Chapter Seventeen
Leaf, photo by Arthur Herrick: Pictures of Earth
It was just after Christmas. Four days, to be exact.
Our tree was still up. We were still on break from school.
We were watching a movie, an older one, super charming, about a Scottish village that saves a sea creature they were sure would destroy them.
It was supposed to be cute and uplifting, but the mood in the house was stressed.
Sometimes I wondered why I’d kept you from my family those first months we were together, because you and my dad and my mom got along so great.
But then I’d remember. That night I sure did.
We were alone in the family room, and you were in your socks.
You had your feet up on the table, your flannel shirt untucked, free access, you know, for my hand against your skin.
This would have been enough ammunition for a fatherly freak-out normally, evidence that we were having sex right there on the Angelo family couch, when, honestly, we always waited until we were sure-sure-sure we’d be alone at the houseboat.
But my dad didn’t even notice. He and Mom were in the kitchen with Maurice.
A rep reached out to Sandrine from Sub Pop Records.
It didn’t even happen from that demo they spent all that money making.
The rep—she’d gone to one of their shows at Neumos.
She’d experienced what we had, too. She’d seen it—the wild lift of music and emotion, the way it made you want to dance, and kiss, and live.
A record deal.
The rep called just before Christmas. Best present ever, only Maurice just couldn’t tell Dad he was quitting Papa Angelo’s.
A week later, he still hadn’t told him. I maybe could imagine what that secret was doing to him, that needing to tell but not being able to tell.
Mom and Dad didn’t know he and Sandrine were living together now, either, and Sandrine was getting fed up.
She didn’t understand what Maurice was so afraid of.
You couldn’t, either, until that night. Multiply that by every day we’d ever lived.
Once you experience it, the possibility of rage never leaves you.
Some pie-in-the-sky dream! Some stupid lark!
You fool, you idiot! Gonna throw away everything I’ve given you?
Everything me and your brothers built together?
Well, there was more. The words written down don’t even sound that bad.
Also, pie-in-the-sky sounds delightful. But the shouting—the tone, the guilt, the fury—it froze us to that couch, as we stared at the charming Scottish villagers in the glow of the colored lights of the Christmas tree, peace on Earth.
Maurice must have been frozen, too, because he was silent.
We wanted to get out of there, but it meant crossing the kitchen.
It was like a swamp of crocodiles in some adventure movie.
Like, if we could get past it, we might have a chance to survive, but it didn’t look good.
You were frozen, too. I could see by your whole body, even your feet in those socks, that you understood some things now that you hadn’t before. Now do you see? I wanted to say, but didn’t. You barely ever saw your own father, but I’m pretty sure it never looked like this.
Your whole body seemed to be holding tension, balancing something fragile.
There was a sense of breath-holding. You squeezed my hand, or maybe I squeezed yours.
I was wearing the silver bracelet you gave me for Christmas.
We’d decided not to give each other gifts, but we both broke the deal.
The bracelet was a silver band with two conjoined circles, an elongated figure eight that sat at the center of my wrist—our symbol, infinity.
And I’d given you Murmurs of Earth, the Carl Sagan book about the making of the Golden Record.
You’d read it, of course, but you didn’t have it.
We both teared up. We were both glad we broke our no-gift vow.
When the shouting died down, we fled. We reached the night air like we’d crossed into our homeland after a hair-raising time in enemy territory. I breathed deeply, but you looked shaken.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Are you?”
“I’ve done this before.”
“I’m…”
“What?”
I worried that it was coming. You’d seen what things were really like, what my family was really like, and now you had some things to think over.
Like me, and how you felt about me. No one outside my family had seen this before, okay?
I never let anyone see. No one, not even Addy, who I’d been friends with forever.
You saw, and it was maybe a test of acceptance, and you were standing there looking all horrified, and stammering, and, well, that’s what I thought was happening.
I was wrong.
“I have something to tell you. And this just seems like awful timing after…that. Like, the worst. But then again, that was terrible, so, let’s just do all the terrible and get it over with. I can’t not tell you for another minute. I’ve been not telling you for a week.”
Wait, what? There was another need to tell but can’t tell going on?
That whole night, I thought your tense discomfort was because of my dad and Maurice, but something else had been going on.
It was shocking, the way a person can misread things.
Dread filled me. Instantly. It was a tsunami of dread.
I suddenly felt like I might throw up. I just stood there by your car in front of our house.
I folded my arms, already mad. I glared.
Like, what, for God’s sake? Just tell me, just get it over with, but I didn’t speak. I was afraid to.
“My, uh…” Your voice cracked. You looked like you were about to cry. One of your shoes was untied. We’d hurried out of there the minute my dad left the kitchen.
“What?” My voice was still angry. If you cried, I couldn’t stay mad, and I was sure I needed to be mad. Whatever was coming—anger was due.
“My mom. She’s, uh, moving? To, um…” You cleared your throat. “Arizona? Phoenix. With Jake? He got a really great job there at some big-time golf course? And, she, uh…Well, of course she wants me to, uh…”
“No,” I said. As if it were up to me. But, no. Just no!
“She wants me to come.”
“Mars.”
“I know, I know!”
“You don’t have to do this anymore! You said you wouldn’t. You said you couldn’t. And you’re going to UW! This is your home.” Sandrine’s words popped out of my mouth. I mean, this was ridiculous. You couldn’t possibly do this! Why would you even consider it?
“I can’t explain. She needs me, Margaret. Around. I’m afraid that if I…I can’t explain,” you said again.
I got it, okay, okay. I understood about the family things that you can’t explain. We’d experienced them that very night. Both of us had struggled with those things since day one. But this was your life. It was ours, us. It was your dream.
“No,” I said.
“I get that you’re upset. But it’s not that far! And I’ve been looking into astronomy programs in Arizona…”
I looked at you, and…This is hurtful, I’m sorry, but you were a stranger right then.
Like I had never belonged to you, and you had never belonged to me.
You belonged to her, Janite. Your mother.
There was a pull and a responsibility and a commitment, really, that I’d never be able to compete with, never.
And I was suddenly so pissed. I’d been being all careful to say the right thing, and be the right thing, and do the right thing so you wouldn’t leave and we wouldn’t break up, and now that seemed ridiculous. My care did.
Maroon flag. I had my own, but I fought through it. We’d just sat in that living room, facing it together. But you couldn’t fight through yours, you know. Flag on the ground, surrender.
“I can’t believe this. I cannot.”
“Margaret.”
“If you can’t fight for yourself…”
“It’s not that simple.”
“If you can’t fight for us, for your dream…‘A dream should be respected,’ you said! What about that, huh?”
“I need to—”
“I’m done with this shit,” I said. “Seriously.” It had all been too much. That night of yelling, of Maurice’s silence in the yelling, and now this. The ways we weren’t free. The ways our lives would always be burdened by what we came with.
“Margaret, come on…” you pleaded.
“I mean it. I’m done.” I didn’t know if I meant it. My heart was breaking. I felt gross and ill and furious. I was swirling and spinning in How could he? I could’ve actually been sick, I was so disoriented.
“Okay,” you said. “Okay, then.”
It wasn’t like the breakup with the leaf. I didn’t have a feeling that we’d get back together. I was too mad to have any feeling other than mad. It’s hard to know what’s real in the mad. It’s hard to know what’s true, under all the noise and the roiling inside.
My arms were folded. I just kept shaking my head.
We stood there in the street, our house lit with Christmas lights, silver reindeer looking on from our neighbors’ yard, an inflatable Santa across the street.
All of that cheer was over, you know. Christmas stuff after Christmas—it looked so sad, so effortful.
I couldn’t believe you would give up on yourself like this.
We stood there in silence for a few minutes. A standoff on my side, helplessness on yours. Frosty air in puffs from our exhales, but no words.
“I’m just going to go,” you said finally.
And so I let you.
The next day, I didn’t call or text. You didn’t call or text, either. You were taking me at my word that I was done, I guess, but maybe I was still just mad. I couldn’t tell.