Rules for Life (3 page)

Dad blew out a breath. “You're missing the point,” he said. “For God's sake, Izzy, you're sixteen years old and you know everything about my life.”

“And you know everything about mine. So?”

“I'm your father. It's too much information.”

I wrapped one arm around myself. “Is that what you think? Or is that what Anne thinks?”

He shook his head. “We're completely offtrack here. This has nothing to do with Anne.”

Nothing to do with Anne? I almost asked what color the sky was in his world.

“It has everything to do with her,” I said. I was breathing hard, trying not to scream at him. “You never had a problem with us talking about stuff before. You never wanted to get married again. And you were happy—or at least that's how you acted.”

“People change. I've changed. I told you that,” he snapped. A vein in his left temple pulsed. “I love Anne. And I want us to be a family the way it used to be. That's not wrong.”

“The way it used to be,” I snorted. “You mean Mom and Jason and me, 'cause you were never around.”

“Stop right there,” he shouted. His arm whipped out and one finger pointed at me. “I have listened to you, now you listen to me. It's my life. I love Anne. She loves me. I'm going to marry her.”

I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. I didn't say anything. I didn't trust my mouth to be able to string words into sentences.

The silence seemed to push us farther apart. I thought about jumping up and launching myself, wailing and flailing, at him. But I didn't. I think about doing those kinds of things, but I never follow through. I don't know if I'm too practical or too chickenshit.

“I have some work to do,” Dad said finally, in a flat voice. “I'll see you in the morning.”

I stared at a chair instead of him.

“We're not done,” he said from the doorway.

I looked down at my right hand. The two pages of script I'd been holding were twisted into a mangled paper rope.

I felt the same way.

5

I sat on the radiator in Mrs. Taylor's English class, trying to soak up some heat. Inside, the pipes clanged and banged and shook, but all that came out were little puffs of barely warm air. Behind me, rain hit the windows, pooled into little rivers and ran down the glass.

Lisa dumped her backpack onto her desk and dropped into her seat. “My feet are wet,” she grumped, undoing the laces of her boots and kicking them off. “Why don't they cancel school on mornings like this? Why don't they cancel life?”

She stretched her legs into the aisle. She was wearing hot pink-and orange-striped socks with individual toes—like gloves for your feet. She'd gotten them for fifty cents at the Sally Ann. On her they worked. On me they would have clashed with my hair.

“You know this?” Lisa asked, yawning.

“I guess so.” I fished an elastic out of my own bag and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. It was getting curlier by the second. “What about you?”

“What's to know? It's English. You write a lot about symbolism, allegory, how everything means something else.”

“Or nothing.”

“Yeah, well don't write that down,” Lisa said. “It's not what Mrs. T. wants to hear.”

Lisa and I had been friends since third grade, when I caught Matthew Hetherington trying to look up her dress while he gave her an under-duck on the swings. She was my fun friend—the absolute best person to hunt for retro stuff with at the thrift store or to go with to get your ears double pierced.

That was the way my friends were. They all fit into some category, like movie friends or honors math friends.

Lisa yawned again, then leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes.

“What's with you this morning?” I asked.

“I stayed over at my dad's,” she said. “The munchkins got up at five and guess whose bed they climbed into? One second I'm asleep and the next I've got sticky fingers yanking my eyelids up.”

“Does it bug you?” I leaned back until my own head was against the window frame and hoped the question sounded casual. “I mean, that your dad got married again and everything?”

“Nah. Andrew and Sam are cool little guys most of the time and I like Haviland okay, even though I think her name sounds stupid.”

“What about your mom's husband?”

Lisa opened her eyes and turned her head to look at me. “You're kidding, right? I haven't bought a CD or a concert ticket since my mom met Sean. I got to meet Keith Dunst of Technical Virgins. If my mom and Sean ever split up I'd go live with him.”

She put her hand on the radiator. “Geez, haven't the prisoners started shoveling coal down in the dungeon yet? Oh, I forgot.” She put a hand to her cheek in fake surprise. “They have to write an English test first.”

I rolled my eyes at her.

For a second I considered telling Lisa about Dad wanting to marry Anne, even though it wasn't the same as her family at all. For one thing, Lisa's mother wasn't dead. Her parents were even friends. And her father was nothing like mine. Lisa's dad drove a minivan. He'd never missed a single school concert or parent-teacher night or anything Lisa'd been in. I'd bet he'd never stayed out all night. Plus Lisa liked what's-her-name—Haviland. I didn't even know Anne.

It wasn't the same. Not at all.

6

“Can't sleep?”

I started and squealed like a bagpipe with asthma. “Jason! Don't do that.”

He grinned. “Sorry.” But I knew he wasn't.

“Look what you made me do.” The spoon was sinking in the pot of spaghetti sauce.

Jason tossed his leather jacket over the back of a chair. “I'll get it. I'll get it,” he said, elbowing me away from the stove.

He stuck his head over the pot. “Mmmm, smells good. I'm starving.” Then he reached in and grabbed the spoon. It was about to go under for the last time. “Oww! Hot! Hot! Hot!” The spoon clattered onto a burner, spraying drops of sauce everywhere.

I whacked him on the arm with the back of my fist. “Get out of the way and don't help me.” I dropped the dirty spoon in the sink and got another from the drawer.

Jason was waving the fingers on his right hand in the air. “I'm hurt,” he protested.

“Run them under some cold water,” I said. He pushed past me and I couldn't help it; I checked his face, his eyes, half expecting him to grab the spoon out of my hand and start eating the sauce right out of the pot.

I remembered Jason sitting behind me on the counter once when he was wrecked, eating marshmallows because they were the first things he touched. He pulled the bag open in the middle and ate them one after the other, talking really fast the whole time. Nothing he said made any sense and I could see the white goo stuck all over his teeth.

I didn't eat marshmallows for a long time after that.

But Jason didn't look stoned this time. Jason hadn't been stoned for quite a while. So why did I hold my breath whenever he walked in? Why did I check his eyes, smell his clothes, count the number of times he wiped his nose?

He sat in the chair opposite me and slid down so his long legs were under the table and his head was against the back of the chair. His hair was the same color as mine these days, but cut short and spiked. I could feel his blue eyes on me. Spencer appeared and jumped into Jason's lap. Jason gently stroked the fur under the cat's chin. Spencer's eyes closed and he began to purr. Traitor.

Jason sat there looking at me, with his cocky smirk, not saying anything until finally I looked at him. Which he knew I would. He'd been doing that since I was four and he was seven.

“So where were you last night?” I demanded.

He arched his head back and laughed. “Working. How was dinner?”

“Working? At 6:30? What were you doing? Playing dinner music at the Holiday Inn?”

“Good one, Iz.” He licked his index finger and made an imaginary mark in the air. “I'm teaching a music class for kids.”

“You're kidding.”

He shook his head. It was possible, I decided, although I was having a hard time picturing Jason as a teacher. Then again, he'd know every scam and excuse for getting out of practicing.

“So? What was the big dinner out all about? It's 11:30 at night and you're cooking.” He paused. “Something's wrong,” he added in a singsong voice.

I stopped stirring. “He didn't tell you, did he?”

“All I got was a message that Dad wanted us all to have dinner. Actually I think it was three messages.”

I took my time, looking all around the room as though I was trying to find something, before I dropped the words, “Dad's getting married.”

“Of course he is,” Jason said.

“He's probably asked her by now.” I gave him a big, fake, chipmunk-cheeked grin. “Dinner was your chance to meet the bride. I think you blew your shot to be ring bearer.”

Jason sat up straighter. “God, you're serious.” His mouth moved but it took a few moments for more words to come out. “Why? Who's the her?”

“Her name is Anne McGwire and I barely know her so I can't tell you much. She works on the show and no, she's not the blond.”

“Too bad. She's hot.”

I shot him my eat-dirt-and-die look, then turned the heat off under the sauce and leaned against the stove. “As for why, Dad says he wants a real family, and you and me and him aren't that. He wants a partner, someone to talk to.”

“Shit! He had to marry Mom twice for it to take. What is this? Some kind of midlife thing?”

I shrugged.

“Why can't he buy a motorcycle? I could borrow that.”

“Hey, Jason,” I said. “Here's an idea. Why don't you pretend to be my big brother and listen to me?”

“I am listening,” he said, but I knew all the little gears and belts and wheels were turning behind his eyes as he tried to figure out if Dad getting married was going to mess up his life in any way.

“Have I done a bad job?” I asked. It was the question that had been floating in my mind since Dad had first said he wanted to marry Anne.

“You mean around here?” Jason said. “No. You're practically perfect, Izzy. You can do everything.” He held out his arms. “Look at this place. There're no pizza boxes on the back of the toilet. There're no stinky socks in the middle of the table.”

“That's because we're not at your apartment.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Here there's milk in the refrigerator you can actually drink and extra toilet paper and clothes you don't have to smell before you put them on. You have Band-Aids, for God's sake.”

“It's not enough for Dad. He says we can't talk to each other anymore. He says it's ‘not appropriate.'” The words seemed to stick on my tongue.

Spencer flopped onto his side and Jason began to scratch behind the cat's ears. The purring got louder. “I've always thought it was a little weird the way you talk to Dad about everything,” Jason said. “I sure wouldn't do it. But I don't get what's not appropriate about it. There have to be dozens of books out there on how to get your kid to talk to you.”

I rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet, pushing off from the edge of the stove.

“So he wants to marry this Anne-person so he'll have someone to talk to?”

I shrugged. “I guess. And you know how he is. That'll last for about a month and then he'll disappear for three days looking for fifty-year-old oak boards.”

“Did you say anything to him?” Jason asked. Spencer sounded like a truck with a bad muffler.

“Yeah, I said something, for all the good it did.”

“So—I don't know—tell him if he gets married you'll, you'll get your tongue pierced.”

I shuddered. “Yeech! I would never do that!”

“Right. I forgot I'm talking to Miss Perfect.” He ran a hand over his hair. “Tell him you'll run away.” He gave me a sly grin. “Tell him you'll quit school and move in with me.”

“I would rather French the old guy with green teeth who walks around downtown with his ‘The end is near' sign, only he spells near with two es, than move in with you,” I said.

“Well, what do you want me to do? It's not like he'll listen to anything I say,” Jason said. “Look, it's his life. He has the right to screw it up any way he wants. So he marries whatever her name is and it doesn't work out. They'll get divorced. It's not like you're five years old or something. What's it to you?”

I closed my eyes for a second and shook my head. “I'm the one who has to live here when people start screaming and clothes end up all over the lawn.”

Jason shrugged. “Sorry, Iz, but the rest of us don't do everything as perfectly as you do.”

“It's not about being perfect, Jason.” I was almost spitting the words. “It's about thinking things through before you do something stupid. It's about not screwing up everyone else's life when you screw up your own.”

I felt like I could hear my own anger buzzing in the silence. Jason gave me a long, appraising look and shook his head. “Izzy, you think too much sometimes.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. Maybe I did think too much. But it was only because everyone else in the family didn't seem to think at all.

7

“Ssssst!” The sound came from behind me, like air whistling out of a balloon. Great. Had the mike picked it up?

“Ssssst!”

So much for this being the Quiet Room at the Seniors Center. I twisted in my chair to mouth “quiet” at whoever was at the door. It was Mrs. Mac. She beckoned to me.

I held up one finger. She nodded and the door closed. I waited for Mrs. Patterson, sitting across from me, to finally take a breath and then I pressed the pause button.
Rule #19: Treat your elders with respect. Someday you'll be old and annoying too.