Cut Both Ways (13 page)

“Still drinking?”

“No, he's not drinking,” I say.

This is a lie, but not really. The passed-out blackout shit that was going on before isn't happening anymore. But she wouldn't see any difference. She won't believe that he could actually be a better person since she left. She'd never accept that he's happier than he's been in a long time. But I won't tell her that. I'm not on her level. She's got Jay and two new kids and money, so she thinks she won something. It's so babyish; it makes me sick.

“That you know of,” she says, and then I can't hold it in.

“Mom,” I say, setting down my fork. “Don't drag me into this.”

“Sorry, sorry,” she says, waving her hands like she can get rid of all this shit she's just asked, like she can make it go away. Erase it. “I just worry about him. Well, mostly about you.”

“I'm seventeen, Mom,” I say.

“I know,” she says. She presses both palms down on either side of the plate, looks down at her hands. She has very nice fingernails, rounded at the edges, with a clear polish on them. “I know,” she says again. “I can barely believe it. Seventeen years. It seems like you were just a little boy, just like Taylor and Kinney. Just a few minutes ago.” She looks up and smiles. Kinney is now lying across both bar stools, listening to her earbuds, but she's silent. I stare at her and my mom does too, and then she laughs.

And I laugh with her but it's fake. She can't tell the difference, though. There's so much shit she doesn't know and will never know. She says she knows, but she still goes around looking at me like I'm a baby. She knows I have a girlfriend because she saw Brandy's name and number pop up on my phone. But she doesn't know that we have sex. The shit she knows barely matters.

And nobody knows about Angus but me and Angus. And I don't plan on telling them. Not just because they couldn't handle it. But because they haven't earned it. Don't deserve it.

“I just want you to know,” she says. “You can always come to me. Anytime you have a problem or need anything. Okay? Need any help at all. Jay and me, we are here.” She puts her palm over my hand, in a kind of ball over my knuckles. It feels weird and
looks weird too. We both look at our hands together like this. Like a huge alien hand. Knuckle tumors.

“I know,” I say. Because she's told me that a million times since I was little. But she says this because the truth is that I've been an afterthought since the twins were born. I know she feels guilty about it. That's the reason for the placemats and candles and meatballs and catching up. But she doesn't get it; I've been fine without her.

And somehow, her telling me now means even less than it did before. Doesn't mean what it meant when Garrett said it.

“You know, I graduate this year,” I say.

Her face perks up. “I know! We have a big party to plan! What kind of party would you like to have?”

“I don't know,” I say. The idea of having a graduation thing, an open house or a party or whatever it is, sounds terrible. I mean, I want the cards with the money in them. But not the experience. And damned if I'm going to tell her about my dad's plan for my graduation.

“What does . . . does your dad want to host it? I suppose not, what with the house . . . ?”

“I'll talk to him about it,” I say.

“Well, whatever you want, we can do it. We can do it here or find . . . some other place. It's up to you.”

“All right.” I look around my plate; there's nothing else to eat and I wish I had something to do with my hands. I take my glasses off, wipe them on the cloth napkin.

“I don't want to upset you about your father, Will,” she says.
She goes to touch me again, but thinks again, pulls her hand back. I'm sort of depressed at that, but also sort of glad. I made her see me, for once. I made that happen.

“I can't stop being concerned, when it comes to you,” she continues. “Maybe you'll understand when you're older, have your own kids. There's a lot your dad doesn't understand about you, Will. About a lot of things.”

I can't look at her now. I'm too pissed. There's a lot he doesn't know about me, yeah. But she's wrong. I think my dad would understand. I haven't told him about Brandy or Angus. I've never had anything like that to tell him before, but I've told him other things. The first time I drank. The time I smoked cigarettes and puked afterward. I told him and we talked and he laughed at me a little. He was cool about it. He didn't act like it was a super big deal, but he told me to be careful. To be responsible. I've never smoked cigarettes since, so it's proof that his way works. It's all in how you talk about things.

I could tell him about Brandy, for sure. About Brandy, I could see him being happy for me. And Angus, he loves Angus too. But that, I probably won't tell him. Angus is hard to explain. Even to myself. Because I'm not gay, so it doesn't really count; I'm not going to come out or anything. It's hard to describe, whether we're naked or just huddled together on the sofa on Garrett's porch, sleeping. It's good. Brandy's good, too. I don't know if he'd understand them both at once, though. He'd probably see it as cheating.

I wonder what my mom would think of me and Angus naked
in bed. I wonder if I went to her asking for “help” with that, what she would say.

Now Kinney is crying, though, so my mom isn't paying attention to me anymore. She's sitting on the floor, holding Kinney in a heap; Kinney fell off the bar stools somehow while she was listening to her earbuds at top volume and even above her crying, I can still hear the music through them, because they've been yanked out of her ears and are lying on the glossy hardwood floor. I stand up and clear my plate and then I pick up the earbuds and click off her iPod.

“What's going on?” Taylor is next to me, looking down at Mom and Kinney.

“Kinney wiped out, kinda,” I say. We both stare at them. Kinney is sobbing now, milking it, probably. She's acting like she's dying. My mom is rubbing the back of her head, kissing her cheeks, talking softly to Kinney. Taylor seemed a little alarmed at first, but then she gets a disgusted look on her face and turns to me.

“She's such a show-off,” Taylor says, spinning around in her little pink socks on the hardwood. I can practically see my reflection in this floor. “Want to watch TV with me?”

“Can't,” I say. “Homework.”

“Bummer for you.”

Later, I'm zoning out over my homework at the dining-room table and watching my mom while she harasses Taylor and Kinney into the bathtub and pajamas. Jay is back from his trip and
he's unpacking a bunch of duffel bags and sorting out his laundry in the mud room and talking on his phone.

“That's critical,” he keeps saying. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Critical.”

I think about what Garrett said to me and for some reason, it makes me feel sick. Like, I could cry. Not about my dad and the house, though that's a little worrying. The part about how he thinks I'm smart, a good worker. For some reason, these sentences matter more to me than any other sentences I've ever heard before, from teachers, on report cards, whatever. I don't care about school shit; school shit is school shit. It's like Roy says; it's not real. Real is me filling up cambros of tomatoes, portions of guacamole and taco meat, mounds of onions and mushrooms. Real is me pushing soaked potatoes for fries until my neck aches from running the slicer. Real is me getting Carl whatever the fuck it is he needs when he hollers that he needs it and him saying, “Thanks, guy.” Carl saying anything beyond “making money and fucking bitches” to me is the sort of thing that matters.

I know being a prep cook, or even a line cook, or even Garrett, a guy who owns a whole restaurant, isn't going to save the world, or cure hunger, or tell me the meaning of life. But I don't care about saving the world. I already know I'm not going to do that.

“No, I'm hearing you,” Jay says, thumping down the lid of the washer. “Critical component of the whole project. Absolutely.”

I look down at my graph paper for Advanced Math. I've erased the paper so much you can barely see the little blue boxes. Then I hear a hollering and little feet stampeding and Taylor is there, her
hair all wet around her Hello Kitty pajamas, her arms smelling like raspberry soap around my neck.

“Gotta kiss you g'night, Will!” Taylor says, and plants one on my both of my cheeks, as she squeezes me.

“Good night,” I say. Squeezing her back. Her hair drips all over the place, reminding me of Brandy.

“Taylor! Will's doing his homework! It's time for
bed
!” my mom hollers.

“I like it better when you're here,” she whispers. “Kinney can have Mom as long as I get you.”

“What?”

“Don't say I told you that,” she says. “Kinney's a hog of our mom. But I don't care. I'd rather have you or my dad. You're way more valuable.”

“Okay,” I say. I push her wet hair out of her face. “I won't tell. You need to get in bed, though, or you'll get in trouble.”

She runs toward the stairs, saying over her shoulder, “I'm always in trouble, anyway!”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

IT'S THE LAST
weekend in September and my dad and I are pulling nails out of flooring he got for free off a Freecycle website when I tell him I want to stay with him until he finishes the house.

I expect him to say no. I expect him to say,
I'll need to ask your mother
. I expect him to tell me the truth, then. That the house is fucked and the furnace isn't hooked up and there's no way I can stay with him. Even if it is closer to Brandy, who he now knows is my girlfriend. Even if it is closer to school and more convenient and less gas.

I expect him to say no, too, because maybe he wants his weeknights back. To drink all he wants and not feel like he's leaving me alone, like he did all summer. He'd look so guilty and embarrassed those mornings he'd show up after being gone the whole night, wearing the same clothes as the day before, red eyed and
holding a box of his favorite pastries like some kind of apology to me. Like a man who beat his wife giving her flowers.

So I'm shocked when he smiles at me. Doesn't miss a beat, either.

“Of course,” he says. “Of course you can. You're my son. This is your home. And you're almost eighteen. We're doing this together, you and I, Will. I'm glad you want to be a part of it.”

“Okay,” I say. “Cool.”

He turns and grabs the magnetic sweeper, runs it over the scattered nails all over the driveway. The clatter-suck sound of it is one of my favorite things in the world. A broom that sweeps up metal is pretty much the greatest invention ever. Along with the nail gun and the thing that you bash with a hammer to staple in flooring. I am so in love with tools. I had no idea tools were so cool. Before this summer, I basically thought the world was built with a hammer and nails.

I expect him to start explaining more details about the house. About insulating the attic. About the furnace not being ready and the power being weird; we keep blowing fuses and needing a generator if we want to run the air compressor for the nail guns and stuff.

But we just keep ripping out nails. Me with a pliers, him with the claw of his hammer. The nails rain on the driveway. Every so often, we make trips to stack the flooring in piles, by length, and then one of us grabs the magnet broom to clatter-suck up the nails. When the magnet broom fills up, we dump the nails
into an ice-cream bucket. Most contractors just toss nails, my dad says. But he sees no reason to waste things.

Never mind that there are tons of ice-cream buckets already full of nails, sitting in our garage. Never mind that the backyard keeps filling up with shit. Never mind that he spent two hundred bucks on a giant tent tarp to cover all the stuff from rain. It's the kind of white tent tarp that you'd use for an outdoor party and some of the neighbors asked if it was for my graduation party my dad was throwing for me, and I had to joke about it, saying, yeah, we really like to plan ahead.

But this is why I want to do something. Stay with him. Help him. Summer's long past, and it's only getting colder out. But he's still finding deals online. Free stuff. Cheap stuff. A convection oven. A bunch of loose countertops. A pedestal sink with no faucet. Cans of half-full paint. A hanging pendant light that looks like a chandelier had sex with tin cans.

And that's just the newest, latest stuff. Because instead of buying that Laundromat in St. Paul, my dad tripped upon another money-making idea. He was buying something from an unclaimed storage locker and started talking to the owner, who was selling the whole storage-unit place. So now he owns that, and all the junk that didn't get bought or claimed from some of those units, anything he thinks might be good or useful, well, it enters our garage or the big top in the backyard or the basement. I don't even go in the basement anymore.

If I don't watch it, there won't be room for me in the attic. The only reason stuff hasn't gotten dumped up there is it'd be a pain
in the ass to haul it up the stairs. I've got to try to work with him. Steer this the right way.

That night, when I don't come home for dinner, my mom calls.

“What's going on?”

“I'm just gonna stay at Dad's the rest of this week, Mom.”

“Okay. What . . .” She stops. “Is there a reason for that?”

“I just . . . we're working on something and I've got homework and I don't want to drive all that way.”

She's quiet. “All right. You'll be here on Saturday, though? It's the girls' birthday.”

“For sure,” I say.

Later, I'm showering upstairs, and the water's barely warm. The hot-water heater isn't working right; my dad replaced the old one with a tankless thing, which is supposed to be energy efficient, but either he didn't install it right or it's a lemon, because half the time it doesn't work.

I get out of the shower and it's freezing. The burst of hot weather is over now. I've pretty much stopped with summer clothes. We've had the windows closed for a while, but it doesn't help; there are too many gaps in the walls and siding now. The wind just sings through the cracks. Looking at the dog asleep on the bed in the picture above the toilet, I dry off as fast as I can and run to my room to get clothes back on. I don't have much here; I need to remember to dig out my warm clothes when I go back for Kinney and Taylor's birthday, because most of what I keep at my dad's is summer shit and stuff for construction.

My dad's downstairs, heating up canned soup on the hot plate
for us. He's got a TV rigged up on a sawhorse table, but there's nothing but network for channels. He's watching some news show, the kind where they talk about kidnapped kids or people getting cancer from living on a toxic-waste dump without realizing it. Serious people in business suits interviewing all these poor bastards.

I call Brandy but she doesn't pick up.

So I text her, tell her I'm going to bed soon. We usually text each other in bed until about eleven. But I'm way too fucking beat tonight and could probably fall asleep in my bowl of soup. I don't want her to think I blew her off. Since that one day this summer, I try to always do what I say I'm going to do.

My dad changes the channel to a football game. I finish my text, just as he's saying to the television, “There we go.” The Vikings have gotten a first down. He opens another beer and gets out silver mixing bowls, dumps soup in one, then hands me a sleeve of saltine crackers.

“Nothing fancy tonight, sorry,” he says.

“I don't mind,” I say. “Steak and potato is my favorite.”

We eat the soup, sitting on stools, holding mixing bowls, watching football. I've never liked football enough to want to play it, but I've always watched it with my dad. He'd fill a dish full of peanut M&M's and make chili or stew and corn bread and we'd just sit on our asses and watch it and eat and it wasn't anything big, but it was fun. Usually Garrett or some of his other friends would stop by. They would all eat and holler at the TV and talk shit and laugh. He didn't do this every Sunday, but nearly. It was
the main way he relaxed. The most he ever talked was in those situations. When I was younger, I could ask a million football questions and all these guys would answer them. It was funny and noisy and everyone would want to explain things to me.

Now, I want to ask him a million questions again. But not about football.

More like:
Is the furnace hooked up?

And, why don't you tell me anything?

And, are you actually happy or just when you're drunk?

Are you an alcoholic? Or something else? Something worse? Is there some reason you can't stand life the way it is? And is it some reason I can do anything about?
Garrett said there was nothing I could do, but I don't think that's completely right. I think I can do things. I know how to work; I know how to do what I'm told. I know how to fold myself up into anything. I'm like the batter that Carl mixes up in the morning in the Hobart. It could be anything, depending on what you fold into it: pancakes, berry crisp, lemon cake, devil's food. It all starts out with this one box of powdery flour and you follow the lists taped up on the wall, depending on what you want. That's me. You can fold anything into me and it'll blend. I can write research papers and do group projects, not that I like either of them, but I can fucking do them, without complaining. I can go watch Angus's band play; I can play pickup ball with DeKalb. I can go to Target on a Friday night with Brandy. I can live in Oak Prairie; I can live in the city. I can live here with you, Dad, in this wreck of a house, and I can live with Mom in her mansion that feels like a hotel. I can be your
only son and I can be a big brother. I can be with Angus; I can be with Brandy.

But I don't say any of that. I ask him why the fuck Joe Buck still has a job announcing football when the whole world knows he's a giant ass. My dad laughs, lifts his mixing bowl to drink the last bits. Then he opens a beer.

“You want a beer, Will?”

I don't respond.

“I know that you've drank beer before,” he says, cracking open the fridge. Which is full of nothing but beer, really. Well, beer and ketchup.

I still don't say anything.

“And you've got nowhere to be, either, right?”

I shrug. He takes that for yes and hands me one of his beers. It's a Grain Belt Nordeast in a tall can. I open it and he seems happy. Smacks me on the back. I drink the beer, we watch the game. Then, during a commercial, he says, “Help me with this mattress, will you?”

Every morning the blow-up mattress he sleeps on deflates a little, and then he pushes all the air out and rolls it up into a loose heap, sticks it in the corner. He used to just use a sheet, but now he's like me in the attic, and has a sleeping bag with a bunch of other quilts that I've never seen before. They've probably been abandoned at the Laundromat. He's been bringing home that kind of crap for years now. My mom would go crazy, when I was littler. They'd have the same fight, over and over.

“Tom, what the hell is this?”

“What do mean, what is it? It's a kind of tablecloth thing.”

“Where'd you get it?”

“The Laundromat.”

“We don't even have a table that size, though,” she would say. “And gross—it's someone else's tablecloth!”

“It was in the damn washer and dryer, Tess!” he'd yell back, leaving me unsure which of them to side with, since they both had decent points.

He attaches the little pump to the mattress and then I help him spread it out over the floor. He doesn't seem to mind that there's sawdust and crap all over the place. It seems impolite, somehow, to point this out.

He flips on the pump and the whole house feels like it's shaking to death from the noise. My dad doesn't seem to notice, though. Just tips back his beer and guzzles like it's a contest. Once the bed's inflated, he puts down his beer and says, “All right, then.”

And he sits down and the game's back on, and so he lies there, drinking on the mattress while I sit on the stool, and we watch the Vikings get killed by New England, while Joe Buck talks in his Supreme Douche of the Universe voice and I have more questions I won't ask.

Do you hate this or is it okay with you?

Do you think I'm a baby for thinking living like this is shitty?

Do you actually like this beer or do you just buy it because it's on sale?

Why the hell was Mom the one who bitched about child support, not you? Why did you let her roll over you, and make me
go back and forth, week after week? When she had the good job, anyway? Everyone says you're the cheap one, but people don't get rich by spending money, either; is that why she wouldn't pay it? Because she couldn't stand to give you a cent? Even if it was for her only son? Or was that a bad investment, too? The better investments being Kinney and Taylor, who come from a better father. Someone who looks good in a suit and doesn't drink whatever's on sale. The biggest quantity for the least amount.

The sound of this in my head is too much. I can hear it over fucking Joe Buck, even. My dad seems like he's made of liquid, lying on the jiggly mattress, sipping his beer, watching the TV and his phone in equal measure. He's got his eye on every little ping from Craigslist and Freecycle and who knows what else. The latest thing is this giant draftsman's desk he got from some dude online. It's in the backyard, this blinding white thing, all aerodynamic and fancy, next to the piles of wood and scrap and stacks of cabinets he wants to reuse. It looks like a spaceship in the middle of a yard sale.

I tell him I've got homework and he waves and smiles and sips and watches. I've got to get my homework done so I can talk to Brandy a little before I fall asleep. I don't finish the beer, but I bring it with me.

“Hey, Will?”

I think for a minute he's going to tell me not to bring the beer up. Like he's realized it was a mistake to give it to me.

But all he says is, “Good to have you around, son.” He sounds weird; choked up. Like he might cry.

“Good to be here,” I tell him, not turning around. I don't really want to know what his face looks like. I feel like he already might know all the shit I was thinking. I wonder what my face looks like at times like that. When I get upstairs I take a piss and then dump the rest of the beer on top of it.

I finish my homework really quickly; when I get upset about shit, I'm like the opposite of most people. I like having something to do, even if it's something stupid like discussion questions for Global Society or the diagram of a camera's parts for Photography. Once it's all done and zipped up in my backpack, I get in bed. I normally sleep in just my underwear, wherever I am, but now I'm rocking these thermal fleece pants and shirt that Jay gave me for Christmas one year; they're like the base layers you wear under your clothes when you climb Mount Everest or whatever. I get under the covers, the light of the phone glowing under the quilts because it's so cold up here, and I text Brandy to call me. A second later, she does.