Wrecked (8 page)

“Did you do this?” he asked Jack. Instead of answering, my brother took a step forward and half leaned down. I stood very still, hoping my dad wouldn’t ask me if I had done it.

“Stop,” my father said. Jack straightened up fast.

“I was going to clean it up,” he tried to explain. I held my breath, waiting for my turn.

“You don’t clean broken glass with your hands,” my father told him. “What is the matter with you?” Jack stood still again. My father stared at him, jaw muscle jumping. “What is the matter with you?” he said again. “I want an answer!” Jack stayed quiet. “What is the matter with you, Jack!”

“I don’t know.”

I started breathing again. Maybe my dad wouldn’t notice me as much as Jack this time. You never knew.

“Harvey?” My mother had arrived at the living-room door. “Oh.” She stared at the shards on the floor. She looked around the room, checking the paperweights and vases and sculptures. “The bud vase?” she asked.

My father pointed at Jack. “Don’t just stand there. Get the broom and the dustpan.” But then, before Jack could move, my father said, “What were you thinking?” Jack didn’t answer. “What were you thinking?” my dad asked again. His eyes were wide open with lots of white showing, like the Black Stallion, upset. Jack stayed quiet. “I’m asking you a question, Jack. What. Were. You. Thinking?” That vein in his forehead started hopping.

“Harvey,” my mother said. “Calm down.” I inched toward
the door. I wanted to get to the hall, the stairs, my room. Away from my dad, away from his making you feel stupid and wrong.

“I’d like to know what he was thinking!”

Tears began to bloom out of Jack’s eyes. My mother’s mouth set itself into a thin line. She couldn’t do anything. I inched farther.

“Stop it,” my father said. He hates crying. “Stop it now.” Jack’s tears didn’t stop. My father shook his head and snorted through his nose. “Get the broom.”

About an hour later Jack banged through my closed door and marched right up to me. I was leaning against two pillows on my bed, braiding beads into my hair and trying to stay invisible. He was sweaty and tearstained. He didn’t say a word. He just punched me hard twice in the arm. Really, really hard.

“Dad,” I call back into the kitchen. I tuck the Windex under my arm and shake out the wet rag. “Jack didn’t break that vase.”

I hear him drum his fingers on top of his deck. “Okay.”

“Okay?” I stay where I am and keep talking loud so he’ll hear me. “Did you just say Okay’?”

“Anna, I’m in the middle of a game.”

“But what does Okay’ mean? Did you know that he didn’t break it?”

“I don’t know. Probably. I don’t really remember.”

I walk over to stand in the kitchen doorway. He’s got his feet up on the seat of a chair and his laptop propped on the lazy Susan, which is so old it doesn’t spin anymore. “Why did you punish Jack and not me?”

He sighs and keeps his eyes on the screen. “I didn’t punish Jack,” my dad says.

“You yelled at him,” I remind him.

“Yelling isn’t punishing,” my dad says. I can see his eyes moving across the screen.

“Yes, it is.” I know that what I’m saying is true. I’m sure of it.

“No.” He taps his mouse and looks up. He lifts his glasses to rest on the top of his head. They get buried in his hair. It looks stupid. “Yelling is just being angry. Punishing is giving a consequence. Like docking allowance or TV”

“But you made him stay and help you clean it up, and you didn’t make me.”

“I remember both of you helping to clean it up.”

“I didn’t help.”

He lowers his glasses. “Anna, please. This isn’t a good time for either of us to have this sort of discussion. Understand?” He looks down at his deck of cards and then back at me. I can see him working to keep the irritation out of his voice. “You’re trying to have a quiet night after a difficult week. I’m trying to also. I’d like to play some poker. Do we have to have this conversation?”

“You brought it up.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. You said, ‘Remember when Jack broke the bud vase?’”

“Fine,” he smiles a strained smile at me. “Okay. But now I want to go back to my game.” He clicks himself on and drops one of his legs off that chair.

“Yelling is punishing,” I tell him.

“Hmm,” he goes, scanning the screen. On it clusters of cards pop up, surrounding a green poker table.

“Dad,” I say. “Yelling is punishing.”

JACK GETS HOME WHILE I’M IN SCHOOL ON THURSDAY. WHEN I
see him, he’s not as blank or stiff as he was before. He’s sitting cross-legged on his bed, clattering away at his laptop.

“Writing another movie review?” I ask him.

“Yeah.” He doesn’t stop typing while he’s talking.

“What’s it called?” I ask.

“
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
. I watched it in the hotel.”

But I’m not really interested in his movie review. “How was the funeral?” What a stupid question. How was the funeral? How about,
It sucked, Anna
.

“In the words of Cameron’s little brother,” Jack says, looking up, “not what I expected.” And then he goes back to his keyboard.

It’s almost dinnertime on Friday. I’m in the Gersons’ downstairs guest room waiting for Ellen to get home. I took her pillows and
comforter and her stuffed animals and vanity table and all her clothes and the little round crystal hanging in her window and her TV and everything from her bedroom, and I tried to set it up exactly the same down here. And I fixed up the guest bathroom. I took all her grapefruit shampoo and conditioner and kiwi bath oil and body scrub and arranged them by the sink along with her Sonicare toothbrush. I set up her crutches by the bed, and I’m just wondering how she’s going to shower with the cast on her leg, when the Gersons wheel her in.

“Surprise.” I give her a hug. Which, as I already know, is hard to do when one person’s in a wheelchair.

“This looks terrific,” Mrs. Gerson tells me, meaning the room, and then she and Mr. Gerson leave, saying something about getting Ellen food or ice chips.

“Wow,” Ellen goes, looking around. She’s way pale. There’s a scab on her cheek where that bandage used to be, and her hair seems longer.

“You lost weight,” I tell her. She’s pretty thin to begin with.

“Yeah. Hospitals are great for that.” She eyes my shield.

“You like it?” I ask her.

“You look like C-3P0.” It could be worse.

“I brought homework and movies and ingredients for chocolate-chip cookies, or we could call Jason and those guys, and they said they would come over.”

Ellen closes her eyes for longer than a blink and then opens them. “Actually,” she says, “I’m pretty tired.”

“Oh,” I go, feeling stupid.

She wheels herself over to the bed. “I kind of want to take a nap.”

“All right.”

“Um,” she goes. “Fm sick of my mom. Could you help me?” She shows me how to help lift her from her chair onto the bed. Her leg is heavy and clumsy. We have to sit her on the edge of the bed first and sort of lean her back. Then I have to lift her cast up after the rest of her. She winces and her face grits itself in pain.

“Aagh.” I think it’s her ribs more than her leg, but Fm not sure, and I don’t know what to do. Ellen does, though. She lies still for a bunch of seconds, and then her face relaxes. “Thanks for remembering Whitey.” She picks up her polar bear. She’s had him on her pillow since she was born. He’s all worn out and gray looking now. She rubs him across her chin. “Thanks,” she says again, yawning and then immediately wincing. About a minute later she’s asleep.

I wake up to my own voice. I’m making this moaning, calling sound. It’s still coming out of my mouth as my light snaps on, and then my father and Jack are standing at the foot of my bed.

“Stop it, Anna,” my father’s saying. “Stop it now.”

My blankets are all over the place. The back of my tank top is sticking to my skin. I’m shaking. The eye shield is falling off My mother rushes in.

“Anna?” She sits on the edge of my bed and puts her hand to my forehead.

“She had a nightmare,” Jack says.

“You’re all right,” my father tells me.

“She’s trembling,” my mother says.

“She’s fine.” His gray hair is in complete bed head. He touches my sweaty shoulder. “You’re fine,” he says again.

“I’m fine,” I say. My father leaves, and Jack snaps off the light. You can still see, though, from the light in the hallway.

I’m in my room, not on Ocean Road. I’m in my room, not in the street with Ellen in my lap and a ponytail, sharp as glass, in my eye. I’m in my room, not out in the middle of the road, huddling near Jack, who’s huge as a giant, tree trunk legs planted wide and firm, tree limb arms and branched hands raised up and out. I’m in my room, not in the darkness with policemen and screaming, stopped. I’m in my room, I’m in my room, I’m in my room.

“I need water,” I say. Jack gets it for me. I wait, the shaking slowing down while my mom sits close.

“Thanks,” I tell Jack after I take a swallow.

“You’re welcome,” he says.

There was this one night, back when we got along. That year’s beach house was called Porpoise Swim. I had run into my room to pull on jeans and a sweatshirt, even though it was so hot out. I hate bug spray and won’t use it. I could hear my family’s voices clear as anything as they trooped down the stairs from the upper deck, under the house, and out to the driveway.

“And then they cut to something else,” I heard Jack saying, “and then they slice up her eyeball, only it’s a special effect, so it’s not really her eyeball.”

“That’s disgusting,” I heard my mom go as I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up. Mosquitoes will get your ears if they can’t get anything else.

“Really, it was a cow’s eye, except you couldn’t do that today because of animal rights and all,” Jack explained. It sounded as if
they had reached the bottom of the stairs. “You never heard of it?”

“No,” my mother said.

“But it’s famous,” Jack told her. “They’re showing it at the museum next Saturday. Could we go home a day early so I can see it?” I walked down the hall toward the great room.

“You know we don’t leave until Sunday,” I heard my dad say. Then he went, “Is that dripping?” He meant the outdoor shower underneath the house, where we were supposed to rinse the sand off before we came upstairs and inside. It was always dripping. “Damn it,” my father said. “It is.”

“Yeah, but it would just mean leaving one day early, and you can’t rent it.” It sounded like they were almost at our driveway. I stepped out onto the deck through the sliding glass doors.

“We’re not leaving one day early so you can see
Anderson’s Dog,
’ my father said. I could see the flashlight beams bouncing around out near the street. “Anna!” my dad called as I stepped onto the top stair.

“It’s
Andalusian,
” I heard Jack say. “Not
Anderson’s
.”

“Turn the shower all the way off when you come down!”

My father had been standing right there looking at it. Why couldn’t he have turned it off?

“Whatever it’s called,” my father told Jack, “we’re not driving back a day early for it.”

They were all the way out of our driveway and down the street by the time I got to the dripping shower. I could see them stepping in and out of one another’s shadows. I reached for the little blue on-off wheel, bent down, and twisted it to the right. And in that exact moment there was this flash of light and something hit me hard, and then I was on my back on the sandy
ground at the edge of where the driveway began and the underneath of the house ended. A crash of thunder. More lightning streaking the sky. Another bang. And then driving rain.

By the time Jack and my parents were back under the house with me, I was sitting up, moving each arm and leg one by one to make sure I wasn’t half dead, or something. My heart was pounding. I couldn’t believe that a second ago I had been leaning under the dripping shower, and now I was sitting all the way over here. I couldn’t believe how fast it had happened. How I hadn’t even had time to scream.

“I think I just got hit by lightning,” I told them. They were soaked.

“What?” My father was frowning at the exposed stairs, probably trying to figure out how to get up them without getting more drenched.

“I mean,” I said, “I didn’t get hit exactly, but my hand was on the metal thing for the shower. Maybe lightning hit the house and it went into the metal, and since my hand was on it—”

“Anna, I’m dripping wet,” my father said. “What are you talking about?”

“Mom,” I said. I thought I was okay. Nothing hurt exactly. “I think I got electrocuted or something.”

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “It was really weird.”

“Can you move everything?” my father asked. He’d finally looked at me.

“I think so,” I said.

“Are you burned anywhere?” He walked over and touched my head, my arms, my back. My mother looked too, over his shoulder.

“I don’t think so,” I said. He stepped away and began squinting at the rain and the stairs again. “But it knocked me all the way over here.”

“Anna, it couldn’t have knocked you that far. Come on, now. Don’t exaggerate.”

“I’m not,” I told him. “It really—”

“I’m making a run for it,” my father interrupted. My mom glanced at me and followed him up. Jack stayed where he was.

“Did you really get electrocuted?” he asked.

“I swear,” I said. Why didn’t they believe me? I don’t make up stuff like that.

“What did it feel like?”

“Like you tackled me.”

“Really? Let me see your hand.” We both looked at my hand. Maybe it would be black. But it wasn’t. “You were just touching this?” Jack asked, and he pointed to the blue on-off wheel.

“Yeah,” I said. “Right when that first big lightning happened.”

“Cool.”

“It kind of scared me.” As soon as I said that, I started to cry, which was embarrassing.

Jack looked away while I pulled my fist across my eyes. He waited awhile before he said anything. “Are you okay?”