Authors: Sarah Bird
“Okay! All right! I’ll go. I just can’t do it right now. Tyler and I are running a business and he needs me.”
“You’re working at a frigging lunch wagon, and if we don’t go today, right now, that is exactly what you are going to be doing for the rest of your life! Is that what you want?”
“I am not ‘working at.’ We rent it. We’re partners. We’re building something, but just because it doesn’t exactly fit your perfect-daughter image, you don’t want to know anything about it.”
“About what? What is there to know? Seriously, tell me.”
“Why? So without you knowing anything, I can listen to you tell me what a loser I am?”
“Tell you you’re a loser? Aubrey, when have I ever told you you’re a loser? I have bathed you in toxic levels of self-esteem your entire life. I adored every drawing you ever held up for my approval and cheered every spelling test you ever passed. Your entire childhood was nothing but a Milky Way of gold stars awarded every time you brushed your teeth or pottied. Come on. We have been waiting for this day for sixteen years. We can finally claim your get-out-of-town money. Please, sweetie. For me. Let’s just keep all the options open.”
She jerks her arm away. “I said I’d do it! I can go this afternoon. I’ll meet you back here after the lunch rush.”
“I can’t believe you don’t want to be at the bank as soon as the doors open. What is so hard about this?”
“Uh, honoring your commitments. Ever heard of it?”
“How about your commitment to your future?”
“Whatever.”
“ ‘Whatever’? Did you just say ‘whatever’ to me?”
I stare at this surly stranger planted in the middle of my kitchen radiating disgust at me in her inevitable pair of Nike shorts and one of her redneck boyfriend’s old T-shirts and wonder if she is my penance for once believing that I was a parenting genius and that puberty was a tale invented by old wives who didn’t know how to accept and love their children and let them follow their own unique path to become the unique human they were intended to be. The way I, in all my enlightenment, had.
At just the moment when I want to scream, “You bitch!” and not in the chummy BFF way, I see tears, staunchly unshed, glaze her eyes. Mossy green with thick lashes, her eyes are exactly like Martin’s. Exactly like the one other person I loved most in the world who also became a complete and total stranger to me.
“Aubrey, sweetie. What is it? What’s going on? You can talk to me. You know you can tell me anything.”
Her chin quivers. The past year of hardness and distance falls from her and she is the little girl who collected dinosaur stamps and begged me for a pink bedroom with a canopy bed. There is a second of clarity, a truce. An umbilical connection joins us and I feel her anguish as surely as if she were kicking inside me beneath my heart.
“Aubrey, what’s wrong, baby? Please. Tell me. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out together.”
SEPTEMBER 9, 2009
E
very day I edge six inches closer to the football field. Today I reach the midway point between the football and band fields. It’s not even about Tyler. The android predator with the number seven on his jersey directing the other androids on the football field is really beside the point. Seven has become just one of 360 degrees on a compass. I could have picked any number to move toward. Just so long as it took me away from where I was, that was all that mattered.
That’s also how I feel about chatting with my father. I am just going to keep edging into it. Inch by inch. He wants to know everything about me. My classes, my teachers, my friends. He was actually interested in the fact that I got Saunders, the psycho physics teacher, instead of Miss Brawley, the non–mentally ill one. He loved my Freddie Mercury insight. He even noticed that I use “hectic” a lot. I told him it is sort of my signature word except that no one else besides him has ever noticed it. He told me that his signature word used to be “churlish.”
Having him to report back to makes the reversed-binocular feeling useful rather than weird. Like I am an anthropologist gathering data on the customs and culture of a strange tribe I’ve been dropped in the middle of.
Today is the first day since school started that isn’t so humid that my hair can make you seasick with all sorts of hectic waves and loopy roller-coaster twirls. The lack of humidity is good, since I got in some flatiron action myself and my hair is almost as straight and smooth as Paige’s or Madison’s. Also, the Nike running shorts that I am wearing are as short and ridiculously expensive as theirs, and my T-shirt is just as unflattering and generic, and the flip-flops I got at Goodwill are just as broken-in and run-down.
Why not? It is their world I am edging into. They didn’t invite me. When you visit Muslim countries aren’t women supposed to cover up?
I know Mom will say that they are all clones and I am being a clone. As if all Twyla’s old friends, all the emo kids, are such giant individualists in their identical skinny black jeans and hair smushed down perfectly over one eye. Or me in my inevitable pair of whatever jeans and whatever top. As if being completely and utterly anonymous is less clonish than Nike running shorts.
While I am occupied thinking of how I will word it when I tell my dad all my insights into clone levels, a guy with a video camera stations himself a few feet from my blanket. He yells to a skinny kid in cargo pants who has a mic in his hand, “That’s good! Right there! Move in a little closer! We can get the whole team in the shot! OK, get Coach!”
The kid with the mic pulls Coach Hines away from practice and leads him over close to where I am sitting. I want to leave, but it would be too obvious.
The camera guy is like, “OK, rolling,” and Cargo Pants is, “Hi, this is Paul Harbaugh with Pirate Video, and we’re interviewing Coach Hines. So, Coach, we’ve got our first game against Pineridge Consolidated tonight. Are the Pirates ready?”
Coach Hines has been watching his players on the field the whole time the kid is asking his question. When he notices that the talking has stopped, he turns around and plants himself with his feet spread wide and his arms crossed across his chest. Coach Hines is a very neat person. He wears crisp, pressed khakis and made the school order him and the assistant coaches white polo shirts with their names and a little pirate embroidered on them in red. He was recruited from a small college up north and always wears a tie and blazer to games. Some older kids told me that before he came, Parkhaven’s team was crap and there were no black players. Now it’s about half black, and last year we went to state. Everyone expects us to go again this year.
Without really knowing what the question was, Coach Hines answers like he is on ESPN. “We’ve got some good athletes this year. Lot of talented athletes. Lot of seniors. Trent Dupey, returning defensive end.” He talks about a “strong safety” and a “dog linebacker,” how they need to focus on their defensive game. “Offensively, we’ve got some top players returning. Wayshon Shelf set a couple of school records last year. A very smart kid. Runs great routes.”
Cargo Pants asks him a long, involved question. While he listens, Coach Hines shifts his lower jaw back and forth like a snake. Like he is going to unhinge it so he can consume Cargo Pants in one delicious pockety bite.
Coach’s answer grabs my attention away from his snaky jaw. “Of course, we’re depending on Tyler Moldenhauer.
Sports Desk
just listed Moldenhauer as one of the top ten quarterbacks in the tristate area. He’s being heavily recruited but hasn’t committed yet. A very talented player. A team leader. A prolific passer. Tyler did a great job for us last year of getting the ball where we need it to be. We just hope he stays healthy.”
“Can we borrow Ty-Mo for a second, Coach?”
I tense up, wondering where I can hide, then relax when Coach gives the guy a look that asks if he is kidding and walks away without answering.
In rapid succession, Cargo Pants drags several players off the field for quick interviews. Colt O’Connor, a kid both muscular and chubby, tells Cargo that he plays tight end, that his goal this year is to “take it one game at a time,” and that the one person, dead or alive, who he would most like to have dinner with is Megan Fox. When Cargo Pants asks why, Colt gives him a look like, “How gay
are
you?” and says, “ ’Cause she’s lookin’ good, dog.”
Cody Chandler, a guy with freckles and red hair, says he is a wide receiver and that he gets psyched for games by “gettin’ all up in my crunk” with his teammates. That he has “Lil Wayne, 2Pac, Fiddy Cen’, and, of course, my man Snoop,” on his iPod. After every answer Cody, who wants to be gangsta but looks like the Lucky Charms leprechaun, asks, “Ya feel me?”
Typical wigger jock.
Cody and Colt? Why would parents give these names to babies if they didn’t want to program them to be football players? I should not be puzzling over this question, because, while I am daydreaming, Tyler breaks away and jogs over, pulling his helmet off as he comes. His hair is dark with sweat. My heart hammers. I don’t need to worry. Even though I am close enough that I get hit with a drop of his sweat when he shakes his head, he takes absolutely zero notice of me.
Cargo Pants is all hectic as he announces, “It’s the man of the hour himself, returning all-state QB, Tyler Moldenhauer. Tyler, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?”
Tyler leans his head to the side and smiles into the camera. “What do you want to know?”
Tyler Moldenhauer has dimples.
Actually, only one. On the right side. That isn’t surprising. What is is something I hadn’t noticed in my postpuke delirium: Tyler Moldenhauer has country teeth. Like Miss O’Day, my third-grade teacher who told us that hers were all mottled from growing up in the country and drinking well water. Also, Tyler’s teeth are crooked. Not horribly crooked, kind of cute-crooked, but crooked enough that any parents who could have afforded it would have put him in braces. My teeth were not as crooked as his are, and Mom, who
couldn’t
afford it, and reminded me constantly of what it was costing her to get the inside of my mouth sliced to ribbons with metal wires, got
me
to the ortho.
“Tell us what your goals are for the team this year.”
Tyler is wearing his shoulder pads over his jersey like some kind of exoskeleton. “We need to keep the same record as last year. Need to get deeper into the play-offs than we got last year. Actually, that is not a goal. That is what we are going to accomplish.”
Unlike the other boys, Tyler doesn’t try to sound ghetto. He picks his words carefully. He works to sound smart and well-spoken.
“Can you tell us about some of the colleges that are scouting you?”
“No.”
The way Tyler says “no”—not mad, just final, not open to debate—makes me understand why everyone looks to him to tell them what to do. I wonder what my father would think of Tyler. I imagine Tyler promising him that he’d have his daughter home by curfew. My father shaking his hand in a way that made it unnecessary for him to say, “You’d better. Or else.”
Cargo Pants apologizes, “Oh. Sorry.”
“No problem. Look …” Tyler pauses, puts his hand on the boy’s skinny shoulder, leans in, asks, “What did you say your name was, son?”
Son
? It is such an oddly grandfatherly thing for Tyler to say to someone only slightly younger than he is. The oddest thing about it, though, is that he sounds completely natural saying it. Like it would fit perfectly if he pulled out a knife and started teaching Cargo Pants how to whittle.
“Paul. Paul Harbaugh.”
“OK, Paul, here’s the deal for this year. This team has all the talent in the world. Talent is not a question. We have to crank up the discipline, study our routes, and execute, and we will go to state. We will be the hammer and not the nail. End of story.” He sticks his hand out. Paul fumbles with the mic, shakes it. “OK, Paul, good job on the interview. Good talking to you. I need to get back to my boys.”
Tyler pats Paul Harbaugh on the back in a way that both signals the interview is over and edges him out of the way. The instant Paul leaves, Tyler steps forward toward me.
“Hey, Pink Puke, you’re lookin’ better. But you should definitely not be in the sun.” He nods toward Shupe. “Obviously, no one’s got your back. That dee bag’d just let you die out here.” Still facing me, he walks backward, toward the field. “You staying hydrated?”
I raise my bottle of water.
“OK, you drink those fluids, girl. That heatstroke—”
“It was just exhaustion. Heat exhaustion.”
Heat exhaustion, really? That is really what I yell at him
?
“Either way. That is serious shit. People die behind that shit.”
I hold the bottle up and pretend to chug it. I ignore his dimple and see only the spotted, crooked teeth. They make me believe that Tyler Moldenhauer is just an ordinary boy.
He points at me, turns, and runs back to the team.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010
S
cared and lost, Aubrey turns from me.
“Please, sweetie. Tell me what’s wrong. Whatever it is, we can—”
EEEEEEEEEEE!
The smoke alarm shrieks.
The scared child disappears and, as if the black smoke pouring off the stove and the ear-piercing shriek were occurring in some galaxy far, far away and have nothing at all to do with her and her life here on earth, Aubrey observes, “Your thing is burning.”
I turn off the stove, use my shoe to bang on the smoke detector mounted on the ceiling until the alarm stops. Mickey Mouse is charcoal. Egg and Teflon fused into a blackened crust. I toss the ruined frying pan into the trash. The charred and smoking pan immediately melts a hole through the plastic can and fills the kitchen with the odor of poached polyvinyls.
I fling open the front door to wave the smoke out and hear the rumble of Tyler’s truck approaching. This is a rare appearance; they usually arrange for him to pick her up a few blocks away or whatever else it takes for him to never actually set foot in this house. A topic that has been the subject of more than one fight. Among the many lame excuses Aubrey has given me for why Tyler can’t come in and pick her up like a decent person is that he has some kind of social anxiety disorder and meeting new people terrifies him.
Pretzels, who’s managed to sleep through the fight and the screeching alarm, is roused by either the sound of Tyler’s truck or the waves of hostility pouring off me. She rises shakily from her spot on the kitchen rug, totters over to where I stand at the open door, and looses a few barks that sound like a garbage disposal chewing through a tennis ball.
An anthem more pop than country and western throbbing from the truck, Tyler barrels into the driveway, cuts the engine, and brays along with the stirring finale, “Gimme that girl lovin’ up on me!”
Ah, the enormity of the cultural divide contained within the bad grammar, the folksy anti-intellectualism, the paternalistic macho swagger of the one line that a privileged suburban jock pretending to be country chooses to sing. Why couldn’t Aubrey have brought home one of those vegan, tattooed boys in the skinny black jeans who love bands with arty, non sequitur names?
The song ends. Tyler presses the brim of the cap hugging his head into an even tighter semicircle, plucks the Oakley wraparounds off his head, and settles them over his ridiculously blue eyes.
Social anxiety, my ass.
But I say nothing. If biting my tongue and walking on eggshells is the price to free my daughter from this redneck Romeo, I will pay it.
Pretzels gives a growl more mucoid than menacing; then, her work done, she lumbers back into the kitchen and flops, exhausted, onto her rug, sighing loudly at the imposition.
Stopping only to scoop lip glosses back into her purse and snatch up her apron, Aubrey hurries past. I grab her arm. “Aubrey, I want you back here the instant lunch is over so that, as soon as I finish class, we can blast to the bank. Okay? Got it? This is nonnegotiable.”
“Okay! Okay! I already told you I would. What do you want? My name signed in blood? If that’s how little you trust me, why don’t you …” She pauses, then names the thing that she’s been angling for for months. “Just throw me out!” She yanks away from my grip and runs out the door like the doomed heroine of a nineteenth-century novel, like Tess of the d’Urbervilles rushing to meet Angel Clare at Stonehenge.
I yell after her, “Don’t make me have to drag you out of that …! That …! That mobile food conveyance vehicle! Because if I have to, I will!”
Aubrey’s aggrieved stomping turns into an airborne dance the moment she slips beyond my reach. She has a sanctuary and she is running to it. Wafting across what remains of the lawn I can’t afford to water, her feet don’t seem to touch the ground once. From her first baby steps, Aubrey had helium in her bones, springing through life like a gazelle. I never understood how such a light-footed creature could have issued from my leaden body. For a fraction of a second, I allow myself to enjoy the only comfort she still offers me, her beauty. I cling to it just the way I did when she was a colicky baby howling out her jerky screams as her tongue clicked spastically in her open mouth. Babies—silky, sweet-smelling babies. They must have been a cavewoman’s first luxury goods.
Tyler opens the door of his truck and gathers Aubrey into his arms, the rescuing hero. My daughter puts her arms around Tyler’s neck, hiking the Nike shorts up even farther, just in case she’s left anything at all to the neighbors’ imaginations. The sweethearts grin into each other’s faces, delirious about being the punch line of their own secret joke.
The uncontrollable “replay” button in my mind activates, and Aubrey’s entire life as it would have been with a father passes before my eyes, a father who would storm out at this very second, snatch his daughter from the clutches of this marauding male, make her “put some clothes on” and go to the bank with her mother. Right this minute. That father does not materialize and Tyler hauls Aubrey into the truck.
At graduation in May, I’d overheard a mom observing Tyler’s and Aubrey’s mutual gorgeousness whisper to her friend, “God, imagine the children they’d have.” I remember that comment and, for a fraction of a second, the regret machine stops and time freezes in the present, right now, as it actually is.
Both Tyler’s and Aubrey’s faces are framed by circles of white shoe polish drawn on the front windshield with their names and “Sexy Seniors!” written above the circles. Sitting in that truck, with shoe-polish halos encircling their heads, they look like Mary and Joseph. A jolt of panic squeezes my heart as I allow the fear I’ve been denying to surface: that the only thing missing from their Holy Family tableau is the Baby Jesus himself, standing between the haloed couple. Just an ignorant little redneck baby who would utterly destroy my daughter’s life and condemn her to live in this miserable suburban wasteland forever.
God, if I’d only been able to nip this romance in the bud. If I’d even only known when it started.