Good Kids: A Novel (28 page)
Read Good Kids: A Novel Online
Authors: Benjamin Nugent
“Do you truly believe the janitors of this nation keep it clean in a state of sobriety?” I heard my father ask Allison. “Have you ever spoken to a janitor? Are you so alienated from the masses that this is your notion of how cleaning takes place? Sober?”
“Remember last week, when you cleaned the tub? Maybe I
should
talk to a janitor, because maybe he would clean up without doing ten thousand dollars’ worth of water damage, even if he was wasted.”
“Maybe you should find a man like your dad, who can just throw out ten thousand dollars and not have it be a thing. Because that’s actually what you’re saying to me right now, right?”
“You could hear a lark singing in a meadow and you would think the lark was implying that you were poor. You could hear a dog barking and you’d think it was implying, ‘Linus, you’re a poor loser. Linus, you’re a poor loser.’”
“That’s what
you
hear when a dog barks. I gave you children—what do you want from me? Am I not an adequate father, despite my unsatisfactory income?”
The sounds of falling silverware and shattering plates issued from the parlor, where the children were, and their parents rushed to see what had happened.
“Asshole,” I heard Allison mutter under her breath as they ran.
Rachel went after them. Maybe I should have gone and helped with the emergency, too, but I was very tired, suddenly, overwhelmed. I considered the situation. My father and Allison had
been married now for ten years. Given the age of the girls, they would have to hang tough another twelve. Longer than my father and my mother had endured each other. And, when I was a child, my parents, preferring whispering and occasional violence, had traded overtly hostile words like this only on very special occasions: the shattering of Paquette china, the disparaging of my mother’s meditation teacher. The life that these girls had been drawn into, the air they would breathe in this largely wall-free apartment—there was no predicting anything.
Lucia marched in and interrupted my reflections. “You hiding?” she asked. “We going to do another show. Grown-ups have to watch.”
To express urgency, she tugged on my black Marc Jacobs cardigan, an old gift from Julie, streaking it with the white frozen yogurt that now covered her fingers and much of her person. The commotion, I suspected, must have started when she discovered my father’s used frozen yogurt bowl on the coffee table and dragged it to the floor by pulling on the tablecloth.
“Wait,” I told Lucia. “Hold still.” I squatted, as I’d seen harried parents do in the streets of Los Angeles, and extracted some folded paper napkins from my wallet: Tom, Myra, Julie 2. I soaked them in my glass of water and applied them to Lucia’s face and hands.
Acknowledgments
Thanks so much, Brant Rumble, Claudia Ballard, Kyle McCarthy, Linda Baker, Conn Nugent, Annie Baker, Curtis Sittenfeld, Michelle Huneven, Allan Gurganus, Peter Orner, Rachel Reilich, David Gorin, Leslie Jamison, Andy McNicol, Holly S., Elizabeth Cunningham, Lan Samantha Chang, Elizabeth McCracken, Uncle Rory and the rest of the Baker and Nugent clans, especially Jack, Danny, Molly, Isabelle, and Kati. I’m grateful to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Yaddo, Southern New Hampshire University, Beth’s Cabin, and the people at Scribner and William Morris Endeavor I rarely or never see, such as Nan Graham, Susan Moldow, Ian Dalrymple, and my copy editor. And to those who offered affirmation when it was much needed: Rob Spillman, Aisha Muharrar, Amy Williams, Edward Carey, Connie Brothers, Melissa Flashman, Greg Walter, Blake Fronstin, Hanna Rose Shell, Amie Barrodale. And to Khadijah Britton for the use of her name and nothing else.
© ANNIE BAKER
BENJAMIN NUGENT
’s essays and reviews have appeared in
The New York Times
,
The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Time,
and
n+1
, and his fiction has appeared in
Tin House
. He was an Iowa Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Director of Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University, he teaches fiction and nonfiction in its MFA and undergraduate programs. He grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, and lives in Boston.
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COPYRIGHT © 2013 SIMON & SCHUSTER
ALSO BY BENJAMIN NUGENT
American Nerd
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012027692
ISBN 978-1-4391-3659-1
ISBN 978-1-4391-5433-5 (ebook)