But she doesn’t like how my other voice can sometimes surprise me. I guess that with most people, it’s sort of expected. It doesn’t almost knock them off their bikes. She asks me about it a lot, and she asks in that no-big-deal way that makes it seem like a very big deal.
Mrs. Newfang would be a terrible poker player.
So I tell her that the voice hasn’t surprised me in a long time, even though it still does. It’s kind of sweet that she worries about me so much, but it’s annoying, too. She can’t let go of certain things, and they’re always the things I want her to let go. The things I don’t ever want to talk about. Or can’t talk about.
I park my bike on the side of the garage. I’d like to put it in the garage, but I don’t go in there alone, and I never go in at night.
Not anymore, at least.
I walk up the brick path. I hear her voice before I see her. I hear it through the open window in the kitchen. I hear it as clear as day.
It’s not my mother’s voice.
Even though I’m still outside the house, with walls and glass between us, I can tell just by listening. She’s in the living room with Glen, and they’re fighting. Glen is almost-yelling. He’s not so loud that he’s shouting, but he’s angry enough to make it feel like he’s shouting. He’s a master of almost-yelling.
The other mother is speaking in Mom’s way-too-calm voice because she’s trying to stop Glen from almost-yelling, even though I know this voice makes him angrier. It’s as if Mom thinks that Glen’s almost-yelling knocks the world out of balance, so she tries to rebalance it by doing the opposite. I had a third-grade teacher named Mrs. Ganci who used to do the same thing. She would speak so softly that the whole class would have to get quiet so we could hear her. And we did. It works with Charlie, too. When he’s having a tantrum, the best thing to do is act as calm and disinterested as possible.
But this never works with Glen, even though Mom (and apparently the other mother) thinks it does. Glen can see right through it. It makes him crazy. It’s making him crazy right now.
It makes me crazy, too. It makes me crazy when she does it to me, but it makes me even crazier when I hear her using it on Glen. I wish Mom would stand up and fight instead of running away and hiding. Just let the asshole have it for once. Fire back. She’s like a solider asking the enemy to put his gun down while he’s shooting her in the chest.
It’s the same old fight, too. Glen is telling the other mother about how hard he works. How he needs her support. How she needs to be patient. She’s telling him that she works hard, too. She’s saying how she worked a double today and would like to come home and have stuff done around the house for once. Dishes. Laundry. Anything.
I’ll never understand how adults can have the same arguments again and again and not realize it. Only this time it’s not the same argument because it’s the other mother who’s arguing. It’s the same argument for Asshole Glen, but it’s the first time for the other mother.
But maybe the other mother doesn’t know that this is her first fight with Glen. I guess it’s possible that she doesn’t know that she’s the other mother. Maybe she really thinks that she’s my mother. Maybe my mother and the other mother have been switched somehow, but neither one knows it.
This is crazy.
How could my mother be switched for this other woman? How can Glen almost-yell at this other person and not know that it’s not the same woman he almost-yells at all the time? It’s not possible. I’m starting to wish that Luke was right. I wish I was crazy. Not just angry crazy but really crazy. Loony-bin crazy. Crazy would be so much easier than this. Crazy would at least be possible. People go crazy all the time. It’s almost normal. This is not normal. This is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers except in real life, but pod people don’t exist in real life.
Maybe they don’t exist in real life until they do. Maybe this is like astronauts walking on the moon and the self-driving cars and Labradoodles. One day none of those things existed, and the next day they did. Maybe this is the moment when everything changes. Maybe this is when pod people become real.
This is ridiculous. I’m going inside. I’m going to find out what the hell is going on. Glen may be an asshole, but if the other mother tries to hurt me, he’ll stop her. Unless she has a gun or some creepy pod people technology, he’ll be able to protect me. Glen might not like me, but there’s a part of him that loves me, even if it’s a tiny part. I know this. He wouldn’t let her hurt me. I’m going to go stand in front of the other mother and say, “I know you’re not my mother!” I’m going to watch her face as I say it, just like Hamlet did to his scumbag uncle. If she’s not my mother, I’ll see it in her expression. She won’t be able to hide it. She thinks she has everyone fooled, and she does.
Everybody except for me.
I listen and wait. I want to walk in just as their fight is ending. I want to confront her at the moment when she thinks she’s in the clear. If this were a movie, I wouldn’t be doing any of this. I’d be investigating first. I’d hide in the back seat of her car under a blanket when she leaves for work tomorrow to see where she’s really going and what she’s really doing. I’d follow her to her hideout. Discover what her master plan is, because there must be some plan. You don’t just replace a person for no reason. A lot of work had to go into this insanity. If this were a movie, I’d listen in as she talks to her accomplice or I’d hack into her computer. Do lots of stuff to stretch the suspense out for a couple hours before the climactic battle at the end. Movies need to be dragged out because people pay twelve bucks to see them. They need action and suspense. But in real life, I think it’s fine to skip all that nonsense and just get to the end. Pod person or no pod person, this is real life, and I need to know what the hell is going on.
“Do they fight a lot?”
The voice startles me so badly that I scream. It’s Sarah’s voice, but for some reason my first thought is that it’s my father’s voice. Then I think it must be the voice inside my head. Those two thoughts crash into each other as I scream, even though I know at the same time that it’s Sarah’s voice.
I spin around and see Sarah’s face. My scream has frightened her, too. Her hands are covering her mouth. Her eyes are wide. They’re beautiful. It’s the first time I notice that a girl’s eyes can be beautiful. Brown and perfect.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. She reaches out and puts her hand on my shoulder. She squeezes. “Geez, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say. “You just startled me.”
She doesn’t say anything. She just stares. Her hand is still squeezing my shoulder. She’s the same age as me and almost as tall as me, but her hand feels so small on my shoulder. She still doesn’t say anything. Just stares at me wide-eyed.
“Okay,” I say, finally filling the silence. “You’ve heard me scream like a little girl. That makes us best friends now. It’s a rule.”
I hate the words as they come out of my mouth. They sound so stupid. I sound so stupid. But then Sarah smiles. Then she laughs.
I feel like a genius.
“It was a good scream,” she says. “Good enough for the movies.”