“Playing piano and being politically apathetic are the same thing,” Ellen said, a bit rotely, as if she’d said it before, though she couldn’t be sure if she had.
A Honda Civic with at least four bears inside passed Jan’s car.
A bear was on top of the car, stomach down.
Jan pointed at that.
They stopped at a stoplight and waited and continued driving.
“When I’m old I want to live in a cabin on the beach,” Jan said. “I’ll wake up, eat fruit, play the piano. I think I’ll take a nap and read a book. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll be playing the piano and I’ll think, ‘I think I’ll nap and read,’ then I’ll go do it. Doesn’t that sound so nice?” Jan made a sudden U-turn. A couple of cars honked. She parked in front of a Wal-Mart grocery store. There was a tired look on her face as she slowed the car to get it just right. It took a long time to make the car go from fast to slow to stop, Ellen felt. It was hard to slow to a stop. Ellen felt nervous, because of how strange it was to slow down, how terrible it must be for Jan to have the responsibility of carefully slowing the car to a stop without crashing. Then Ellen felt normal again. They were just parking the car. The car was still moving. Ellen looked at her mom, who was trying to park the car. A person, Ellen thought, and felt sad. Inside, putting peaches into a plastic bag, Jan said she was flying to Las Vegas to gamble for a few days. Ellen asked if she could go. Jan told Ellen to go get a package of salmon. Ellen went and got an organic avocado and thought about gambling and brought back the avocado. Jan said she knew Ellen would get something else — not a salmon. Ellen said gambling was good because it kept people inside, where they couldn’t hurt anyone, and where they could get rid of their extra money, but bad because it increased the divide between the rich and the poor. Jan said she would donate her house to the poor, and they would all live in a forest, with dogs. Ellen said she wished that would happen. Jan pointed at something and said, “Look at that organic fruit.” Ellen looked. Jan quickly walked to and hugged her daughter.
A few weeks passed and Ellen didn’t make any friends — she talked once to the girl with the “Mineral” shirt but then didn’t see her again — and then 10th grade was over and it was summer. Ellen’s mom, Jan, was going to Hawaii. She and her sister had planned to go to Las Vegas but then chose Hawaii, as a sort of joke, just to do it — vacation in Hawaii; why not? — and now the plane was about to crash. There had been an explosion or something. Jan and her sister were hugging. A flight attendant was telling everyone to hold themselves and lean forward into their laps and everyone did that and Jan’s sister did it, and then Jan did it.
Everything was shaking and Jan was crying a little.
She thought of her daughters and Steve and saw some of their heads and faces in different angles, sort of floating around. She hugged her sister, who was in a kind of fetal position, and felt her sister’s spine against her cheek and looked sideways out the window — something was flashing and behind that it was a very light blue, like a black that went past into white and then a little into blue — and thought that if she concentrated hard and moved very fast she could jump out of the plane and parachute onto a cruise ship that would be there, but that seemed too difficult, because she didn’t have a parachute. It was very noisy and everything was shaking. Jan felt a little sleepy. She thought she should probably stay awake, to see what would happen, but she wasn’t sure — it felt dangerous to know what was going to happen; safer to just let it happen, outside of herself, like someone else’s responsibility — and then the plane went into the ocean. But a few weeks before that, in July, Ellen had received forty posters in the mail; the package had said, “The United States Government.” Ellen wasn’t sure if they were allowed to do that — use tax-payer money on this. “Paste them in conspicuous areas around the city,” said a pamphlet. She sat on the floor of her room, felt sad, and flattened out a poster in front of her. The poster had a handsome dragon. They were posters for the movie the president had written, directed, and starred-in.
“Why are you doing that?” said Ellen’s brother Steve.
“I’m not,” Ellen said. “Go away.” She stared at the carpet.
“You go away. I own this room. I bought it from a government auction with fake bids.”
Ellen pushed Steve out of her room. While being pushed into the hallway Steve said, “I’m going to come in here tonight and superglue those posters to each of your clothes. Don’t cry when it happens.” Steve went to his room. He thought briefly about his life, felt a vague foreboding, and sat at his computer. He instant messaged Andrew, his acquaintance from high school who had gone to college in New York five years ago. Andrew worked in a library.
“Andrew,” Steve typed in AOL instant messenger.
“Steve,” Andrew typed.
“Karl’s away message is ‘Rock!’ ” Steve typed.
“I want to throw eggs at Karl’s house,” Andrew typed.
“I’m so hungry. I’m going to check the fridge.” Steve sat there. He wasn’t hungry. Maybe he was a little hungry. He couldn’t tell. “We have six limes,” Steve typed a few seconds later. He felt impatient.
“Make a line of subs. A subline,” Andrew typed. Good one, Steve thought. It didn’t make sense. In high school they did Sublime covers in Andrew’s room. Maybe that was it. “We should just go assault Karl,” Andrew typed. “We should break his leg.”
“Ahahahahaah,” Steve typed, and stared at his computer screen.
“Eggs aren’t enough anymore,” Andrew typed. “We will murder him.”
“What about when he fell on the curb and broke his leg,” Steve typed. “He said he was going to sue the government. For making the sidewalk slippery.”
“I don’t remember that,” Andrew typed. “I can’t remember anything anymore.”
“Karl’s buddy icon is a guitar. Douche bag.”
“I have to go,” Andrew typed. “My boss just walked by grinning. ‘Passive-aggressive.’ ”
Steve lived in Orlando, Florida. His mom, Jan, was always at her sister’s place — or wherever — playing Texas Hold ’Em, a kind of poker. She was going to Las Vegas soon, with her sister. Steve was twenty-four. He did not have a job. But he pretty much was raising Ellen and his other two sisters, who were seven and five or something. It was summer now so none of them had school except Ellen, who for some reason was taking summer classes — probably to try and make friends, Steve thought, which made him feel empathy. Most nights Steve and the people he went to high school with played video games or drank beer while playing poker; the same things they’d been doing for about seven years, and the future — or, rather, the past of some future’s future, Steve thought suddenly — was just another thing that wanted to get away from everything else and finally be completed, which is to say that Steve himself had no future. The future was only itself, and it didn’t care; it was somewhere else and it was already done, like bread in an oven. Steve felt very calm. He moved icons around on his computer for almost ten minutes, drew five whales with Microsoft Paint, closed the file without saving, went in the bathroom, washed his hands, smiled exaggeratedly at his own face for fifteen seconds and then watched a movie he’d already seen, ate something without paying attention to what it was, went to sleep, woke in the morning, made eggs for the kids — six in one skillet; he would email Andrew, he thought: “I cooked twelve eggs in one skillet and it looked like a cake”—played video games at a friend’s house, came home, made dinner for the kids, watched TV, went in the bathroom, saw Ellen staring at her own face in the mirror, made eye contact with Ellen in the mirror, turned around to give Ellen privacy, felt Ellen walk quickly past him, into the hallway, and heard Ellen’s door slam shut. He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and flossed. He walked into the living room and saw his mom, Jan, on the phone. Jan stood and walked away into the computer room. Steve sat on the sofa. Ellen walked through the living room. She went into the computer room. She came out of the computer room.