The Vast Fields of Ordinary (28 page)

“In case of any teeth-shatteringly good times.”

“—the alarm company, the Savages’. I think that’s it. And don’t say
teeth-shattering
. It makes me nervous.”

“911?” my dad asked.

“911 is on there,” my mom said, totally missing the joke.

“Super,” I said. “We’re set.”

“I can’t think of anything else,” my mother said.

She looked nervous. Pensive. It would’ve been terrible form for her to bust out a pill right then and there, but I’m sure she was itching to do just that. So I gave her another hug.

“I’ll be fine, Mom,” I said into the side of her head, into her hair. When did I get taller than her? I always thought that at times like this. “Have a good time. Don’t worry about me.”

“Dade’ll be fine,” my father said. “Man of the house.” He opened up the front door and a surge of warm air entered the house. I helped them take their luggage out to the driveway, where my father’s Audi was parked. He’d gone out early that morning and had it washed, as if it were important that their trip to the airport be in a sparkling car. That was how my father’s mind worked. The quest to make things perfect must be perfect in all respects.

My mother put her sunglasses on before getting in the car. She rolled down the window and mouthed good-bye as they were backing out.

“I love you, Dade,” she added. “Very much.”

My father lifted his hand from the steering wheel and waved at me like I was some kind motorist who’d just allowed him to merge into his lane. I waved back as they pulled into the street, straightened out, and drove away.

From my pocket came the sound of my new Vas Deferens ringtone. A text message from Alex.

That week the house felt more like home than it ever had before. Having my parents and their problems out of the house made me realize how much space they took up.

I was making me and Alex breakfast at one p.m. in nothing but my bathing suit and I was suddenly overcome with the urge to stop everything and allow myself time to breathe and simply exist. I just stood there staring at the scrambled eggs. A million watts of sunlight were blasting through every window, and I could feel the blood moving through my body and sustaining my existence. Alex sauntered in from the backyard, the blue and yellow plaid bathing suit he borrowed from my father dripping water on the floor. He came up behind me and put his arms around my waist and kissed my bare shoulder.

“You’re such a good housewife,” he murmured into the back of my neck.

“Don’t interrupt,” I said, nudging him away. “Scrambled eggs are an art. I need focus.”

He tugged at my bathing suit. “I wanna play.”

“Stop,” I said. “I need
focus
.”

“That’s not what you need. You need to play.”

I tried elbowing him away several times, but he kept tugging at my suit. I finally thought
Screw the eggs
and moved the pan to an unlit burner.

We made frozen margaritas and took turns doing readings from my mother’s self-help books while standing on top of the kitchen table. We read from
Finding Your Awareness
,
The Secrets of Intuition
, and
How Can I Love Me if I Don’t Even Know Me?

“‘What one must realize,’” Alex read in a fake British accent, “‘is that in the absence of hope, there lies hope itself. The vast expanse that many people mistake for a desert of utter hopeless-ness and despair is actually the rich field from which a bountiful crop of faith will eventually spring. And like any other crop, faith needs time to grow. And time, dear friend, is your friend too.’”

“I hate the way he refers to his readers as his friends.” I was leaning back in my chair and stirring my margarita with a grape Popsicle. “It’s so patronizing.”

He held up the back cover of the book to show me the author photo. He was a mustached man with giant red-framed eyeglasses. “Dude, Dr. Harris B. Harris is your friend. He wants to help you. And me. He wants to help us.”

We kept getting calls on the landline from a blocked number. Sometimes there were as many as five or six a day. I’d answer and there’d be only a long silence as I asked who it was, what they wanted, and then finally a click as the caller hung up. The first few times I thought it was my parents trying unsuccessfully to reach me from somewhere abroad. But after a while I ditched that theory and assumed it was Pablo or Fessica or maybe even Vicki.

“Maybe it’s Jenny Moore,” Alex once said before making a ghostly moaning noise and waving his arms around. I told him it wasn’t funny, but he just laughed and rolled his eyes and told me to lighten up.

Once we got one of these calls at five in the morning. Alex was passed out next to me in bed. I deliberated not answering, but with each one came the fresh hope that after the call I’d realize something that I hadn’t before. Maybe something basic like the caller’s identity. Maybe something deeper and more cosmic.

“Who is this?” I asked the silent void. “Seriously. You’re not accomplishing anything by just calling and not saying anything. Tell me what you want.”

No sound. Not even breathing. At least there would’ve been comfort in that. I would’ve known that it was an actual human being on the other end. But now every time we got a call, I thought of Alex’s sarcastic suggestion that it was Jenny Moore. The idea of this sent a shiver down my spine.

“Jenny?” I said.

The person hung up immediately.

Alex introduced me to
The Difference Between Wright and Wong
, a cop show from the early eighties that they showed at three thirty a.m. on channel 321.

“This is easily one of the most underrated shows in the history of television,” he said. We were on the floor of the family room in a tangle of sheets, blankets, and pillows. I was struggling to keep my eyes open, but he was wide-awake. The opening sequence had just begun and already he was completely immersed. “I used to watch this show with my dad. He loved it. I met the actor who played Detective David Wright at the state fair when I was, like, seven. I bet I still have his autographed picture somewhere. God, what I would give to get this channel at my grandma’s place.”

The two detectives were speeding through Chinatown on a little black moped. Detective Wong was driving and Detective Wright was holding on to his waist and shooting at a black sedan that was chasing them. The horns in the chase music kept pulling me out of sleep.

“Which would you rather be?” Alex asked. “Wright or Wong?”

My eyes were barely open. “I don’t know. I’ve only seen, like, two half episodes in my entire life.”

“I think you’d be Wright. Wright is careful, levelheaded. He’s the partner that talks to the chief when shit goes wrong, like when a stakeout ends with a giant explosion and a dead hooker. Only Wright can talk him down. And Wong knows the Chinese underworld really well, sorta like I know the Cedarville underworld. So I think it fits.”

I thought about pointing out that Dingo and his gang of loser friends could hardly be referred to as the Cedarville underworld, but I fell asleep before I could.

That night I dreamt it was me and him on that moped. We were flying through a bright neon Chinatown of my mind. There were puddles in the street and I was having trouble steering the bike. It leaned in ways that defied gravity. It was all I could do to hang on. Even in my dreams there was music: cheesy horns, intense percussion, and a bass guitar humping away at a single note. “You’re such a good housewife,” Alex whispered into my ear before going back to shooting at the invisible thing following us.

Lucy and Jay came and went as they pleased. The house became our post-adolescent clubhouse. There were epic barbeques at dusk. There were marathon Ouija board sessions between the four of us in my mother’s meditation room, where we tried to conjure the ghosts of dead rock stars and poets.

One night Alex and Jay stayed up late doing God knows what while Lucy and I slept upstairs. I woke the next morning to find a long crack in the sliding glass door. Alex and Jay were eating frosted cereal in the kitchen, bags under their bloodshot eyes.

“What happened?” I exclaimed. “My parents are gonna kill me!”

“He fell,” Jay said.

“I fell,” Alex repeated. “My head did that.”

I didn’t know if believed them or not, but I quickly found myself thinking that maybe I didn’t want to know.

“This needs to be fixed,” I said.

“I already called some glass place,” Alex said. “They’ll be here between two and four. I’ll pay for it.”

“Oh,” I said. I hadn’t expected this, but it was a pleasant surprise. It still wasn’t enough to completely smother my irritation.

I leaned against the counter and rubbed my eyes. This was not the best way to wake up. They went on eating their cereal in silence. I found myself glaring at Jay more than Alex. I felt a bit jealous of Jay, jealous that the two of them had been up all night together wreaking havoc in the house. I looked over at the refrigerator and noticed it was covered with magnetic letters. Amongst the jumbled nonsense someone had spelled
Dade Kincaid is not afraid
.

“Where did those come from?” I asked. “Did you go out and
buy
refrigerator magnets last night?”

The two of them looked dumbly at the phrase spelled out on the fridge.

“I’m not sure,” Alex said slowly. He paused for a moment. “I don’t think so, although a chunk of last night is a bit fuzzy.”

“To say the least,” Jay said.

“But I’m thinking yes,” Alex said. “We must have.”

“At least you’re thinking,” Jay said. “That’s more than I can say for myself.”