HOW I LOST YOU

CHAPTER FIVE

Chapter Five

While it rained outside, Indie and Dad cooked. James and I sat on the floor in the living room, playing Mom’s original version of Super Mario Brothers on the old Nintendo system. She’d pulled it out of the basement for a garage sale a few weeks before, but James refused to let her sell it. We’d become obsessed.

From the kitchen, the scent of bacon wafted out, with puffs of smoke filling the living room. Fat sizzled on the griddle. Saturday morning breakfasts were feasts and, unlike most meals at our house, healthy wasn’t an option. Every Saturday, Dad’s manager opened Splatterfest and ran it on his own all day. Mom and Dad firmly believed in countering working out and healthy eating with a weekly morning of overindulgence. Attendance and gluttony were mandatory. Friends were encouraged.

James used his controller to race Mario through the Mushroom Kingdom on screen. “Damn!”

I glanced at the TV. He’d lost another life.

“I hear you’re going to the Seattle show.” He glanced at me, taking his attention from the game for a second. “Shoot!” he shouted when he glanced back. He’d accidentally entered Minus World on the game and would stay there until he ran out of lives.

“You should come with us! We don’t have an extra ticket for the party, but we could try to get one. And you could come to the tradeshow for sure.”

“Not my scene, Jelly Bean. Plus me sharing a hotel room with you and your mom and Kya.” He shuddered. “Too much estrogen.”

His battle with the video game went on until Mom’s voice interrupted. She walked down the stairs toward the living room and burst into a spontaneous song. Loudly. She walked to James and me, incorporating us into her song. “Stop playing games and come eat,” she sang, and stepped over top of us, singing on about monkey pancakes.

Neither one of us even flinched. She’d been abusing hits from the radio, making up her own words, and singing at the top of her lungs for as long as I could remember. I don’t know how many verses I’d listened to about the horrors of menopause or about starting a paintball business in your retirement years. Mom turned everything into a wacky song.

She wore her favorite new T-shirt. Black with tiny white writing. Sarcasm is a service I offer for free. She’d ordered it for herself from eBay. No wonder I’d craved affection as a kid. I turned the game off. James and I stood and followed Mom to the kitchen.

At the stove, Dad wore his Saturday morning apron with a picture of a woman’s body in a bikini. Indie stood at the table, placing down a plate piled high with bacon. In a glass jar in the middle of the table, an arrangement of lavender celebrated our cheery ritual.

Mom slid up beside Dad and patted him on the rear. He wiggled his butt at her and she moved to the cupboard to get coffee cups. We all put aside any differences on Saturday mornings. It was family time and we all got along, whether we wanted to or not. “Coffee? Indie? James?” She didn’t ask me since she knew I couldn’t stand the taste. I went to the fridge to pull out orange juice and then grabbed some glasses and set them down on the table that Indie had already set. Saturday was man-day in the kitchen.

“Not a lot of kids showed up for the new paintball league,” Dad said to all of us from the griddle, where he was pouring batter into his coveted monkey-pancake pan. Around the pancakes, he was scrambling up a huge pile of eggs. Indie scooted past me to grab toast that popped up from the toaster and spread butter across the top.

“I’m sure there’re more pseudo-criminals needing to rehearse for future years of delinquency.” James slid into a chair at the kitchen table. “No offense, Mr. Black.”