Breakfast with Neruda (27 page)

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

The waitress, looking confused, sets Shelly's and my coffee down. “Thanks,” I say. I glance over at Shelly, but she is deep in conversation with my ex-girlfriend. That can only be a disaster.

Rick taps on the table and looks out the window, and I fumble with the handle on my coffee cup. “You're wrong about Shelly,” I say.

“Okay,” he says. “I'm sorry. I just went on what I heard.”

“Get a hearing aid, Grandpa, because what you heard was a truckload of elephant shit.”

He snorts a laugh. “Does this make us even for you trying to kill me?”

“I didn't try to kill you,” I say. “I only wanted to blow up your car.”

“Yeah, and that turned out well for you.”

“You started it.”

Rick considers this. “Yes, I did. But you were the inadvertent catalyst in pushing Ashley and I together.”

“Ashley and me.”

“Fuck you and your AP English grammar.”

I smile. He always hated it when I one-upped him. “Words are all I have,” I say. “I got expelled from school, I am spending my summer cleaning the school, and until yesterday, I was living in my car.”

Rick leans against the back of the booth. “Say what?” he pauses, wrinkles his forehead. “
What?
”

“You know how I never took you to my house these past couple years?” He nods. “There was some truth that my mom slept in the daytime,” I say. “She often works nights. But the real reason is she's a hoarder. The house is a total disaster. And it got to where I couldn't stand it, so I moved out and started living in my car last fall.”

“Jesus,” he says. “You lived in . . . did Ashley know?”

“Nobody knew. Other than Mom, Jeff, and Annie.” I say. “And Shelly. She figured it out the first day she met me.”

“But where are you living now?”

“With Earl.”

“The custodian?”

“Yeah,” I say. “He noticed my car was on the school lot before he got there every morning. Once I admitted to Earl I lived in it, he insisted I move in with him and his wife.” I take a swallow of coffee. “Annie's there too.”

“Holy shit, Flynnstone. You could have moved in with us.”

I look down. “I didn't want anybody to know.”

He shook his head. “No wonder you went a little crazy.”

I shrug. “I was crazier before. But yeah,” I say, “the pressure may have exacerbated things. I was often hungry.”

Shelly approaches the table, holding a carry-out bag. “So are you two friends again?”

I raise my eyebrows and look at Rick. “I guess,” he says.

I smirk. “Someone has to do it.”

“Neruda,” she says, “we have to get back to school. I've already paid.”

Rick and I slide out from behind the booth. “Neruda?” he asks.

“It's his chosen name,” Shelly says. “For his fake ID. Michael Neruda.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah, well, see ya,” I say to Rick.

“Shake his hand,” Shelly nudges me.

“Okay, but I'm not kissing him.” Rick laughs, and he and I shake. “Later, man.”

I wave at Ashley as we walk out. Interesting how I feel nothing for her anymore.

Shelly starts nibbling on her breakfast in the car as I pull out onto Rocket Road. “Thanks,” I tell her. “I no longer feel like something is poking needles into my innards.” She nods and chews. “And it's getting easier to tell people my mom is a hoarder.” Shelly takes a long sip of her coffee.

“Maybe I'll put it on a billboard,” I say. “Susan Marie Flynn is a Giant Hoarder.”

Shelly laughs and takes a big bite of her sandwich.

“You have no idea how much better I feel right now. Like the sun came up after a long, hazy winter,” I say.

At the stoplight, I lean over and kiss Shelly. She tastes like eggs and cheese. She leans her head on my shoulder the rest of the way back to school.

I'm not looking forward to facing my mother with Annie. Earl offers to join us, but I figure he might stoke the fire. “Let me see how she takes it first,” I tell him.

As we pull up in front of the townhouse, Annie says, “Let's hope she's in a good mood.”

“Or that she hasn't called the cops and filed a missing person report.”

We head to the back of the house and walk in through the screen door. Mom is standing by the counter, pouring herself a cup of coffee. Her freshly showered hair hangs in a long braid down her back. “Hey, kids,” she says. She picks up a cigarette and twists the base before putting it in her mouth. She inhales and expels smoke.

“You didn't light it,” Annie says.

“It's called an e-cigarette,” Mom says. “It expels mist, but no tobacco smoke.” She hands it to us to look at. “I'm trying to quit, and one of my patients gave it to me.”

“Cool.” I hand it back to her.

Annie clears her throat. “Have you noticed the back porch is clean?”

“Yes,” Mom says. “What did you do with it all?”

“I moved.”

Our mother raises her eyebrows. “Where?”

“We're both living with Earl, the head custodian at school,” I say.

“Earl! Oh my God. He was there when I was in school.”

“Yeah,” I say, “He said he remembered you.”

Mom starts puttering around with stuff on the counter. Annie and I glance at each other. “Mom,” Annie says. “Did you hear what I said? I moved.”

“Yes, I heard you.” Mom pulls a large plastic bowl from a pile of junk on the counter and rinses it off in the sink. She sets the bowl down, turns to us, and says, “I need to go get dressed for work now.” She grabs her coffee cup and her e-cigarette, and disappears into the other room.

Annie and I just look at each other. “What was that?” she asks.

“Beats me.”

Our mother went on a rampage when Paul picked Jeff up. She threw things at them both as they loaded Paul's truck. When Jeff climbed into the passenger seat, Mom grabbed his sleeve and pleaded with him to stay.

“I'm sorry, Mom,” Jeff said. “I can't live here anymore.” He gently removed her hand from his shirt and closed the door. As Paul and Jeff drove away, Mom collapsed in the yard and wailed.

When I left, she helped me load my car. “Now whenever you get cold or need to eat, make sure you come back inside,” she said. “Don't be a stranger.”

“It's like I don't even exist.” Annie storms out the back door.

“Mom!” I follow my mother into the living room.

My mother doesn't notice my presence. She sets down her coffee cup and electronic cigarette and lifts an afghan from the couch. She drapes it around her shoulder
s
like a cape. She closes her eyes and twirls, her lips curled in a wistful smile. And it hits me. The cape—like the one she described the first time she and my father met under the stage. This mess of a house is her prop room. My mother has never left that room.

I back out quietly and go look for my sister. Annie is sitting on the back steps, sobbing. I kneel and wrap my arms around my sister.

“She cares more about all that junk than she does about her own children,” Annie says between sobs.

“She's confused,” I say. “She doesn't know what she cares about anymore.” Someday I'll explain to Annie what I figured out, but right now is not the moment to do that.

I drop Annie off at Earl and Dot's and head to work at the theater. On the way, my phone rings.

“So how did your mother take the news of you and Annie living with Earl?” Shelly asks.

“Surprisingly well,” I say. “She was creepily calm.”

“What do you mean?”

“When Annie told her
we moved in with Earl, all she said was she remembered him from when she was in school. Then she went to dress for work,” I say. “But I figured out why she hoards.”

“Oh?”

“Remember in her diary when she went to the prop room with my father? How she felt comfortable among all the clutter? She's recreated her own prop room.”

“That's so sad, Neruda.”

“Yeah,” I sigh. “It is.”

Earl and Dot are officially Annie's foster parents, and they have not tossed me out yet. My mother didn't even try to fight giving them custody of my sister, but she went ballistic when Social Services showed up at her house to talk her into cleaning it up. She called me and screamed expletives I didn't even know she knew. And now she's not speaking to me.

I go over every few days to talk to her, but she won't answer her door. Last time Jeff came with me, and I thought she'd come outside since she's not mad at him, but she shouted from her bedroom window, “You people are trespassing. You go away or I'm calling the sheriff.”

“I'm not giving up, Mom,” I yelled from the lawn. “One of these days you'll come down and talk to me.”

“Don't bet on it,” she screeched.

Later, Jeff and I talked to Paul about it. “She may end up losing everything,” he said. “She doesn't own the property, so if she doesn't clean it up, the landlord can throw her out. She could end up homeless.”

Earl went with me once and offered to help her, but she threatened to call the cops on him too. He threw his hands up in the air and said, “Sorry, kid. You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.”

One thing I know for certain is I can ever tell my mother I found out the truth about her and my father.

At school Earl still treats me like
a stray dog, but he only has Shelly and me another week, so he and Hess are getting as much bang for their buck as they can. This week we are painting the hallways. School starts in two weeks.

Rick and I don't hang together like we used to, but we're friends again. The four of us went out for pizza together last weekend. Ashley and Shelly get along surprisingly well.

“You do realize both of us have dated you,” Shelly said to me.

Rick laughed. “So both of you have had major lapses in sanity.”

I puffed out my chest. “No, it means the women at this table have amazingly good taste in men.” Ashley and Shelly both rolled their eyes, and Shelly made a gagging noise.

Maybe someday Rick and I will be tight again, but right now things are still stiff between us. He and Ashley are both headed to college in a few weeks. He's majoring in theater and music at University of Chicago and she's going to Wright State to major in art. Maybe distance and time will heal all of us. Odd to think I'm still technically in high school for another year.

And I'm looking forward to school this year. I could have taken the GED and been done with high school, but I like the idea of spending senior year with Shelly. We won't even be on the high school campus. The principal and guidance counselor suggested the best option for us odd ducks is to do postsecondary options where we take classes at the local branch of Ohio University. We will avoid the awkward high school drama, get our high school diplomas, and also receive college credit. So in a way, I'm headed to college too.

Since I'm eating real food every day I can lay off the donuts and junk food, and now I easily run five miles without feeling like I need oxygen. I'm not training for anything. Running just keeps the craziness of my life from detonating inside my head. Besides, I need to work off all the food Dot force-feeds me. Best of all, Shelly says I have a rocking body now. “Your abs look like you're made of Legos.”

Shelly, Shelly, Shelly. I've never known anyone like her. She is light and wind and thunder and ocean, and I can't imagine I would have survived this summer without her.

Shelly and I are sitting here at Starbucks, drinking lattes, using her laptop to find information on colleges and majors, even though I clearly told her I am not going to college after this year.

“You're going away to college, Neruda,” Shelly says. “I'm not going to be associated with an ignoramus.”

“But I come from nothing.”

“So did Lincoln, and he ended up becoming president.”

“Maybe I like being nothing,” I say. “Maybe my biggest ambition is to manage the theater at the mall.”

She sneers at me. “You're going to college.”

“Okay, I'll stay here and take classes locally.”

“You're getting out of this town. Far away from here, Neruda,” she says. “Far, far away.”

“But what about us?” Shelly is a big part of my life now, and it makes me sad to imagine not seeing her every day. There are infinite reasons to stay, and only one selfish reason to leave.

She sighs. “If we are meant to remain us, we'll find a way to make it work.”

“I can't leave now,” I say.

“Why not?”

“I've never even been to another state.”

She rolls her eyes at me.

“And then there's my job. It doesn't pay much, but I'm not totally dependent on Earl and Dot. I can pay my own way.” I fidget with the stir stick. “Most of all, I'd be leaving behind the people I love. The idea of not being able to see my brother and sister anytime I want punches me in the gut. My family needs me.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Neruda, you can't forfeit your life in order to solve your family's problems.”

“But I'm afraid my mom will go off the deep end if I leave.”

“She still has Jeff and Annie,” Shelly says. “And your sticking around here won't make your mother less screwed up,” she says. “You have to let yourself be the kid, not the parent.” She pauses and looks at me. She reaches across the table and takes my hand. “You have to go find what you've been looking for all these years.”