He tells me how the peregrine falcon hits speeds of 200 miles per hour in a dive. I raise my eyebrows in a wow to be polite, but hello, who doesn’t know that?
I tell him how giraffes eat up to seventy-five pounds of food a day, sleep for only thirty minutes a day, are not only the tallest animal on earth, but have the longest tail of any land mammal and tongues that are twenty inches long.
He tells me about these tiny microscopic water bears they’re thinking about sending into space because they can survive temperatures ranging from minus-328 Fahrenheit to 303 Fahrenheit, can cope with 1,000 times the radiation it would take to kill a human, and can be revived after being dried out for ten years.
For a moment, I want to kick the table over because I can’t tell Brian about the water bears in space, but then I climb right out of it by making Dad guess what the most deadly animal is to humans and totally stumping him after he goes for all the usual suspects: hippos, lions, crocs, etc. It’s the malaria-carrying mosquito.
We go back and forth exchanging facts about animals until the bill comes. It’s the most fun we’ve ever had together.
When he’s paying the check, I blurt out, “I didn’t know you like animal shows!”
“What do you mean? Why do you think you like them? That’s all you and I did together when you were little. Don’t you remember?”
I. Don’t. Remember.
I remember, It’s a sink-or-swim world, Noah. I remember, Act tough and you are tough. I remember every heart-stomping look of disappointment, of embarrassment, of bewilderment from him. I remember: If your twin sister wasn’t my spitting image I’d swear you came about from parthenogenesis. I remember the 49ers, the Miami Heat, the Giants, the World Cup. I do not remember Animal Planet.
When he pulls into the garage, I see Mom’s car’s still not there. He sighs. I sigh too. Like I’m catching him now.
“I had this dream last night,” he says, turning off the engine. He makes no move to get out of the car. I settle into my seat. We are so totally buddies now! “Your mother was walking through the house, and as she did, everything fell off the shelves and from the walls: books, pictures, knickknacks, everything. All I could do was follow her around the house trying to put everything back in its place.”
“Did you?” I ask. He looks at me, confused. I clarify, “Did you get everything back where it belonged.”
“Don’t know,” he says, shrugging. “Woke up.” He glides a finger around the steering wheel. “Sometimes you think you know things, know things very deeply, only to realize you don’t know a damn thing.”
“I totally get what you mean, Dad,” I say, thinking about what happened with Brian.
“You do? Already?”
I nod.
“Guess we have lots of catching up to do.”
I feel a springing in my chest. Could Dad and I be close? Like a real father and son? Like it could’ve been all along if I’d flown off his shoulder that day like Jude did? If I’d swum instead of sunk?
“Where the hell is Ralph? Where the hell is Ralph?” we hear and both laugh a little. Then he surprises me by saying, “You think we’ll ever find out where the hell Ralph is, kid?”
“I hope so,” I say.
“Me too.” A comfortable silence follows and I’m marveling at how supernaturally cool Dad’s being when he says, “So, you still seeing that Heather?” He nudges me. “Cute girl.” He gives my shoulder a squeeze of approval.
This sucks.
“Kind of,” I say, then add with more conviction because I have no choice, “Yeah, she’s my girlfriend.”
He gives me that dumb you-sly-dog expression. “We’re going to have to have a little talk, me and you, aren’t we, son? Fourteen years old.” He cuffs me on the head just like that sculptor did his students. And that gesture, plus the word son again, the way he keeps saying it: Yeah, I had no choice about Heather.
Once inside, I go to my room, noting that Jude knocked over a water bucket on my floor in retaliation. Whatever. I throw a towel down on the puddle and as I do, glance at the clock on my desk, which has the date as well as the time.
Oh.
Later, I find Dad sunk into the couch in front of a college football game. I went through all my sketchpads and couldn’t find one drawing of him with his head still on, so I took out my best pastels and did a new one of the two of us on the back of a blue wildebeest. On the bottom, I wrote, Happy Birthday.
He looks right in my eyes. “Thanks.” The word comes out all scrunched up like it was hard to get out. No one remembered. Not even Mom. What’s her problem? How could she not remember Dad’s birthday? Maybe she’s not a blow-in after all.
“She forgot the turkey on Thanksgiving too,” I say, trying to make him feel better, only realizing after I say it how lame it is to compare him to a turkey.
He laughs though, which is something. “Is that a blue wildebeest?” he asks, pointing to the drawing.
When we’re done with the world’s longest conversation on the blue wildebeest, he pats the couch and I sit down next to him. He puts his hand on my shoulder, leaves it there like it fits, and we watch the rest of the game together. It’s pretty boring, but the athletes, well, you know.
The lie I told him about Heather is a stone in my belly.
I ignore it.
• • •
A week after Dad’s forgotten birthday, with the rain beating the crap out of the house, Mom and Dad seat Jude and me in the frozen part of the living room no one ever sits in to inform us that Dad’s temporarily moving down to the Lost Cove Hotel. They, well actually, Mom tells us he’ll be renting a studio apartment by the week until they can work out some issues they’re having.
Even though we haven’t spoken in forever, I can feel Jude’s heart clenching and unclenching inside my chest with mine.
“What issues?” she asks, but after that the rain gets so loud I can’t hear what anyone’s saying anymore. I’m convinced the storm’s going to bust down the walls. Then it does and I’m remembering Dad’s dream because it’s happening. I watch as the wind sweeps everything off the shelves: knickknacks, books, a vase of purple flowers. No one else notices. I grip the armrests of the chair tight.
(FAMILY PORTRAIT: Assume the Crash Position)
I can hear Mom’s voice again. It’s calm, too calm, yellow fluttering birds that don’t belong in this life-bucking tempest. “We still love each other very much,” she says. “We just both need some space right now.” She looks at Dad. “Benjamin?”
At the mention of Dad’s name, all the paintings, mirrors, family photographs come crashing down from the walls. Again, only I notice. I glance at Jude. Tears suspend in her eyelashes. Dad seems like he’s going to say something, but when he opens his mouth, no words come out. He drops his head into his hands, his teeny-tiny hands, like raccoon paws—when did that happen? They’re too little to cover up what’s happening on his face, how his features have all squeezed shut. My stomach churns and churns. I hear pots and pans in the kitchen plummeting out of the cupboards now. I close my eyes for a second, see the roof whip off the house, reel across the sky.
Jude explodes, “I’m going with Dad.”
“Me too,” I say, shocking myself.
Dad lifts his head. Pain’s leaking out of every part of his face. “You’ll stay here with your mother, kids. It’s temporary.” His voice is so flimsy and I notice for the first time how thin his hair’s getting as he stands and leaves the room.
Jude gets up and walks over to Mom, looking down on her like she’s a beady little beetle. “How could you?” she says out of clenched teeth and makes her own exit, her hair twisting and winding angrily across the floor behind her. I hear her calling for Dad.
“Are you leaving us?” I say/think, rising to my feet. Because even though Dad’s leaving now, Mom’s already left. She’s been AWOL for months. I
know this and I can’t look at her.
“Never,” she says, grabbing my shoulders. I’m surprised by the strength of her grip. “You hear me, Noah? I will never leave you and your sister. This is between your father and me. It has nothing to do with you kids.”
I melt into her arms like the traitor that I am.
She strokes my hair. It feels so good. “My boy. My tender boy. My dream boy. Everything’s going to be okay.” She repeats how okay everything’s going to be again and again like a chant, but I can tell she doesn’t believe it. Neither do I.
Later that evening, Jude and I are shoulder to shoulder at the window. Dad’s walking to his car carrying a suitcase. The rain’s wailing down on him, stooping him more and more with every step.
“I don’t think there’s anything in it,” I say, watching him toss the piece of luggage into the trunk like it’s filled with feathers.
“There is,” she says. “I checked. One thing. A drawing of you and him on some weird animal. Nothing else. Not even a toothbrush.”
These are the first words we’ve exchanged in months.
I can’t believe the only thing Dad took with him is me.
That night, I’m in bed unable to sleep, wondering if I’m staring at the darkness or it’s staring at me, when Jude opens the door, crosses the room, and gets in bed next to me. I flip the pillow so it won’t be wet. We’re lying on our backs.
“I wished for it,” I whisper, telling her what’s been tearing me up for hours. “Three times. Three different birthdays. I wished he would leave.”
She turns on her side, touches my arm, whispers back, “I once wished for Mom to die.”
“Take it back,” I say, turning onto my side. I can feel her breathing on my face. “I didn’t take it back in time.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Grandma would know how,” she says.
“That’s a load of help,” I say, and then out of nowhere and at the exact same moment, we both burst out laughing and can’t stop and it’s the gasping snorting kind and we have to put the pillow over our faces so Mom doesn’t hear and decide we think Dad being kicked out of the family is the funniest thing that’s ever happened to us.
When we settle back into our selves, everything feels different, like if I turned on the light we’d be bears.
The next thing I know, there’s a shuffling of motion and Jude’s sitting on me. I’m so surprised I do nothing. She takes a deep breath. “Okay, now that I have your undivided attention. Are you ready?” She bounces a few times.
“Get off me,” I say, but she’s talking over me.
“Nothing happened. You hear me? I’ve tried to tell you so many times but you wouldn’t listen.” She spells it out. “N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Brian is your friend, I get it. In the closet, he told me about something called a globular cluster, I think. He talked about how amazing your drawings are, for Pete’s sake! It’s true I was so mad at you because of Mom and because you totally stole all my friends too and because you threw away that note—I know you did that and it really sucked, Noah, because that was like the only sand sculpture I ever made that I thought was maybe good enough for Mom to see. So I might’ve had Brian’s name on a piece of paper in my hand at that party but NOTHING HAPPENED, okay? I did not steal your—” She pauses. “Your best friend, okay?”
“Okay,” I say. “Now get off me.” It comes out gruffer than I intend on account of my spanking new voice. She doesn’t move. I can’t let on what this information is doing to me. My mind is speeding around, rearranging that night, the last few months, rearranging everything. All the times she tried to talk to me, how I walked away, slammed the door, blasted the TV, unable to look at her, forget listen to her, how I even ripped up a card she gave me without reading it, until she gave up trying. Nothing happened. They’re not in love. Brian isn’t going to come back in a few weeks and escape with her into her bedroom like I kept imagining. They’re not going to be watching movies on the couch when I come home or looking for meteorites in the woods. Nothing happened. Nothing happened!
(SELF-PORTRAIT: Boy Hitches Ride on Passing Comet)
But wait. “Who’s Spaceboy then?” I was so sure it was Brian. I mean: outer space, hello?
“Huh?”
“Spaceboy, on the computer.”
“Spy much? Jeez.” She sighs. “That’s Michael, you know, Zephyr. ‘Spaceboy’ is the name of some song he’s into.”
Oh.
OH!
And I guess other people—probably millions of them—besides Brian and me have seen that alien movie. Or might joke with her about teleporting. Or might use the name Spaceboy!
Now I’m remembering the Ouija Board. “Zephyr’s M.? You like Zephyr?”
“Maybe,” she says coyly. “I don’t know yet.”
This is news but Nothing Happened steamrolls right over it. I forget she’s in the room, not to mention sitting on me, until she says, “So are you and Brian like in love with each other or something?”
“What? No!” The words fly out of my mouth. “God, Jude. Can’t I have a friend? I totally hooked up with Heather, if you didn’t notice.” I don’t know why I say all this. I push her off me. I feel the stone in my stomach get bigger.
“Okay, fine. It’s just—”
“What?” Did Zephyr tell her what happened that day in the woods?
“Nothing.”
She gets back in bed and we shoulder up again into the smush. She says quietly, “So you can stop hating me now.”
“I never hated you,” I say, which is a total lie. “I’m really—”
“Me too. So sorry.” She holds my hand.
We start to breathe together in the dark.
“Jude, I’ve—”
“So much,” she finishes.
I laugh. I’d forgotten this.
“I know, me too,” she says, giggling.
My next sentence, however, she will not be able to mind-read. I tell her, “I’ve probably seen all of your sand sculptures.” I feel a stab of guilt. I wish I didn’t destroy the photographs now. I could’ve shown them to her. She could’ve gotten into CSA with them. She could’ve had them forever. She could’ve shown Mom. This will have to do. “They’re freaking amazing.”
“Noah?” I’ve caught her completely off guard. “Really?”
I know she’s smiling because my face is too. I want to tell her how scared I am that she’s better than me. Instead, I say, “I can’t stand the ocean washing them away.”
“But that’s the best part.”
I listen to the waves pounding away at the shore outside, and think about all those incredible sand women being swept off before anyone can see them and I’m wondering how in the world that could possibly be the best part, tumbling that around and around in my head, when she says very quietly, “Thank you.”
And everything in me goes quiet and peaceful and right.
We breathe and drift. I’m imagining us swimming through the night sky to the bright moon and hoping I remember the image in the morning so I can make it and give it to her. Before I’m all the way gone, I hear her say, “I still love you the most,” and I say, “Me too,” but in the morning I’m not sure if we said it or if I just thought it or dreamt it.
Not that it matters.
• • •
It’s the beginning of winter break, otherwise known as The Return of Brian, and the off-the-hook smell wafting out of the kitchen has brain-commanded me out of my chair and down the hallway.
“Is that you?” Jude yells from her room. “C’mere, please.”
I walk into her room, where she’s reading Grandma’s bible in bed. She’s been trying to find some hogwash in it that will bring Dad back.
She hands me a scarf. “Here,” she says. “Tie me to the bedpost.”
“What?”
“It’s the only solution. I need a little reminder not to be weak and go in the kitchen. I’m not giving Mom the satisfaction of eating one bite. How come she decides to become Julia Child now? You shouldn’t eat anything she makes either. I know you got into that chicken pot pie after we came home from Dad’s last night. I saw.” She gives me a hard look. “Promise not one morsel?” I nod, but there’s not a chance in hell I’m not having whatever it is that’s filling the house with this supernaturally awesome smell. “I mean it, Noah.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Only one wrist so I can turn the pages.” As I tie her wrist to the bedpost, she goes on. “It smells like pie, apple or pear, or maybe turnovers, or a crumble. God, I love crumbles. Of all unfairness. Who knew she even knew how to bake?” She turns the page of Grandma’s bible. “Be strong,” she says after me as I head for the door.
I salute her. “Aye, Captain.”
I’ve become a double agent. This is how it’s been since Dad left: After eating takeout with Jude and Dad in his dead-body blue hotel studio, I, on arriving home, wait for the moment Jude locks herself in her room to chat with Spaceboy, who is Zephyr! Not Brian! and then head for the kitchen to feast with Mom. But whether I’m sitting with Dad watching Animal Planet, breathing gray air, pretending not to notice he’s all folded up like a chair, or with Mr. Grady in the art room making the final touches on my CSA portfolio paintings, or learning salsa dancing in the kitchen with Mom while soufflés rise, or playing How Would You Rather Die? with Jude while she sews, I’m really only doing one thing. I’m a human hourglass: Waiting, waiting, waiting for Brian Connelly to come home.
Any day, hour, minute, second now.
Jude’s right. On the kitchen counter this morning is indeed an apple pie with a golden roof over it and a plate of turnovers.
Mom’s at the counter kneading dough, her face spotted in flour.
“Oh good,” she says. “Scratch my nose, will you? I’ve been going crazy.”
I walk over to her and scratch her nose. “Harder,” she says. “That’s it. Thanks.”