“And you’ve been on one date,” Dad says.
“Well, if this one works out and I have one more, it’ll be a trifecta,” I say. “Jeez, take a breath.”
“We’re breathing, we’re breathing,” Dad says. His name is Orville. “We just want to know that she’s…you know.”
“Good enough for me?”
“We’re your parents, Angus. We’ll never stop worrying.”
I glance at Bella, sipping from her wine glass, clear of the fray. “What do you think, Bella?”
She smiles. “I think a boy should listen to his mother.”
“Which one of you is my mother again?” I survey the crew, halt my conversation as the waitress sets the He-Man T-Bone before me. “Since kindergarten I’ve been explaining to my very few friends that I have four parents, all gay as court jesters and all living on the same city block.” I rise into falsetto.
“So, like, Angus, one of those guys is your dad and he’s, like, kind of married to the other guy? What do you call that guy?”
And in an altered falsetto, my own younger voice, “‘I call him Alexander.’
“Yeah, but what do you call him, like your step-homo?’
‘“I call him Alexander, asshole,’” and I smack my fist into my palm.
“I do seem to remember you explaining our situation with your fists on occasion,” Mom says.
“My point,” I say back, “is that I have a Ph.D. in observing exotic relationships, so I guess I can be trusted to pick one strange enough to keep you all happy.”
“My god,” Dad says. “You’re serious about this girl. What’s her name?”
“Her name is Sarah, and I’m having coffee with her. Tap your helmet, Dad.”
Mom says, “Well, it’s about time, that’s all I can say.”
If only that were true.
“Worst thing that ever happened to you.” Sarah adds nonfat milk to her coffee, removes a scone from that tissue-y paper bag they give you. She looks around the rustic coffeehouse that is Rocket Bakery. “Beats Starbucks.”
“Worst thing. Lemme see.” I pull out my frosted pumpkin scone, place it next to my banana bread. “They hoisted my undershorts up the flagpole during gym class in junior high. Totally blotted out the Stars and Stripes. Probably not the worst thing, but it comes to mind when I’m asked that. Guys used to leave bras in my locker, but that wasn’t so bad. I just took them home and…never mind.”
“If we’re going to be married, I have to trust you,” Sarah says.
“We’re getting married?”
“We’re on a date, aren’t we? You know what that leads to. So, if I’m going to trust you, you have to tell the truth. Worst thing, not worst funny thing.”
“You drive a hard bargain. You have, like, our dishes picked out?”
“Worst thing.”
“Maybe sitting with my mother when she was so depressed she couldn’t move. You know, trying to cheer her up when all she could do was sit and stare; tears she didn’t even feel streaming down her cheeks.”
“What was going on?”
“Ah, you know. Junior high. I was getting into it on a regular basis when some kid would call my parents queer or faggots or whatever. If I’d have just told the teachers, the other kid would’ve gotten in trouble, but I liked to avoid the middle man back then; I hurt some guys. So Mom and Dad came to school for this big meeting. Two teachers, the principal, two kids who still had black eyes, with their parents, and them. I got labeled armed and dangerous. Dad kept telling them school was supposed to be a safe place for me, and they said it was safe if I’d just report what was happening instead of taking the law into my own hands. The parents of wounded Thing One and Thing Two said what about their kids’ safety, and I took the opportunity to let them know exactly how their kids could keep themselves safe.”
Sarah almost spits her coffee.
“Guess I should have practiced the delivery, because when the meeting was over I was on two months in-school suspension and the other parents were calling mine faggots and queers.”
“Sounds like a meeting or two I’ve been in.”
“Yeah. So my mother talks all the way home about how their lifestyle has ruined me and how she and Dad should have stayed in the closet until I graduated from high school. Dad gave her his Hallmark bullshit about the truth setting us free, and she got quieter and quieter. Dad went home to Alexander and Mom went home to Bella and everyone warned me not to kick any more asses, which I promised I wouldn’t—just like I promised every time—and Mom started the Big Retreat. I would come home after school and sit with her and try to convince her she hadn’t fucked up my life. It was like talking to a bag of rocks. She just kept sinking.”
“So what brought her out of it?”
“Time, I guess. As much as I wanted to save her while I sat by her side, that disappeared when some kid would turn the crank on my temper. So I turned out for football in high school and started taking out my rage on unsuspecting offensive linemen and running backs. I was pretty good; made a few friends. Mom finally figured out I’d survive, and they went on living their lives.”
Sarah says, “That’s more like it.”
“More like what?”
“Truth. I asked for the worst thing. That was pretty good.”
“That’s off the top of my head. Let me think about it a while; maybe I can top it.”
“That’s good enough for now,” she says.
I walk to the counter for refills and order two thick slices of banana bread and two more scones, remember my manners, and turn back to her. “You want anything else to eat?”
She looks at me pitifully, shakes her head, and pats her stomach.
“I like that,” I tell her when I sit back down with my goodies. “Keepin’ your girlish figger.”
“Like that’s ever done me any good.” She stares in mock wonder as I lay out my repast. “What’s your cholesterol count?”
I count. “Two banana breads, two scones. Four.”
“You’re my second fat boy.”
“Seriously? Awright! You’ll know how to treat me.”
“With great disdain. His name was Moby.”
“Like the whale. Does he fit in on the question you now have to answer?”
“What question is that?”
“The worst thing that ever happened to you.”
“Indeed he does,” she says. “Sure you want to hear this?”
“Not if you’re going to tell me you’re going back to the other fat guy.”
She laughs. “Actually, he’s not fat anymore; at least not way fat. And I was never with him. He was my friend, and he probably saved my life.”
“That’s fair. Way fat, huh?”
“I didn’t mean…”
“Yeah you did,” I say, taking in the carbohydrate circus in front of me. “Maybe I should get to know this guy.” I put a napkin over the food. “Let’s see if I can get through your story without scarfing these.” I sit back. “Okay. Worst thing.”
This has to be about her scars, and I’m not sure I want to hear it. There’s something beguiling about this girl. She is disfigured, and as much as I’d like to be bigger than that (hell, I’m bigger than almost everything else), I’m not sure how it affects me. Without my glasses, which I only wear when I need to see, she’s blurred at the edges, and I see a beauty, a femininity that doesn’t hide behind her toughness, probably because she doesn’t know it’s there. And I gotta tell you, I know what it’s like to not quite pass muster on looks.
“I don’t know how much I remember and how much I imagine,” Sarah says. “I was young; three or four. Pretty, everyone says. I remember being so scared of my dad. I’d see him through the window coming home from work and I’d stand just around the kitchen entrance and wait to see if he was dangerous that day. I’d watch my mother. I could tell how he was by her shoulders. If he was in a good mood—and good is relative here—her shoulders slumped and I could feel the relief; if he was mean they would
pinch up high around her neck. When they slumped, I’d come around into the kitchen and wait to see if I got a hug. It wasn’t much of a hug, like nothing to sustain you, but if I got anything, we were safe for the night.
“Then it seemed like the slumped shoulders and hugs just disappeared. When I look back, I know he was drinking more, because we’d have to wait longer for him to come home to dinner. You didn’t eat anything before he got there.”
It scares me even to hear it. “How crazy was this guy?”
“As crazy as he still is,” she says. “But don’t judge him yet. It gets better.”
“I thought so.”
“My mother would cook dinner so it would be ready when he got home, and he’d come late and fly into a rage because dinner was cold. So she’d wait for him, and he’d fly into a rage because dinner wasn’t on the table. I remember it because every night she would ask me what I thought she should do. I wouldn’t know, so I’d make a guess and she’d do it. It was like living your life at a roulette wheel with no colors or numbers. You couldn’t pick a winner because even when you did time it right, the food still had to be something he liked.”
“I’ve played roulette,” I tell her. “There’s almost no chance to pick a winner when there are numbers or colors.”
“Well, you had a hell of a lot better chance than we had. And losing really sucked. Swear to god, my clearest memory of my mother is the smack of his hand against her head.”
“Why didn’t she just take you and leave?”
“Looking for the answer to that question will keep therapists in work for eternity. Anyway, one night the stars lined up exactly wrong. He was at the door and then he and my mother were screaming and then he had her by the hair and the water was running in the sink and he was pushing her face into the water, ‘You can’t talk if you can’t breathe, bitch,’ and I was scared but I was mad and I ran at him and started bashing his legs with my fists, screaming at him to leave her alone and then I was in his arms and the potbelly stove was coming right at my face and then this awful, like, searing pain and I was screaming and then we were back in the kitchen. He pushed me at her and said, ‘There’s your pretty little girl for you.’
“Next thing I remember, I think, was pitch dark, because my face was covered with bandages. Hands, too, where I put them out to stop the stove. I heard my dad telling nurses I had pulled a kettle of boiling spaghetti over on myself when my mom wasn’t looking. I still don’t know how in the world anyone bought that bullshit because a scalding burn and a dry burn are way different, but it was a small town and people don’t get into other people’s business, even doctors, and no one ever called child protection. I don’t even know if there was suspicion. My dad was meaner than a snake, but he could turn on ‘earnest’ anytime.”
I am glued to her.
She sips her coffee. “Like I said, I’m not sure how much I remember exactly and how much I made up. Some of it I heard again at my dad’s trial last year. I was young. For a long time I believed the story about the spaghetti, because he told it over and over and so did my mom. It was easier to believe than the truth. But when it came back, it was like it was happening right then.”
“Jesus, my worst thing would be your best thing.”
She smiles. “I’m not to the worst thing yet.”
Jesus.
“When I got home from the hospital, I stayed close to my mother. If she left the room, I howled; followed her everywhere I could. But it was like she wasn’t in there. I mean, she let me tag along through our tiny place, but she didn’t talk, didn’t sing to me anymore, or tell me how much she loved me. Nothing. She moved like a ghost, and I followed her like a ghost, but she was my mom and I couldn’t stand to have any distance between us. There was no more fighting. Dad came home and didn’t say a word, and my mother would figure out some way to get his dinner. He ate alone. She fed me before he got there.”
Sarah sighs, and I swear there isn’t a breath between us, but there are crumbs because I’m not holding to my dietary pledge. She shakes her head like a dog clearing its ears, bringing herself into the moment. “Here’s the worst thing,” she says.
“It’s night. My mom is home and Dad isn’t. I hear her crashing around upstairs in her room. I run up and see her throwing clothes into two suitcases on the bed, stuffing them in. I stand in the doorway and she doesn’t see me, just packs faster and faster. I say, ‘Are you throwing stuff away?’ and she sees me and gasps, then keeps packing. ‘Are you?’ I say. She kneels in front of me. ‘Listen, Sarah, I have to go away’ and I say, ‘No!’ ‘I have to,’ she says, and I say, ‘I’m coming, too.’ She says, ‘I have to go alone,’ and I start to cry. ‘I’m coming, too!’ She shakes me. ‘I’ll come back and get you. I have to get us a place to live,’ and I yell ‘No! No! No!’
“I hear a car horn and run to the window. The car is yellow. I’m screaming and holding on to her, so she says, ‘Okay, okay! Run and get your clothes. Hurry. Use the play suitcase I bought you. Get a dress and some underpants. Bring your bear. Hurry, your dad is coming.’ I run like the wind to my room, get my favorite dress and a pair of pants and a shirt. I stuff in some underpants and I look all around but I can’t find my bear and I’m so scared to leave it and I’m trying to hurry. I dig in the closet, and then I hear a car door slam and I panic. My heart pounds in my ears, and I run to the window in time to see a leg disappearing into the backseat, with my mother’s shoe on it. I scream at the window, but it’s closed and no one looks up and the yellow car drives away.”
I’m so lost in this I’ve almost stopped eating. “A cab. Please tell me she came back.”
“She came back.”
Ahhh. “Really?”
“Nope. You said to tell you that.”
“She didn’t.”
The next time I saw her was in Reno, thirteen years later.”
“Reno? Nevada?”
“You know another Reno?”
I don’t.
“In grade school I got these postcards from there. No writing, just pictures of casinos and shows and stars who sang there. The casinos looked like castles. I dreamed the postcards were from my mother and when the time was right she would come get me to go live in one of the castles with her. My friend, Moby, the other fat guy, figured out when we were in high school that they had to be from her, and this teacher, Ms. Lemry, risked her job to take me there to find her.”
I look at the crumbs on the table in front of me. I’m thinking maybe the other fat guy wouldn’t have eaten them, which was why he was no longer the other fat guy.
Sarah breaks me out of my dietary reverie. “We found her.”
“You found her? You’re not saying that because you heard me thinking, Please tell me you found her.”
“We found her. She was a waitress at a restaurant in one of those casinos on the postcards. My teacher recognized the shame on her face when she saw a burned girl sitting in the booth, plus I had one way old picture. There couldn’t have been one chance in a million we’d find her, but there’s less chance than that to win the lottery and somebody always does. Anyway, she knew it was me somehow, and she tried to run, but Ms. Lemry chased her down. My mother sat right there in the middle of the street and refused to come back…said she knew she would rot in hell, but she was scareder than she was ashamed.”
I am pushing my finger into the last crumbs on the table, eating them slowly, trying to wrap my imagination around all this. “So losing your mother is a worse thing than getting burned?”
“You never get used to losing your mom,” she says. “I hate her. I mean, I hate her. I hate her worse than my dad, but I’d give anything to have her back, even if it was just to tell her to go to hell.”
Wow. “Where’s your dad?”
“Prison,” she says. “It’s amazing. He raised me and we had a few times that were okay, but I don’t care if I never see him again. She knew what he was like and she left me with him, but I ache to be with her sometimes. It’s so crazy. Ma
ybe I just want her to know how much I hate her, but in my dreams…that’s not it. I don’t get it; most times I hate myself for wanting her.”
I sit, digesting her story, and the scones. I remember hating my own parents because they were gay and wouldn’t shut up about it. I hated them every time some kid brought it up or asked out loud how I thought I might have been conceived, and then described the possibilities. But my parents were always there. The one thing I’ve always counted on, come hell or high water, was that they were looking out for me. Maybe I was embarrassed by them, but by now I know that’s my problem. I live in two different houses with people I have to explain, but my back is covered, and those people love me like I’m the only kid in the world.
“It did help to get to see her that one time. She’s weak. It feels good to know she’s weak; that it wasn’t me.”
“So she looked you in the eye and…”
“…said no. I needed her to come tell what he’d done. No way could I prove it in court after living with him all that time. I’d never let on to him that I remembered what really happened. I stuck with the spaghetti story. But he seemed crazier and crazier, wondering if I’d figured it out and was waiting to get far enough away to tell. I needed my mother to come put him away. She said she was too scared, but I think the other part was that she would’ve had to come back and face the shame of leaving me with him.”
“So how did your dad get caught?”
“He got crazy when I ran off to Reno, thinking the jig was up, and he went after Moby to find out where I’d gone. Moby wouldn’t tell and he got violent and Moby’s stepdad hunted him down.”
My jealousy surprises me. This other fat guy not only went Jenny Craig on me; he, like, saved Sarah’s life. “So this Moby, are you sure you guys weren’t…you know.”
“No. We weren’t you know.”
“Why not?”
“Look at me, you dick. Besides, he liked a prom queen. And even though he got all buff, I remembered him as the dweeb he was when I met him.”
I am looking at her—my glasses are in the car—and she looks fine. I’ve been running around after pretty girls all my life, and to understate it a little, it hasn’t been working. Something crazy is going on inside me. “How’d he lose the weight?”