The Haters (14 page)

“Yeah, we would like that a lot, please,” I said, and fortunately neither Ash nor Corey tried to fuck it up.

Corey and I squeezed into the back so Charlize could have shotgun and give directions to her house a few blocks away.

“How old are y'all, seriously,” Charlize wanted to know.

“Seriously, I'm twenty-one,” said Ash.

“If you're twenty-one, I'm Michelle Obama,” announced Charlize.

There was a meditative silence in the car.

“And I am not Michelle Obama,” clarified Charlize. “Because the man I married is not the President of the US of A. He is more like the President of the US of PYF.”

She gazed out the window.

“United States of Picking Your Feet,” she said eventually, kind of to herself, and somehow that was how we knew she didn't hate us.

“My dad picks his feet,” said Corey.

The President of the United States of Picking Your Feet was not amped about the three random kids who were going to sleep in his house.

“Charlie,” he announced. “These young people have
got to go
.”

We were in the living room with him. He was sitting in an armchair with a cup of tea and a book called
The Mauritius Command
with pirates on the cover. His name turned out to be Ed, and I would describe his fashion sense as “frumpcore.” It was socks and flip-flops, pants that looked like they were meant to be worn in a lab over your actual pants, and an old mucus-colored polo shirt that somehow had a hole right over the belly button. It was a look so committed to late-middle-age frumpiness that you had to respect it.

“They have nowhere else to stay and you can just deal with it for one night,” Charlize called down from upstairs, where she was making some beds.

“NNNNNNOPE,” shouted Ed, staring squarely at me.

“Yyyyyyyes sir,” called Charlize.

“I will NOT be responsible for the children of strangers.”

“That's funny, because my crystal ball says you most certainly will.”

“I am deeply opposed to this foolishness.”

“We really appreciate this,” offered Corey, but Ed just stared at him wordlessly for ten seconds. Then he repeated, “
Opposed
.”

“Oh, go oppose yourself,” we heard Charlize say.

“I am
strenuously
opposed to this latest misbegotten misadventure.”

“Ed, it sounds like the second-floor toilet's still acting up.”

Ed exhaled a few times through his nose.

“Charlie,” he called upstairs, in a more rational tone of voice. “Suppose the police come by. Suppose they make the discovery of three children in our home—
white
children—without the knowledge or express permission of any type of legal guardian. Now tell me realistically what you think might happen next.”

“The police are not gonna come by, and by the way only one of 'em's white.”

He did an eye roll so hard that it was kind of amazing that he didn't dislocate his eyeball.

His next move was to peer intensely at each of us in turn, clearly with the purpose of getting one of us to break. Unsurprisingly, that person turned out to be Corey.

“His parents are also white,” volunteered Corey, pointing at me.

Ed turned his CIA-interrogator-type stare back to me.

“I'm adopted,” I said, feeling ridiculous. “From Venezuela.”

Ed nodded gravely, as if this information could possibly have been of any use to him.

“I grew up outside New York,” added Ash irrelevantly, at which point Ed cut us all off by throwing his arms wide and saying, in a slow and reasonable voice, “
Now look
. You three can appreciate my predicament. Am I being asked to harbor runaways?”

It is safe to say that none of us had any idea what the fuck to do. We all just stood there nodding at him thoughtfully. We were trying to nod in a way that said,
We appreciate your predicament
, but not in a way that said,
Yes, we are runaways that you are being asked to harbor
.

“In the eyes of the law, will I be culpable of harboring fugitive minors? In the eyes of the law.”

We continued nodding in our halfhearted, confusing way. Ed seemed to just be addressing me.
He thinks I am the leader
, I tried not to realize.

“Tell me,” he boomed. “Am I complicit in some funhouse-mirror perversion of the Underground Railroad?”

I had to stop nodding in order to contemplate what this meant. Corey just nodded even more vigorously. And Ash started shaking her head. So we looked like total idiots taken as a group.

But somehow that response was the one that satisfied him. Because he grinned and went, “HA.”

And then, mysteriously, he just let it drop. He cleared his throat, sipped some tea, picked up
The Mauritius Command
, and went back to reading it as though we weren't there.

We shuffled upstairs to three made beds in three different
rooms. Charlize was lying facedown on the floor in my room when I went in there. She got up briskly as if that was a totally normal thing to do.

“Just resting,” she told me, patting me on the arm and walking out.

Charlize told us we could play a little backyard set after dinner, and neighborhood folks would come see us and have some beers and stuff. It seemed like Ed wouldn't possibly agree to let this happen, but nonetheless, we rehearsed out there for a couple of hours while the sun set, and no one stopped us.

This was clutch, because no one could remember any part of any song. Also I needed to get used to playing with the heel of my right hand all wrapped up. But the main thing was we were still just getting started on figuring out how to play with one another.

I mean, I was really just beginning to learn who Ash was as a guitarist. Like the specific things she liked to do and when she liked to do them. But also, I was starting to understand her overall musical personality, which seemed kind of sloppy and haphazard until you really started listening to it and you realized that actually she was in total control.

She was never right on the beat. She liked to come in a split second late, or early, and was always putting either too many notes into a phrase or too few. She'd shadow the bass part for a few bars, like an intro or a verse, but with all kinds of hiccups and ghost notes that made it actually a different part completely. Or she'd set you up with some very orderly squared-away blues
comping and then, without warning, stamp a big weird note over it in a way that kind of made your skin jump. But it was all super intentional.

Her whole thing was about giving you whatever it was you didn't expect, and so for me and Corey it became about giving her the maximum amount of space to do that, and getting as tight and gridded-out as we possibly could, and for a couple of hours that's what we did, and we couldn't be totally sure but by the end we were starting to feel like we really were onto something.

Charlize and Ed's four sons came for dinner. Two of them brought their wives and kids. We were spared the indignity of eating at the kids' table in the living room. Instead we got squeezed in among the adults despite there being not really enough room for all of us.

Dinner itself was some kind of poached fish, plus a million delicious sides. In an effort to get at these miraculous sides, I kept accidentally elbowing the guy next to me, who turned out to be Ed Jr., a.k.a. Little Ed. Eventually he mumbled, “Just tell me what you want I'll get it, okay.” He did this without turning his head or making eye contact.

That was all he said until Charlize started telling the story of how she met us.

“Well, my heart sank when I saw Walter in that CVS because you know Walter, he's like a hypochondriac but for everybody in the room, and sure enough he sees this young man with his hand wrapped up, and he hollers, Charlize! Hey! Charlize!
I need you to look at this!
And soon as I say, look at what, he just goes, whoopee!!
and—and
books
it out of there, knocking people over, leaving a Walter-shaped hole in the wall. But it isn't that false of an alarm because this young man Wesley does need some attention, and Wesley, I don't want to embarrass you, but you looked a little like a hobo standing there, sorry but you did, you had a dirty little bloodstained washcloth around your hand like you were going for your Hobo Patch in Boy Scouts—heh—Quincy, don't make me laugh—and there's all kinds of dirt and grime and shattered glass in his hand just begging to get infected. So I cleaned it out and then I sent these three on their way—”

“The evidence would suggest you did no such thing,” said Ed.

“Ma, what were you doing in CVS,” said Little Ed, in his mumbly scratchy voice.

“Ed, I
did
send them on their way, but then outside I catch up to them arguing and bickering about motels, not a parent or a teacher in sight, which, let me ask you three, is that normal for you young people? I'm not judging, I'm just curious, is that a normal circumstance?”

“I will answer that question,” said Ed cheerfully. “NO. No, it is not. There are three runaways sitting at our dinner table.”

“Pop,” said Quincy.

“You three would've told me if you were runaways, I hope,” Charlize asked us.

My skin got very hot and itchy and I squirmed involuntarily. Corey stared at his food unhappily like it was forcing him to watch an episode of the news. And Ash was completely expressionless, which somehow made her seem the guiltiest of all three of us.

“Their silence is deafening,” said Ed, munching some fish.

“Ed, let them speak.”

“You,” said Ed to me. “Do you have express parental consent to be in this house.”

Fortunately, I had a full mouth. And I knew that having a full mouth was going to buy me a little time. So I tried to chew the food as conspicuously as possible. But I was not able to use the time that this bought me to have any kind of productive brain activity.

Everyone continued to wait for me to say something. I knit my eyebrows and puffed out my cheeks a little bit, hoping to convey the idea of,
There is a whole bunch of food in here. So I probably will not be able to talk for a while
.

Unfortunately, puffing out my cheeks caused a small amount of stuffing to lurch out of my mouth and into my lap.

A wife giggled. So did Ash. But pretty much everyone else reacted with total despair. One son put his head in his hands and whispered, “
Dang
.”

The impasse, incredibly, was broken by Little Ed, who wanted to talk about something completely different.

“Pa, you gonna ask Ma what she was picking up at CVS,” said Little Ed.

Ed turned to Little Ed.

“What reason would I have to ask her that,” he said, genuinely confused.

“Ma. Are you gonna tell him.”

She pursed her lips and said, “Couple of things.”

“You gonna tell him or do I have to.”

In a very short period of time the vibe at the table became completely different.

“Advil,” said Charlize. “And, uh, toothpaste.”

Little Ed just stared mournfully at his plate.

“Well, don't go making a big deal out of it,” snapped Charlize. “I've been having a few dizzy spells. So the doctor prescribed me something. Now drop it.”

“Told me it was seizures,” mumbled Little Ed.

“
Drop it
,” ordered Charlize, but everyone at the table was talking to her at this point. Everyone except Ed, who was just staring at her with this frozen terrible face that I didn't want to be looking at, but was.

It was about that point that I knew we probably shouldn't be there. But there was no clear way to leave.

“Ma—you've been having seizures again?”

“They've been barely even noticeable, and in fact—”

“Oh my goodness, Mrs. Harris. Oh my
goodness—
”

“You can't be—Ma, listen—you can't be keeping this from us. If you been having them at all—”

“All y'all, just calm down, because I am
fine—
”

All three of us were desperately racking our brains for graceful exits we could make so that this sensitive family moment could happen without three weird nonfamily spectators. Or maybe Corey and Ash weren't racking their brains. But I definitely was. “We all have to go to the bathroom”? Nope. “We just remembered that actually we do have a hotel booked somewhere except don't ask us the town or the name of the hotel and, on that note, bye”? Also nope.

“Mrs. Harris, you can't be cooking alone if you're gonna have seizures!”

“Ma, yeah, say you got some water boiling on the stove—”

“This is exactly why I didn't want to tell y'all because I
knew
y'all would start overreacting and trying to keep me out of my kitchen and—calm down,
please
—”

“Charlie,” croaked Ed, shaking his head, and something in the way he said it made me react kind of in spite of myself, and I felt myself get up, and I heard myself say, “We're definitely intruding here, so please excuse us,” and I got up and walked out to the backyard before anyone could stop me, and Ash and Corey must have followed immediately because pretty soon it was the three of us out there.

Each of us was making our own That Was Intense Face. Corey's was his go-to all-purpose face, i.e., the De Niro. Ash was kind of gritting her teeth and sneering with one side of her lip. Mine was the one where you push your mouth up and your eyebrows down and basically push all the parts of your face toward the center.

We could still hear them having their intense family moment through the windows. Ed was begging Charlize to tell him everything and not leave a single thing out. Charlize was taking it out on Little Ed for making a fuss about it. The two wives were making a bunch of offers of things they could do to help. The sons who weren't Little Ed were also kind of taking it out on Little Ed for not telling them sooner.