Bright Lights, Dark Nights (14 page)

“Thank you, Naomi,” Mom said. “Walter, tell us a little more about your friend.”

She's gorgeous. She's sweet and smart. She likes me. She wants to be around me.
She came to a creepy broken-family dinner just to spend more time with me. But Mom wouldn't get it. What could I say anyway? I hadn't even told Dad about her yet.

“This is Naomi,” I said, and kept it simple. “She plays the harp.”

“I run cross-country, too,” Naomi said, filling in the gaps for me.

“Her dream is to be a contestant on
The Biggest Loser
,” I added.

“Well, we're glad to have you here, Naomi,” my mom said. Everything felt so phony, as if a tap with a mallet would shatter it all. I decided to test it.

“Has anyone read the paper lately?” I asked. Things had really turned around for Dad ever since he'd caught his neighborhood thief. It ended up being some kid we went to school with, Calvin, someone I hadn't heard of. It really was a big deal, at least in our part of the city. The newspaper covered the case, and sent a reporter and photographer over to interview Dad and take pictures. Rosie made him a cake, which I ate most of, and he had a spring in his step that was nice to see.

Mom nodded as she chewed her food. “I did. I see your father's made some news. That's great for him.”

He was doing better without her. We were both doing awesome now. It just took us a little while.

“It's a pretty big deal,” I said. “This kid was a menace in the neighborhood. Nobody else could catch him. There was a whole chase. Dad had to really push on him, get him to crack. It was this whole high-pressure thing.” I embellished a detail or two to keep it impressive in story form. That was how the best legends are built.

“So when's graduation?” Seth asked, smiling. Changing the subject. “Looking at colleges yet?”

“No,” I said.
I've been busy surviving, trying not to get my butt kicked in school. Trying to keep my dad out of the hospital. Honestly, I couldn't care less about college, grades, nice clothes, or home-cooked meals, you walking sitcom-reject cretin.
“I could always stay back a year if I run out of time.”

“Ooh, we could be seniors together,” Naomi said. She got it. That was what was important to me. Her.

“Walter,” Mom said after putting down her fork, “did you make a costume for Halloween this year?”

“Not really,” I said, although my and Naomi's costumes were fairly homemade, even if the actual elements were all store-bought. “Naomi and I went to a Halloween party. I was a detective and she was a gangsta bitch.”

“Kind of a femme fatale,” Naomi said. “Sort of.”

Without an acknowledgment, Mom went right to the ninja turtle story. How when I was a kid, I hated the store-bought ninja turtle costume so much I insisted on making my own version. Not a year goes by that the pictures don't get dragged out: me with my painted green face, my green pillow shell, my shirtsleeve headband. I was already regretting Naomi's presence at the table. Every year after that, my mom and I would make my costume, and it became a family tradition.

“Oh, how about that Fourth of July?” Mom rambled on, pointing at me with her fork. Not buying into my and Naomi's awesome repartee. Of course I remembered; she only told the story to everyone. “You came running inside crying because you picked up your sparkler on the wrong end. We rinsed your hand off and you'd already forgotten anything had happened—you wanted another sparkler. Oh, and then there was Aunt June.” Aunt June, my dad's sister-in-law, would get fall-down drunk at those family gatherings.

“Let's not forget the hike that never ended,” Mellie said, bringing up another Walter Wilcox classic—the time we got lost in the woods and didn't find our way out until night. I'd gotten tired of walking and was slowing Mellie down. I was supposed to stay by a tree until she found help and would come back for me. But then I got scared and got even more lost. There had to be one story where I was somewhat heroic and saved the day, but it seemed that, no, there wasn't.

The stories continued, and the laughing continued, and Mom looked at me like her silly little boy and Mellie gave me loving-big-sister looks, and Naomi laughed with them. And they told the stories to Naomi because she was the one hearing them for the first time, and she was learning a lot about me, and it was all wrong. The laughing and the happiness were all a hundred percent incorrect, because Mom had left us and the family was broken, and that ruined the memories, that tainted them all.

My legs were jittering. The memories I had involved furniture flying across the room. They involved ugly words and name-calling; they involved the man up the street. My memories included waking up at two in the morning to screaming fights. Needing earplugs to sleep through the night so I could go to school in the morning, earplugs I couldn't sleep without today.

“Walter was so clingy,” Mellie said, holding a glass of wine. “I couldn't even go to the movies with my boyfriend without Walter tagging along. Remember I used to call you my shadow?”

I offered a weak smile. I wasn't her shadow anymore. We saw things differently. She thought Dad had had it coming, that Mr. Spencer was a better match for Mom. She thought Dad was cold and aloof, and Mom had been suffering. What I had seen was Mom depressed, all the time, and when Dad wasn't working, he was trying to cheer her up, and it never worked. And then our neighbor started spending way too much time here, making everyone uncomfortable. Mel hadn't been there when Dad and I moved out, at five in the morning so the neighbors wouldn't watch or talk to us. She didn't have this image burned in, of Mom watching us drive away in a U-Haul truck from the window, drinking coffee. I'd been sure Seth had already been on his way over.

Seth was telling everyone about his big splurge, a sailboat. This wasn't just any boat—this was going to be the envy of the sea. “You've gotta come see this thing, Walter. It's a work of art. What do you think, sport? Maybe in the summer? We can bring Naomi, Mel, your mom.”

“You and your toys,” Mom said with a laugh. “What are the neighbors going to think?”

“What
do
the neighbors think?” I asked. Naomi's eyes were wide and everyone was quiet, but it was such a good question that I hadn't thought of. After all, I moved away, Dad moved away, but Mom did not. What did the neighbors think? “What do they think of Seth and his ex-wife? What do they think about Dad? Do people actually like this? Do the neighbors all think you're a cute couple? Are they happy for you? They shouldn't be. It's not cute, or sweet or romantic. You basically have the worst how-we-met story in history.”

“Oh,” Mom said, and her body sunk.

“This isn't appropriate, Walter,” Seth said, pushing his plate away. “And it's really disrespectful to your mom and your company.”

“And who says ‘sport'?” I asked, choosing to ignore his comments about Naomi. “What is that? Is that, like, a British thing? 'Cause you're not even British. You don't break up a kid's family and call him sport, you just don't do that.”

Mom got up and left the table, and for a second, my heart broke and I didn't want to feel that way when I was right. So I shoved my chair out from under me and stood up myself. “It's better to not be here, and not think about this,” I said. “I was doing fine before. I was doing really good.”

There was nowhere else to go but outside, so I went there. I left Naomi at the table. I don't even remember walking to the door or closing it. I just remembered Naomi's shock and my mom withering away, and then I remembered the blankness of standing outside. I was looking at the dark outline of the woods and the light from inside that reached the trees by the street. And the moon. I didn't have my license or the keys, so I couldn't just hop in Mel's car and head off. I couldn't leave Naomi behind, either.

“Are you okay?” Naomi asked from the back doorstep. That was a relief, as she was the only one I wanted to see. She was trying to play it cool. “It's okay. You warned me,” Naomi said. “Really I'd have been let down if everything went nice. I was expecting fireworks.”

“I told you this wasn't Disney World,” I said. I wondered if that could be a Bogart-cool line. “It's a crappy situation. Not good at all.”

Naomi walked to where I was and ran her hand up and down my back. I took a deep breath, exhaled, and watched my breath swirl into the air.

I heard Mel tell my mom and Seth that she'd take us out for dessert, and before I knew it, she was grabbing me by the arm and pulling me to her car. I opened the back door. “Front,” Mel barked. She was not happy, but I wasn't, either, so that didn't bother me. I slammed the back door shut, got in the passenger side, and slammed that door. Naomi followed behind, wide-eyed, and got in the backseat. Mel got in the driver's seat and slammed her door, too.

“That is not fair to Mom, what you just said.” Mellie turned on the car and turned off the music and sped onto the road. She was driving a little faster than I was comfortable with. She was never a great driver. “I know you want to sit there and be quiet, but I'm talking. I know you're mad at Mom for what happened, but it takes two. You're letting Dad off way too easy. He has some blame in this, too. He could have done more. Mom was depressed—you know she was, and he did not want to deal with it.”

I regretted Naomi seeing all this. I had no way of knowing what she was thinking. I looked in the mirror and saw her eyes darting around. I let my head tilt, looked out the window, and watched the streetlights hover past.

“If you don't want to put any blame on Dad because he's not the one who cheated, I get that,” Mel said. “Just know that adult relationships don't always work out. Everyone has their own path to take, and they don't always line up with their partner's. Things don't always go the way people want or expect. That's something you just figure out when you're older.”

What had she figured out? She hadn't even been around for the worst of the fighting. She saw some of it, sure, but then she got out of the house. It was easy to have a levelheaded response from that distance. She hadn't even been around when Mom essentially had a boyfriend over at the house all the time.

“What makes Seth so special?” I asked. “I can't stand how Mom acts around him. I don't think she ever acted like that before.”

“It's called taking her meds, Walter,” Mel said. “What planet do you live on? Mom was sick; Seth helped her get better. And you're going to ruin all the progress she's made with outbursts like that.”

I hadn't thought she was sick. Things hadn't been great, but she'd just seemed bored, or cranky. I could always make her laugh, and things were usually okay before long.

“Seth isn't a doctor,” I said. “I don't see why she needed him in any way.”

“Dad completely ignored it,” Mel said. “Seth noticed; he talked to her. Jesus, he didn't have to write out a prescription to help. She's bipolar.” Mel let out a frustrated groan. “I know it wasn't easy for you. Believe me, I have a lot of guilt for leaving you there. I thought maybe we could start some kind of repairing process. I guess not. Naomi, I'm sorry you're hearing all this.”

“It's okay,” Naomi said. “I have plenty of family drama myself. I've seen it all.”

Her family had seemed so warm and together when I saw them. She did mention that sister, though, the one she went to the concert with. I had a lot to learn about Naomi still.

Mel started talking to Naomi because I was quiet. “Our dad would be out working, or upstairs sleeping, and Walter would tell Mom all these corny jokes. I don't even know where you got those bad jokes. Or he'd tell her everything that happened on the TV shows we'd watch. He'd do anything in the world to make her smile.”

“Now you're just talking to talk,” I said. We were close to the ice-cream place anyway.

“Walter, you can't be mad now because she finally is happy. That's not fair. You should know more than anyone what Mom was like,” Mellie said, facing away from the road. Why did she have to turn her head?
Watch the road, Mellie.
“You were
always
trying to cheer her up.”

I leaned my head against the window. I could see Naomi in the passenger-side mirror. She lifted her hand to wave. She gave me a soft smile. It wasn't that long ago that I didn't have that smile in my life. It was a major improvement. I guess I had some other improvements, too. Dad was happy, finally. And Mom was happy. Maybe this was a key moment, or I could make it one, a conscious decision to let go.

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