.

  Procedures.

  Post-diagnosis, Dad lived another eighteen months. The doctors said that was rare. They said he was a fighter. They said he was lucky.

  I said they should get their heads checked if they thought Dad was lucky. At least he had Mom to take care of him. For a year and a half, she sacrificed her life to give Dad some comfort at the end. So shouldn’t I be happy for her now? Hadn’t she earned it? Shouldn’t I welcome Frank the Boyfriend with arms open wide? The answer was yes. To all of it. But part of me thought about all those sacrifices she’d made, and compared them to what she’d gotten in exchange.

  “It’s in literature, too,” said Frank, right on cue. He took another bite of green beans, and it took everything in me not to ask him if he wanted a second fork, one for each hand. “Take that Russian novel with the four brothers,” he said. “Whatchacallit . . . ? Gosh, I can never remember the name.”

  I looked at Mom, daring her to make eye contact with me. Look at me. Just once tonight, really look at me. Just once, let’s skip the shorthand and talk like we used to.

  “Well, this is just gonna bug me,” said Frank, who, for the moment, had stopped shoveling green beans into his mouth. “The Brothers something-or-other. It’s one of Tolstoy’s more well-known works.”

  “Karamazov,” I said quietly, still staring at Mom.

  Her smile dissolved. Slowly, finally, she met my gaze. For a few seconds the dinner table dissolved. Frank, Klint, Kory—gone. It was just the two of us, living in the saddest house of happy memories. We stared at each other until she looked away. And just then, I knew I’d lost her.

  I pushed my plate away, tucked my hair behind my ears, and shifted in my seat. “Frank, you’re a fucking moron.”

  “Victor!” shouted Mom.

  Frank, temporarily stunned, turned to help Klint, who had suddenly choked on the crispy part of his potato; Kory chewed, chuckled, nodded.

  Mom stood from the table with authority. “Kitchen. Now.”

  I took my time getting there, scooting my chair out from under the table with more defined force than necessary, following her through the swinging kitchen door. A strand of Christmas lights lay at the foot of the fridge, gravity having gotten the better of the three-week-old duct tape. The counter was a mess of flour and sugar and eggs, vestiges of Mom’s recent romance with the baked good.

  “Out with it,” she said, arms crossed.

  “Out with what?”

  “That was unbelievably rude.”

  “I can’t help it if your boyfriend knows everything about the fucking chromosomal similarities of siblings, yet somehow thinks Tolstoy wrote The Brothers Karamazov, which I’m fairly certain he pretended not to remember the title of so he wouldn’t have to mispronounce it out loud.”

  “Honey,” she said.

  “Maybe if he’d give it a rest with the Churchill biographies, he could devote some time to—”

  “Victor.”

  “What?”

  “What is this really about?”

  . . .

  . . .

  “The literary prowess of Fyodor Dostoyevsky.”

  Mom did not laugh. Not even a chuckle. “We don’t like the same books, Vic. You can’t base a relationship on literary preferences.”

  I felt myself try to smile, which happened sometimes. It was amazing—even though I’d never done it, not once in my whole life, the urge was there. Mom used to say she could tell by my eyes when I was laughing. She said they changed somehow. Said they got happy enough for my whole face.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Mom.

  Traitorous eyes.

  “Nothing is funny.” I crossed my arms. “What could ever be funny?”

  It was quiet for a moment. Mom put a hand on my shoulder. “I know it’s hard. This hasn’t been . . . Nothing has been easy. But you remember what we’ve been talking about? About moving on?”

  I swallowed the knot down as she pulled me closer. I remembered. How could I forget? Lately she’d been going on about the importance of healing, of allowing ourselves time to wade in the grief pool, and of recognizing when the time came to get out and dry ourselves off.

  Mom had been dry for a while, I guess.

  I was sinking like a rock.

  “Frank makes me happy, sweetheart,” she said. “Or at least, not sad. I’d like to feel more of that, you know? I’d like for you to feel it too. Maybe not toward Frank, but toward something, somebody.”

  I imagined the knock on my bedroom door again. Come in, I would say. Frank the Boyfriend would open the door, poke his head full of hair inside. Hey, Vic. You need anything? I would nod. Go jump off a bridge, Frank.

  Mom hugged me.

  And it felt like a last meal. It felt like thnx, luv.

  I tried to hug her back, but my arms hung like vines by my sides, awkward and too long for my body.

  “He gave me dad’s tumbler,” I said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Klint. When he came in here to get my Coke.” Suddenly the hug takes on a new sense of restraint, a hesitation that wasn’t there seconds ago. “He switched out my glass and gave me Dad’s. They’re awful, Mom. They hate me.”

  . . .

  . . .

  “They don’t hate you. They just don’t know you yet.”

  Yet.

  For such a tiny word, it sure could flip a sentence on its ass.

  “I’ll talk to Frank about it,” she said. “Speaking of which, you owe him an apology.”

  I nodded and Mom let go, stepping toward the door, toward the dining room, toward her new family, away from me.

  “It’s not true, you know,” I said, staring at the fallen strand of Christmas lights.

  “What’s not true?”

  Just when I decided not to s
ay it, the words came out. “You and Dad liked the same books.”

  Watching her eyes water offered a strange sense of relief. He still mattered to her. What we had still mattered. Mom could flirt and smile and bake a billion pies, but in the end, her eyes were traitorous too. They told me all I needed to know. Whatever this was with Frank, even she knew it was nothing like what she had with Dad.

  She blinked away tears, forced a smile, and opened the door to the dining room. “After you, honey.”

  I stood frozen to the spot.

  I stood staring into the dining room.

  I am mighty aplombed.

  “Vic?” said Mom, turning to look through the door. “What’s—”

  In the dining room, Klint and Kory were standing in their chairs, each one with a guitar strapped around their shoulders. “Two! Three! Four!” yelled Klint, his voice even raspier than normal.

  The Orchestra of Lost Soulz plunged into song with that special enthusiasm reserved for people who had no idea they couldn’t sing. It was awkward and sweaty and uncomfortable for everyone. Frank sat in his chair, staring at Mom through the whole thing, his face strangely constricted. After the song came to a close, he said, “I realize this is sort of . . . well, not ideal timing.” His eyes shifted to me. “Vic, I hope you see this as proof of my love and commitment. To both you, and your mother.”

  Before I could ask what this meant, Frank cleared his throat and scooted out of his chair. I waited for him to stand, but it never happened.

  Frank the Boyfriend took a knee.

  Frank the Boyfriend reached into his pocket.

  Frank the Boyfriend pulled out a ring.

  Frank the Boyfriend wanted to be Frank the Husband.

  Frank the New Dad.

  Mom covered her mouth with both hands as I helplessly watched the scene play out before me.

  “Doris Jacoby,” said Frank.

  I quietly observed the conspicuous absence of Benucci.

  “. . . make me the happiest man alive.”

  I quietly observed my mother, who, bizarrely, had yet to run screaming through the front door, racing down the street, pulling clumps of hair from her head, rending the clothes from her body, shrieking in havoc and mourning . . . or, at the very least, laughing, grabbing Dad’s urn from its dark place of prominence in our hallway, shoving it in Frank’s face, and saying, I’m spoken for, bitch!