The Genius of Little Things (24 page)

I told him I wasn’t. I waited for him to get back to the Janet issue. I knew they were not spending the holiday together, but Carl’s comment made it sound like a permanent separation.

I decided to heat up frozen waffles. After I watched them not absorb syrup for a minute, I became impatient—not at the waffles, but at Carl. I asked him how long he expected Janet to be away.

“She’s going to stay with her mother for a few weeks. And then we’ll see. Nothing will change for you. No need to worry. You have a lot on your plate.”

What was on my plate, literally, made me want to hurl. I tossed the waffles in the trash and cleaned out the crumbs from the toaster.

I went to my room and worked on essays, but I couldn’t focus. Around one o’clock, I heard some rustling and thumping. A few minutes later there was the click-click-click of heels on the terra cotta floor and the murmur of conversation. I burst out of my room. Janet was in the foyer. There were three suitcases at her feet.

“Oh, Tyler, I’m glad you’re here. My taxi will be here any minute.”

Before she could ask, I picked up all three suitcases—my anger was giving me extra strength—and stormed out to the curb. Janet click-clicked behind me.

“Maybe you shouldn’t carry all those at once.”

I crashed the suitcases onto the sidewalk. She was right. My back already ached.

“I assume Carl told you about us.”

I spun around to her. “Yes. It’s great to have advance warning.” That was my attempt at sarcasm.

“Nothing will change for you.” They had rehearsed this line, I was sure of it.

A yellow and lime green cab approached but it didn’t stop. Janet turned and waved. The cab kept going. This was peculiar. There was nobody else standing outside with suitcases.

“Were you going to leave for good without telling me?”

“It’s not necessarily permanent,” she said. She was still waving at the receding cab.

“Are you still mad that I didn’t tell you about the emancipation?”

“No. Tyler, our problems are not about—”

“Maybe I should have told you about it. Maybe I should have told you about my suspension—”

“Your what?” The cab had turned. It was moseying back from the other direction. It looked like it would cruise by again. Janet screamed, “Hey!”

“First it’s Scott, and now it’s this.
I
deserve a little consideration. I’m not some…” Foster child was what I almost said. “Carl goes on and on about how I should stay in Las Vegas, and how you’re going to help me out with college and give me money. But you don’t have any money.”

“We have money,” she said.

“You’ve been selling off furniture.”

The cab drifted lazily to the curb in front of us. The driver got out. He was the hairiest man I’d ever seen. “You going to the airport?”

“No, thanks,” Janet said. “I’m just standing here with suitcases because that’s my hobby.” I might have laughed if I hadn’t been so peeved. Janet watched the driver grab the suitcases and fling them into the cavernous trunk.

I had more to get off my chest. “Carl keeps saying, ‘a family does this,’ and ‘a family does that.’ Real families don’t keep big secrets.” I wasn’t sure that was true. Maybe real families did keep big secrets. But it sounded right. I didn’t take it back.

The cab driver opened a rear door and glared at her. Janet turned away from both of us. She put her hands to her face. I could tell she was crying. She was like this for about a minute. The driver raised his arms and looked at me as if he expected an explanation. I held up my index finger to let him know it would be a minute.

“We don’t know what we’re doing with you,” she said with a phlegm-y voice. “We didn’t know what we were doing with Scott. We were shitty parents and now we’re shitty foster parents.” She wiped the tears from her face and turned back to me. “But we’re keeping this house. You can stay in this shitty house because it is not being sold and we are not giving it up. We’re going to do
one thing
right.”

I didn’t feel like saying any more and, frankly, I was surprised I had said so much. I was starting to forget why I was angry with her.

It was the tears. They threw me off. It bothered me to see people cry. I never wanted to cry in front of another person, or cry alone, and I definitely didn’t want to witness anyone else’s tears.

She turned to me and scowled, as if I had farted loudly. I hadn’t. “You said you were suspended?”

“Lady,” the furry driver groaned.

“All right,” she snapped. “We will discuss this later,” she said to me.

She didn’t hug me goodbye, which was good, I suppose, because I’d never been a hugger. She did wave when the cab pulled away. Next door, the curtains in Hansens’ living room window shimmied and shut.

TWENTY-THREE

November 29. Thanksgiving. Age one: don’t remember. Age two: don’t remember. Age three: don’t remember. Age four: don’t remember. Age five: don’t remember. Age six: don’t remember. Age seven: don’t remember. Age eight: BiMo made a turkey and was very happy about it. Age nine: BiMo was depressed. I read a book about insects. Age ten: BiMo was in a manic phase. She and her boyfriend drove me out to the country for a picnic. They didn’t accidentally leave me there, and I was grateful. Age eleven: don’t remember. Age twelve: BiMo was depressed after breaking up with another boyfriend. Age thirteen: BiMo had just died. Not happy. Age fourteen: not happy. Age fifteen: not happy. Age sixteen: thoroughly miserable. Age seventeen: alone with Carl, not unhappy.

**

Thanksgiving day was dry and warm. I was sluggish because I was down to five yellow jackets and I was trying to ration them. Carl bought most of the food. He allowed me to pay for ingredients for the pumpkin bread. He initially refused to let me help in the kitchen. After I stood in the doorway for a few minutes, he began giving me little tasks, such as handing him a bowl that he could have reached. Pretty soon I was taking over, grating carrots and mashing potatoes. Cooking was preferable to doing research or watching TV or listening to Carl’s moribund acoustic guitar music. Carl eventually decided he was no help. He went to his office to do some “power yoga.”

As I minced garlic, the landline rang. I answered, because it was close to me and I didn’t want to shout for Carl. It was Janet. She seemed shockingly chipper. She wished me a happy Thanksgiving. Fiona butted in and wished me the same.

“You’re staying out of trouble?” Fiona said.

I told her I was trying to.

“Don’t try too hard. You need to have some fun.”

“Is Carl there?” Janet was talking now.

“He’s in the other room. Do you want me to get him?”

“I want to talk about your suspension first.”

It had been weeks since the suspension, and several days since I let the cat out of the bag. I thought there might be a statute of limitations on scolding, but apparently not. She demanded an explanation. I said the German club party got out of hand and it was no big deal. I gave her the abridged story and emphasized that I didn’t drink anything at the party.

“And you think this kind of behavior is acceptable?”

“I don’t.”

“You thought you could get away with it?”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“You used a fake I.D.”

“Levi gave me the I.D.”

“And that makes it all right?”

“No.” It went on this way for a while. I thought she would run out of serious accusations and start reprimanding me for innocuous things.
And you ate cereal that day, didn’t you? And wore… khaki pants?
In the back of my mind was a question.
Why do you care, if you’re not coming back?
Finally, she said I could not drive Carl’s car for a month. This was excellent punishment, because I had no desire to drive Carl’s car.

Janet was winding down her censure when Carl entered. I handed him the phone and left him alone to reconcile, or not, with Janet.

I thought dinner would be a fast, glum affair. But the phone conversation with Janet had perked Carl up. He didn’t say what they discussed, except for the fact she was angry that we hadn’t told her about the suspension. “That’s a good sign,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

“A good sign of what?”

“She wants to come back. She’s concerned about you. She’s worried.”

We ate in silence for ten minutes. Then, I blurted out, “I’m sorry about Scott.” I had been waiting for the right time to say that. There was no right time.

I didn’t expect Carl to go into the whole story, but he did. He explained how Scott had “slipped away” from them. They were busy with their careers, both working sixteen hour days. Carl was starting a company. Janet was a rising star at a bank. Scott had become addicted to drugs, and they hadn’t seen the signs until there was little they could do. First it was speed, and then it was heroin. He died choking on his own vomit. They were living in California at the time and Scott was in New York.

“We had given up on him. It was exhausting, chasing after him, putting him in rehab. We felt helpless. We convinced ourselves after his last relapse that the best thing was to let him get clean on his own. We cut him off. We’ve been reconsidering that decision…” He paused long enough to finish his yams. “But, you can only chew over mistakes for so long.”

Then Carl answered something that was on my mind. “It’s not about you, our break up. You just brought up issues that would have stayed buried. We’ll work it out. Janet can’t stand her mother. By Christmas, she’ll be back. And don’t worry about her punishment. You can drive the Sentra if you really have to. But you can’t touch her Lexus, I’m afraid. She would have a conniption.”

During dessert the landline rang. Again, I was the closest person, so I answered.

“What’s up?” It was Levi. I hadn’t heard from him since we returned from Pasadena. He wasn’t calling from a Mormon indoctrination camp, unless the camp had slot machines. The dinging and electro-deedling almost drowned out his voice. I informed him he was way behind in geometry.

“Can’t afford tutoring,” he shouted over the din. “I have sixty dollars and it has to last.”

“Until when?”

“Until I move back home.”

“You moved out?”

“Chased out.”

“Where are you now?”

“Paris.”

“Ha.”

“The Paris Hotel. On the Strip.”

“You can afford that?”

“The garage is free.”

I coaxed out the basic facts and demanded that he come to the point. There had been no mysterious van waiting to snatch him in the middle of the night. But there had been a confrontation with his family. He told the truth about the deer. That made his camping story more plausible. The problems started when the emergency clinic sent the bill to Levi’s house. His dad became suspicious. He checked the Lincoln’s odometer, which led to more questions. Instead of coming up with a plausible lie, Levi confessed to driving to Pasadena and seeing a tutor—me. He told them he was questioning his faith. They proclaimed him unwelcome in their house. He ran out with a change of clothes and two hundred dollars in his pocket.

If he had that much money on hand, why was he always short when it came to paying me for tutoring?

 “I’m using this guy’s cell phone and he wants it back now. I’ll find a pay phone and call you back.”

“No,” I said. “Stay there. I’ll meet you at the front entrance.”

“Wait.”

I cut him off by ending the call. I always wanted to do that to him.

I put on my winter vest and told Carl I was meeting Levi. He offered the Sentra, but I declined. I reminded him I had to work and would see him in the morning.

“I can drive you to work.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“Janet will be upset if I don’t.” A grin crossed his face. “That’s another good sign. Means she’ll be back.”

I should have waited for Levi to finish what he was saying on the phone. He might have informed me about the many possible front entrances to the Paris hotel. After bouncing between the middle-aged, glassy-eyed, drink-in-hand tourists for fifteen minutes, I ran into Levi by a craps table near the Arch de Triumph. He had lost weight, quite a feat for someone already so skinny. He told me he had spent the last two weeks sleeping in his car and wandering hotel casinos. He had an acquaintance who worked at the UNLV student gym and let him shower there for free.

“Did you eat today?” I said.

“Of course.”

I assumed that was a lie. I told him I was buying dinner.

We zigzagged through indoor fake-Parisian streets, past gambling tables and roulette wheels, drinkers, coughers and women in skimpy outfits handing out drinks. Most people had a look of pressured amusement, as if someone were forcing them to act wildly happy. Some people stepped out of the way, probably because I was wearing my work scrubs under my winter vest. They may have assumed I was there to resuscitate someone.