Well, I’ve gone and done it now – broke up the family.
It baffles me how on a summer night, someone can be sitting there with her siblings eating hamburgers and Canadian Mints for dessert, thinking this is how happiness feels, this is what it is, nothing will ever change, and then the next afternoon her dad says he’s leaving. Leaving. We were all standing there sweaty and stupid, our mouths open.
At least I’m not a child anymore. This would’ve put a wrench in things if I’d been eight years old or something, but now I’m thirteen and all grown up.
Dad was the only one who cried, at first. I’ve never seen him cry before. I thought he was laughing!
Ha-yuk, ha-yuk, yuk, yuk, yuk.
Me, Bonnie, Keanan, and big fat stupid Charlie were all lined up in the kitchen. Mom was out of the house – conspicuously absent, as they say. Dad said, no he sighed . . . “I have something to tell you, I’m leaving your mother.”
Our mother. As if she and him and us weren’t one thing. Our father; our mother; our family. Then he started to snort, ha-yuk, ha-yuk, and I looked away out the window, where the sun was beating down on the garage door.
A month ago, Dad found Leander in there, all wrapped up in his towel and plastic bag. I hadn’t looked at him for weeks; he was really stinky, his eyeballs mushy, his hair falling out. I’d definitely lost faith in my ability to bring him back from the dead. Just so you know, this has seriously impaired my ability to believe in you. I mean, you really had me there for a while! I don’t see why, if Jesus could channel your almighty power, I can’t. That’s not fair.
Anyway, Dad brought the bag out and said, “What is this?” and I waited for his face to get red and angry like usual, but he just stood there.
I said, “It’s my guinea pig.”
“The one from last winter?”
The one from last winter? The only one – my best friend, my little buddy, Leander.
“I wanted to bury him,” I answered, “instead of having him taken away to the dump.”
He turned his back, walked away. Next thing I knew he was going to the back of the yard with a shovel, where he dug a deep hole and dropped the bag in. He passed by me again, wiping his forehead, as I stood there. I didn’t even feel sad.
“Stunk the whole place up,” Dad muttered.
When I came back from staring at the garage, there he was bawling. Guffawing, sobbing, gnashing. Then Bonnie started to cry. Why the heck was she crying? You know how much she hates Dad. The sight of her crying made me feel sick to my stomach. I started crying too, like a dork. What was I crying for – my dad, my mom, my sister, myself? No, for nothing. For the sheer discomfort and grossness of it all. Bonnie wrapped her arms around me, which felt strange. I don’t enjoy being hugged by people who hate me otherwise.
Then I couldn’t help it, I had this weird thought. I’ll bet finding an old rotten guinea pig in the corner of the garage was what did him in, my dad. It must have put him over the edge. I know, because he didn’t blow up. He just stood there looking tired. Like he was going over the edge.
Over the edge into what?
Into leaving, of course.
Dad’s leaving.
Now that I’ve gotten used to the fact, I’m a little excited. Mom and Dad are so horrible and tight around each other. Every ordinary conversation is like a looming cloud that threatens to expand into a rainstorm. We can feel the thunder rumbling underneath their words. When they explode at one another, we just scatter like frightened rodents. Off we go, into the bushes.
It should be better with him gone. I can tell that’s what Mom is thinking. Secretly, even though she’s acting all sore and hurt about it. Bonnie told me Mom has been looking for a house to rent, and she’s going full time at the Howey Bay Pet Shop that’s run by our family friends Harold and Sharla. We’ve got church, friends, community, and a new home. Things will be relaxed – no more fighting, no more long cold silences. I hope.
Part of me is disappointed, though. They just renewed their vows last year, right in front of two ministers, in front of you! What does that mean, if anything? And you just sit there doing nothing. It makes me think you never wanted them to stay married at all, in which case, why on earth did you put them together in the first place? Your ways confuse me. I remember sitting up late at night through last winter, feeling so bad that I wanted to burn myself with the iron, and I ended up listening to Motley Crüe and writing poetry and thinking about my terrible family and all my woes.
I used to say to myself, Why am I crying? There’s nothing to cry about. And that’s what I say to myself now . . . But still, I cry. My parents are sleeping apart and everyone is supposed to be packing their things up. I barely talk to my siblings and go around hoping they all leave me alone, I hate them and they’re mean. Nothing is a comfort except the idea of living in a new house closer to downtown Howey Bay and no more fighting.
That said, it’s none too comfortable that we’re selling everything in the house. Dad got rid of his dog that Mom gave him for Christmas two years ago. Some of the furniture and one of the cars. Last week, I was sitting in my room downstairs, reading, and my mother came in with two men. She said, “They’ve come to take your bed.”
“What?” I looked down at myself, at the bed I was sitting on.
“Your bed. We’ve sold your bed.”
All I could do was get up. I took my book and blankets off the bed. I sat in a corner watching them take it apart and carry it out, piece by piece. I was stunned. Somehow, in all the hullaballoo, my parents had forgotten to tell me.
“I’m sorry, honey,” said Mom, realizing her mistake.
My room felt barren after those strangers left. The walls were still plastered with posters of my favourite rock bands, and my desk had stayed too. I cried like a baby for a whole day and night. Into the wee hours of the morning I ripped everything off the walls, until they were bare and open like the floor. If we’re getting out of here, we’re getting out, I told myself. I slept on a piece of foam.
I’ve been feeling emptier as our house loses its furniture piece by piece. I can’t tell if it’s because everything is changing so fast, or if I really wish my parents would stay together. Most of the time, I’ve gone around with the secret notion that they’ll realize they can’t split up, they just can’t. They’ve been through too much together, they’ve made holy promises. Maybe they just needed to try on the thought of divorce. I wake up expecting them to sit us down for another talk, this time to say sorry for the big inconvenience, we’re staying together after all.
I’m slowly realizing that’s not going to happen. Pretty soon, my dad will be gone. Mom gets happier and sadder every day; they don’t even fight anymore. We all have a sense of relief and excitement.
Dad left, and Mom cried for days. I guess maybe she couldn’t really believe it was going to happen either. She probably kept waiting for him to cave in and say, “Marisol … you’re my true love. I could never really leave you!”
But there he went. He stood at the front door with nothing but a couple of suitcases. Everything else had been sold, or what was left we’d be bringing it to the new place within the next couple of weeks. They’d called each other’s bluff alright.
“Well, goodbye, kids,” he said with a sad kind of smirk, as if his leaving felt as possible as it did awkward. He hugged us one by one. He tried to give me a kiss on the lips, but for some reason I balked and turned my cheek to him.