The Honey Bus. Meredith May

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      I imagine they tried at first to manage their squabbles, but eventually their disagreements multiplied and spread like a cancer until they had trapped themselves inside one big argument. Now Mom’s shouting routinely pierced the walls we shared with the neighbors, so their problems had undoubtedly become public.

      I opened my eyes and saw Mom standing there in position, ready to throw the pot of American chop suey. Their threats arrowed back and forth, back and forth, his restrained monotone mixing with her rising falsetto until their words blended into a high-pitched ringing in my ears. I tried to make it go away by softly humming “Yellow Submarine.” It’s the song Dad and I sang together with wooden spoons as our microphones. Back when music filled our house. Dad recorded every Beatles song off the radio or vinyl records onto spools of tape, which he kept in bone-colored plastic cases on the bookshelf, lined up like teeth. He listened to tapes on his reel-to-reel player, and lately he preferred “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” the one about the man who bludgeoned his enemies to death, blasting it from the living room until Mom inevitably told him to turn that racket down.

      I was somewhere in the second verse when I saw her lift her arm, and the pot handle released from her palm seemingly in slow motion. Dad ducked, and our leftover dinner flashed through the air and slapped into the wall, where it slid down, leaving a slick behind as it pooled with the peppercorns on the floor. Dad picked the pot up from near his foot and stood, his whole body quivering with silent rage. He dropped the pot onto the table with a loud thud, not even bothering to put it on a hot plate like he was supposed to. Matthew was wailing now, lifting his arms to be picked up, and Mom went to him, as if nothing had just happened. She bounced Matthew, shushing softly into his ear, her back to Dad and me. Dad turned on his heel and escaped to the attic, where he would spend the night tapping out Morse code on his ham radio in conversation with polite strangers.

      I didn’t bother asking permission to leave the dinner table. I made a run for the staircase, two-stepped it up to my room and slammed the door. I pulled my Flintstones bedspread off and dragged it under my bouncy horse. It was a plastic horse held aloft by four coiled springs—one on each leg attached to a metal frame. I put my feet under its felt belly, and pushed it up and down until I’d established a soothing rhythm. I curtained my eyes with my shoulder-length hair, blotting out reality so that I could almost believe that I was safe inside a yellow submarine, below the surface, alone, and so far down I couldn’t hear any voices at all.

      Although I didn’t understand why my parents fought so much, deep down I understood that something significant was shifting inside our house. Dad had stopped using his words, and Mom had started using too many. I tried to make sense of it by gleaning bits of information I overheard whenever my godmother, Betty, dropped by while Dad was at work. Mom and Betty would sit on the couch and talk about all sorts of things while Betty would play with my hair. Matthew would go down for his nap, and I’d sit on the carpet between their legs where Betty could reach down and absentmindedly wind long strands of my brown hair around her fingers. She’d twist my locks into knotted snakes and then let it unfurl, over and over, while she and Mom worked out their problems. She’d coil my hair tight, then release. Twist, tug, release. Twist, tug, release. It felt like getting a deep itch scratched, a tingling scalp massage that could go on as long as it took them to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes.

      They talked the afternoons away, and I stayed so quiet that they forgot about me and got to discussing things I probably shouldn’t have heard. Mostly I learned that men are disappointing. That they promise the moon, but then don’t bring home enough money for groceries. I overheard Mom say that Dad might lose his job because his boss was doing something called “downsizing.”

      “Layoffs?” Betty asked. Twist, tug, twist, tug.

      “Apparently,” Mom said. “They’re letting all the junior engineers go.”

      “Shit on a shingle.”

      “You said it.”

      “What will you do?” Twist, tug.

      “Hell if I know.”

      Betty tugged on my hair once more and let it uncoil from her index finger. I stayed statue quiet, ear hustling. They were silent for a few minutes, and Betty switched to scratching my scalp, sending pollywogs of ecstasy squiggling down my neck. Mom got up and fetched two more Tab sodas from the fridge and cracked them open, handing one to Betty. Mom plunked back down onto the sofa and put her feet up on the sagging ottoman. She sighed so hard it sounded like she was deflating.

      “Honestly, Betty, I don’t think marriage is all it’s cracked up to be. I’m thirty and feel like ninety.”

      Betty shifted her heavy legs, unsticking them from the Naugahyde and stretching them out lengthwise. She attempted a forward bend, but couldn’t reach her hands much past her knees. She grunted with effort and sat back up. She pushed aside the curtains and looked out the window.

      “You think being single is all rainbows and unicorns?”

      Mom blew a wedge of smoke out one side of her mouth and dropped her stub into an empty pink soda can where it hissed out. “At the rate this is going,” Mom said, “I’d be happy to change places.”

      Betty turned back and looked directly at Mom, to make sure she had her full attention. “Sometimes it’s lonely.”

      “It’s better to be lonely alone than lonely married.”

      Betty cocked an eyebrow at Mom as if to say she wanted proof. Mom launched into Exhibit A—the time she was returning from a walk with me in the buggy, and Dad hollered down to her from the upstairs window to come quick. Terrified something was wrong with Matthew, she left me in the buggy on the sidewalk and streaked into the house and up the stairs, only to find the crisis was a diaper that needed changing.

      Mom’s voice turned indignant. “Isn’t child rearing supposed to be fifty-fifty?”

      Betty let out a low commiserating whistle. I wanted to ask if Mom ever went back outside for me in the buggy, but knew it wasn’t the time to remind them I was listening.t

      “Betty, listen to me. Don’t marry anyone without first asking one crucial question.”

      Betty’s fingers froze in my hair temporarily, waiting for the secret to marital bliss.

      “Ask if he’s willing to change diapers. Depending on his answer, he’ll treat you as his equal, or his employee.”

      I lifted my head like a cat to prod Betty’s fingertips and remind her of her job. Her fingers automatically hooked a strand of my hair and began winding it into a knot. I knew that I was not to repeat anything that was said on the couch. It made me feel a little squirmy to eavesdrop on them, but I liked the head scratching too much to pull myself away.

      I must have fallen asleep under the bouncy horse, because I didn’t remember how I got into bed when Mom pushed open my bedroom door with such force it slammed into the wall, jarring me awake. She yanked open dresser drawers, and tossed fistfuls of my clothing into a white suitcase with satiny orange lining. I sat up and tried to adjust my focus, but she was moving so fast she stayed blurry.

      “Five minutes,” she said, standing still for a second. “I’m going to get your brother. Be dressed by the time I get back.”

      Mom whizzed out of my room. It was dark outside. My body felt like concrete, and I didn’t want to go out into the cold. Mom had done this before. She’d shake us awake in the middle of the night, hurry us into snow pants and hats and mittens, СКАЧАТЬ