Everybody Sees the Ants (27 page)

Dad
picks us up and drives us away from the Philadelphia airport. He and Mom make small talk while I stare out the window. It’s so humid here, I’m chilly. I have goosebumps.

About ten minutes after we start driving, Mom says, “So did you do it?”

Dad keeps his eyes on the road. “Do what?”

“The thing you said you’d do?”

“I don’t recall saying I’d do anything.”

Mom stares at the side of his head. The ants hand her an auger so she can drill right into his skull. It takes a hundred of them to carry it over the seat back.

“Did you talk to the McMillans?” she says.

“No.”

Mom’s face puckers into a cinched bag of disappointment.

“What could I say to them?” he says. “I mean, obviously the kid learns it somewhere.”

“That’s not my point.”

“So what
is
your point?” he asks.

“You were supposed to do something.”

Mom sighs and looks out the window as suburban Philadelphia sleeper towns race by. She doesn’t say another word. I sit in the backseat and watch Dad as he drives. The ants say:
You are not a turtle, Lucky Linderman
.

Dad parks in the driveway and says, “Welcome home!” Like a tour guide. As if we were just passengers riding on his shell.

I get the suitcase out of the trunk, and I deposit it in the laundry room and go to my room. After I lie there for a while, I realize that Dad isn’t ever going to do anything but be there to drive us home from the airport. And cook. And if I want something bigger to change, it’s up to me. I’m scared shitless, yes. I’m doubtful, yes. But I’m angry. Angry that I am doing this because Dad can’t. But then I sniff breakfast, and I know that Dad is doing what he can.

Once he’s placed plates of steaming-hot pancakes in front of us, he arrives at the table. He looks at each of us for a long minute and smiles.

I want to tell him about Ginny and kissing and how I can bench-press sixty pounds. I want to tell him about how Arizona changed my life, but instead, because these are the best
pancakes I’ve ever eaten, I say, “How did you make these pancakes taste so good?”

“Chef’s secret,” he says, and then tells me that the secret is lemon zest.

Mom says, “Did you know Lucky is a great cook?”

Dad raises his eyebrows.

“He even taught Jodi a few things.”

Dad laughs. “Your aunt Jodi is a lost cause.”

I sit up proudly. “I got her to eat brie.”

Dad smiles at me. I suddenly feel so stupid for giving up eating when I was thirteen. The ants say:
Forget about it. We’re all larvae once
.

He says, “Well, if you could teach Jodi about cooking, you must have magical powers.”

“I think he does,” Mom says, and winks at him.

“So, what’d you think of Dave?” Dad asks.

“He’s cool,” I say. “He taught me how to lift weights, which was really good. But he works too much.” Do they notice my smirk when I say this?

“True,” Mom says.

“And Aunt Jodi is nice, but she’s nuts. I mean that in a nice way. But she’s nuts.”

“No doubt,” Dad answers. Mom nods.

“Lucky met some nice friends out there, didn’t you?” Mom says.

“It was good.”

“Glad to hear that,” Dad says. “Good to see you smiling.”

Good to see me smiling? Can this conversation be more weird? I want to give Dad a chance, but if the changes that are about to happen in our family are going to be credited to my smiling, I will be irked. So I decide now is the time to say something.

“I’d really like to get some weights. I like working out.” I say. They don’t look up from their plates or say anything. I add, “It makes me feel better about being a Linderman.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Dad asks. He stops eating his pancakes and glares at me.

“It means I’m tired of being me.”

They stare at me.

“It means I’m taking control of my life,” I say.

They stare at me and then look at each other.

“I think I know where I can get a weight set,” Dad says. “I think a guy at work is selling one.”

Mom’s eyes are glassy. “That would be great, Vic.”

Dad leans toward me and frowns with his eyebrows. “And there’s nothing wrong with being a Linderman,” he says. “We should be proud to be Lindermans.”

I want to point out that he said “we” and not “you.” I reach up and touch my Massachusetts scab, and I can’t help but rub it a little. For all my talking, I’m still nervous. For all my lifting, I’m still weak. Right now, Dad is the least of my worries.

When I check in the mirror after breakfast, I see the scab has separated into a bunch of little scabs. It’s Hawaii. The final scab on my cheekbone is Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s tallest mountain. Kauai is about to flake off any minute now. Maui after that. I predict that by tomorrow all physical traces of Nader
will be gone. Then it’s up to me to erase the brain traces—my mental scab.

I am in a pit thirty feet deep, alone. I’m in tattered black pajamas. I have sores on my feet. I’m missing my right arm and most of my teeth. I have a beard.

Someone calls, “Lucky?” over and over again from the top of the pit, but I can’t see anyone.

“Meet me in the tree, son. Remember?”

I sit in the mud and meditate. Breathe in. Breathe out. I see myself in the tree with Granddad Harry. But when I open my eyes, I’m still in the pit by myself.

“Try again!” he says.

I try again. Open eyes. Still in pit.

And again. And again. It begins to rain. Bananas.

“Try again, Luck! Come on!”

The pit fills with bananas. They are Chiquita bananas—store-bought. They have stickers on them with clever sayings. Instead of meditating, I take some of the stickers and stick them to my sore skin. I do this until I realize I will soon drown in bananas if I don’t get out of here. I try to climb on top of them. They mush under my weight, and make me sticky. Insects arrive.

I read the stickers.
PLACE STICKER ON FOREHEAD. SMILE
.

I have no problem placing the stickers on my forehead. But I cannot smile.

“Try again, Lucky! Don’t give up! Get to the tree!”

I meditate, I breathe, I visualize, I
become
the fucking tree, but I can’t get my ass out of the hole. I’m up to my neck in bananas.

“Smile, son! That’s the ticket out!” I look up and see an outline of him—hazy and backlit. So far away.

My face is paralyzed. I can’t smile. It’s like all those times Mom told me that if I crossed my eyes too much, they’d get stuck that way. It’s happened to my mouth. Operation Don’t Smile Ever has rendered me frowning. Forever.

“Jesus, son! Hurry up!”

I keep trying, but my face won’t obey. I think of cute things—puppies and kittens and babies—and happy things, like Ginny kissing me, and Granny Janice hugging me, and my ability to bench-press sixty pounds. I think about bad things that would make me happy—Nader in pain, Nader turning on Danny, Nader in jail. No smiles.

I have mere seconds left. I’m going to die by suffocation. Everything is black. My breathing is barely there. I hear muffled calls, but I block them out. I’m okay with dying in a pit of Chiquita bananas. I’m okay with everything right now. I’m at peace. Real peace.

Then I smile—unintentionally.

I’m in the tree with Granddad Harry. We’re twins. We’re both missing the same arm, have sores on the same feet; we stroke our beards the same way.

“Have you thought about my question?” he asks.

“Which one?”

“The one about why you come here. The time I asked you if you really thought you could take me back with you?”

I nod.

“You know you can’t, right?” he says.

“Look. I have
reason
to be here. I was sent. It’s
important
,” I say.

He strokes his beard. I stroke my beard. We’re like mirror mimes. Except my face is still covered in banana stickers. Except he’s really him and I’m not really anyone.

“You’re not coming
here
,” he says. “You’re escaping
there
. Big difference.”

•   •   •

When I wake up, it’s the middle of the night, and I lie in bed for a minute. My forehead feels odd, so I reach up and touch it and find it’s layered in Chiquita banana stickers that say
PLACE STICKER ON FOREHEAD. SMILE
. I spend several minutes removing them. When I get to the final layer, I have to rip them off fast—like Band-Aids. I save one and stick it to the inside of my secret Harry box under my bed.

I look at the box—a lifetime of secrets—and I know the change I’m about to make is a lot more than lifting weights and smiling and all the surface bullshit. It’s about something bigger, but I just don’t know what yet.

It
was my last monthly meeting with the guidance department. I was sitting in one of the itchy tweed chairs in the waiting area. About two minutes after I got there, Charlotte Dent came in, pulled two college catalogs from the bookshelf and sat at the big table. She’d been crying, made obvious by the watery mascara under her eyes. The guidance secretary wasn’t there, and we were on our own, but I didn’t have the guts to talk to her.

She looked up and stared at me, and I looked at my shoes. Then she pushed the catalogs out of the way and put her head in her arms, as if she was napping. But I heard sniffling.

“Are you okay?” I finally asked.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t look it.”

She looked up from her arms and put on a huge goofy smile. “How about now?”

“Nope.”

I moved over to the table and sat across from her.

“I want to make sure you’re okay,” I said.

“Why? You believe the stupid rumors?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“Because Nader McMillan used to bully me before he started bullying you,” I say. “And your questionnaires are making me worry.”

“My what?”

“You know—the questionnaires?”

She shrugged and made a face like she was genuinely clueless.

“In my locker?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, and then the guidance counselor called my name from her office door, and that was the end of it. All I could think about during the meeting was who? Who put them into my locker if Charlotte hadn’t? I know I saw Charlotte putting the paper into my locker back in February, but maybe I was being deceived. Maybe Nader or Danny had a pink pen and knew how to do curlicue handwriting. Maybe I was just an idiot—again.

That day I got a new questionnaire in my locker. It was in pink ink, with the same curlicue writing.
If you were going to commit suicide, what method would you choose?
It read:
I’m okay. Thanks for asking
.