the rude noise he made into the phone.
“Hi, Marty! What’s up?”
“Your butt!”
“What are you doing answering the phone?”
“Poo-pee! Poo-pee!”
“Marty! Can you pass the phone to Mom, please?”
I heard a huge crash and a shriek, then Mom’s voice: “Hello, Vivian, sorry about that. How are you? How’s London?”
I heard a lot of crying and yelling in the background—my dad, yelling; Marty crying.
“Mom! I’m having a great time.”
“And are you all settled in at that hostel?”
“Uh huh. It’s okay. Some weird people, but whatever. Listen! London is amazing. Just like I’d hoped.”
“That’s great. Are you calling from one of those red British phone booths?”
“Uh, I’m at a friend’s house. This girl I met, uh, Jill.”
“How nice of her to let you use her phone! I’d like to say hello to her.”
“It’s a pay phone, Mom, just in her house. Some weird British setup. And she’s in the bathroom right now. So I’ll tell her . . . oh, I’m really sorry, I’m running out of pound coins, I can’t talk anymore. Say hi to Dad for me, okay?”
“Wait a minute; I had such a funny thing happen this week with the dishwasher repairman, I just have to tell you. So the dishwasher just stopped working on Tuesday—one day it was working just fine, and then the next, it made this horrible grinding noise . . .”
“Mom, that’s sounds really interesting, but I have to go.”
“Hold on, I’m almost done. So, I’d press the button and nothing would happen except for that noise, it sounded like a cat coughing up a hairball, honestly. So I called Appliance Experts, they’re always so nice--”
“I told you, I’m out of coins here. Tell me next time, okay?” She was still talking as I hung up the phone.
Mom talked a lot, but there was so much she didn’t say. Whitewashing the real issues with pointless stories. At home, I would often find her in the kitchen, reading the ingredients of cleaning supplies, mouthing “oxymethylbutyloxinate” just for something to do. If she was finished with the morning paper and still eating breakfast, she’d read the nutritional information on cereal boxes. She was never not busy.
Talking with my family always made me want to take a nap—I was slammed with mental exhaustion afterward.
There had been a mistake about five years ago, and here was Marty. My mom was almost fifty. She’d thought she was through with raising kids, and was into all these middle-aged-lady activities like going on local garden tours with friends who already did the hair-helmet thing—aging hair bouffanted into an old-lady cloud around their heads.
But it turned out she wasn’t post-menopausal after all, and now there was a maniac kid running around the house, this unwanted child who I barely got to know before escaping to my faraway college. Marty was hyperactive; he was always throwing things, breaking things, and falling down our rickety staircase and smashing his face up. And my mom and dad, never the most affectionate parents a person might hope for, grew ever more distant, acting around the house as if each inhabitant they encountered was an unwelcome surprise visitor.
At home for vacations, I’d sometimes overhear Mom on the phone, updating friends about us. At least five straight minutes of talk about my nineteen-year-old brother Alex. How successful he was, how proud she was, basking in the reflected glory of having a straight-A kid going to an Ivy League school. What she never said was: Alex was gone. He was spending the summer in Boston; he had left for Harvard last fall and hadn’t looked back. He’d finagled a summer job at State Street Bank, handling back-office money market transactions, and was living in an MIT fraternity house that rented its rooms for cheap in the summer. I knew that he wasn’t coming back. Not just for the summer. Never.
I understood why. And I almost didn’t mind that he emailed me less and less often, too. We’d been
“Hi, Marty! What’s up?”
“Your butt!”
“What are you doing answering the phone?”
“Poo-pee! Poo-pee!”
“Marty! Can you pass the phone to Mom, please?”
I heard a huge crash and a shriek, then Mom’s voice: “Hello, Vivian, sorry about that. How are you? How’s London?”
I heard a lot of crying and yelling in the background—my dad, yelling; Marty crying.
“Mom! I’m having a great time.”
“And are you all settled in at that hostel?”
“Uh huh. It’s okay. Some weird people, but whatever. Listen! London is amazing. Just like I’d hoped.”
“That’s great. Are you calling from one of those red British phone booths?”
“Uh, I’m at a friend’s house. This girl I met, uh, Jill.”
“How nice of her to let you use her phone! I’d like to say hello to her.”
“It’s a pay phone, Mom, just in her house. Some weird British setup. And she’s in the bathroom right now. So I’ll tell her . . . oh, I’m really sorry, I’m running out of pound coins, I can’t talk anymore. Say hi to Dad for me, okay?”
“Wait a minute; I had such a funny thing happen this week with the dishwasher repairman, I just have to tell you. So the dishwasher just stopped working on Tuesday—one day it was working just fine, and then the next, it made this horrible grinding noise . . .”
“Mom, that’s sounds really interesting, but I have to go.”
“Hold on, I’m almost done. So, I’d press the button and nothing would happen except for that noise, it sounded like a cat coughing up a hairball, honestly. So I called Appliance Experts, they’re always so nice--”
“I told you, I’m out of coins here. Tell me next time, okay?” She was still talking as I hung up the phone.
Mom talked a lot, but there was so much she didn’t say. Whitewashing the real issues with pointless stories. At home, I would often find her in the kitchen, reading the ingredients of cleaning supplies, mouthing “oxymethylbutyloxinate” just for something to do. If she was finished with the morning paper and still eating breakfast, she’d read the nutritional information on cereal boxes. She was never not busy.
Talking with my family always made me want to take a nap—I was slammed with mental exhaustion afterward.
There had been a mistake about five years ago, and here was Marty. My mom was almost fifty. She’d thought she was through with raising kids, and was into all these middle-aged-lady activities like going on local garden tours with friends who already did the hair-helmet thing—aging hair bouffanted into an old-lady cloud around their heads.
But it turned out she wasn’t post-menopausal after all, and now there was a maniac kid running around the house, this unwanted child who I barely got to know before escaping to my faraway college. Marty was hyperactive; he was always throwing things, breaking things, and falling down our rickety staircase and smashing his face up. And my mom and dad, never the most affectionate parents a person might hope for, grew ever more distant, acting around the house as if each inhabitant they encountered was an unwelcome surprise visitor.
At home for vacations, I’d sometimes overhear Mom on the phone, updating friends about us. At least five straight minutes of talk about my nineteen-year-old brother Alex. How successful he was, how proud she was, basking in the reflected glory of having a straight-A kid going to an Ivy League school. What she never said was: Alex was gone. He was spending the summer in Boston; he had left for Harvard last fall and hadn’t looked back. He’d finagled a summer job at State Street Bank, handling back-office money market transactions, and was living in an MIT fraternity house that rented its rooms for cheap in the summer. I knew that he wasn’t coming back. Not just for the summer. Never.
I understood why. And I almost didn’t mind that he emailed me less and less often, too. We’d been
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