“Don’t get me started.”
“I won’t,” she said. “Unless you want to talk about . . . why people feel like they have to yell when they talk into their cell phones.”
“Right?” I said. “Like, do they think the person needs to be able to hear them without the phone? And why do they especially do it when they’re someplace like Starbucks, where you want it to be quiet? Do they think everyone is interested in their conversation? Thank God they don’t allow people to talk on their phones on airplanes. You’d have murders. And since people can’t bring weapons on airplanes, you’d have people being beaten to death with copies of SkyMall.”
I went on like this for another minute or so before I started repeating myself.
“How long was that?” I asked.
“Only two minutes, forty-five seconds. You’re losing your touch. What should we do now?”
I reached out and grabbed the monkey bars, using them to swing down, then across, rung by rung. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
“What?”
“Just something.”
She scrambled down too and ended up beside me. I tried not to notice I only came up to her nose. I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the park that adjoined the school. The walking paths were unlit, but there was a full moon we could see by. I led her to a giant ficus tree that stood by the canal, its gnarled roots making a pattern on the ground like one of those Irish knots. I walked around, looking. “They’re usually right here at night.”
Then I spotted them. The mother duck was sleeping, head tucked under her wing. Her babies, seven of them, slept the same way around her.
“Remember when we used to come with my mom to feed them?” I said.
“Like it just happened.”
“It’s been half a lifetime.”
“Weird.” She looked at the ducklings in the moonlight glinting off the canal. “They’re so cute. No swans to make them feel bad about themselves.”
“I don’t think that’s how the story goes.”
“Yeah, but you know that’s what would happen in real life. Did you know that the term pecking order came from stronger chickens pecking at the weaker ones to achieve social dominance?”
“I didn’t need to know that,” I said. My phone was buzzing in my pocket, but I ignored it. There was no one I wanted to talk to.
“The more you know. Wonder what happened to the fishhook duck?”
“Probably long gone.”
“I guess. He was a fighter, though.”
“Good old Fishhook,” I said. Amanda moved closer to me, but also closer to the ducks. My phone was buzzing in my pocket again. Probably just a text about practice or something. One person texts, then ten people have to respond. I said, “Hold on. Let me turn off my phone. I keep getting texts.”
I took it out of my pocket and looked. It wasn’t texts. It was five missed calls from my mother.
I called her.
“It’s your brother. He’s been in an accident.” Her voice sounded shaky.
“Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. They took him to the hospital.”
I said to Amanda, “My brother’s in the hospital.”
“My dad can take you.”
I said to Mom. “Go ahead. Tim will bring me. Where is he?” We were already walking back to our bikes. What if it was a bad accident? What if Matt was dead?
I felt Amanda’s hand on my shoulder. I tried to unlock my bike, but I couldn’t because my hands were shaking. Finally, Amanda did it for me.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Guess I’ll have to be.”
My brother, Matt, my phenomenally stupid brother, who later insisted he was neither drunk nor texting but just tired at ten at night, had fallen asleep at the wheel and plowed through a traffic circle with an ornamental obelisk at its center and giant bronze fish swimming around. The fish were fried and Matt was knocked out for two days, so he got to miss my first meeting with Dad’s girlfriend, a twenty-two-year-old blond yoga instructor who wished me Namaste when we met. I wished I’d been so lucky.
But at the hospital, Dad told Mom, “I can’t believe you let this happen.”
“How is it my fault?” Mom asked.
“He was in your care,” Dad said.
“Because you ditched him. He has a curfew, eleven o’clock. It was ten.”
“That’s just like you, always making excuses.”
“She’s not always making excuses,” I said. “She never makes excuses. You’re the one who’s always blaming everyone else for everything.”
Amanda took my hand and squeezed it.
“I don’t have to listen to this,” my father said. “I just want to see my son.”
“The one who never made you happy in twenty years?” I muttered.
“And what’s he doing here?” Dad gestured at Tim.
“He drove me here,” I said, “and he’s being supportive, like you never were.”
Dad hitched his fingers in his pockets and glared at Mom. “Should have known you’d turn them against me.”