UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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The evening does not go well.
But it’s not what you think. The only person who is normal about anything is Tiffany. Everyone else is spazzing out. Especially my mom. But she’s spazzing out in a good way, or a nice way, at least. Put it this way, she’s kind of acting like the mom on Leave It to Beaver. June Cleaver. She’s emphasizing everything in the weirdest way possible. Example: “Wade, could you please pass the julienne carrots. Thank you so very much.” Normally this sentence goes like this, “You! Carrots!”
Now, my mom, God bless her heart, is acting this way I don’t know why, but I think she’s overcompensating, outside of her head, because inside of her head she knows how much no one else at the table is really happy about this after-school-special of a dinner to which their dumb little sister has subjected them.
Like my annoying older sisters, for instance, they are just huddled over to the side of the table like two bitchy bats just waiting for some moment to swoop down and bite out everyone’s entrails. My perfect brother, Robby, is the second most normal person. He’s eating his food and just waiting for everything to play out with a content but slightly amused smile. This is not surprising because it’s sort of the way he deals with everything. One day the Grim Reaper will show up at his doorstep and he’ll shrug and say, “Yeah, okay. It’s been a good run. Where to?”
Henry is acting pretty weird, honestly. What else is new? Quiet. Check. Brooding. Check. Staring. Check. Now if Robby were acting this way we’d call an ambulance but this is Henry’s natural state, so we’re all clear.
And what about the ogre, you ask? Well, his way of dealing with this excruciating dinner is to pile his plate as high as possible and stuff his face as fast as possible and not make any eye contact. If he looks up at all, he looks up at my mom, rolls his eyes, and quickly eats another bite of mashed potatoes.
Poor Mom.
“Now, Tiffany, I want to know if they are treating you girls okay at the Bunza Hut. I try to ask Anika but I can’t seem to get a straight answer out of her.”
“Mom, what do you think they’re doing? It’s the Bunza Hut.”
Tiffany obliges: “Oh, it’s not so bad. They let us drink the shakes.”
“Oh, they do, do they?”
“The leftover shakes.”
Silence. Confusion.
I chime in to ease everyone’s befuddlement: “You have to make the shake in this silver cup thingy, and there’s always some leftover. So, we get that.”
Now Henry: “But then couldn’t you just make the shake bigger?”
“Well, we do. Basically we make the shake twice as big so every time anyone orders a shake we get a free shake.” I’m so proud of myself.
“So, you’re stealing.” That’s the ogre. Of course.
Tiffany kind of blushes. Stealing’s not her racket. It’s mine.
“Well, I just hope you’re not abusing that privilege.” Mom feels the need to turn this into some kind of life lesson.
“Oh, Mom, the guy’s a total jerkface. And he’s like superrich. Have you seen their house on Sheridan?! Not to mention he told Shelli she’s fat.”
Again, Henry: “Their house on Sheridan is worth one million two hundred and seventy-six thousand dollars.”
Silence.
Now Robby: “But who’s counting.”
“Mom, the guy totally sucks. You should see how he talks to Shelli, he just abuses her. It’s horrible.”
Now the ogre: “Does she work there?”
Now Mom: “Wade—”
“I said, does she work there?”
God I hate the ogre. “Yes. She works there.”
“So, he’s the boss. He can do whatever he wants.”
Me: “Nice. That’s a nice philosophy. What if he wanted to chop her head off or eat her ankles or something . . . could he do that, too?”
Wade shrugs. Everybody else looks at their plate.
Now the doorbell rings. This is a surprise to everyone but Tiffany.
Mom goes to the door and answers in her best Doris Day.
“Good evening, how may I help you?”
But the person on the other side of the door is not in the mood for Doris Day.
“Tiffany! Get out here right now!”
Of course, now the whole table, our whole table of sibling rivalries, little snickers, and the ogre, turns to look.
Tiffany’s mom is not in a good mood. She, also, looks like maybe this is the first time she’s got out of bed today. Just looking at her, my heart breaks for Tiffany. As meticulous and sweet and orderly as Tiffany is . . . now I see it’s maybe a reaction to whatever her mom has going on at home.
“Get out here right now. C’mon now!”
Tiffany is red with shame. God, I wish I could take this from her. And all of us are instantly on Tiffany’s side. I can feel it. The whole family, who were so annoyed we had to have this stupid Leave-It-to-Beaver dinner . . . well, now we are ready to take Tiffany in as our own.
Come live with us, Tiffany. What’s one more? Even the ogre is less ogre-fied. His spine is up. He wants to help. But like all of us, he is helpless.
Mom tries to make it better.
“Would you like to come in for dinner, there’s plenty of—”
“Lady, I can take care of my own.”
Mom nods. I can tell she’s calculating. What can she do? Can she do anything?
“You think I can’t take care of my own?”
“No. No. I don’t think that. I just thought maybe you might—”
“Well, you thought wrong, lady. C’MON now, Tiffany, I ain’t sayin’ it again!”
Tiffany ducks out of the dining room and down the stairs and to her mother. Her mother who moves her, not gently, behind her. We all stare.
“Please, we would love to—”
“Good night.” And with that Tiffany, in her white ankle socks and cute navy skirt, is gone. Back to that cruddy little stucco apartment complex with that just-out-of-bed-mom and the rest of us are just sitting there, struck dumb.
There is a long silence.
Mom comes to the table and starts collecting the plates. Lizzie and Neener look at me. Lizzie does the talking.
“Hey, Anika. That sucks. We didn’t know.”
“Neither did I, really.”
Beat.
Now Neener: “Poor Tiffany.”
Now Henry: “I thought she was beautiful.”
Silence. Okay, if you were looking for the quietest, weirdest silence in the USA . . . you found it. Right here in this dining room between the oak dining cupboard and the cedar breakfast nook.
Now Robby just starts chuckling. “Well, okay, there you have it.”
Now Lizzie and Neener start making funny noises, not a catcall exactly, more like “Ooooo, Henry’s in looooooove . . .”
And now it’s too much for the ogre.
“DON’T. Don’t even think about it, Henry!” He’s pointing his finger.
Of course, this makes Lizzie and Neener lose it completely, they are giggling and teasing and snickering it up. Robby’s clearing his plate with a smile on his face and Henry is turning the color of a lobster.
“You guys are idiots.” Henry clears his plate, shaking his head. “I swear, if I don’t get into Harvard I’m going to jump off a bridge.” He walks back to his room, annoyed.
“Yeah, a loooooove bridge.” Brilliant comment, courtesy of Neener.
The ogre rolls his eyes, gets up, and lumbers back to his room, where he will lie down on his water bed and blast Wheel of Fortune,, then The Tonight Show, then the late-night news.
I say it. “What in the world is a love bridge?”
Mom is just putting away the leftovers. She looks at me, over the Tupperware. She doesn’t have to say anything. She just gives me the universal look for “We tried.”
We tried what? To have dinner with a black person? To pretend we weren’t just a household of generally crappy people? We tried to be less self-involved. We tried to look up from our dumb obsessions and notice other people. We tried to be open, for once. We tried not to be just another vaguely racist family. We tried to be enlightened. We tried to be good.
We tried to be all of the things . . . we are not.