The Kids Are All Right

by Diana Welch

  During these diets, she banished all things sweet from our house. Even raisin bran was contraband. I blame the authors of Sugar Blues. She read it when it first came out in the early seventies, and I can still feel the burn of humiliation from when Mom brought whole-wheat cupcakes sweetened with apple juice into school for my eighth birthday. Natalie Brown took one bite, made a face, and spit it out into her hand. It was bad enough I was being punished, but my entire second-grade class? If sugar was as bad as Mom claimed, it certainly could have caused her cancer. Maybe it was the reason that only one month after Dad died, she was scheduled to go for a radical hysterectomy.

  She explained the procedure to Amanda and me a few days later. “They will take out my uterus. Not that I need it anymore!” She was trying to sound upbeat, but to me it just sounded awful.

  The only person I knew who had cancer was Mom’s acting friend Diana Hyland. She was the original mom on Eight Is Enough, and she dated John Travolta after playing his mom on The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. Mom named our Diana after her. Cancer had killed Diana Hyland. Could it kill Mom? After days of stomach-sick worry, I decided, No, it couldn’t. If it did, then we’d be orphans. And that wasn’t possible.

  AMANDA

  ACTUALLY, MOM HAD cervical cancer and the tumor was only three centimeters wide, the size of a quarter. The grapefruit-size tumor came later.

  DIANA

  THERE IS A dream I remember from when I was little. In it, Mom and I were walking together in the desert, over rolling yellow hills with green scrubby shrubs and black scorpions. The sun was hot and gold, and my sneakers hit the sand hard when we started running toward a rusty red and white swing set, its two wooden swings hanging perfectly still. I was good at swinging. I jumped on and started pumping my legs back and forth until I was soaring. I liked to go so high that the chains coughed, losing their tension for a second when my face was even with the sky. I turned to see how high Mom was, but she was just sitting, her swing twisting gently, her shoulders slumped.

  In the distance, I saw a figure walking toward us. It was a big beast-man, a warrior. Mom didn’t see him; she was looking at her shearling slippers in the sand. Her head was getting sunburned because her hair was so thin. I could see her scalp. It was turning pink and some skin was flaking off. The beast-man was closer now, beefy and veiny in his leather skirt and wide metal suspenders. He reminded me of Clan of the Cave Bear and Conan the Barbarian. Mom stood to meet him, pulling her shawl tight around her shoulders and holding it there with one hand at her throat as her other hand reached for a sword within its folds. She raised the sword above her head, her eyes still on the ground. The warrior walked toward us, and Mom took two steps toward him, bringing her other hand up to hold the sword above her head as her shawl fell to the sand by the swing set. Her sword seemed so heavy.

  There were rocks all around. I jumped off the swing and picked one up. I was going to hit the warrior in the head, but Mom brought her sword down on his head hard and pulled the blade toward her slowly, leaving a thin line of bubbling blood along his crown. His hair was animal-like, tiny clumps of curly wire on a greasy scalp that was dark and bumpy. He took a blade from his leather skirt and raised it above his head, grunting. Mom lowered her head as he brought his blade down, cracking her skull open. He grunted and walked away. She fell to her knees, hands in the sand. Her head was a quartered cantaloupe. I saw the rind of her skull and the melon of her brain and the seeds in the middle. I put my cheek on her bony back, and I felt her sobs moving her shoulder blades together and apart. We stayed like that until she got up, picked up her shawl and we began to walk.

  LIZ

  MOM WAS SITTING upright in the hospital bed, wrapped in the white Christian Dior silk robe Dad gave her when Diana was born. I’d always loved that robe. It was decorated with purple irises with long green stems—Mom’s favorite flower and mine too, to this day. It was early June and the window in her private room was open, letting in fresh air. Despite having had a radical hysterectomy, Mom was in remarkably fine form. Her lips were firm and upturned, her eyes sparkled bright, and her chin jutted out in defiance as she cracked jokes about kicking this cancer in the rear end.

  “Eviction time is here,” she said, raising her fist triumphantly. “Screw squatters’ rights, pack your bags, and go!” For the first time since Dad died, she seemed hopeful, even happy.

  She was staying in the hospital for a few days to let the scar heal. The crooked rag-doll’s mouth across her belly made it hurt to laugh, but with Dan around, it was impossible not to. He was a joker like Dad and would do anything for a laugh. He had just formed a break-dance crew with two friends and wanted to show Mom his latest moves. He was a “popper.” This meant he could make his arms look like a liquid stream, beginning at one end of his finger tips, popping at his elbow, bubbling up through his neck and then down the other arm, another elbow pop down to his fingers, which ended with a wrist flick. He performed for us while rapping “Roxanne Roxanne” by UTFO. For the line that went, “Yo, Kangol, I don’t think you’re dense, but you went about the matter with no experience,” he moonwalked in his army pants across the hospital room floor. For the line “You should know, she doesn’t need a guy like you, she needs a guy like me with a high IQ,” he did the Robot, jerking his skinny upper body from one side to the other, and bent his arms upright like a soccer referee calling a goal, ending with both pointer fingers aimed at his red French legionnaire cap, part of his crew’s outfit. It had black felt letters in a medieval font that read “Danny D.” We all were cheering him on, laughing. Amanda was doubled over, holding on to the bed railing as she guffawed, Diana was lying next to Mom on the bed, hugging her belly, her eyes magnified, happy slits beneath her pale pink glasses. Mom was laughing so hard she snorted, which made us all laugh even harder. We laughed and laughed—tears streaming down our faces.

  Then Mom screamed, “Ouch!”

  She had popped a stitch. And as awful as it was, we kept laughing. We had to. It was the first time we had all laughed like that in over two months, and it felt too good to stop.

  DAN

  THAT SUMMER MOM got sick, I had just graduated from elementary school. It was right across the street from our house, so me and my crew—Curtis, Jeremy, and Sean—would walk over there and go straight to the roof. There was always a stray ball that someone had kicked up there during recess, and we’d use it to play basketball, kickball, whatever. Or sometimes we’d hit our fists against this brick wall to see who was toughest. The bricks were concrete with this coarse sand that would rub off like the salt from a pretzel. My knuckles would be bleeding, but I would not stop hitting the wall. It was cool. I was always the toughest.

  Curtis was my best friend. He lived with his mom in a low-income apartment complex in Mount Kisco. It was like we came from two different worlds. The differences really hit me that summer when I invited him to the Bedford Golf and Tennis Club to play tennis. I walked onto the court, bouncing the ball and talking shit. When I turned around, I saw that Curtis hadn’t set foot on the court. He was just standing there, and his eyes began to well up with tears. He was looking at a sign that said WHITES ONLY. He thought it meant black people weren’t allowed. Even though I felt so bad, I just laughed it off and explained that the sign referred to clothes. But I hated the club from then on. Later, I heard that the club, the Bedford Golf and Tennis Club, wouldn’t even let Arthur Ashe join.

  One evening, this kid Kenny, Curtis, and I were walking back to Curtis’s house from the Bazaar Mall, and this Puerto Rican gang of older kids drove by and almost hit us. The car stopped. Kenny backed off, but Curtis and I stood our ground. One of the Puerto Rican kids rolled down his window and was like, “Give me your jacket.” Curtis said no. We stood there, glaring at them, and they drove off. That night, I learned that you have to stand your ground with things like that. You have to be tough and stand your ground.

  LIZ

  MOM CAME HOME from the hospital with a bandage on her belly and a mission
: to find Dan a male role model.

  “He’s surrounded by women!” she declared one June morning, sitting up in her bed as if she had just realized yet another tragic impact of Dad’s death. The bills that lay in messy piles scattered on her blue chenille bedspread were one; the crooked scar that underlined her belly button was yet another. Although she could do little about the unpaid bills or her missing uterus or her dead husband, she could find a man to kick a soccer ball with her eleven-year-old boy. That seemed doable.

  But it just added to the cast of characters who constantly streamed in and out of our house that summer, “friends” I’d never heard of or seen before Dad died. They appeared in droves, locusts buzzing up our long driveway bearing casseroles and furrowed brows. In a way, I think our sad story soothed them, made them feel better about their own lives. Every time a new stranger appeared in our kitchen and embraced me, each time I saw the same tense-eyed and tight-lipped expression, I couldn’t help but think: You don’t know me. You could not possibly care as much as you are pretending to.

  Duncan showed up that summer with an altogether different expression. He was the son of a friend of Mom’s, another instant friend. Since Mom thought it would be nice for Dan to have another man around the property, Duncan was welcomed with great enthusiasm. He was twenty-eight, with long wavy dark hair, chiseled features, and intense dark brown eyes set deep into his skull. He wore dirty jeans and slip-on leather boots despite the summer heat. He lived in Greenwich Village and started showing up on Saturday mornings with his guitar and always a knapsack full of records. Every weekend, he would bring a new assortment to play. Amanda was in awe. Instead of Supertramp or Elton John, Jimi Hendrix and Cream wafted down the stairs from her room. She made a mix tape that started with Janis Joplin singing “Mercedes Benz” and played it loud in the tape deck of her car, Dad’s Mercedes.

  I spent most of that summer listening to music too, either up in Amanda’s room with her and Duncan or downstairs in the living room with Liz Subin. Liz was my best friend. She was my twin in reverse—she had jet-black hair and olive skin. And she was Jewish, which as far as I could gather meant no presents on Christmas or jelly beans on Easter. Being Jewish sucked. Her parents called us Liz One and Liz Two, like Thing One and Thing Two from Cat in the Hat, only we never got into any trouble.

  Liz often spent weekends at my house, where we’d pick fat blueberries from the row of bushes that lined our side lawn and make blueberry pies or muffins or pancakes. On weekdays, we’d spend afternoons playing a game of tennis or hitting a bucket of golf balls at the Bedford Golf and Tennis Club. I would have much rather rented a golf cart to play nine holes, but Mom said we couldn’t afford that anymore. She even closed our account at the pool snack bar. That would have put me off going to the pool altogether, if it were not for the new lifeguard, a cute high school senior.

  Brad had broad shoulders, narrow hips, and short brown hair golden-tipped from the sun. He was the reason I showed up for swim-team practice every morning and afternoon that summer. I’d swim a hundred laps at eight in the morning, then again in the afternoon. He was also the reason I signed up for swim clinics. I didn’t need much help with my strokes—I had records in butterfly and freestyle—but I pretended my flip turns needed help. I struggled with them on purpose, hoping Brad might place a hand on either side of my hips to show me how they should turn.

  The afternoons Liz and I were not at the club we’d be at my house, lying on the living room floor listening to the Doors. We’d spend hours dutifully inking the Doors logo on the soles of our Tretorn sneakers, our forearms, and our inner thighs. That summer, I had two crushes, Jim Morrison and Brad. And Amanda had one. It was Duncan. She talked about him all the time: “Duncan gave me his Cream album.” “Duncan is going to take me to the city.” Duncan, Duncan, Duncan. And Duncan responded by spending most of the weekend sitting on her bedroom floor playing his guitar or his records, or helping Amanda in the barn. Summer passed, and no one seemed to notice that he never once kicked a soccer ball with Dan.

  I started freshman year at Fox Lane High School that September. Amanda was a senior and I knew, without ever discussing it with her, that I was to avoid her at all costs. She thought my preppy friends, with their flipped-up collars and their penny loafers, were lame, and I was scared of her tough-looking smoking-lounge crew. Even if I passed her in the hallway, as I did every day on my way to my English class, which was right next to her locker, I knew to avert my eyes, to busy myself in a notebook or in a conversation with a friend.

  But at home it was a different story–we had begun experimenting with RIT dye. Amanda and I raided Dad’s closet, taking his old Hanes T-shirts, twisting and rubber-banding them into deformed snowballs, and then plunging them into Tupperware trays of purple or red dye. As our spider-web designs improved, we graduated to Dad’s Brooks Brothers button-downs, his crisp tuxedo shirts, which Amanda wore into the city to go see concerts with friends. I wore mine with black leggings in my bedroom and danced by myself, Billy Idol blaring, my side ponytail whipping my cheeks as I practiced moves I’d seen on MTV.

  That same fall, Amanda’s colt, Bartholomew, was scheduled for castration. Amanda was nervous, worried that the surgery would be painful. Bartholomew was still so young, knobby-kneed, and skittish. He had been born in May just weeks after Dad died. He was a small, skinny version of his mom, Berry, with a toast-colored coat, black mane and tail. When Amanda told me that Duncan wanted to be there during the procedure, I thought it was nice. I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer to watch her pet’s balls get chopped off. Just the thought made me woozy.

  The next afternoon, as I was reaching into the kitchen freezer for a tub of Breyer’s mint chocolate chip ice cream, I saw a Ziploc bag containing two bloody hunks of meat. I pulled out the package.

  “What’s this?” I asked Duncan and Amanda, who were sitting in the kitchen.

  Amanda repressed a smile, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “Ask Duncan.”

  I thought it was a prank. I think Amanda did too. Then, in a very matter-of-fact way, Duncan said, “They’re Bartholomew’s balls.”

  Once he said those words—Bartholomew’s balls—I could see that it was true. Veins ran through the grayish purple rounds of frozen flesh. I shrieked and dropped the bloody bag back on top of the frozen peas and spinach.

  “Why are they in our freezer?” I asked. Amanda’s contorted smile exploded into a full-on belly laugh. So they were playing a joke on me, I thought.

  “Because I am going to eat them,” Duncan said.

  Amanda stopped mid-“Ha” as if the second “Ha” got stuck in her throat. “Eat them?” she asked, her face going from good humor to horror in a split second.

  “They are a delicacy,” he explained calmly. “Sometimes called Rocky Mountain oysters, they’re good for virility.”

  I had my back to him, but I could feel his eyes. I had felt the gaze before but had brushed it off or made up an excuse for it. This time it was direct and impossible to ignore—partly because of the way he said “virility,” all smooth and creepy, and partly because of the silence that stemmed from Amanda’s realization that this man she had a crush on wanted to eat her pet’s balls.

  “That’s gross” was all I could muster.

  “You slice them into thin pieces and sauté them,” he was saying to a silent Amanda as I left the room, not fast enough. I felt sick to my stomach and wasn’t sure if it was the balls or just him.

  Several weeks later, Amanda and I went grocery shopping, and Duncan came along. We whizzed through the aisles, picking up things on Mom’s list—tuna fish and brown rice—and things that were not—ice cream and Oreos, perks of having a distracted mother.

  As we waited in the checkout line, Amanda remembered milk.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said and took off before I could say “I’ll get it,” which would have been code for “Please don’t leave me alone with him.”

  I watched her run, in her tie-dyed Levi�
�s jeans and her Pop Rocks T-shirt, her Converse low-tops squeaking as she ran past the deli and racks of Hostess cakes and Thomas’ English muffins. She hooked a left and disappeared down the dairy aisle. As soon as she was gone, I felt his eyes.

  I was in the middle of a busy grocery store. A woman was unloading a full cart of groceries onto the moving belt two feet in front of me, yet I felt totally alone with this man I did not trust and did not like. I took a step away from him and toward a nearby magazine rack to look at Kim Alexis on the cover of a magazine. She was so pretty. Ever since I had done the Macy’s catalogue, I’d become obsessed with supermodels. Everyone in the eighth grade at Fox Lane saw it and thought it was so cool, and I even got to take home the clothes I wore for the shoot. I wanted to do more modeling, maybe even be a model when I got older. As I was scanning the racks and fantasizing about being on the cover of Seventeen one day, Duncan took a step toward me and pointed at Paulina Porizkova on the cover of Modern Bride.

  “One day, you’ll be in Modern Bride,” he said.

  I froze. Then he added, “One day, you’ll be my bride.”