“Shit,” he breathes as his body becomes rigid, standing in the entrance of the front door, unmoving.
I straighten, and step up behind him with Zeus on my other side. My jaw drops at the sight of our house. “What in the hell happened?” I ask, looking around.
A loud crash followed by a squeal lets me know Erin happened. I haven’t seen her in several days. I’ve been ignoring her again, hoping that she just loses interest. I should have known better. I’m not that lucky.
I look around again, taking in the millions upon millions of bubbles that seem to be growing and inching toward us by the second. I release a dozen expletives, loud enough that Landon quietly chuckles as he follows me in.
We make it to the kitchen and find Erin on the floor with the vacuum cleaner, surrounded by suds that are up to my knees and continuing to pour out of the washing machine.
“What happened?” I repeat.
“I think your washer’s fuckin’ broken! I was going to vacuum it up. The thing’s possessed!”
Landon’s thigh high in foam as he twists the dial on the washer. He waits for a moment for it to unlock, and then opens the door. A large mass of bubbles erupts, flowing over his arm.
He turns to me with a harried expression. “You used dish soap,” he says, shaking the suds off his arm, still looking at me although he’s speaking to Erin.
“Oh. My. God.” Kendall’s voice rings through the house.
The heels of her shoes click against the hardwood, and then a loud grunt and thud tell me she’s fallen.
I turn back to the living room and see her struggling to stand up. Making my way over to her, I feel the slickness of the soap under my tennis shoes. I wrap my hands under her arms to lift her like a child, which I know by the glare she’s giving me, she doesn’t appreciate.
“What is this?” she asks, looking around.
“Don’t turn on the vacuum! You’ll break it, and probably kill yourself in the process!” Landon’s voice booms.
Kendall eyes me with curiosity and then removes her heels. Holding them with two fingers, she leads me back into the kitchen, sliding every few steps. I place a hand on her elbow to offer her stability, and then grasp a leather bound photo album she shoves into my chest that the bubbles are getting dangerously close to reaching.
“I’ll grab the Shop-Vac,” Landon says, lifting our house vacuum and heading out the garage door.
Erin grasps a hand towel, and starts uselessly blotting at a pile of suds. “Look, they’re going down!” she cries eagerly.
“I don’t think that’s going to help,” Kendall says, heading toward the kitchen counter. Before she gets all the way to it she slips and falls unceremoniously with a quiet squeal.
“I don’t understand what happened?” Erin looks around the kitchen, hovering by the washer that’s still spewing suds.
“You put dish soap in the washer. What don’t you understand?” Landon asks. An extension cord that he’s plugged into an outlet in the garage trails him as he carries the Shop-Vac in.
“Is that why it smells like lemon?” Kendall asks.
“That’s why our house looks like a fucking full-sized bathtub!” Landon shouts. I’ve never heard Landon shout. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him even raise his voice unless he was drunk and telling a story.
“You don’t have to be such an ass about it. I was trying to do you guys a favor and do some fuckin’ laundry.”
I cringe. I don’t know if it’s her voice, or her incessant need to use that word, but my ears feel like they’re ready to bleed.
“What did you wash?” Kendall asks, looking slightly fearful for a new reason.
“Stuff that was in the laundry room.”
“What stuff exactly?”
“Why are you interrogating me?” Erin screeches.
“Max!” Kendall’s voice rises in warning.
“Don’t yell at him!”
Kendall’s eyes widen as her head snaps to Erin. She takes a few slippery steps closer to her and I momentarily pray she doesn’t attempt to practice her newly-learned punching skills.
“I can’t do this anymore!” She raises her hands in the air and turns back to me. “I’ve held my tongue, waiting for you to stop and realize that you’re making a mistake. You need to get your ass up and go to Delaware and stop this shit or we’re all moving out!”
I feel Landon’s eyes on me and turn to see him giving me an expectant look, not making any effort to disagree with Kendall’s threat.
“Delaware?” Erin asks. “Why in the hell would he need to go to fuckin’ Delaware?”
“Fucking. Fuck-ing!” Kendall screams. “He needs to go to fucking Delaware.”
“I’m leaving, I’m not going to allow you to treat me like this!” Erin moves and slides against the floor, but continues through the house, slamming the front door as she leaves.
“God, never again am I allowing her in when no one else is here.” Kendall says, shaking her head as her eyes rove over the kitchen. “How much soap did she add? An entire bottle?”
“An entire fucking bottle,” Landon says sarcastically.
I don’t know what to do. A part of me feels guilty for the way Erin was just treated and that side is telling me that although she’s driving me out of my mind, I shouldn’t be a dickhole and just let her walk away without saying something. Part of me wants to yell at Kendall for bringing up her again for the twelve hundredth time this week, realizing that she’s been slowly incorporating her into more conversations lately. And another part of me just wants to ignore everything, and focus on cleaning up the suds that are somehow still pouring out of the washer.
Landon takes a step forward and pushes the coffee maker back further on the counter and with his next step he falls with a loud thud, and suddenly I’m laughing. I’m hurting, I’m laughing so hard.
Cleaning up the mess goes surprisingly fast with the Shop-Vac, however the residue left behind is a bitch. The floors feel like we’ve waxed them with furniture polish. Kendall and Landon don’t complain as they help me scrub everything in an attempt to lessen the slickness.
Jameson arrives home and falls on his ass within seconds of walking through the front door, confirming our efforts are wasted.
“Son of a bitch,” he mumbles, rubbing his elbow.
“We need to go find some of those orange cones to steal,” Kendall says, shaking her head.
Jameson’s less than amused when Kendall shares with him what had transpired this afternoon, not even bothering to look at me as he shakes his head.
I stare out across the night sky, wondering what she’s doing right now. Is she looking at these very same stars?
“Hey, Son, you decided to stay off the ice rink, huh?”
I look over as my dad steps out onto the patio, leaving the lights off as he makes his way over to where I’m sitting.
I don’t laugh or make a joke like I think he wants me to. Instead, I ask the question that’s been eating at me for years, “Where have you been?” I ask, looking up to notice an airplane as it flies overhead, reminding me again of her.
“Everywhere and nowhere,” he answers quietly as he sits beside me. I can smell the scent of tobacco and fresh coffee on him, even though it’s after eight. He told me that it’s his vice now that he’s quit drinking.
“I was never trying to leave you kids, Max, not permanently. But once I was gone things got a lot worse for me before they got better, and once they got better, the guilt was too much. I didn’t know how to come back and tell you all that I had problems. Even though I was getting them taken care of, I still couldn’t admit it, not to you kids, and not to your mother.