19
After the show, we crash at someone’s house. I share a room with a very pierced college student named Lorraine, who’s pretty nice, even if she won’t shut up about the guys in the band. Ben and the rest of the Scarps camp out on the couch or in the basement in sleeping bags. The next morning, we all eat Dumpster-dived bagels and then load up.
“Prepare yourself,” Ben says.
“For what?”
“The reek. Eight nights of travel. You’ll get a case of jock itch just sitting in the van.”
The rest of the band eye me suspiciously. Do they know I’m the dead one-night-stand’s friend?
I sit down on a makeshift bench of two-by-fours stacked on top of a couple of amps. Ben sits next to me. We get onto I-90, and the guys bicker about what they should listen to. No one says a word to me. When we stop for gas and the guys go load up on junk food, I ask Ben what the deal is.
“I’m breaking the code.”
“What code?”
“No girls in the van.”
“Oh.”
“But you’re not a girl.” He looks embarrassed. “Not that kind anyway.”
“What kind am I?”
Ben shakes his head. “I’m not sure yet. A previously undiscovered species.”
I fall asleep somewhere outside of Moses Lake and wake up with a start, leaning against Ben, my ears popping as we come down the Snoqualmie Pass.
“God, sorry.”
“That’s okay.” He’s smiling a little.
“Did I drool?”
“I’ll never tell.”
He keeps grinning.
“What’s so funny?”
“It’s just, you broke your promise, about never sleeping in my vicinity.”
I jerk away from him. “Technically, I broke it last night, when I slept under the same roof as you. Score yourself a point, Ben. It’s the only one you’re going to get off me.”
His eyes flash, and for a second there’s that Ben, the asshole. I’m kind of glad to have him back. But then he scoots a little away, muttering something.
“What was that?”
“You don’t have to bite my head off.”
“I’m sorry. Did I hurt your feelings?” My voice is laced with sarcasm, and I’m not sure why I’m so pissed off all of a sudden.
Ben scoots farther away, and I’m surprised to realize that maybe I did hurt his feelings.
“Look, I’m sorry . . .” I begin. “I’m tired and kind of keyed up about all this.”
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t mean to be a dick.”
He smiles again.
“Now what?”
“Most girls wouldn’t describe themselves as dicks.”
“Would you prefer I call myself a cu—”
“Don’t,” Ben interrupts. “I fucking hate that word.”
“Really? Most guys I know seem to think it’s interchangeable for female.”
“Yeah. My father is one of those guys. Used to call my mother that. All the time.”
“That’s gross.”
“What’s gross is her putting up with it.”
For all of Tricia’s faults, and they are legion, she mostly leaves her boyfriend drama out of the house. Guys never stay at our place. She goes to theirs. If they call her foul names, at least I never have to hear them.
“Why’d she put up with it? Your mom?” I ask.
Ben shrugs. “She got pregnant with my brother when she was seventeen. Married my dad. Had three more by the time she was twenty-three, so she was kind of stuck with him. Meanwhile he’s out and about, carousing. He has two more kids by his girlfriend; it’s an open secret. Everyone knows. Including my mom. But she still stayed married to him. They only got a divorce when my dad’s girlfriend threatened to take him to court for child support. Cheaper and easier to dump my mom and marry the girlfriend. He knew my mom wasn’t the kind to sue.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It gets worse. Mom’s finally free of the bastard and we’re all older, a little independent. Things seem to be going okay. And what’s she do? Goes and gets pregnant again.”
“How many are you?”
“My mom had five kids, four with my dad, one with her current douchebag. And my dad has two others that I know of, but I’m pretty sure he has more. He believes birth control is the woman’s responsibility.”
“You’re like the redneck Brady Bunch.”
“I know.” He laughs. “Only we didn’t have a housekeeper like what’s her name?”
“Alice,” I answer.
“Alice.” He smiles. “Ours would have to have a white-trash name, like Tiffani.”
“Or Cody.”
Ben looks perplexed. I remind him that I clean houses for a living.
His face actually flushes. “Sorry, I forgot. I meant no disrespect.”
“Oh, please, it’s a little late for that now,” I say, though I’m smiling and then he is too.
“So what’s your story?” he asks.
“My story? You mean like my family?”
He raises his eyebrow, like he just bared all, and now it’s my turn.
“Not much to tell. It’s sort of like your story and the opposite of it. It’s just me and my mother, Tricia. No dad.”
“Did they split up?”
“Never together. She refers to him as the sperm donor, though he wasn’t, obviously, because that would’ve meant Tricia actually intended to have me.” Tricia has remained uncharacteristically quiet about my father, and over the years I’ve suspected it’s because he is married. I picture him sometimes, in a nice house, with a nice wife and nice kids, and half the time I resent the hell out of him for it, but the other half of the time, I sort of understand. It’s a good life, that. If I were him, I wouldn’t want someone like me to fuck that up either.
“Tricia thinks she raised me on her own,” I continue, “but really, it was the Garcias who raised me.”
“Meg’s family?”
“Yeah. They’re like a real family. Mom, Dad, two kids.” I pause to correct myself but look at Ben and see I don’t have to. “Family dinners. Games of Scrabble. That kind of stuff. Sometimes I think if I hadn’t met Meg, I never would’ve known what a normal family was like.”
I stop. Because remembering all those times at the Garcias, watching movies on their worn couch, making plays and forcing Scottie to act in them, staying up too late by the dwindling fire on camping trips—all of that fills me with warmth. But. Always the but.
Ben is watching me, like he’s waiting for me to say something else.
“But if that’s what happens to normal, what hope is there for the rest of us?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. Like he just doesn’t know either.