Trinkets (6 page)
Authors: Kirsten Smith
Fortunately, my dad breaks free
and says he has a big presentation on Monday
and he needs to go get ready for it,
which makes sense because
he’s not really one for public speaking,
but I still wish that didn’t require him
to get up and leave me sitting there alone
eating mush and blueberries
with the secretary
he married.
ROMANTIC HISTORYMy parents met when my mom was just out of college and working as an assistant for an interior design firm in Seattle. Her company was brought in to design one of my dad’s office buildings, a six-story building on Pike Street. He was a brash associate architect then, and after a few weeks of flirting, he asked her out for a drink. She wasn’t sure she should go, because she was still half seeing her college boyfriend, but she figured this was just work and what could one drink hurt? So he took her to the top of the Space Needle for gin gimlets, which she’d never had before. Two of those turned into four, and as the story goes, they stayed for a five-hour dinner, talking and laughing and requesting bad seventies songs like “The Piña Colada Song” from the piano player, who thought they were charming. At the end of the night, my dad drove her home and shook
her hand like a gentleman. She thought that must mean he didn’t like her as much as she liked him or he was dating someone else. But he kept finding excuses to show up at her job, even though his work on the building was basically done. He claimed it was his responsibility to “oversee” everything down to the very last detail, and she didn’t argue, but she kept her distance. On the night before the building opened, everyone was toasting with champagne, and he introduced her to his boss as “the woman I’m going to marry.” She thought he was joking and said, “We’ve only gone out once. How could you say that?” And apparently he responded, “Once was all it took,” or something cheesy. But I guess she didn’t think it was cheesy, because she got married to him three months later. They were so in love, they had a baby eight months after they got married, causing anyone with half a brain to realize there was some sort of miscalculation in terms of either birth control or logical thinking.
Now a couple of decades have passed, and my dad’s off working in the living room, and my mom is on the phone with my older brother, Jake, who’s in his freshman year playing hockey at the University of Michigan. I’m sitting on the couch watching a lame movie on TNT and listening to my mom laugh at all of Jake’s stupid jokes. The way she used to laugh at my dad’s, which makes sense, since Jake’s a clone of my dad.
“Lemme talk to Jake,” my dad calls out, and my mother crosses to the dining room to hand over the phone reluctantly. She says, “I love you so much, Jake,” and for a second
I get confused because my dad’s name is Jacob too, and when I was little I sometimes remember her calling my dad “Jake” and my brother “Jakey.” So for a second I think she’s saying “I love you” to my dad, but it’s obvious I’m mistaken.
“Hey, bud,” my dad says, and launches into bro code as my mom disappears upstairs. Men sometimes talk to each other in these fake voices, like they’re weird androids without feelings or emotions, their conversations peppered with words like
buddy
and
dude
.
Just then I get a text from Taryn: WHAT HAPPENED TO U LAST NITE?
I type back: I WAS ANNOYED.
That seems like as good an answer as any, and I go back to what I was watching on TNT. It’s an old Sandra Bullock movie, one where she meets her dream guy on the Internet and falls in love with him, but it turns out he’s a total asshole and then he ruins her life. I wonder if my mom’s ever seen this one.
MARCH 8, 9:32 A.M.I’m really glad Aunt B didn’t walk into my room this morning to wake me up like she normally does. She would have been pretty shocked to see Noah Simos in my bed. I was a little shocked to open my eyes this morning and see him staring right back at me. He kissed me good-bye, which was nice but I wish I had had a chance to brush my teeth first. It sucks to be ignored by him sometimes, but when we’re together he’s so sweet that I almost forget about everything else.
Fortunately, he climbed out the window when he heard Aunt B, and she didn’t notice anything was up at breakfast. I arranged my eggs and bacon into a smiley face that looked like Noah, but Marc walked by and messed it up with his fork, so I had to punch him. Aunt B yelled at me,
which was okay because I was in such a good mood that I apologized immediately and told her she was a very smart lady, so she went off to work in high spirits, feeling like I respected her, which could only be considered a banner way to start the day.
Stolen GoodsThere’s a guy in the Hair Care section of Fred Meyer
who’s looking at me like he knows
what kind of person I am.
Then I realize I’m being paranoid.
There’s no way he—or anyone, for that matter—
could know that I’m the kind of person who has
three lip glosses,
a Hello Kitty alarm clock,
a packet of Red Vines,
condoms (so I can see what they look like up close),
and a box of Crayola markers
in my bag.
To top it all off,
I slip a rhinestone barrette in there too,
one that Rachelle might like.
Nothing helps new friendships like surprise trinkets.
Fortunately, Rachelle knows my parents have money,
so she’ll never guess her gifts are stolen,
but if she were a thief herself,
she’d understand that a stolen present
means way more than one that’s been bought,
because of what you had to go through to get it.
Out the Door
I walk out the door,
past the guy collecting money
for some charitable cause or other,
and I give him a dollar
and a good-girl smile,
and that’s when I feel
a hand
on my shoulder.
I’m gonna need you to come back into the store.
I turn around and there’s the creepy guy from Hair Care,
and next to him is the nice old lady
from the candy aisle.
What’s wrong?
I say.
And the nice old lady says,
We need to see what’s in your bag.
For a sick second,
I’m happy
because someone realizes I’m not simply a good girl.
They can tell I’m dangerous,
not just some stupid wallflower waiting to bloom.
Let’s go, miss,
Hair Care Guy says,
and I hold up my hand
to say
just one second,
and then I turn
and barf all over the sidewalk.
Good Cop, Bad Cop
In the holding room of Fred Meyer,
they make me pose in front of my stolen goods.
It’s like I’m getting my photo taken at Spring Fling,
only instead of being half a couple
posing in front of a cheesy cityscape backdrop,
I have condoms, a clock,
and licorice lined up behind me.
Hair Care Guy thinks this is funny.
Candy and sex—those are my vices too,
he says with a grin.
Nice Old Lady doesn’t laugh.
That’s because she’s Bad Cop.
She’s not even remorseful,
she says,
looking at me.
I realize now might be a good time to act sad,
so I think back to two years ago
after my mom died and my dad had gotten
me a dog for Christmas:
a sheltie from the pound
who was scheduled to die
the next day.
I named him Rufus and slept with him every night
for a month until my father came to tell me
that we were being transferred
to Chicago, and we’d live in an apartment
that didn’t allow dogs.
I think back to the day we dropped Rufus off
at a new family’s house,
and I thought of the look on his face
and his soft ears and his molasses eyes,
and here come the tears
in the back room of the drugstore
as Bad Cop calls my dad
and I bawl in front of all my trinkets,
stupid things you didn’t know how much you loved
until they’re taken from you
and you can’t get them back.
Meditation
I had a hippie science teacher
in the school I went to before this one,
and she told us how she meditated every morning,
and she said when you first learn to do it
you hear all these sounds in the room
you’ve never heard before
like the air conditioner
or people arguing next door
or a plane above.
It’s like you’re hyperfocused on everything
because you’re trying not to focus on anything.
That’s what I’m doing
after my dad picks me up in front of Fred Meyer
and drives me home.
He convinced them not to call the cops
and negotiated for me to go to group therapy instead;
he closed the deal using his expert skills.
I want to say thank you,
but all I can do is
try to breathe
and block out the sound
of his deafening,
disappointed
silence.
“Guess I’m just another statistic with another set of clichéd motives.”