I walk into the kitchen, but I stand in the doorway and watch him vacuum. He runs it in every direction and misses most of the dirt. He’s not even watching TV. There’s nothing to distract him from the sliver of tissue right in front of him on the carpet but before he can vacuum it, he turns the vacuum cleaner off and puts it back into the closet. Then he sits in the chair by the door and picks up a Time magazine and leafs through it.
I stare at the tissue sliver. If I can see it from here, he should be able to see it from there. It’s white and the carpet is dark blue. No one could be that lazy without knowing it. He picks his nose while he reads Time, and he wipes a booger on the armrest of the chair. I wait for him to have his finger up there again to walk in.
“Hi,” I say.
He removes his finger from his nose and doesn’t know what to do with the booger this time. He wipes it on his sweatpants.
“Anything good in Time?”
“Not really,” he says. “Did you clean your room today?”
“I cleaned it yesterday. Today is Sunday.”
“Oh,” he says. “Right.”
“What are we having for dinner?”
“Probably breakfast,” he says.
“I’ll make waffles,” I say. “Mom loves waffles.”
“Sure,” he says.
I know Dad hates waffles. I don’t care. Before I go to the kitchen to make batter, I draw three triangles on the TV screen’s dust. The small one represents me. The medium one represents waffles. The biggest one represents how much I don’t care that Dad hates waffles. Then I pick up the sliver of tissue on the carpet, wet it with my spit, and stick it right in the middle of the smallest triangle.
? ? ?
I make corn waffles and I put on a pot of coffee for when Mom comes down. She sings in the shower. Today she’s singing a Nirvana song called “School.” I love that song. I played it for Carmen once but she said it’s too angry. And she’s the one who paints tornadoes. Seriously. What’s angrier than a tornado?
Dad.
Dad at breakfast-for-dinner is angrier than a tornado.
He’s a shrugging machine as he makes himself a fried egg and toast while Mom and I eat corn waffles at the table.
“Dad told me you were out with a friend today,” Mom says.
“Yeah. Neighbor girl I see a lot.”
“Is she nice?”
“Totally nice.”
“She’s a bit young for you,” Dad says.
“It’s like a little sister thing,” I say.
Mom nods. “Tomorrow is Monday.” I have no idea why I need a human calendar until she adds, “Do you think you could make it back to school?”
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“It’s a high school diploma,” Dad says. “It’s not rocket science. You need it to get a job. You need it to get to college.”
Mom nods.
I say, “I’ll think about it.”
“Good,” they say in unison. And then they look annoyed that they said something in unison. Then they fake smile at each other, but I’m starting to understand that smiling is really just another way of baring one’s teeth.
HELEN’S SONG
I get fakers all the time in the ER. Last week a college girl said she swallowed staples. We rushed her to X-ray, and there wasn’t a staple to be found. She cried and screamed and kicked and said she was sure she swallowed staples. “A whole roll of them!” she said.
Staples don’t even come in rolls.
She begged me for painkillers. She said she was dying. She said she was going to sue the hospital for not taking care of her. And she wasn’t even a psych case. She was just bored, I think. She walked out of the place just fine an hour and a half later.
? ? ?
There’s a song I sing sometimes. It’s a terrible song. I feel bad for singing it but I also know the truth will set me free. I call the song “You’re a Dumb Prick and I Hate You.”
It never has the same words except for the chorus, which goes like this: You’re a dumb prick and I hate you.
I’ve been singing this song since about two years after I married Chet. I never sing it to any other people. Just Chet. I dedicate the song to Chet as if it were the radio days when we were young and you could call a number over and over and when someone finally answered at the radio station, you could request a song and the DJ would read out who the song was dedicated to and who it was requested by. Sometimes before I sing the song, I say, “Dedicated to Chet from Helen.”
Do I hate Chet? I might. I think I do. I look mean when I say it here. I look mean and awful and you’re reading this thinking I’m glad she’s not my wife or I will never be like that to my husband. You have no idea.
Chet isn’t here. Chet was never here. I married him when I didn’t fully understand how he would disappear because he only knew the men he saw around him. Abusive father. The sportscasters on the TV. The annoying weatherman on CBS. The guys he works with who watch porn all weekend.
He says, “At least I don’t hit you.”
He says, “At least I’m not jerking off to porn.”
He says, “I wish I could show you how much I love you.”
I wish he could, too. If the weatherman just shrugged all the time, would anyone know what the weather was going to be? Would he say, “I wish I could tell you what the weather could be,” and still manage to keep his job?
Chet’s happy like this. As happy as he can get, I guess.
He’s a natural-born faker.