We Are the Ants (21 page)

It was a tradition in our house to binge on bad disaster movies instead of football or parades. Watching the world end in various, ever more ludicrous ways sanded the jagged edges off the day. We made it through
Runaway Gamma-Rays
and three bottles of wine before Mom started yelling.

“What did you do? I can't believe this! Are you stupid?”

Dulled by wine and lethargy, my reflexes were sluggish, but I scrambled off the couch and stumbled into the kitchen. Black smoke belched from the oven, and Nana stood beside it, looking dazed. “You were cooking it wrong. I added salt to your stuffing too. You never add enough salt.”

I grabbed Nana by the crook of her arm and led her out of the way while Mom threw open the oven door, releasing a gob of smoke that immediately set off the smoke alarm. The pulsating squeal made my brain throb.

Charlie shoved past me, frantic and confused. When he saw the blackened turkey smoldering in the oven, he grabbed two dish towels and hauled the bird into the backyard, where he unceremoniously lobbed it into the canal.

“What the hell are you doing?” Mom screamed, following after him.

“Keeping the house from burning down.”

“I could have salvaged that!”

Charlie dropped the roasting pan. “A Thanksgiving mir­acle couldn't have saved that.”

Mom was shaking with rage. “Will someone shut that goddamn alarm off!”

Zooey said, “I'll open the windows,” and tugged my sleeve, motioning for me to help. I climbed onto a chair and yanked the alarm out of the ceiling, but it kept shrieking until I popped the battery out as well. The house was smoky and smelled like charred turkey. Zooey tried to laugh it off after she'd opened the windows and brought the fan from Charlie's bedroom into the kitchen to help blow the smoke out. “All we do at my house is smile politely and trade passive-­aggressive compliments.”

I peeked my head outside but wished I hadn't. Mom and Charlie were going at it for the whole neighborhood to hear.

“I'm not the one who cranked the oven to five hundred degrees!” The muscles on the sides of Charlie's throat bulged, and he was sweating profusely.

“You had one job, Charlie! One job! Keep Mother away from the food. You couldn't even do that, and now we have no dinner. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Charlie stormed inside and pulled Zooey toward the front door. “I'm done. We're going to your parents' house.”

“But they're not expecting us until three.”

“Then we'll be early.”

Nana shuffled to me and held my arm. I didn't notice she was crying until she sniffled and wiped her nose with a crumpled tissue she produced from her pocket. “I only meant to help.”

“I know, Nana, but I don't think anyone can help this family.”

  •  •  •  

Diego arrived to pick me up wearing a tacky Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts, and didn't look embarrassed by either. “Is there a dress code?” I asked.

“Yes, but don't worry, I can loan you a shirt.” Diego waited until I'd buckled my seat belt before taking off.

I didn't know if Diego was joking about the dress code, but I would have worn clown shoes and a tutu to get out of my house. After Charlie and Zooey left, Nana passed out on the couch and Mom disappeared into her bedroom with a bottle of Chardonnay. “I've never been to a Thanksgiving barbecue before.”

Diego hadn't stopped grinning since I'd gotten in the car. I even thought I'd heard him grinning over the phone when I'd called him to ask if the invitation was still open. “It's Viv's anti-Thanksgiving celebration.”

“Who's going to be there?”

“Mostly Viv's work friends. They're cool, though.”

“Anything's better than my house.”

“Yeah, so what happened?”

As we drove to Diego's house, I told him the whole miserable story. It sounded worse the second time. “The problem is, I think my mom might be right about putting Nana in a nursing home. What happens when she actually
does
burn down the house? What if she decides to cook while we're sleeping, and we die of smoke inhalation?”

“All the more reason not to press that button, yeah?”

“I guess.” Except, when I was with Diego, the button was the last thing on my mind.

We pulled up to a ranch house painted the color of key lime pie. The shutters were white with pineapple cutouts in the center, and the front yard was meticulously manicured. It threw off a vibe that said:
Come in! Relax! Don't track dirt on the floors!

Diego parked on the swale and motioned for me to follow him inside. It was even more colorful than the outside. The living room felt like a Key West bed-and-breakfast, complete with a stuffed sailfish mounted on the wall above a wicker sofa set upholstered in palm-tree-patterned fabric. Everything—the lamps, the entertainment center, the picture frames—was island themed. The only thing missing was steel drum music in the background.

“This is . . . unique.”

Diego chuckled. “Viv kinda went overboard, but she wanted it to look as different from home as possible.” I didn't know what a typical house in Colorado looked like, but it probably wasn't this. “Viv? You home?”

“Valentín? Is that you?”

“Valentín?”

“Don't ask.” Diego led me into the kitchen. The counters were loaded with cut vegetables, and Diego's sister stood by the sink, shucking corn. She was tall and curvy, with a devious gleam in her eyes. She and Diego looked so different from each other, and yet there was no mistaking they were siblings.

“Viv, this is Henry. Henry, my sister, Viviana.” Diego stole a cherry tomato from a ceramic bowl, and Viv smacked his ear.

Viviana smiled and offered me her hand, which was damp but strong. “Nice to meet you, Henry Denton. Valentín never shuts up about you.”

“Why do you keep calling him Valentín?”

“That's his name.”

“My
name
is Diego.”

Viviana rolled her eyes as she checked a pot of something on the stove. She moved like an acrobat but spoke like a car salesperson. “Your middle name is Diego.” Her face tightened, and a look passed between them. “May I have a moment alone with my brother?”

“You can hang out in my room.” Diego motioned toward the living room. “It's down the hall. I'll be there in a minute.”

I'd stumbled into something I didn't understand. Maybe I should have stayed home, where I could have hidden in my room and pretended it was any day other than Thanksgiving, but I was already there, so I walked back through the living room and down the hall, peeking into each room. There was a tidy bathroom decorated with peach seashells, a bedroom with a four-poster bed that I suspected belonged to Viviana, and two rooms at the end of the hall. Both doors were closed, so I chose the one on the right.

It was definitely not Diego's bedroom. The smell of paint and turpentine blanketed the air, and diffuse light streamed through the windows. The room lacked furniture, but countless paintings hung on the walls. So many that hardly any naked wall remained. It was overwhelming and beautiful, and I stood in the center of the room, trying to absorb it all.

An oil painting of a raven clawing its way out of a young boy's chest caught my attention. The boy was sprawled on a frozen lake, his eyes white and blind, his mouth open in a last word. What clothes he wore were shredded and soaked with blood and saliva. The bird emerging from the boy's chest looked toward the sky. Its wings were spread as if preparing to fly, and its hooked talons pierced the boy's heart. But it wasn't the gore or broken ribs or the frozen heart that disturbed me. It was the last word. The raven was going to strand it on the boy's lips. It seemed beyond cruel to leave the word behind where no one would ever hear it.

“I see you've found the museum.”

I turned around, too awed to feel guilty. “I didn't mean to snoop.”

Diego leaned against the doorway, his hands in his pockets. “What's the point of going to a stranger's house if you're not going to poke around?”

Even though he didn't seem upset, I was still embarrassed. “This is brilliant.” I pointed at the raven painting.

“Yeah, it's okay.” Diego motioned toward a smaller painting on the adjacent wall. It was crowded by the work surrounding it, and I wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't pointed it out. “This one's my favorite.”

It was a portrait, but the subject had no skin. No, that's not accurate. Some frayed ribbons of skin were still stuck to the muscle, as if the subject had been flayed hastily by someone who hadn't cared enough to do it properly. A gaping hole yawned where the nose should have been, and the bulging eyes gazed heavenward and to the left at something or someone off the edge of the canvas.

“Self-portrait,” Diego said after a moment of quiet.

I had to tear my eyes from it. “That's you?” Diego nodded. “That's what you see when you look in the mirror?”

Diego said, “It was when I painted that.”

“Who tore your skin off?”

“I tore it off myself.”

“Why?”

Diego sighed, and I wasn't sure he was going to answer, but then he said, “Snakes get to shed their skin, why shouldn't we?”

“But why would you want to shed your skin?” I couldn't stop staring at the painting, looking for any detail that would give me insight into the real Diego Vega. If his paintings were any indication, then there was more to him than I imagined.

“Because sometimes it's easier to start over with a clean slate than to drag the baggage of your past with you wherever you go.”

“What do you see when you look in the mirror now?”

Diego pointed at a charcoal drawing. It was larger and more prominently displayed. The background was unfinished, and it wasn't exactly a portrait. It was just a portion of a shoulder and the back of Diego's head as if he were walking out of the painting. “I painted that on the happiest day of my life.”

“What'd you paint on the worst day of your life?”

“The one you like.”

The real Diego was hanging on these walls, but I didn't know how to reconcile the images of agony and anger with the boy who'd tried to show me the stars and loved my mother's fried chicken and who'd screamed his name from the apex of the Ferris wheel. I wanted to know what secrets Diego was hiding under his ever-changing wardrobe and disarming smile, but I didn't know how to ask. I didn't know if I even had the right to ask.

“I could paint
you
sometime.”

“I'm afraid to ask what you see when you look at me.” I wondered if he saw Henry Denton or Space Boy, or if there was even a difference anymore.

“You wouldn't believe me.”

I could have spent days examining Diego's paintings, peeling back the layers for meaning, searching for insight into what drove him, but even though we were surrounded by bits and pieces of Diego's naked soul, I was the one who felt exposed. “Is everything cool with your sister?”

Diego nodded. “Of course.”

“You didn't tell her I was coming, did you?”

“I might have forgotten to mention it.”

If he was in trouble, he didn't let on. “So . . . is that your room across the hall?”

Diego seemed as eager to leave the gallery as I was to stay, and he shut the door behind us. His bedroom was the only one in the house that didn't look like it had been lifted out of a Tommy Bahama catalog. His twin bed sat unmade in the corner with the blankets and pillows piled in the center, clothes adorned every surface—pants on the floor, shirts hanging off the edge of his dresser, boxers swinging from the doorknob—and a distinctly musky smell lingered in the air, like sweat and sneakers and hair gel.

“It's a little messy.”

It was so different from Marcus's bedroom, which was enormous and always spotless, and from Jesse's, which always looked on the verge of being condemned. Diego's room felt lived in and real. I spied a stack of comic books on his desk, the topmost issue was a series called
Patient F
, and next to it was a cramped bookshelf. I crouched down to scan the titles. He must have owned everything Ernest Hemingway had ever written. “I take it you're a fan?” I held up
The Old Man and the Sea
.

Diego flopped down on the bed, shoving the dirty clothes aside. “Kind of.”

“Mr. Kauffman forced us to read
A Farewell to Arms
last year. I hated it. Hemingway's writing is so bland. He never
says
anything.” I leaned on the edge of his desk.

“It's not about what he says but what he doesn't say.”

I sniffed the air. “I smell bullshit. Do you smell bullshit?”

Diego snatched the book out of my hand. “It's not bullshit.” He returned the book to the shelf, lining up the spines so that they were all even. “Hemingway wrote in the negative spaces. His stories were shaped by what he didn't tell you.”

“It still sounds like bullshit,” I said with a smirk.

The doorbell rang before Diego could reply, and Viviana shouted at him to answer the door. He sighed. “Forget it. Let's go have some fun.”

  •  •  •  

If the inside of Diego's house was a bed-and-breakfast, the backyard was a tropical island. Viviana had built the deck herself, and erected a fully-stocked tiki bar, complete with carved masks, coconuts, and a thatched roof. The centerpiece of the yard was a stone fire pit surrounded by the comfiest chairs my ass had ever graced. By the back fence she'd strung a hammock between two palm trees that looked over a lazy canal. It was paradise.

Diego and I mingled, inserting ourselves into various conversations with Viviana's friends. Their names slid in and right back out of my brain. The conversations were ­painless—­mostly about how I liked school and what colleges I was applying to. Before Jesse, I assumed I'd wind up at whatever school he decided to attend. After, I stopped considering college at all. Rather than endure endless lectures about the necessity of being prepared for my future, I told anyone who asked that I wanted to go to Brown, but only because I'd heard Jesse mention it once.