Kids of Appetite by David Arnold

few minutes later Margo brought the salads. It had been a while since our last Chapter, so we ate in silence for the most part, each of usacclimating to the presence of another person at the table. Once done with the salads and cheese fries, we passed around the two items from the urn: the letter and the photograph.
    I read a portion of it aloud. “‘You and Victor are my North, South, East, and West. You are my Due Everywhere
.
’” What I wanted to say was,
This is the sweetest fucking thing I’ve ever read
, but all that came out was, “Doris is your mother?”
    Vic nodded, and I read aloud the locations on the list. “‘Hang me from the Parlour, toss me off the Palisades, bury me in the smoking bricks of our first kiss, drown me in our wishing well, drop me from the top of our rock.’ Well, the Parlour we know. The Palisades are the cliffs, I assume.”
    Baz nodded. “That one should be easy enough. We can get there from Englewood.” He looked across the table at Vic. “Do you have any idea about the other three places?”
    â€œNo,” he said, staring into his empty glass.
    I passed the letter across the table; Coco grabbed it with cheesy hands and read it out loud between bites. When she got to the closing, she paused. “‘Till we’re old-new.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œIt’s something they used to say,” said Vic. “I don’t really— I don’t know what it means.”
    Vic’s mannerisms, the tone of both language and body, suggested some deep embarrassment, as if we’d just broadcast his personal diary throughout the country. Though there was something intensely personal about the letter, his father’s “Terminal Note.”
    Zuz passed the Polaroid to me.
    â€œWho put these things in your father’s urn?” asked Baz. “And why would they do such a thing?”
    â€œMom must have,” he said. “The list, the photo, the ashes. She needed to keep all of him together, I think. Everythingin our house is different now. But those things are still him. Those things haven’t changed.”
    In the photograph, Vic’s parents are on a rooftop, the familiar skyline of New York City behind them. There was a fair resemblance between Vic and his parents, but I wondered how much stronger it might have been were it not for the wall of hair he hid behind like a shield, a divider between himself and the world around him.
    â€œThey look really happy,” I said, looking back at the picture.
    Vic pushed his glass away, reached across the table, took the Polaroid out of my hands. Just then Margo appeared with a tray full of burgers, setting a plate in front of each of us. She disappeared with an “
Au revoir, mes petits
gourmands
,” but I barely heard her. I watched Vic as he stared at that Polaroid in his hands, and I wondered what he was thinking.

VIC
    I bet Mom asked a complete stranger to take this picture. She was always doing that, asking strangers to take photos.
    Strangers stared hardest.
    It was a real problem for me.
    â€œThey
were
happy,” I said. “We were happy.”
    I
was happy.
    Now? Shit. Singapore.
    I put the photo down, stared at the burger in front of me. The weird waitress was gone, but no one was eating. I thought about what Baz had said, about the Parlour being atattoo shop, and in my Land of Nothingness I saw two compasses pointed at each other.
So we never get lost
, Dad used to say.
    I knew Baz was right about it being a tattoo shop. It made so much sense. Which meant we would calmly finish our food and make our way to the Parlour, where I would begin a process whose end was
the
end. Dad’s end.
    And I felt like this: a shaken bottle of champagne; an angry volcano tired of humans building silly little houses on my arms and legs like I didn’t exist, like I couldn’t wipe them out whenever I wanted. I felt full