How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets (25 page)

E
VAN READS THE Sunday
New York Times,
which, like so many other things, simply gets delivered to Tracy’s house without request. Once you’re in the computers, there’s nothing that will stop them. Kind of an unpleasant reminder that when you die, the world will continue its ceaseless expansion into the dark emptiness that surrounds our universe.

Dean skulks into the kitchen in baggy shorts and a baggy T-shirt. Evan can’t tell if this outfit is Dean’s pajamas or the latest in gentrified hip-hop propaganda. He pours himself a cup of coffee.

“Are you allowed to drink that?” Evan asks.

“Allowed by whom? By you?” Dean retorts.

Dean takes a carton of vanilla ice cream out of the freezer and spoons a big blob into his cup. He returns the carton to the freezer and stirs the coffee.

“By your mom. Did she let you drink coffee?”

Dean sips his concoction. “Yes, ” he says. “But she’s dead, so I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

Dean takes a box of Cheerios from the cabinet and reaches for a bowl. He prepares his cereal deliberately, using orange juice instead of milk because there is no milk. He sits at the kitchen table, reaches for the sports section, and eats almost resentfully, shoveling Cheerios into his mouth silently, spoonful after spoonful, like a Cheerio-eating machine, orange juice spilling sloppily out of his mouth and back into the bowl, all the while reading, or pretending to read, the news of the latest Mariners triumph or debacle, the end of one losing streak or the beginning of a new one; it’s always one or the other.

“Hey, ” Mica chirps, bursting into the room. She’s wearing Evan’s pajama bottoms and a microscopic tank top that exposes most of her midriff and her ribs.“How are my two favorite boys?”

“Morning, ” Evan says cheerfully.

Dean says nothing. He just stares in awe at Mica, the hot babe in the breakfast nook.

“What are we doing today?” Mica asks.

Evan shrugs.

“You’re not wearing a bra, are you?” Dean asks from out of nowhere.

Mica is momentarily surprised, but she recovers quickly.

“No, I’m not, ” she says.“Why?”

“Because I can see your nipples.”

“Hey!” Evan snaps.“That’s enough!”

“She’s showing them, not me, ” Dean says in his defense.“What, am I supposed to do, lie and pretend I don’t see them?”

“That’s rude and out of line. You apologize to her—”

“Evan, ”Mica breaks in.

“Apologize. Now.”

“Or what?” Dean challenges.“You gonna hit me?”

He leaves out the word “again, ” but Evan hears it.

“No, Dean, ”Mica says.“He’s not going to hit you. It’s my fault. I’ll go change.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t
like
it, ” Dean mutters.

“Hey!”

“Evan, ”Mica chastises.“Stop with the ‘heys.’Hay is for horses.”

“A nicely phrased aphorism by the pretty lady with the nipples, ” Dean smirks.

Evan clenches his fists. He has no idea how to handle an asshole kid who’s provoking him. He wants to hit. Another quick smack to let him know who’s boss. So tempting.

“What are you gonna do?” Dean taunts. “You gonna ground me? Tell me I can’t leave the house? Go ahead. Ground me.”

Evan is almost blind with frustration. It starts in his chest and throbs its way up to his temples. He can’t ground Dean. He has no authority. If he were to ground Dean, Dean would just laugh at him.

“You’re not grounded, Dean, ” Mica jumps in. “Evan, he’s not grounded, is he?”

Evan looks to Mica. “I guess not.”

“Now listen, ”Mica says to Dean.“I want you at the front door with a swimming suit and a towel and a bottle of sun block in a half an hour, okay? We’re going on an outing.”

She turns to Evan.

“You. I need to speak to you. Come with me while I change into something less revealing.”

“MY BEING HERE is a direct challenge to Dean, ”Mica says, peeling off her tank top and dropping her pants, suddenly so naked in the bedroom. “I’m a challenge to his mother and to his relationship with you and to almost everything. I mean, I’m sleeping in his mother’s bed. That has to have a lot of significance to him. He imagines that you’re having sex with me in this bed. That must conjure up some resentment. And, also, if you go along with the Freudian thinking that every fourteen-year-old wants to sleep with his mother, and I’m standing in for his mother, then he
really
wants to sleep with me because he can pretend he’s sleeping with his mother when he really isn’t—I’m an obtainable stand-in for his mother. Do you understand?”

Evan nods.

“You’re completely naked, ” he says.

“Yes. Does that distract you?”

“Yes, it does.”

“You can imagine how my nipples might distract Dean, then.”

“I can.”

“
Plus
, ” Mica goes on, “his verbal assault on me is really an assault on
you.
Understand? He was challenging you to hit him or ground him. He’s becoming a man. He’s struggling for control of the herd, in this case, me. I mean, if I had thought about it for a second before I came out, I would have put on a big robe or something. Sometimes I take my sexuality lightly. I don’t spend a lot of time around teenagers. I usually spend time with drugged-out rock stars who couldn’t get it up if I sucked on their dicks for a half hour because they’re on so much black tar heroin. It didn’t occur to me that my nipples might give Dean a hard-on that he’ll have for the next two years.”

She stops, one hand on her hip, the other, palm up in a plea for understanding, completely naked, and completely unfazed by it.

“You’re giving
me
a hard-on
I’ll
have for the next two years, ” Evan says.

“I’m happy to know I’m stronger than your medication. We can deal with your hard-on later. Right now I have to get into the shower. We’re going to the water park.”

She turns and goes into the bathroom. Evan follows.

“There’s a water park around here?” he asks.

“I read about it in my handy guide to Yakima Valley, ” she answers, turning on the shower.

“You have a guide to Yakima?”

“I got it last night at the mall, along with a very pretty book about gardening that I gave to you but you don’t care about.”

She steps into the tub.

“I’d invite you in, but I told Dean we were leaving in a half hour and that doesn’t give me enough time to wash myself
and
you. You’ll have to do that on your own.”

She closes the shower curtain with a snap, and there Evan stands, once again awestruck by Mica, concerned that she can see what’s going on so much better than he; convinced, further, that he is not meant to be any child’s father.

IT’S A SMOKIN’ HOT Sunday morning. Ninety-two degrees, not a cloud in the sky. Perfect for watersliding. The park is crowded, teeming with kids and adults, each flying down one of the seventeen extended slides and plunging into one of the six vast pools of overheated, overchlorinated water.

It takes Dean one twisty slide and dunking to come out of his funk, and that goes for Evan, too. Within minutes, they are laughing and having a ball together. Just like the old days.

In the morning they play. In the early afternoon, they eat lunch from a snack bar. Evan breaks his diet: chili dogs and root beer. Then Dean asks permission to hit the slides again. Again, his unbridled enthusiasm and joy for life having been unleashed by Mica.

“Too soon after you ate, ” Mica says. “You shouldn’t swim for thirty minutes.”

“I won’t swim. I’ll go down the slides and get right out.”

Mica smiles at him.

“Okay. But no swimming. And if you vomit in the pool, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Dean grins at Mica without restraint and then bounds off for the slides. And all of this—all this manic behavior—bothers Evan. The joy that Dean is experiencing bothers Evan. The fun that Mica is having bothers Evan. The fact that Mica looks at Dean with such pride and love bothers Evan. Because in Evan’s mind, the break has already been made. It’s one-thirty. In two-and-a-half hours, Ellen is coming to take Dean away, and for some reason, Evan can’t get past the fact that this is a permanent change.

He knows, of course, that if he confided in Mica, she would fix it. She would fix everything. And he half-suspects that Dean knows the same thing. In that sense, Evan and Dean are co-conspirators. They both know that if either of them told Mica about the imminent transaction, she would smite the very core of the idea to powder, whip both of them into shape, have everyone hugging and in tears, and, when Ellen showed up to claim her prize, Mica would plant a tornado kick on her temple that would drop her like a dead halibut on a dock. It’s all over but the gutting, as they say.

But they are mute. They, both Evan and Dean, knowingly let the day slip through their fingers without alerting Mica of what is to be. A silver Honda rolling up Nob Hill. Dean climbing in, closing the door after himself, leaving Yakima.

“I love kids, ” she says as Dean bounds up the steps to the top of a slide.

Evan shakes himself awake. He’s been drifting.

“I said, ‘I love kids’, ”Mica says again, leaning in to Evan.“Don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“Sure, ” Mica repeats.“Sure. I hate men.
Sure
. Men say ‘sure’ like it means something. Sure.”

Evan stops, puzzled.

“I’m sorry?”

“Oh, nothing, ”Mica sips at her water.

Evan nods. Men are also willing to take “nothing, ” and “never mind, ” at face value.

He sees Dean in the distance, reaching the top of the slide, waiting in line. Then it’s his turn and he goes, his body hurtling down the ramp at high speed, turning over and over, down and down and down, shooting into the pool at the bottom, squirting underneath the water, and then his little brown head popping to the surface; he climbs out and heads for the top again.

“Are you at all interested in having another kid?”

“I don’t know, ” Evan answers cautiously.“Why?”

“You didn’t raise Dean, ”Mica says.“Are you at all interested in raising a child from birth?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Just asking, ”Mica shrugs.

Evan catches sight of Dean again. Barreling down the slide, this time feet first, spinning over and over and flying out into the pool.

“I need two things, ” Mica says. A new approach. “I need love, and I need a family.”

Evan nods and turns to Mica.

“Sure, ” he says.

Mica frowns at him.“You’re not listening to me at all, are you?”

“Sure, I am.”

“No. You’re in a whole different world, ” Mica says regretfully. “Where are you, anyway? What are you thinking?”

What is he thinking? He’s thinking about how easy things have become since Mica returned. How it’s like being a kid again. Mom announces where we’re going: to the water slides. And we go. The logistics of it, the where and how, are details for an adult to worry about. Not for a child who just lets things flow, whose primary job is to have a good time wherever he is.

“. . . I’m not trying to freak you out, ”Mica says, always the perceptive one.“We only just started, I know that. But I thought that you’re not the kind of guy who would get freaked out by this. You’re not, are you?”

Evan shrugs, suddenly panicked. Shit, he really was far away that time. He has no idea what Mica was talking about. How long has she been talking? What did she say? It’s the heat. The damn heat.

“I need some water, ” Evan says tightly. Mica offers what she’s holding, a liter of something bottled.

“I freaked you out, didn’t I?”

“No, no. How hot is it?”

“It’s supposed to be in the mid-nineties today.”

Mid-nineties. That’s raisin-making temperature.
Dis heer’s seiz-sure
weathir. Beck home, we us’ta git heet lik dis, ‘n’ dem epolepticks us’ta
git dem fits so mich, ya coodn’t hardlie tek a step wit’out squashin one a
dem boodies, squigglin roun onna groun lik a skinn’d snek.

Evan looks for Dean. He desperately wants to see Dean on one of the slides, standing on line, or in the water, or somewhere in between. But he can’t find him anywhere. The heads of a million children and adults bob around like wet rats. Human cannon ball after human cannon ball, bursting out of a tube and skittering across the water. God only knows why there aren’t more broken necks at a place like this. They must carry a billion dollars in liability, that’s for sure.

“I’m old, ”Mica says.

Evan swings his head around. Mica reaches for the water.

“How old do you think I am?” she asks.

“Twenty-six, ” Evan offers. Mica scoffs.

“Try thirty-eight, ” she says.

Thirty-eight? Jesus. Those carrot sticks and sit-ups really work.

“Listen, ”Mica says. “Can you hear it? Tick-tick-tick. That’s my biological clock.”

She takes Evan’s hand and holds it to her breast.

“Feel, ” she says.

He can feel her heartbeat. Or is it his own? He doesn’t know. But he definitely feels blood pounding through his ears. He feels tight. Suddenly overheated. Suddenly confused. Please, please, please. Please let this not be a seizure. He hasn’t called Dr. Melon. He’s been driving. He’s been doing all the wrong things. Please, God. Please.

“I don’t want to put pressure on you, Evan. I know how guys are. As soon as you mention something like this, they take off. But you’re different. You aren’t afraid of me. And I’m not talking right away, anyway. Just soon. At some point soon. We can have fun now. Tons of fun. Trust me, I’m full of fun. But soon. I have to know if there’s a possibility, at least, because I’m getting old.”

Evan takes his hand away from Mica’s chest. He looks at her with glassy eyes.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

She puts the back of her hand to his forehead.

“You’ve been in the sun too long, ” she declares.“You should go inside.”

Evan nods in agreement.

“You go to the lockers and take a warm shower, okay? Don’t take a cold one, it could shock your system.”

Right. We definitely don’t want to shock the system right now. Right now we want to calm the system.

“I’ll find Dean, ”she says.“When you’re done, go into the entry area where we bought the tickets. It’s air-conditioned in there. Okay?”