How I Lost You (4 page)

While it rained outside, Indie and Dad cooked. James and I sat on the floor in the living room, playing Mom's original version of Super Mario Brothers on the old Nintendo system. She'd pulled it out of the basement for a garage sale a few weeks before, but James refused to let her sell it. We'd become obsessed.

From the kitchen, the scent of bacon wafted out, with puffs of smoke filling the living room. Fat sizzled on the griddle. Saturday morning breakfasts were feasts and, unlike most meals at our house, healthy wasn't an option. Every Saturday, Dad's manager opened Splatterfest and ran it on his own all day. Mom and Dad firmly believed in countering working out and healthy eating with a weekly morning of overindulgence. Attendance and gluttony were mandatory. Friends were encouraged.

James used his controller to race Mario through the Mushroom Kingdom on screen. “Damn!”

I glanced at the TV. He'd lost another life.

“I hear you're going to the Seattle show.” He glanced at me, taking his attention from the game for a second. “Shoot!” he shouted when he glanced back. He'd accidentally entered Minus World on the game and would stay there until he ran out of lives.

“You should come with us! We don't have an extra ticket for the party, but we could try to get one. And you could come to the tradeshow for sure.”

“Not my scene, Jelly Bean. Plus me sharing a hotel room with you and your mom and Kya.” He shuddered. “Too much estrogen.”

His battle with the video game went on until Mom's voice interrupted. She walked down the stairs toward the living room and burst into a spontaneous song. Loudly. She walked to James and me, incorporating us into her song. “Stop playing games and come eat,” she sang, and stepped over top of us, singing on about monkey pancakes.

Neither one of us even flinched. She'd been abusing hits from the radio, making up her own words, and singing at the top of her lungs for as long as I could remember. I don't know how many verses I'd listened to about the horrors of menopause or about starting a paintball business in your retirement years. Mom turned everything into a wacky song.

She wore her favorite new T-shirt. Black with tiny white writing.
Sarcasm
is
a
service
I
offer
for
free.
She'd ordered it for herself from eBay. No wonder I'd craved affection as a kid. I turned the game off. James and I stood and followed Mom to the kitchen.

At the stove, Dad wore his Saturday morning apron with a picture of a woman's body in a bikini. Indie stood at the table, placing down a plate piled high with bacon. In a glass jar in the middle of the table, an arrangement of lavender celebrated our cheery ritual.

Mom slid up beside Dad and patted him on the rear. He wiggled his butt at her and she moved to the cupboard to get coffee cups. We all put aside any differences on Saturday mornings. It was family time and we all got along, whether we wanted to or not. “Coffee? Indie? James?” She didn't ask me since she knew I couldn't stand the taste. I went to the fridge to pull out orange juice and then grabbed some glasses and set them down on the table that Indie had already set. Saturday was man-day in the kitchen.

“Not a lot of kids showed up for the new paintball league,” Dad said to all of us from the griddle, where he was pouring batter into his coveted monkey-pancake pan. Around the pancakes, he was scrambling up a huge pile of eggs. Indie scooted past me to grab toast that popped up from the toaster and spread butter across the top.

“I'm sure there're more pseudo-criminals needing to rehearse for future years of delinquency.” James slid into a chair at the kitchen table. “No offense, Mr. Black.”

“Oh my God, James. Could you be any funnier?” I bumped my elbow into his arm as I sat down in the chair beside him. “Oh. Yes. You could.”

Dad chuckled. “What would we do without James's healthy doses of cynicism?”

“What can I say? My blood type is B negative.”

Dad smiled at James and flipped over a monkey pancake. “So your dad is gone for a few more weeks?” he asked.

James nodded. “Yeah. Maybe longer. He wasn't sure last time we Skyped.”

“And how's your mom? We need to get her over here for dinner soon.” Dad scooped up a pile of eggs on his spatula, walked to James's plate, and plopped them down.

“She's not very mobile this week. But she's doing okay.” He glanced at my mom. “Mrs. B keeps us well fed,” James said. “I keep telling her to stop sending so many lasagnas and casseroles but they keep coming. I'm pretty sure my mom wants to make out with your entire family.”

“Sign me up,” Dad said. He scooped a pile of eggs on my plate and winked at me.

Mom threw a towel at him and they laughed.

I smiled. James's mom's condition sometimes left her tired and unable to do much on the physical side of things, so when his dad was away on duty, which was about half the year, the bulk of the household duties were left to James. He'd learned to cook pretty young and had always had a lot of extra chores. A nurse came in to look after his mom's physical needs, and once a week there was a house cleaner over, but as the only child, he was left in charge of keeping the house running smoothly. It was a lot of responsibility looking after a mom with MS, but he handled it without complaining. He even made his own spending money working at Splatterfest whenever he could. Dad was flexible with his hours. Mom helped by sending over food. Indie used to shovel the walks and his driveway in the winter and mow the lawn in the summer time. Now James did that.

“How come Kya's not here?” Mom asked as she dug her fork into some eggs. Indie dished her a couple of slices of buttered Texas toast.

I shrugged, pretending not to be worried. “She said she had plans.”

“Probably with that boy who was over last night.” Indie shoved an entire piece of bacon in his mouth.

I glared at him. “Just to watch a movie. And she kicked him out early, before the movie even ended.” I glanced at Dad, but he flipped another pancake and didn't say anything.

“That girl has had way too many boyfriends.” Indie tossed me a piece of toast but completely missed my plate.

“She doesn't take them seriously.” I grabbed the toast from the table and put it next to my eggs. “Besides, aren't you the guy who majors in changing girlfriends?” He'd had a serious girlfriend for a couple of years, Shari, but since they broke up, there'd been a revolving door of girls. Even though Indie was five years older than I was and had finished college, he lived at home and worked at Splatterfest while working toward becoming a cop.

Mom did his laundry, bought his underwear, and let him bring girls home for free dinner dates. There was no debating that what she lacked in parental warm fuzzies, she made up for in physical nurturing.

“Kya never takes anything seriously,” James mumbled. “Except perhaps a single-minded pursuit of average.” He shoved back an entire mouthful of eggs and made a face as I grabbed the bottle of ketchup and squeezed an inch-thick layer on top of my eggs. “What's not average is the amount of ketchup your family consumes in a month,” he said.

“What can we say? We like to support tomato farmers. Anyhow, stop talking about Kya when she's not here to defend herself,” I said.

“How about you?” Indie slid behind a chair, grabbed the ketchup bottle from me, and squirted a high pile on his plate. “We've never seen you with a boy unless you have a gun in your hand. Other than James. And he doesn't count. Maybe you need lessons on how to be less revolting to the opposite sex. First step, stop shooting them all the time.”

James squinted at him as he finished chewing. “I count. And unlike you, I can count without using my fingers. You should try it sometime. Thinking, I mean.”

“James, you seriously need to get laid,” Indie said, and shoved a huge mouthful of food in his yap.

James's ears and face turned a shade to match the contents of our Heinz bottle.

“Indie. He's seventeen years old. He does not need to get laid,” my mom interrupted. “Good lord, how did I raise such foul-mouthed children?” She took the ketchup bottle to layer her own eggs in a sea of red.

“Um, by being a foul-mouthed parent?” Indie shot back.

“Child. Not children. I do not have a potty mouth.” I mouthed a swear word at him as Dad approached the table with a plateful of finished pancakes and he saw.

“The boy speaks the truth,” Dad said as he flipped a monkey.

Mom directed her dirty look at him.

“Don't worry, Mom. We love you, despite your potty mouth.” Indie grinned at her.

“You sow what you create,” Dad said to Mom as he placed pancakes in the middle of the table.

“Asshole,” she said back.

“Family time. No fighting,” I reminded them.

“I just felt your grandmother shudder in heaven,” Dad said. “But…”

“She never understood our family.” We all finished the sentence with him. Even James. He'd hung around my family enough to hear that a million times. My grandma had been an ultra-conservative woman who believed soap in the mouth was the way to clean out bad words. My mom would have gone through a bar a week. Mom and Grandma were total opposites, and while in many ways I'd craved a more affectionate and cuddly mom—one more like my grandma—I knew my mom had my back.

I stuck my fork in the ear of a monkey pancake and Indie and James smothered theirs in syrup and sang the traditional Saturday morning “Monkey Pancake” song to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

Monkey
pancakes
are
so
great,

Pile
some
pancakes
on
my
plate.

“Okay, James, Indie,” I said. They sang louder.

Up
above
the
pancake
pile,

Pour
some
syrup, make me smile.

Monkey
pancakes
are
so
great,

Pile
some
pancakes
on
my
plate.

“I made up that song when I was five,” I said. “We should really let it go.”

“Songstress just like your mama,” Mom said, batting her eyelashes and then biting into a slice of crispy bacon.

“The problem with this table is too many freaks and not enough circuses,” I said.

“But there are flying monkeys.” James tossed a monkey pancake in the air and it landed on my plate.

Dad joined us and soon we were busy mixing and sopping up syrup and ketchup and buttery toast in a giant feeding frenzy. After the carb load and some groaning and stomach patting, we all helped clean up the messy kitchen. Soon Mom and Dad were off to another Latin dance class.

“You going out?” Mom called, her hand on the front door.

“Hot yoga later.”

“All right. Your dad and I will probably go out with the Simpsons for dinner. You can fix yourself something? Don't wait up.” She laughed as she closed the door behind her, but the truth was they usually stayed out later than me.

“You working this afternoon?” I asked James.

“Nope.” He headed back toward the living room for the Nintendo. “Robert is. He's hot, right?”

James liked to check in sometimes on other guys' hotness quotients. Trying to figure out what girls liked, maybe. Robert was a semi-pro baller and he ran Splatterfest most weekends.

“Very hot. But he's too old to go out with you.”

“Wow, Grace. That was as low as your brother's IQ.”

“I heard that, James,” Indie called from the kitchen.

“You were supposed to.” James sat on the floor, crossing his legs like a kindergartener. “You want to go first?”

“Go ahead.”

He turned on the game and waited.

“You want to come to hot yoga with me later?” I asked, and plunked down on the floor beside him, bopping my head along to the catchy Super Mario theme song.

“What? Running around playing speedball isn't enough of a work-out for you?” He glanced at me as if I were crazy.

“Yoga relaxes me,” I said.

He picked up the controller as the game started up, not answering my original question.

“I take it that means no.”

“Thanks for asking, but when have I ever expressed a desire to go to hot yoga?”

“Think of all the ladies there, James,” Indie called as he bounded up the stairs. “Maybe not taking advantage of situations is one of the reasons you haven't gotten laid.”

We both ignored him as he cackled away to himself on his way to his room.

The Super Mario game dinged as James ate up some coins. I stretched my feet out and lay back on the floor beside him, holding my bloated stomach. “Have you talked to Kya today?”

“Not since work.”

“I wish you two would make up already.”

“Dream big, Graceling. Dream big.”

I sat up and hit him on the arm.

“Hey, watch it,” he growled. “You almost made me lose a life.”

“I'll make you lose a life all right. You two will make up. You're my best friends. If she puts up walls, James, it's only because she wants you to break them down.”

“Curse you, Mario,” he yelled. “Stupid game glitch.” He'd lost his final life. “Will I ever beat you at this video game?”

“I doubt it.”

In an abrupt whoosh, he put down the controller, switched off the game system, and got to his feet. “You know, maybe I'm not big on breaking down walls, Grace. I've got to get going. Check in on my mom, see if she needs anything.”