Thanks for the Trouble - Tommy Wallach Page 0,28

Is that her bedroom?” Before I could say anything, Zelda had pushed open the door. My mom’s bed was unmade, the pillow still cratered. Her drugs were on the bedside table—Prozac and Tylenol PM—alongside an empty bottle of wine. Zelda seemed more interested in all the photographs. One over the television. Another on the wall next to the windows. A couple propped up on her vanity. Zelda picked up the one right behind the Prozac. Inside a little flowered frame, my dad was sitting at a picnic table, smoking a cigarette. “How long ago did he die?”

I held up five fingers.

“And your mom never remarried?” I shook my head. “I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. What man would want to make love in a house full of ghosts?”

It felt deeply weird discussing my mom’s personal life with a near stranger. Actually, it felt weird discussing my mom’s personal life at all. I took Zelda’s hand and pulled her back out into the hallway.

Stay here, I mouthed, once we reached the top of the stairs.

“Yes, sir,” Zelda said with mock seriousness.

In the kitchen, my mom was standing at the stove. The impossibly delicious smell of bacon went to work on my nostrils, momentarily distracting me from my task of getting Zelda out of the house unseen.

“Morning, sunshine,” my mom said. I tried to sidle past her into the living room. “Hold on a second.” She put one hand on the back of my head and used the other to pull my eyelid down, staring at the crackly redness under my pupil. “You’re hungover!” she announced.

Like I said, it’s really hard to lie when you can’t speak. I was composing my explanation when both of us were distracted by the telltale creak of something on the stairs. I looked at my mom. She looked at the stairs. I looked at the stairs. My mom looked at me. I looked at her. We both looked at the stairs.

“Good morning, Ms. Santé,” Zelda said. “I’m Zelda.”

There is a kind of shock that paralyzes your usual response systems, like when someone says something so totally dickish to you that you can’t think of a coherent comeback until hours later. I could see that my mom was experiencing exactly that kind of shock. Most kids would get in serious trouble for getting drunk and bringing home some random girl; but for me, it represented such a giant leap toward normal teenage behavior, I knew that my mom wouldn’t be able to condemn it. She was stuck between two impossible reactions. The moment stretched out, on and on, underscored by the sizzle of bacon.

“I guess I’ll have to scramble more eggs,” my mom said.

“Thank you, Ms. Santé.”

Zelda and I went into the living room and sat down. I left a whole couch cushion between us—a pretty empty gesture toward modesty, given what my mom must have assumed had already happened last night (but which, tragically, had not). Breakfast was served a few minutes later, along with life-giving coffee.

“We need anything else?” my mom asked.

“This all looks wonderful,” Zelda said.

“Oh, good.”

There would be no avoiding it now. It was inevitable, like death and taxes and Law & Order being on television at any given point in the day. My mom sat down in the easy chair across from us, took a deep breath, and then . . .

THE INTERROGATION, PART 1

“SO, ZELDA, TELL ME ALL about yourself. Where are you from?”

“Omaha,” Zelda said, without hesitation. And was it just me, or had she just taken on a shade of a Nebraskan accent? “Have you ever been?”

“I have, actually. I’m a flight attendant for Delta Airlines, so I’ve been all over.”

“That must be fun. I’ve always found flying so romantic.”

My mom laughed. “Romantic? Maybe fifty years ago, back when air travel was just for rich people. But those days are long gone.”

“What a shame. You know, American Airlines used to have a piano bar in coach. Can you imagine? Now you’re lucky if you get a bag of peanuts. And even when you do, it’s impossible to open.”

“Sounds like you’ve traveled a lot. You an army brat or something?”

Zelda shook her head. “I suppose I have an incurable case of wanderlust. It’s like Kundera said: ‘In the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.’ ”

My mom looked bewildered, and I could sympathize—talking to Zelda could be a trippy experience. “So where do you go to school?”

“The Lycée