The Accidental Siren (3 page)

* * *

Years later, the smell of basil would remind
me of Mara’s eyes; how they matched
exquisitely
the flicking
emerald glass of the tea-candle sitting between my lasagna and her
Chianti at the
Campanile
in LA. But in the mid-nineties,
basil meant Mom’s kitchen.

“What happened to your cheek?” she asked
without looking up from the stove. “You know how worried Whitney’s
mother gets when you wrestle.”

“We weren’t wrestling. I just tripped. Where
is everybody?”

“Jake has a time-out in Mom and Dad’s room,
Bobby has a time-out in your room, Dad’s in the tower with his head
in the clouds, Fantasia’s right behind you–rock her for me?–and
Olivia’s in her room with... what’s her name... the redhead?”

“Kimmy? I thought you said no friends on
Saturday nights!”

Mom looked up but continued to stir. “You
want some cheese with that whine? Next week is your sister’s first
set of exams and I told her she could study with a friend. Don’t be
a little booger tonight, okay? They’re nervous.”

“I thought exams were for high
schoolers.”

“Junior high too. Do Mom a favor and be sweet
to your sister, okay?”

“I’ll be good.”

“Pinky promise?”

Whenever I fly home for the holidays, I make
it a point to squeeze my Mother’s shoulders, to calm her hazel
eyes, and to ask her about
her.
Like most “stay-at-homes,”
Mom lived for everyone but herself. She was a chameleon of
necessity with the ability to morph–seamlessly and without
complaint–into whatever roll her family demanded. At once she was a
gourmet chef, a fast-food employee, a soccer player, baseball
player, frisbee thrower and Monopoly banker; a nutritionist, cab
driver, hair-stylist, architecture consultant, surgeon
(specializing in sliver removal), lover, mentor, counselor and
executioner. She performed her duties despite a low metabolism,
high cholesterol, and a weakness for things covered in cheese; she
wasn’t fat, but her body fluctuated between varying degrees of
“round.” During the nineties, her dimpled thighs went to war with
Dr. Atkins, Weight Watchers, Susan Summers and a plethora of “lose
forty pounds in two weeks!” yo-yo schemes. But like everything
personal, Mom buried her weight issues in a carousel of characters,
performing daily routines for her family’s well-being. (Only in
writing this book was I able to make these observations; in ‘94,
Mom was just a mom.)

“Yeah, Ma,” I said. “I pinky promise.”

She balanced her ladle on the pot’s edge,
bent down, ran her thumb across my cut, and pecked my forehead. “Go
fix up your face and tell Dad dinner’s ready in ten. I love you,
Jamesie.”

I wiped off the kiss and groaned, “Love you
too.”

* * *

For years, my parents feared I’d never come.
After twelve months of failed attempts, Mom was finally diagnosed
with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, a disease that made it difficult to
ovulate and, twenty-three years later, is harboring the cancer
that’s draining her life. When she lost all hope of giving birth,
she quit her job as a realtor and enrolled in a class for foster
parents.

Six months later, Olivia came into their
lives. They fostered her from the day she was released from the
hospital and adopted her the day the courts allowed. Seventeen days
after signing the papers, Mom discovered she was pregnant with
me.

Her love of children (and a knack for
stirring spaghetti while burping a baby) yielded a crop of little
brothers and sisters for Livy and me; “temporary gifts,” Mom would
call them, and when they lived with us, they were family. Bobby and
Jake were temporary gifts too, the “on-again-off-again” type whose
mother wobbled the line between “stable” and “unfit.” The twins
were weasely little rug-rats with no vital affect on my story, but
provide a colorful backdrop none-the-less.

The parlor had green carpet and a tin ceiling
and served as the central hub for every room on the main level. The
kitchen could be accessed from two open archways separated by a
piano that never got played. Livy’s bedroom was on the left. Dad
helped her nail a chalkboard to her door so she could “express her
individuality”; today it read
“KIMMY IS THE COOLEST!!!”
and,
hidden in the bottom corner,
“livy loves ryan!”
I could hear
her boom-box through the wall, the soft baseline gave the castle a
steady pulse.
Studying... my butt!

My room was next in line. A glow-in-the-dark
galaxy of stars clung to the door with poster putty. I cracked
it–just an inch–and peeked inside. Bobby was in his undies, hugging
his knees and sucking his thumb as if my beanbag was a womb.

“Whadja do?” I asked.

“J-Jake stole my orange c-c-c-crayon and I
dinin’t even do noffin!”

I grinned and sealed the little jailbird back
in my room. I slunk past the library hallway to my parent’s room
and pressed gently on the door. Jake was in the fetal position too,
wrapped in my father’s robe and sucking his thumb. “Hey, Jake the
Snake,” I whispered, “whadja do?”

He sniffled. “I stole Bobby’s crayon and he
punched me in da nose!”

I snickered and quietly closed the door.

Next were the two stairwells. An antique iron
gate blocked the downward steps on the right. They led to the
foyer, garage, playroom and the unfinished guest room. I barreled
up the other set with leaps and bounds, zoomed passed the thin
windows where I sometimes pretended to be a medieval archer, then
emerged into a vast and glorious ballroom with twenty-foot ceilings
and awful floral-print carpet. I tugged the lapel of my invisible
velvet robe, straightened my jewel-studded crown, bowed to my
minions, then strode with lumbering poise to the base of the spiral
staircase. “Dad!” I called. “Dinner in ten!”

Silence.
Then, the click of a pen...
the thump of a hardcover book... the shallow cry of a wooden
chair... five intentional steps above my head and my father
appeared at the balcony rail. He wore square glasses–always–and
held himself with a scholarly demeanor. Despite his ruffled hair
and loosened tie, David Parker was as mild and structured as his
blueprints. “I’ll be right down,” he said.

Believe me when I tell you that–like most
boys–I lost all reverence for my father by the time I could drive a
stick-shift. But now that I’m older, I find myself reverting to
that childhood sense of bridled awe:
my dad can do anything.
He’s in his sixties now and still a master architect. He’s a
carpenter, an artist and a connoisseur of wine, beer, books and
film. He’s an avid fishermen, a poet, and an amateur photographer.
On his forty-ninth birthday, he went bungee-jumping from a
helicopter... probably thought about work the whole way down.

After Mom bought him a book about Michigan
wildlife the Christmas before this story, Dad added “birdwatcher”
to his list of interests. The new hobby brought tubs of seed to the
garage and more feeders on our property than discarded toys. On
weekends he rolled up his blueprints, unlocked the shed, immersed
himself in a train wreck of chicken-wire, rope and wood, and
tinkered for hours on a more effective means of keeping squirrels
off his feeders.

A month ago, The Grand Harbor Tribune
reported a Bald Eagle sighting over the lake and speculated that a
whole family of the patriotic birds may have nested in the woods on
the outskirts of town. Since the article, Dad spent his spare
moments locked in the tower with patient binoculars around his neck
and a determined checklist of birds on his lap.

“That man gets obsessed,” Mom told me. “I
love your father like Bush loved this country, but if those
gosh-darned eagles don’t show up soon... I’m hiring a plumber to
fix the disposal!”

* * *

Family dinner.

The dining-room/living-room combo was a
recent addition to the castle and still carried the grainy smell of
new carpet. There were seven of us including Kimmy, but Mom was
still back and forth from the table to the kitchen, unable to sit
until the rest of us were fed.

My leg bounced beneath the table. At some
strategic moment I had to bring up the camcorder, and I still
didn’t know if I should tell the truth or lie. I dipped my garlic
bread in my milk, sprinkled extra cheese on my noodles, and
politely devoured my spaghetti and meatballs.

“There goes the Super Nintendo,” Livy said
and Kimmy choked on her food to stifle the laugh.

“Watch it, Princess,” Dad said and eyed her
from the head of the table.

“I’m just sayin’, if he wants his silly game,
he could just eat like I do.”

“It’s called genetics!” I said, then grabbed
a meatball and raised my arm like a catapult. I hesitated.

Multi-colored beads hung at the tips of
Livy’s tight braids and rattled when she cocked her head with
“you’ve-got-to-be-kidding” annoyance. “Go ahead, Jamesie. Throw it.
I’ve never seen you waste a handful of meat before!”

“Olivia Parker!” Mom said from the kitchen.
“Be nice to your brother or Kimmy goes home! James, if you throw
that meatball, you’re on toilet duty for a month!”

Dad glared at me over the rim of his bifocals
to reaffirm Mom’s threat, then took a sip of his fancy beer and
grinned.

I lowered my arsenal. “Livy’s just crabby
‘cause of Ryan Brosh.”

Livy coiled like a pissed off cobra. Her
spine tightened, her shoulders constricted into ridged knobs, and
she shot me a look so deadly I could taste the venom.

Her silent attack worked. I slunk to my seat
and stuck out my tongue.

She opened her mouth in retaliation and
showed me the creamy red mush of half-chewed pasta.

The twins giggled and shoveled marinara sauce
on their tongues, then opened their mouths too.

Kimmy snickered.

Dad cut the tension by clearing his throat.
“James, your mother tells me you might have a screening for your
summer project?”

My heart sank like peas in milk. “I told her
not to call them. The movie won’t be any good anyways.”

“If it won’t be good, why did I agree to be
the executive producer?”

I rubbed the blunt end of my fork against the
bandaid on my cheek.
Think, James! The camera was yours, right?
Why should they care what you do with your own stuff?

That line of reasoning was foolish; my
parents let me buy the camcorder to prove my responsibility. Plus,
I only paid half... they matched my savings dollar for dollar.

“The art show is a big deal at The Lakeshore
Celebration,” Dad continued. “Mom said she talked them into
accepting film submissions this year. We expect a lot from
you.”

Mom Of The Year finally arrived with
Fantasia’s bottle. “First prize is a hundred-dollar savings bond
for the kid’s show,” she said. “They’re going to set up a TV and
VCR in a conference room, and James can invite whoever he
wants.”

I searched my plate for something to calm my
galloping heart, but the food was gone. Every last drop of sauce
had been mopped with bread.
Dangit, darnit, crap and
bungholes!
I thought.
Should I lie or tell the
truth?

“How was your location scout?” Dad asked.
“Did you find a good path for the war scene?”

I shoulda let Danny keep the dang picture!
Forget Roslyn! Why was she taking naked pictures of herself
anyways?

“James?” Dad said and narrowed his brow.

What could I do? I couldn’t stay mute
forever! My old man could read faces like Sherlock Holmes and smell
fear like a raptor! He was a fierce gambler back in his day; never
bet more than he could lose and only played to win. When I was old
enough to hear such stories, Mom recalled an overseas business trip
in which Dad out-bluffed a trio of Taiwanese business associates
for eight-hundred US dollars with a pair of nines. “They won most
of it back,” he added when the story neared exaggeration, “But you
shoulda seen their faces!”

“James?” Mom asked. “You alright?”

All eyes were on me.

“My camera!” I blurted in an Oscar-worthy
performance. “I think I left it in the woods!”

* * *

I was sent to bed without ice cream. Thanks
to my little white lie, Dad woke me up at sunrise to search for the
missing camera.

While everyone else spent Family Day baking
snicker-doodles and playing spoons, I meandered through the woods
in search of something I would never find. To lighten the blow and
strengthen the lie, I made a production out of the punishment by
drawing a map of the woods and enlisting the twins for help.

When the DEET wore off and the ‘squitos made
their move, I conveniently recalled using the camera at the beach.
Jake and Bobby helped me putter around the shore, dune grass, and
steps, kicking driftwood from the sand and plucking interesting
shells from the water’s edge.

When we returned empty-handed, Dad lowered
his binoculars, looked at the ground, and shook his head.

It took years before I understood the reason
I lied: I never looked at the photo of Roslyn...
but I
accidentally glimpsed the corner of her thigh before I creased the
plastic
. That’s why I couldn’t tell the truth;
that dang
glimpse of thigh.

I was certain that I did the right thing by
trading the camera, but with the overwhelming guilt of
maybe–
possibly–
noticing a
sliver
of a girl’s upper
leg, how could I explain the truth to my father and expect to look
him in the eyes? In our house, the word “naked” meant twin boys
streaking through the kitchen after shower time. The word “girl”
meant long hair, dangly earrings, and curlycue penmanship. But
combining
the words created a phrase that could turn a
simple conversation about bullies, cameras, and “doing the right
thing” into something awkward and naughty; a conversation, perhaps,
I wasn’t ready for.