“You were okay with this, Char…?” he says, but it’s more like a question. “All of this. We talked about it. And all night you were fine.” He tips her face up. “Drinking champagne, dancing, celebrating. Those assholes from LA couldn’t take their eyes off of you. You know it’s going to be okay.…”
She slaps his hand away, and yanks down her dress, stands there in only her black bra and lacy underwear. I want to back away from the crack in their half-open door, where I’ve been watching, listening, but I’m afraid to make a noise.
“I lied! I faked it!” my mother yells. “You know I’m an excellent faker. I don’t want this. Not if it’s going to be that long. Six months! Half a year! I want you. Us. To all stay here. Together.”
“Charlotte, six months is nothing. The time will fly. We’re talking seven figures and a cash bonus…”
When he tries to grab hold of her arm, she wheels away. “I’m going to bed,” she says, and the door to her bathroom slams.
“Char. Come on, Char…?” Dad follows, disappearing from my view. A few minutes later, they return, my father still trailing behind.
Not five hours earlier, they had headed off to a celebratory dinner and contract signing at the Rainbow Room in New York City, with the guys who were buying Dad’s company. Mom had gotten all dressed up in her new dress and heels, and Dad had apparently rented a tuxedo. They looked like movie stars. My parents never looked like that, all dressed up and glamorous. They looked happy.
And fifteen minutes ago, they’d come back, laughing and giddy.
I had come out of my room to witness that—the glee and excitement—but by the time I reached their bedroom door, everything had shifted.
Now my mother lies facedown, still in her undergarments, on the bed. My father sits beside her. He reaches a hand out to touch her back but thinks better of it, and rests it in his lap.
My mother is prone to these fits more and more lately—her tantrums. She shouldn’t be mad at him. Not if it’s going to make everything easier. I’m sure he doesn’t want to go. And I don’t want him to go, either.
But she should make it easier for him. Get over it. It’s not like she’s ever had to work.
After a few minutes, he reaches out and strokes her back, and she lets him. “I’ll be home soon,” he says, softly. “You’ll see. You’re being dramatic. You won’t even miss me.”
“I will.” She flips over and sits up, puts her head in her hands. When she takes them away she says, “And you told them you could stay longer…”
“I didn’t tell them that. It’s an option, a contract thing. It’s the only way their lawyer would let them make the deal. I’m a ‘key man,’ Char. I have to make sure they’re up and running. Introduce them to vendors, buyers, how to do the studies, schmooze the customers. You know how it goes.”
“Bullshit,” she says. “You want to go, or you wouldn’t.”
“Stop it, Charlotte. I’m serious. For once in your life be practical.” He gets up, and walks over to the chair in the corner, and retrieves a briefcase that he places on the bed. He snaps the locks and yanks the top open. “This,” he says, “is practical.” He tips the briefcase over and wrapped piles of bills fall onto the bedspread. “Cash. And, there’s plenty. Whatever you and JL need … Whatever we need. Even your goddamned mother … Buy her a car. And that’s only one installment. There’s more where that came from.”
She stares at the wads of green paper.
“They paid you cash?”
“Just a small bonus. Charlotte, this is nothing.…”
“I don’t care,” she says, shoving a few of the stacks aside. “I don’t want it.” Her voice is small, petulant like a child’s. “So, take less. Just come home. Six months, tops. Not a minute more. They’re grown men. Let them figure out how it’s done.”
I move my face closer, careful not to be seen, or squeak the floor.
“I promise,” he says. “I promise.”
She leans in to him and lets him stroke her hair. I use the opportunity to back off, turn down the hall.
“But I hate you, now. You should know that…” I hear her say, before I close my bedroom door.
EARLY MAY
TENTH GRADE
As if it were a dream rather than a memory, I forget about it for a few days—the fight, her words, the money, all of it. Or maybe I don’t forget so much as block it, once again, from my mind. After all, I may be a lot of crappy things lately, but I want to believe that thief isn’t one of them.
At least I hope not.
Then Max comes over again, and this time my mother sends me over the edge.
It’s the day the baseball championships are beginning and we have home field advantage, so it’s not like we can hang around after school. Aubrey is there, with those girls. Half the school is there.
Max says we should go hang out behind the Hay & Feed where he and his friends ride their dirt bikes after school, but it smells like manure there. Plus, they smoke weed, and Dean’s and Bo’s girlfriends go sometimes, too, and it’s not like they like me, or want some goody-two-shoes sophomore hanging around.
“How about your house?” I ask like I have before.
“Off-limits, Jailbait, I told you. At least when the old man might be there.”
“My mom is a disaster,” I offer, tired of always risking the crap at my house. “She sleeps all the time, and floats around like a ghost in her stupid kimonos.”
Max raises his eyebrows up and down like that old comedian with the cigar and bushy mustache, and smiles, and I punch his arm. Like I need to be reminded how hot my mom is. He doesn’t get how messed up she is. All I’ve told him is that she’s kind of depressed. It’s not exactly the type of thing you share with your new boyfriend, that your mother hallucinates and writes letters to a dead man.
“Your mom may cry and sleep a lot, Jailbait, but my dad is an asshole. Trust me. And your house is a freaking palace compared to mine.”
* * *
When we get home, Mom is out, the one good thing about her constant, if futile, appointments with Dr. Marsdan.
We go to my room, and fall onto my bed, and make out desperately, till I’m having a hard time stopping myself and Max is practically begging for more.
I roll off the bed and walk to the habitat to let the butterflies out, and we watch them circle for a while, until Max turns on my television and we fall asleep to an episode of some show Max loves called BoJack Horseman.
When we finally emerge to get something to eat, Mom is back, sitting in the living room, a book in her hand.
She must have seen Max’s dirt bike, but she didn’t come find me. Six months ago, she never would have let me stay in my room with a boy with the door closed, not that I had a boyfriend to prove it. There’s so much she doesn’t seem to bother with anymore.
Her attention doesn’t shift as we reach her, which fills me with panic. What if she’s in one of her weird trances? I should have made Max leave earlier.
My eyes dart to the kitchen, wondering if I can skirt us past before Max can take her in, bare legs to her thighs in her lime-green kimono.