Notes on a Near-Life Experience (4 page)

Counseling? Missed appointments? What are they talking about? Or not talking about? What are they
supposed
to be talking about? And why haven't they talked to us about it? I look at Allen for some sign of what we should do—stay at the table, leave, ask questions, keep our mouths shut.

“Mom, how long do I have to wear my braces? They aren't doing anything. My teeth look exactly the same as they did before,” Keatie whines, baring her teeth for emphasis.

If Allen or I made a comment like that, it would probably be an attempt to change the subject or steer my parents away from an argument and toward a less volatile line of conversation. However, I don't think Keatie has any such motive. She refuses to believe that there is ever anything very wrong with the world. She sees those commercials on TV about starving kids and honestly believes that somehow they got that skinny between lunch and dinner. When my parents fight, it worries me; Keatie thinks it's normal, that they're not really fighting at all. And the question about when she's going to get her braces off? She's had them for three weeks.

“Keat, they've told you a million times that it'll take at least another year,” Allen snaps. He knows all about Keatie's orthodontia because he takes her to most of her appointments. My mom started working again shortly after Al got his driver's license; he got his car in exchange for agreeing to
drive Keatie and me around. When I get my driver's license, I, too, will have the privilege of driving Keatie to the orthodontist, violin lessons, and soccer games.

Mom ignores the orthodontic conversation and addresses Dad. “I'm asking you if you are willing to work… and compromise… make some changes…do something for this family. Do you care at all about what's going on here?”

There is a pause, too long and very awkward, between Mom's question and Dad's reply. In the four seconds it takes Dad to come up with his answer, we've heard something else. He
doesn't
know, not for sure; maybe he
doesn't
care. I'm not sure what he and Mom are talking about, exactly, but it feels like we're all involved in it somehow.

“Of course I care. What kind of a question is that?”

But it's too late. Dad's answer doesn't feel like the right one, the one Mom wants, maybe the one
we
'd want if we knew what her question meant. It feels like an answer we shouldn't have heard. My chest tightens. I feel like I'm suffocating. My face feels like it's on fire. It's strange how sometimes you can understand an answer without even knowing the question, kinda like on
Jeopardy!
Dad's answer tells me that something is broken in my family and that it's probably something I can't fix, especially since I don't really know what has fallen apart.

I get up from the table as quietly as I can and mumble something about great dinner and homework to do; Allen does the same, dragging Keatie along with him, leaving Mom and Dad alone at the table.

I go to the bathroom and stare at myself in the mirror, looking for a change in the way I look, any indication that I'm defective, that I'm part of a defective family. It's difficult to focus, though, and I wish I could just close my eyes, make myself disappear. I feel weak and tired. A wave of nausea hits me. The toilet is too far away, so I aim for the sink and I throw up—spaghetti and Caesar salad from the dinner I've just eaten. The dinner where Dad's pause made us wonder whether he loved us enough to “compromise” or “make some changes.” The dinner where Keatie complained that her braces weren't moving her teeth fast enough. The dinner where my life began to parallel a bad soap opera. I drink water straight from the faucet, trying to rid myself of the sour, acidic taste in my mouth.

After a few minutes of puking and rinsing, I feel clean. Like everything bad has been emptied out of me. I focus on this feeling. I want to hold on to the sense that what's happened is over. Gone. A temporary bad taste.

I spend the rest of the night in my room, staring at my math homework, then my English homework, then my social studies homework, then the math again, my cell phone turned off, my stereo turned up.

After a few hours, Allen knocks on my door. “Are you okay?”

“Sure.”

“I just wanted to check and see.”

He stands in the doorway, waiting for me to say something. I don't.

“I think maybe they're going to get a divorce. They've been fighting a lot lately,” he says.

I don't say anything. For some reason, I'm mad at Allen for suggesting that they might be splitting up; it feels like he's giving up, making it happen by saying it.

“Well, good night,” he says.

“Night.”

I
WANT TO KNOW HOW ADULTS DECIDE WHEN THE TRUTH IS
necessary and when it isn't, and if there's some kind of an age requirement for it. Like, does getting a driver's license or the right to vote also mean it's time for you to know why your aunt Lucinda was in that hospital for two months when you were eight, or what really happened to your dog when it mysteriously vanished three weeks after its fourteenth birthday?

The strange thing is that the truth has this way of seeping through, leaking out, even when you build walls and dams and work as hard as you can to contain it. It's like even when no one tells you what the truth is, somehow, eventually, you just feel it. Even if you don't want to.

S
ATURDAY MORNING
. J
ULIAN
, A
LLEN
,
AND
K
EATIE ARE UP
-stairs playing video games; I'm in the basement working on the piece I'm choreographing for a competition. I go up to my room to find some different music and Dad emerges from his and Mom's room with a suitcase.

“Allen,” he calls, “come here and help me.”

I grab a mix CD from my room and pause at the staircase to see what's going on.

Al comes down the hall with Keatie following.

“I want to help, too,” she says.

“I don't think I have anything small enough for you to take,” Dad tells her.

“What are you doing?” Al asks Dad, eyeing his suitcase.

“I need your help getting my things into my car,” Dad says.

“Why?”

“Allen, please. Take this out to the car.”

Allen doesn't say anything; he turns and goes back down the hall, leaving Dad with the suitcase.

Dad drags the suitcase down the hall. Keatie and I watch without saying a word. We go to the balcony and look on as Dad struggles to load it into his trunk.

I feel like I'm dreaming, like this can't be happening, because you're supposed to be able to feel things like this coming, but I didn't. Or maybe I wouldn't, or just didn't want to? I wonder if this is how all families come apart—so quietly and unexpectedly that you are numb by the time the biggest blow hits. I decide it's probably better not to feel anything at all than to feel everything at once and break under the weight. Like this girl Tracy at my school: her parents split up and she stopped wearing makeup and doing her homework; she fell apart.

Allen wanders out to the driveway, watches Dad pack up, pretends to practice footwork with his soccer ball. Julian comes out, helping Dad carry the remainder of his suitcases and boxes from the house to his car. When they've finished, Dad thanks Julian and shakes his hand.

Keatie rushes out to the driveway, hugs Dad, and asks, “Where are you going?”

“I'm going to be staying in a condo across town. Your mother asked me to leave.”

“Why?” Keatie asks.

Dad hugs her again, then gets in his car and drives away.
I realize at this moment that my father has never explained anything to me; it's always been my mom: Santa, sex, quadratic equations, it was always Mom. I wonder what I will miss about my father, if I will miss him at all, and I am scared.

Julian and Keatie are the only ones who seem choked up when he leaves. Mom doesn't come out of her room until that evening, when she asks Allen to go pick up some Chinese food for dinner. I feel stronger, smarter than her for not being paralyzed the way she is. For the first time in my life, she offers no explanations. Maybe because we haven't asked the right questions, any questions. Maybe because this is too big for an explanation. Maybe she doesn't know how to explain. Maybe there is no explanation.

L
AST SUMMER WHILE OUR FAMILY WAS ON VACATION IN
Mexico, I met this guy named Miguel. He had an accent that made him seem more attractive than he really was—I can see that now when I look at the pictures. Anyway, he really wanted to be a veterinarian. He talked about it a lot: how he “loffed aneemahls,” how “ees barry hard go to betreenahrian school.” I couldn't figure out why anyone would want to spend their life neutering cats. I mean,
really
want it.

My mom used to paint and sculpt; she studied art in college. She works in public relations now. She plans art openings once in a while—I think that's the closest she comes to actually making art. Allen, Keatie, and I bought her a potter's wheel last Christmas and she got pretty emotional when she opened it, but she's never used it. I found it in the garage last
week when I was looking for a box of my old dance costumes. A heavy, dusty box with a picture of a smiling, muddy, fully clothed couple on the front, clay on a wheel in front of them—a G-rated version of the sexy pot-throwing scene from that movie
Ghost
. I imagined my mom and dad making pots together. I pictured them arguing and throwing mud in each other's faces rather than smiling happily.

My dad spent nine years earning his PhD in film studies, and now he sells commercial real estate.

When I say that I want to be a dancer—“the next Martha Graham,” my mom says—and they tell me that I can do it, that I can be anything I want—I'm not sure I believe them.

T
HE
M
ONDAY AFTER
D
AD LEFT
, I
WAS EATING A BOWL OF
cereal in the kitchen and Keatie came in. She opened the door of the refrigerator, stared inside it for a few seconds, and then closed it.

“Mo-om,” she yelled. “Nobody made lunches.”

Mom came in half dressed, her hair still wet. “What's going on, sweetie?”