"Happiness is subjective," the psychic had said, which had caused a howl of protest from all of them. It was hard to say whether the man had planned to leave the prediction at that, but after their outburst of catcalls and, "Not fair," and "Come on," he asked JoLyn, "Are you happy now?"
"Yeah," JoLyn had said. "Sure."
"You will never," the psychic told her, "be less happy than you are now."
So that had been the one unequivocally good fortune. Though Daphne at Stanford wasn't bad.
Now the psychic asked Cara, or maybe them all, "Do you have any further questions?"
Cara shook her head, and so did the others.
The psychic stood, which apparently meant they weren't going to be offered a Halloween candy bar or a glass of water or an opportunity to use the bathroom, or even a "Good-bye, it's been fun."
This—or the fact that it had gotten cold and started raining—put Rodney in a bad mood, and as he stepped out the front door he muttered, "I can tell fortunes, too: Smoking'll kill you."
Hard to tell if Rodney meant the comment for them or for the psychic, but the psychic did hear. He said, quietly and without emotion, "Yes," then closed the door firmly behind them.
They lingered under the overhang that someone with more ambition than this particular psychic might have tried to make into a patio. At seven o'clock, the night was dark, and the rain was pouring. Their breaths condensed in the cold.
"I hate driving in the rain at night," Daphne said. "It makes me nervous."
"Hey, I'm relaxed," Marissa said. "I don't know about the rest of you—but I know I'm safe."
"You're also not legal," JoLyn said, lording it over them just because she and Daphne had already had their birthdays and could drive at night. She took the car keys from Daphne. "And you all know you're safe with me, because I would not be happy if I had an accident. And you have all heard it..."—she shouted for the entire Lily Dale community to hear—"I am destined to be happy."
Cara muttered, loud enough for JoLyn to hear, which meant she wasn't serious, "If you're destined to drive, then I'm destined to be scared."
Rodney said, "If we don't get out of here soon, we'll be destined to need an ark instead of a car."
So, screaming as though they were melting, they ran to the car, JoLyn and Marissa in the front seats, Rodney sitting between Daphne and Cara in the back.
The rain came down so hard, the windshield wipers—even on at maximum—had a difficult time keeping the windshield clear. The raindrops were fat and verging on being sleet. The fact that the streetlights reflected and glared on the wet pavement made Marissa glad she wasn't driving.
But JoLyn was confident and was doing a fine job. She had gotten them singing Christmas carols—since they couldn't find any decent radio stations, being still too far from Rochester, and since they didn't know any Halloween songs.
Rodney had started, "Up on the Housetop," but he didn't really know the lyrics beyond that, and he was floundering. After checking that the road ahead of them was clear, JoLyn, still gripping the steering wheel, glanced over her shoulder into the backseat as she energetically sang the refrain, "Ho! Ho! Ho! Who wouldn't go?"
In the front seat, Marissa saw the eighteen-wheeler ahead of them lose control on the slick road and begin to veer, then twist till it was sliding forward sideways, with their car aimed right at it.
There seemed to be all the time in the world for her to tell JoLyn to look out, to step on the brake—but carefully so that they wouldn't skid, too. There seemed all the time in the world to slow down safely. But it must have been only a moment, for JoLyn, all unaware, was still preoccupied with Rodney, was still belting out the second, "Ho! Ho! Ho!"
And then they hit the truck.
Just over fifty-six years later, four months short of Marissa's seventy-fourth birthday, the staff at Hillcrest Home were discussing what to do with the old woman who had been in a coma ever since the car accident that had scrambled her brain and killed her four friends.
As far as they could tell, she had no family, or at least no one had come to visit in the two decades the most senior of them had been working there. For some reason, Hillcrest in Rochester was overcrowded, while their sister facility had several empty beds.
Since no one ever came to look in on her, and since she didn't know where she was, everyone agreed there could be no harm in sending her by air ambulance to Buffalo. A nice, short, safe trip.
When My Parents Come to Visit
"When your parents get here, Matt," Nona tells me, "try to relax. Try not to let them get to you."
"You, too," I say by way of encouragement.
Yeah, right. Easier said than done. We both know that each of us will be ready to run from the room, screaming, before the night is done.
Not that running from the room, screaming, will help.
Which each of us knows so well that we both jump when the doorbell rings. Even though my parents never ring the bell. They just walk into my grandmother's house and start to spread cheer—spread it like an oil spill or a fungal infection.
I glance at the wall clock on my way to the door. Eight fifty-five. This is early for my parents—my father, VP of Marketing for a big insurance firm, and my mother, the attorney, who announced when she was still in high school that she was going to become the youngest female judge in the city. But it's kind of late for trick-or-treaters—especially since I turned off the light by the front door about half an hour earlier.
My parents always arrive promptly at nine o'clock. My father likes to say they're punctual. I like to say they're anal-retentive.
I open the door and find a group of four kids: two guys and two girls. They look about my age, which is fifteen, which is way too old to be going door to door, extorting goodies from the neighbors, even if you like Halloween.
I, personally, hate Halloween.
Although they are dressed in just regular clothes—jeans and sweatshirts—one of the girls wears a set of wings, which I guess she figures qualifies as an angel, butterfly, or bumblebee costume, and the other girl has a witch hat with a sparse fringe of fluorescent green hair overlaying her own blond hair. One of the guys wears a football jersey, which may or may not be a costume, and the other has a T-shirt with I BELIEVE MICHAEL JACKSON IS INNOCENT on it, which has to be a costume, because nobody really believes Michael Jackson is innocent.
They may well be classmates of mine, but my grandmother and I have just moved into this house in August and I don't yet know very many people in the neighborhood or in the school.
I am reaching into the bowl of Halloween-sized candy to give them each a handful—you don't want to tick off the kind of teenagers who're too old for trick-or-treating but who go trick-or-treating, anyway—when the angel/butterfly/bumblebee rattles a canister at me and announces, "Trick or treat for Unicef."
I keep to myself my doubts whether my donation will ever make it to Unicef, and I give them the money my grandmother gave me this morning to buy lunch in the school cafeteria. I had been so roiled up, knowing my parents were coming this evening, that I'd been unable to eat.
I give the four of them suckers, too, just in case they are from my school, even though none of them seem to recognize me any better than I recognize them.
When I close the door on the teenagers, Nona has come up behind me and she says, "You're a good boy, Matt," and she tousles my hair like I'm not a full head taller than she is.
"And you're a good Nona, Nona," I tell her.
"So where did Barry and Linda come from?" she asks with a sigh. Barry is my dad, Nona's son, and Linda, of course, is my mom.
We haven't even made it back into the living room when we hear them coming in. I'm about to glance at the clock, when I hear it start to chime. Nine o'clock, of course. Punctual, as always. And bickering and complaining as they come in, also as always.
"Ugly green," Dad comments to Mom about the color in the entryway. "It's reminiscent of that awful dress you wore at Seth and Nina's weddi
ng, the shapeless one that made you look like a gigantic breath mint."
He is impeccably dressed in a charcoal-gray suit.
Mom has an ivory-colored skirt and jacket—business chic.
Apparently for this visit they have cast themselves in the role of style police.
"That was a lovely shade of green," Mom says, "and it couldn't have been that shapeless, because your so-called buddy, Leonard, spent the entire meal trying to look down my neckline while you were busy being tacky trying to sell life insurance to the other people at our table." She waves her arm to indicate the front hall. "But you're right: This is ugly mint green. Totally different from my daiquiri-ice-colored dress."
Fifteen seconds into the visit, and Nona is holding the bridge of her nose as though she has a headache already. "Hello, Barry. Hello, Linda. Are we going to try to make it through this visit without killing each other?"
Dad gives his mother an air kiss in the vicinity of her cheek. Mom acts as though Nona isn't even there. I suspect her agreeing with Dad that the front hall is an ugly color will be her only concession to him tonight. "Hello, my little sweetums," she coos as though she hasn't noticed that I'm no longer six years old. She takes my hands, and her touch is cold and sends a shiver up my spine as she leans in to kiss my cheek. "Were those your friends, just leaving?" she asks. "Those girls looked hard and cheap. You could do better, handsome boy like you."
"They were just trick-or-treaters," I say. Maybe I mumble a bit, because my parents intimidate me.
My father says, "Stop mumbling. Stand up straight."
"He's not mumbling," Mom says. "Obviously there's something wrong with your hearing. Just like there's something wrong with your eyes: shapeless mint-green dress. Stop criticizing all the time. Do you want him to grow up mean, like your cousin Donald?"
"No," Dad counters, "but I don't want him to look and sound like an effeminate little pansy like your brother, Warren, either."
Mom gives a squeal of protest, but before she can say anything in defense of Uncle Warren, Nona stamps her foot. "Stop, stop, stop!" she shouts.
I try to escape down the hall and into the kitchen, but they follow me.
They always follow me.
"Come on," Dad says, "let's try to make this visit pleasant, for a change."
"You're the one who started it," Mom tells him.
I look at the clock on the stove.
They've been here for something like two minutes and already I feel like I'm about to throw up from anxiety, the way I did two years ago.
They followed me into the bathroom that time and made negative comments, based on my vomit, about what my grandmother feeds me.
At least moving into the kitchen sidetracks them from our relatives and from the dress my mother wore to her cousin's wedding ten years ago. This is the first time my parents have been to this house, and there are all sorts of fresh things to criticize.
"Butcher-block counters." Mom sniffs. "I didn't think anybody actually did butcher-block counters anymore."
"Please," I beg. "Is critiquing Grandma's decor really why you came?"
"Of course not, darling." Mom's fingers brush my cheek. "We came to see you. To make sure your grandmother is doing a good job of raising you—"
"—and not turning you into a pansy, like Warren," Dad finishes.
"I'm doing well in school," I say, to change the subject.
But it's a bad change.
Dad wants to know exactly what I mean by "well," and apparently B minus in most of my subjects doesn't count as "well." Of course he zeros in on the C minus in geometry. "Math is important," he lectures me, though I don't ask him how—ever—geometry has enhanced his life. The A that I've gotten in literature doesn't impress him. "Literature would be ... like, what?" he demands.
"This particular unit is on poetry," I admit.
He smacks the palm of his hand against his forehead and proclaims, "Poetry is definitely for sissies. I don't know why these female teachers always try to emasculate—"
"Neanderthal woman-hater," Mom spits out at him.
Nona interrupts, saying, "You're here to visit Matt. How do you think this bickering and name-calling are making him feel?"
That calms them down for about another minute or so.
"So those weren't your friends?" Mom asks, going back to the kids they saw as they were coming in. "Don't you have any friends?"
My father says, "I hate overage hoodlums who go around on Halloween without even the pretense of a costume."
"They were collecting for Unicef," I say.
"Yeah, right."
It's the same thing I thought, but it sounds so petty and mean-spirited when he says it.
"Why don't you have any friends?" Mom asks.
"I didn't say I don't have any friends," I protest. "I just said those guys weren't my friends." Of course, I don't have many friends, as my grandmother and I move around a lot, but I hate how Mom has jumped to that conclusion.
"You belong to a team yet?" Dad asks, poking a finger at my chest. "You look kind of puny."
Mom slaps his hand down. "He does not."
"Track and field," Nona announces proudly.
"Like running and jumping?" Dad's tone clearly shows he's thinking skipping and hopping. "Oh, man. You need to try out for football," he tells me. "Put some meat on you."
"Oh, here we go again," Mom says. "Let's relive those glory days of yours—when men were men, and girls all carried pom-poms." She claps her hands, cheerleader-style. "Give me an S. Give me a T. Give me a U-P-I-D. How pathetic that you peaked in high school."
"Yeah? And you never did peak."
"Barry," Nona warns.
Earlier, Nona and I brainstormed for topics to use to try to deflect them from sniping at each other, but my parents have a way of making my mind go blank.
Dad says, "You just sat around the house letting your butt grow to legendary size."
Mom squeals and puts her hands on her rear end. "I wear the same size now I did when I was in high school."
"Same size," Dad agrees, "but a lot more stress on those seams."
Mom glances around the kitchen, obviously looking for something to throw.
It was a mistake for me to come in here.
"Yeah?" Mom demands. "Yeah?"
Nona recommends to Mom, "Why don't you just take the high road and ignore him? Visit with Matt. You only have another"—she glances at the clock—"two hours and fifty-three minutes."
Is that all? It could just as well be two hundred and fifty-three years.
Of course, Mom doesn't want to take the high road and ignore Dad. High road and ignore Dad are not in Mom's vocabulary. She tells Dad, "Well, all your fat's between your ears."
"Anybody want to hear my essay on why there'll never be peace in the Middle East?" I ask.
"No," Mom and Dad say simultaneously.
Peace in the Middle East? What about peace when my parents come to visit?
"Shrew," Dad calls Mom.
"Cretin," Mom retaliates.
We are never going to make it to midnight.
I try to slip inconspicuously out of the kitchen, to get away from all those knives that could be used as weapons, but my parents notice and follow me into the living room.
Nona says, "Do you see Matt's trophy?"
If I could have gotten her attention I would have signaled her not to mention the trophy.
Dad reads the plaque, then snorts. "Participation award. Participation award in track and field."
"It's good to participate," Mom says. "What is it with you that you think someone always has to grind somebody else's face in the turf and be declared"—she gestures quotation marks in the air—"'The Winner.'"
"Because that's better," Dad says, "than being"—he makes quotation marks of his own—"'The Participator.'"
Rather than defend me, Mom says, "Oh, here we go. This sounds like an introduction for the long, boring story about running fifty-seven miles for the winning touchdown."
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"Fifty-three," Dad corrects, "yards."
"You sure it wasn't miles? End zone and back? In the snow? Uphill both ways?"
"Maybe you can brag on the time you got your nails done," Dad suggests. He holds his hands out and flips his wrists and—in a breathless falsetto—he says, "Aren't they just gorgeous? My hairdresser, Antonio, assures me, this is the color of the moment."
Nona is saying, "Who cares? What's it matter?" but this time my mother can't contain herself. She has to throw something at my father. She picks up my trophy and flings it.
He sidesteps and the trophy knocks the clock off the mantle.
I don't think either of them notices that both clock and trophy land in pieces. So much for my one and only trophy—even if it was just for participating.
"Beast!" she calls him.
"Psycho witch!"
"We wouldn't even be in this situation if it wasn't for you!"
"Me? You started it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah?" Mom launches herself at Dad, ready to use her nails on his face.
He grabs her wrists, but the force of her attack makes him take a step back and he trips over a stool. Still holding Mom, Dad staggers backward into the antique tea cart, where my grandmother has a bunch of her plants. Cart, plants, Mom, Dad—all crash onto the rose-colored rug.
The first few times this sort of thing happened, I tried desperately to get them to stop.
Now I worry about Grandma's rug.
I can smell the crushed greenery and the rich, loamy smell of the potting soil my grandmother has so lovingly used.
Mom catches hold of one of the plants. I don't know what it is: something stalky and sturdy. She swings it—ceramic-pot-end first—at Dad's head. The pot cracks from the impact with Dad's skull, showering dirt and leaves halfway across the living room.