13

by Jason Robert Brown

  13

  Jason Robert Brown & Dan Elish

  Dedicated with love and gratitude to

  Molly, Cassie, and John…and their mothers

  —J.R.B. and D.E.

  Contents

  1

  I GUESS it started with Angelina, the flight attendant my…

  2

  A HOUSE. We were going to live in a house.

  3

  There was day at some point in the next week…

  4

  MY MOM and the rabbi had been on my case…

  5

  “EVAN?”

  6

  MY SCHOOL back in New York was a gray brick…

  7

  ARCHIE DIDN’T sound like a normal person. First of all,…

  8

  IN NEW YORK, a bad day was a cab tearing…

  9

  I PEEKED outside the door, checking for any hall monitors…

  10

  ON FRIDAY Mom really came through. She drove me to…

  11

  AFTER PATRICE and Archie left, I lurked around the theater…

  12

  WALKING TO school that Monday, I expected to be teased,…

  13

  “BE A MAN,” Rabbi Weiner had said.

  14

  I CUT through Pam’s backyard and came around the back…

  15

  THE PHONE rang in the kitchen. Pam got up from…

  16

  AND THEN I got punched in the face.

  17

  “THAT’S IT, I’m canceling the whole thing!”

  18

  THERE’S A lot of other stuff I could tell you—about…

  About the Authors

  Other Books by Dan Elish

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  I GUESS it started with Angelina, the flight attendant my father met on a flight from New York to L.A. last year. I don’t know the whole story. Maybe he caught her eye while she was handing out pretzels? Pretty much all I know is that on July 15 at 5:45 P.M., I left Central Park and came home to our apartment to find Mom bawling on the sofa and Dad looking sheepish by the terrace—sort of like he had just cut in front of an old lady to snag a cab.

  “Evan. Your father has some news.”

  Dad drew in a sharp breath. “It’s really very sad.”

  I knew it: My grandmother had died. No, grandfather. Wait, definitely my aunt, oh my god, my aunt Elaine, it was going to be horrible.

  “Your mother and I can’t live together anymore.”

  I sat—more like collapsed—on our old blue easy chair, like I had taken a giant cannonball to my gut.

  “What?” I said. It was all sort of hard to believe. My folks fought every once in a while, but it was a “Why can’t you put dinner on the table for once?” kind of a thing, not “I hate you and don’t want to be married to you anymore.”

  Anyway, the next thing I knew, we were all crying and hugging. Then, before I could catch my breath, my dad was heading to the door with his suitcase.

  “I’ll pick you up for dinner tomorrow at six,” he said. “We’ll talk, okay, buddy?”

  And just like that I became one of those kids you see on those after-school specials: a guy who sees his dad once a week for dinner and every other weekend. Except I wasn’t on TV. And by the time my dad had one foot in the hall, I was crying all over again.

  And my mom? Well, she tried to be good, but it took only an hour before the bathroom door was closed, and I could hear her screaming from inside: “A STEWARDESS! IS HE KIDDING?”

  My dad had made it sound mutual, like something they had agreed on together over their morning latte. But listening to my mom, I realized that it had been a one-sided decision—my dad had decided he couldn’t live with my mom. And it began to sink in that, by extension, my father also wouldn’t be living with me—not ever again. That night before bed, I punched out my pillow. Then I kicked in my closet door. You might say I was angry. You might say I was a lot of things—none of them good.

  The next night at dinner, my dad said all the stuff you would expect. He never meant for it to happen. Life throws you strange curves. He loved me more than anything. I could see he was trying, but by the end of the meal I had tuned him out. Sure, each one of his so-called explanations sounded reasonable, but to my ears he was just spinning lines, desperate to get my forgiveness. Bottom line: My father was ditching me for some woman in polyester who dispensed peanuts across the friendly skies of America. It didn’t matter that she turned out to be nice when I met her a few days later. By that point I had already made my decision. I hated her. And to tell the truth, I was starting to hate him.

  “But you can’t really hate him.”

  That’s what Steve said. He was my best buddy. It was hard talking to him about the miseries of my home life, because he and my other best friend, Bill, were in a much more celebratory mood: Three days before all this happened, I had made contact with Nina Handelman’s upper lip at Peter Kramer’s birthday party.

  “How was her breath?” Bill said. “I bet her breath smells like candy.”

  “Whatever,” I muttered.

  “Evan, you can’t really hate your own father,” Steve repeated.

  “Oh, yeah?” I said. “Sure I can.”

  “It’s not biologically possible,” Bill said. “He’s your dad.”

  “I know he’s my dad,” I said. “But he took off. I mean, you should see my mom.”

  It was ugly. For the first few days after Dad left, she pretty much lived in her bathrobe, staring vacantly into space, wandering around the apartment, crying. On the fifth day, while she was halfheartedly attempting to make dinner, still in her bathrobe, I heard her mutter, “I’ve gotta get us out of here—we’re not safe.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  She forced a huge, fake smile.

  “Never mind me, just talking to myself,” she said. “More spaghetti?”

  Later that night, I caught her crying again, this time on the phone to my aunt Pam. I didn’t really listen much to what she was saying; I just heard the emotional roller coaster in the next room. Suddenly Mom’s head popped into my doorway. “Hey, kiddo, guess what we’re going to do?” It was the happiest she had sounded since Dad left. “We’re moving to Indiana!”

  She was grinning, ear to ear, like Dr. Teeth, even though her cheeks were still damp with tears.

  “That’s great, Mom,” I said, and made a mental note to talk to Steve’s mom about all of this. She was a shrink.

  “Pam offered me a job!”

  Aunt Pam had an antiques store. She sold about a chair a week. My mother had a doctoral degree in anthropology. Nothing was adding up.

  “Mom, we can’t go to Indiana. I’ve got school. And friends.”

  She looked at me, still cheerful, perky almost. “They’ve got schools in Indiana.”

  I went on, making my case. It was only five weeks before my first year in junior high. A few months before my thirteenth birthday.

  But my mother would not be swayed; we were moving to Indiana! To be with Pam! Wasn’t that great? I argued with her, but it was like talking to a boulder. An insane, grinning boulder. She wanted as far away from my dad as she could get. And I’m guessing she wanted to punish him a little bit, too. You know—if he didn’t want her, he wasn’t going to get me, either.

  In the end, I had no choice. My dad tried to fight it, even threatened with the lawyers, but he’d stacked the cards against himself: He had just left his wife for another woman, and he traveled almost every week for work. By the time he officially gave in, my mom had sold off half our stuff. Then one steamy, miserable day in early August, Steve and Bill and a few of Mom’s friends came by to help load up the U-Haul and say g
ood-bye.

  “We’ll keep in touch,” Steve assured me.

  “Tell you all about school,” Bill said.

  “Yeah, just stay away from Nina Handelman,” I said halfheartedly. “Those lips are mine.”

  Bill shrugged awkwardly. “On a strictly literal basis, only the upper lip is yours.”

  Was he really going to move in on Nina Handelman the minute I left town? No way would he do that.

  “Evan!”

  My mom had just finished hugging Mrs. Lieber, our downstairs neighbor.

  “Time to go, honey.”

  I looked at our apartment building—thirty stories, straight up. It had always seemed like nothing more than a tall mass of steel, brick, and glass. Suddenly it was home.

  “In the car,” Mom said.

  It was hard to believe how fast my life had spun out of control. I thought of making one last-ditch attempt, throwing myself on the mercy of the court, begging to stay. I was beating all the other guys in Halo! Steve’s dad got tickets to the Jets opener! Nina Handelman! But just like that, the feeling passed. I was old enough to know when a battle was lost. So I gave Steve a hug, slapped Bill’s back, and walked to the car. All of a sudden I was blinking back tears. Not just because I was leaving, but because of who wasn’t there to say good-bye. I knew Dad and Mom were at war, but I guess I still expected him to show up at the last minute, maybe even waving a court order that said I had to stay in New York. Instead I slouched into the passenger seat of Mom’s old Volvo, depressed to the bone. I nodded out the window a final time—even Manuel, our doorman, had come out to wave goodbye. But still no Dad. And then Mom was in the seat next to me.

  “Ready?” she said.

  I just stared straight ahead and nodded. Forget my father. He and Angelina were probably in first class on some jet, bathing in a tub of champagne.

  Or maybe not. As Mom inched the car down the street, I twisted around for one last look. And he was there! Getting out of a cab. Waving after the car. Running.

  “Mom!” I said. “Stop!”

  She sped up.

  “Mom!”

  She stopped.

  But then I saw someone else get out of the cab, the early-morning sun catching her perfect younger-woman hair. Angelina.

  “Forget it,” I said.

  Mom wrinkled her brow. “What?”

  “Drive!”

  Mom didn’t have to be told twice. With a triumphant glance into the rearview mirror, she peeled down First Avenue like she was Jeff Gordon. I watched my dad run for a block, then stop, hands on his hips. He looked confused and sad.

  That made two of us.

  Our trip west wasn’t any joyride. For starters, somewhere outside of Newark, the air conditioning broke down. It was ninety-five degrees. Then right as we entered Pennsylvania, the engine began making a horrible clanging noise, and continued doing it every five seconds for the rest of the trip. Then things got really bad. We were in Ohio when my mom brought it up, almost as an afterthought, half talking to herself.

  “Once we’re settled, we’ll have to get to work finding you a rabbi for your bar mitzvah.”

  Clang, went the engine.

  “My bar mitzvah?” I said. “Are you kidding? I’m not having my bar mitzvah in Indiana.”

  It felt good to say it. I should have stopped there. But I kept going, not even sure where the words were coming from. “You want to drag me away from my father, fine, you do that, obviously it doesn’t matter to you what I want. Well, I don’t care what you want, and I’m not having a stupid bar mitzvah.”

  Clang.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  My mother glowered at me, her face on fire with fury.

  “You. Are. Having. Your. Bar mitzvah.”

  Clang.

  Clang.

  “Do you understand me?”

  I gulped. We were going ninety miles an hour.

  “You are having your bar mitzvah, Evan Goldman, and you are having it in Appleton, Indiana, with me and your aunt Pam, and that is the end of that discussion. Forever. Period. Are we very clear?”

  Clang.

  Clang.

  “Yes, Mom.”

  We were silent for the rest of the trip.

  Back in New York, I had taken two lessons with Rabbi Cohen and decided that Hebrew just wasn’t my thing. I couldn’t sing and I didn’t know Exodus from Psalms. So I had begged my dad to skip the bar mitzvah and just throw me a big party. But now with Dad out of the picture, apparently the bar mitzvah was on again, and there was no one left to appeal to.

  I looked out the window, exit after exit on the highway. Great. I could only imagine my first month at school. Everyone was already going to think I was some sort of weirdo fatherless New York Jewish freak.

  What would they think when they heard me chant in Hebrew?

  2

  A HOUSE. We were going to live in a house. That, all by itself, was actually a pretty cool idea. Not worth moving to Indiana for, but since I had to go anyway, at least there would be a house. Big yards, grass, trees, quiet streets, and most important—space, lots and lots of space to stretch out, to leave my stuff everywhere, to have a bicycle AND a skateboard AND a scooter. I wasn’t much excited about anything, but I was, I admit, a little excited about living in a house.

  Apparently houses come in all sizes. Pam’s, it turns out, is a Small House. A Small And Very Cluttered House. It wasn’t an actual shack; she wasn’t a tenant farmer or anything, but the life of a struggling antiques dealer, even in Appleton Indiana, does not provide for a large estate. There was a yard, a nice one with a big oak tree, and a cracked sidewalk that wound its way from a white picket fence to a yellow front door. But the house, even from my blurry viewpoint in the passenger seat of our clanging vehicle at eleven o’clock on the longest night of my life, was way tiny, and sort of run-down.

  “Be nice,” Mom whispered as she turned off the engine.

  Before I could say anything, there was Pam, waving from the front porch, and a large dog running out to meet the car, barking and snarling.

  Aunt Pam is not technically my aunt. She and my mom went to college together, and then Pam moved out here with her then-husband, Roy. That didn’t last long, which you’d understand if you saw Pam now: short bowl-cut hair, corduroy shorts, flannel shirt, Birkenstocks. My dad always used to say that Pam looked like National Public Radio. After her marriage fell apart, she stayed in Indiana, got a big dog named Simon, bought a house, and opened her store. It had been twenty years since college, but she and Mom were still best friends.

  “Ruth!” Pam called, and all but skipped into Mom’s arms.

  “Pam!”

  I was still in the car, because Simon was pacing in front of the passenger-side door, drooling and growling.

  “Don’t be afraid, honey!” Pam yelled. “He only bites Republicans!”

  I warily opened my door, and Simon jumped up and licked me, then immediately ran back to the front porch. I stretched my arms, unfastened my seat belt, and took the first step into my new life.

  Even though the outside looked like something from the set of Larry the Cable Guy, the inside of the house was sort of wild. The foyer connected to a largish living room, small dining room, and kitchen. There were about twenty weird voodoo masks hanging on the walls, as well as these wood carvings of naked African women painted entirely in red. Near the dining room table was a rocking horse and a surprisingly realistic cactus made out of papier-mâché. Exotic mobiles and big plastic chickens hung from the kitchen ceiling. Side by side with the voodoo stuff, the living room was decorated with old road signs (one said “New York City, 695 mi”), a couple of wood stoves, and…no television. Anywhere.

  “You’re down here, Evan,” Pam said.

  I followed her into a small bedroom. It was pretty bare—just a dresser, a bed, and a little desk. I looked for an internet cable or even a phone jack. No luck. I didn’t even bother wondering whether the house was wireless.

  “This
used to be my study,” Pam said. She touched my shoulder. “You can decorate it however you like. Heavy metal posters. Pictures of girls. It’s your space.”

  She was working very hard at being accommodating.

  “Thanks,” I said. “This’ll be great.”

  Pam wiped a strand of hair out of her face, then gave me this super-concerned look. “This must be a very emotional time for you.”

  Well, yes, it was. And since I’d just been in the car with Psycho-Mom for the last fourteen hours, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to be discussing it.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Okay, then. But if you ever need someone to talk to…” For a moment I was scared Pam was about to ask if I wanted to join her art therapy class or something.

  Mom called from across the hall. “Which bed should I take?”

  “Take your pick,” Pam called. “You’re the guest.”

  We walked two steps and we were in the master bedroom. Pam’s house was smaller than our New York apartment! Only two bedrooms, which meant that Mom and Pam would be sharing. And once again, the décor was, well, elaborate, with bright purple walls and four large paintings of some Chinese guy wearing a wig. There were two twin beds, one by a window, one by the far wall.

  I have to imagine that Mom was having second thoughts, but she did her best to remain upbeat.

  “This one by the window would be perfect,” she said with a smile. “Evan. Help me unpack.”

  It was almost eleven thirty by then. I was completely overwhelmed and exhausted. I was hungry. Simon was following me around trying to get me to throw a disgusting old tennis ball covered with dog spit. As far as I was concerned, she could unpack her suitcase just fine by herself.

  I helped her unpack.

  The next day we went to a local department store to shop for what my mother thought were fun “boy” things for my room. I mostly stared straight ahead in a daze.