Zero (4 page)

Nice ass
, huh?

“Not … 
bad
,” I whisper. But not nice. No way.

I climb into bed, wishing I could tell Jenn how I actually talked to a living, breathing male of the species of my own accord.

I wonder what the weather is like in Chicago right now.

I think about charcoal sapphires.

I wonder if my phone will ring.

Ever.

“You need new
clothes,” Mom says on Monday night, ironing a pair of my jeans.

Jeans
. Who the hell irons jeans?

I don’t look at her because my video game demands total concentration.

“ ’Kay,” I say.

“Amy, I mean it. Don’t you want something a little brighter for the summer? Or for school this fall? A nice skirt or two … These clothes are falling apart.”

“Well, Mom, most people don’t iron their socks.”

The iron sizzles behind me. God, why can’t she do this in her bedroom or something instead of the living room, where I am clearly trying to de-stress from a very long, hard day of practicing my shading and hatching?

Mom’s telepathy tunes to my lazy channel. “Have you
thought about finding a job this summer?” she asks. “Since you chose not to take summer school?”

I didn’t
choose
not to take summer school; I didn’t think I’d freakin’ have to worry about being here long enough for it to matter. But I don’t bother telling her this. After graduation, in desperate need of distraction thanks to Jenn and the SAIC debacle, I registered at a community college for fall semester. Still need to choose classes, though.

“Yeah, sure,” I say.

It’s not a bad idea. Maybe I’ll start looking tomorrow. It beats being stuck at home with Mom. Not like I’ll be hanging out with Jenn all summer.

“You’ll need something nice if you want to look presentable,” Mom goes on. “You can’t hide in all these baggy things for a job interview. And some color wouldn’t kill you.”

Maybe it would.
Then
she’d be in trouble! I close my eyes and count to five. When I open them, my game has ended. I’m dead.

“Goddammit.”

“Amy, please, swearing is a terrible habit for …”

“Ah, hell, let her say what she wants,” my dad says, sailing into the living room, his suit coat hanging casually off one finger. “How’s it going, Z?” he asks, yanking the brim of my cap down as he ambles past.

“Don’t call her that,” Mom stage-whispers. “It only encourages her.”

“We all need encouragement, Miriam,” Dad says, tossing his coat carelessly onto the couch and stepping back out of the room. Mom sweeps the coat into her arms and folds it over the back of her rocking chair, beside the sofa.

“Oh, for chrissake!” Dad’s voice blares from the kitchen.

Mom goes back to ironing (my
jeans
!), tight-lipped. I reset my game while Dad crashes around in the kitchen. I’d keep the game system in my room except Dad bought it mostly for himself. Apparently he’s training to be (a) a ninja, (b) a mercenary, or (c) a race car driver.

I hear Dad sliding a case of beer into the refrigerator. Glass clanks, and Dad walks back into the living room, a tall brown bottle in one hand. He sits on the couch and sighs.

“Got to hand it to you, Miriam,” he says. “You’re getting smarter. It could have taken me, I don’t know,
minutes
before I found it this time. Well, it’s warm and disgusting, if that’s any goddam consolation.” Dad hates ice in his beer, for some reason. Maybe it spoils the taste.

“Please don’t swear at me,” Mom says quietly.

“Well, please don’t hide my damn beer!”

“I just wish you wouldn’t drink before dinner, that’s all.”

“The hell that’s all.”

My game ends again. Probably because I didn’t use the controller at all. I reset.

“I’m not going to fight with you, Richard.”

“Glad to hear it. Hey, kiddo, you done playing? Where’s the goddam remote?”

Mom slams the iron down on the board, making me jump.

“Oh,” Dad says in mock surprise. “I thought we weren’t fighting.”

Mom puts a hand to her forehead. “I am not fighting! I …” She takes a deep breath. “I just wish we could all use more
civilized
language….”

“Well, I’m an uncultured old bastard, I guess.” Dad’s lips pop as he takes another drink.

“It’s no wonder Amy talks the way she does,” Mom says. “It’s clear where she gets it from.”

My game ends. Probably because I can’t make my fingers work. They’ve tied themselves together in my lap without asking me first.

This time, I reach for the power button.

“Gets what, exactly? My rugged good looks or boyish charm? Maybe both, huh, Z?”

“Or my boyish looks and rugged charm,” I offer, searching for a smile to go with the joke. Dad throws his head back, laughs, and takes a drink.

“The sarcasm, Richard,” Mom says, pressing a hand to her forehead. “The swearing. Probably drinking, too, for all I know …”

“If your daughter wanted a beer, there’s not much you could do to stop it. Right, Z?”

I stand up. I’ve had a swig or two in my time, yes. Mostly girlie stuff like piña coladas. But not anymore, not ever again. Somehow I can’t make myself tell them that, though.

“Her
name
is Amanda, Richard….”

“Oh, Christ, would you relax, Miry? Jesus.”

Dad only pulls out the old King of Kings to upset Mom’s delicate Catholic sensibilities. She hasn’t been to Mass in years, but it works every time.

“Richard …!” Mom says, and I know the tone. She’s ready to throw down now.

I stand up. “Well, I’ll be in my room. Enjoy your special time together.”

They both look at me like they’re not sure what to say. I walk out just as they start blaming each other for my
tone
.

I’m about ready to set clocks by this crap. Dad usually gets home at seven, and the skirmishes with Mom begin not long after. He’s out the door by eight or eight-thirty on the weekend to go to Scotty’s with work buddies.

I go into my bedroom and slam the door. It’s not enough to drown their voices. I can’t stay here. I reach for my phone and punch in Jenn’s number.

She answers on the first ring. “Hello?”

Oops, forgot;
not ever talking to her again
. I hang up.

I fall back against my door and slide down its length until my knees buckle upward, my arms curled around my stomach. I inhale sharply, trying to stop the salty, bitter taste running down my throat. I feel my sinuses clogging, stomach tightening, face warming….

“Stop it,” I whisper. “Just fucking
stop it
for once.”

Something crashes in the living room. Wonder what it was this time.

In eighth grade, Mr. Hilmer introduced us to glass etching in his last-hour art class. I fell in love with it, and the next weekend, I bought etching cream, carbon paper, razor blades, and a selection of mirrors and glass. It took me a few weeks to get the technique down, but I got pretty good even by my own standards, and that’s saying something. I showed a couple of my pieces to Mr. Hilmer—the class had moved on to watercolors, which I don’t like as much—and he said, “You done good, Amanda. These are fantastic.” Me.
Fantastic
.

My first truly successful piece was of my dad’s face, hidden in white swirls on a circular mirror. I ran into the living
room, literally
forgetting
that a fight was in progress. Combat ceased as Dad accepted the gift with a fast smile and faster hug. I took off, ashamed somehow that my presence was distracting them from their
marital strife
.

Then came the sound of broken glass as one of them—I never asked nor wanted to know which—dropped the gift onto the tile floor.

Dropped or threw. Whichev. I haven’t etched a single thing since then.

I snuffle up a noseload of snot and glance up at a painting of my own face on the ceiling, expressionistically rendered, split by jagged cracks and splinters. My face in a shattered mirror. Subtle, yes?

“I hate you,” I say to the painting.

“… so damned worried about …”

“… would for once listen to …”

My parents’ voices filter into my room. Thought I was used to it by now. I will not cry over this. No, I
won’t
. But I can feel the whole mess with Jenn stacking on top of my off-the-scale stupidity at The Graveyard on Friday ganging up on me, too, threatening to flood my eyes.

Must make it stop. I get up and turn on my stereo. Minor Threat blares, but I turn it up louder. Ian MacKaye reminds me right off that life’s not been good for me. (Thanks, Ian. I appreciate that.)

But it’s not loud enough, so I flip on my TV, too. I am pleased to learn that
getting rid of a yeast infection is now easier than ever!
I change the channel to public access. No commercials.

“… with the drinking every night …”

“… tell me how to live my own …”

I grab my palette and squirt black acrylic onto its surface. Dumb idea; I should cut it with gel, make it last, but the hell with it. Pick a brush, any brush, smash it into the goo, and begin slicing across the canvas of a half-finished desert landscape.

Go out and fight, fight, bottled violence
, Ian suggests, while two guys on public access introduce me to downhill skateboarding. Camelback Mountain is in the background.

I hold my brush in a fist, making circles now; tight, Möbius-strip curls. Wipe my nose across my forearm, squeeze crimson onto the palette, use the same brush, stab the canvas, refusing to look at my reflection in any of my Dalí posters. I have a pretty good idea what I look like, thanks. It rhymes with
shit
.

That’s when I realize my phone is ringing. I’m not sure for how long it’s been going. I drop the brush and pick up. Instead of saying hello, I bitch, “
Now
what!”

Nothing. No response. I swear, if this is some kind of sales—

“Uh … hi.”

“Hello!” I shout again, and jab the TV power button off.

“Um …”

“What!” I punch out Ian MacKaye’s voice. “Hello!”

“Hi, um … is … Zero there?”

No. Fucking. Way.

“This is me—her—she,” I blurt out,
very
smooth and calm. My nose is still plugged up from crying, so I sound like a sick goat.

“Oh. Hey. It’s Mike.”

I know!

“We met Friday night at The Graveyard?”

I know!

“Oh yeah, hi,” I say. “How’s it going?” I look wildly around for a safe place to set my palette down without creating a mess.

“Pretty good, I guess. So, um … what’re you up to?”

I view my painting, such as it is.
Teaching myself a little Dada. You?

But what I say is, “Um, nothing much, what are you up to?”

“Well, uh … getting ready to head over to Eddie’s to jam.”

“Yeah? Who’s Eddie?”

“Bassist.”

“Oh. Cool.”

Bang!
The kitchen door slams, causing every one of my muscles to cramp. That must’ve been Dad, out to hit Scotty’s, drinking….

“You wanna hang out sometime?” I blurt.

 … Um …

That voice sounded an
awful lot
like mine. Oh, hell, what did I just do? Tires screech off the carport concrete, and I hear Dad’s truck peel into the night.

This is my mom’s fault. I just made the world’s biggest ass of myself, and it’s because of her stupid nagging. No way would I have asked Mike out otherwise.

Oh, and speaking of Mike:
insert awkward silence
. My mind is a new canvas, stretched taut, off-white, empty.

Mike rescues me. “Well,” he says, “now that you mention it, we’re playing this show downtown tomorrow night, at Weidman’s Pub, but we’ll be done around nine or so …”

Oh my god
. Is he really going to ask—

“… and if you want to, you know, hang out or something, we could maybe do that afterward, if you wanted to. Or whatever. I mean, unless you’re twenty-one, then I guess we could meet up at the pub. Uh,
are
you twenty-one?”

I say, “Me? No! No, uh-uh. Are you?”

“Nah. We can play there, we just can’t drink.”

“Oh. Cool. But—yeah! Meeting up, I mean. That’s cool. Okay.”

Smooth Operator Tip Number One: Babble incoherently instead of saying
Yes
.

“Okay,” Mike says, with what sounds like a sigh of some kind. “Cool. Where’re you coming from?”

“Oh, uh, I can get pretty much anywhere. As long as I can still see Camelback.”

“Camelback … 
Mountain
?”

“Yeah. It’s like a, you know, landmark. For, like, navigation.”

And I’m, like, you know,
an idiot
.

“Huh,” Mike says. “Well … okay, yeah. Um …”

I (somehow) get a brilliant idea. “Do you do coffee? We could meet at Hole in the Wall Café. That’s not far from Weidman’s, right?”

“Yeah, I know right where it is. Yeah, sure, that sounds good.”

“Really?” The word pops out of my mouth before I can stop it. I wish I could slug myself in the stomach. “Cool. So Hole in the Wall at about nine tomorrow?”

“Yeah, perfect. That’ll work. See ya then.”

“Bye!”

I hang up and perform eighteen consecutive cartwheels. Only mentally, but whatever!

I’m an idiot, but I’m a
genius
idiot. The Hole is my turf. Home away from home. It’s the perfect place to hang out, with its multiple rooms for semiprivacy, but still in public just in case he’s an ax murderer, and with plenty of espresso to ensure my tranquility.

Mom’s footsteps echo in the hallway. A moment later, I hear their bedroom door close. Guess that’s it for the night.

Whatever. I have important things to do. Selecting exactly the right clothes for a first date could take up to several decades, right? I need to get started. I haven’t exactly been on a real live date in … well, whatever. The point is, I want to look good, and thinking about this beats thinking about them.

However, Mom had a point: my wardrobe isn’t exactly varied. Should I wear my D.I. shirt again, since he mentioned them? No, it’ll look like I never washed it. Some other obscure punk band to test his taste? No, too risky, and I don’t care. What I care about is getting the chance to spend an hour, maybe two if I’m lucky, looking into those emerald-sapphire eyes. Which I could have been trying to paint right now instead of destroying a landscape.