Breakfast with Neruda (20 page)

“So you moved out,” Shelly says.

“Yeah. Living in my mom's house is like living inside a Ziploc bag with rotting fruit,” I say. “It's dark and stinky and totally unlivable. I only go there occasionally to use the shower and to try to find a shirt or something.”

Shelly caresses my face. “I am so sad for you, Michael.”

I feel myself getting all fragile inside, like I am scratched glass. One tap and I will shatter. “The thing is,” I say, “I love my mom a lot. And I know she loves me. She tries to buy me crap, and sometimes it's stuff I can use, like that camping gear. That gear will probably help me survive this winter, but most of what she gives me, I toss out. It's either too battered, or I don't have room for it.”

We pull up in front of the school building and I park the Blue Whale. “My mother appears normal, and she's had the same job for years. Strangers can barely tell there's something off about her.”

I shut off the car. “I just wonder about the dark mysteries that linger from her past, and why Paul feels so guarded about it. He's known her most of their lives, and he always knew something was wrong, but she functioned. Like now, she functions. She goes to work, pays her bills, drives her car. Outside her house, you'd barely detect my mom is freaking nuts.”

“Does she date?”

“Sort of, but now she always meets guys out in public. She doesn't bring them home anymore.”

“Kind of like you.”

“What are you talking about?” I say. “You're in my home every day.”

She smiles. “Oh yeah. The car.”

We walk to the entrance of the building. “I guess my mom taught me how to survive by forcing me to discover it for myself.”

“So are you going to let me go home with you?” Shelly asks.

“You're such a pain in the ass,” I say.

She nudges against me. “Yeah, but you like me anyway.”

After school, we stop at Rite Aid and I buy some Vicks VapoRub, gloves, paper masks, and matches. When we get back to the car, Shelly asks if I plan to burn the place down.

“Someday, maybe. The matches are for the odor. I learned in science class that the sulfur dioxide from the flame masks the odor.”

“What's the VapoRub for?”

“The eucalyptus also masks the odor if you put some under your nose.” I pull up to the row of townhouses. “Ours is the end unit,” I say.

“You're right,” she says. “It looks fairly normal.”

“It's all a façade,” I say.

My mom's car is not there, and I'm never sure if that's good or bad. She could be working, or she may be at Goodwill or dumpster diving. Annie hears my car and comes around from the back as Shelly and I are walking across the lawn. My sister looks concerned that I have brought someone here. “Hey, Annie,” I say. “This is Shelly.”

“I've heard a lot about you,” Shelly says, as they shake hands.

Annie's eyes display surprise. “He has said absolutely nothing about you.”

“Your brother is a funny creature,” Shelly says.

“That he is,” Annie nods. We walk to the back porch and Annie glances at Shelly.

“She knows,” I say.

Annie nods. “I took stuff out of the box and laid it on a tarp in the sun,” she says. “To get the stink out.”

It's a sea of small white papers, photos turned over to protect their surfaces. Annie has anchored some of them with stones. “You're a treasure,” I say.

I kneel down and turn over one of the photos. The boy in the photo looks familiar, yet he's also a stranger. This kid is free of worry, as if he's the happiest kid in the world. I don't recall having such unguarded moments of joy. I was six years old in this snapshot, before Bob died and life was carefree and fun. It was taken in Whetstone Park, and I'm surrounded by golden leaves, running at the photographer, most likely Bob or my mother. My hands are stuffed with leaves, and I have shoved leaves inside my sweater like the scarecrow in
The Wizard of Oz
.

Shelly kneels next to me. “Is that you?” I nod. “You were so cute. What happened, Neruda?”

“My life.”

I turn over another. It's a snapshot from the same day, and two boys smiling with an ineffable happiness stand on the dirt trail in the park, surrounded by trees. The boys are dressed in flannel shirts and jeans and hiking boots. They look clean and new, well cared for, even if their hair is a little ragged. The bigger boy, me, has his arms around a towheaded Jeff.

“God, is that Jeff?” Annie says. “His hair was so white.”

“He still kind of looks like that,” I say. “He still has that cheesy, senseless happiness.”

“Aw. Who is this little monkey?” Shelly says, as she picks up a photo of a toddler with static-cling hair. My hair looks like I've been electrocuted.

I laugh. “I look like an orangutan in that one. I'm lucky I was cute.”

I scan the other papers on the tarp and look for official-looking documents.

“I didn't see anything that identifies your father in the box,” Annie says. “But you still might want some of this stuff.”

Old grade cards from elementary school. Homemade birthday cards, a drawing I made of a ship. “I don't even remember doing this.”

“I think she kept something from every day of our childhoods,” Annie says.

“Did you find an Annie box?”

She shakes her head. “Everything is an Annie box.”

“Sorry,” I say. I squeeze her into me.

“I'll keep looking for more of your stuff, though.”

“Where do you think Mom would keep anything with information about me?”

Annie shrugs. “There has to be something.”

“So you can't ask your mom directly?” Shelly asks.

“No,” Annie and I say in unison.

“She's odd about her past,” Annie says.

“What about your grandmother?”

“We never see her,” Annie says.

“But would she turn you away if you stopped for a visit?”

“Probably not,” I say.

“But she's odd too,” Annie says. “She won't talk about things either.”

“Is your grandfather still alive?” Shelly asks.

“We don't know. Neither of them will talk about him.”

“Do you have any aunts and uncles?”

“Mom had a brother who died in a motorcycle accident when she was in high school,” I say. “Paul said it changed her.”

“Wait!” Shelly looks like an alarm bell went off in her head. “Maybe we're looking in the wrong place. Maybe your dad was another student at the high school.”

The three of us stop, as if the world stops spinning. “But Paul claims he doesn't know him.”

“Paul might be lying,” she says. “You said he tries to protect your mom's secrets.”

“So what are you proposing?”

“We find a means to look through old yearbooks,” Shelly says. “We might see pictures of her with a guy other than Paul.”

Annie, Shelly, and I gather the pictures and papers up and carefully place them in a Kroger bag. They still bear a sour odor, but I think I can tolerate it.

Shelly and I drive to Wendy's, order Cokes and fries, and sit at a corner table. “I'm just glad you didn't see the inside,” I say.

“Maybe next time,” she says.

“Maybe never,” I say. “I like you well enough to never take you inside.”

I drop Shelly off at her house, and go to work at the theater. After I get off, I am tempted to park somewhere in her neighborhood, but my crappy car might attract attention, so I take my usual parking space near the stadium. Sleep comes easily, partly because I can lock the doors from the inside and only crack the windows. Cool nights are best, nights when I can wrap myself in a blanket. And now that Shelly knows my worst, and has not judged me, I feel lighter.

As I walk toward my car fresh out of the shower, Shelly sniffs me. “Mmm. You're wearing L'Homme Libre,” she says. “Where did you get that one?”

“
GQ
left in the teachers' lounge.”

By lunchtime, my fancy cologne smell has vanished. Earl has us waxing the floors. But first we have to strip off the old layer by dissolving it with what smells like embalming fluid. We all reek like dissected animals by the time we go to lunch.

When Shelly pulls out a cigarette, I say, “Aren't you afraid you're flammable right now?”

“Yeah, you may be right. Loan me a shirt.”

I find a couple clean shirts in one of my boxes.

“Turn around,” she says. I quickly change my own shirt, and turn back around just in time to see her smooth my Jim Morrison shirt over her hips. The shirt is so long she looks naked underneath. “Nice dress,” I say.

We eat a quick Wendy's lunch in the parking lot since we're too stinky to go inside anywhere, and then head back to work detail.

After a day of stripping floors, Shelly and I slog to my car around two, drenched in sweat. My phone buzzes. “I hope this isn't work,” I groan and look at the text. “It's Annie.”

-Mom is working today. Do you have to work after school?

-No.

-You have 8 hours to snoop through boxes. If you can stand it.

-Might bring Shelly.

-Let me tidy the house.

-Ha ha

I tell Shelly I'm going to look through boxes at my mom's. “Wanna come along?”

“Are you sure you want me to?”

“No, but the more people we have searching, the quicker we can find out how futile this will be.”

“Okay. Let me text my mom.”

“Wear ratty clothes,” I say. “Something you'd be willing to throw away.”

She looks at her shorts, and she is still wearing my T-shirt. “I'm not tossing Jim Morrison,” I say.

“I'll wear what I had on earlier,” she says.

“We should probably stop by your house and pick up something you can change into afterward.”

I park in front of Shelly's house. She opens her door. “Aren't you coming in?”

“No,” I say. “I smell so bad I'm emitting fumes.” She shakes her head and walks up the driveway. “Put on shoes other than flip-flops,” I yell from the open window. “Her floors are treacherous. And can you get a couple trash bags?”

She nods and continues toward her house. She comes back a couple minutes later with a sack of clothes, a wad of white trash bags, and two bananas. She hands me one.

Annie sits on the back porch reading
Catching Fire
. She is halfway through it.

“I love that series,” Shelly says.

“This one is even better than the first.” She stands up and stretches her legs. She looks Shelly over. “Are you sure you're ready for this?” Shelly nods.

I tell Shelly to leave her extra clothes on the porch. I open the bag of supplies I bought yesterday. I smear VapoRub under my nose and hand the jar off to Shelly. The three of us wear masks and gloves.

“We look like a hazmat team,” Shelly says.

“Believe me, we should be wearing hazmat suits,” I say.

I grasp a trash bag and open the door. It's been weeks since I've been inside my mother's house. I adjust my mask, but the odor still permeates the gauzy filter as soon as I step through the back door. Shelly follows me in and stops to gaze around.

“What are you thinking?” I ask.

“That this is surreal.” Her voice is muffled through the mask.

The kitchen floor is fairly clear due to Annie's insistence, but the counters are heaped with the clutter of dishes, pots and pans, and open food containers. The dead-mouse smell lingers, along with mold and rotten fruit.

“Are you okay?” I ask Shelly.

She nods.

“Watch your step,” I say as we move into the living room. Odd name for a room where life can barely happen. Shelly and I climb on top of stuff that sometimes slips under our feet. “Damn,” I say. “I forgot the matches.”

“Seems to be a pattern with you,” Shelly says.

“Maybe I should have tried to blow up this place instead of Rick's car.”

“Why do you have matches?” Annie says. “Are you planning to have a bonfire?”

“Wouldn't be a bad idea.” I stop and scan the mountain in front of us. “I really don't know where to start. Annie, do you have any ideas?”

“How about over by that desk?”

“What desk?”

“The one in that corner.” Annie points to a spot near the picture window.

The boxes and objects are stacked up to the light fixture. “Oh yeah, we do have a desk.”

I remember when we first moved in all three of us kids would sit and color or do homework at the desk, and sometimes Mom would read or pay bills there. I step forward and hear something snap under my feet. I look down. It's a plastic doohickey now broken under my feet. I open a trash bag and toss it in.

“Will your mom notice?” Shelly asks.

“Probably. She remembers everything.”

I tread carefully toward the corner. “I'm going to move some of this shit by handing it to you guys. See if you can find a spot for it.”

“Wait!” Annie says. “Do you have a camera phone on you?” she asks Shelly.

“Yes. Why?”

“So we can take a picture and move everything back the way it was.”

“Good idea.” Shelly hands me her phone, and I snap a few shots of the corner. I give her back the phone. I reach up and slide the board games off the top of the pile and hand them to Shelly, who passes them on to Annie.

“I remember playing Candy Land,” she says. “I wondered what happened to the game.”

There must be twenty boxed games. “We never played any of these,” I say. I cough as dust spews around me. “She must have gotten them free somewhere.”

“Why would she accumulate kids' games?” Shelly asks.

“Her logic would be someday our children would play them,” Annie says.

“My children will never set foot inside this house,” I say.