All These Lives (17 page)

I hear her laugh when someone gets hit, the creaking of her smile, her heavy, loud breathing, even with my back to her, and I remember what I am fighting for. I want her here. More than anything. More than being here myself.

I shape a giant ball of snow that makes Mom laugh and tell Dad he’d better look out. Dad glances up and searches for something to duck behind.

This snowball has more new snow than the ones I’ve made before, so it won’t hit its target and fall flaccidly to the ground; it will melt against coats and shoes and hair and knees. This snowball takes a long time to make, building an air of anticipation as Dad starts throwing smaller ones at me, to scare me from going after him. This snowball is heavy, not light, as I finally pick it up off the ground and prepare to use it. This snowball goes up, high, a world of white against the blue of the sky, up, up, up, over my head and backwards to where she is.

This snowball makes everyone freeze temporarily and then she shrieks and goes, “You cow, Dani!”

And a million little snowballs start flying at me. From Jena and Dad and even Mom, who has forgotten that she did not pray for snow—she prayed for something else.

And these snowballs make me giggle for the first time in a long time. They make me shriek and they sting and the tips of my fingers ache and I remember for the first time in a long time that I am here. Not dead or dying or waiting to die; not passing time as I wait for the people I love most in the world to drop one by one by one.

I don’t know how long I’ll stay, or anybody else for that matter.

But I am. Here.

28

O Wind, If Winter comes,
can Spring be far behind?

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

The drive back home is better than the one from it. Happy is a clichéd word to use, but we are closer to it than not.

While Dad drives and Mom goes back and forth between us and him, Jena and I hang out. We play several games of cards. I forgot what a sore loser she was, and she says she forgot what a gloating winner I was.

We watch TV. No game shows today. We watch some Animal Planet documentaries and a reality show about a divorced couple living together. It’s completely tacky. We can only stand it because the man is hot and doesn’t speak much, and the woman’s confessionals to the camera are super dishy and inappropriate.

It’s a marathon, though, so when their voices become grating, we mute them out and make up dialogue for them. This is amusing for about an episode and then Jena falls asleep underneath her six blankets, and I steal the Jena Book from where she left it, beside the couch.

It’s nothing like I expect. Each entry starts with the date and then a detailed entry of what she ate that day, how she felt, when and how much medication she took. I’m just about to close it when the back cover flips open and I see that, going backwards, Jena has been drawing in it. Upon closer examination, I recognize that these are comics. Characters with names like Captain Spearhead and Villain Vikon fill the pages. It crosses my mind that this must be a code between Mom and her. They leave messages, coded inscriptions that nobody else would understand.

I wonder if I am Villain Vikon.

“They’re good, aren’t they?” Mom says, sitting on the arm of my couch since Jena is spread out across it and I only just have enough room to sit. “Don’t tell her I said that, though,” she whispers, with a shake of her head. “She does it to piss me off. Here I am trying to keep official records of what her days are like and she takes up half the pages of each book, drawing little superheroes.”

Mom tugs down the blanket, where Jena’s foot sticks out. “She’s showing me who’s boss.” Even though Mom is smiling, I get the sense that it’s something that actually drives her crazy, the way so much about Jena used to. The way she’d lazily throw her hair into a ponytail every single day. The way she never cleaned her room and left her door wide open, so Mom never went a day without seeing it, but then kept skulls and the
NO ENTRY
sign on her door, denying my mother permission to enter and fix things, the way she always wanted to.

They compromise because they have to now, but maybe deep down inside, they are still the same people I know and love. Maybe they’ll come back soon and tell me stories of where they’ve been and what they’ve seen and I’ll tell them too and everything will be okay.

*   *   *

We pull into town in all our RV-relaxed glory, an ethereal feeling of togetherness and vitality and our own non-LSD-inspired, seventies version of “everythinggunnabearite, man.”
God sent snow,
Mom thinks,
and He’s got a whole lot more resources where that came from
.

I single-handedly repaired this family over a weekend,
Dad thinks.
Maybe finally my wife will stop holding against me all the other ways I’ve failed, projects I haven’t finished, and kids I can’t save
.

The sun is setting when we get home, an orange-red tinge painted carelessly across the sky by those angel friends of my mother’s, the ones she’s sure are keeping Jena alive.

We all help bring in stuff from the RV, and I shrug off Dad’s coat, which I’ve kept ever since ice-fishing.

Jena looks tired but fine, and we’re all set to continue our RV vacation right here at home.

After we’re unpacked—in the loosest sense of the word—Jena and I battle our tofu dinner by ourselves. Mom is doing laundry, while Dad is upstairs.

“I think,” Jena is saying, “you and Jack would make an adorable couple.”

“You know who we haven’t talked about lately? Rufus.”

If Jena notices my stepping around the subject of Jack, she overlooks it, opting to glare at me instead.

Right then, Mom appears in the doorway, walking into the kitchen and dishing up a plate for herself, then heading to the table.

“Jena, why’s it taking you so long to eat?” Mom glances at my plate. “Have either of you even touched your food?”

“We thought we were supposed to wait for you,” I lie. “Where’s Dad?”

It’s then I notice Mom’s splotchy face, the red around the rims of her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Jena asks before I can.

“Nothing,” Mom sniffs, pushing her fork into her food and bringing it up to her mouth.

“Mom, we’re not stupid. We can
see
something is wrong.”

At least it’s not with Jena, I think.

Ignoring her, Mom points her fork at me. “Dani, we had a voicemail from the Whitaden people. You booked the commercial.”

The dining room is completely quiet except for Mom’s chewing, which sounds harsh and vigorous. I realize she’s mad, not upset.

“Congratulations, honey,” Mom says, as if suddenly remembering what she just told me. “Jena, say congratulations to your sister.”

Jena’s lips don’t budge; neither do her eyes, which are fixed on Mom.

When I got a non-speaking part in
Oliver!
three years ago, Mom called Aunt Tish to tell her the happy news. Now I’ve booked my first commercial, and she looks robotic. I’m not offended; I’m worried.

We finish our food in silence—that is, those of us that do. Some of us are well-schooled in the art of not finishing food and not being seen by our mothers, so all we have to do is push the food around in our plates a little, wait till her focus is elsewhere—the best bet is on your sick twin sister—and scurry into the kitchen to expertly dispose of it.

We’ve figured out by now that Dad probably knows what it is she’s angry about, so when I can, I sneak up to their room and find him. He’s on his laptop checking e-mail.

“What’s wrong with Mom?” I ask as soon as I see him. “Did she hear something about Jena?”

He frowns, still looking at the computer screen. “What do you mean? Isn’t your sister downstairs?”

“Yeah,” I say, “but when Mom came to eat, she looked like she’d been crying. And she’s acting … weird.”

Dad finishes typing his sentence, then rises from his chair, stretching. “I’ll go and talk to her. Try not to worry. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

I know it’s not nothing because I hear snatches of their conversation. I hear snatches of their conversation because they don’t talk; they yell. Or Mom does. First she asks if he’s smoking again. He must say yes, because things get even louder.

“How dare you!” she shouts from downstairs. I hear the sound of forks scraping plates and I realize she’s washing dishes. I’m surprised they’re not all broken by now, what with her exceeding the sound barrier and all. “After everything we’ve been through! I only asked you for one thing.
One thing
. And you couldn’t do it.”

Dad mumbles something, an apology or a grunt or maybe he’s totally silent and that’s just his stomach growling, because I have a feeling he’s not getting any dinner tonight, inedible or not.

“Do you not
see
what it’s like to be sick? Or, worse, to watch someone you love be sick? Where have you
been
, Eric?” she yells. “Am I crazy? Have I been the only one that’s seeing it? Maybe it’s because
I’ve
been here all this time, while you hid behind your work or even jumped at the chance to grocery shop just so you didn’t have to see
this
.”

This time I hear what Dad’s saying. “That is not true, and you know it.”

I feel bad for him. It’s not true.

He wants to run away as much as I do, but he hasn’t, yet. He tries to help—grocery shopping and even, God forbid, being stuck in a car with me, taking me to auditions or to school. Unfortunately for him, nothing he does comes close to wiping up your daughter’s vomit or seeing her writhe in pain or going to appointment after appointment where they just want to keep trying stuff and refuse to meet your eye and tell you that it’s not working.

It’s not enough.

“What do you want me to do?” Dad is asking her.

“At this point,” she says, “I don’t care what you do. I can’t even look at you.”

Vigorous washing. Clanking of glass against glass. Metal against glass. Floor against glass.

“SHIT … Just leave it, Eric!” Scraping of glass. Fingers against glass. “I swear to God, Eric, if you get sick, I
will
leave you. I’m not going to sit here and watch you die, too. I won’t. Not when you couldn’t do the
one thing
I asked you to.”

Watch you die
too.

She mutters angry words under her breath, words too obscene, words that don’t fit in her new evangelical Christian mouth.

The one thing she asked him to do was quit smoking.

And she said “too.”

“And by the way, I don’t know what you want to do with your coat, but right now it’s out on the back porch.”

I hear Dad’s footsteps as he walks across the kitchen and out onto the back porch. I slip out and through the front door, then walk around the house to the porch, where Dad stands dejected, looking at the sleeve of his coat.

He jumps as I approach. “Hey, kiddo. What are you doing out here? It’s cold out and you’re not wearing a coat.”

Light snowflakes float to the ground, a few getting caught in Dad’s hair, giving him the speckled look I imagine he’ll have in another few years. Or months, if our family stays this bipolar.

“Why didn’t you tell her it wasn’t you?” I ask, staring at the burned edge of his coat.

He shrugs. “She asked if I was smoking and I wasn’t going to lie to her.
You
weren’t smoking, were you?”

I shake my head. “It got burned when we were making fires, with Jack and stuff.”

He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “I should never have started up again. No matter how … no matter how bad things got.”
“Hopeless” is what he wanted to say. “Fucked up” would do, too.

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

He shakes his head and forces a smile. “I’ll tell you what. When you’re rich and famous, the official Whitaden spokesperson, you buy me a brand-new coat. To make up for this.”

I give him a small smile as he puts the coat around my shoulders.

“Remember the little people when you’re a big star.”

“Dad.” I roll my eyes. “In, like, a year I’m going to destroy all footage of that commercial. And nobody will ever miss it.”

My father laughs. “Maybe,” he says. “But your mother doesn’t need to know that.”

29

Despite my parents (Mom) being a little chilly toward each other (Dad), and obsessing sort of compulsively (Mom) over certain others (Jena), this week is a good one.

Monday, it turns out, is the day our assignments are due, and while Lauren appears frazzled and totally disheveled—apparently, she was up all night finishing hers—she is happy to see me. And despite things being a tad awkward at first, Jack is, too.

Mr. Halbrook says we can hand in our assignments any time before the end of the day, so the three of us stay in during lunch and “touch up” the assignment. Mostly, Lauren sleeps with her head on the desk and Jack reads aloud all the work he’s spent four weeks doing.

I tell him how terribly impressed I am.

He flushes, but seems pretty happy about it.

We still have the rest of lunchtime so we just sit there and make idle conversation—sort of like when we went ice-fishing on Saturday, but without the awkward relatives. Or the me-stomping-on-his-heart thing.

Maybe Jack and I will be friends. Or.

He tells me my family is different than he always imagined it would be, which I assume is a backhanded compliment, while I assure him that his family is exactly what I thought it would be like. If I’d ever given any real thought to the matter.

His father has been in a wheelchair for the past eighteen months, after getting into a car accident that resulted in a serious spinal cord injury. His mother works two jobs—she works at the museum downtown during the day and teaches art classes at the community college in the evenings. Jack helps out in the museum sometimes.

“So what you told me about your dad,” I say, then swallow because I’m about to give
advice
and it tastes thick and sticky and hot in my throat. “You should probably tell him that. You said you don’t like when people pretend everything is okay, so take your own advice.” I feel a bit better now that I’ve said it, but it still tastes like drinking hot water when you’re super thirsty. Wrong and gross and I shouldn’t be giving advice. I should just refer him to Harry-with-an-
i
.