handle anything he has to tell me. Did he really think he could keep these truths from me? I am an investigative journalist! Though apparently I have not been a very good one these past few months.
I am finished. I have clumps of paint stuck in the down of my arms and my jeans are soggy, but the car looks pretty good. In fact, the car looks phenomenal.
Henry’s family’s lobster buoy was cream-colored. It had two orange stripes circling the middle, where the form begins to taper. It had a light green nose. I step outside. The rain has stopped. The best way to dry a fresh coat of paint, the way I understand it, is a swift breeze.
14
Quinn
I drive the living, mewling Derek Jeter back home and exchange him for his stuffed double with as little explanation as possible. I head to the Uncle, taxidermied mystery cat under my arm.
I’m barely in the door when I hear Jethro calling, “A beer for my friend!”
I put the taxi-cat on the bar. “Who is this?” I say.
“My mother had many tabbies,” Jethro says. “But I believe this is Agatha. She passed in ’76.”
“You taxidermied your mother’s cats?”
“She loved them,” he says. “And it helped her remember. It’s a highly respected science and pastime.”
I moan. My grandfather was a taxidermist and my father is an asshole and I’ve fucked up my article so badly I can’t even claim to have moved the family interest along to journalism. What happened to my plan, the screed and the guitar? It was such a good plan and then . . . what did I say I was Leah for? The way Carter looked at me like he knew me from somewhere. His bare feet. His small, clean house. Forget about it. Think about anything else.
I think of all the things neither Woodward nor Bernstein would have done:
1. Forget to write anything down
2. Say “cat slaughter”
3. Accept gifts from an interviewee suspected of a crime
4. Touch an interviewee (unless she was pretty and withholding information)
I’m lousy at this, is the truth. I keep on telling myself that if I stick with writing articles, one of these days I’ll just become a good journalist. But maybe it doesn’t work that way. Maybe I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.
The summer I was eighteen my mom was in the hospital for the first time. We didn’t know it was cancer for the first month. A nervous breakdown, is what they called it. To do with being a single parent and Carter abandoning her when I was so small. Raising a teenager all alone? No wonder the issues have come to a head now, the nurses said.
I was angry, and we thought she was going crazy, so we had her in the crazy wing. She slept most of the day, so there wasn’t shit to do except sit in the lounge and watch the TV attached to the wall. I sat there and stewed over all the ways this was probably Carter’s fault. If he’d only married Marta in some flowery ceremony instead of all that free love crap, maybe he’d have stayed. If only that damn song, the song about her, hadn’t done quite so well. Maybe then he’d have lived with Marta instead of singing about her on a nationwide tour and never phoning. If anything else had happened, I thought, and he was here, then at least there would be someone who knew what to do. How to fix her.
In the lounge, I watched game shows. Password was my favorite. I loved how ridiculous the clues were and how the announcer would whisper the words to the viewer so the contestants couldn’t hear. The password is, he would say, automobile . The password is Alka-Seltzer . God, I loved that whisper. I was convinced the whisper would tell me what was wrong with my mother if I listened carefully enough. Shared it quietly, just between the two of us.
Then one day a nurse brought in this old geezer in a wheelchair. She rolled his chair right next to mine. She shut off the game show.
Hey, I said. Don’t you wanna know if Carol Burnett can get him to say “carnival”?
He’ll never get it, the guy said. And it’s time
I am finished. I have clumps of paint stuck in the down of my arms and my jeans are soggy, but the car looks pretty good. In fact, the car looks phenomenal.
Henry’s family’s lobster buoy was cream-colored. It had two orange stripes circling the middle, where the form begins to taper. It had a light green nose. I step outside. The rain has stopped. The best way to dry a fresh coat of paint, the way I understand it, is a swift breeze.
14
Quinn
I drive the living, mewling Derek Jeter back home and exchange him for his stuffed double with as little explanation as possible. I head to the Uncle, taxidermied mystery cat under my arm.
I’m barely in the door when I hear Jethro calling, “A beer for my friend!”
I put the taxi-cat on the bar. “Who is this?” I say.
“My mother had many tabbies,” Jethro says. “But I believe this is Agatha. She passed in ’76.”
“You taxidermied your mother’s cats?”
“She loved them,” he says. “And it helped her remember. It’s a highly respected science and pastime.”
I moan. My grandfather was a taxidermist and my father is an asshole and I’ve fucked up my article so badly I can’t even claim to have moved the family interest along to journalism. What happened to my plan, the screed and the guitar? It was such a good plan and then . . . what did I say I was Leah for? The way Carter looked at me like he knew me from somewhere. His bare feet. His small, clean house. Forget about it. Think about anything else.
I think of all the things neither Woodward nor Bernstein would have done:
1. Forget to write anything down
2. Say “cat slaughter”
3. Accept gifts from an interviewee suspected of a crime
4. Touch an interviewee (unless she was pretty and withholding information)
I’m lousy at this, is the truth. I keep on telling myself that if I stick with writing articles, one of these days I’ll just become a good journalist. But maybe it doesn’t work that way. Maybe I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.
The summer I was eighteen my mom was in the hospital for the first time. We didn’t know it was cancer for the first month. A nervous breakdown, is what they called it. To do with being a single parent and Carter abandoning her when I was so small. Raising a teenager all alone? No wonder the issues have come to a head now, the nurses said.
I was angry, and we thought she was going crazy, so we had her in the crazy wing. She slept most of the day, so there wasn’t shit to do except sit in the lounge and watch the TV attached to the wall. I sat there and stewed over all the ways this was probably Carter’s fault. If he’d only married Marta in some flowery ceremony instead of all that free love crap, maybe he’d have stayed. If only that damn song, the song about her, hadn’t done quite so well. Maybe then he’d have lived with Marta instead of singing about her on a nationwide tour and never phoning. If anything else had happened, I thought, and he was here, then at least there would be someone who knew what to do. How to fix her.
In the lounge, I watched game shows. Password was my favorite. I loved how ridiculous the clues were and how the announcer would whisper the words to the viewer so the contestants couldn’t hear. The password is, he would say, automobile . The password is Alka-Seltzer . God, I loved that whisper. I was convinced the whisper would tell me what was wrong with my mother if I listened carefully enough. Shared it quietly, just between the two of us.
Then one day a nurse brought in this old geezer in a wheelchair. She rolled his chair right next to mine. She shut off the game show.
Hey, I said. Don’t you wanna know if Carol Burnett can get him to say “carnival”?
He’ll never get it, the guy said. And it’s time
Similar Books
