Going Vintage (10 page)

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Authors: Lindsey Leavitt

Tags: #Romance

BOOK: Going Vintage
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Which I guess was the point of my social experiment, but
what if … the end of the world happened, and the only way to access information on how to avoid the end of the world was posted on Friendspace. Surely then,
then
I would make an exception. Best to have the site there, just in case, so I don’t have to use precious end-of-the-world minutes creating a new account.
I still have to think
practically
.
“I’ll do it later,” I say vaguely. “But can you, like, do some damage control first?”
“Now wait a second—” Ginnie starts.
“Elephants!” I clap my hands together. A baby elephant squirts water into the air. Another elephant, Bertha, splashes in a waterfall alone.
“Insert cheesy joke,” Ginnie monotones. As if on cue, the “guide” says, “Bertha’s been hogging that shower for thirty years now! If you don’t believe me, just look at all those wrinkles.”
We fall quiet as we pass the apes, go under the waterfall, hear another awful joke. Ginnie pokes my side. “You distracted me with elephants. I was going to say, isn’t telling someone else to partake of the Internet Evil just the same as you using the evil yourself?”
“More elephants!” I point.
Mom leans across the French tourists in front of us, sticking her head in between the annoyed couple. “What’s evil? Jeremy? Are you two talking about Jeremy?” My mom has this uncanny ability to butt into any conversation with one easily misunderstood word. “What did he do that was evil?”
“Nothing!” I yell back, just at Ginnie offers, “He tooled out on Mallory.”
“‘Tooled out’?”
More cruise buddies are staring at us now. Ginnie goes on like we’re having a conversation about the weather in our kitchen. “Or tooled up. His ability to tool knows no bounds.”
“Is there a new meaning to the word
tool
I don’t know about?” Mom asks.
“Switch?” the tourists between us ask.
“Oh, thank you, yes! Come back here, Kevin.” She grabs Dad’s arm and there’s a scuffle as they maneuver to new seats. The tour guide stops his rehearsed commentary. “Sir, in the Donald Duck shirt, don’t fall overboard. Those hippos look hungry.”
Everyone has a good laugh, except us, because this guide is stupid and so is my mom for picking this precise moment to scour for details. Dad turns his attention back to the guide, but my mom huddles up to Ginnie and me, her eyes big and expectant. “What were you saying about Jeremy?”
“Look, Mom. Jeremy and I … just grew apart,” I say.
Ginnie snorts.
“So he didn’t dump you?” Mom asks.
I cross my arms over my chest. “Why would you assume Jeremy dumped me?”
“I didn’t,” Mom says a little too quickly. She adores Jeremy. She bought him a Baltimore Orioles baseball hat online. Yes, the Orioles, the most boring team in the major leagues. That should have been an indication he was a bad seed to begin with, right up there with the deep V.
“I just don’t see why you would break up with him.”
“But you could see why
he
would break up with
me
?” I ask.
Ginnie gives a low whistle.
Mom readjusts her Cinderella T-shirt. “No, of course not. I just know how much you like him and I want you to be happy. He’s a smart boy, ambitious and nice—”
“And he’s a tool,” Ginnie says.
I am
this
close to adding “and he cheated on me with a girl named BubbleYum.” But then I would have to give Mom the details, and I’ve been burned enough by her lust for news. Like when I told her about my first kiss with Cameron Steeples in seventh grade, and the next day I pick up the phone to hear her dissecting the kiss with Cameron’s mom. She thinks she has a right to know my everything just because she had a forty-hour natural labor with me. My life would be so much easier if she would have just taken that stupid epidural.
“Villagers,” I say.
We boat past a village of natives, blow darts sail past us, we narrowly escape, and Dad lets out a hearty chuckle at another lame tour-guide joke we’ve heard 49,023 times. He twists around. “So your boyfriend is a tool. Is that what I’m hearing?”
“Dad! The entire Amazon rain forest does not need to know the details of my love life.”
“Did you break up with him?” Dad asks.
“Thank you!” I say. “See, Mom? Did
I
break up with
him
.”
“Well, I have to make some sort of assumption when all you give me is,
you grew apart
. I’ve used that excuse before; I know how it is. You never tell me anything.”
“I wasn’t a fan of Jeremy,” Dad says. “Shifty eyes.”
Mom sticks one hand on her hip. Her shirt has dipped low again, and I catch the French guy giving her scoop neck a look-see. “Kevin, shifty eyes?”
Dad wiggles his eyebrows. “Doesn’t make eye contact. Cannot trust a kid who can’t manage eye contact.”
“He always made eye contact with me,” Mom says.
“Are you kidding me? That kid was always checking you out. Bet he would date you both.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous,” Mom says. He is, but not in the way she means. They’ve forgotten that we’re talking about my fresh breakup and moved onto some bizarre foreplay. Mom swats Dad on his thigh. He grabs her hand and pulls her close. Ginnie gives my hand a little pat and I squeeze back. Having Mom take Jeremy’s side is one thing, but having Dad joke about my breakup and move on the next second almost hurts more.
Grandma says my parents are the perfect example of what passion will do to a marriage, which sounds romantic enough, but it’s not meant to be a compliment. I don’t know if they’ve always been that way. It seems when I was a kid they fought less, but I also don’t remember the PDA being quite so public or affectionate. Then again, I could have just blocked it all out. There’s a little girl dressed up like Ariel staring as my parents nuzzle. Nuzzling is never right, but especially when you’re old and
especially
in a theme park.
We pass the final elephant and Ginnie mouths along with the tour guide. “Many of you think that’s water coming out of that little guy’s trunk. Don’t worry. It’s snot.” She yawns and closes her eyes. My parents finally unglue from each other as the boat ride ends.
“Splash Mountain?” I ask.
Dad grabs Mom’s hand and pulls her out of the boat. “You girls can. I want to walk around with your mom for a bit.” Walk around equals make out on a paddleboat like they’re sixteen-year-olds. I should know. Jeremy and I have “walked around” on every ride in this park.
Even Winnie the Pooh. I know. I’m not proud.
Mom kisses Dad on the cheek as we shuffle through the exit and into the main part of Adventureland. “I can’t stay much longer. I have too much work today.”
“You could do it tomorrow.” Dad swats at a fly. “Those Internet thieves aren’t going anywhere.”
My dad might love his job, but my mom hates hers. When we moved from Reno, she was really big on quitting part-time retail to “stay home with her girls.” This really meant girl, and that girl was Ginnie, who needed an escort to her endless soccer tournaments and camps. I am totally fine with this, by the way. I’m stifled enough by Mom’s love and attention; I don’t know how Ginnie deals with Mom knowing everything about her all the time.
But the full-time-mom stint didn’t last long. Dad isn’t very tech savvy, and what he made from selling houses and running his little booth at the antiques mall wasn’t paying the bills, so Mom took over the Internet sales. Even though she’s still (too) involved in our lives, she spends most of her time on the computer now—running the website, e-mailing, posting stuff on various online auction sites. Sales, especially international deals, have increased since Mom got it going, but it’s just not
her thing. She’s a different kind of bargain shopper, the one who scours sales, clips coupons, and relishes sticking it to the man/corporation/soccer moms who would dare spend full price.
“If I don’t work tonight, then I’ll have to do double tomorrow,” Mom says. “And we’re having a bad month. The last two storage units you bought were a flop.”
A family of thirty, all with GIBSON FAMILY REUNION shirts on, weave around us. Mom and Dad are frozen in front of the Tarzan’s Treehouse line. Ginnie nudges me with her shoulder and whispers, “Here we go.”
“I make most of our money on a quarter of the units,” Dad says. “And using the word
flop
suggests failure.”
Mom unzips her purse—she’s severely anti–fanny pack—and globs on some lip gloss. “I’m just saying, I devote as much time to this business as you do, but it’s starting to feel like too much of a gamble. Back when you were selling houses, we made twice the money and you worked half as much.”
“And I was miserable! And you know the housing market is stale right now.”
I don’t hear blame in Dad’s voice, but Mom jumps on the defensive. “Sometimes, Kevin, you have to do something you don’t like to make life work. All this junk shopping takes up so much time, and you could be—”
Dad’s face flushes. “Junk?”
“You guys want to go on It’s a Small World?” Ginnie asks. “Little repetitive music and clapping puppets is very calming.”
“Yes, Kevin.” Mom raises her chin. “Junk.”
I slump down on a nearby bench. Ginnie calls these fights left fielders, because we never see them coming. “Wake me up when they’re done.”
Ginnie tries again. “Maybe we should get a frozen banana.”
Dad leans over and with a voice soft but razored says, “It’s my job. Not junk.”
“It’s junk if we aren’t making any money.” Mom jabs her finger toward Tomorrowland. “If you’d do something more stable, we could pay off some of that credit-card debt you took on even though I
told you
the interest rate was sky high—”
“It was the only card we could qualify for because you spend all of our money on the bargain bin—”
Ginnie jumps up and waves her arm in front of my feuding parents. “Hey! Hello! Your daughter is okay.”
Mom blinks. Dad rubs the back of his neck.
“Remember?” Ginnie says. “That’s why we came here? To give
Mallory
a little post-breakup sunshine?”
Oh, right. Mallory.
Mom covers her forehead like she has a headache. “Of course. I’m sorry, Mallory. Your father and I are here for you anytime, whatever you need.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” The edge is out of Dad’s voice now. “For real?”
“No.” I look back and forth between my parents. Dad’s face is flushed; Mom’s is white. Money is the
worst
topic for them. Which is too bad, because money is something they think of every day, especially when we don’t have it. Especially when we
used
to have it, and the stupid economy barreled right into
our living room and shoved us out of town. “Don’t worry about me.”
Ginnie grabs my arm. “Mallory is going to do a little, um, activity to help her, you know, stay fine after the breakup. And I’m going to help.”
“What?” I ask.
“Yeah, we’re just getting to our roots. Details to follow.” Ginnie pulls me toward Frontierland. “You guys are great parents for caring. You should go celebrate your parenting skills with a paddleboat ride! Or one of those ten-foot corn dogs. Or … Peter Pan. That’s romantic. Be together. Be happy.
Don’t talk
.”
Mom gives Dad one of those looks that is a conversation in and of itself. I’d guess this one says,
Oh, we’re fighting in the middle of Disneyland in front of our daughters, one of whom is emotionally fragile. Let’s call a truce to save face
. “I guess I can wait another hour if you two want to go on some rides together.”
“Yeah.” Dad kisses the top of Ginnie’s head. “Meet us at the carousel at eight.”
“Wait.” Mom digs her camera out of her purse. “For posterity.”
Ginnie and I automatically wrap our arms around each other and smile. Only my photo-freak mom would take a picture at a moment like this.
“Bye! Love you! Have lots of fun!” Ginnie calls.
She yanks me into a Moroccan-themed gift shop and cranes her neck out the window, watching Mom and Dad. If there is one ounce of parental tension, Ginnie bursts in with all this
sunshine before running away, like that fixes anything. Besides, Mom and Dad were just arguing about money. What couple doesn’t argue about money?
Our parents stay in the same spot, and although their body language isn’t friendly, at least they’re not scaring the little children. They finally leave, Mom a few steps in front of Dad. I pick up a plastic genie bottle and peer inside. They’ll be happy again in five minutes. It’s how they are.
Ginnie shakes her head and storms out of the store. So, I guess I’m supposed to follow, then. Pity. I wanted to bum some money so I could buy the genie bottle. Ginnie saves all her money; she’s always rolling in cash. And three wishes could do a lot to Jeremy. Actually, do they sell voodoo dolls in New Orleans Square?

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