Yee-haw, we hit Texas, finally reaching Beaumont at night, a sleepy city with only a few lights blinking. Off the highway, a Motel 6 called out, and Barry suggested we all take a break from the RV (and each other) by renting three separate rooms. The ’rents in one, Troy and Steph in one, and Jenny and I bunking up in the third. Our room had thin walls, bookended by both couples, and I knew I’d have to wear my headphones to drown out their lovemaking. Jenny got Bonkers candies and Mambas from the vending machine, and we had ourselves a late sugar dinner.
“How you doing?” I asked, lying on my bed, glad to not have a converted couch for once this trip.
“This room smells like death.”
I looked over at Seymour, but she shook her head and pointed at a suspect stain on the carpet. I got up and covered it with a towel.
“Let’s forget that we saw it. TV?”
She shrugged, and I flipped through the channels, coming across us again on the news.
“Leave it,” Jenny said, sitting up on her knees. She watched in fascination when she came up on the screen, and the Orthodox woman described Mama Cass again as a terror.
“I love it,” she whispered to Seymour in a creepy voice.
“Uh, let’s watch something else.”
I flicked through until we found an episode of Growing Pains where Mike Seaver got in trouble for writing the notes from a test on the bottom of his sneakers. But then he never actually wound up cheating, learning so much from copying it down so intricately. Everyone hugged in the end. Fucking bullshit simplistic family. I turned it off.
“Hey,” Jenny said, lobbing a Bonkers into my eye. I joined her on her bed.
“Listen, I’m gonna take care of you.”
“O…kay.”
“No, really, no matter what. Even if Mom and Dad aren’t here anymore.”
“Why wouldn’t they be?” she asked Seymour.
“Look at me,” I said and took Seymour away. She scratched my arm. “Jesus, Jenny, ow.”
“Don’t fuck with Seymour.”
She hugged him so tightly, smushing his little fuzzy face. Seymour, a calm in the center of her crazy storm.
“I’m sorry, but if you love animals so much, why do you hurt them?”
She bounced out of the bed, eyeing the window as if PETA could be eavesdropping. Her little shoulders stayed up by her ears.
“I dunno.”
“It’s not what normal little girls do.”
“Who said I ever wanted to be fucking normal?” She did a cartwheel. Stood in front of the mirror and made her hair into even more of a lion’s mane. “You’re like smart, and Steph’s so pretty. What am I?”
“You’re Jenny.”
“I’m weird, like I never remember not being weird. Seymour listens to me when no one else does, when the animals don’t either. That’s why I’ve hurt them.”
“What do you want them to hear?”
She did another cartwheel. “Okay, I’ll…I’ll get real angry sometimes. Like there’s a tick, tick, tick inside of me. Gonna explode. Pow. So, I do.”
“Do we make you angry?”
Through one of the walls, we could hear moaning and the squeaking from a bedframe. Jenny banged on the wall.
“I’m not here, Aaron,” Jenny said, her teeth chattering like she was cold.
“What do you mean you’re not—”
“Like I’m a ghost, right? I pop up here and there, say boo, but usually no one notices.”
The hairs on the back of my neck got all prickly.
“It’s been a nutso time lately, Jenny.”
She held up her tiny palm for me to stop talking. “That’s how it’s always been. No one has ever noticed me.”
My heart nearly broke. I could feel it fracturing in two. Eyes watering.
“Jeez, I’m so… You know we all love you.”
She shrugged her baby shoulders again. “Because you have to. But do you really?”
I sucked up a big ball of snot. “Yeah, you’re my Jenny belly.”
“You haven’t called me that in years.”
“I’m calling you that now.”
She let out a child’s sigh, one even sadder than an adult’s, because children shouldn’t have the kind of problems that would make them sigh. She went back to her bed and picked up Seymour.
“I heard Mom and Dad once talking about me. They were fighting in their room. I guess I’d done something pretty bad, killed a bird or something, and they said I was a mistake. They weren’t trying to have me, but I happened anyway, and they thought about getting an abortion.”
I wanted to hug her right there but was afraid she’d push me away.
“Hey, a lot of kids are unplanned. Like Drake at my school, his parents didn’t want kids, but then they had him.”
“But they were glad they had him,” she sang.
“So are Mom and Dad.”
She cocked her head to the side. “That’s not what they said that night. They called me the Exorcist.”
“Wow, Jenny, I mean, they were probably drunk or something and just upset. You know, people, adults especially, say a lot of things they don’t really mean. It’s called venting.”
She held up her little palm again. “I know what the fuck venting means, Aaron. I’m not slow.”
“No, I know—”
“Look, I’m freaky, I get it. I would be weirded out by me, too.”
“You’re unique.”
“Ugh, grody, you’re such a cheesehead. Like, it’s fine. Mom and Dad aren’t that great themselves.”
It was the first time one of us had really said it out loud. The motel got super quiet, even the moans from the adjoining rooms, as if they were listening to our secret truth session.
“No, they’re not,” I whispered, wanting to swallow the words back immediately after they escaped. This actually got Jenny to smile.
“Oooh, I’ve never heard you say bad things about Dad.”
“Shut up, I didn’t—”
“You hate Dad, you hate Dad,” she shouted.
I leaped over and clamped my hand over her mouth as she still tried to shout my disloyalty.
“Stop it, listen, stop it. Can I take my hand away?”
She nodded for me to do so. Once I did, she shouted again.
“You hate Dad, you hate Dad!” she screamed, so I flung open the door and ran out into the night. The Texas air, smelling different, like leather, cotton, and sage. The motel lights glinting along the interstate. A semi roaring by, tooting its horn. I dug into my pocket and ate the last Bonkers. I didn’t hate Barry, far from it. I still needed his acceptance like a junkie to a hit. Fuck Jenny for allowing any doubts to circulate. I looked up at a show of stars that twinkled. Those stars knew of our future because they existed so many light years away. They could see whether we’d be successful in Houston, whether Barry would remain a star like them in my eyes or fall swiftly, become Barry eventually, and no longer Dad.
I spat out the Bonkers because it was cloyingly sweet, and I was getting too old for that kind of sugary shit.