Antsy Does Time (9 page)

I was feeling light-headed, and then realized I had said all that without breathing. I figured maybe I should have put my own oxygen mask on first before helping others, like you're supposed to.

Gunnar didn't say anything—he just stared at me like you might stare at a car wreck you pass on the side of the road. It was Kjersten who spoke.

“He wasn't at work,” she said, almost under her breath.

“More chicken?” Mrs. Ümlaut asked me.

“Yes, please, thank you.” But even as I tried to plug up my mouth up with food, I couldn't stop myself from talking. “My dad had one of his recipes stolen by a restaurant down the block and he says he should sue—maybe you can be his lawyer, or at least tell him if it makes sense to sue, because I hear it costs more money than it's worth, and then there are like fourteen thousand appeals and no one ever sees a penny—of course I could be wrong, you'd know better than me, right?”

He seemed neither amused nor irritated. I would have felt much more comfortable if he were one or the other. “I'm not that kind of lawyer,” he said flatly, between bites of food. Gunnar continued his car-wreck gaze, although I think by now it was a multicar pileup.

“Something to drink, Antsy?” Mrs. Ümlaut asked.

“Yes, please, thank you.” She poured me a tall glass of milk, and I quickly began to drink—not because I wanted it, but because I knew that unless I was a ventriloquist and could make words come out of somebody else's mouth, drinking would shut me up for a good twenty seconds, and maybe the urge to blather would go away like hiccups.

It worked. Once the glass was drained, my words were drowned. The rest of the meal was filled with an unnatural silence, in which no one made eye contact with anyone else, least of all with Mr. Ümlaut. I made it through the meal listening to clinking silverware, and the ticking of the clock, until Gunnar finally rapped me on the arm and said, “The dust bowl awaits.”

I had never been happier to get away from a dinner table, and it occurred to me that this was the first time in the Ümlaut home that it felt as if someone was dying.

It was dark now, with nothing but the back-porch bulb to light up the backyard. We sprayed until both drums of herbicide were empty. Gunnar had brought with him the silence of the dinner table. It drove me nuts, because, just like with his father, I had no idea what he was feeling or thinking—and although I swore to myself I wouldn't bring it up, I couldn't leave without asking Gunnar the big question.

“So what's the deal with your dad?”

Gunnar laughed at that. “The deal,” he said. “That's funny.” And that's all he said. He didn't tell me that it was none of my business, he didn't tell me to go take a flying leap. He just brushed it off like the question had never been asked.

He took a quick glance at the instructions on his herbicide canister. “Says here that the plants will all be dead in five days, and then it should be easy to pull them out.”

“We could sign over two extra days of life to the plants if you want to wait until next weekend,” I said, and laughed at my own joke.

“That's not funny.”

“Sorry.”

To be honest, I had no clue what I was and wasn't allowed to laugh at anymore.

The moment was far too uncomfortable, so I tried to salvage it. “Hey, by the way, I think there are still a few people at school willing to donate months, if you still want them.”

“Why wouldn't I want them?” he asked. “As Nathaniel Hawthorne said,
‘Scrounging for precious moments is the most primary human endeavor.
'”

He was always so matter-of-fact about it, you could almost forget what was happening to him. Like the end of his life was just an inconvenience.

“Does it ever . . . scare you?” I dared to ask him.

He took a while before he answered. “A lot of things scare me,” he said. Then he looked at his unfinished gravestone in the middle of the dying yard. “No doubt about it—I'm going to have to start over.”

 
 
Before I left, I stopped by Kjersten's room. She was sitting at her desk, doing homework. I suppose she was the type of student who would do homework on a Saturday. I knocked even though the door was open, because there's this instinct we're born with that says you don't walk into a girl's room uninvited, and even when you're invited, you don't walk in too far unless, of course, you're related to each other, or her parents aren't home.

“Hi,” I said. “Whatcha doin'?”

“Chemistry,” she said.

“Are you studying whether
we
got chemistry?”

She laughed. I have to say, this whole you're-attractive-when-you're-embarrassed thing was great. It was like a free license to say all the things I'd never actually have the guts to say to a girl, because the more embarrassed it made me to say it, the more it worked in my favor.

She turned her chair slightly toward me as I stepped in. Still riding on the fumes of my chemistry line, I thought I might actually dredge up the guts to sit on the edge of her bed . . . Then I realized if I did, I wouldn't be much for conversation, because the phrase
My God, I'm sitting on Kjersten's bed
would keep repeating over and over in my mind like one of Christina's Himalayan mantras, and I might start to levitate, which would probably freak Kjersten out.

So instead of sitting down, I kind of just stood there, looking around.

“Nice room,” I told her. And it was: it said a lot about her. There was a NeuroToxin concert poster on the wall, next to a piece of art that even I could recognize as Van Gogh. There was a mural on her sliding closet doors that she clearly had painted herself. Angels playing tennis. At least I think they were angels. They could have been seagulls—she wasn't that great of an artist.

“I like your mural,” I said.

She grinned slightly. “No you don't, but thanks for saying so.” Like I said, people can pick up my emotions like a pod-cast. “I like painting, but it's not what I'm good at,” she told me. “That's okay, though, because if I was good, then I'd always worry if I was good
enough
. This way I can enjoy doing it, and I never have to care about being judged.”

“In that case,” I said, “I really DO like your mural. I wish I had the guts to do things I stink at.”

She took a measured look at me. “Like what?” she asked.

Now I was put on the spot, because there were so many things to chose from. I thought of her on the debate team, and finally settled on, “I'm not very good speaking in front of an audience.”

“It just takes practice. I could teach you.”

“Sure, why not?” I was thrilled by the prospect of her coaching me in verbal expression, even though me being a public speaker was about as likely as angels playing tennis. Or seagulls. “I promise to give speeches even worse than you paint,” I told her.

She laughed, I laughed, and then the moment became awkward.

“So . . .” I said.

“So . . .” she said.

What happened next was kind of like jumping off the ten-meter platform at the Olympic pool they built when someone in public planning got high and actually believed the Summer Olympics might come to Brooklyn. A couple of years ago, I stood on that platform for five minutes that seemed like an hour, while my friends watched. In the end the only way I was able to jump was to imagine that I was a nonexistent ultracool version of myself. That way I could trick my self-preservation instinct into believing it wasn't actually me jumping.

Standing there in front of Kjersten, I dug down, found ultracool Antsy sipping on a latte somewhere in my head, and pulled him forth.

“So I was wondering if maybe you'd like go out sometime,” I heard myself say. “A movie, or dinner, or trip to Paris, that kinda thing.”

“Paris sounds nice,” Kjersten said. “Will we fly first class?”

“No way!” I told her. “It's by private jet, or nothing.” I was dazzling myself with my own unexpected wit, but then ultracool Antsy left for Starbucks, and I was alone to deal with the fallout of his cleverness.

“A movie would be nice,” she said.

“Great . . . uh . . . yeah . . . uh . . . right.” This is like the guy who lifts a five-hundred-pound barbell, then realizes he has no idea how to put it down without dying in the process. “A movie's a good choice,” I told her. “It's dark, so people you know won't see us together.”

“Why would that matter?”

“Well, you know—you being older and all.”

“Antsy,” she said, in a lecturing tone that really made her sound older, “that doesn't matter to me.”

“Well, good,” I said, enjoying the prospect of walking into the multiplex with Kjersten. “And anyway, a movie-theater date will give me lots of great opportunities to be embarrassed.”

“I certainly hope so,” she said, smirking. Which of course made me go red, which of course made her smirk even more.

This was all going so well! It would have been perfect, except for the fact that her father was weird, and her brother was dying. She must have read what I was thinking, because her smile faded and she looked away.

“I'm sorry about my father,” she said.

I shrugged, playing dumb. “He didn't do anything.”

“He came home,” she said. “These days, that's enough.”

Even though I was curious, I didn't want to ask what she meant, just in case she didn't want to tell. I looked at the mural, giving her time to gather her thoughts. Then she said, “He was a partner in a law firm, but a few months ago the firm fell apart. He hasn't worked since.”

“But he's gone all the time—what does he do all day, look for work?”

And Kjersten said, “We don't know.”

7
Recipes for Disaster from the Undisputed Master of Time, Live on Your TV Screen

After my Kjersten encounter, I walked home, nearly getting run over twice on the way, because my head was stuck in an alternate universe. Everything Ümlaut was one step removed from reality; the way they dealt with Gunnar's illness; the Mystery of the Disappearing Dad—even the fact that Kjersten was going to date me was weird, although it was the kind of weirdness I needed more of in my life.

My own father's arrival at home later that same night didn't raise the homeland security index, as it did in the Ümlaut household. That was mainly because everyone but me was already in bed.

“Hi, Antsy,” he said as he shuffled into the kitchen. “You're up late.”

“Just came down for a drink,” I told him, even though I'd been stalking around the house all night with thoughts of Kjersten and Gunnar clogging up my brain. We sat down at the table. He grabbed himself some leftovers from the fridge, and I ate a little, even though I wasn't hungry. I thought it was strange how he can be at a restaurant all night, then come home and have to eat leftovers.

“I heard your friend is real sick,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

That surprised me. “I didn't know you knew about it.”

“Your sister keeps me informed on things.”

I could tell he wanted to say something meaningful. Thoughtful. But whenever he opened his mouth, all that came out was a yawn, which made me yawn, and pretty soon whatever he wanted to say got KO'd by the sandman. We left the dirty dishes in the sink, too tired to put them in the dishwasher, and said our good nights.

It was like this more and more between us—more yawning, and less talking. For my father, the restaurant was like the crabgrass in Gunnar's backyard. It had taken over everything. Even on Monday, which was supposed to be his day off, he would do taxes, or go to the fish market to get a jump on the fancy Manhattan restaurants. I think I liked it better when he had a mindless corporate job. His work was miserable, but when he wasn't working, he did stuff. Now, instead of a job and a paycheck, he had a business and a “calling”—as if feeding Brooklyn was a holy mission.

As I went to bed that night, I thought about Mr. Ümlaut, and the weirdness that filled that house like a gas leak. If nothing else, I could be thankful that my own family weirdness was not lethal.

I got a call from Lexie on the way to school the next morning.

“I want to make sure you're free on Saturday the nineteenth,” she said.

“Let me check with my social secretary.” I glanced over at some fat guy sitting next to me on the bus. “Yeah, I'm free.” And then I realized with a little private glee that I might actually need to keep a social calendar now, if things worked out with Kjersten.

The nineteenth was the first day of Christmas vacation, when rich people went off to exotic places where they hate Americans. Sure enough, Lexie said, “My parents are flying me to the Seychelles, to spend the holidays with them,” and she added “again,” as if it would make me feel better to know she was legitimately embarrassed by her lap of luxury. “They haven't bothered to visit since the summer, so I have to go—but before I do, I've planned a special adventure for Grandpa.”

The phone signal kept going in and out—all I heard was something about a team of engineers and lots of steel cable.

“Sounds like fun,” I told her. Sure, I could do it. It's not like “vacation” was in my family's vocabulary since the restaurant opened. Then she got to the real reason for her call.

“Oh, and by the way, I'm having dinner at the restaurant with Raoul, and you're invited.”

By “the restaurant,” I knew she meant Crawley's, her grandfather's first restaurant. By “you're invited,” she could have meant a whole lot of things.