Twenty Grand (17 page)

Oh, I said.

I'm sorry, my sister said. I did not want to hurt your feelings.

I know, I said.

You're my sister, my sister said. I share seventy-five percent of your genes. Then she said next time I came over I should just not focus on Caitlin Bug and not talk to her, look at her, or go near her.

I said, Good idea, and thank you for the advice. I hung up. I looked at my picture of Caitlin Bug. She had curly red hair, large blue eyes, and was beautiful. I looked in the mirror. I saw a woman who had big thighs. I opened my mouth. I saw yellow teeth. I went in the living room to see Rick. He was watching TV. When he saw me, he turned the TV off. I told Rick, while talking with my mouth shut, about the phone call. He said he was sorry that my sister had been mean. I said she had not been, that she was just doing what was best for Caitlin Bug. He patted my shoulder, and turned on the TV. I thought: I will never, never test him.

Rick, I said. If we could never do it again, would you still want to live with me?

He looked at me and then at the TV. He stared at the TV. He scratched his head. Probably not, he said. Then I felt my heart go squish, squish, like someone had squeezed it twice, and also it felt like my lungs stopped, but I said I understood. I put the cart in the car, and said I might go for a drive. I drove to the part of the town where poor people live where there are a lot of small, crappy parks.

I found a small, crappy park. In the middle of the park was a puddle filled with sewage runoff. Past the puddle was a swing set with two swings. The third had fallen off. I left my car several blocks away so when I was ready, I could leave without being seen. I dragged the box to the middle of the park. I put it next to the puddle. I took off the piece of paper where I'd written “To Caitlin Bug” and I crossed out “Caitlin Bug” and I turned the paper to the blank side and wrote, “Sno-Kone Cart.” I went to the edge of the park. I hid behind two trees. I did not move from behind the trees, even when two poor children entered the park. I'd decided I would not come out and explain to them the things you could do with a Sno-Kone Cart, because I did not want them to scream and run away. This worked. The two girls went right to the box.

I put Rick out of my head, and I put my sister out, and I put Caitlin Bug out. I knew I could not be the only person in the world who liked Sno-Kone Carts. I felt a spider in my heart. It was jumping around. It was saying, Open it. Open it. I felt so excited, because I knew how happy the girls were going to be as soon as they opened the box, and I knew that they would love it and would always remember getting it.

Grateful thanks for invaluable support: Sarah Chalfant and Kathryn Lewis, Esther Newberg and Liz Farrell, and for amazing edits, Tim Duggan and Allison Lorentzen, Meghan O'Rourke, Bill Buford, Field Maloney, Deborah Treisman, Ben Metcalf, and Christian Lorentzen; for brilliant readings, edits, and encouragement, Adam Desnoyers, Keith Gessen, Chad Harbach, and Robin Kirman; my classmates at Syracuse and teachers, especially George Saunders, Diane Williams, Robert O'Connor, Brooks Haxton, and Michael Burkhard; and thanks to my family for love and encouragement. I'm also indebted, for their generous support, to the Rona Jaffe and Saltonstall foundations.

I GREW UP
(from the age of two) in Gilford, New Hampshire, a semi-rural town of five thousand people on a small road named after my family. Gilford is part of the Lakes Region, so named for the lakes and mountains. It's a scenic area, and many tourists come from around the country—in summer to go boating, tour around, and swim in the lake; in fall to see the foliage and hike in the mountains; and in winter to ski. Both my sister and I felt, growing up in such a beautiful, rural, isolated, and homogenous area, that we wanted to go somewhere more exciting as soon as we could. Basically we hated it and felt we lived in Hicksville. We both left the area after high school. But when I wrote the stories in this book, each began with the desire to describe a place in New Hampshire that I knew, even if it was an ugly place. The setting for “The Alpine Slide” is based on a local water park where I worked as a slide attendant, as did a bunch of other teenagers. That was the best job I ever had, working in the valley among the mountains, riding the slide; in writing the story, all I wanted to do was describe the park. Since almost all of the stories in this book are set in New Hampshire, and since I probably did no justice to the places—I thought I'd compile, as an apology, a guide to some truly great highlights of the area. Many of these places are mentioned in the stories.

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