ALL THAT WEEK, OGGIE looked more and more tired. Everything he did, he looked half-dead. I’d try to buck him up by giving him another Mole installment, or buying him a candy bar to zap his energy level, but not long after, he’d be on the ropes again.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him. “Aren’t you sleeping at night?”
He just shrugged. I figured it was a combination of Marvin at school, his lost wallet, Mom and Dad’s arguments on the phone, and him being only six years old. It’s pretty hard to fight back with all that against you.
One night, Oggie was so tired, he fell asleep in the middle of dinner. Mom had to carry him upstairs to bed. She loved that, even though he’s pretty big for his age and weighed a ton.
I think it reminded her of when he was little, because when she came back downstairs, she said to me, “Want to make some popcorn and watch a movie like we used to?”
“Sure!” I said. I was happy she remembered.
We did that with Dad in our old house when Oggie was a baby.
Back then, Mom and Dad were really protective of me. I was only allowed to watch ancient Walt Disney movies like Kidnapped or Old Yeller. Oggie gets away with murder now. He watches anything he wants and no one pays any attention. When I was little, I couldn’t turn on the TV without permission, and even then Mom and Dad would usually watch with me to make sure I got through all right. I didn’t mind. We’d all curl up on the couch and eat popcorn and have a great time.
Just thinking about that made the old sinking feeling that comes over me sometimes come over me. I wished I could talk to Mom about our family. I mean, really talk instead of beating around the bush like we usually did.
I wanted to ask how it was going between her and Dad, if they were working things out better lately. I wanted to know if there was any chance he might move back in. During the show, I tried to think of some way to bring up Dad that wouldn’t make her mad.
“Do you still have my turtle photos?” I asked her when a commercial came on.
“They’re in the hall chest,” she said. “Why?”
“Dad said he wants to see them.” It wasn’t exactly true, but I said it anyway.
“They’re in the second drawer down,” Mom said.
I went and took them out. I held them under the light to get a closer look and … what a shock! There was Alphonse, clear as clear! I couldn’t believe it. I’d completely forgotten how he got started in real life. Seeing him like that in the flesh—or in the shell, rather—made me realize how much I’d come to care about him.
“Wow!” I said. “These photos are even better than I remembered.”
“You’ll return them, right?” Mom said when I came back in the living room. “I want to keep everything of yours here.”
“Why? Is Dad planning to move somewhere?”
“Not that I know of.”
“So, can’t I keep them over there for a while?”
“I’d rather you brought them back,” Mom said. “I love those photos. I don’t want to lose them.”
That kind of upset me.
“But what if I want them over there? To put on the wall or something. They ARE mine, you know.” I was thinking I might put them up where Dad could see them and be impressed.
“I know they’re yours. I just want to keep them here,” Mom said. “When you get a place of your own, you can have them. For now, I’m keeping everything.”
The movie came back on then, but I couldn’t watch it. A terrible anger came over me. The more I tried to sit with Mom, the more furious I was.
Here we were, Oggie and me, going back and forth and back and forth between two places that weren’t our homes and never would be. Everyone pretended they were, but really they had nothing to do with us.
One was Mom’s house, with all her stuff in it, and one was Dad and Cyndi’s, with all theirs. Oggie and I had no place. We were like pieces of furniture being moved in and out, passed around like baggage as if we didn’t own anything. As if WE were the things that were owned.
“I think I’ll go to bed,” I told Mom.
“I’ll let you know how the movie turns out,” she said.
“That’s okay,” I said, and got up and left.
“Is something wrong?” she called. “Can I do anything to help?”
“NO, YOU CAN’T,” I yelled back.
I didn’t tell her how mad I was, or that I’d seen the movie twice before with Dad and already knew how it ended. That just would have hurt her feelings. She’s a good mom, basically, who was just trying to do her best. The problem was, she didn’t have a clue what was happening with Oggie and me.
The next morning before school, I took my Alphonse photos out of her control and brought them with me to school. When school was over, I took them to Saturn and taped them up in my closet. After that, every time I sat in there writing, I’d look up at Alphonse and feel close to him. Even though he was only in a photo, he felt real, as if he was watching over me to make sure the story came out right.
And not just the story, either. With Alphonse there, all of me felt protected.