40: Who are you talking to?
PR stops and slowly looks up. His face contorts.
PR: Who are you?
40: Who are you?
PR: Sarah, who are these people? Oh, hi—um—Katie. Nice to see you again . . . I don’t understand what you’re all doing here.
23: We’re waiting for Mom to get back.
PR blinks and his frown is a thinking frown but an angry frown at the same time. His tail is between his legs.
40: We’re here to help you pack.
23 (points to boxes in living room): I have a few boxes I found in the basement.
40: Bruce got the suitcases out of the attic this morning.
? ? ?
There is something in the room with us. It’s familiar. It’s a feeling I’ve known my whole life but never talked about. It’s an invisible man or monster under the bed.
History. That’s what it is. History is in the room with us. You absorb it even if it’s not happening right in front of you. You absorb the feeling of it. It’s there even though it’s not there. It’s in your skin.
ME: You should really get started before Mom gets home.
PR: I don’t have to go anywhere.
40: Don’t be a dick, Dad. You have to go and you know it.
23: It’s about time.
10: You never fooled me, you know.
If this were a movie or a cartoon, Dad would faint. That’s what it looks like and feels like. It feels like something big just happened. Like we’re all inside a cloud of thick magician’s smoke. Magic has happened. The truth has set him free. History finally caught up with him—the rat who never admitted he was a rat.
I think of the joust. Two riders galloping at full force toward each other. We are one rider. Dad is the other. All of us in armor meant to protect us from the storm of bullshit. As we ride, the adrenaline rises as we aim our lances. But then Dad falls off his horse before we ever get to knock him off.
This is Art
40 got Dad to pack his bags. 23 helped him figure out where he could stay. She had her phone app set to one-bedroom apartments in Center City. 10 stayed with me because she was scared. I played a game of Uno with her and she beat me and left me with a handful of high-value cards. Neither of us wanted to be home when Mom came back, but we stayed because 23 and 40 told us we should.
40: You should watch it end. If you don’t, you’ll always wonder.
23: Nothing bad is going to happen, I promise.
10: It’s too sad.
ME: We’ll be safe now.
When Mom and Bruce come through the door, the Pathetic Rat hangs his head again. He starts his entrance speech from the beginning. He says, “Please don’t make me leave. Let me say some things first.”
Mom says, “We’ll talk in the kitchen. Alone.”
We all know that you can’t be alone in our kitchen. We all sit down in the living room because we’ll hear it from here. 10 sidles up next to Bruce on the love seat and he puts his arm around her and gives her a side-hug. I sit between 23 and 40 on the couch. 23. 16. 40. Our arms touch. Only our skin is between us. Thick skin. We heal fast.
23 says, “I’m sorry I was such a bitch to you at first.”
“You didn’t take me seriously,” I say.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“You made fun of my new name.”
“Sorry. But—Umbrella?”
I say, “It has deeper meanings.”
“I know,” she says. “I’m you.”
“So why choose to make fun of me? Why not just be nice?”
40 says, “Being twenty-three is hard. You’ll see.”
“No one takes me seriously, either,” 23 says.
We hear Mom say “You never took me seriously” in the kitchen.
She’s forty-seven years old. Maybe we’re destined to never be taken seriously.
Dad is begging in the kitchen. Mom has taken the weekend off—first full weekend since Mexico she won’t be in the ER sewing people together at three o’clock in the morning. We have plans.
40 says, “It’s getting late. We have to go or else we won’t have enough time.”
Bruce says, “She’ll be done in a few minutes.”
In the kitchen, Mom says, “I have to be somewhere.”
“We can still talk, though, right? I’ll call you over the weekend. We’ll call it a trial separation,” Dad says.
“Call it whatever makes you feel okay about it,” Mom answers.
Bruce says, “He’s staying with a friend for a week.”
23 says, “We’ll have to rent the apartment for him. He’ll never do it himself.”
“Mom took care of it,” Bruce says. “The lawyer knows a guy. It’s all taken care of.”
It’s all taken care of.
40 calls Dad a taxi on Bruce’s phone. She gets up from the couch and tidies the mantel after Dad’s rearrangement of the house yesterday. She says she wants a picture of all of us so she can give it to Mom.
We all pile onto the couch and put our heads together. 10 is up front, lying across our laps. Bruce holds his arm out as far as he can and takes a bunch of pictures of the five of us with his phone. A few of them are serious—we smile and look posed. Toward the end, we’re laughing. I tickle 10 and then 23 tickles 40 and someone tickles me and some of the pictures on Bruce’s phone are priceless, like Three Musicians.
I think of Earl.