The Art of Adapting (42 page)

“Yeah, okay, got it. Here, have a Coke, then. You like these, right?” Jack pulled a can of Coke from the fridge and handed it to Matt.

Matt took the Coke and looked at it like he'd never actually touched one before. “Mom never let me have Coke. She said it made me too hyper.”

Jack nodded, leaned in close to Matt. “It'll be our secret,” Jack said. They watched as Matt opened the can, flinched from the hiss and snap of the metal popping free, sniffed the carbonated syrup, and laughed. It was like watching an alien creature discovering
something earthly for the first time. Byron was laughing before Matt even took a sip. Matt took a swig, made a face, but then he smiled.

“Good stuff, right?” Jack asked.

“Good stuff,” Matt said. “Did you know the carbonic acid in Coke can take rust off chrome?”

“I know it goes perfectly with Jack Daniel's,” Jack said, laughing. “So you like living with your sister Lana there in San Diego?” Jack slowed down every syllable in
Diego
as he said it:
dee aye go
, like it was three words and not one.

“I have a nice room. And a weighted blanket. Blue. And blackout curtains. They're red, not blue, but they help keep the sun out. I'd rather have blue.”

“Blue-out curtains,” Jack said. He and Matt laughed together. They looked a bit alike when they laughed: they had the same way of squinting their eyes and showing all of their teeth. A little airplane engine whined overhead and Jack looked up toward the ceiling. “Cessna?”

Matt stopped sipping his Coke to listen. He nodded. He gave a brief lesson on the various Cessna models. He preferred the small, sleek, carbon-fiber composite Corvalis model. Jack asked a stream of questions about engine types and body shapes and lift and drag and Byron was so bored he didn't listen to the answers, but he liked watching Matt and Jack interact. He could see how much Jack liked Matt's brain: the fact-memorizing part. They were a bit alike like that. But total opposites in the talking part. When Matt was done with the airplane lesson it was silent for a whole second, and Jack never let it get quiet.

“So, what was the Susan verdict?” Jack asked. “Do we have a girlfriend or don't we?”

Matt got up and left the room, leaving his soda on the table.

“Something I said?” Jack asked, and he and Byron laughed together. Jack was like a stand-up comedian. And the beer probably helped. Byron put his beer next to the Coke, so that if someone came in, they'd think the Coke was his. “Just don't ever drink and drive,” Jack said, pointing at the beer. “No joking. I've seen some
cases . . . people's entire lives ruined. Careers, marriages, dreams ended on a single night from one bad choice. Got it? We're not just talking sky-high insurance rates. We're talking jail time.”

“Got it,” Byron said. The stand-up comedian was gone and Jack was back to being a lawyer. Then Matt returned and Jack perked back up.

“Susan says yes,” Matt said. “She'll be my girlfriend again, if we take it slow.” He sat down and took a long swallow of Coke. “I think that means no sex yet.”

Byron choked on his beer and Jack howled with laughter.

“Oh, I know that drill,” Jack said. “Good ones play hard to get a bit. She wants to see your heart before she sees your . . .” Jack pointed at his lap and laughed as Byron sputtered again. Matt smiled and drank his Coke. “Son, am I making you uncomfortable?” Jack asked Byron. “If so, you're too damn sheltered.”

“No, sir,” Byron said. “I'm fine with it. I like it.”

“Good, good. But I'm no sir. I work for a living. Or did, from fifteen years old until those bastards forced me to retire last year. That's sixty-one years working nonstop. Now I'm just Grandpa Jack. Got it?”

Byron did the math. “Wait, that means you're seventy-seven? How's that possible?”

Jack laughed good and hard. “I know, right? I don't look a day over seventy-six!”

The next morning Matt came out with Byron early for his parkour session, to videotape it and give him suggestions. Byron did some of his best stunts, finally acclimated to the Florida weather. The heat wasn't so unbearable first thing in the morning, and the freshly watered grass was refreshing to land on, if a little slippery.

After that Byron jumped into the pool to cool off. The house was air-conditioned, but it felt stuffy in there, too many bodies for too little space, and the tension between Lana and Gloria sucked up what little air there was.

Byron swam a few laps, long slow strokes pulling him along in the muted underwater world. He was thinking about heading home, looking forward to seeing Betsy, of course, but also to hanging
out with Gabe more. Gabe was a senior now, and not a bad guy to be in with when school started back up.

After Byron got out of the pool he sent one of his best parkour videos to Gabe. Then he remembered how Trent accused him of dumping him, first for Dale, then for Betsy, and then for Gabe. He'd already sent the video to both Dale and Betsy. So he sent the video to Trent, too. He could see how being popular was a lot more work than being nobody. He showed the video to Jack, too, who was every bit as impressed as Byron had hoped.

“Did you see this, Glo?” Jack shouted toward their bedroom, where Gloria was lying down for her daily rest. “Our grandson here is gravity-defying!”

Jack offered Byron another beer, and he took it, because Lana and Becca were out shopping. Abby caught him drinking and rolled her eyes, but Byron knew she wouldn't say anything. They were friends now. And at least he'd finally quit smoking for real. Smoking was worse, right? Byron took a picture of himself with the beer and sent it to Betsy. She always looked so sexy and sure of herself in the photos she sent him, and Byron wanted to look cool enough to have a girlfriend like that. In most of his pictures he looked like a loser sixteen-year-old with a huge acne blotch on his forehead and a lame look on his face.

Behave yourself
, Betsy wrote back. Then Byron remembered the frat parties where everyone was wasted and she'd slept with guys she was too drunk to remember the names of. Guys who were too drunk to care how they treated a girl. He went to the kitchen and poured out the rest of the beer. He was drinking a Coke when Lana and Becca came back, giggling and carrying shopping bags.

“We were wondering if we should brave Disney World before we head home,” Lana said.

Byron shrugged. He was too old for Disney World, but what else was there to do?

Gloria came in from her nap for a cup of coffee. She drank hot coffee all day long. She and Lana kind of squared off, so Byron tried to break up the tension.

“Grandma, we were talking about going to Disney World. You in?”

“Matt can't handle Disney World. I'll stay here with him,” Gloria said.

“Oh, stop it, Mom,” Lana said. “It's a little late to play the protective parent.”

“Both of you stop, okay?” Becca said. She stood between them, which was useless, because she was so short they could still glare at each other right over her head.

“She woke him up at six this morning,” Lana said. “We've been working for months to regulate his sleep cycle, and she decides to get him up a couple of hours early for no reason. First denies him the sleep he needs, then tells him to stop taking his melatonin.”

Becca turned and looked at Gloria. Gloria just sipped her coffee, staring right at them both. It was like a fuse had been lit. And in a few seconds the bomb was going to go off.

Byron grabbed his phone and Coke and left the room. He didn't need to be a part of whatever was unfolding in there. He needed to call Betsy. To tell her he wasn't a drinker, never would be. She answered on the first ring.

“Hey, babe,” she said.

“I poured the beer out,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I love you. I'm not going to drink around you.”

“But you aren't around me,” she said, laughing, but he could hear the relief in her voice. “And I love you, too.”

“I'm just a chicken,” Lana said to Becca. “I keep telling Abby how brave and strong she is. I praise Byron for coming into his own. Turns out I'm the scaredy-cat.”

They were back at the mall, their favorite retreat. It was teeming with scantily clad teenage girls and aloof boys in low-slung jeans, but it was air-conditioned, there was food, and they could spend hours window-shopping to avoid their parents' condo.

“You're just a normal human being,” Becca said. “Recently heartbroken and afraid of getting hurt again.”

“But I don't feel afraid of Abbot. At all.”

Lana had been avoiding Abbot ever since he told her he loved her. It was a childish response and made no sense. Hadn't she wanted love in her life again? Lana wasn't sure how to remedy the problem, because she wasn't sure what the problem was.

“You're not afraid of Abbot,” Becca said. “You're afraid of opening your heart up and getting hurt again.”

“Oh, here's the solution right here.” Lana paused by the cookie counter, inhaled the fresh-baked chocolate chip aroma deeply. Becca laughed and nudged her along.

“We better get back for lunch,” Becca said. Lana sighed. She wanted to check on her kids and Matt, but she felt no desire to
see her parents. Which made her feel just as guilty as leaving Abbot's proclamation of love hanging in the air, just a blue trail of fear streaking across the country from San Diego to Sanford in response.

Being in such close quarters with her parents, now visibly slower and more frail, made Lana edgy. Gloria's memory of the distant past seemed to be slipping. She went through old photo albums by the armload, asking Lana and Becca to fill in the gaps.

“Remember the time we went to Yosemite, and it snowed, and we couldn't leave?” Gloria asked. “When was that? Easter?”

“Christmas break. But it wasn't Yosemite,” Lana said. “It was Tahoe.”

“Yeah,” Becca said. “North shore, right? At that cabin we borrowed from Dad's friends. That woodsy place with the rats in the attic.”

“The Stillmans,” Jack said. “Nice people. You know their son is gay? You remember the crush you had on him, Becca? Turns out you never stood a chance.”

Becca, Lana, and Jack laughed, but Gloria was displeased, a wrinkle of unhappiness forming between her eyes.

“I'm sure it was Yosemite,” she said, returning to the photo album. Gloria, always proper and polite to a fault, had recently become impossibly stubborn.

Lana mentioned it to her dad and he just shrugged. “She's had her share of hardships. Some recent health challenges. She's got a little fight left in her, and I think that's a good thing.”

Jack, on the other hand, was having trouble retaining the present. He was starting to repeat himself. He'd always had a flare for the dramatic, a lawyer's courtroom air about him, posturing and pontificating with the best of them. But he asked three times what Lana's plans were for summer, and three times she explained that she was running the summer school's reading lab. Each time he regarded it like new information. Lana wondered how much he was retaining.

“You'll keep an eye on them, right?” she said to Becca. “Seems fair. I have Matt.”

“Nothing fair about that deal in the least,” Becca said. “But yes, I'll look after them.”

Lana handed Matt his Wellbutrin pill at breakfast the next morning. He studied it in his palm before swallowing it with milk.

“I feel slower now,” Matt said. “On the meds. I thought that was a good thing. I have a fast-processing brain, you know. Maybe too fast. But maybe it's too slow now.”

“Where's this coming from?” Lana asked. “Did you want to try a different medication? Are you having side effects?” There were a ton of frightening possible side effects for every medication they'd considered for Matt. Lana had just hoped he'd have a high tolerance after his long history of self-medication.

“Mom said I might be better off without it.”

Lana braced for battle. She found Gloria in her bathroom, freshly showered, wearing a pink terry-cloth robe, holding the hair dryer aloft in her left hand and a brush in her right hand. Gloria deftly lifted her thin hair up and away from her scalp in practiced strokes as if she were blow-drying it, but the hair dryer wasn't on. Lana's anger subsided in a wave of confusion. What was Gloria doing, pointing a sleeping hair dryer at her head?

“Mom,” Lana said. “Is everything okay?”

Gloria lowered her spiky round brush and looked at Lana in the mirror. “Are you and Becca going to the store? We need paper towels. And creamer.”

Lana nodded and waited, watching. Gloria set down the hair dryer, touched her hair, and seemed perplexed to find it still wet. She started the process again, this time with the hair dryer blasting appropriately.

Lana didn't mention the scene to Becca. There was something intimate about it, too personal to share. And something alarming that Lana wasn't ready to face. She also swallowed the anger about Matt. They were leaving in three days. He'd be out of Gloria's grasp soon enough. How much damage could she do in three days?

But the whole scenario made her miss easygoing and doting
Abbot. She wanted to call him to complain, to get advice, to hear the way he said, “Lana, dear, that's the pits.” But first she needed to get past the hurdle of words, or to be able to explain to him why it was a hurdle for her at all.

Lana sat with Matt as he ate breakfast and wrote in his journal. She drank her coffee and tried to figure out what was wrong with her. Why life had to be so complicated. How she could be forty-four years old and still not have a clue what she was doing. For all the times people had thought Matt had insurmountable issues, maybe he actually had a better grasp on happiness than the rest of them: eat only foods that you love and in reasonable portions, worship and record beauty whenever you see it, spend all day learning new things, work hard when you work, stay organized, and never get pulled into other people's drama.