It was dark except for a dull red glow coming from the living room. When I unthinkingly flicked on the lights there was a surprised squeak. The source of the noise was almost buried in the easy chair–the springs are bad and it tends to engulf anyone of moderate size–with a folded laptop on his lap, and currently shielding his face with his arms. After a few seconds he realized who it was and lowered the arms. Slowly, he said, “Have I embarrassed myself again?”
“Don’t worry, Dad, your ‘eek!’”—I did an exaggerated high-pitched imitation—”is very manly.”
He did a sort of half-smile with the barest glimpse of pointy teeth. Sometimes I mulled over how by the time I was in college we would look like we were the same age, and that I had better start concocting cover stories. Maybe, I thought grimly, I could say that both my parents died of disease and this was my older brother Andy. Nat said he’d start aging eventually, but how many decades would it take before Dad looked like he could be my father? I shivered.
“To ask the extremely obvious, you can’t sleep, Dianne?”
“To state the extremely obvious, especially as this is 1:20 a.m., yes. Are you working?”
Dad stared at the Apple as though willing it to open itself. “In theory.” He was wearing different clothes than from when he had just woken up; I wondered if the black color scheme reflected his mood.
I turned to go into the kitchen, but a question occurred to me. “Um, are you going to tell me to go back to bed?”
“Hm?” He had been staring blankly—and squinting—into space. “Oh. I doubt that doing so would be of any benefit to either of us. How about we make a deal: I switch on the table lamp over there, you turn off the main light, and I let you stay here with an added discretionary clause.”
“Huh?”
“I mean we don’t have to tell your mother.”
While doing the required light maneuvers, I replied, “Right. Sorry, late night equals slowness. Though technically it’s early morning. I was going to get myself a drink. Would you like anything?” I knew what he wanted, but sometimes I prefer to pretend that he has more than one thing in his diet.
“The usual. . . if it’s not too much trouble.”
“No problemo. Hot or cold?”
He looked wistful. “Somewhere in the neighborhood of 98. 6 Fahrenheit and 36. 8 Celsius?”
“Poor Daddy. I don’t have a thermometer, but I’ll try.”
Mom’s voice trailed down after me. “Herbal tea would be really nice.” I craned my neck over, and sure enough, she was standing at the foot of the stairs, almost as pale as her husband. She had wrapped herself in a purple and blue flowered blanket. “Better than the two of you hiding from me.”
“We’re not. . .”
“Relax, I’m kidding. This isn’t exactly land of the well-rested, is it?” She came down and kissed me on the top of the head. I felt a mixture of teen desire to protest, ‘Mo-om!’, and little girl pleasure.
The process was simple enough. I pulled out one of the bottles of blood, poured it into a mug, and put it in the microwave. After nearly sixteen years the setting was automatic; I didn’t even need to think about how long it would take to heat it to vampire-preference. While that was revolving, I filled two other mugs with hot water from the faucet, dropping the bag of herb and flower tea into the first and mixing cocoa into the second. I knew we had a tray somewhere–
“Are you okay, Di?” chorused my parents.
“Yeah, fine. I just knocked over most of the pots and pans.”
When I’d put everything back I carefully carried the hot drinks on the tray, hoping not to spill any on my ‘The First 1,000 Digits of Pi’ t-shirt. The big comfy chair now had two occupants—my dad took up so little sideways room that my mom barely had to squish at all. When Mom is sick she tends to want companionship more than usual. Dad had put the computer back in the loft while I was messing around in the kitchen; he now had an arm around Mom’s shoulders.
“Thank you,” Mom said, taking her flowery tea. She generally preferred coffee, but caffeine would have defeated the purpose of joining us. I put down the tray, pulled a cushion over to a spot near the chair, and sat cross-legged on top of it. Dad and I each took a mug.
Being down here, in the soft yellow lamplight, felt much better than alone in my room. I asked Mom, “So, have you come for the beverage or for the company?”
She wrapped her hands around the tea, warming her hands. “Company. Would using the phrase ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ have copyright issues?”
“Might I suggest lucid in Laconia?” Dad said.
She smiled. “I have an idea. Can we pretend that we have known about me being HIV positive for a long time and have gotten used to the idea and don’t have to make that our main topic and don’t have to avoid it in a very obvious way as if we had an elephant in the room?”
I was hesitant. “I don’t know. Do we have that much imagination?”
“We could try.”
“I drink to that,” Mom replied. We all took a sip.
I nearly choked. “Oops.”
Dad grimaced. “Switch.”
We switched mugs while Mom tried not to giggle. “Bloody gross,” I muttered.
“I faintly remember liking chocolate once. . . Selene, please. It was a simple mistake.” He took a long, deep drink to wash away the taste.
When the trauma of the moment had faded away and I was comfortably slurping cocoa and doing my best to think about nothing, a new problem arose. “What are we going to do now?”
“In relation to me,” asked Mom, “or just until the sun comes up?”
“The sun comes up. Tell stories of your childhoods? Toilet-paper all the trees in the neighborhood? Play Chinese Checkers?”
“Chinese Checkers seems safest,” Dad put in.
So I got out the wooden board with the six-pointed star and all the little colored pieces. As always, Dad was red, Mom was blue, and I was green. We played for about twenty minutes; moves interrupted with drinks and repetitions of, “Dear, why did you do that? Your pieces are blocking mine! It’s so annoying. . .” from my parents. Meanwhile, my inner monologue managed to split into an inner dialogue.
Normal Me: Skip, skip. Mom’s nightgown is pretty. Dad’s going to win, isn’t he? He’s got a nice little trail going. I think I’ll move my next piece five spots up.
Crying Me: Oh crap, how can you be playing checkers when Mom’s going to DIE?
Wolf Me: Embrace the pain, human. Change. It’ll be so much simpler then. Kill. Eat. Sleep.
Normal Me: Whoa, it’s getting pretty crowded in here. Is it my turn?
This game distracted us for a while (Dad was the winner) but once it ended, we sank straight back into the sleepless exhaustion again, staring into our empty cups. It was 2:00. I was getting a headache, but anything was better than being in the dark with nothing but my unstoppable silent voices for company. Mom leaned her head on Dad’s shoulder and looked steadily drowsier, until I was pretty sure she had nodded off. I pointed and Dad put his finger to his lips.
“It hurts,” I whispered.
He whispered back, keeping perfectly still. “Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.”
“I’ve heard that before. Doesn’t help much.” I leaned against the wall, hugging the pillow I had been sitting on earlier.
“It’s from a 19th century poem called ‘Solitude’, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox—”
“Ew,” I murmured.
“What?”
“E-W-W. Her initials. Ew.” Feeble joke, I knew, but he smiled a tiny bit.
Dad’s voice, always pleasantly smooth, moved into a soothing, soft singsong tone. This was the first time he had recited any poetry for weeks. Usually he’d quote or sing something every few days. “‘Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone–for a sad old Earth must borrow its mirth but has trouble enough on its own. Sing, and the hills will answer, sigh and it is lost in the air.’’
Mom sighed an
d moved a little closer to him. He stroked her hair.
“‘. . . The echoes bound with a joyful sound, but shrink from voicing care. Rejoice, and men will seek you, grieve and they turn and go. . . ‘ “
“I’ll say,” I interrupted, thinking about my friends.
“‘They want full measure of all your pleasure, but they do not need your woe.’”
Without opening her eyes, Mom dreamily added, “‘Succeed and give, and it helps you live, but no man can help you die.’”
“That comes later, darling. You can sleep, it’s all right.” At this point, he sounded like he had a lump in his throat, even though he had been very calm ever since destroying our firewood. “‘Be glad and your friends are many, be sad and you lose them all. There are none to decline. . . there are. . . ‘ sorry, just a minute, it’s, ‘There are none to decline life’s nectared wine, but alone you must drink life’s gall.’”
I looked at the three mugs, then at my parents. “We all drank this time.”
He followed my gaze thoughtfully. “Hm. We’ve disproved the ageold wisdom.”
A huge yawn nearly dislocated my jaw. “Thanks, Dad. I guess I’ll have to go back to bed if I’m going to resemble sentient life at school tomorrow.”
“I’d sit by you if you wanted, if it wasn’t for. . .” He indicated Mom.
“It’s okay.” I headed towards the stairs, and then turned. I had to say it. “Dad…”
“Yes?”
“This means Mom’s probably going to die before you and I look like we’re the same age, right?”
“Yes.” He didn’t meet my eyes.
“Promise me we won’t drink alone?”
There was a silence. I wondered if he was thinking about how I would grow old and die before him, and any of my children do the same, along with grandchildren, unknown generations to come. He wasn’t the sort of person to follow Mom when she went if I still needed him, but after I was gone. . . I suddenly decided that Dad needed more pity than I did. If my existence weren’t at stake, pardon the pun, I would say that vampires shouldn’t marry.
Finally, he whispered, “I can’t. I can’t promise that, I mean.”
“Okay. Just wanted to know.”
Didn’t bother with brushing teeth again, I only used mouthwash before returning to my room. Then shut my eyes. When I opened them again the sun had come up. I tiptoed down to check on my parents, then sighed: Mom was still asleep there, and Dad hadn’t moved the entire night.
Chapter Ten
Fight With Me
The next day was hard. The day after that was harder. By the time October came I was as numb as the frosted mornings.
“What’s wrong, Dianne?” Taylor asked me on the bus.
I didn’t look at her, or at anything else in particular. “Nothing.” “Are you okay?” Matt asked from across the aisle. He had a new
jacket that was almost cute enough to cut through my gloom. Almost
being the operative word.
“Leave. Me. Alone.” I immediately regretted my growling, but if I
said anything now I would say too much. The worse thing about all this
was the secret, the hiding what had happened to Mom as though
misfortune was something to be ashamed of, like it never happened to
anyone else. Taylor’s sister had diabetes, for goodness’ sake. I squeezed
my eyes shut.
Matt lapsed into unhappy silence while Taylor returned to her usual
comatose state. The wolf inside me whined to get out. Two friends, two
parents, and nobody I could talk to. Mom was strictly business-as-usual
while Dad moped. Rifts had begun to form between the three of us;
times we couldn’t think of anything to say that hadn’t been said already. When I went home I saw Mom’s shoes by the door. I could hear her
voice from upstairs, not loud but hurt.
“Where were you last night? Di was worried.”
“I was out.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“I just went for a walk.”
“All night?”
“I wanted some time to think, okay?”
“Ferdinand, I really wanted, no, I needed you.”
“I’m sorry, I just. . . don’t cry! Selene. . .”
“Are you afraid to look at me now? Is that it? Do I make you feel
guilty?”
“You do if you sob like that!” Dad snapped. He actually snapped.
Dad had never even clicked before.
“I don’t blame you for all this. But if you’re just going to swoop out
when things get complicated, I will blame you for that.”
“I said I’m sorry. Do you want me to go to Dianne’s parent-teacher
conference tomorrow?”
“This isn’t the issue here!”
“Than what is? So I’m the villain of the piece? The emotionally
distant husband? The failure?”
“You’re not a failure, just. . . stop twisting my words! Stop making
everything I say sound like I’m accusing you!”
I noiselessly crept up to my bedroom, locked the door, and started
my homework. Fifteen minutes later I realized that I had been doodling
in the margins instead of actually doing anything. We were supposed to
stick together through this. They were the ones who are supposed to
understand me. They were the ones that I was supposed to talk to. . . Without realizing it, I had made my decision. The scene on the bus
had been one of too many. It would be the last. I went and got the
cordless phone (I had drooled on it a little in my wolf phase, but it was
okay now), took it back into my room, sprawled on my back on the bed,
and made a call.
“Hello. Is Matt there?”
A little boy had answered. “Yeah. MATT!” He yelled into the
mouthpiece rather than away from it, nearly bursting my eardrums. “Hello?”
“Hi. It’s Dianne.”
“Dianne, I’m kinda busy right now.”
My heart compressed to the size of a thimble. “I’m sorry about being
such a mood-and-rude today.”
“Just for today?”
“I’m sorry for all the days. I’m an ingrate who should be beheaded,
then grounded, then beaten to death, then forced to live on bread and
water for six weeks.”
Matt laughed, the nicest sound I had heard in weeks, giving me the
courage to continue.
“I’m finally ready to tell you what’s been causing it.”
“I am mostly ears, except for my hand because it would be really
hard to hold the phone if you were all ears, wouldn’t it?”
“I never thought about that. Before I tell you, promise to never ever
tell anyone else on pain of. . . pain.”
“The pair of us seem to be magically wittier than usual today. I
promise. Former Boy Scout’s honor.”
“I’m technically not supposed to be letting anybody know, but the
pressure is getting to be way too much. My mom’s sick.”
“Oh gosh. What is it? Is it serious?”
Once you start telling something, it’s very easy to keep doing it. In a
voice that was not my own, I whispered, “AIDS.”
“Oh.”
A long silence.
“How?”
“Bad blood transfusion.”
“I thought they screened those.”
“Not in poor countries.”
“Vacation?”
“Yeah.”
“Anybody else in the family have it?”
“You are remarkably businesslike. No.”
“I don’t tell anyone?”
“I trust you to not even tell your tarantula.”
“Okay.”
Ano
ther long silence.
Matt cleared his throat and said, “I kinda expected something like
this would be more dramatic.”
“I did too.” I was supposed to cry. Why wasn’t I crying? The world
was crazy. The most painful things I could say calmly, but I fell apart the
day before when I had lost a pencil. It had seemed unbearable at the
time.
“Is there something I can do?”
You could ask me out, I imagined answering. “No, not really. But
thanks.”
“This may be a bad time to ask, but I completely forgot to say this earlier. My parents want to invite your parents over for dinner this Friday. Seven to eight. They just like to get to know all of our neighbors.
Can you tell them? Let me know tomorrow if you can come.” I thought for a moment. Was Friday full moon? No, I had forgotten
that it was tonight. “I think that should be okay.”
“All right. Hang in there, Di.”
“I’m hanging.” I felt a tiny, tiny, microscopic bit better.
When I hung up and poked my head out of my room, I could see
Mom and Dad downstairs. Mom was fixing up dinner and Dad was
clearing out the dishwasher—Dad did most of the chores around the
house, but we learned early on to never let a vampire cook. You end up
with everything very rare and lots of holes poked in it. They weren’t
talking, and my heart, which was already located somewhere around my
pelvis, sank further.
“I didn’t hear you come in earlier, honey,” Mom said. The smile on
her lips didn’t reach the eyes had been stained with frustration. “I can understand that,” I said quietly.
Dad looked at the two of us pleadingly and opened his mouth, but
ended up not saying anything. I took out the salad and salad dressing
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