Everyone should thank rebel scamp for badgering me into getting this done. Hounding of that level takes devotion and grit.
Happy birthday to me (in a week or so!)
Happy birthday to me (in a week or so!)
Happy birthday to me-e (in a week or so!)
Happy birthday to me (in a week or so!)
Did you know that if you underline Verdana the bottom of the "g" doesn't show up?
Yes, I've officially gone insane.
Thank you to my lovely cat who kept me company while I was typing part of this on a laptop and didn't step on the keyboard (almost) the entire time.
Because line breaks refuse to show up (at least on my computer) this is my new line break: ~~~~~~~~~
10. Crashing
When my mother heard the about the planned trip to Las Vegas, well, she barely seemed to hear. We are sitting around the living room with Joe and Aiden trying to get her attention, but she's too busy poring over a new script to notice their not-so-subtle coughing. Her agent, Dylan, keeps calling her every hour or so. Even on Christmas Day, we barely saw her until the guests started arriving.
"So I heard that they're aliens on an intergalactic mission to clean the world," Talise remarks conversationally. I choke, Joe glares at his daughter, and Aiden snickers.
"That's great, Kyla," my mother responds, obviously distracted.
"I'm over here, Mom," Kyla snaps. Lines of thwarted love are etched permanently onto her face these days. She nearly murdered Waldo for saying "Have a nice night!" to Aiden before he left to take Spencer on another date.
"Okay," my mother murmurs absently.
"So can we go or not?" Aiden demands eagerly.
"Sure, dear."
"Sweet!" Aiden leaps to his feet.
"Sit down," Joe reprimands before turning on his wife. "Christine, can you put that down for a second." Irritation colors his voice.
"Just a moment."
Joe sighs, "This will only take a moment."
"Mm-hmm."
Admitting defeat, Joe turns up the volume on the TV. "We'll talk about this in the morning."
With a roll of the eyes, Talise pushes herself off the couch. "Good night," she announces to no one in particular.
Silently, I follow her. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Aiden giving me a weird look. Maybe he's tired or something.
We climb the seemingly endless flights of steps to the attic. Halfway to the third floor, we hear shouting.
"I don't..." Joe's voice trails off.
"You're so selfish...always doing..." It sounds like he and my mother are arguing. Why? Well, a better question for those two would be: Why not?
Talise's knuckles go white on the railing. Everything our "parents" irks her since school started. "Why the hell did they get married if all they do is fight?"
I look at her, surprised by the sudden outburst. Every year or so, my mother and Joe have a period where they can't stand the sight of each other. It's my belief that this period of hatred counteracts the rest of their usual sappy, soppy, dripping-with-overwrought-emotion marriage. There's nothing new. Unsure of what she wants me to say, I answer, "Why does anyone get married?"
"Because they're idiots," Talise growls.
Her mood is starting to worry me a little. Confused, I let the silence drag as we trudge up yet another flight of stairs.
The ladder to the attic clatters down. I flinch. One day we're going to break that thing and then we'll never be able to get away from the rest of our "family". When Talise practically storms up the ladder, I suggest tentatively, "Maybe we should be a little nicer to the ladder."
Talise mutters something unintelligible. I'm not sure if I want to know what it is.
My schoolwork is strewn across the floor. Feeling obliged to say something—anything, I observe, "So, 'Action Will Be Taken', Heinrich Böll... it's a really active story there." Cringing at the forced optimism in my voice, I remind myself to never make small talk again.
"It's a story about stupid people who are too stupid to care about the stupid stuff that's right in front of them and too stupid to admit it." Talise yanks out some drawers and paws through the contents before smashing them shut. Is she looking for something? It looks more like she just wants to annihilate the world.
"Um, well..." Think of something clever of say, anything to say. "That's certainly a refreshing take on Böll's World War II satire." That sounded scholarly, right?
"The narrator is some guy during Germany's Nazi regime," Talise snarls. "He tries to avoid knowing what his job is about by doing a bunch of useless stuff, but then his boss dies because the narrator hesitates. The narrator then mourns what happened and tries to be good and other stupid stuff. It's about how if some ruthless guy comes to power everyone in the world will just turn a blind eye as he commits mass genocide," she explains as though Böll has personally offended her.
"And here I was thinking it was about stupid people who are too stupid to care about the stupid stuff that's right in front of them and too stupid to admit it." At least now I have some understanding of the story despite my horrendously horrible English teacher. This evening hasn't been a complete waste.
"Same difference."
"Aren't you the one who hates that phrase?"
"I will impale you." The good news is that she only sounds irritated right now. I can deal with that. It's the festering resentment that alarms me.
"Pleasant," I reply, thinking of Vlad the Impaler.
"You need to spend less time with me."
Snorting in disbelief, I scoff, "Says the person who's making me go to Las Vegas with her."
"Speaking of which, how does Aiden plan to get Spencer's parents to agree on this?" Finally drained of anger, Talise flops onto her bed.
With a shrug, I fall onto my bed. How does he plan on doing that? Frommy point of view, it didn't seem like Spencer's mother was the type to send her daughter on a road trip with a bunch of college guys to Las Vegas. Maybe she's really easygoing though and just incredibly homophobic.
Maybe koalas aren't violent little creatures filled to the brim with evil intent.
Okay, okay, that might be going a little too far, but I'd rather try to clip a wet cat's claws than hold a disgruntled koala.
Glancing across the room, I notice Talise staring at something in her hands, almost captivated by whatever it is.
"Hey, Talise."
She comes out of her trance and shoves the object beneath a pillow. "Yeah?"
"What's—"
"I'm going to take a shower," she interrupts, as though she knows what I'm about to say.
As she digs out a bathrobe, I try again. "Is something going on? What's—" the slamming of the trap door slices into my inquiry "—wrong?"
More silence.
Part of me is drowning under a wave of curiosity. I wonder what she's got stuffed under her pillow. Talise is always nosing into my business, but she never tells me about hers. Shouldn't I try to figure out what's wrong and, I don't know, help her? At the same time, if I feel patronized when people treat me like I'm about to commit suicide, then Talise will too. And she doesn't pry that much. She just needs to stop asking me about Spencer. Is it my duty to find out what's bothering her? Does she expect me to figure it out? Is it wrong for me not to dig deeper? Why are people so complicated?
By the time Talise gets back from her shower, I'm still chasing my thoughts around in circles. It's too late now.
"Are you going to take a shower?" she asks, carefully turned away from me.
"Yeah." When I get back, the room is dark.
"I don't see why we have to do this," Joe grumbles.
"If the kids are going to go on this trip, then we should all get together and plan this," my mother replies, voice resolutely calm. The house crackles with tension. Due to some inexplicable bump in their relationship, she and Joe have been at each other's throats all week. They make little, jabbing, needling comments until one of them goes ballistic. Minor irritations are blown up into dispositional disasters. Meanwhile, Talise's mood blackens each day. We spend a lot of time holed up in the attic where the constant squabbling doesn't reach. Usually.
"It's none of our business if her parents don't want her to go." Wait, are they talking about Spencer? "We don't have to organize everything. It's not our responsibility," Joe insists.
Frustration seeps into my mother's tone. "Don't be selfish. Can't you see how much this means to your son?"
"Aiden can fend for himself. You just want to be the center of attention," Joe accuses, tearing through the cabinets for another bottle of wine. Talise would probably kill me if I mentioned that she's kind if like Joe. Both of them seem to enjoy opening and slamming things when they're upset.
"I what?" Composure shattered, my mother whirls on Joe, her skirt swishing. Ben and I are unfortunately trapped in the kitchen with them, and we each begin to shuffle to doors on opposite sides of the room.
"I'm just saying that you always want to have people over. It doesn't matter that I want a quiet night if you have other plans!" Joe shouts.
I slip into the dining room.
"Well, you didn't seem to have a problem when I called the Carlins yesterday!" my mother protests crossly. I wish the two of them would go visit a desert island somewhere and never come back. It would be for the greater good of the world if they did. Joe bursts into the dining room, wine in one hand, eyes rolling. (I'm telling you, certain traits run in the family, especially eye-rolling.)
Oh, great, my mother's coming too.
"As if you ever ask me what I want," Joe bawls.
"Oh, come on! I was standing right next to you. I told you I was going to call them," my mother retorts.
Of course, they're blocking the only door with their wind-milling hands and scarlet faces. What is this? The final exam for wannabe Houdinis? I never signed up to be a magician.
Instinctively, I duck under the tablecloth. The white walls of cloth creating a sort of sanctuary with their soft purity. Something crashes down on the table. Both of them are enraged beyond coherency. Joe mocks, "Oh, I'm so sorry," in a child's voice. My mother splutters, her voice shrill and garbled.
Blood boiling, I hiss, "What the hell is their problem?" The tan wood of the table doesn't reply. I think of Talise's drawn face. Don't they see her uneasiness? Even Aiden can tell she's been acting out of character and, as far as I can tell, it's their fault. A wave of outraged justice engulfs me. I want to get out from under the table and scream at them. All of us have been dancing around my mother and Joe for the past week. How is it fair for us? If any of us got into a fight like this, they wouldn't put up with it. Kyla doesn't whack Aiden or holler at him like this. I hate them. They're hypocrites. Why the hell did they get married if all they do is fight?
Blazing with righteous fury, I lunge out from under the table. "HOW CAN Y—"
Spencer shrieks.
She backpedals into a wall and hits her head against a shelf. "Spencer!" Her fair hair wafts around her face as she simultaneously gasps and groans, holding her head. "A—are you okay? I'm sorry. I—I didn't know it was you." Still leaning against the neutral walls, she sinks to the floor.
"I think I'm alright," she informs me weakly, batting away my concerned hands. It would be so easy to wrap her up in my arms. Reaching out, I withdraw my hands when she pulls away. I examine them for any sign of the poison that she shrinks from. i don't find it.
"What are you doing here?"
"We're having dinner here." Again, really? After what happened last time? "To talk my parents into letting me go with Aiden to Las Vegas. Your mother invited us. I think Aiden asked her to."
"Oh—hey, where did Joe and my mother go?" I wonder, realizing that we're alone.
"Your mother's in the foyer. Your father—"
"Stepfather."
"Stepfather," she gives me a pointed look. What did I do? "Left when we came in. He said he had to go somewhere."
"Oh." There's silence. Silence seems to be a re-occurring theme in my life. The last time we were this close, we were both angry. I remember it clearly, the burning rage, the need for her to just leave me alone. It just doesn't make any sense anymore. I don't understand why I was mad or how I stayed mad for so long. Try as I might to gather up the lingering dredges of fury, I can't make them stick. To be angry at her feels more grueling than—I don't know, okay? I just don't know. I never know anything, especially when it comes to her and how she seems to know everything.
It feels disjointed and misshapen and malformed and a whole bunch other stuff too.
For me, at least.
She gets up without looking at me. Guess it doesn't bother her too much that we can't even look at each other. We stand there awkwardly, casting our eyes around everything but each other. I think I feel sick. Perhaps skipping dinner and lying down for a while would be a good idea.
She makes a noise, and I look up to find her pinning me with her eyes. "Ash—"
Our families stream into the room.
Whoever can tell me where I got the line (not word for word) "they're aliens on an intergalactic mission to clean the world" gets tofu.
...
Well, SOME people hate tofu so I guess I'll get you a cookie instead.
(You're not getting anything actually. Just in case you didn't know.)