Still Life with Tornado (24 page)

I'm a goddamn ER night nurse. Do you know what I've seen in my life? I've seen a thousand ways to die. I've met every kind of person you can imagine. I've met murderers and child molesters and people who starve their mothers to death.

I've met men who killed their ex-wives. I've met the dead ex-wife. I've recorded her time of death on her chart. I've seen me in her.

I've met the nicest people, too. Kids and moms and dads and uncles and nephews and grandmothers who are simple and kind.

I've met Earl and a hundred more like him.

I've met Rose and a hundred more like her.

Every night there's a drunk—sometimes a big one, sometimes a small one. Sometimes they swing but I know how to duck after living with Chet for twenty-eight years. I know how to duck.

•   •   •

It's quiet in the house without Chet. It's a quiet I wished for a million times but never got. When he left today, I wanted to feel relief but I didn't feel it. I don't think I'll feel it until the papers are signed, the lawyers are paid, and the whole thing is over.

I will never understand why he didn't change. We could have had such a great life. We could have had some fun. Once he was gone there were no bottles hidden in the garage or the toilet cisterns. No pills or bags of smack or weed or anything. All that meanness was inside of him
.
Not a bottle. Not a pill. Not a needle. It was
him
.

Nineteen years old. At nineteen years old I knew what he was. I stayed with him anyway. Make a note: You can't change people with love. It doesn't work that way.

I'm forty-seven. I'm not going to sit here and tell you I wasted all those years because I didn't. I made a name for myself at work and helped thousands of people. I raised two excellent children. I know how to cook a decent Sunday roast. But the love I wasted on a man who couldn't love himself is lost with those years. Lost as my twenty-twenty eyesight, lost as my beach body, lost as my hair color, lost as my ability to do a cartwheel.

It's like tossing a gourmet meal into a sewer.

•   •   •

I'm giving my middle fingers a rest.

I'm not singing that song anymore and I'm not lying.

That's going to be the hardest part.

I never thought I'd be a liar. Not to my own kids. Not to myself. I'm a goddamn ER night nurse. I tell the truth in dark twelve-hour shifts. Harsh truth. Maybe I needed one place in my life to not be an emergency. Maybe lying to myself was the only way I could sleep.

I wanted quiet for so long.

Now I can have it.

You have no idea how much I want you to be careful. You have no idea how much I want to save you from what happened to me. Listen closely.

I'm not sure what comes next. I don't know where to find my future.

I wake up in my room and ten-year-old Sarah is playing with my old Legos on my floor. Today is the day Mom meets with the lawyer. Today is the day Dad probably comes home to get his stuff.

Up until now, I wasn't nervous.

As I lie in bed, I visit scenarios I shouldn't visit. I think about Dad coming home and shooting us all. All four Sarahs, Bruce, and Mom. And probably himself. I shake the thought out of my head. I think about Dad coming home and not leaving ever again. Locking himself into his room. Barricading the door. I decide to get up and take a shower before the other Sarahs use all the hot water.

How does this work?

How do so many Sarahs exist in one place at one time?

Does the answer matter when all the answers so far have been lies and windmills and half-truths and get-on-with-its?

Thick skin is a fallacy. The skin is an
organ
. It isn't just about pimples and freckles and sunburn and wrinkles. All skin is thick skin.

I hear Mom and ten-year-old Sarah giggling and my skin absorbs the sound. The feeling. The idea of giggling. Skin lets things in and lets things out. It's a two-way system. Right now, in the shower, I let out the art club.

There are more important things in the world than the art club.

Art can't exist in the vacuum of emotion. It's why Carmen draws tornadoes. It's why Dad doesn't draw anything at all. He's the hole where the rat used to be. I guess if he wanted to change, he'd draw the rat. A million times, he'd draw the rat.

I can't figure out what I am if Dad is a rat.

I can't figure out what I am at all.

I guess that's why I'm here. Not in the shower, but in a houseful of Sarahs, in a city full of Earls, in a joust with a windmill. I can't figure out what I am at all.

Mom knocks on the bathroom door. She tells me to hurry up. She says, “We're going out for breakfast.”

I try to imagine four Sarahs, a Bruce, and their mother going out to breakfast. What restaurant could handle all of us?

The only thing the waiter says is “What a beautiful family!”

And we are. We are a beautiful family.

•   •   •

Mom and Bruce go to the lawyer's office together. All Sarahs stay at the house and hope Dad doesn't come home. We sit at the study table.

10: You're all so uptight. Dad isn't gonna freak out again.

ME: You don't know that.

23: She has a point. We'd just call the police again. He knows that.

ME: It doesn't matter what he knows. He can't control himself.

40: His whole gig is control. He'll be fine. We'll talk to him.

23: He won't know what to do with us.

10: I've met him twice and he still has no idea who I am.

ME: True. She even came over for dinner.

23: You went to dinner?

10: We ate tacos.

ME: He thinks her name is Katie.

40: Katie?

10: It was the first name that came to mind.

ME: She even played “Eleanor Rigby” for him on piano.

40: God, I'd love to hear that.

Ten-year-old Sarah sits at the piano and plays her rusty version again. She tells me to play, so I do and it's a little less rusty than it was when I played for Mom last week. Twenty-three-year-old Sarah looks sad. Forty-year-old Sarah says, “I really should take up piano again.”

23: Me too.

ME: The skin is the largest organ in the human body. Did you know that?

10: If you know it, then we all know it.

23: We have thick skin. I know that.

ME: I'm still mad about never finding out who stole the headpiece. I know I shouldn't be. I know I should get over it. I just want to know.

40: You find out.

23: I do?

ME: I do?

10: Who was it?

40: It's exactly who you think it is.

ME: How did you find out?

40: Carmen.

ME: You still know Carmen?

40: She's my best friend.

23: I'm so glad. She's been so hard to reach lately. I thought things were going to go bad between us.

40: You're spending too much time with your boyfriend. She thinks he's an asshole but can't tell you.

10: I don't even know how you can go with boys. They're so dumb.

ME: So it was Vicky? Or Miss Smith?

40: Trust your gut.

I know it was both. Vicky. And Miss Smith. I find my queen of the unicorns tinfoil headpiece and start working on it again. More foil. Spikes like the Statue of Liberty, but longer and more disorganized.

ME: But the whole art club knew, though, right?

40: Carmen didn't know, but then she found out. The art club still has a page on The Social.

23: That's pathetic.

ME: Do they all become famous artists?

40: What do you think?

23: I very much doubt any of them become famous artists.

10: Most famous artists only become famous after they die, anyway. Like José Guadalupe Posada.

I try on my new crown and stand up to see myself in the mirror. It needs work. The spikes aren't looking as good as I thought they would.

40: So, I took care of the Miss Smith thing yesterday. I figured you'd want to know.

23: Sick bitch. I read about that.

40: I know you wanted to let it go. I did, too, when I was you. But some things you just can't paint over.

Some things you just can't paint over.
I think about 40 and how she doesn't seem married or in love with anyone. I think about how Tiffany ignored my question about love when she read my palm. I don't know how much control I have over my Sarahs. Are they really me or are they the me I think I'll be? I don't think I'll ever know the answer to this. Not until it happens.

10: Can I wear your crown?

I hand her the crown and say, “You can keep it. It looks best on you.”

A car parks in front of the house and a car door slams. Ten-year-old Sarah goes to the front window and says, “It's Dad.” I text Mom the way she told me to. I text Bruce, too, in case Mom is too busy to read her texts.

All Sarahs stand in the living room. 40 has her hands on her hips. 23 blocks the way to the kitchen. 10 opens the door. I sit on the stairs because I want a good view.

Dad hangs his head. I have seen this act before. He is now sorry for everything he did when he did it. He is now in control by being sorry for losing control. If his character had a name in our play, he would be called Pathetic Rat.

PR (
doesn't look up
): Please don't ask me to leave. Let me say some things first.

40: Who are you talking to?

PR stops and slowly looks up. His face contorts.

PR: Who are you?

40: Who are
you
?

PR: Sarah, who are these people? Oh, hi—um—Katie. Nice to see you again . . . I don't understand what you're all doing here.

23: We're waiting for Mom to get back.

PR blinks and his frown is a thinking frown but an angry frown at the same time. His tail is between his legs.

40: We're here to help you pack.

23 (
points to boxes in living room
): I have a few boxes I found in the basement.

40: Bruce got the suitcases out of the attic this morning.

•   •   •

There is something in the room with us. It's familiar. It's a feeling I've known my whole life but never talked about. It's an invisible man or monster under the bed.

History. That's what it is. History is in the room with us. You absorb it even if it's not happening right in front of you. You absorb the feeling of it. It's there even though it's not there. It's in your skin.

ME: You should really get started before Mom gets home.

PR: I don't have to go anywhere.

40: Don't be a dick, Dad. You have to go and you know it.

23: It's about time.

10: You never fooled me, you know.

If this were a movie or a cartoon, Dad would faint. That's what it looks like and feels like. It feels like something big just happened. Like we're all inside a cloud of thick magician's smoke. Magic has happened. The truth has set him free. History finally caught up with him—the rat who never admitted he was a rat.

I think of the joust. Two riders galloping at full force toward each other. We are one rider. Dad is the other. All of us in armor meant to protect us from the storm of bullshit. As we ride, the adrenaline rises as we aim our lances. But then Dad falls off his horse before we ever get to knock him off.

40 got Dad to pack his bags. 23 helped him figure out where he could stay. She had her phone app set to one-bedroom apartments in Center City. 10 stayed with me because she was scared. I played a game of Uno with her and she beat me and left me with a handful of high-value cards. Neither of us wanted to be home when Mom came back, but we stayed because 23 and 40 told us we should.

40: You should watch it end. If you don't, you'll always wonder.

23: Nothing bad is going to happen, I promise.

10: It's too sad.

ME: We'll be safe now.

When Mom and Bruce come through the door, the Pathetic Rat hangs his head again. He starts his entrance speech from the beginning. He says, “Please don't make me leave. Let me say some things first.”

Mom says, “We'll talk in the kitchen. Alone.”

We all know that you can't be alone in our kitchen. We all sit down in the living room because we'll hear it from here. 10 sidles up next to Bruce on the love seat and he puts his arm around her and gives her a side-hug. I sit between 23 and 40 on the couch. 23. 16. 40. Our arms touch. Only our skin is between us. Thick skin.
We heal fast.

23 says, “I'm sorry I was such a bitch to you at first.”

“You didn't take me seriously,” I say.

“Yeah. I guess.”

“You made fun of my new name.”

“Sorry. But—Umbrella?”

I say, “It has deeper meanings.”

“I know,” she says. “I'm you.”

“So why choose to make fun of me? Why not just be nice?”

40 says, “Being twenty-three is hard. You'll see.”

“No one takes me seriously, either,” 23 says.

We hear Mom say “You never took me seriously” in the kitchen.

She's forty-seven years old. Maybe we're destined to never be taken seriously.

Dad is begging in the kitchen. Mom has taken the weekend off—first full weekend since Mexico she won't be in the ER sewing people together at three o'clock in the morning. We have plans.

40 says, “It's getting late. We have to go or else we won't have enough time.”

Bruce says, “She'll be done in a few minutes.”

In the kitchen, Mom says, “I have to be somewhere.”

“We can still talk, though, right? I'll call you over the weekend. We'll call it a trial separation,” Dad says.

“Call it whatever makes you feel okay about it,” Mom answers.

Bruce says, “He's staying with a friend for a week.”

23 says, “We'll have to rent the apartment for him. He'll never do it himself.”

“Mom took care of it,” Bruce says. “The lawyer knows a guy. It's all taken care of.”

It's all taken care of.

40 calls Dad a taxi on Bruce's phone. She gets up from the couch and tidies the mantel after Dad's rearrangement of the house yesterday. She says she wants a picture of all of us so she can give it to Mom.

We all pile onto the couch and put our heads together. 10 is up front, lying across our laps. Bruce holds his arm out as far as he can and takes a bunch of pictures of the five of us with his phone. A few of them are serious—we smile and look posed. Toward the end, we're laughing. I tickle 10 and then 23 tickles 40 and someone tickles me and some of the pictures on Bruce's phone are priceless, like
Three Musicians.

I think of Earl.

This is art.

The five of us. 40, 23, 10, me, and Bruce.

The two of us. Me and Bruce.

Me.

I am art.

I have become Spain. I have become Macedonia. Life is art. Truth is art. Art doesn't steal. Art just is. You can take a break from art. You can make art for seventy-two hours straight if you want. You can breathe in and out and that is art. You can hold your breath and that is art.

Blinking is art. Snoring is art. Sneezing is art. It's not complicated. No one needs to be better than anyone else. That is not art. That is anti-art. Art is inclusive and it's the murals all over this city and it's the kids in the park and the old people you see at the corner grocery who only buy four things at a time. Art is dog shit next to a tree on Locust Street. Art is the sound of the Dumpster service behind the pizza place at four in the morning. Art is as big as Liberty Two. Art is as small as two wedding rings at the bottom of the sea.

You get the picture.

Nothing new ever really happens.