The Rest of Us Just Live Here (14 page)

Mel drives Dad and Meredith back home. I ride with my mom.

“The best thing is that it’s only six months to the election so it’s a short campaign,” my mom says, pushing on through the dark. “Normally for a seat this big, I’d have had to be running for at least the last year.” She glances over at me. “Which would have been worse.”

“You’d still have run, though.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I probably would have. And you and your sister judge me for that, I know.”

“We don’t judge you.”

To my surprise, she snorts. “Yes, you do. I judged
my
parents. That’s what young people do, isn’t it?”

Her parents live in North Dakota. I’ve met them about four times in seventeen years of life. I wonder if she just kept on judging them.

“I do all this for you guys, you know,” she says. “I know you think it’s just ambition and power-seeking, and well, for goodness’ sake, I’m a politician and I wouldn’t be a politician if those things weren’t there, too, but it’s not just that.”

I don’t know what to say. She
never
talks like this. Never hints that there’s anything behind her motivations other than pure, patriotic public service. “Are you feeling okay?” I ask.

“The thing is, I’m not even surprised you’d ask that. We’ve forgotten how to talk to each other, haven’t we? Funny how things evolve and evolve and then one day, you look up and they’re different.”

“You don’t believe in evolution.”

She laughs. Actually
laughs
. “Well, not politically, I don’t.” She looks over at me again. “I wonder what you think of me.
Really
. What kind of a person am I when seen by you?”

I keep quiet, hoping like hell this is a rhetorical question. It is.

“I
am
feeling okay,” she says. “But I’m also stepping into the big time, son. This isn’t local government with all its little tyrants and petty feuds. This is national office.”

“Which has big tyrants and dangerous feuds.”

“Absolutely,” she sighs. “I thought it was all over with the Lieutenant Governor’s race, that I’d be in local office forever. Maybe end up on a school board some day or a state commission for something or other. But all of a sudden, in the space of a few weeks, here it all is. The big show.”

“If you win.”

“I will.”

Yeah, she probably will.

“What do you
do
when your dreams are about to come true?” she asks. “No one ever tells you. They tell you to chase them, but what happens when you actually catch one?”

“You enjoy it. Do your best, try not to be a dick.”

“Language.” But she’s not upset. “I really do this for you guys, though, whatever you may believe. They’re
my
dreams, yes, but they’re dreams of a world I can make better for you.”

“Us specifically? Me and Mel and Meredith?”

“Your generation. I know you guys face some tough things.”

“Do you?”

“I want to help with that.”

“Do you?”

“Quit saying that. I was a teenager once, too. I know what goes on.”

“You do?” I risk.

She frowns at me. She looks in the rear-view mirror, checking out for Mel in the car behind us. “I saw stuff you wouldn’t believe,” she says, under her breath.

My ears prick. “What stuff?” I ask, carefully.

She just shakes her head. “The world isn’t safe, Mike. It just isn’t. I wish it was, but it’s not. I worry for you and Mel. I worry myself sick for Meredith, that the future’s going to have enough for her to be happy and protected.”

“You need to let her go to the Bolts of Fire concert.”

“I know. She deserves it. She’s going to miss you two so much.”

I leave that alone, because it doesn’t feel like it belongs to her. Trees pass us by in the night. I watch them, looking for strange blue lights, I guess, but not finding any.

“What stuff did you see?” I ask again. “When you were a teenager?”

“Nothing,” she says, too quickly. “Are you ready for your finals?”

“Yes. What do you mean, nothing?”

“Mike,” she says, warning. “The mistake of every young person is to think they’re the only ones who see darkness and hardship in the world.”

“That’s what the cop said,” I mumble.

“What cop?” she snaps.

“On TV,” I say, pleased at myself for thinking so fast. “The mistake of every adult, though, is to think darkness and hardship aren’t important to young people because we’ll grow out of it. Who cares if we will? Life is happening to us
now
, just like it’s happening to you.”

“What’s happening to you now?” she says, her voice changing, alert as a meerkat.

“Mom–”

“Tell me. Are you okay?”

“I didn’t mean–”

“I think you did mean,” she says. “Teens argue with their parents. That’s the law of nature. Doesn’t mean we stop caring about you. Doesn’t mean we stop being parents.”

“Dad stopped. A long time ago.”

There’s a really,
really
dangerous silence at this. I find that I don’t actually care.

“Your father…” she starts, but she doesn’t finish.

“He checked out after he stole all that money from Uncle Rick,” I say. “He never checked back in. Mel loves him, still. So where did he go?”

“And why can’t I bring him back? I don’t know. I wish I did. He was there
tonight
.”

“He was about forty per cent there tonight, and the sad thing is, we all thought that was a victory.”

She doesn’t say anything to this, just stares ahead into the darkened road. I feel bad now for wrecking the mood on her big announcement night, though I’m still wondering what she saw as a teenager. Was that the time of the undead? No, that was a bit later. But was there
something
, in her teenage years? Why have I never thought that she might have seen all this stuff, too?

“You didn’t say what was happening with you,” she says. “I need to know. I
want
to know. Not for the campaign. Because I’m your mother.”

I don’t answer her. I don’t want to.

But then I do.

“I think I need to see a psychiatrist again,” I say. “I think I need to go back on medication.”

There’s the smallest of pauses, like she’s slotting the information into some grid in her head. “The compulsive stuff?” she asks.

“Yep.”

“It’s gotten that bad?”

“It’s gotten really, really bad.”

I watch her absorb this. I watch her nod. “Okay.”

“‘Okay’?” I say, surprised.

“Of course,” she says, also surprised. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well … the campaign, for one–”

“Didn’t you hear me? Weren’t you listening to that ferocious mama bear crap?”

“I assumed that was something the party wrote for you in case you got asked about Mel.”

“Well. Okay. That’s true. But–”

“Lieutenant Governor would have been the big time, too. And that’s when everything went to hell. You can’t blame us for being a little weirded out by it.”

“No,” she says, after a second. “No, I can’t. Is it
because
of the campaign? Your … trouble?”

“I don’t think so. It started before Mankiewicz died. This isn’t me trying to tell you not to run. I think it’s just … life and graduation and everything changing.”

And zombie deer, I don’t say. And kids at my school dying. And Henna and her spirit of exploration.

“We’ll work it out,” she says. “I promise. I’ll talk to my team and work something out.”

“Why does your team need to know?”

“They need to know everything a journalist might find out. That way they can protect us.”

We’re nearly home, and I don’t say anything more. I certainly don’t ask what it might be like for families that don’t need protection from their parent’s jobs. Strange. It feels like we’d almost got somewhere, but then missed it. I’m surprised at how disappointed I feel.

When I go to bed, there’s a text from Jared.
Not bad in a suit there, Mikey.

I text back.
You saw it? Was it gruesome?

Jared:
All politics is/are gruesome.

Me:
Will you have to be at your dad’s?

Jared:
He doesn’t get a press conference. He’s announcing on Twitter.

Me:
Oh. Sorry.

Jared:
Don’t be. Makes him seem like the undergod.

Me:
Did you just type undergod?

Jared:
Underdog.

Me:
Does anyone use Twitter any more?

Jared:
UNDERDOG.

Before I put my phone away, I text Mel.
You all right?

Counting the days
, she texts back from her bedroom.

Me:
Dad was okay.

She doesn’t answer.

Me:
I like Call Me Steve.

Mel:
Me too.

I put my phone back on my side table to go to sleep, but it buzzes again.

Mel:
What’s going to happen to Meredith when we go?

Me:
She’ll be better than all of us. The only one who won’t need therapy.

Mel:
I don’t trust ANYONE who doesn’t need therapy.

Me:
You don’t trust anyone period.

Mel:
I trust you.

The word “finals” makes it sound like a bigger deal than it is, at least for us. We’re all College Prep, so most of the hard work had to be done early enough to prove to colleges we’d be worth indebting ourselves forever to them. The “final” for US History was just that Civil War essay, for example, which we all managed to get turned in on time, splitting the questions so me and Mel didn’t do the same one. The rest of our major tests have at least two of us in each class, so lunches turn into study sessions. For me, my only real worries are Calc and English.

“What is the limit as x approaches one of one minus x-squared over x to the fourth minus x?” I read.

“Iambic pentameter,” Mel says.

“You are?”

“Minus two-thirds,” Henna answers.

We look up to Jared. “Yep,” he says.

“It’s not iambic pentameter?” Mel says.

“You’re
definitely
bic pentameter,” Henna says. “In those shoes, anyway.”

“Because they look like four feet?” Mel says.

“Can I squeeze in?” Nathan says, appearing at our table.

Why does he do that? Always arrive late? He never comes
with
anyone, just wanders in after we’re all together. What’s he up to?

“I brought that essay I did last year on
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
,” he says, handing it to me. Me and Mel are the only two in AP English, and that awful, awful book is one of our exam texts, so he’s really helping us out here.

“Thanks,” I say, a bit surly.

“Don’t be too thankful, I only got a B and I still don’t have a clue what the hell the book was about.”

“No one does,” Mel says. “I think that’s the point.”

“Did you even finish it?” I ask her.

She hesitates. “Ish.”

“Listen–” Nathan says.

“This is…” I say, flipping through his essay. “Long.”

“They called it Core College in Tulsa,” he says, “and they really weren’t kidding. Listen–”

“Let me see,” Mel says, reaching over for the essay.

“Is this right?” Henna asks Jared, showing him some Calc work. He scans it in an instant.

“All fine,” he says. “I don’t know why you’re worried, Henna. You’re as good as me.”

“Meredith isn’t even as good as you,” she says, frowning at her paper.

“Guys?” Nathan says.

“Crap,” Mel says, reading his essay. “This is really smart. Like
really
smart. So much smarter than me.”