What is Real (11 page)

See on the ceiling, held up by wires, were these two cats. But they weren't regular cats. They looked like bobcats.

“What the hell are those?” I said.

“Oh,” she said, looking up like she never noticed them. “Those are the cats that killed my mom.”

The cats were posed like they were about to strike. Claws out. Their faces were stretched into messed-up snarls. I thought about her mom's dna on those cat claws. Someone had to have cleaned that off.

“What?” I said, even though I heard her.

“My dad had them stuffed.” She shrugged. “It made him feel better. It's symbolic, you know?”

“Oh,” I said.

That is not true. That did not happen.

There are cats. Stuffed, dead cats.

They didn't kill her mom.

Her mom left.

I don't know the story of the cats.

Her dad is total whack job. He does security work at the bank and a couple of other places that no one would want to rob anyway. The only one worth robbing is the bank, but no one ever would. Tanis's dad is about six foot eight. He has a scar from his ear to the corner of his mouth. He shaves patterns into his beard that make him look like a pirate. He always looks like he's slept in his clothes, even when they're brand-new.

He's not, as they say, “all there.”

After Dad jumped off the grain elevator, Tanis's dad painted it black, with skeletons all over it and a huge yellow bird at the top. He's some kind of fucked-up artist, I guess. You never know with people.

But I still don't understand how someone like Tanis came from someone like him.

Someone like Tanis.

There is no one like Tanis.

Sometimes she's explaining something to me about her ratios. How the whole world and everything in it can be understood in terms of beauty and explained once you understand the numbers. I want to believe her. I want to understand what she's saying. But mostly I just feel like a cartoon character, staring, mouth open, a huge question mark floating above my head.

Once I dreamed that her dad killed me and had me stuffed, but I was alive, and posed, claws out, over Tanis's bed. I woke up screaming.

Tanis says, “Whoa, you're getting me sweaty.” But she doesn't really mind. I know she doesn't.

“Sorry,” I say. But I'm not.

I wonder, does everyone lie?

I wonder, is there even a difference? Between lying and the truth?

I hold on to her and I can smell her hair, and it should be enough. Her hair smells different all the time. I don't know how she does that. Today it smells like strawberries. I am looking over her head for Olivia. Does she know Olivia? Are they in classes together? Do they sit close, sleeves touching?

“Hurry up, man,” T-dot shouts. He's breathing heavily.

“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “Just a second.”

I hold on to Tanis tighter, and I don't know what I'm holding on to because she's pushing me away. Over her shoulder, I finally see Olivia slip out from under the shade of the oak tree that fills the whole parking lot with acorns and leaves. She climbs into a car that peels out of the parking lot on burnt rubber. I don't see who's driving.

And I shouldn't care, but I do.

chapter 9

I get home to find that Dad has fallen. Again. He sometimes forgets. He sometimes falls asleep and then when he goes to get up his legs don't work. That's what he says. He forgets. His head is bruised, a lump like an ostrich egg stretches purple and blue on his forehead.

“What the fuck?” I say.

“I fell,” he says. “Don't make it a bigger deal than it is.” His hand is shaking just enough to make him look old. He's holding on to a tiny pink bed. Tanis loves his dollhouses. He has the ratio right. The bed is made of wood. He's painted on the pink and even a few wrinkles in the sheet. I feel like the bed is growing in his hand. It's Chelsea's bed, of course. From when she was little. The bed is getting bigger and filling the room. I can't breathe. I look at Dad's head.

There's a rule about Chelsea: she cannot be mentioned. She doesn't see Dad. Ever. It's in the court documents. Never.

No contact.

I'm not allowed to know why.

I don't want to know why.

“It is a big deal,” I say. “Where was Gary?”

Gary is a shitty care aide. I don't believe for a second that he even is one. He's a dealer, a biker, tattoos all the way up to his eyes. No kidding. Black and purple and blue and red and yellow and green. So much ink, you can't even tell what it is. He looks like a comic-book villain.

“Downstairs,” Dad says. “Gary was downstairs. I've asked him to take over the processing. You're getting behind.”

“What the fuck?” I say.

“I asked him to,” he says. “It's a business and you're behind. He knows the business. It makes sense and you know it.”

“It's
my
business,” I say. “Fuck you, Dad. Fuck you. A thousand times, fuck you.” I know I'm overreacting, but I can't help it. Dad looks like he's been clocked with a baseball bat in a cartoon. There is everything but a flock of birds, circling. Animated stars. It's hard to think clearly. He's not my kid, so why do I feel like he is?

I am not the father.

Dad sighs. “Nice language,” he says. “What would your mother say?”

“She'd say, ‘Fuck you,'” I say.

Gary wanders in. Gary
lumbers
in. His arms are pulling the fabric on the sleeves of his shirt so tightly that the shirt looks like a bandage. Gary looks at me slowly. Everything about Gary is slow. He's been smoking. His eyes are pink and dilated.

“What's up, kid?” he says.

“How's the basement?” I say sarcastically.

He shrugs. I hate him.

“Hey,” says Dad. “Hey now. It's business. You're too busy and you have school.” Glob takes a few steps toward me and nudges her head hard into my crotch. I pat her. She stinks like a wet wool sweater.

“Hey,” says Dad again.

I glare at Gary and he glares back, and for a few seconds that's all there is. The shimmering heat waves of us glaring. Then something inside me collapses, and I just go, “Yeah. Whatever.”

I stomp up to my room. The stairs that Dad can't climb make it so that the whole upstairs is mine. There are rooms I don't go in up here. I use only this one and the bathroom. If I go in the others, I'll have to clean them, and I can't be bothered. One of them is full of wet mold from a hole in the ceiling. At night, I'm pretty sure I hear things scampering.

My room isn't much better. I don't know who used to live in this room when Our Joe lived in this house. Someone who liked heavy metal. The old posters are curled around the edges. The tape has turned yellow. I leave them up because I figure it's kind of vintage cool. And I'm too lazy to take them down anyway.

Tanis says that Our Joe used to have foster kids. They got taken away.

She doesn't say why.

She does say why, but when she talks, her words come out garbled, like an old tape being eaten by the machine, and I try to hear her, but I can't, and I can't explain why I can't, so instead I just nod. I nod and nod.

Who loses
foster
kids? I hate Our Joe. I hate Gary. I hate my dad. I have so much hate I want to scream or vomit or tear the head off a chicken like the cartoon Ozzy is doing on the poster on my bedroom wall.

I can't stay in my room for long—it makes me antsy. Besides, Gary is here for a few more hours and I don't want to occupy the same space that he does. My muscles are twitching under my skin and I want to punch someone or something, so I switch into my running shoes and I go down the stairs again in one solid jump, landing so hard on the landing that the floor gives.

I don't want to think about floor rot. I am seventeen years old. I don't want to worry that our house is full of mice and, god knows, probably rats and the floors are rotting and the roof leaks and it's almost winter again and then what? It's cold.

I don't want to scream, “WHAT IS ALL THE MONEY FOR?”

We could buy a house. A real one. Somewhere else. I want to move to suburbia. Somewhere pretty, with green lawns and trees and kids playing hockey in the street.

Dad is back at the kitchen table. He slowly places a tiny couch in a tiny living room. He has to special order all this tiny furniture, but he paints it and decorates it. He sews these tiny cushions for the tiny chairs. He has really big hands. It's hard to see how that works, but it does. When he works, he sticks his tongue out slightly, like a kid learning to write.

Glob is at his feet. She is asleep, as she always is these days. Glob has cancer. Dad cannot have her put down because Glob saved his life, so Glob is as medicated as the rest of us, only she can't stay awake through it. Sometimes she snores. If you press on her belly, you can feel the lump.

Gary keeps giving me one of his slow looks. He is cooking something in the kitchen that smells like socks. He means something by the looks. I don't know what. I don't want everything to mean something. I know I am meant to know exactly what he is saying, but I don't
want
to know.

I just want to run.

I can
run
.

I step outside. The weather is ambivalent. I take a few steps and stop, and then start again. The gravel is slippery. I run down toward the corn. I have this weird feeling that I'll only be able to run so far and then the chain will snap and jerk me back, strangling me in the process. I rub my neck with my hand.

Nothing. I run faster.

I have weed in my pocket. Wrapped up tight. Processed by Gary. I stole extra this time. What the fuck kind of “processing” does weed need? You dry it, you bag it.

What else, Gary?

I run all the way back to the school, just to have someplace to go. I run hard, sprinting until I can't and jogging until the air comes back and sprinting again. Ugly, my feet hitting the edge of the road hard and avoiding broken glass and fast-food wrappers and a carton of milk tipped on its side in a white puddle, like someone threw it out the window of their car.

I get to the school and it's deserted. I'm too hot, my caged breath rasping out of me, full of spit and sweat. The sun is setting, and the sky is suddenly burning with the cold colors of orange sherbet.

I shiver.

I am looking for Olivia because if she isn't real then she is as likely to be here as not, right? If I am making her up, then I can make her be here.

Now.

But she isn't here. The air is still; it feels like there is about to be a thunderstorm. There is no one around but me. No one in the town, no one on the planet. I am so goddamn alone, and I wish I had a guitar and a microphone so I could sing something or scream it and someone would hear it. Somewhere.

The basketball court has dark shadows tipping over it, from the tree, the flagpole, the clouds starting to gather in the sky. The net hangs crookedly off the hoop.

My hands are empty. No guitar. No ball. I don't know what to do with them. I stare at them. Smack them together. Veins pulsing on the backs. My nails are dirty and too long. I sit on the cement steps and let the coldness of them seep through me until I've cooled off enough to shiver, my heart still pounding so hard in me that my eyes feel like they're vibrating. I watch cars pass and a lady with a dog, jogging. You don't see much of that here, so I watch her until she's gone.