And Then Things Fall Apart (17 page)

When he said, “It takes two to tango,” he was just trying to be funny. But as we sat in his car with the air on, I was, like,
yeah, two to
tango
. As he leaned the seats back as far as they could go and ran his warm hand up from my waist to my chest with his mouth on mine, I thought,
What would make me give up all this kind of happiness with Matt?
And I remembered that when I was alone and totally unhappy—just days ago—I had, in all seriousness and with much hatred in my heart,
broken up with him
. That was when I knew there was way more to this divorce than some stupid sexcapade between Dad and Amanda, and if my so-called parents didn't have the guts or time to talk with me about it, I had to take matters into my own hands. I mean, and I don't say this lightly, WTF?

Sometimes you need to know things. Especially things that directly impact your life and emotional well-being. And let me say right now, for the record, if I were on trial in Judge Judy Sheindlin's courtroom, this would be my only defense for my actions.

Unlike Gram, my parents' mouths have been shut as tight as clams about anything important that has anything to do with anything I care about. And I have had it. Gram can
talk about one of the most degrading and upsetting experiences of her life while eating raw meat, but my dumb-ass parents can't even sit me down over coffee to explain what has happened to our family and their marriage. Which, at this point, is the same thing.

I had to look for answers, and now I sorta wish I hadn't, because things are sofa king messed up. All I am capable of doing right now is typing, and using my involuntary muscles to swallow and blink.

So, after making out with Mutant Frogboy and trying to hide my hormonal upheaval from Gram, I went down to the basement on a long-overdue fact-finding mission. Dame Kindness was upstairs. Every once in while I heard her footsteps creak from the front room to the back porch, or from the dining room to the kitchen. I told her it was cooler in the basement. I brought down a glass of lemonade and my battered copy of
The Bell Jar
to complete the ruse. I had no intention of drinking or reading anything in the basement. Instead I stood in front of the door to the Lair. I waited for Gram's feet to wander to the front room, the place farthest away from where I was below.

The door to the Lair was cheap, covered in gray laminate. The knob was gold with a hole in the center that you couldn't peek through, but could be used to pick open the lock if you had to. I didn't have to because it was open.

My dad was where he always was since he moved here—out.
Working. Working. Working some more. Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go. Working. I even said something to him the other day. As he walked out the door, I said, “See ya never.” I thought he would think that I was saying “See you later,” but he was actually listening to me, and he turned in the doorway and said, “I know, Keek. I'll come back early tonight. Maybe we can go for ice cream.”

At first I was, like,
Yippee, ice cream!
But then I remembered that I could never be purely happy again, that I'm not six, I'm fifteen, and ice cream wasn't going to make me feel one iota better. And I said, “Whatever.” And meant it.

I thought of this as I turned the knob and pushed. Doors. Walking through them, opening them, shutting them. They are part of everyone's day-to-day life, but as I passed from basement to Lair, I felt in my bones that I was transgressing something important like trust, privacy, personal rights. I was crossing the threshold into my dad's shame because I could and because I needed to. So there I was, smack-dab in the center of his room, the sanctuary, the tomb. His capital-L Lair.

There was a prefab homework desk beneath the window, which was covered with papers scattered like leaves on a curb. There was a dresser with grooming things on it. There was an unmade bed, big enough for only one person. A built-in bookcase held some tax books and a framed picture of me when I was eight—braids, missing teeth, etc.
The windows looked out onto the backyard, the pavement, and the grass beyond. It was a foxhole. It was a child's room. It smelled like a greasy man and/or a gerbil lived there. I suddenly imagined my dad as a kid on the debate team sitting in the school cafeteria, eating fries. I know from old pictures that he was a skinny teenager, and I could see him, sitting here at his desk finishing a geometry assignment before slipping some cash into his jeans' pocket and meeting friends for Cokes or to buy Kiss records.

On the dresser, one hairbrush. Tortoiseshell with black plastic bristles and a broken handle. Who else would brush their hair with such a ridiculous implement but my father? It used to be my mom's. She brushed her hair with it, my hair with it, and even today I'm sure if some voodoo priestess wanted to place curses on us, she could get samples from this very brush. The point being, it was an artifact from his old life. Like the leather recliner in the sitting area and the picture of me in the bookcase, the brush was one more thing that Dad needed in order to get through his day-to-day life in this house without his wife and, I suppose, daughter. Creepy. Or not so creepy. Just sad. Sofa king sad that I just sat in the desk chair. Numb. You can only go so long saying to yourself, “This can't be happening, this can't be happening,” before you just have to stop saying it, hold still, and let it sink in.

Sunlight angled through the basement windows onto
the desk, and now that I'm typing this, it was like God or the director of a telenovela beamed a spotlight right on the freaking Holy Grail. It was like angels should have been singing opera at the discovery. At first I thought they were just papers. Adult nonsense, like tax stuff or Dine & Dash invoices for vent cleaning. But then I looked closely, like
CSI
-forensics closely, and they weren't your ordinary flotsam and jetsam of business-owning waste-paper. They were letters. Bank statements. Copies of receipts. All from the last few months. Words and columns, letters and numbers, all tic-tac-toeing across the papers like code.

My heart was beating sofa king fast. I knew it was trying to tell me that I should turn back, that this wasn't fair or right, but when passing an accident on the Eisenhower Expressway, I couldn't look away. I sat in the desk chair and took deep breaths while I tried to really see things for what they were. But each time I looked at one piece of evidence, I had to look at something else. To see if anything hidden away down here would tell me what I needed to know about my parents, about me, about what was going to happen to all of us.

When my parents first started counseling, Mom stopped mentioning Amanda in conversation, but I didn't think much of it. The phone would ring at weird times and Mom would pick up the phone and say something cryptic like,
“Don't” or “He's not here,” when he so was right there, in the repaired leather recliner, holding his head in his hands. And sweating.

Something was rotten in Denmark, right? But I couldn't tell where the smell was coming from. Dear reader, I was oblivious. I also wasn't seeing much of Amanda then. School was busy and our schedules were different, and again, it didn't mean anything in particular to me.

I'll never forget the night I found out. After weeks of therapy my parents seemed to be enjoying a night of renewed domestic bliss. For real. I remember how peaceful and secure I felt in the living room, listening to my parents being nice to each other for a change. Mom and Dad, probably inspired by their therapist, decided to make a big pot of red sauce from scratch and had been bumping into each other in the kitchen like drunk bumblebees all afternoon. They seemed to be having the time of their lives, and the house smelled amazing. I thought however much they were paying this amazingly gifted marriage counselor was not enough.

They opened a second bottle of wine. I was in the living room, living. I could see them through the kitchen doorway and hear their teasing and cajoling escalate into something sharper, louder. I got up to get a Coke from the fridge. Trying, I guess, to keep them from fighting. It was like I was trying to prevent two betta fish cheerfully circling each other from realizing they were mortal enemies.

And then I heard it—from Mom. She threw a wooden spoon heavy with sauce at the wall and screamed: “At least I didn't screw the WAITSTAFF.”

The what staff?

?

The only two waitstaff were me and—

?

So.

?

It must have been . . .

?

—

Oh.

God.

I was right there when she said it. I looked at my Dad, who was at once repugnant and pathetic, then at the splash of red on the wall where the spoon had hit. It looked like a bullet had gone through his forehead and splattered his brains all over the place. And my mom was standing there, the opposite of Zen, with both hands clamped over her mouth like a speak-no-evil monkey.

I grabbed my iPod and left. Went walking. Where? Around the blocks of our idyllic suburban neighborhood, but I don't remember a thing of it. Only that it was the colorless, silent landscape of the shocked.

It was suddenly as if I had never had a father. I felt this
void in my head and heart where my dad usually inhabited. So total was my pain, it was like he had never existed. It was as if someone had torn my plug out of the wall. Everything was deadened and more silent than silent, because there was no energy pulsing through anything.

Now that we are cloistered together here at Gram's house, he's slowly taking form again. I catch glimpses of him when he pops his head into my room to check on me before heading down to the Lair, or as he takes the garbage out for Gram. He is working, yes, but I know he is also avoiding me because he is humiliated by his own behavior. If I were him, I'd lie low too.

That stunning night of dismay when it all came out was the very worst I thought I could feel about the goings-on in my parents' marriage—when, ha, ha, ha. Little did I know the outrages that awaited. Like the evidence before me: the D&D's bank statements.

The bank records were pretty straightforward. At first glance, they seemed as innocent and meaningless as a grocery receipt. And yet a floundering Algebra II student could interpret them with the greatest of ease.

In layman's terms, the restaurant was screwed.

There was no money in the Dine & Dash, Inc., account.

$0.00.

Then a letter from the bank saying, “Thank you for banking with us. If there is anything we can do for you in future, do not hesitate blah, blah, blah.” And then bills, big ones for D&D insurance, workers' compensation premiums, meat delivery, etc. So of course I'm convinced that skanky and manipulative Amanda took advantage of my family, broke my mother's heart,
and
swindled all this money out of my poor overworked, under-loved, sex-starved Dad, when I see my
mother's
ridiculously flamboyant signature beneath the reams of legalese.

There was a letter underneath all these papers, handwritten, on stationery from Hallmark or something. I'm just going to attach it here as evidence. Besides, retyping it would re-break my heart. Let me warn you: It is not very Zen. My mother has a trajectory, all right. She can go straight to hell.

 

Dear Kevin,

I don't expect you to understand, but I need to have a fulfilling life. Although I care for you, you know as well as I do that something has changed.

But I need financing. I've closed the D&D account and am going to use the cash to help me rebuild my life. You are a better businessperson than I am and can run the restaurant without me. You'll be better off without me. I promise.

I have been very unhappy and couldn't see any other way to break free.

Please don't hate me,

Love always,

L

How long did Dame Kindess watch Matt and me make out before tapping on the window? Oh, yeah, I should have typed that up yesterday, but there are so many humiliations of late that, forgive me if I forget to mention them all in chronological order.

When I say “making out” I mean
making out
. In an idling car. With the air on in the thousand-degree sun. During the day. In front of my grandmother's house. It had been more than three weeks. And more than that, when I'm with Matt, all this other monstrous crap gets put on hold. Making out with him is like entering a suspension pod in a sci-fi movie. It's like taking a nap from your life. And if anyone deserves a break, it's me.

And so Matt's got his hand up my shirt, and my underwear is totally soaked and I'm feeling like a lady baboon with all my pink parts inflamed, and then
knock, knock, knock
on the VW window. I swear I have never seen Matt move so fast, not even in the wrestling ring.

It was Gram. Smoking, a hand on her hip, acting like an extra from a Joan Crawford movie. And we were newly sweating and red in the face, and I was a slug upon whom salt had just been poured.

“Out,” Gram said. I opened the door and slithered out onto the hot pavement.

She said, “Keek, telephone.” And then she said, to Matt, “I'm Karina's grandma. Who the hell are you?”

And I started to say something but got this laser beam look, so off I went to get the phone.

Mom. I could hardly think straight—what with my sexed-up blood a-jangle in my nerve endings—let alone talk to Mom, but here is what I learned:

1. Aurora was out of the hospital. (Yes!)

2. Mom as coming home on Monday. (La. Dee. Freaking. Da.)

3. Then she said, “We need to talk.”

4. And I didn't know then about the embezzling, but if I had, I would have said, “Fuck you.”

5. Instead I said, “Okay, Mom. Call me again tomorrow,” like an utter simp. But she didn't call me back. Chicken.

When I got back outside, Matt was gone. The sun was moving lower in the sky, and Gram said, “How about an
early supper of broiled tomato and Spam?” (Recipe number three on my
Bell Jar
recipe list.)