Real Live Boyfriends (15 page)

“Fine,” I said. “We rip them up first.” Nora and I ripped our toilet paper signs into tiny shreds and dropped them into the paint-splattered toilet.

We flushed.

“Good riddance!” I yelled as the paper swirled down.

Then we opened the door to the bathroom and tumbled out of it, laughing hysterically.

Bonsoir, Hutch
,

Comment va Paris? I have a mental image of
you wearing your fanny pack and a beret,
holding a baguette and playing bread air-guitar
on the top deck of the Eiffel Tower
.

But I know that can’t be how you spend an
average day
.

Just on Saturdays, right?

Ruby
,

The pastry of France kicks the ass of the
pastry of America. It kicks it so hard the pastry of
America hobbles to the curb whimpering, then
scuttles down the street never to be seen again.

That is how good the pastry is here
.

Maybe you should come out at Thanksgiving
break
.

Or not. Whatever
.

You probably have plans
.

Hutch

Hutch
,

No money, no Paris. That is the scenario here
.

But I am glad you asked
.

I would really like to see your bread air-guitar
.

1
“We Will Rock You.” By Queen
.

2
The Yellow Wallpaper:
An 1899 novella
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman about this lady
whose doctor husband confines her to an
attic room as a rest cure for her mental
illness. She’s not supposed to do
anything:

not read, not write, not play games, not
have visitors, nothing. Wallace says this
was the nineteenth-century idea of how to
treat mental illness, or even just how to
deal with difficult women. Lock them up
and keep them quiet until they’re ready to
act the way society wants them to. Like a
giant time-out. Naturally, the heroine of the
story goes more and more insane
because

of

this

treatment

that’s

supposedly going to make her better. By
the end she thinks the wallpaper in her
room is full of trapped women, and she
has to strip it from the walls. She never
leaves that room again. She just becomes
a madman. So, yeah. It is supremely
excellent that I don’t live in 1899. First of
all, I’d be married already (ag), and second
of all, my husband would completely be
locking me in the attic
.

3
Joint notebook: Entitled
The Boy Book: A

Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus

Techniques for Taming Them
.

Secrets of the Panda Bear!

nora sits on the steps outside the Tate Prep gymnasium. She’s dressed in shorts for basketball practice and looks all legs and uniboob under a tank top. Hair in a ponytail. She digs her camera out of her backpack and snaps a picture of Ruby behind the video camera.

Nora: There. You look like a real
filmmaker
.

Roo: (behind the camera) Thank you
.

Nora: Meghan said you were going to ask
me the definition of love. So I prepared an
answer
.

Roo: That’s what I asked
her.

Nora: Did you change?

Roo: Now talk of love makes me feel
desperate. I’m going to ask you about
popularity
.

Nora: I’m not in love with Happy
.

Roo: You’re not?

Nora: No. I mean, maybe I
could
be. But
not yet. And sometimes there are things he
does that make me think: I couldn’t
ever.

Roo: What?

Nora: Twice we’ve gone to parties and he’s
gotten really wasted. I had to get the keys
and drive us home. I don’t think I’m going to
fall in love with someone who gets drunk
like that
.

Roo: Couldn’t you get him to stop?

Nora: Maybe I’ll say something. But then
would I fall in love with him if he stopped? I
don’t know
.

Roo: If he changed for you?

Nora: If he changed for me that would be
nice. I guess. But he’d still be the same
person under the change. The person who
wants to get wasted. Who didn’t think
anything about it until his girlfriend said
something
.

Roo: Is that the answer you prepared?

Nora: (blushing) No. I was going to say,
Love is when you have a really amazing
piece of cake, and it’s the very last piece,
but you let him have it
.

Roo: Nora
.

Nora: What?

Roo: That’s completely warped
.

Nora: It’s a metaphor. You like metaphors.

Did I tell you my brother’s coming to town
tonight for the weekend? He gets in around
five
.

Roo: I have to turn this camera off
.

Nora: He’s always asking about you. Go out
with him
.

Roo: I can’t find the right button
.

Nora: I bet you’d have fun
.

(
darkness
)

Gideon Van Deusen called me up that night. It was Hall oween.

Every year, my parents go to this huge costume party Mom’s friend Juana throws in some dance studio she’s connected with. Lots of people in the Seattle arts community go, and my mother always wants to stand out.

This year, she had made go-together costumes: a light socket (her) and a plug (him). Dad stood in the middle of our living room wearing black leggings and a black thermal, his pelvis encased in a white cardboard box with two giant prongs sticking out like insane metal penises.

I was dressed as a bobby-soxer, wearing a vintage fifties dress I already owned but never wore, and saddle shoes I found for four dollars at the Salvation Army. I had curled my hair with Meghan’s curling iron earlier that day and had my bangs pulled off my face with a totally retro hair band. I was planning to go to a soccer muffin party with Meghan, Finn and Nora, but I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I’m not that interested in muffins, and seeing them dressed as Wolverine and Jack Sparrow doesn’t make them any more attractive.

Anyway, Polka-dot trotted in from the bedroom. He eyed Dad’s crotch prongs for only a moment before deciding they were chew toys and clamping his jaws around one of them. “No, Polka! Bad doggie!” Dad cried, swatting at the dog’s nose and trying to move away from the drooling mouth.

The dog held fast.

“Ruby, get him off me!”

It was really not my idea of a pleasant evening to go sticking my hands in my father’s pelvic region. I looked severely at the dog. “Polka. Drop it!” Polka-dot shook his enormous head side to side, the way he did when he had a good stick in his mouth and wasn’t no how going to drop it. Dad was practically hyperventilating, yelling, “Elaine, Polka’s got my prongs!” but Mom was in the bedroom ignoring him, so I grabbed one of Polka’s ears to stabilize his head and then pressed on the sides of his jaw to get him to loosen his grip on the prong.

Finally he opened his slavering mouth and I dragged him outside by the collar and clipped him to his chain.

Phew.

Inside, Dad was trying to sit down on the couch to rest after his trauma. However, his butt was encased in cardboard so he couldn’t. The prong the dog had chewed was sagging, mangled and wet.

“Elaine, I told you this costume was a bad idea,” Dad called.

Mom came in from the bedroom wearing a cardboard box with two light sockets on it. Her hair was gelled up to look like she’d been electrocuted.

“Don’t be so negative, Kevin,” she said. “You’re negative all the time now. You have to get over yourself.”

“Polka ate my prong,” Dad said. “I can’t even sit down.”

“You look hot,” Mom said. “The prongs are very sexy.”

“The left one is ruined.”

“We can fix it with duct tape.”

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to drive when I can’t even sit.”

“You’re

not

driving.

We’re

taking

public

transportation.”

“I still can’t sit.”

“You can stand on the bus.” Mom stroked her electric-shock hair. “What do you think? Adds to the effect, right?”

“Can we please just wear the silly hats instead?” Dad begged.

“If you don’t like being the plug you can be the outlets,” Mom said, making as if to take off her box.

“I am not being the outlets.”

“Why not?”

“I’m just not.”

“You shouldn’t be scared of your feminine side, Kevin. Everyone has one,” said Mom glibly. “I’d be glad to wear the prongs.”

“Mom!” I cried. “Leave him alone! The dog just tried to eat his pelvis.”

She turned on me. “You stay out of this, Ruby. I already know you’re on your father’s side; you’re
always
on your father’s side.”

“You don’t have to be such a wench to him.”

“You know what?” said Mom angrily. “I don’t have to stand for this. Not your smart mouth or your father’s apathy. I’m going on vacation. Without either of you.

Starting tomorrow morning.”

“What?” Dad look shocked.

“Juana asked me yesterday if I wanted to drive down to the Oregon coast with her women’s empowerment group, and I told her no, because I felt guilty leaving you when you’re still moping about Suzette’s death.”

“Don’t miss it on my account,” Dad said bitterly.

“And Ruby. Ruby’s being a drama queen about this thing with Noel what’shisname. The two of you are driving me crazy with all your negativity and self-involvement,” she said. “So you know what? I don’t feel guilty anymore. I don’t need to work so hard stuffing sausages and making Hall oween costumes when no one appreciates anything I do. I can go to Oregon and sit in a hot spring!”

“I did appreciate the sausages,” said my dad. “I made a point of telling you I liked them.”

“Roo didn’t.”

“I’m a vegetarian!” I yelled.

“I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning,” said my mother.

“It will be a relief to get away from both of you.” She stomped into the bedroom and emerged with her purse, furiously putting lipstick on. Then she slammed the front door and walked—awkwardly in her costume—into the fading light.

When she was out of sight, Dad took off his cardboard box, let Polka back in the house and gave him the costume. Polka chewed on it, thumping his tail heavily on the carpet.

Dad lay facedown on the floor beside the dining table and announced he was just going to rest there for a minute.

“Aren’t you going to go after Mom?”

“I gave the prongs to the dog,” he said. “There’s no way I can be forgiven unless I have prongs.”

“Are you going to let her go on vacation without us?” I said. “Is she really going to leave?”

“I don’t know,” Dad said, turning his head to rest the alternate cheek on the carpet. “Your mother pretty much does what she wants to do.”

“Are you depressed?” I asked, standing over him. It was a stupid question. Of course he was depressed.

He was the king of being depressed.

“I’m just so tired.”

“Dad! You have to do something. She’s leaving us.”

“Will you answer the phone?”

“What?”

“The phone.”

Oh. It was ringing. I picked it up, thinking it would be Mom calling from her cell, but instead it was Gideon.

“Hey, wakeboarder,” he said.

“Hey, wakeboarder yourself.”

“Happy Hall oween.”

“Same to you.”

“What are you doing right now?”

“Trying to peel my dad off the floor.”

“Ha-ha,” said Gideon. “You want to come to a party with me?”

“I’m supposed to go to this soccer party with Nora.”