Literally by Lucy Keating
1
Instinctual Response
IT’S 3:02 P.M. on Sunday afternoon, and I should be cleaning my room. Not because it’s particularly dirty—it never is. Not because my parents told me to—they never would. Because my calendar says so—in yellow. Errands and necessary “upkeep” are yellow; homework blue; exercise (running on the Boardwalk, surfing with my dad) purple; appointments (teeth cleaning, haircut at The Hive) are in hot pink; and events like dinner with Ava at Papa’s Poke Shop or Nisha’s birthday party in Malibu are a bright teal. I call that one my “Friends/Fun” section. There are other categories for other things, but I won’t bore you with the details. I’m a very visual person. I get that from my mother. I am also highly organized. I get that from absolutely nobody in my family.
The problem with it being three P.M., when I should be cleaning my room, is that I am not. Instead I am lying on my stomach on the living room floor, staring into the eyes of Napoleon, who, from his place under the wheat-colored sofa, stares back at me with challenging eyes, a lone pair of my underpants hanging out of his mouth.
“Don’t do it, Napoleon,” I warn.
Napoleon growls.
Ava told me the other day, after Napoleon growled at her, too, that she wasn’t offended, because it was an instinctual response. “Sometimes the body reacts in ways we can’t help, as a way of letting us know how we’re really feeling,” she told me. “Like how Nisha turns beet red whenever Ray Woods utters even a partial sentence to her. Or you always sweat in your armpits during exams. Or how I’ve barfed before almost every flight I’ve ever taken.”
“My armpits don’t sweat during exams,” I protested, and Ava just smiled. It is very like Ava to say something like that. To dwell, not so much on the fact that something is happening, but rather why it is happening in the first place. She is good at trying to see the other side. For me, it’s not so complicated. Things happen or they don’t. You make them happen or not. And I consider an unexpected, instinctual response—blushing and sweating and growling—highly inconvenient.
Slowly, I reach a hand toward Napoleon’s sofa cave, and his growl becomes a snarl. I withdraw my hand with an eye roll that I like to believe he can understand.
Napoleon is my father’s dog. He is also my mortal enemy. It’s not that I don’t like dogs. Those golden retrievers you see lying by the fire in a soup commercial, for example, doing nothing but wagging their tails. Or that bulldog who rides a skateboard, wearing sunglasses, his tongue flapping in the wind. But Napoleon is different. My father found Napoleon in an alley with a dead rat when he was only a few months old. “Poor guy,” he said. “Living in conditions like that.” But I know the truth. I know that Napoleon challenged that rat to a fight to the death, and Napoleon won.
The back door to the kitchen opens and in wanders my mother, iPad directly in front of her face as she walks, her bob of straight blond hair swinging along with her, followed by Jae, her new design intern. At least I assume it’s Jae. I can’t see his face behind the giant stack of rolled-up pieces of vellum paper, probably displaying the plans for another one of her beautiful Southern California homes. Mom’s specialty is remodeling old bungalows. She has a reputation for simplifying a house’s design, modernizing it just enough, but without losing the character of the place. With deep oak floors and heavy beams balanced by bright white walls and mid-century furniture, our house is one of her best advertisements. One of the exotic pillows she sourced from India is currently wedged under my elbows.
“What are you doing on the floor?” my mom asks, still staring at her iPad as she sets down her bag and motions Jae to drop the plans on the counter. Then she grabs two seltzers from the fridge and hands one to him.
“Napoleon has my underpants,” I explain.
“What a little pervert,” she replies.
Jae just smiles politely. “Hi, Annabelle.”
“Hey, Jae,” I say, and then I sigh. I want to ask my mother if she could maybe refrain from calling our dog a pervert in front of her intern to whom I have never spoken more than four words on one individual occasion, but I know there’s no use. My mother is unconcerned with formalities.
“How do you plan to get them back?” she asks now, finally setting the iPad down and looking over at me.
“Murder him,” I say definitively, and she snorts. I glance back at Napoleon. He has not moved a muscle.
“You’re a monster,” I whisper.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” my father says as he strolls into the kitchen, his salt-and-pepper hair in its usual bed-head state, his jeans rolled round the ankles. Nobody ever hears him coming because he is consistently barefoot. “That’s the beauty of working from home,” he’ll say if you point this out.
There’s a joke in there, if you know where to look. The joke is that my dad hasn’t “worked” in years. He was a TV writer in the late 1990s before selling a big ensemble comedy to a major network, and, after the finale in 2006, hasn’t been to an office since. He spends most mornings surfing, which he took up after retirement, and reading, which he’s always done. There’s a smaller guest house behind our house that my dad refers to as his “lair,” where he reads, screens movies, and takes an occasional meeting. Lately, he’s been spending more time out there than usual, and occasionally, I’ve noticed him coming out early in the morning. He must be onto a new idea.
“Should we take a drive?” he asks the room. I notice how wrinkly his T-shirt is. “Head up to Topanga State Beach, maybe grab an early dinner and watch the sunset? What do you say, you?”
The you is always directed to me. I know it’s kind of weird, like my own father can’t remember my name, but it’s actually the opposite. Something about the way he says it makes me feel like I am the only you there is. And that makes me feel good.
“I have plans,” I explain. “Is that the T-shirt you were wearing yesterday?”
“Forgive me!” my father exclaims, ignoring my question. “What’s on deck?”
I steel myself for a moment, considering that maybe if I talk really fast, they won’t make fun of me, and we can be done with this conversation. “Well, I have to clean my room and then I have to take a run and—”
My father shoots a glance at my mother, like How did we create this? “Maybe you should shake things up a little bit? Prove to yourself that the world isn’t going to end if you don’t clean your room this afternoon?”
I frown, contemplating his suggestion.
“What are you doing on the floor?” my brother, Sam, says as he bustles into the kitchen, grabbing an apple and taking a giant bite. “Did Napoleon steal your socks again?” he manages through muffled chews.