“I’d like to call this meeting to order,” I say. I like the sound of this. I have brought everyone to the living room; Severin and Bex and Trevor sit on the couch, Mom in her rocker, me sitting with folded legs on the floor. Freud is lying on the “Homes and Lifestyles” section of the Sunday paper.
“I see presents,” Mom says. “I thought we agreed on no more stuff.”
“They’re wrapped in Christmas paper,” Bex says.
“It was all I could find,” I say.
“Ho, ho, ho,” Trevor says. “Me-rry Christmas, boys and girls.”
“I hope I got a pony,” Severin says.
“And a Betsy Wetsy doll,” Trevor says.
“People, please,” I say. Maybe I need a gavel. “I’d like to officially welcome you to Plan A.” They finally shut up. Bex even folds her hands. “I know I said no more shopping, but these are thoughtful and necessary items. From here on out, it’s all about balance.”
Trevor holds out his arms and wavers them around like a doomed tightrope walker, but I shoot him a look and he stops.
I read my plan. Everyone is silent. They sit there, quiet. Even Mom. “I expect you to protest,” I say to her. “And I’m ready to take you on.”
“I’m not going to protest,” she says. “I can see you know what you’re doing.”
“And there’s one more thing and I don’t want to hear any shit about it,” I say. “No jokes, because this is serious. We’re all going to drive cars that don’t fuck up our planet. The others get traded in. Any questions?”
“The Porsche?” Severin asks.
“Sayonara.”
Mom. “The yellow Datsun?”
“Adios, muchacha,” Bex says.
Trevor. “Bob Weaver?” He looks stricken.
“Bob Weaver isn’t a car, it’s a Mustang.”
“Thank God,” Trevor says.
Now that they’ve indulged my display of crazed power and dictatorship, it’s time for presents. “These are for everyone. I took my time, this time.”
I let Mom unwrap. First an iron. Then a vacuum. Then a microwave oven.
“Oh, honey,” she says. “We really need these things.” She’s a little choked up. Her voice is high and tight. She blinks back tears. There is one present left.
“I know what it is! I know what it is!” Bex sings. She’s so loud that Freud flees under the coffee table, scrunching the newspaper in his panic.
Mom pretends to shake the large, flat box. “Hmmm, an umbrella?” she says. She unwraps. Holds the gift in her lap a moment before she raises it in the air for us all to admire. There is a small round of applause.
It is not gold. It is not padded. But the toilet seat is perfect just the same.
This is not just a simple story of Money can’t buy happiness. Or maybe that’s just what it is. And if it is, why shouldn’t it be? Because if this is something we are already supposed to know, then why don’t we know it? Why do we chase and scrabble and fight for things to flaunt, why? Why do we reach for power over other people, and through the thin superiority of our possessions, believe we have it? Why do we let money make people bigger, and allow those without it to be made smaller? How did we lose the truth in the frantic, tribal drumbeat of more, more, more?
We’re supposed to know this. We should know better.
It took me nearly two months to get all the pieces of my plan in place. We bought the Elberts’ house, across the street, when Mr. Elbert got transferred to Philadelphia. It has a bigger, sunnier backyard, a flourishing flower garden in the back, a bedroom for each of us. Freud didn’t have to get to know a new neighborhood. We got Bomba a blow-up pool with leaping dolphins on it for her first visit.
Jane accepted my investment, and my offer of any advice I’d learn in school to help her run the business better, and Leroy came out of the greenhouse closet, so to speak, after he, too, accepted my business proposal. Trina was back in boots again, her car at the curb. Roger had returned from Rio and tried to get her back. She told him to go fuck himself, but she was still taking his calls. Joe left for Saint Louis, wearing a suit and tie on the way to the airport, a hat on his head. Funny came in every day with her laptop case strung from her shoulder. But not everything went according to my plan. Nick said he couldn’t accept a ticket out of Nine Mile Falls, although his eyes got watery when I gave him his gift. Sometimes he wanted to leave he said, but all the things that made him him were here. His memories of his wife were here. And we were here. I understood this.
My guitar playing, too, underwent a change. I played for a little while when I got back, and then I stopped for good. I put my guitar in my closet. It seemed to belong to another time of my life. Some things, I understood, were temporary pieces, passing phases. Other things, the real passions, stayed for good.
When we leave to visit Dad—me, Trevor, Severin, and Bex—Mom stays behind, in spite of her invitation. Dad hoped she’d come too, but Mom said she wasn’t sure about that. She is having fun with Officer Brian, even if she isn’t the Mariners fan that he is, even if she doesn’t like camping. There’s a lot of water under the bridge, she says. But her eyes look sad, I can see that, when we leave her at the airport.
Dad says he’ll ask again, even if it’s silly. As we sit on the beach and try to snap on our flippers, I can almost picture her, standing there trying to wipe off all the sand that suddenly clings to her sunscreen. Maybe when her hormones calm down, she’ll come for a visit with us.
“Would you guys hurry up!” Severin says from the water. “It’s amazing down here. Wait till you see these fish!”
Trevor holds out his arms like a monster, his mask over his eyes, walking stiff-zombie-legged and flipper-footed toward Bex, who screams. “AAAAH,” Trevor-zombie says, and zombie-lurches forward.
Bex splashes out away from him, and a moment later, you can see her flowered bikini bottom snorkeling along in the sea.
Dad lies on his towel. He leans back on his elbows, smiles.
“Are you coming?” I ask.
“Nah, I think I’ll just watch awhile.”
I pick my way carefully to the water’s edge. Bex pops her head up.
“Mother Nature is a genius!” she yells.
“The real world,” I say, and then I dive in.