Chapter Two
Saturday, October 9th
Morning of Fenton High homecoming dance
“Good morning, sunshine,” Dad says. It’s ten in the morning. He’s been up for hours. He sounds as bitter as the coffee grounds he’s pouring hot water through, probably for the fourth time. He runs his hand through his gray hair. He’ll dye it brown if he ever gets a job interview. It’s been months.
I yawn, rub my eyes and say nothing. The anger passes quickly. If I had a life like Dad then lost it through forces I couldn’t control, maybe sarcasm would be the only thing I’d have left too.
“What are you doing today?” Dad asks in a tone that implies I’d better have a good answer.
I reach for cereal. I can’t say, Same thing I did until six in the morning, you know, looking for porn pictures of my sister, your daughter. I can’t say it because it’s cruel, and because I couldn’t find any more in the thousand other pix and vids I explored. There was only one set of stills of her from the Homemade Hos #115 DVD. I found the web page of the company who produced it and sent an email asking how to contact the actress in the interracial threesome.
“You deaf like Grandpa Chuck?” Dad asks. “Except you don’t have the excuse. You didn’t hang hoods in a GM plant for thirty years. So, what are you doing to do today, Carson?”
I hate when Dad gets like this, all in my face. He’s not mad at me. He’s just angry. Bored. Out of work two years now and going on forever.
“Looking for a job.” But not right away since I look like hell. My light brown-almost-blond hair sits flat rather than turned up in front and my pathetic attempt at a beard remains stunted, both desperate attempts to attract the attention of actual females.
Dad laughs, a big, hearty yet totally fake laugh. “Good luck with that.”
I fill a cereal bowl with knock-off corn flakes and shovel them into my mouth without milk so I can stop this conversation before I say something mean. I need to find a job because I need money. I always need money but now it’s essential. If—I mean when—I find Caitlin, I’ll bring her home. I’ll save her from the life she’s fallen into somehow. I doubt she’s in Michigan—probably LA or Vegas, the porn capitals of the United States. That means I’ll need travel cash.
Mom walks in the room. She’s dressed up for work, not that she brings in much money. She observes the out of place, bemused look on Dad’s face and smiles. “What’s so funny?”
“Carson says he wants to get a job,” Dad says. Another fake laugh.
Mom frowns. “If you need money,” Mom says, but stops. There’s no money. The auto industry collapse and the human cyclone Caitlin took it all. Parts of the auto industry bounced back, but for older workers like Dad, it left nothing but tread marks. Mom wears her ‘I’ll sell a house today’ smile, a bright yellow dress to match her fake blonde hair and faker gold jewelry.
“No, I need a job.” I walk over to make myself some coffee. A tall, skinny and wired guy like me needs caffeine like Superman needs steroids, but I’m hooked on the rush.
“We’re working on a way to pay for college,” Dad says. If there’s money, and that’s an elephant-sized if, he wants me to attend the engineering program at Michigan Tech in the Upper Peninsula. If not, and if I can get in—another elephant—he’ll settle for Kettering in Flint, but he doesn’t like the ‘changing’ neighborhood, which is code for black. I don’t share my dreams of going to Princeton like my hero F. Scott Fitzgerald or to a small liberal arts school like Oberlin with a strong creative writing program.
“This isn’t about college,” I say. “It’s about earning money for myself, not from you.”
“It might be hard to find a job,” Mom says. She’s sympathetic. She’s knowledgeable about finding jobs. In the almost eighteen years of my life, Mom’s had six careers and ten jobs—or is it six jobs and ten careers? She thinks each one is going to be the dream job that makes us rich. Mom’s as delusional as suckers playing the lottery or selling Amway crap.
“If you work, then I assume you’ll take over car expenses,” Dad says then sips his coffee.
I reply the same, stalling. He’s trying to sound tough, fatherly, but it fails him. They treat me like this delicate thing, afraid I might break. My parents used to be strict. That worked with Carol, backfired with Caitlin. The jury’s out on how it will work with me, their youngest child. The oldest, Carol, was the dream child—Miss Homecoming Queen Honor Roll Student Council. Then on the Boston College Dean’s list and now in San Diego working for a big software company. Second child, the troubled middle one, Caitlin Autumn Banks. A failure, a parent’s nightmare. On the road to becoming a Carol clone until tenth grade when the cyclone of her chaos blew into our lives. I’m the tiebreaker—my parents’ fates, as parents, hang in the balance of my life.
“We had a deal about car expenses,” I push back. I hate to lie or argue with my parents. They need no grief given what Caitlin put them through, especially her aborted senior year.
“Maybe we need a new deal,” Dad says.
“Thank you, FDR,” I joke, but he doesn’t laugh. Our deal is they count my being active in things, like newspaper or the new creative writing club that I helped form, as working. Every hour I put into school activities, they pay me—far under minimum wage—to fund expenses related to driving Mom’s more rust than gray Malibu. That’s also Caitlin’s legacy. Caitlin never attached herself to any club at school, just the wrong cliques and worse boys, then older men.
“Why do you need money?” Mom asks, trying not to sound too concerned, so as not to surrender her upbeat salesperson charade. It’s Saturday and she’s off to sell houses in Flint, which is like trying to sell Bibles at Mecca. If she wants to sell houses, then maybe she could start with ours before the bank takes it away. “Are you in some sort of trouble?” Mom used to be cheerful but Caitlin took Mom’s joy with her when she walked out of the door.
“Mom, everything’s fine.”
She smiles and swallows the biggest lie I’ve ever told.
Over omelets, we continue the eggshell conversations, my parents interested and concerned, but trying not to push too hard. Me, desperately wanting to tell them the truth, or even a part of it, but instead showing them mercy. By the end of breakfast it’s resolved that before she goes to work, Mom will take me to Target to buy interview outfits. I’ll start applying for jobs and they’ll stop asking me why. Given that all Caitlin did was suck money out of the house, you’d think they’d be happy with me bringing some in, but I know it’s not about that. They want—no, they need—me reliant on them so they still have a purpose as parents. But I know I can’t depend on them for this task. I need to find Caitlin without their knowledge or help.
After breakfast, as I walk up the stairs, I remember all the times I got sent to my room when my parents had it out with Caitlin. Even if I told my parents what I saw last night online, I’m not sure it would do any good. They’d be relieved to find out she was alive, but I just know they couldn’t bring her home, especially given her last words from her lips—’I hate you’—and what I guess was her last action with Dad’s gun, click.