The Art of Adapting (7 page)

“Mom!” Byron yelled. “Phone!” It drove her kids crazy that Lana didn't keep better track of her phone. They lived on theirs, but nobody really called Lana, aside from her sister Becca. The only people who ever sent texts from Lana's phone were her kids, to keep under the texting limit Graham had set for them. She met Byron on the stairs, holding her phone out to her.

“You missed the call.”

“Of course I did. I always do.” She smiled.

“Who's Nick Parker?” Byron asked.

Lana opened her mouth and closed it again, wondering if he'd overheard her talking to Graham. It took her a moment to realize the missed call had been from Nick Parker. The perfect, chiseled dreamboat of her past popping up in her present to pull her out of her own wallowing. Twice.

“An old friend,” she said. An old friend who didn't have her number. She smiled and hit the call-back button as Byron headed for the kitchen, back to Hemingway.

“Are you a stalker?” she asked when Nick answered. “How'd you get my number?”

“I'm a cop,” he said, laughing. “You never called for that coffee, so I thought I'd remind you. No pressure. If you aren't interested . . .”

“How's Friday?”

Matt preferred forty-five-degree angles for most things. Ninety was too sharp. Thirty was too shallow. But forty-five felt just right. Each item just far enough apart to make it easy to grasp without knocking anything else over. Matt hated his clumsy nature, but it was what it was, so he just tried not to crowd things together, and never put anything at the edge of a table. Spacing was important. Spacing was soothing. Spacing was forgiving when Matt's body didn't cooperate with his brain.

Matt arranged his food the same way, separate bowls and plates and utensils a few inches apart, spokes extending out from the wheel of his dinner plate at forty-five-degree angles. He admired the arrangement of objects the way he took in the beautiful alignment of a constellation. Not that constellations were aligned, not carefully placed or symmetric like he liked his food. In fact, it was the asymmetric nature that drew him to stars. So much chaos and chance, scattered all around. But then held in place for eternity. It was infinitely distracting and inexplicably soothing.

But the food, that had to be at forty-five degrees. He started with the dinner plate, and set the blue cup and green bowl of carrots at the proper angles. He liked his blue cup best because it was the hardest to tip over, and he preferred a particular spoon
and fork that felt most secure in his hand. He liked the carrots in a small green bowl just for carrots, and the corn on a very small salad plate with slightly raised edges. Lana was just finishing making dinner, and he didn't have his napkin or silverware yet, and the special corn plate was missing, replaced by an extra salad bowl. He didn't want to make a fuss, but he wanted the plate instead of another bowl. He tried to like having the bowl for a change. As he arranged them one by one, the overall effect of the dinner plate, carrot bowl, and corn bowl was very Mickey Mouse. Head and ears. He smiled and looked up, at no one in particular.

“Mickey Mouse,” he said. Abby sat across from him and Byron was to Matt's left. They were inches from the Mickey Mouse design, but instead of looking at his arrangement, they turned toward each other. They were always doing that, pulling in toward one another like magnets, instead of seeing what was all around them. He pointed toward the plate and two bowls, but just then his extra salad bowl was lifted away.

“Sorry, Matt,” Lana said, replacing the bowl with the corn plate. “I forgot.”

Mickey Mouse vanished, and the angles were thrown out of sync. He fixed it just as the napkin and silverware arrived, but they were the wrong fork and spoon. They were the narrow-handled smooth ones that he had a harder time holding on to. He needed the ones with the wide, flat handles, and the pretty flower design around the edges, for extra grip.

“Oh,” Matt said, holding up the fork. “I can't. Not these. I need the other ones. The ones with the scalloping around the edges.”

“Right, sorry,” Lana said. She sighed, frustrated, and the feeling filled Matt's chest as she took the fork and spoon and came back with the right ones. He wanted to keep things simple, to just have everything the same every day, but somehow that ended up making them harder. He didn't understand why.

Lana waited while the kids served themselves. Byron filled his plate in a messy heap, everything touching everything else, exactly the opposite of how Matt liked his food. Abby took a small scoop
of corn, some salad, and a few slivers of halibut. Lana asked Abby if she wouldn't like more food, and Abby said no, as always. Matt wondered why Abby came to dinner at all, since she rarely ate anything. Then Lana started eating, too fast to taste her food. Lana was sad again, or maybe mad, Matt wasn't sure which, but her happiness was gone and her unhappy feelings filled Matt's whole body until he could barely move. Then Abby asked for more water, and Byron told her to get it herself, and the tension in the room and in Matt's body just got worse.

Dinners, which had always been a quiet time for Matt, were quiet no more. The kids talked at the same time, tonight about swimming and driving and movies and money, and they got louder and louder, talking over one another until the noise hurt Matt's ears and muscles and bones. He covered his ears to make it stop. It was better with his hands dampening the noise except that he couldn't eat with his hands over his ears and he was hungry.

He decided to try again, but when he removed his hands the talking was even louder, now about driver's training and an expensive soccer camp and getting jobs and swim team fees, and there was a scraping sound, the horrible screech of metal against ceramic as Byron separated bites of fish with the side of his fork. Matt raised his hands to his ears again.

An unexpected prod to Matt's shoulder, not rough but a harsh jolt of unanticipated contact, nearly knocked him to the floor. It was Lana, smiling, holding an empty TV tray, nudging him with it. She gestured for him to put his food on it, but he still had no free hands, just the ones on his ears, which were busy keeping the noise out. She set the tray down, mouthed something he couldn't hear, and loaded up the tray for him. She pointed from the tray down the hall toward his room, as if he had suddenly sprouted an extra set of arms and could now carry the tray of food away from the noise while covering his ears to block out the noise. Matt stared at it, wondering how it had all gotten so complicated so fast. He just wanted dinner. The weird ground-turkey meatloaf he didn't care for, not on Mondays, but he refused to eat the halibut the rest of the family was eating, because Matt didn't eat fish. So he got
leftovers of other food he also didn't care for. But he also got corn, which he loved. And it was getting cold.

The tray rose before him and Lana led the way. Matt followed her out of the kitchen, into his room, where she set the tray down beside the bed. He would have to rearrange the food. Everything was in the wrong place again. Lana closed the door, shutting herself in the room as well. Matt removed his hands, grateful for the quiet. Well, it was considerably quieter, but he could still hear them: the higher pitch of Abby's voice carrying above the lower tone of Byron's. Byron's voice was changing, getting deeper, getting easier to mute with doors and hands, it was more of a vibration than a sound these days. But Abby's shrill pitch just couldn't be stopped.

“Sorry. They're a little excited tonight,” Lana said.

Matt nodded. Excited. Not the correct word.
Agitated
was closer.
Argumentative
.

“They're mad at you,” he said. Lana flinched, as if he had said something hurtful, and he wondered if he had. Wasn't it true? Wasn't it obvious? “Because you and Graham aren't together anymore. And they think they could have all of these things if he was still here. You have less money without him. He makes a lot more money than you do. You aren't a CPA like him. So they're mad at you.”

“I heard you,” Lana said, hands on her hips. Her hips were bigger. Not much, but enough that her jeans had little horizontal wrinkles running between her hips. The jeans were straining to contain her. Her hands were holding her tight now, too. Even tighter than the jeans. Little wrinkles formed in the backs of Lana's hands as she gripped her wider hips. The gripping meant stress, strain, unhappiness, this much Matt knew. He could feel Lana's unhappiness seeping into his body, settling into his sternum, expanding within his chest. It made it hard to breathe.

“And now you're mad?” he asked. “You're mad at me about wanting a different fork?”

“No,” she said. “I'm not mad.” She rubbed her forehead. Massaged the pressure points just above her eyebrows. Matt wondered
if acupuncture would help her. He wouldn't do it, let someone put needles in his body, needles that might have anyone's germs on them, but Lana was a schoolteacher and was around germs all day long, so she probably wouldn't mind.

“You could get acupuncture,” he said, pointing toward his forehead, and suddenly Lana was laughing.

“I'm not upset because you like a certain fork, okay? I want you to feel comfortable here. It's just . . . everything piling on all at once. Sometimes it's too much for me. I don't have all of the solutions that everyone expects me to have.”

“Solutions? I think you mean money.” Matt finished arranging his food and watched Lana's earrings sway as she spoke.

“True. Teenagers have expensive tastes and hobbies and sports and I don't have the means right now. Maybe after I get a better job.”

“You have a job. You said you like your job.”

“I love my job. But it doesn't pay enough.”

Matt eyed the corn. It was definitely cold now. He touched it with his fingertip. It was cold and not buttered. He pulled out his wallet and looked inside. There were several bills, various denominations. He removed them all and held them out.

“Here. And can I have warm corn? With butter?”

“Matt, I'm not taking all of your money, and yes, you can have warm corn with butter.”

She leaned over for the corn, her jeans pulling even tighter, and Matt set the money on the tray.

“I don't really need that money. My friend Bill pays me to do programming for him. He just sends me money every week. I don't even mind the work. It's fun for me. I do it at night when I can't sleep and it helps my mind calm down. And the money keeps coming, but I don't really need it for anything. Maybe you can use some of this money for acupuncture.” Matt pointed to his forehead, but he didn't mean for him, so then he pointed to Lana's forehead. “And to get more jeans. You've gained weight and those are too small for you now.”

Lana looked up, hands back on her hips, wrinkles back in her
hands. Matt tugged at one of the belt loops of his jeans, which were nice and worn from many washes, and showed her how they should fit.

“I wear Levi's. They fit perfectly.”

“Yes, they do,” Lana said, leaving with both the corn and the money.

Matt sat on his bed, watching the back side of his closed door, waiting for her to return. He needed something on the door. A poster or calendar or something to look at while he waited. He rearranged the meatloaf plate, carrot bowl, and blue milk cup, but it didn't feel right. He needed the small salad plate with the corn before any of it would work.

The noise from the kitchen grew louder, then there were footsteps, too many of them and too loud, getting louder. He covered his ears again just as his door opened and Abby and Byron, very excited now, proper use of the word, jumped up and down in his doorway yelling something he couldn't understand with his hands over his ears. Wouldn't even have understood without his hands over his ears, he was pretty sure.

They were wild and hopping, like rabid kangaroos. Only not Australian kangaroos, since there was no rabies in Australia. Kangaroos were marsupials. Opossums were also marsupials, and opossums were rabies-resistant. So perhaps kangaroos were rabies-resistant as well, even the ones not in Australia. Matt eyed his computer. If the kids weren't jumping up and down in front of it he'd go look that up right now. Could kangaroos get rabies? It seemed very important to know.

Then Lana came back with the corn, and he could see it steaming, a pat of butter precariously balanced on it and ready to slip off. She shushed the kids and Matt risked removing his hands to accept the corn.

“What they mean is thank you,” she said, barely above a whisper.

“Thank you!” the kids both whispered, so loudly that it was like the rasp of a rake against concrete. They held up the money, his money, and smiled at him, as if waiting for something else.

“The corn is better now,” he said. The kids looked at each other, smiled in their magnet-pulling-together way, and left laughing.

“You're a good uncle,” Lana said softly, “and a good and generous brother. But lay off my weight.” She shut the door and Matt leaned over the corn, inhaled the steamy aroma. It was perfect. It made up for the meatloaf.

He finished his dinner and looked up the rabies statistics while he waited for his ice cream. Lana was good about always remembering the ice cream. He loved ice cream, but he never got it at Spike's, because their freezer was broken, and Spike didn't want a repairman to come inside to fix it. Spike never wanted anyone inside their apartment.

Matt pulled out his Google map of directions to Spike's apartment. It said it would take him three hours and forty-five minutes to walk the 11.3 miles. That seemed like an awfully long time. Matt didn't know if he was a fast walker or a slow one. He only ever thought about walking to Spike's in the middle of the night when he couldn't sleep. He knew he wasn't supposed to take sleeping pills anymore, but he missed them. The ice cream was better at Lana's, but the sleeping was better at Spike's.