“We could leave after lunch if that gives you more time to get ready,” Dad says.
Mom’s so used to being the opposition she can’t help herself. “I hate to waste the money on fuel.”
He’s ready for that. “It’ll be a good break for everyone. Take in a little fresh scenery, catch a few fish, laugh a little. There won’t be many more warm weekends like this. Come on, let’s do it for the boys.” Through the open windows I can hear the clink of Dad’s spoon in his coffee mug and her silence as she scrambles to think of a rebuttal.
Nick groans from his bunk at Dad’s sticking us into the role of bait for his blackmail. I was already awake, but bracing myself to get out from the warm covers. October mornings on the water are a little nippy until the sun gets geared up.
“Red.”
Dad laughs with her because she’s caught him laying it on so thick, but it doesn’t stop the debate.
She says, “Have you asked them? They probably don’t even want to go. If they had their choice, they’d spend the weekend with their friends. Not their old, fuddy-duddy parents.”
“Well, that’d be okay too. We can drop them off and go, just the two of us.” What a faker.
Nick kicks the bottom of the bunk, his laughter stifled in the pillow. I’m all yawns and stretches, enjoying the normality of this discussion, wondering if she will relent. That yearning in Dad’s voice, how can she not give in? Having me around all the time must be a pretty grim reminder that their life is going to hell. If I were them, I’d leap at the chance for a break.
While they counter each other with more pros and cons, I start planning the weekend at Mack’s. He’s been raving about his redone basement. The twins can come over for a movie. Mr. Petriano brought an old TV/VCR combo home from the school-board auction and they let Mack paint the cinder-block walls with all their leftover paint. Psychedelic, he’s been bragging, but I haven’t seen it yet.
His growing obsession with sixties terms scares me a little. If I say anything about it, he shuts down, like you do when some geek starts explaining how to write HTML code. If you listen to Dad’s version of back then (and to everything you read or see in movies), drugs were a huge part of that scene, but in a way that made their crowd seem like innocents compared with kids now and the stuff they’re into these days. Even though Mack insists he’s only tried drugs once, and only marijuana, he talks about parties and people we never liked before. It’s so damn obvious that he thinks I’m out of touch.
Dad’s silence lately when the subject comes up is noticeable too. It’s not like him. He used to be so adamant, taking every chance to talk about how a little experimentation leads to worse and about the friends he lost to overdoses. He describes the whole withdrawal from activities and from people until you’re alone in a room worrying about the next fix. It makes me think there’s some guilty link between that bad time in his life and his refusal to let the doctors give me chemicals.
Mack can’t be but so far gone if he keeps inviting me to the new basement when I’ve made my stand on the drugs clearer than clear.
“The stereo’s pretty basic,” he qualified the invite on the third go-round. “Not as comfy as Meredith and Juliann’s basement with the two couches, but still…” He waited for me to say yes, but I was more curious about what he’d use to convince me. “It deserves to be christened.”
I’m remembering all of Mack’s reasoning as the debate about the boat trip lingers. Sliding down the ladder, I scramble for jeans and a sweatshirt. Dad won’t give it up.
“It may be our last chance.” He hesitates. “Winter coming, I mean.”
Mom must think I’m asleep. “What if something happens while we’re away? Misty says Daniel could crash at any time. Carla Petriano wouldn’t have a clue where to start. She’d probably feed him cookies.”
“He knows the routine. He might as well learn how to handle some of these details.”
“Needles and medicine and restricted activities? Not the kind of details a boy his age needs to handle. It’s bad enough he feels lousy all the time.”
“He says he has good days.”
“You can’t really believe that with the way he looks. What if tomorrow, while we’re cruising along to ‘Good Day Sunshine,’ he has a bad day?”
“Sweetie, you can’t protect him from all the bad things in the world.”
“That is the understatement of the year.” Her voice cracks.
There’s a long pause before Dad speaks. “I think we need this trip. For the family.” And when she doesn’t answer, he announces in his most fatherly voice, “It’s decided then. We’ll leave in an hour.” His footsteps stop outside our cabin door.
“We heard.” Nick groans again, this time an exaggeration to make his point. But Dad just laughs.
We don’t leave until eleven because Mom has to make a grocery run. She’s definitely in her bomb-shelter preparedness mode. When I volunteer to go with her, she doesn’t object, which only proves she’s preoccupied, not that she’s changed her mind about germs. On the way over to Food Lion she drives about ten miles an hour. I can’t figure what’s bothering her about all of this beyond what she’s said, but I’m working on getting up my nerve to ask her to stop by the twins’ house. I need to talk to Meredith about Halloween.
For the past three years, since Essex County Board of Supervisors banned kids thirteen and older from trick-or-treating, the Petrianos have let Mack have a party on Halloween. That was before the basement redo, so the party was in their garage or their backyard. Last year Leonard and Mack and I dressed up like characters from Young Frankenstein, the movie. I was the hunchback since I didn’t want to be burdened with more lines. I was in training for Captain Von Trapp. “Walk this way” was all I had to say. Mindless, but funny. Anyway, last year we invited girls, too…for the first time. The party was outside because it was like eighty degrees. Mack disappeared about the same time Marissa Bennett, my costar-to-be, disappeared. That single fact made me wonder for a long time whether that was the night he had sex. Although he continually said no, he’d smirk like he meant yes. Finally months later he told me the truth. So at least that image can be purged from my imagination. It wasn’t Marissa Bennett getting it on with a green monster.
In the grocery checkout line, where there are a dozen people who know Mom, I ask her about going by Meredith’s house. Not surprisingly with all those witnesses and her boulder-size guilt, she says yes. No dead brain cells yet in this kid.
“So this girl Meredith, you like her?” she asks.
I swallow and let my smile come and go. The question cannot be answered in front of people who live in Essex County. It will spread like a thunderstorm on the river.
At the Rilkes’ house the van is parked on the lawn and the girls are in their shorts, sudsing it up like a dog.
“Can I—” I motion to where Juliann mans the hose.
“Don’t get soaked. You’ll have pneumonia by tonight.” But Mom’s smiling. Normal’s good for her, too.
Meredith gives me a half hug and I come away damp already. Luckily Mrs. Rilke motions for Mom to come inside.