Antsy Does Time (14 page)

Now all the lawns around Gunnar's house, front and back, were going a strange shade of brown that was almost purple. Our dust bowl was spreading outward like something satanic.

 
 
When I got home, my mom wasn't with my dad at the restaurant, like she usually is on Sunday afternoons. She was home, cleaning. This was nothing unusual—but the sheer intensity of the scouring had me worried—like maybe the toxic mold was back, and this time it was personal.

Turns out, it was worse.

“Aunt Mona is coming to visit,” Mom told me.

I turned to my sister Christina, who sat cross-legged on the couch, either doing homework or trying to levitate her math book. “No—tell me it's not true!” I begged.

Christina just lowered her eyes and shook her head in the universal this-patient-can't-be-saved gesture.

“How long?”

“How long till she comes, or how long will she stay?” Christina asked.

“Both.”

To which Christina responded, “Next week, and only God knows.”

It's always that way with Aunt Mona. Her visits are more like wartime occupations. She's the most demanding of our relatives—in fact, we sometimes call her “relative humidity,” on account of when Mona's around, everybody sweats. See, Aunt Mona likes to be catered to—but lately the only catering Mom and Dad have been able to do is of the restaurant variety. Plus, when Aunt Mona arrives, all other things manage to get put on hold, and we're all expected to “visit” with her while she's here—especially those first couple of days. With the dust bowl due, tests in every class before Christmas vacation, another date to schedule with Kjersten, and Gunnar's illness hovering like a storm, Aunt Mona was the last thing I needed.

Just so you know, Aunt Mona's my father's older sister. She has a popular business selling perfume imported from places I've never heard of, and might actually be made up—and she always wears her own perfume. I think she wears them all at one once, because whenever she visits, I break out in hives from the fumes, and the neighborhood clears of wildlife.

She's very successful and business-minded. Nothing wrong with that—I mean, my friend Ira's mom is all hard-core business, and she's a nice, normal, decent human being. But Aunt Mona is not. Aunt Mona uses her success in cruel and unusual ways. You see, Aunt Mona isn't just successful, she's
More Successful Than You,
whoever you happen to be. And even if she's not, she will find a way to make you feel like the pathetic loser you always feared you were, deep down where the intestines gurgle.

Aunt Mona works like 140-hour weeks, and frowns on anyone who doesn't. She has a spotless high-rise condo in Chicago, and frowns on anyone who doesn't. In fact, she spends so much time frowning and looking down her nose at people, she had a plastic surgeon change her nose and Botox her frown wrinkles.

It goes without saying, then, that Aunt Mona is the undisputed judge of all things Bonano—even though she changed her name to Bonneville because it sounded fancier, and because Mona Bonano sounded too much like that “Name Game” song. I'm sure as a kid she was constantly teased with “Mona-Mona-bo-bona, Bonano-fano-fo-fona.” And as if Bonneville wasn't snooty enough, she added an accent to her first name, so now it's not Mona, it's Moná. I refuse on principle to ever pronounce it “Moná,” and I know she resents it.

It turns out that Aunt Mona was considering moving her entire company to New York, so she was going to be here for a while. She could, of course, afford one of those fancy New York hotels, where the maids clean between your toes and stuff, but there's this rule about family. It's kind of like the Ten Commandments, and the Miranda rights they read you when you get arrested: Thou shalt stay with thy relatives upon every visit, and anything you say can and will be used against you for the rest of your life.

So Mom's Lemon Pledging all the dining-room furniture until the wood shines like new, and she says to me, “You gotta be on your best behavior when Aunt Mona comes.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I tell her, having heard it all before.

“You gotta treat her with respect, whether you like it or not.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“And you gotta wear that shirt she gave you.”

“In your dreams.”

Mom laughed. “If that shirt's in my dreams, they'd be nightmares.”

I had to laugh, too. The fact that Mom agreed with me that the pink-and-orange “designer” shirt was the worst piece of clothing yet devised by man somehow made it okay to wear it. Like now it was an inside joke, instead of just an ugly shirt.

I picked up one of her rags and polished the high part of the china cabinet that she had trouble reaching. She smiled at me, kinda glad, I guess, that I did it before she asked.

“So, do I gotta wear the shirt in public?”

“No,” she says. “Maybe,” she adds. “Probably,” she concludes.

I don't argue, because what's the use? When it comes to Aunt Mona, the odds of walking away a winner are worse than at the Anawana Tribal Casino. Anyway, I suppose wearing the shirt was better than Mom and Christina's fate. They'd have to wear one of Aunt Mona's perfumes.

Right around then the doorbell rang, and Mom looked up at me with wide eyes and froze. I know what she was thinking. Aunt Mona never showed up when scheduled. She would come early, she would come late, she would come on a different day altogether. But a whole week early?

“Naa,” I said to Mom. “It couldn't be.”

I went to answer it, fully prepared for a blast of flesh-searing fragrance. But it wasn't Aunt Mona—instead it was two kids—fourth or fifth graders by the look of them, holding out pieces of paper to me.

“Hi, we're collecting spare time for a kid who's dying or something—would you like to donate?”

“Let me see that!” I snatched one of the papers from them. It was my own blank contract—second- or third-generation Xerox, by the look of it. Someone had taken one of my official contracts and was turning out counterfeits!

“Where'd you get this? Who said you could do this?”

“Our teacher,” said one kid.

“Our whole class is doing it,” said the other.

“So are you going to donate, or what?”

“Get lost.” I slammed the door in their faces.

So now collecting for Gunnar had become a school fund-raiser. I felt violated. Cheated. Betrayed by the educational system.

I didn't bother my parents with this—they had enough on their minds, and they'd probably just say “So what?” and they'd be right. It was petty and dumb to think that I owned the whole idea . . . but the thing is, I liked being the Master of Time. Now there were people running around, doing it on their own, without official leadership. They call that anarchy, and it always leads to things like peasants with pitchforks and torches burning things down.

“Think of those little kids as disciples,” Howie said, when I mentioned it to him the next day. “Jesus' disciples did all the work for him after he wasn't around no more.”

“Yeah, well, I'm still here—and besides, Jesus
knew
his disciples.”

“That's only because the lack of technology in those days forced people to have to know each other. Now, because of computers, we really don't gotta know anybody, really.”

Then he went on about how today the Sermon on the Mount would be a blog, and the ten plagues on Egypt would be reality TV. None of this addressed the issue, so I told Howie I was leaving, but by all means he should continue the conversation without me.

I think this whole prickly, offended feeling was the first warning. I was sensing things getting out of control—not just out of MY control, but out of control in general. My little idea of giving Gunnar a month to make him feel better was now turning into a monster. And everyone knows what they do to monsters. It's pitchforks and torches again. That happens, see, because people think the monster's got no soul.

As it turns out, they'd be right this time. My monster didn't have a soul . . . and I was about to find that out.

11
It's Amazing What You Can Get for $49.95

There's this junkyard off of Flatlands Avenue where they salvage anything they can from junked cars and dump the cars into massive piles before crushing them into metal squares about the size of coffee tables. It's the kind of place you might invent in a dream, although in a dream, the metal squares would talk to you, on account of they'd be haunted by the people who got murdered and thrown into the trunk before the car got crushed.

Gunnar and I went there looking for rusty engine parts to put in a corner of our dust bowl, to add to the atmosphere of despair.

I did most of the looking, because Gunnar was absorbed in the catalog he was reading. “What do you think of this one?” he said to me while I was looking at a pile of bumpers too modern for our purposes. I didn't look at the catalog because I didn't want any part of it.

“Tell you what. Why don't you make it a surprise?”

“Come on, Antsy, I need your opinion. I like this white one, but it's a little too girlie. And then this one—I don't know, the wood looks like my kitchen cabinets. That just feels weird.”

“It
all
feels weird,” I told him.

“It must be done.”

“So let someone else do it. Why should you care? You're gonna be inside it, you're not gonna be looking at it.”

Now he was getting all miffed. “It's about the image I want people to be left with, why can't you understand that? It needs to express who I was, and how I want to be remembered. It's about image—like buying your first car.”

I glanced at the catalog and pointed. “Fine—then go with the gunmetal-gray one,” I said, fairly disgusted. “It looks like a Mercedes.”

He looked at it and nodded. “Maybe I could even put a Mercedes emblem on it. That would be cool.”

The fact that Gunnar could discuss coffins like it was nothing didn't just freak me out, it made me angry. “Can't you just pretend like everything's okay and go about your life, like normal dying people?”

He looked at me like there was something wrong with me instead of him. “Why would I want to do that?”

“You're not supposed to be enjoying it. That's all I'm trying to say. Enjoy
other
stuff . . . but don't enjoy . . . that.”

“Is it wrong to have a healthy attitude about mortality?”

Before I can even deal with the question, I hear from behind me—

“Yo! Dudes!”

I turn to see a familiar face coming out from behind a pile of taillights. It's Skaterdud. He gives me his official Skaterdud handshake, which I've done enough to actually remember this time. He does it with Gunnar, who fakes his way through it convincingly.

“D'ya get my kick-butt donation?” Skaterdud asks.

“Huh?” says Gunnar, “Oh, right—a whole year. That was very cool.”

“Liquid nitrogen, man. We're talking freeze-your-head-till-they-can-cure-you kind of cool, am I not right?”

“No . . . I mean yes. Thank you.”

“Hey, ever consider that, man—the deep freeze? Cryonics? I hear they got Walt Disney all frozen underneath the Dumbo ride. The chilliest place on earth, right? Gotta love it!”

“Actually,” I said, “that's made up.”

“Yeah,” admitted Skaterdud, “but don't you wish it wasn't?”

It's then that I realize that I am the gum-band of sanity between these two jaws of death. On the one hand there's Gunnar, who has made dying the focus of his life, and on the other hand, there's Skaterdud, who sees his fatal fortune as a ticket to three carefree decades of living dangerously.

Suddenly I wanted to be anywhere else but in the mouth of madness.

“Listen, Skaterdud, I got somewhere I gotta be,” which was true—and for once I was grateful I was needed to pour water at my dad's restaurant. “Do you know where we could find car parts so old and cruddy nobody actually wants them?”

Turns out Skaterdud knew the salvage yard well—his dad was the guy who crushed cars.

“Go straight, and turn left at the mufflers,” he told us. “Best be careful. Ain't no rats don't got steroid issues around here. We're talking poodle-sized,
comprende
?”

“Rats don't bother me,” Gunnar said.

I, on the other hand, have no love of furry things with non-furry tails. As I rummaged through the appropriate junk pile, afraid to put my hand in any dark hole, I began to wonder if I'd be more like Gunnar or Skaterdud if I knew the time of my final dismissal. Would all of life's dark holes seem insignificant?

“You're right,” Gunnar said out of nowhere. He put down his catalog and reached deep into the pile of junk to dislodge a truck piston. “I'll go for the gunmetal-gray coffin. It's classier.”

Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather be scared of rat holes than not care.

As Gunnar went off in search of boxes we could carry the stuff in, Skaterdud called me aside and waited until Gunnar was too far away to hear.

“Something ain't wrong about that friend of yours,” said the Dud.

I was a little too tired to decipher dud-ese right now, so I just shrugged.

“No, you gotta listen to me, because I see things.”

That didn't surprise me entirely. “What kinds of things?”

“Just things. But it's more the things I
don't
see that's got my neck hairs going porcupine on me.” Then he looked off after Gunnar again, shaking his head. “Something ain't wrong about him at all—and if you ask me, he's got iceberg written all over him.”