Mr. Johnson didn’t make kids raise their hands, but no one spoke up.
“Similar to vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images,” he said. “Characters caught in hopeless situations, dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense. Those are just a few definitions of Theater of the Absurd.”
Emily whispered to Trix, “Sounds like my life.”
Mr. Johnson yanked a screen down over the whiteboard, tapped his laptop to life, and played some video of Charlie Chaplin, who, he explained, was a direct influence on Theater of the Absurd.
He told everyone to read Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and to write his or her own Theater of the Absurd play. Two acts. Due the first week of November.
Trix slipped glances at Ryan and saw him staring at the back of Emily’s head (not that he could really help but stare at her head, since it stuck out above everyone’s). His eyes glittered.
Trix squirmed. The imaginary ants were back. She had to resist the urge to flick them off her arms and swipe them from her legs. She scratched her back through her sweater.
Johnson jumped around like a fool, reciting something, and Trix’s thoughts drifted to the Octopus Guy. Her mom had, indeed, invited him in after their date. Trix’s bedroom was barely an alcove shielded from the rest of the trailer by thin drywall, and through it she heard noises she’d rather forget.
“Go home,” she’d whispered under her covers. But the clink of beer bottles, giggling, and groaning filtered through the skinny walls. It had been at least three thirty before she’d fallen asleep. And now here she was at eight fifteen with a pounding headache, trying to take in her homeroom teacher’s lecture and convince herself that Ryan’s interest in Emily was fleeting.
Thanks mom, she thought. Thanks loser Octopus Guy.
Filing from class, Emily said, “Can I just jot down everything my dad and step-mom say for my Theater of the Absurd play? That’d get me an A for sure.”
“Melissa? She’s cool.” Trix didn’t comment on Emily’s father. He was decidedly uncool.
Emily shrugged and said, “She has her moments I guess.”
“I’d love to live with Melissa. She’s young and hip—way more interesting than my old fish of a mom.”
Emily’s eyes flashed—a searchlight swooping across her irises. “At least your mom is your real mom.” As faulty as Trix’s mother was, Trix knew her. Lived with her for God’s sake.
Emily’s memories of her own mother were hazy at best. She’d been four when her mother left and her recollections were nothing more than decomposing mental snapshots. Riding in the car together. Picking her a fistful of buttery dandelions. Hearing her argue with Emily’s father in the next room.
Daily, Emily wondered about her, about what she looked like now, where she lived, if she had other kids. Emily had fantasies: that her mother was tall and beautiful, residing in a suburb somewhere, baking cookies for neighborhood children and chairing a garden club, that she was a fashion designer in New York dressing celebrities for premieres, or that she had been in a terrible head-on car accident and had forgotten who she was and that she had two daughters named Emily and Kristen.
Emily had no idea of the reality. She had no clue if her mom was a doting family woman or careerist or really a drug addict strung out in some other state. Or if she was even alive.
Trix and Emily walked down the hallway, talking loudly enough to hear themselves over the din of 1,500 other kids. Trix said, “My mother being real makes everything worse. Believe me, you’re the lucky one.”
“Trix. C’mon,” Emily said. She hated comparing hardships, trying to out-tough-luck each other.
“Seriously. If I could trade Fiona in for the Melissa model, I’d do it in a second.”
Maybe Trix was trying to make Emily feel better, but her method wasn’t working. Hearing anyone complain about her mom irritated Emily to no end. But when Trix, who knew how desperately Emily wished for a mother, went on about it, Emily took it as open hostility. “Can we talk about something else?” Emily pleaded.
“Jesus,” Trix said. “You just need to get over it.”
It was then that both of them felt the rumble of the tectonic plates on which their friendship was built. The shudder was brief and almost undetectable, like the ripple of seismic activity before an earthquake. But it happened, causing Emily and Trix to traipse shakily off to their individual classes as if their feet moved across tilting rock.
4. Evil X-Ray Machine
THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE was stark. White paper crinkled under Emily every time she moved. In a rack on the wall were magazines, mostly for little kids: Highlights. My Big Backyard. Cricket. One Seventeen.
This doctor was a pediatric endocrinologist. Emily’s dad, who, unlike Melissa, found her staggering growth infinitely disturbing, had suggested the appointment. Melissa set it up and drove Emily downtown.
The doctor talked to Melissa about things like “bone age” and phalanges and cartilage. He was going to send Emily to the lab to have her hand X-rayed. From the X-ray, the doctor would be able to predict, to a certain extent, how tall Emily would grow.
She’d overheard a conversation between her dad and Melissa a couple weeks before, Emily standing at the top of the stairway while her dad said, “She’s going to lap me, M. Jesus Christ. My daughter’s an amazon.” There was silence then. Until he burst forth with, “We know she doesn’t have anything wrong with her pituitary gland, from what Dr. Watkins said when she was, I don’t know, nine or ten, but my God. What if she’s going to hit seven feet or something?”
Ever the optimist, Melissa said, “WNBA?”
Emily pressed her toes into the nap of the Berber carpet. It was like small, fuzzy peas under her big feet.
“Don’t joke,” he snapped.
“I’m sorry,” Melissa said. “It’s just that I don’t think it’s so bad.”
“For her it will be. She’s not athletic. She’s creative.” Emily was surprised her father even knew this.
Sitting in a flimsy gown in this pediatric endocrinologist’s office was embarrassing. And Emily was scared of what the X-ray would tell them. She thought she’d rather not know where she’d end up. Kind of like she’d rather not have any inkling of the day she’d die.
The doctor left and Emily was allowed to get dressed. Then she and Melissa took their paperwork down two floors and followed the signs to X-Ray.
The hallways were quiet and squeaky. The exact opposite of the dirty, noisy corridors at school.
A youngish guy in his twenties with red hair and freckles across his nose took the papers. He smiled at Emily and winked. He told her to have a seat, that they’d call her name soon.
Slightly buoyed by the positive attention, however brief, she sat next to a fish tank and watched a bottom feeder slide over the glass. His mouth was a perfect black circle, his whiskers wiggling. She wished she’d brought her camera—an old Canon Rebel she’d gotten used off Craigslist. She would’ve zoomed in on him and taken a photo of that mouth, gaping like a manhole.
She looked away. She picked up a Ladies’ Home Journal and read a recipe for cornbread. She stared disdainfully at ads for ugly figurines she imagined old ladies in Nebraska ordering.
When her turn came, the freckled guy led her into a dim room full of machines. A quiet hum filled her ears. With another wink, he left.
An Asian woman arrived and introduced herself as Fay. She instructed Emily to rest her hand on a white table. Fay spread out Emily’s fingers.
She laid a heavy lead apron over Emily’s chest and left the room.
Emily loved the lead apron. She loved it when she got dental X-rays and she loved its comforting heft now. She wished she could wear it around all day, that she could deflect stares and mean comments with the lead apron.
Within moments, the X-ray tech came back in, removed the apron, and told Emily she could go.
Freckles, on the way out, promised the endocrinologist would read the film and call soon.
&n
bsp; Swell, she thought. I can hardly wait.
“Want to go to Starbucks or something?” Melissa asked, unlocking the car doors with her remote.
Emily said, “How about Café Obscura?” She tried not to frequent Starbucks. She and Trix had decided it was too corporate.
“Obscura it is,” said Melissa.
They drove in silence, listening to a woman singing with a deep, smoky voice. “Who is this?” Emily asked, turning it up a little.
“Cat Power. Hot, huh?”
“Don’t say ‘hot.’”
“Oh, sorry. Wrong word?”
“Wrong word coming from the wrong person.”
Melissa could’ve laughed at that, should’ve really. Since Emily was half joking. She’d meant to say “old” instead of “wrong.” To joke about Melissa’s age. But “wrong” had popped out.
Melissa looked sideways at her and shut off the stereo.
“Sorry,” Emily said.
Melissa sped through two yellow lights and got on I-5. Once she’d merged into traffic, she said, “You know, I apologize that I’m not her. I deeply apologize. Because I know you want me to be her. But I am me. Your dad loves the me that I am. And I thought you and Kristen did too. But all I’ve been getting lately is … attitude. And it’s making me tired, Em. It’s making me really tired.”
Emily stared out the window as they crossed the bridge and passed exits for the University District. She could see, in the distance, the stadium, the Safeco building, treetops that were turning yellow and orange.
Though he never showed it, she supposed her dad loved Melissa. She was reliable. She was pretty for a woman in her thirties.
But there was also something sad about her. She tried too hard. She wanted so badly to be part of Kristen’s and Emily’s lives that she was always throwing herself in front of them.
Emily said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” Melissa said, her voice flat.
“Why don’t you have a job?”
Melissa made a noise that sounded like a spoon stuck in a garbage disposal. “I do! You know that. I’m a data engineer.”
“But you’re always … around.”
Melissa reached over and gave Emily a light chuck on the forehead. “That’s because I work from home, you knucklehead. I want to be there for you and Kristen when you come in from school.”
The mood had lightened and Emily was relieved. She vowed not to say another inflammatory thing between there and the house.
Emily leaned her head against the cool window and watched trees and cars whip by. She imagined her mother living in this very same city, over in Wedgwood or down in the Central District, nearly missing running into Emily at Whole Foods or Nordstrom. Over and over. Like the movie Sliding Doors.
5. Dad? And a Cat
TRIX BREWED A pot of coffee and fried herself an egg in the kitchen, which was so small she could reach the sink, stove, and garbage can without taking a step. She had her earbuds in and listened to The Bad Fathers.
After eating the egg over the counter, she grabbed her coat and purse and went into her mom’s room, just big enough for a double bed and narrow dresser. She nudged the mattress with her knee.
“I’m going,” she said.
Fiona mumbled something, then opened one eye. “Where?”
“I dunno. Wherever dad deigns to take me this time. McDonald’s, probably.”
Voice still thick with sleep, her mom said, “You tell him he owes me two hundred thirty dollars.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Fiona was always claiming that Trix’s dad was behind on his child support payments. Trix didn’t doubt he was, but she knew her mother would never see a penny of what her dad didn’t feel like paying. Fiona violently distrusted the court system and wouldn’t take her father anywhere near a judge. Trix’s dad was equally adamant about doling out only what he felt Fiona deserved. Which wasn’t much.
Before she left, Trix yanked open Fiona’s bedroom blinds. “Trixie, Christ!” her mom shouted after her.
She hustled to the front of the trailer court to wait for her dad. From another double-wide, a baby wailed. Trix lit a cigarette and watched Metro buses, cars, and delivery trucks rumble past. She had no way of predicting how her dad would be that day. Or any day. He could be in one of his jovial moods where he played Lynrd Skynrd loud and drove them up to the mountains for a pseudo-hike, which meant finding a flat two-track road and walking along it for a while. Usually they would then stop at a bar on the way home and her dad would claim Trix was his girlfriend so she could drink. Or he could be in a foul place where he barely muttered hello and dropped her off at the mall while he sat in his truck smoking a joint.
Trix never knew.
Her parents had divorced when she was a baby. Her older brother Vox moved down to Tacoma with friends when he was Trix’s age and now tended bar and worked sound at concerts. She only saw him on major holidays. If then. She was pretty sure Vox never contacted their dad. The two hadn’t gotten along since Vox hit puberty.
A couple guys hooted at her from a passing Honda. She tried not to care that they might be mistaking her for one of the prostitutes, but she wanted to yell after them, this is a Badgley Mischka jacket! What hookers wore Badgley Mischka jackets? She’d gotten it at a thrift store, but still.
She heard him before she saw him, some twangy song blasting from the speakers of his pickup. He slammed on his brakes with a spray of gravel, leaned over the seat and pushed the door open.
“Hey babe!”
“Hi Dad.” Trix didn’t bother to put out her cigarette as she hopped in. She could be tripping on hard drugs and he wouldn’t care.
They zoomed south on Aurora, through three yellow lights, toward downtown.
“Where are we going?” Trix asked.
“A buddy of mine needs help moving a couch in Georgetown. You good with that?”
Her dad wore a t-shirt that showed a band of his heavy, white gut. His frizzy salt-and-pepper hair was tied back with a twist tie. Like a garbage bag.
“Would it matter if I wasn’t?”
“Not really,” he said, guffawing and turning the music down a notch.
She’d given up being annoyed when he dragged her on an errand or off to a car show she didn’t give a crap about. She wanted to spend time with her dad, as sporadic and halfhearted as his attempts at father-daughter togetherness were.
They zipped through downtown, past CenturyLink and Safeco stadiums and finally came to Georgetown—a strip of old brick buildings that housed restaurants and shops, but mostly seemed forgotten, tucked between I-5 and Boeing Field.
Her dad’s friend, Buck, lived above a bar and you had to take a rickety, outdoor staircase to get up to his apartment.
As soon as they entered the dusty space, sunlight streaming through dirty windows, a cat with a half tail curling itself around Trix’s leg, Buck offered them cans of Pabst.
Her dad took one, but what Trix really wanted was more coffee, not to start drinking and dragging so early in the day.
She bent down and picked up the cat. The backs of his ears were flea bitten and he had no collar. She scratched under his chin. He extended his neck and purred uproariously.
“That’s David,” Buck said. His laugh sounded like Trix’s mom’s. Heavy with thirty years of smoking.
Trix cooed his name. “David. Sweet little David.”
“Want him?”
She did, as a matter of fact. As soon as he offered, her mind sang, “Yes.” But she said, “Oh, nah. I don’t think I’m around enough to take care of him.”
“You’d take better care of him than he’s getting here.”
“My mom would kill me.”
“Take him!” her dad cajoled. “She’ll get over it.”
Trix found herself actually considering stealing David home. “Don’t I need, like, a litter box and food?” And a flea comb.
Buck tossed her half a bag of Friskies and said, “He shits outside.”
And just like that she had acquired a pet. She hung out with David on the curb while her dad and Buck moved the sofa into the back of the truck. Then, all smashed together in the cab with David crawling around their heads and feet, they drove the couch to Beacon Hill and unloaded it into a small white house surrounded by a chain link fence.
Buck and her dad shook hands.
“Can we get a coffee on the way home?” Trix asked.
“What, you want to stop at Starbucks or something?”
“No, I don’t do Starbucks. Anything else. Even 7-Eleven would be fine. Just, you know, I need a caffeine fix.”
“I thought we’d go back to Nine Pound Hammer.” Another Georgetown bar.
For once it bugged her that her dad didn’t even remotely observe the legal drinking age. Wasn’t a parent supposed to be on top of that? “I’m 16,” she said. “Besides. We can’t just leave David in the truck for that long.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“Maybe you should just take us home.”
Her dad shrugged. “You’re the boss.”
“I’m not the boss!” she snapped. “I’m the kid.”
Except that she didn’t feel like a kid anymore. She felt like she had to parent herself, like her mom and dad were the stupid teenagers, too self-involved to pay attention to her.
She talked her dad into stopping at a vet’s office on 45th Street, where she waited a half hour trying to hold a dirty, squirmy cat. She left with pills to kill fleas, several vaccinations, and $120 less. Luckily, Frederick Hui was paying her later that week.
She’d gotten a cardboard carrier from the vet, and when her dad dropped her off, she lugged David into the trailer.
Fiona stood in the bathroom doorway doing one of her breathing treatments, which involved a boxy, white machine, a long tube, and a mouthpiece. When she saw David wriggle out of his box and begin prowling around sniffing things, she flapped her hands and pulled the tube from her mouth. “What is that?”
“A cat I just adopted,” Trix said, squatting on the thin carpet and trying to coax David to her.
“Oh, a cat you just adopted? Do I get any say in the matter?”
Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel) Page 2
