Lance #2
He looks up. “Oh. I was thinking of doing something to help special-needs people. My younger brother Elliott is special needs, so I have to take care of him and my grandmother when I get home from school,” he says.
“Mom and I have to trade off and that means that I’m kind of on-call a lot, but at least then I can understand more of what he’s going through. ”
I’m surprised at this, because at school he’s always drawing. I assumed he would go to art school somewhere.
“That’s a noble calling,” Dad says.
Parker nods. “Elliott has a lot of issues. He’s touch-averse, and he tends to melt down easily.
” He glances over at the front door. “He must be having the most awful time right now. All the change and disruption. He’s the sweetest kid.
It’s just that he doesn’t understand that he’s not little anymore, and he could really hurt someone when he has his tantrums.”
“Does he like Minecraft?” Bree asks.
“Bree,” Dad says gently.
“What? I’m asking.”
Parker almost smiles. “He likes the animals in it. He’ll just build fences and fill them with sheep for hours.”
“What kind of tantrums?” Mom asks, resting her chin on her hand.
“Well, about little things. Like, food. He can’t grasp that if you take all the food and eat it yourself, other people have to go without it. So at the beginning of the meal, he will take more food than he can eat, but I can’t reason with him to give it back. Or that I’m hungry, too.”
I stare at his wrist. I think of how thin it is compared to his mother’s and brother’s. I look at my mother, but her gaze is locked on Parker. My father makes eye contact and holds up one finger for quiet.
I take a bite of my own food. Mom’s catastrophe meatloaf—garlic and ketchup glaze, the same thing she made when Grandpa died, when Dad got laid off, when the dog had to be put down.
I’ve had it a dozen times and never thought about it beyond whether there’d be seconds.
I try to imagine what it tastes like if you’re not sure where your next meal is coming from.
If the kid sitting across from you takes everything and nobody stops him.
My mother’s meatloaf. Ordinary, and the most generous thing on earth.
“And your mother doesn’t step in?” Mom asks.
“She tries to, but his meltdowns are so dramatic, and she’s trying to tend to Grandma at the same time. My grandmother has dementia, and she can’t always make sense of who Elliott is, or why he’s screaming and throwing things, so she gets upset. Sometimes it’s easier to make sure he’s happy.”
“It sounds like your mom has a lot on her hands,” Dad says. “And doesn’t she have someone else to turn to that can help?”
“Our neighbor, Miss Martha, comes in while I’m at school. Elliott has to be homeschooled now because he had some incidents. The administrators thought it would be best for him to be at a familiar location that didn’t trigger him as much. Miss Martha and Mom and I try to teach him.”
“I see,” Mom says.
Parker goes quiet, pushing a piece of meatloaf around his plate. Dad reaches for the mac and cheese and sets it next to Parker’s elbow without a word.
“Lance has been wonderful,” Parker says, facing me. I look down at my plate.
“Him?” Bree asks in clear disbelief.
“When my other friends started getting cars and getting on the road, they wanted to get together with me, but I was so busy at home that I kept putting them off. My mom just couldn’t cope without me to help out, but I can’t really explain that to people who don’t have someone like Elliott in the family.
Eventually, they stopped trying. Lance is the only one who remembers me during the summer months.
He texts me all the time, and at the beginning of every school year, it’s like we can pick up where we left off.
His friendship has meant everything to me. ”
He trails off. Something shifts in his expression—a thought catching up to him. His eyes flick to mine and then away, fast, and a flush crawls up his neck.
“I mean—” He clears his throat. “He’s just. He’s been a really good friend.”
He stares hard at the meatloaf on his plate and doesn’t look up.
I straighten and look at my family with pride, but my mother is wearing a particularly tight smile, and my father’s eyes haven’t left Parker’s wrist. Parker glances down at the meal and takes a hasty bite.
“Sweetheart, would you like some more food?” Mom asks Parker.
Parker shakes his head. “No, this is plenty, thank you. I’m not used to eating big meals.”
She stands and carves a huge piece of meatloaf and sets it on his plate. He looks at it like he’s starving.
“And I have pie in the oven,” she says.
He takes a bite and closes his eyes. Just for a second. When he opens them, they’re wet, and he blinks it away fast and keeps eating.
“I can help clean up,” he says quickly. “I did a lot of the housework at home. Elliott always had to be cleaned up after.” He picks at his meatloaf for a second.
“A few years ago, I was in the shower when he found a box cutter and...guess how I figured out how to get blood out of the couch cushions. After that, I had to keep the door open when I was in the shower.” He smiles like he’s expecting us to laugh at this story, but I’m so stunned I can barely breathe.
I’ve seen Elliott in the middle of a meltdown.
I’ve stood in that kitchen while he screamed and swept everything off the counter, and I thought I understood what Parker was dealing with.
I didn’t understand anything. A box cutter.
He’s fourteen. And Parker’s sitting here smiling about it like it’s a funny story about a family pet that got into the trash.
I look at my family in alarm. I want to take my parents aside and have a serious come-to-Jesus about this. This is like about a million kinds of fucked up, and the fact that he thinks this is a funny story makes it worse.
Parker turns to me. “I’m sorry,” he mouths.
Silence descends on the table—something my family has never once been known for. My mother sets down her fork and looks at me, and for once in her life she has nothing to say.
Then Dad clears his throat. “Well, your brother’s lucky to have you, Parker. Not every sibling’s like that. Bree took Lance’s retainer to school for show-and-tell last year.”
“It was a good one,” Bree says.
“She passed it around the whole class.”
“Everybody wanted to hold it.”
“He never wore it again,” Mom says. “Eleven hundred dollars.”
Parker laughs—a startled, cracked sound that hurts to hear—and the table comes back to life around him. I squeeze his wrist. Then look at my plate.
I don’t feel brave. I know what I did was supposed to be brave, but I don’t feel it.
What I did was stand on that lawn and argue with a grown woman until she let me have one of her sons.
And I don’t know if I took Parker because he was the only one I could get, or because he was the only one I wanted.
When Mrs. Bishop calls—and she’s going to call, she has to call—I’m going to tell her that Parker stays with us. And she’ll tell me no, because he isn’t mine. There’s no version of this, no matter how much I run the scenario in my head, where I’m the one who decides.
I want her alive. I want her alive more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. And the day she is, she takes him home to box cutters and rationed food and a bathroom door he isn’t allowed to close.
When he goes back to eating he’s slower, less mechanical, and when I put my hand on the small of his back he pauses for just a second, studying the plate, before he carries on.
Tomorrow he’s eating breakfast if I have to stand over him.