by Mira Ptacin
A month into things and still no word from me. My parents are learning about my progress through others. My mother calls Amanda and pressures her for information, but Amanda doesn’t have much to share; we don’t talk anymore. My parents get bits of information from Ms. Phelps. My high school principal, Mr. Rasmussen, gives me a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. At the movie theater where I work, my manager sits me down and tells me I should talk to my mom and dad. “I can see your point,” I tell him. “Sure. I’ll give them a call,” I say, but I don’t.
I receive a letter from my parents. We’re not mad at you. We just want to talk, it says and they propose a date and place. I dismiss their letter, and the next one that follows. We have started performing Man of La Mancha and during each show, the star Don Quixote rides in on a real live horse that belongs to one of my neighbors back home. I think it’s ridiculous and a little sad to see this giant beast standing miserably in the middle of a high school auditorium. It makes me want to put down my violin and protest. Or smash my violin to pieces. One night, from behind the horse, I spot my family in the crowd. My parents don’t stick around after the show but Julian and Sabina find me. “You’re being dumb,” Jules says before Sabina peels him away.
For them, things are awful. Nearly two months have passed and the whole household is still holding its breath; the mood is somber, nothing is going as planned. “Mira will be back,” Mom assured them. They thought by now I would have come to my senses and returned. At home, Julian is very quiet and says nothing about it. Sabina is spending more time with her boyfriend. When they’re not working, my parents are up late in the kitchen, arguing over what they should do, over who is the bigger victim, who is more at fault. You’re a pushover. You’re too harsh on them. The sadness is consuming them; my parents worry about divorce. I refuse to respond when they reach out to talk, and these new friends of mine, the “bad” ones, won’t talk to them, either. Neither will their parents. Instead of helping out, these parents are reveling in it, taking pleasure in the fact that Dr. and Mrs. Ptacin’s daughter is not such a goody-goody, that the Ptacins are not so holy after all. My mother has found out where Jeff lives and at least once a day, she slowly drives past the house where I stay then circles the block several times. She’s panicking. She’s crying all the time because there’s nothing she can do. I’m alive but I’m a ghost to her. Or maybe she’s dead to me. Two months turns into three. Mira won’t be coming back. Everyone is losing weight.
Most nights, Jeff doesn’t come home. He avoids conversation but gets mad at me for putting a dent in his Hot Pocket and bologna supply, so I eat the leftover popcorn from the movie theater. I bring home garbage bags of it. Then Jeff gets expelled for bringing a knife to school so I have even more difficulty finding a ride to class, to work, from work. Rumors are floating around that he’s sleeping with another person. And another. And another. I stop talking to him. Jeff’s dog Louie growls when Jeff comes near me and this makes him even more resentful. When I go to our room and find that my stereo is missing, Jeff tells me that Dirt took it to a secondhand store and pawned it for fifty dollars. I’m making plans to join the Marines. Otherwise, I’m going to be a nomad. I’m a runner, I’m coming to accept it.
The first time I ran away, I was maybe eight years old and on my red two-wheeler, the very first bike without training wheels. “I’m running away,” I declared as I backed my bike out of the garage. Jules said nothing but just looked at me in a completely neutral way. No one seemed to care; our babysitter had even packed me lunch. She was Polish, her name was Lucia, and she didn’t get it. “You will never see me again,” I threatened, but she handed me a sandwich. Peanut butter and orange marmalade sandwich on rye bread. I hated it. Jules and Lucia walked me to the edge of the driveway and watched me pedal away furiously. I was trying to make a statement. I don’t remember my reason. Maybe it was because of a rule I didn’t want to follow. Maybe I felt left out of something I wanted to be a part of. Whatever it was, I would remove myself from the situation and prove my point. I was so angry when all I wanted was to feel powerful. I felt unimportant and weak. I wanted Julian to join me. But as I was making my dramatic exit, Jules stood back, held onto his stuffed animal Woofie and watched me saddle up and go. I rode my bike about a hundred yards to the birch wood forest behind Greencrest Manor, climbed a tree, and listened. As I waited, I promised myself that I would stay in that tree forever. They’d find me up there, nothing but an ivory skeleton, and they’d regret it. I would show them. But no one came. No one called. I stayed up in the tree for hours, peeling off the papery birch bark, singing songs and feeling sorry for myself. I got bored and lonely and wanted to climb down that tree and go home but I couldn’t. I was so knee deep in shit that it was easier to keep sinking than pull myself out. Surely the police were looking for me, surely major trouble awaited. It started to rain. I was cold and wet and hungry and eventually I just gave up. I walked my bike home and when I walked into the house, it seemed as if nobody noticed I’d left in the first place. They’d eaten dinner, even. That’s when I realized I’d done it to myself. Maybe it was my problem. Maybe I was the problem.
The third month is when my parents begin seeing a counselor. They start buying books. My mom reads something about “tough love” and shortly after, attends a Tough Love workshop in Kalamazoo. This is when their sadness turns to anger. It’s nearly four months into things when I receive a letter in the mail from my mother. The letter. It says: That’s it. I’ve had it. In the letter, my mother writes that she cannot do this anymore, that she cannot always be on the edge, that I’m being destructive to the rest of the family. She writes: You come home, or you never come home again. She writes: You can go on, but you won’t be part of our family. Now, or never. She reminds me: You know that when I make my mind up on anything, I keep my word. You know I will follow through.
I call home the next day. School has just ended; I have completed my junior year. When I ask their permission to come home, they tell me I can return, and ask if I’ve got a ride. A friend from the movie theater, a sassy girl named Amber who goes to Julian’s school. That afternoon, Amber helps me pack my belongings into her car. We move quickly, and I scribble a note for Jeff. Just as we’re finishing up, he pulls into the gravel driveway.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jeff barks and tells me to get back in the house.
“I’m taking her home,” Amber says and calls him a cocksucker. She tells him that his penis is going to fall off, then she picks up a rock from the driveway. She tells me to get in the car, but I just stand there frozen with my violin case in my hands. Jeff calls Amber a bitch, tells her to stay out of our business, and she throws the rock at him. I slide my violin into the car and pick up a rock, too.
“Don’t,” I say. “I love you, but I’m leaving. Get in your house, Jeff. Go home.”
Amber and I wait in the driveway, watching with rocks in our hands as he walks all the way to his front porch, backward.
Otherwise, there is no fanfare. When I arrive home, it’s Father’s Day. My parents are expecting me. We sit down for a meal, the whole family, but no one says much and no one points out the obvious—that this sudden reunion is very strange.
In the weeks that follow, I’m treated fairly but no differently than before. My parents try to be forgiving; they know I am young. A young, stupid kid not conscious of her own delusions. But still, there are no exceptions for me or anyone; we’re all equals. The house remains calm but in a strained way, almost as if we’re trying not to wake something that is slowly falling asleep.
Summer rolls around. I’m still working at the movie theater. Sabina is serving at Mom’s restaurant and Julian heads off to basketball camp in Ann Arbor. The hot weeks pass and then school starts up again. Sabina packs up for college, Jules heads back to Pennfield, and I’m now a senior at Battle Creek Central. During the first semester, there are a few hiccups, but things are improvin
g, things are getting better. Things are getting normal. Four months go by and just as we are becoming our family again, Julian dies.
I slide off the examining room table feeling tense and culpable.
“Are you sure there’s nothing I should worry about?” I ask Dr. Reich as I slip on my jacket.
“Don’t worry. They can find out more about the test’s results when you go in for your ultrasound in a few weeks,” she says, her tone upbeat. “I’m sure everything is fine. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
Oh, what a fool I’d been.
eight
October 1997. It’s drizzling out and another lot of Canada geese has left the Great Lakes. Above us, they honk and streak the calico sky in a giant V-formation of elegant black necks and little white chinstraps, lifting their wings and lowering them, lifting and lowering.
V-shaped, like an arrowhead. Dad once told us that these birds fly forward with a sense of duty, to themselves and to one another. He explained that each wing flap creates uplift for the bird immediately behind it. That they honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed, their hope, and their spirit. “Just like we do when we go to Julian’s home football games,” I replied. Dad said that when the lead goose tires, it peels off from the point position and rotates to the back of the V, then another goose moves up to take its turn fighting the wind. To one another. Dad said that always, when a goose weakens or is wounded and falls out of group, one or two geese drop down with it, down to the earth to help and protect it. Always.
From behind the chain-link fence of the cemetery, I watch the gaggle as two birds break from the sky, dive, and land next to the soggy spot of upturned Astroturf where our herd is huddled. I watch the two geese, pecking at the synthetic grass, five or six feet to my right, paying us no mind.
Rewind three days and it’s Saturday evening. The fall air smells musty, like Halloween, and is syrupy with anticipation. Everyone is waiting for something. In October, at the start of a new season, who isn’t?
My girlfriend and I are cruising down the highway in the secondhand car I share with my older sister—a blueberry-colored 1989 Buick Regal. We are smoking sweet Black & Mild cigarillos we bought at the gas station. Ivory-tipped, vanilla-flavored. We glance at one another and nod. We believe we look cool.
The sun is lowering, and the cornfields are shadowy and crackling. Our blue ride steals past front doors behind which farm families are eating dinner. We drive past the bronze Sojourner Truth memorial, the Lakeview Square Mall, the Calhoun County Humane Society, a small brown cabin nestled in a bitter golden valley. My one hand is on the wheel and the other adjusting the volume of the stereo. I turn it up. Who rocks grooves and make moves with all the mommies? The Buick merges onto The Penetrator, passes Climax township, and, like we always do, my friend and I point out the obvious innuendos that dot our forty-mile route from Pennfield township to Kalamazoo, Michigan. And, as usual, we snort with amusement, even though the glory of it all has worn off over the years.
But tonight my laugh feels more counterfeit and stale than it ever has. It’s forced, and irritably fake. I mean irritably. I really want tonight to be gratifying. I really want to have the most fun I’ve ever experienced. I want tonight to be worth it. This desire of mine is mandatory and urgent because I really do not want to be here—“out,” “going out” as we call it—in the first place. I would much rather be home.
I want to go home.
I don’t spend enough time at home.
I could’ve worked for Mom at the restaurant tonight. I could’ve earned some extra bucks as a dishwasher, but I didn’t. Or I could’ve stayed at home. I wanted to stay home because tonight is a rare night when Jules and Dad and Mom will all be there, after work, just hanging out, but I didn’t. I want to turn this car back around, call the whole trip off, but every time I get close to doing it, a voice in my head scolds me and says, You are young. You are young and fun. You are a pretty girl. You are supposed to want this. You are supposed to want to be going out with your wild girlfriends and your boy toys. It’s what you young people do.
My girlfriend blows an impressive smoke ring through her lips: thick, sturdy, a perfect halo fresh from a cartoon. We are driving to Western Michigan University and we are going to flirt with boys who are done with high school. Boys who have left their hometowns. Boys who don’t live with their parents anymore. Boys who are in college.
We have straightened our hair. We are wearing transparent lip gloss that tastes like strawberries. We are seniors in high school. I am almost eighteen. I will be eighteen in less than three weeks.
I am almost an adult, and aware and growing increasingly anxious that tonight’s night on the town as an almost-adult will prove to be just as insignificant as any other night on the town. My front teeth clutch the plastic filter tip of my cigarillo as I consider what lies ahead: flaring teenagers with planned outfits, wine coolers, sloppy games of playing hard to get, drunken kisses—the sweet muddle of hormones. Tonight’s foolish, juvenile games really won’t amount to much in the grand scheme of the universe, I’m sure of it. But, still.
Back in Battle Creek, a man turns into one of the three slim, gravel parking spaces at the Dixie Mart on Emmett Street. His name is Gordon. He is nearing forty years old. I don’t know how Gordon spent his Saturday. Maybe he was at home doing not much of anything, messing with his broken television set a bit, drinking Diet Rite and rum, maybe Tanqueray. You could say Gordon has a drinking problem. And he’s also got a girlfriend. Her name is Deborah. She’s fat. I bet they fight a lot.
This evening, Gordon needs more alcohol. He’s been busted a couple of times for drinking and driving but that doesn’t stop him from doing it again tonight. As long as he doesn’t get caught. Just drive slow.
And Deb is close by. She’s driving around the block in her car, searching for Gordon, creeping. Deb’s just down the road, one stoplight from view.
Gordon gets out of his car, slams shut the door to the running vehicle, and swaggers toward the entrance of the Dixie Mart. He has a thin wad of cash in his pocket and knows exactly what he wants. As he pushes open the door to the party store, the cluster of bells on its handle jingles.
Not even one mile away from the Dixie Mart is my mother, working at RSVP. Even though she’s fifty-one years old, she doesn’t look a year older than forty. Her cheeks are soft red, like her lips, and her skin is flawless. She’s serving up dessert to the last of her customers, sprigging flourless chocolate raspberry tortes with mint leaves, scorching the circular roofs of yellow crème brûlées, switching in and out of her chef’s apron to schmooze with her restaurant’s patrons. It’s been a long day of work for my mother and the end is near. Soon the engorged patrons will roll themselves out of her restaurant; soon Mom will be free to go home and soak her swollen ankles in a hot bucket of water.
Back home, my brother Jules has finished his chores. He’s fourteen years old. He’s downstairs flipping through the TV, searching for clips of the University of Michigan football game he attended earlier in the day. During the commercial breaks, Jules thrashes around on the floor with his dog, Gonzo, trying out wrestling moves. The dog lives for it; he’s a Lab. Earlier in the day, Jules was up in Ann Arbor visiting Sabina, who is now a sophisticated college freshman at University of Michigan. Bean scored two extra tickets and took Jules and his friend Blake—sooooo immature—to the game with her and her boyfriend. The boys didn’t leave their seats once, so the autumn sun tanned the whole right side of their faces a shade or three redder than their left sides. Then, after the game, on the walk back to Sabina’s apartment, the boys trailed behind and wandered into some sex shop where they snagged novelty condoms; and when Mom picked the boys up before heading to work, she found the two of them tossing the rubbers back and forth at one another, prophylactics blown up like balloons. She didn’t really mind.
Now, in the basement, Jules wrestles with the dog. Th
e Texas Piledriver. He drops into a sitting position with Gonzo’s head falling between his thighs, crashing down into the carpet. “Need a little excitement, ah?” Jules imitates the gruff voice of Macho Man Randy Savage, the famous WWF wrestler and Beef Jerky spokesperson, and Gonzo recognizes the tone and buzzwords as a cue. His tail wags and the dog braces himself, ready to brawl with his master. Julian is toughening up Gonzo, riling him ready for hunting trips. Quail. They’ve been hunting one time already, just once so far. Jules bought boots and a hat, camouflage pants, and an orange vest. He bought Gonzo a bright orange vest, too, with Velcro straps across the chest, and they waited patiently until Dad finally convinced Mom to let him buy Jules a shotgun. He stores it in his closet, I think.
“Snap into a Slim Jim!” Jules rumbles and demonstrates a Diamond Dust on Gonzo. The black dog slips out from underneath his grip, tail wagging like a machete, and once more, Jules plows into him with a Diving Double Axe Handle. Two leviathans battling over the couch pillows. “Ooooooh yeahhhh!”
