Alleged Earl shifts in his seat and looks right. The bus stops twice, but he doesn’t get off and neither do I. I decide that wherever he goes today, I go. Even if it’s dangerous.
The bus turns and makes its way up Lombard. At Broad Street, three people get on and I stare at Alleged Earl and try to get an idea of what he looks like, what color his eyes are, or what his skin looks like under all the hair and dirt, but he’s still hidden under all those coats and he’s got a hood up over his head and pulled right over toward his nose. He isn’t wearing a tinfoil crown today. He looks like he’s in his own sort of armor. Maybe he’s in his own sort of joust. His lance is an oil crayon or a piece of sidewalk chalk. His opponent is everyone who doesn’t believe in art. Which could be me now. I’m no longer sure if I believe in art.
Ten-year-old Sarah sits next to me.
She says, “Didn’t expect to see you up so early on a Sunday.”
“I’m dropping out of school,” I say.
She thinks. “So doesn’t that mean that you shouldn’t be up this early on a Sunday?”
“Every day is Sunday,” I say.
“Oh,” she says. “Why are we dropping out of school?”
“Don’t say we.”
“I think I have a right to know what you’re doing with my future,” she says. “Or at least why you’re doing it.”
“Have you met twenty-three-year-old Sarah?”
“Have you?” she asks.
“We turn out okay,” I answer.
“You following Earl again today?”
Alleged Earl should be able to hear this. He doesn’t take notice. I consider that maybe Alleged Earl is deaf. Who knows? I don’t. All I know is a bunch of ideas I made up in my head—like ten-year-old Sarah did with the fish in Mexico. We all do it. I bet thousands of passersby have decided why Alleged Earl ended up where he is the way ten-year-old Sarah used to decide what those fish said to her.
Alleged Earl gets off at 16th and Lombard. I follow him. Ten-year-old Sarah follows me. We just went in a big circle, really.
“We’re a block from home,” ten-year-old Sarah says.
“I know.”
“He’s walking us home,” she says.
“I see that,” I say.
As we walk by our house, ten-year-old Sarah crosses the street and heads for the front door.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I have to pee.”
“You can’t just walk in there and pee.”
“It’s my house,” she says.
“It’s—” I have no idea how to finish this sentence. I’m talking to a ghost or a hallucination. I don’t know what I’m talking to. Alleged Earl can’t go too fast; we won’t lose him if we stop to pee.
So I cross the street and walk in the door ahead of her just in case.
Loser
“You know what you are? You’re a loser, Chet. You’re just a loser.”
“Then you married a loser. How’s that my fault?”
Ten-year-old Sarah closes the downstairs bathroom door behind her. I can hear her peeing. Hallucinations don’t pee.
“I’ve always been a loser.”
“Well then, why don’t you try not being a loser?”
“You won’t give me the chance.”
“Jesus Christ! So now I have to give you a chance to not be a loser? I just worked a twelve-hour overnight. I need to fucking sleep. Figure it out yourself.”
When ten-year-old Sarah comes out of the bathroom, I go in. Our downstairs bathroom at the end of the kitchen is smaller than an airplane bathroom. Now that I’m tall, I can’t close the door and sit on the toilet at the same time. So I watch as ten-year-old Sarah wanders around the kitchen.
She says, “They changed this. It looks nice.”
“I don’t know why we’re doing this anymore!” Dad screams upstairs. He says something else that ends in the word divorce.
I say, “Yeah. A pipe burst and the old kitchen got ruined.”
I finish and flush and when I come out of the kitchen area, I find her looking at the old painting behind the piano no one ever plays.
“Still my favorite,” I say. It’s colorful and abstract. When I painted it, I said it was flowers, but really I didn’t know what it was when the paint was going on the canvas. That was when Dad taught me about the muse. The muse is a made-up person who gives you the images in your head when you paint was how he put it. I don’t know where my muse is now. Every time I look at any old paintings, that’s what I wonder. I wonder Where the hell is my muse?
“I did it in second grade,” she says. “Mom bought me canvas and acrylics. She painted one, too.”
“Just get out of my room and let me sleep, will you?” Mom yells.
Dad comes down the stairs and we’re still standing in the study looking at our painting of abstract flowers. He storms past us and into the kitchen. He opens the back door and then stops.
“Sarah?”
“Yeah?”
“I thought you were out.”
“I was. I just had to pee.”
I hear him walking back toward the study and I try to hide ten-year-old Sarah behind me, but she won’t stay hidden.
He looks at us—both of us—from the doorway between the kitchen and the study and he says, “I didn’t know you had a friend over.”
Oh
Ten-year-old Sarah smiles at Dad and I say, “We’re going back out now. Home by dinner.”