“How about the smell of a new baby?” asked my mom.
“Kitties are magic!” Robin yelled.
“Indeed,” said my dad, scratching Aretha’s ear. “And don’t forget dogs.”
They were still going at it when I shut the door.
9
I love my mom and my dad and usually my sister. But lately they’d really been getting on my nerves.
Robin was a little kid, so of course she was annoying. She’d say things like “What if a dog and a bird got married, Jackson?” Or sing “Wheels on the Bus” three thousand times in a row. Or steal my skateboard and use it for a doll ambulance. The usual little sister stuff.
My parents were more complicated. It’s hard to explain, especially since I know this sounds like a good thing, but they were always looking on the bright side. Even when things were bad—and they’d been bad a lot—they joked. They acted silly. They pretended everything was fine.
Sometimes I just wanted to be treated like a grown-up. I wanted to hear the truth, even if it wasn’t a happy truth. I understood things. I knew way more than they thought I did.
But my parents were optimists. They looked at half a glass of water and figured it was half full, not half empty.
Not me. Scientists can’t afford to be optimists or pessimists. They just observe the world and see what is. They look at a glass of water and measure 3.75 ounces or whatever, and that’s the end of the discussion.
Take my dad. When I was younger, he got sick, really sick. He found out he has this disease called multiple sclerosis. Mostly he has good days, but sometimes he has bad ones when it’s hard to walk and he has to use a cane.
When he learned he had MS, my dad acted like it was no big deal, even though he had to quit his job, which was building houses. He said he was tired of listening to hammering all day long. He said he wanted to wear fancy shoes instead of muddy ones, and then he wrote a song about it called “The Muddy Shoes Blues.” He said he might work from home, so he taped a sign on the bathroom door that said OFFICE OF MR. THOMAS WADE. My mom put a sign next to it that said I’D RATHER BE FISHING.
And that was that.
Sometimes I just want to ask my parents if my dad is going to be okay or why we don’t always have enough food in the house or why they’ve been arguing so much.
Also, why I couldn’t have been an only child.
But I don’t ask. Not anymore.
Last fall we were at a neighborhood potluck dinner when Aretha ate a baby’s disposable diaper. She had to spend two nights at the vet’s until she pooped it out.
“Poop in, poop out,” my dad said when we picked her up. “It’s the cycle of life.”
“The cycle of life is expensive,” my mom said, staring at the bill. “Looks like rent’s going to be late again this month.”
When we got to the car, I came right out and asked if we had enough money for stuff. My dad said not to worry. That we just were a little financially challenged. He said sometimes it’s hard to plan for everything, unless you have a crystal ball and can see the future, and if I knew someone with a crystal ball, he would love to borrow it.
My mom said something about winning the lottery, and my dad said if they won the lottery, could he please get a Ferrari, and she said how about a Jaguar, and then I could tell they wanted to change the subject.
I didn’t ask any more hard questions after that.
Somehow I just knew my parents didn’t want to give me hard answers.
10
After I got ready for bed, I lay on my mattress and thought things over.
I thought about the stuff I’d put in my keepsakes bag. Some photos. A spelling bee trophy. A bunch of nature books. My teddy bear. A clay statue of Crenshaw that I’d made when I was in second grade. My worn-out copy of A Hole Is To Dig.
I thought about Crenshaw and the surfboard.
I thought about the purple jelly beans.
Mostly, though, I thought about the signs I’d been noticing.
I am very observant, which is a useful thing for a scientist to be. Here’s what I’d been observing:
Big piles of bills.
Parents whispering.
Parents arguing.
Stuff getting sold, like the silver teapot my grandma gave my mom and our laptop computer.
The power going off for two days because we hadn’t paid the bill.
Not much food except peanut butter and mac and cheese and Cup O Noodles.
My mom digging under the couch cushions for quarters.
My dad digging under the couch cushions for dimes.
My mom borrowing toilet paper rolls from work.
The landlord coming over and saying “I’m sorry” and shaking his head a lot.
It didn’t make sense. My mom had three part-time jobs. My dad had two part-time jobs. You’d think that would add up to two whole actual jobs, but it didn’t seem to.
My mom used to teach music at a middle school until they cut her job. Now she worked as a waitress at two restaurants and as a cashier at a drugstore. She wanted to get another job teaching music, but so far nothing had come up.
After my dad had to quit construction work, he started a handyman business. He did small fix-it stuff, but sometimes he wasn’t feeling well and had to cancel appointments. He also gave private guitar lessons. And he was hoping to go to community college part-time to learn computer programming.
I figured my parents had a plan for making everything okay, because parents always have a plan. But when I asked them what it was, they said stuff like maybe they could plant a money tree in the backyard. Or maybe they could start their rock band up again and win a Grammy Award.
I didn’t want to leave our apartment, but I could feel it coming, even if nobody said anything. I knew how things worked. I’d been through this before.
It was too bad, because I really liked where we lived, even though we’d only been there a couple of years. Swanlake Village was the name of our neighborhood. It didn’t have any real swans. But all the mailboxes had swans on them, and the community pool had a swan painted on the bottom.
The pool water was always warm. Mom said it was from the sun, but I suspected illegal peeing.
All the streets in Swanlake Village had two words in their names. Ours was Quiet Moon. But there were others, like Sleepy Dove and Weeping Wood and Sunny Glen. My school, Swanlake Elementary, was only two blocks from my house. It didn’t have anything with swans on it.
Swanlake Village wasn’t a fancy place at all, just a regular old neighborhood. But it was friendly. It was the kind of place where you could smell hot dogs and burgers grilling every weekend. Where kids rode their scooters on the sidewalk and sold lousy lemonade for a quarter a cup. It was a place where you had friends you could count on, like Marisol.
You wouldn’t have thought it was a place where people were worried or hungry or sad.
Our school librarian likes to say you can’t judge a book by its cover. Maybe it’s the same way with neighborhoods. Maybe you can’t judge a place by its swans.
11
I finally fell asleep, but around eleven I woke. I got up to go to the bathroom, and as I headed down the hall, I realized my parents were still awake. I could hear them talking in the living room.