Bunny Yabba is paws-up. Pink eyes gone white. Finished.
Papa yells at me for twenty minutes straight. Irresponsible. Lazy. Stupid. I stop listening after a while and start thinking logistics for making a waterless bong I saw in A Child’s Garden of Grass called a “steamboat.”
Mama cries more than I expect. I’m not sure if that’s about Yabba or me or something else—my heart’s gone flat. The losses are piling up and I’m shutting down.
When I drop by Howie’s room he’s filling a bag with magazines and clothes. “Time to hit the road, Cochise.”
“What? Where?”
“Home.”
“Why? Again? Is it your mom? Her ankle?” I think this can’t be happening but of course this is happening. It always does. “Can’t we just wait until the votes come in? You’re going to win. I know it.”
“And that pays … a complete wardrobe. But no cash. Brother gotta work.”
“But it will mean lots of work—”
“In LA,” he says, and I know it’s true. He puts his hands softly on my cheeks. “It’s just … time.”
“It’s not time,” I shake my head, “Not yet.”
“The Buddha says you only lose what you cling to,” he says. Another one of those sayings that say nothing to me.
“Well, I lose everything.” Not just the houses. Everything. “Every friend. Every house. And now you. I didn’t want to move to this stupid city. But then you came. You came. And for once, I was happy. We all were.” This much is true.
“If you think of things that way you’ll always be unhappy,” he says softly, sitting beside me on the bed. “The Buddha says ‘a spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.’”
“I don’t care what the fucking Buddha says. Or Lenny Bruce. Or Bob Dylan.”
“OK. What I’m saying is that if you think of your life as a little glass then the hard moments, like this one, seem to fill every bit of the space you’ve got and they taste like shit. But if you think of your whole life as a big and magical lake, a wide-open adventure, then a few teardrops are just seasoning. They don’t spoil the whole thing.”
“You’re spoiling it.”
He gets up, softness leaving him. “We gotta go home. This isn’t real life anymore.”
“You mean it’s starting to feel like real life. For the first time.” Papa appears, right on cue.
Howie laughs. “Maybe your life, Jefe.”
“Right. My life. Welcome to it. It’s about time, you know?” He points to Howie’s beads and the paintings and papier-mâché sculptures and the plastic toy characters all fucking each other in different positions on the mantle and the windowsill and the bedside table. “This den of iniquity is a fantasy. You can’t live like this forever.”
“Can’t hurt to try,” Howie argues.
“Really?” Papa snaps back. “Really can’t hurt? Try raising a family while you’re high all day. Making bupkes. Cheating on your wife. Try doing it that way.”
“It’s better than being gone ten hours a day and taking martini lunches. What’s the difference?”
“Everything I do, I do to make sure my family is safe and sound. Everything you do, you do to make sure your dick is stroked. By Playgirl. By my secretary.”
Howie goes back to stuffing his bag. Not looking at us. Mad but not mad. Processing it all. Uncomfortable with the way this is going. This isn’t the Howie and Carly vibe.
“Hey, maybe if you got that mythical grant and hired me then you wouldn’t be saying any of this,” Howie blurts suddenly. “I can’t support my family if you’re not paying me. So I’ve been taking care of your family for you. I thought that was our deal.”
“Sure. I appreciate everything you’ve done. But that’s not a real job. And it’s not my job to get you a job. Carry your own water.”
“Thanks for the pep talk, Dad,” Howie snips in a tone so unlike him. “When did you start believing you’re The Man?”
Papa flashes red when Howie says this. Those wide Papa eyes, telling you that you just crossed a line. “I believe in reality,” he says in a whisper. “You lost touch with that a long time ago.”
“So many realities, Jefe. You just have to know how to dance between them.”
“Look,” Papa appeals suddenly, his color drained, an unconvincing smile fixing his face. “You’re my brother. I don’t want you to go. But I can see you’ve made up your mind—”
“No he hasn’t,” I push in, finally, feeling like this may be Papa’s fault. And if it isn’t, he’s not doing enough to help stop it.
“He has,” Papa snaps. “He’s an adult. I’m sorry the grant never came through.” Then to Howie, in a political shift that is as jarring as it is mollifying: “Louis is right. The two of you? Being here. It’s been one of the best experiences our family has had in a very long time. There’s no way we’re going to end it on this note. So tonight’s a bon voyage party … Right after the bunny memorial. What a day.”
Howie sighs heavily but he’s smiling.
“I need you to give me a hand with this,” he says, handing me a duffel when Papa is gone. I help, but I know he doesn’t really need me.
* * *
“She was a little rabbit whose presence was rarely seen but always felt, here in this great house on Chestnut Street,” Papa says, officiating over the funeral that precedes the bon voyage. We bury Bunny Yabba at dusk under the pear tree in the backyard. Atjeh paws the fresh earth and I kick her away as we take turns remembering our fallen family member.
“I can’t believe this is happening all at once,” Amanda shakes with new tears.
“April showers,” Carly whispers, wrapping her arms around me and my sister. “But it’s almost May. It’s the cycle, love. Everything ends. Bunnies die, flowers fall, friends take different paths. But the flowers always come back. And it’s all right here with us,” she says, rubbing her warm palms on our cracked hearts. “We carry each other. Wherever we go. Do you feel it?”
“I feel it,” Amanda whimpers.
“I feel it,” Howie says convincingly, joining us low to the ground.
“I feel it,” Mama says, and she’s crying again.
“I feel it,” I confess.
“We feel it,” Papa adds, bouncing David in his arms. “And we feel hungry! Let’s eat.”
We say good-bye for the last time before bed. When we wake up, just like that, our friends are gone.