Casebook: A novel

  “No,” I said.

  The Boops chorused. “No. No. Nooooooo.”

  “Well, I feel better,” she said. “Next week, Miles, we’ll start on your shelves.”

  But the next week, our dad took us to the pier. He loved bumper cars as much as we did and bought us ice cream at five o’clock. The light was just jelling when he bounded into the house, sniffing and scanning the kitchen. “What’s cookin’?”

  My mom had the table set. The way Eli had looked at her, my dad looked at the food. But our parents laughed together. People don’t talk about how weird it is when your separated parents get along. They were still sharp and funny. My dad had seconds, then thirds, before shoving his chair out and saying good night. We hadn’t seen Eli for a while. While we loaded the dishwasher, I asked the Mims how he was.

  “Better,” she said. “Definitely better.”

  “He’s home from the hospital?”

  The way she said Mm-hmm made me think she didn’t know. I wondered if they’d had a fight. Maybe because she hadn’t gone when he’d had that operation.

  20 • Behind the Futon-Sofa

  Then one day he showed up holding flowers. My father was usually the flower sender. I’d never before seen Eli with a bloom. My mom wasn’t expecting him, I deduced; she was wearing sweats, her hair up in the clip she wore at home. He just stood there with his flowers. They didn’t say anything to each other. They stared. Then his face fell onto her shoulder, his neck like a dinosaur’s. Bent. Dark. He might have been crying.

  “Do you want to sit down?” she asked, and they sat on the futon-sofa Sare had lent us.

  I happened to be hiding behind that. Not to spy. My camp duffel and all my gear were spread out on the kitchen floor, and hide-and-seek even with my benighted sisters had seemed more appealing than starting to pack. I’d hid. The Boops were seeking me. Then Hector was coming to get me for a movie.

  I’d have to pop up like a jack-in-the-box behind my mom and Eli.

  “I’m s-sorry.” The stutter again. “I had my first session with Dr. Wynn, and I told her I’d been crazy. I knew I was being too hard on you. She had my medical records, and she asked for a blood test. She suspected pressure from the tumor was causing the anxiety. She called me an hour later and said we had to do emergency surgery. I promise to do better. I’m going to keep seeing her. Sweetie, are you afraid to get divorced?”

  Afraid to get divorced? Was it still possible they wouldn’t? I had a queasy feeling: I remembered the boy to whom those words would have fallen like the deepest balm. The gold of recovery. I could almost reach his feelings, but not quite; I was no longer that boy. I wasn’t sure I wanted my parents back together. I was used to things the way they were now. I’d already begun to be the man I would become. Halfhearted. About my parents getting back together. About Holland. About Eli. And the other side of half-heartedness was greed.

  “I won’t push you so hard anymore,” Eli said.

  The Boops ran panting into the room, saying they couldn’t find me. My mom and Eli stood to help them look.

  I gave them a head start and then snuck up behind, shouting, “Boo!”

  The doorbell rang; it was Hector and I had to go. His mom had started dating their surf instructor and he and Jules hated him. The surf instructor had a dog called Scout, and they didn’t like the dog either. We ran down to his mom’s car, late for Batman Begins. Bo, the Surfer, rode shotgun and Kat drove. I guess all VWs have those little vases, but Kat was the only person I ever knew who always kept a flower in hers. That night it was a sprig of rosemary and one lavender stalk.

  “Didn’t Eli just have surgery?” Hector asked. He had freckles on every inch of his body from surf camp and wore a twine ankle bracelet. “Did they have to shave his head?”

  “His head’s already kind of shaved. The sides, anyway.”

  “Is there a scar?”

  I’d forgotten to look. Hector stayed at my house, and the next day my mom let us sleep, which was odd since it was the Sunday she intended to go through everything I owned. But when I blinked awake, I could tell it was late from the way the sun fell on the lawn. Gal scrabbled.

  “Your mom let us sleep in till noon.” Hector jumped down from the top bunk. He slept in the top bunk at home, too.

  “Wowza. That’s a first.”

  We ventured out through the rooms, still in yesterday’s clothes. The kitchen looked itself. I heard thunks and rustles from my mom’s closet. We sauntered in and found a huge pile of clothes on her bed and my mom standing in sneakers and a dress before the mirror. Eli knelt there, tugging at the skirt of it.

  “We’re cleaning out my closet,” she said.

  I rubbed my eyes. “Does that mean mine gets a pass?” She surveyed the pile of shoes on her floor, sweaters melting on a chair arm.

  Eli pinched the back of her dress like a seamstress. “Honey, this’ll take most of the afternoon, and then we should do something fun with the kids.” He pulled the shoulders of the dress in. Then he shook his head. “No, take it off. Giveaway.”

  They spent all day in that closet. I stuck my head in; she was trying on a ruffled shirt. A huge clown face was Eli’s response. She pushed him back onto a pile of coats.

  Later, we stepped in to say we were going out on our bikes. My mom had on white jeans. From the floor, he grabbed her ankle.

  We took a long ride. Hector said, “I didn’t see any scar.”

  “Ask him.” I shrugged.

  By the time we got home, they had k.d. lang singing “The Air That I Breathe,” a song about cigarettes, and both of them were lying on the floor. “Guys, look at my closet,” the Mims said. “It’s a thing of beauty.”

  “It’s a thing of empty, anyway,” I said. “What happened to all your clothes?”

  She pointed to three ginormous garbage bags, marked THROW, GOODWILL, and SEAMSTRESS. Her closet had yards of room. A cluster of empty hangers. Not only that, the top of her dresser was bare.

  Eli drove us in my mom’s car as the sun went down. He took the 405 onto a road that wound around a mountain, cutting into brush, where each dry leaf cupped gold. We ended up on a street that looked halfway between a mall and a ghost town.

  “I love this,” my mom said, stepping into the dusty light. The restaurant was known for dumplings, just the kind of thing she liked, full of odd vegetables. We preferred dumplings that were fried. But Eli ordered a Coke, and so she let us, too. “Okay, it’s happened. I love LA now,” she said, walking outside after to a store that sold cream puffs. You could pick your own filling and sauce. The Boops chose ice cream inside; Hector and I made ours into warm éclairs. We were almost to the car when she shrieked. I thought she’d been stung. But it was only Eli; he’d pinched.

  Eli didn’t seem—I don’t know—maybe as special as my dad, but he made her looser. I tried to explain. “You know why I like him? I can say it in one word. Coke.”

  “He’s better than Surferdude,”* Hector muttered.

  After that day we didn’t see Eli for the rest of the summer.

  My mom bragged about him, though. She told me he’d had a teacher in eighth grade who made him read a book every day.

  “Sounds like a site,” I said. “Book of the Day.”

  She laughed, which was good, because I had no intention of reading a book every day. The Mims wasn’t such a reader herself. She liked papers with equations.

  One night in August I found her computer screen open to Dalmane addiction.

  “What’s Dalmane?” I asked, my skin going raw chicken. Could my mother be an addict without me knowing? I made myself say, “So who’s addicted?”

  “I told you Eli’s brother lost his job.”

  “Oh, yeah. The brother.” Relief hugged me, enough to make me care a little about Eli’s brother. “What kind of job did he have again?”

  Their dad had been a professor who made a lot of money in the stock market. Hugo had inherited that talent. He’d considered business school; Eli thought that had bee
n his last good chance. But he’d only worked in menial positions in financial services. “His new doctor says that he’s on way too high a dose of this drug. I guess it’s very addictive.” She put the top down on her computer. “You want tea?”

  I did want tea. She made tea then that tasted like a bowl of spices. We brought our handleless mugs to the porch and sat looking out over the canyon. That was where my dad lived, in a multilevel house hidden by trees. We couldn’t see many stars. Most of them turned out to be airplanes.

  The next time I asked about Eli, she said his brother was in the hospital for Dalmane withdrawal. Eli had moved into his apartment in New Jersey to help.

  I don’t think I remembered to ask again.

  I was a pretty selfish kid. But I didn’t love Eli yet.

  * * *

  * At least Surferdude should have red hair. He pretty much does.

  21 • A Trip to the Other Economy

  That fall, my class moved to the Upper Campus, and it was a city. Over the summer, kids had grown. All of a sudden, Hector and I were short. People sold great food from carts. But my mom refused to pay for hot lunches. My allowance covered one a week; the other days I had to bring food from home. She packed leftover pasta and farro salad and carrots and shit. And she’d gotten to my dad before I tried. Some Tuesday mornings he didn’t have food in the house and gave me a twenty, saying, “For just this once, Miles. It’s not going to be a habit!” Then we had to rush to Whole Foods, because the Boops, who were still in elementary, couldn’t add on lunches by the day.

  The noodle soup cart and the burrito guy had the longest lines.

  A Wednesday, after school, I saw Esmeralda eating the same kind of noodle soup at our kitchen table. I said, “I buy those for lunch.”

  “How much?”

  “Two fifty.”

  She spurted giggles. “Near my place, I pay one dollar for ten pieces.”

  I gave her my allowance and skipped my hot lunch that week. She’d buy soup and bring it when she came to clean the house again the next Wednesday.

  I started selling soup from my locker. At first I waited until I saw people in line for the cart, then I told the ones at the back that I could give it to them for a buck twenty-five. Kids worried about finding hot water. It didn’t seem right to ask the cart vendors for their water if you didn’t buy their soup. But I figured we could get it in the chem lab.

  In two weeks, I sold out and gave Esmeralda thirty dollars to buy more. Upper Campus bustled with opportunity. I asked Esmeralda about other deals. I started to watch what people bought. I threw out the organic Whole Foods crap my mom packed and bought a burrito and a soda every day. Money piled in. I bought Hector lunches, too. Esmeralda delivered eight bags of new soup and she still had cash left over. She was happy because I gave her a twenty, as a thank-you. She didn’t know how big my profits were.

  “You are gaining weights,” she said.

  I looked at her and thought, You should talk.

  But I’d put on fifteen pounds by Thanksgiving. My legs felt packed into my jeans, and my stomach bulged out over the top.

  I wanted to investigate other products. I asked if I could go home with Esmeralda one day; she seemed happy with the idea. But I couldn’t figure out how to explain to my mom.

  Then my progress report arrived. Cottonwoods only gave letter grades starting in ninth grade, and they were going to be a problem: I got a C in math. My mother sat with her reading glasses on, scanning the paper report. She didn’t say anything. That was bad. She would definitely notice a C in math. She disappeared to her room to talk on the phone. It had to be either my dad or Eli. Or Sare.

  “Miles?” she said, coming out. “There’ll be no television or video until your next report card.”

  “What? You’re taking away TV for two months because of a grade?”

  “We both know it’s not your best.”

  “What if it is? No, really, Mom. What if it is my best?”

  I called my dad to fight, but he interrupted. “I agree with your mother one hundred percent. One hundred percent, Miles.” Then he had to get off the phone. Dickwad.

  With no electronics, I had time, so I hitched a ride home with Esmeralda the next Wednesday. She took me to Lucky supermarket, where her son, in his baseball uniform, showed me all his favorite stuff. Chips I’d never seen before—fried pigskins! No shit! They were good, but I didn’t know if I could move them. I bought Mexi-Crisps, prepopped caramel corn, and two different chips, all cheap, and a yellow soda I wanted to introduce. I bought one bag of the pig chips for Hector. Right before I left, I saw Cokes in bottles; they turned out to be Mexican Coke and cost more than regular, even here, but I bought five six-packs, for a luxury item. Esmeralda drove me to the bus stop. When I finally got back, I left the bags outside under the windows of my room to sneak in after dark.

  The Mims wasn’t pleased when I walked in at nine twenty, but I’d told her I wanted to see Esmeralda’s home. She couldn’t say anything to that, even though we both knew she’d rather have had me copying algebra problems a hundred times and showing my idiotic work.

  22 • A Basement Below a Doctor’s Office

  When Boop One made the dance team, our schedule turned wack. Thursdays didn’t work anymore. Esmeralda could pick us up from school, after cleaning Charlie’s house, and drive Boop Two to speech therapy on her way east; I had to go along. Then the speech therapist took us to the dance studio, where we’d wait for Boop One’s carpool. But I couldn’t read in a place that smelled like feet. Finally, we figured out that Esmeralda could drop me off near UCLA; I could work in my mom’s office and then ride back with her. “But I see a doctor Thursday after work,” the Mims said.

  “O-kay,” I said. “Just this Thursday?”

  “Every Thursday.”

  “What kind of doctor?”

  She paused. “A therapist.”

  “You see a therapist? For what?”

  She shrugged. “Just everything, I guess.”

  Once, after I’d been torturing my sister and repeating gobble gobble, the Mims said if we couldn’t get along better we’d have to see a psychologist. I said back, “Dad doesn’t want us going to therapists,” just guessing, but I turned out to be right.

  So I sat with my mom in the waiting room doing homework while she watched. A tall woman, my grandmother’s age, opened the door halfway.

  “This is Dr. Sally Bach,” my mother said. “This is Miles.”

  “Hello, Miles.” The woman’s smile seemed halfway to laughter.

  My numbers on the page marched up in a slant and I needed to pee. A guy in the lobby pointed me to the basement. I found the bathroom and then, next to it, another door to a low-ceilinged unfinished place. I climbed around under hanging pipes to a spot I thought was below the doctor’s office. And I could hear the old doctor laughing! They sounded like two women having tea. When you’re trying all the time to glean information, sometimes it just falls onto you. That’s when it felt sweet.

  “Eli’s pressuring me to hurry,” the Mims said.

  Hurry and what? I wondered.

  “Some mathematicians have spouses who follow them,” she went on. “Marge called Stanley a Trailing Spouse.”

  “Cary not only didn’t follow you, he suggested you quit,” the doctor said. He did! That was news to me.

  “He didn’t really want me to quit. He just didn’t like me to complain.”

  “Or to ask him to help with his children.”

  “He never wanted twins. You’ve got to give him credit. He knew his limits.”

  My dad didn’t want the Boops! A smile crept onto my face as I felt the wind knocked out of me. I was surprised how much they were talking about my dad.

  “The truth is, I think I’m happier now,” the Mims said.

  That made it seem like she was the one who left. I was never sure. I didn’t know when my dad had started up with Holland. But it was hard to believe my mom left. My dad admired her; she seemed to him rare and
valuable, but he didn’t need her. She needed him, not for the complicated things but for the easy ones. She forgot to lock the door and she ruined enough kettles for him to buy one that shrieked so she wouldn’t burn down the house. But then he moved out. I guess he didn’t worry about the house burning with just us in it. I thought my dad had loved my mom more than she’d loved him. Eli loved her more, too. I felt a twinge; she hadn’t even visited the guy in the hospital. I felt guilty remembering that; I hadn’t wanted her to go.

  “You’re happier without him and with Eli,” the doctor said.

  “Eli’s coming with me to the Kovalevsky thing. No, I’m happy with him. Everything’s just … even bobby-pinning Emma’s bun. Doing ordinary things, I feel more …”

  “Is he going along with you?” Bells rang in the doctor’s voice. She was merry. There were girls in my class like that. Hector called them the goofy good-time girls.

  “Do you think he’ll always be getting mad at me?”

  “We’ll have to find a way to make him feel secure.”

  “I’d never leave him,” my mother said.

  The doctor laughed again. She seemed like a party girl, just a very, very old one.

  It wasn’t until we were driving west to the smelly upstairs studio that I realized they hadn’t mentioned me once.

  23 • Business

  I opened bags of the new chips for people to sample. Mexi-Crisps were catching on. Three girls bought the prepopped caramel corn. Salsitas were a hard sell, even though they were way cheaper than the brands we knew. And nobody touched the yellow soda. I was surprised to learn that Cottonwoods kids were so prejudiced.

  But even with resistance to the new merchandise, business grew. Kids asked me in the halls if I sold soup. We had a regular line now in the chemistry room. Hector and I both stashed thermoses in our lockers to keep things from getting overly conspicuous. We had bat-shit crazy lunch periods. I stayed by my open locker while Hector went to buy us burritos from the cart. We were sick of soup. I was waiting to introduce the Mexican Coke. I still had to figure out pricing.