I wake up long before I realize it. I don’t know how long I’ve been staring at the pattern on the couch cushions. I must have slept down here all night; I’m still in the suit. Somebody put another blanket over me. I am enjoying the blank buzzing in my mind. As soon as I realize I am not thinking about anything, I think about Karen.
I twist around so I can see over the arm of the couch. Mom’s at the kitchen table. Amanda is pouring hot water into Mom’s teacup and then into her own. I thought maybe I’d dreamed Amanda. She puts the kettle back on the stove and sits in Karen’s seat at the table. After a second she slides over into mine.
Mom is patting Amanda’s hand and saying, “She really loved to get your letters.”
Amanda nods and sips her tea. At the other end of the kitchen Dad leans against the counter and watches Mom in that warning way he has. He hates it when she cries. I think today should be an exception.
“She wouldn’t ever let me read them. You know Karen. She’d rather . . . do anything . . . than let me know what was happening in her life. But once in a while she would let something slip, something you were up to. You had a boyfriend?”
Amanda nods and sips. “We broke up,” she says. Mom nods.
Dad twists his mouth.
“She missed you so . . .” Mom draws a shaky breath; Dad and Amanda hold their breath and watch her. “. . . much.” Everybody exhales. It’s like watching a rock skip on water, knowing any second it will stop skipping and sink.
“I missed her, too,” Amanda says, squeezing Mom’s hand. Bullshit. I can’t believe she says that with a straight face. She missed my sister so much she stopped writing, stopped calling. Only comes to visit for her funeral, for Christ’s sake.
A car horn beeps.
“They must have driven all night,” Dad says, and Mom drops her head on the table and cries, “Oh, thank God. Thank God they got here.”
“Diane,” Dad says. Mom looks up at him, matching his warning with amused astonishment. She sniffs. “Diane” Mimicking his voice back to him. It’s kind of funny.
“For Christ’s sake, Diane.” Dad dumps his coffee in the sink, lets the cup fall in with it, and grips the counter. “I’m just trying to hold it together, that’s all.”
Karen would snort if she saw that. She’d whisper, “Soooo dramatic.”
“Well, thank God you’re here then. To hold it together for us.”
Amanda is pretending to be busy clearing the table.
The horn beeps again, two staccato beeps, and Mom says, “Well, then.” She wipes her face on the sleeve of her bathrobe and gets up. Amanda follows her out of the kitchen, and after a second Dad walks out too. They cut through the dining room, I guess not wanting to wake me.
My insides feel heavy and dense, like wet sand packed in a bucket. Even though I kicked off the afghan, it still feels like I’m wrapped in a hot blanket.
I get up and stand behind Mom and Dad and Amanda while Amanda struggles to unlock the front door. I think, Turn around and notice me, turn around and notice me, turn around and notice me, but they don’t. I wonder if I’m still asleep on the couch. I think fever, fever, fever.
It’s freezing out. The cold burrows deep into my ears like pins pricking at my brain. The world’s gone white bright, and I close my eyes against the glare of the sun off the ice that’s covering everything. I gasp against the cold, and Mom, Dad, and Amanda turn around and look at me. They’re surprised to see me there. Amanda moves past me, back inside the house. Mom’s hand is on my forehead, my face, the back of my neck. Her bandaged finger flutters near my face, wanting to touch it too. She keeps looking at Dad, shaking her head. I concentrate on making my fever fall. It doesn’t work.
“We got your prescription refilled,” Mom whispers, her eyes looking everywhere but at mine. “Amanda went and picked it up. You can have some toast and then take one. I think it’s your ears.”
“Do they hurt? Do your ears hurt?” Dad asks, sounding very Dad-like.
I say, “Yeah, they hurt.”
He hugs me with both arms.
Amanda comes back out, carrying jackets for all of us. Dad pulls the hood up on mine, the ugly orange one Aunt Janice sent me at Christmas, and cinches it close around my face. We stand at the top of the driveway, watching the movements inside the sedan parked on the street.
“It’s Aunt Janice and Uncle Dan,” Mom says.
I guess she says it for Amanda, because Dad and I know the chances are very slim that anyone else we know would be driving a pink Cadillac. The engine cuts out; through the glare against the windshield, I can see Aunt Janice looking up at us.
The driver’s-side door opens and my uncle pops out, his bushy head of orange hair smooshed down by a hunting cap with earflaps. He looks up at us, waves, and calls, “Hello,” and then seems to regret doing it. Then he gives us a really solemn nod and moves around to the passenger-side door to open it for Aunt Janice. I watch the way she reaches her hand out for him, and the way he takes it and gently helps her out of the car. It takes two seconds for Mom to streak by us, skidding down the icy driveway into Janice’s arms. I say “Mom” when she runs by. It’s like she’s leaving us.
Mom grips Aunt Janice’s shoulders like the ice under her slippers is trying to suck her down. Aunt Janice says, “Oh, my poor baby, my poor little girl.” I don’t know if she’s talking about Mom or Karen.
Uncle Dan stands for a second next to Aunt Janice and Mom, shifting from foot to foot. Finally he leans over and kisses Mom on the back of her head and walks up the driveway toward us. He looks back toward the car and yells something. Dad mumbles, “Bobby’s here?” And from the street we hear Aunt Janice say, “Of course he came,” because I guess Mom asked her the same thing.
Bobby hasn’t come to our house in two years. Not since he went to college. Aunt Janice says it’s hard for him to get back for holidays. Bullshit. He’s actually closer to our house now that he’s in college than when he lived at home with Aunt Janice and Uncle Dan. I guess if I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t come to my house either.
Last time Bobby came to visit we sat out on the back steps after dinner. Bobby had this way of asking “How’s things?” that made me want to tell him every single thing that was happening in my life. He actually listened for as long as I wanted to talk. He’d listen and then tell me how all the popular kids end up fat and bitter, still living in their hometown. He said they’d never go anywhere, never do anything. They reach their peak in high school, and there’s nowhere for them to go but down. And all the kids that get the crap beat out of them, he said, well, we’re the ones that run the world. It was the same speech he gave me every time, but it made me feel better.
I remember when Cousin Bobby didn’t show up for Thanksgiving this year. I kept waiting for him to get out of the car, and he didn’t. Even after Aunt Janice told Mom that he wasn’t coming, that his band was on tour, I kept looking out the window and waiting for him. Things were going really wrong and I didn’t know if I was going to make it. I wanted to tell him that, that I didn’t know if I could make it. I was going to tell him that I was becoming invisible. I was going to tell him about Karen.
That night Mom called his cell phone from her bedroom and whisper-yelled that I was crushed. That I looked up to him and, damn it, how could he just not show up? I listened from her bedroom door, wanting to scream at her to shut up.
Aunt Janice and Mom start moving up the driveway, and a head of wavy, matted hair pops out of the car. Bobby looks wrecked. He squints up at us and waves his hand. Dad waves back. I don’t.
Bobby ducks back down in the car for a second and comes back up wearing a worn baseball hat.
“Donnie, I am so sorry. So sorry.” My aunt leaning toward me, breathing into my neck, I lean around so I can see Bobby getting out of the car. “Oh! Donnie . . .” She pulls me in between her boobs and holds me there, rocking me back and forth. She’s short so she has to pull me down in order to jam my head in there, and now my ass is sticking out and shaking back and forth as she rocks me. I can’t breathe because between the hood of my jacket and her boobs, I’m all sealed in.
“Jesus, Ma, let the kid up for air.”
She lets go and I pull back, gasping air into my lungs and taking off my hood.
Bobby is standing by the front steps, hugging first Mom and then Dad, all the time looking at me. He reaches out his hand for mine and when I do the same, he yanks me close and puts me in a headlock. I push him off me so hard that he falls on his ass and slides a little on the icy driveway. I can see Mom’s mouth shout “Donnie!” and Aunt Janice’s mouth just falls open. Amanda looks away. Dad and Uncle Dan are both coming at me. I want to circle Bobby, bounce on my feet like fighters do when they’re waiting for the guy they just knocked down to get up so they can knock him down again. But Dad’s got me, my arms pinned by my side.
“Ready for me that time, huh, kid?” Bobby’s scrambling back up, his palm is scraped a little, and his stupid cap fell off. He’s balding on top. Ha. He pulls his cap back on.
“Yeah, I guess,” I say. Dad lets go of my arms, and for a second there’s this awkwardness with everyone looking at each other and then down at the ground. And then Dad says, “You remember me telling you about Amanda. Karen’s best friend. Came all the way from Chicago.”
“Yes, of course,” Aunt Janice says, and pulls Amanda into a hug. “Diane told me what a help you’ve been.”
I’ve still got my eyes set on Bobby, who’s got his eyes on Amanda. Everybody starts to go up the front steps, and Bobby turns to follow. He stops when he sees I’m not moving, and he looks at me.
“Me and Donnie are going into town to buy some ice cream,” he says to Aunt Janice, the last to go in the house. She nods without turning around. Mom pokes her head back out the door. “He’s sick, Bobby. Don’t stay out too long.”
“Man, roll down your window,” Bobby says, already rolling his down. The car smells like my aunt, her too-sweet perfume and something sharper and more acrid. The cold air stabs into my ears.
“Where’s the ice cream?” Bobby asks, yanking the wheel all the way to the left and U-turning in the middle of our street. I’m not going to tell him where the ice cream is. Let him drive around till he finds it. Maybe he’ll get pulled over. Pulled over and arrested for being a prick.
“I’ll find it. Sorry, man, I forgot about your ears.” He pushes a button on his car door, and my window rolls up. He does his too. I lean back into the seat and let him drive in a direction heading nowhere near ice cream.
“When you were a little kid, you came over to our house, remember that? We went swimming in the pool at the park, and Mom forgot to put those plugs in your ears. You had to go to the doctor and get drops. Remember that?”
I want to not answer him, but the silence is so heavy I give a flat-voiced, “Yeah.” Then I remember that day. “Your mom had to sit on me to get the drops in my ear.”
“I know!” He’s laughing now. “You kicked her in the chin too. That was great.”
I remember the feeling of my aunt’s face against my heel. How I was so mad at her I wished I’d done it on purpose.
I wish I hadn’t said anything just now, I wish I hadn’t made him laugh. I wish I’d just sat here silent, making him feel uncomfortable. But now the silence is bothering me, pressing down on me. It’s a relief to be mad at him, to feel something that’s not about Karen. I don’t want him to think we’re okay now, though; I don’t want him to think we’re okay and then ask about Karen.
“Bobby?
“Yeah?” He turns his head so I’m looking him right in the eyes.
“I think you’re an asshole.”
He turns back to watch the road and looks like he’s considering what I said. Finally he nods his head and says, “Okay.”
I keep staring at him. He glances at me again. “You have more you want to say to me?”
I shake my head. Bobby nods, pulls the wheel sharply to the right, and pulls the car over.
“Get out of the car.” He’s already got his door open when he says it, and he slams it shut behind him before I can answer. My heart’s racing, and for a second I think he’s going to make me walk home. Or maybe he’s going to walk home and make me drive the car home. Or maybe he’s going to kick my ass and then make me walk home. I watch him walk around the front of the car, and I get that giddy feeling you get when adults lose their shit. When he yanks open my door, I look up at him and try not to laugh. He’s obviously making some sort of statement, something he thinks is really, really important for poor freaked-out Donnie. I’m not impressed at all.
“Get out.” He’s leaning into the car, his face right next to mine. His words are measured, hard. “Don’t think that I won’t drag you out of there by your tie. Get out of the car.”
I get out of the car. But slowly, and as mean as you can be getting out of a car. I hope we fight, I hope he tries to throw me to the ground so I can flip him hard onto his back. I put up my fists. He laughs.
“I don’t want to fight you, Donnie.”
Yeah, right. He wants to drag me out of the car by my tie so we can make a snow fort by the side of the road. I keep my fists up.
“Why’d you want me to get out of the car, then?”
“Because I want to talk to you,” he takes a step forward and I bounce back, raising my fists. He laughs again. I punch him in the chin.
“Dude!” he yells. “That hurt!”
“So, talk! Don’t laugh at me!” I yell back. “Talk to me if you want to talk!”
I hate that I don’t scare him.
He holds his hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m not laughing. I just . . . I would never beat you up!” He laughs again.
“Stop laughing!” I get him in the chin again. This time it’s harder and it makes him fall back a step. I raise my fist and he almost trips over himself trying to jump away. It’s funny, so I laugh.
“I’ll stop laughing if you stop hitting me.” He rubs his chin. I laugh again. A big laugh, a laugh that sounds like HA HA HA HA! I laugh and I point at him rubbing his chin.
“Do you feel better?” he asks.
I stop laughing and consider. Yes. Yes, I do feel better. I nod my head and gasp out, “Don’t think that I won’t drag you out of there by your tie!”
Bobby shrugs. “I wanted you out of the car. It worked, didn’t it?” I let him sling his arm over my shoulders. I let him pull me into him. I let him hold me there. I know what this is. This is the point when I laugh till I cry. I miss my sister. If this were a movie, she would throw popcorn at the screen and whisper to me, “How original.” Bobby smells like cigarettes and fabric softener. My laughter’s just a giggle now, and it’s like when you know you’re going to throw up and you keep thinking “This is it, I’m about to barf.” The first sob’s just a sputter out of my mouth. Then the rest comes in spurts, gasps. I hear it inside my head, the sounds of it echoing off my skull. There’s nothing except for that sound and the cold against my face. I stop sort of suddenly and try to force more out but just make a low groan, and it sounds false. I think I’m embarrassed, but I’m not sure. Bobby’s arm is getting heavy on my shoulders, and I can feel my fever working it’s way up again. I sniff, not knowing how to pull away.
“Know what, Donnie?”
I turn to him; he’s looking at me.
“I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what to say to you. There’s nothing I can say to you.” His dark eyes are pleading with me; I have no idea what to say to him.
I shrug and move away. He opens up my door and I slide into the car. Before he closes it, I say, “It’s better if you don’t say anything. I won’t say anything either. We’ll just drive home.”