Bottled Up (4 page)

It was after five.

I forgot to pick up Mikey.

I crunched down on a Pepomint LifeSaver as I walked into my house. My clothes reeked as if they'd been on fire, and my shoes smelled like rum. Maybe I'd spilled some. Anybody else would have changed his clothes—maybe showered.

Not me. I'd go only as far as a LifeSaver. It didn't matter anyway. Nobody living in my house knows how to connect the dots. They don't have a clue about me.

I always figured I was like the family dog—like a puppy people get when it's all cute and fuzzy. Then when it's full-grown, they send the mutt to live out back on the end of some chain. He doesn't look for anybody to play with, or to brush him or pat his head. He learns not to want. He learns that being outside's a better way to deal than being inside anyway. He thinks about getting the leash off—finding his own Ken-L Ration.

My house was quiet when I walked in. It's always either quieter than the Site or louder than Yankee Stadium when the score is tied in the ninth.

Everybody was sitting at the kitchen table eating dinner. My mother shot me a look. It was either for being late or because my father just finished screaming about me being late.

“Wash your hands,” she said.

I went over to the sink, squirted some soap into my hands, and squished them together under the tap.

Nobody was talking. Mikey didn't even look up at me. He was pissed. Boo-hoo, I forgot to pick him up. The kid better grow up fast. He was still breathing. He got home fine.

My father—a.k.a. the Grinch, because he can steal Christmas from you way before December 25 comes around—had both his elbows on the table. He was jabbing at his food with his fork as if the chicken wasn't dead yet. He was in his shoot-to-kill mood. I could tell just by looking at him.

His face gets red, his ears go back a little, and his eyes stick out of his face like Mr. Potato Head. He doesn't smile when he's being the Grinch. No. The Grinch never smiles in that old cartoon either. He does the same thing my father does—he smirks. It's like he's telling you that you're the biggest idiot in the world, but he's doing it without making a sound.

As soon as I sat down, the family fun time got rolling. The Grinch pushed his plate into my mother's, sending a couple of macaroni and cheese noodles onto the side of her water glass.

“You call this a meal?” he asked. The noodles started sliding down from the glass to the table.

“There's nothing wrong with that chicken,” she said in a voice that was just asking for a fight. Sometimes I think she
wants
him to scream and throw things at her. Just by looking at my father's face, anybody—except maybe my stupid brother—could see the guy's nuts. If my mother said something like,
I'll fix you something else
and just let it go at that, maybe the rest of us could finish our food for a change.

He reached across the table with his fork and stabbed another piece of chicken. After he put it in his mouth he scrunched up his face like a little kid would. He spit it back onto his plate and started yelling.

“That's disgusting! I don't work all day to come home and eat bland rubber.”

I put the saltshaker in front of him.

“Are you a wiseass?” he asked me.

First Giraldi called me a wiseass, then my father. I was a trendsetter.

“Maybe it just needs some salt,” I said, but didn't really care if he liked his friggin' chicken or not. I just wanted him to get off her back. The best way to do that was to get him yelling at me instead.

Mikey wasn't chewing but had a mouthful of food. I could tell he was trying not to cry.

This family fighting stuff rattles him a lot more than it ever did me when I was six. Sometimes I wish I could press the Pause button on our family like on a VCR. Our family isn't any G-rated flick, so I'd just get the kid out of the audience. I'd drop him off someplace else, come back by myself, then press Play.

“I'll reheat you a leftover,” my mother said. She went over to the counter, and my father got up and rinsed out his glass.

I heard ice cubes rattling behind me. The Grinch was busy doing what he does best: fixing himself a drink. He keeps the bottles lined up like soldiers at attention on top of the refrigerator, and pulls them down for active duty. I heard the ice cubes crack when the scotch hit them, same as always. Then Mike Senior shook the glass to mix it up, making the cubes clang against the sides.

Some families listen to music while they eat, mine listens to ice cubes.

He put the bottle back on top of the fridge—back in the line-up—and sat down again.

“You look like hell,” he said to me.

“I'm tired,” I said.

“Tired? Must be all that studying you do.”

“Mike, don't start,” my mother said, coming back to the table with a plate of steaming beef teriyaki.

“Oh, okay, Eve. Why don't you warm the baby's bottle for him.” He took a long drink from his glass. His eyes were getting redder and redder.

He looked back at me. “You ever clean out the garage like I've been asking you?”

“I started it—”

“Get out there and finish.”

“Mike, he's eating,” my mother said, forgetting I could take care of myself.

“I'll eat later, Mom.”

“You're not eating until that garage is clean.”

I gave Mikey's shoulder a squeeze when I walked behind him. He still had the same mouthful of food.

“Swallow,” I whispered to him, but I don't think he heard me. My parents were screaming at each other. Dad was telling Mom she babies us, and she was calling him a bully. Same old stuff.

The phone rang just when I was walking by it, so I took the call.

“Hello?”

“Is this Phillip?” the voice on the other end asked.

“It's Pip,” I said.

“This is Mr. Giraldi.”

I thought I was going to hurl right there on the kitchen floor. I didn't say a word. I put my hand over the mouthpiece so he wouldn't hear all the screaming behind me, and pulled the cord as far as I could into the living room.

“I was calling to speak to your father,” he said.

“I thought we had a deal.”

“I called Ms. Butler today. She said you never called her. That was
your
end of the deal.”

My father was yelling pretty loud. There was no way Giraldi couldn't hear it, no matter how tight I had my hand on the mouthpiece.

“I am not playing around,” he said. “You can't stop me every time I try to call.”

“I'll call her now.”

“She's not in.” He was quiet for a second. Maybe he was listening to my father call my mother names I'd get detention for using in class. “You'd better call her first thing in the morning and have an appointment for the afternoon. If you don't, while you're off smoking dope or doing whatever it is you do, I'll be on the phone with your father.”

“I hear you.”

“Get the hell off the phone,” my father yelled.

“Do the right thing, Phillip,” Giraldi said. “This is your last chance. See it for what it is.”

Then I heard a dial tone.

I hung up, thinking anybody looking at me could see my heart beating under my shirt.

 

I started walking past my father to the door, but he stopped his yelling right in the middle of a sentence to grab my elbow. He leaned in and sniffed my shoulder.

“What's that smell? You smell like—what the hell is that?”

I wondered if my parents ever smoked pot. If he figured out the smell, I wasn't going to be cleaning the garage. I was going to be picking out my casket.

“Wood shop,” I told him. “It stinks up my clothes.”

“Do you ever wash, for cryin' out loud?”

“You want me to clean the garage or take a shower?”

“I want you to get the hell out of here before I puke.”

Like he never does that.

I was thinking, What does he care how I smell? He just wants to put me down. The guy has a whole list on me. I'm stupid, I don't listen, I'm a smart-ass, a slob, and now I stink too.

Screw him. He doesn't know anything about me.

Asshole.

I don't take wood shop.

Even from inside the garage I could hear my parents yelling at each other.

How could I be related to these people? Maybe someday the truth would come out that I was really left at their door by gypsies. Maybe that was why my brother was named Junior and not me.

I don't look like any of them. Mikey has our father's dark curly hair and blue eyes. Mom and I have brown eyes, but hers are round like pizzas and mine are like footballs. I'm the only Downs with blond hair, and nobody on my mom's side of the family is blond either.

I had no idea where to start in the garage. My father had been yelling at me for weeks to clean it. I kept saying yeah, yeah, but this was the first time I'd seen the inside of the place in months.

I looked around. None of the crap in there was mine, but for some stupid reason I was the one who had to clean it. There was an old box fan with a spider family hanging out in between the slats, an air conditioner, eight million extension cords, and an old dresser. There were about eight half-empty bottles of detergent and twenty other cans and bottles of cleaners probably from back when George Beattie was alive. There were Christmas decorations, rusted tools, and jelly jars filled with nails and screws. There were boxes and boxes of crap, a ton of dirt, and way too many bugs.

“Whoooooosh!” My brother came running in with his red Superman cape flying from the back of his neck. He made a swooshing sound all around the garage, trying to be faster than a speeding bullet. Then he made believe he was landing right in front of me.

“Metropolis is safe,” he said. “I got the bad guys.”

“You beat up Dad?”

He didn't answer me. It's a trick he uses that he learned from his big brother.

I pushed a few boxes around. One of them felt more solid, better packed, than the others. I pulled open the flaps and looked inside. All I could see was rolled-up newspaper. I unwrapped one roll and inside was a statue of a boy with a big head and a very white face.

“Look at this, Bugs. Mom used to collect these. She packed them away when you were two years old because you couldn't keep your paws off anything.”

“Why not?”

“Why not what? Why couldn't you keep your paws off anything? Because you were two years old and a pain in the butt—kind of like you are now.”

I re-wrapped the statue and put it back in the box. I wondered if Mom had forgotten she had them.

“Pip?”

“What?”

“Why do they call them M&M's? Why don't they call them G&G's or B&B's?”

“Who cares?”

“Me.”

“Don't you care about anything else?”

“Yes. I just wanted to know.”

“So go on
www.whogivesacrapaboutm&m
's.com.”

I pushed some paint cans to the side, and Mikey started zooming around the garage again. Then he just stopped. “Pip?”

“What now, Bugs?”

“Do you love Daddy?”

I should have let him stick to the candy questions.

“Do
you
?” I asked him.

“I think so.”

I opened another box and found a bunch of rotted old Tinkertoys that smelled like garbage.

“Pip?”

“What?”

“Does Daddy love me?”

I wasn't sure if I felt sorry for the kid or if I felt like slugging him. All I wanted to do was grab a couple of hits off a joint and have a beer with the guys.

But I was stuck in the garage with Super-Stupid-Question-Man.

“What do you think, Bugs?”

“Yes?”

“Listen, I got a lot to do in here. Could you cut me a break and scram?”

He stuck his tongue out at me and went back to zooming around the garage. He had his arms out like airplane wings. Three seconds later, faster than a speeding idiot, a stack of boxes went crashing to the floor and stuff spilled out all over the place.

“Oops,” he said, friggin' genius that he is.

“Nice job, butthead. Now put it all back.”

He bent down to pick stuff up. Then he came over to me with a handful of bottle caps.

“What's all this?” he asked.

I couldn't believe it. I thought I'd thrown them out a hundred years ago.

“That's my old bottle cap collection.”