by Don Zolidis
That left the couch for me and Amy.
We had spent the night together exactly once when we were going out, so this was definitely something new. A test of our newfound friendship. Also, I should mention that this wasn’t even a pull-out couch; it was a regular-size couch. And when I say “regular-size,” I really mean very small.
So there was that.
Amy took the inner edge of the couch and wrapped herself up, burrito-style, in the spare sheet from the closet. That left about six inches of cushion for me on a couch about four feet long. I also had no sheets or cushions. This was gonna be awesome.
As you can imagine, falling asleep was impossible. Amy kept to her spot, but I could feel her breath on the back of my neck. Should I turn around and face her? Should I stay totally still, petrified, like a statue? What did this mean? Were we getting back together? Surely there was nothing more romantic than a Motel 6 in Milwaukee with three of your best friends? Clearly it was working for two of the people in this place.
It surprised no one that Groash fell asleep first, probably because his odorous feet were gently nestled on a pillow. Somehow Elizabeth crashed too, and then it was just me and Brian who were awake.
I stayed as still as possible, but it didn’t help. After about five hours of this, I saw Brian get up. He yanked on a shirt and walked into the hallway, letting the door click shut.
I followed him.
I found him on the “porch” of the Motel 6, which was a slab of concrete with a couple of chairs and the overwhelming sensation of despair. A couple of trucker guys were smoking cigarettes and downing Miller High Lifes in a circle. They regarded Brian a little wolfishly.
I tried to ignore them.
“How’s it going?” I said, settling in next to him.
He smiled and shook his head. “Crazy, man. I think my whole world just turned inside out.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve liked her for two years. I didn’t say anything. Because, like—why would I think she would go for me?”
“Wow.”
“Then I watched you and I was like, ‘Well, if that girl likes Craig, then I’ve probably got a good shot.’”
“Glad I could help.”
“But I’m serious, right?” He stopped and bit his lip. “You internalize things. You start seeing yourself the way you think people see you. But maybe they don’t see you that way at all. She told me, tonight, that she’d had a crush on me for a while. And I was like, ‘You couldn’t have made that clear earlier?’”
“And if you hadn’t done that stupid solo adventure you wouldn’t have known.”
“Yeah.”
“You know, Groash wants a solo adventure now too. He says it’s not fair she gets one and he doesn’t.”
Brian put his hands through his spiky hair. “That’s gonna be a little weird.”
I looked up at the sky. The lights of the Motel 6 made it impossible to see the stars. The clouds overhead were a sickly orange color.
I had basically missed this entire thing. Brian was my friend; Elizabeth was my friend, and I had no idea what was going on. I had been so wrapped up in Amy and my own problems that I was completely blind to everything going on around me. Once again.
“I’m happy for you,” I said, and I meant it. Oddly enough, it felt like diving into a deep pool of water.
“Thanks.”
“Are your parents gonna be cool with it? I mean, I know Elizabeth’s mom is cool with it—she already saw your sexual power and everything.”
He laughed. “Um…I think it’s gonna be okay. My mom’s gonna be like, ‘You think that’s love? Your father was in a prison camp for sixteen months while I raised your sister, that’s love. I brought him food every week or he would’ve starved to death. That’s what love is. You wrote a Dungeons & Dragons adventure.’
“But I think—you know, my parents want me to be happy. And if the white girl in combat boots and a nose ring makes me happy, then…go for it.”
“Cool.” I thought about my parents. “I think my parents want me to be happy too.”
A semi was backing up in the parking lot, sending an obnoxious beeping sound reverberating over the patio.
“Hey, man,” he said. “I’m sorry about what happened to your college plan.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you gonna do next year?”
“I have no idea. I thought maybe I’d go to Madison, but…I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”
Brian looked over at me. “I think it’ll work out.”
“I don’t know.”
“Think of it this way: Maybe it’s better to wait and see what happens. You push and you push and you push and maybe the answer is just to relax.”
Pooh just is.
“Huh.”
“And create a solo adventure with a sphinx and then fight about it in a car the next day.”
When I got back to the room, Amy had stretched out over the entire couch.
I settled in on the floor.
“Whatever you do, don’t hurt the car,” said Brian.
“I’m not gonna hurt the car,” I said. “But let’s face it: It’s an Omni, something is going to go wrong. A squirrel could jump on it and the bumper would fall off.”
“Craig—” He took off his glasses and rubbed his face. “I don’t really feel good about you taking the car.”
“It’s okay,” interrupted Elizabeth, squeezing Brian by the shoulder. “Craig’s really boring. He’s not gonna do anything.”
“Thanks,” I said.
We were already at the convention center, which was thronged by ecstatic nerds from all over the country. Ironically enough, I did in fact spot someone in a chain-mail bikini. As a result, we had already lost Groash. Of course, once he realized I gave Brian all the money for the tickets he’d be back.
“Promise?” said Brian.
“Yes.”
“All right,” he said, finally.
“Thank you,” said Amy.
The adoption agency was on the south side of Milwaukee, theoretically only three or four miles from downtown. It took us about three hours to get there because Milwaukee is basically designed like a deathtrap. Once you’re inside, there’s no getting out; every road is both one-way and under construction, and the signs are nonexistent and contradictory. To make matters worse, the Omni accelerated like it was being powered by a hamster wheel and handled like a cardboard box.
Amy was still quiet. When I wasn’t actively praying that the car would live through the day, I wondered what was going on in her head. Was she going to find out her birth mom’s name today? Was it possible she lived nearby? What would happen then? Suddenly the immediate future was an unknowable gulf. “You okay?” I said, realizing I had just turned the wrong way down a one-way street.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shoulders hunched. “I’m just thinking.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Okay.”
The agency was in a nondescript white brick building, hanging low to the ground like it was embarrassed. There was an insurance office, and an accountant, and a bunch of other tiny businesses housed in these buildings—people live out their whole lives working in places like this, and everyone else drives past.
“You want me to come with?” I said.
She nodded.
We entered the first waiting room, which had been decorated in the 1970s and hadn’t recovered. The tile was a gold-and-gray geometric pattern that was probably designed to subliminally make you buy popcorn. The chairs were created in the same vein—stiff-backed, and too deep to sit in comfortably. We signed in and fidgeted.
A teenage couple. That’s what we looked like. Were we a teenage couple?
A middle-aged woman behind the counter called Amy up and handed her a raft of papers on a clipboard. After she finished them, they called her into the back and she disappeared down a wood-paneled hallway. I stayed in the waiting room and poked at the maga
zines on a side table. Ladies’ Home Journal.
Why is it always Ladies’ Home Journal? Who are these ladies that need instructions on doily construction so much?
There was another couple there, dutifully filling out paperwork. They were older, probably in their mid-thirties—the man had a tie like he had just come from an office of some kind. The woman was tall, dark-haired, and nervous as hell. Every once in a while she would look over at me and give me a faint smile like I was a dying animal.
Ten minutes later, Amy came back. She held a white envelope in her hands and stopped in the middle of the waiting room. Tears were already brimming in her eyes. I stood up and wrapped her in a hug. In my mind, while I was waiting, I tried to picture what I was going to say to her, but I hadn’t come up with anything. I just held on to her.
“I just want you to know,” said the woman, getting halfway up from her chair, “that I think you guys are doing the right thing.”
It took me a second to realize what she was talking about.
“Oh, we’re not a couple. I mean, we were a couple. Six times actually.”
“I see,” she said, slightly horrified. “It’s a good thing you’re giving it up, then.”
We burst out laughing when we got in the car.
“Do I look pregnant?” said Amy. “Shit.”
“I shoulda been like, ‘We’re not really sure who it belongs to. I’m one of a number of possibilities.’”
She smacked me on the arm. “You’re horrible.”
I kept laughing. “They probably saw you and were like, Dibs.”
Amy put her face in her hands, losing it.
“Then they saw me and were like Eh, maybe not.”
She shook her head. “Those people were doing a good thing.”
“I shoulda said, I’m just here for the Ladies’ Home Journal. I can’t find it anywhere.”
Amy snickered, then looked down at the envelope in her hands. It had the name of the adoption agency on the outside, typed in a wide, official-looking font. It was a cloudy day, the light was soft, and when she looked down, her hair fell just over her shoulders, reminding me of that first time in Youth in Government. She looked so beautiful it hurt.
I tried not to look at her. The feelings that I’d been pushing down the whole trip were swelling inside of me, like my whole skin was just a thin covering of my heart, which was about to burst.
The envelope crinkled in her hands. She took a deep breath.
“So…” she said, exhaling. “It’s not quite how I thought. They’re not gonna just give me the name; I have to write my birth mom a letter and then they have to let her know that a letter exists, and she has to decide if she wants to read it. And then, if she reads it, then she can send a letter back. And then…then we can meet.”
“Oh.”
She let go of the envelope and threaded her fingers together under her chin. “I don’t know that I’m ready to do this. Can we maybe go somewhere?”
We settled on McDonald’s, which seemed like a perfect place to have a public breakdown. We got some lunch and tucked into a hard plastic booth in the back, as far away from the malignant play area as possible.
Amy kept looking at the envelope. “I really thought I wanted to do this, but every time I think about what I would write to her…it gets scary.”
“Of course it’s scary.”
“If I start going down this path, then I can’t go back.”
“You can stop at any time.”
“I know, but…once I write the letter, then it’s out there. Then those words are out there. I mean, this is the person that made the most important decision in my life, and I’ve never met her. And I don’t know if I want to meet her.” She took a deep breath. “But then why come here if I’m not gonna follow through with it? I dragged you all the way here—”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. Do what you need to do.”
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about her—what she’d be like, if she had a family. All I know is that she was really young and from the wrong side of the tracks, but…I don’t know.”
She still had the envelope, which had been crinkled, uncrinkled, crinkled again, then finally smoothed out on the surface of the table.
“What’s she gonna say? If she meets me? Maybe she has a whole different life now. Maybe she doesn’t want to be reminded of what happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I’d been saying that a lot. I had no clue what to say.
“But then what if she wants to be a part of my life? What if she’s doing great, and is in a place where…where she can have a relationship with me?” She plucked a Kleenex and blew her nose into it. “At first I thought I wanted that—I mean, I think in the fantasy, that’s what I dreamed about for years, but now…now I think about—what does that mean for my dad and Glenn? Glenn can’t even try to find his birth mom for years, even if he wanted to. And then I just kind of imagine us all…separating…after my mom…dies….”
Amy started to collapse.
“I don’t want her to go,” she whispered.
I was sitting right next to her. I had my right arm around her shoulder, and my left arm was wrapped around her stomach, like I was preventing her from falling to pieces. I wasn’t succeeding.
“And I know she can be difficult, but she’s the thing that holds us together,” she managed.
“I know.”
“What’s gonna happen when I go to college? If she’s…not dead, then who’s gonna take care of her? If it’s just my dad and Glenn…what’s gonna happen to my brother?”
Amy stopped to blow her nose again and then dropped the used Kleenex in the white mountain that was forming on the plastic bench next to her.
“I’m not staying,” she said, steeling herself. “She’s not gonna make me stay. I can’t do that to myself. I mean—why do you think I’m going to UCLA? I’m going as far away as I could….”
She took the envelope in her hands again. “Maybe this is just the same thing: an escape route….”
She was shaking a little bit, and I still had my arm around her and was trying to think of something to say that was going to make all this better.
And there wasn’t anything.
I didn’t have any words that could make this less shitty.
So I stayed silent, and I held her for a long time. Finally, she got up, took the envelope, and pushed it into the trash.
“So let me explain my vision, here,” said my dad as we tromped into the basement.
It was the week before graduation and my dad had chosen this moment in time to destroy my world.
The basement consisted of exactly four rooms:
THE SECRET GUN ROOM—This room was off-limits. What happened in here? No one knew, but there were many guns. This was where all my friends had declared they would go in the event of the zombie apocalypse.
THE OUTER LIVING-ROOM-TYPE PLACE—The wood-paneled room with the nasty couch, chair, and television. Site of breakup number five.
THE LAIR—The unfinished part of the basement, which was where we gathered to consume Mountain Dew, nerd out, and play Dungeons & Dragons. Also, curiously, it contained our washer and dryer.
THE COLD STORAGE ROOM—Beyond the Lair was a cave-like place that housed our many, many Christmas decorations and abandoned dreams. I had been in there exactly once and it scared the hell out of me.
The Lair had a bare floor and exposed beams. There were drains in the floor in there, and the walls were plain cement that were stained with water marks. Spiders had grown powerful over the years and had created a small empire in the areas behind the chairs. You tried not to look too hard in any area of this room.
And it was here that Dad had a vision.
He opened the door to the Lair and took it in with a deep sigh. “So here’s what I see. We pull everything out of here. Get rid of the junk we don’t need. We clean the hell out of everything else.”
I may have let out a littl
e gasp of pain at this point.
Since the job hunt had been a continuous failure, Dad had been coming up with more and more projects to keep himself useful. So far he had reorganized the garage, built the shaky deck, and had now moved on to his white whale: the basement. His real goal was to reach the cold storage room and discover what terrors lurked within.
“I know we’ve got some wedding presents we never opened in there,” he said.
The mere act of taking everything out of the basement and cleaning it would take a normal, industrious human a week. For us, it was going to be longer.
“And you’re gonna help me,” he finished, clapping his hands together.
“Okay,” I said.
I think most disasters in history begin with someone proposing a plan and then some other idiot saying the word Okay.
We yanked all the furniture into the outer room first. That was the first nightmare. Because there were things beneath that furniture—crumbs that had dropped months or perhaps years ago, which had developed their own ecosystems and resented being exposed to the light of day again. Large, bloated wormy things slalomed away from us. We found about nineteen dice.
The cleaning process took longer. We swept the floor, and my dad took a break while I mopped everything.
“That’s not how you mop,” he said.
“This is how I mop.”
“It’s not effective.” He took it from my hands. “You go side to side, in an arc, okay? Side. To. Side.” He went back and forth with the mop, wetting the floor. “You know my first job? I worked in a restaurant.” He kept mopping. “The last thing we did—every night—mop the floor.”
“They probably thought you were a mopping genius.”
He chuckled. “I was, actually. Everyone else was terrible.”
He kept mopping.
“So I think I got a job lined up,” I said. “For the summer.”
He paused and leaned on his mop. “Don’t get a job in a restaurant.” Then he took a breath and looked at the wall. “I might be able to talk to some people at Parker Pen. They usually hire some kids for the summer.”
