year since my brother, Jack, had died, and after a family screamathon that had spanned three floors, two hours, and one threat of divorce from my mother, my father had actually started going to group counseling with us again. Which meant every Wednesday was the same: my mother wearing perfume, my father actually hanging up the phone for once, and me sitting in my father’s giant blue SUV, trying to pretend the back didn’t still smell like dead wolf.
Wednesdays, everyone was on their best behavior. The few hours following counseling — dinner out in St. Paul, some mindless shopping or a family movie — were things of beauty and perfection. And then everyone started to drift away from that ideal, hour by hour, until, by Tuesday, there were explosions and fist-fights on set.
I usually tried to be absent on Tuesdays.
On this particular one, I was a victim of my own indecision. After getting home from school, I couldn’t quite bring myself to call Taylor or Madison to go out. Last week I’d gone down to Duluth with both of them and some boys they knew and spent two hundred dollars on shoes for my mother, one hundred dollars on a shirt for myself, and let the boys spend a third of that on ice cream we didn’t eat. I hadn’t really seen the point then, other than to shock Madison with my cavalier credit card wielding. And I didn’t see the point now, with the shoes languishing at the end of Mom’s bed, the shirt fitting weirdly now that I had it at home, and me unable to remember the boys’ names other than the vague memory that one of them started with J.
So I could do my other pastime, getting into my own SUV and parking in an overgrown driveway somewhere to listen to music and zone out and pretend I was somewhere else. Usually I could kill enough time to get back just before my mother went to bed and the worst of the fighting was over. Ironically, there had been a million more ways to get out of the house back in California, back when I hadn’t needed them.
What I really wanted was to call Grace and go walking downtown with her or sit on her couch while she did her homework. I didn’t know if that would ever be possible again.
I spent so long debating my options that I missed my window of opportunity for escape. I was standing in the foyer, my phone in my hand, waiting for me to give it orders, when my father came trotting down the stairs at the same time that my mother started to breach the door of the living room. I was trapped between two opposing weather fronts. Nothing to do at this point but batten the hatches and hope the lawn gnome didn’t blow away.
I braced myself.
My father patted me on my head. “Hey, pumpkin.”
Pumpkin?
I blinked as he strode by me, efficient and powerful, a giant in his castle. It was like I’d time-traveled back a year.
I stared at him as he paused in the doorway by my mother. I waited for them to exchange barbs. Instead they exchanged a kiss.
“What have you done with my parents?” I asked.
“Ha!” my father said, in a voice that could possibly be described as jovial. “I’d appreciate if you put something on that covered your midriff before Marshall gets here, if you’re not going to be upstairs doing homework.”
Mom gave me a look that said I told you so even though she hadn’t said anything about my shirt when I’d walked in the door from school.
“As in Congressman Marshall?” I said. My father had multiple college friends who’d ended up in high places, but he hadn’t spent much time with them since Jack had died. I’d heard the stories about them, especially once alcohol was passed around the adults. “As in ‘Mushroom Marshall’? As in the Marshall that boffed Mom before you did?”
“He’s Mr. Landy to you,” my father said, but he was already on his way out of the room and didn’t sound very distressed. He added, “Don’t be rude to your mother.”
Mom turned and followed my father back into the living room. I heard them talking, and at one point, my mother actually laughed.
On a Tuesday. It was Tuesday, and she was laughing.
“Why is he coming here?” I asked suspiciously, following them from the living room into the kitchen. I eyed the counter. Half of the counter was