And though they clearly suspected, his parents had also never found out about any of the trouble he and Gudmund got up to. Not that any of it was actually all that bad. No drugs, and though there was more than occasional drinking, there was definitely no drunk driving. Gudmund was bright and easygoing, and most parents would have been happy to have him around as a friend for their son.
But not, it seemed, Seth’s mother. She pretended she had some sixth sense about him.
And maybe she did.
“You’ve got work tomorrow,” she said now, but he could already tell she was on her way to a yes in the negotiations.
“Not ’til six,” Seth said, keeping his tone as unargumentative as possible.
His mother considered. “Fine,” she said curtly. “Now, get up. We need to go.”
“Close the door,” he called after her, but she was already gone.
He got up and found a shirt to pull on over his head. An hour sitting through Owen’s torturous clarinet lesson with onion-smelling Miss Baker so his mother could go run furiously along the coastal path in exchange for an evening of freedom which included a stash of beer forgotten by Gudmund’s father (though not behind the wheel of Gudmund’s car; really, they were good kids, which made her suspicions all the more infuriating; Seth almost wanted to do something bad, something really bad, just to show her). But for now, it was a fair enough trade.
Any chance to get away. Any chance to feel not quite so trapped. Even for a little while.
He’d take it.
Five minutes later, he was dressed and in the kitchen. “Hey, Dad,” he said, taking down a box of cereal.
“Hey, Seth,” his father sighed, intently studying the wooden frame for the new counter, a frame that refused to fit, no matter how much sawing went on.
“Why don’t you just hire a guy?” Seth asked, stuffing a handful of peanut-butter-flavored granules in his mouth. “Be done in a week.”
“And what guy would that be?” his father asked distractedly. “There’s peace to be found in doing something for yourself.”
Seth had heard this sentence many, many times. His father taught English at the small, liberal arts college that gave Halfmarket two-thirds of its population, and these projects – of which there had been more than Seth could count, from the deck at the house in England when he was just a baby, adding a utility room in the garage here, to this kitchen extension his father had insisted on doing himself – were what he swore kept him sane after swapping London for a small coastal American town. The projects all eventually got finished, all eventually pretty well, too, but the peace, perhaps, had less to do with the project than with the medication his father took for his depression. Heavier than the usual antidepressants that some of his friends took, heavy enough to occasionally make his father seem like a ghost in their own house.
“What have I done wrong now?” his father mumbled, shaking his head in puzzlement at a pile of off-cut timber.
His mother came into the kitchen, thudding Owen’s clarinet down on the table. “Would someone mind telling me how this ended up in the guest room?”
“Ever thought of asking Owen?” Seth said through a mouthful of cereal.
“Asking me what?” Owen said, coming through the door.
And here was Owen. His little brother. Hair curled up in a ridiculous, sleep-messed pile that made him look way younger than his nearly twelve years, a red Kool-Aid stain around his lips and crumbs from his breakfast still stuck to his chin, wearing regular jeans but also a Cookie Monster pajama top that he was about five years too old and too big for.
Owen. As scatterbrained and messy as ever.
But Seth could see his mother’s posture change into something that almost resembled joy.
“Nothing, sweetheart,” she said. “Go wash your face and put on a clean shirt. We’re almost ready to go.”
Owen beamed back at her. “I got to level 82!”
“That’s brilliant, darling. Now, hurry along. We’re going to be late.”
“Okay!” Owen said, blazing a smile at Seth and his father as he left the kitchen. Seth’s mother’s gaze greedily followed him out the doorway, as if it was all she could do not to eat him.
When she turned back into the kitchen, her face was disconcertingly open and warm until she caught Seth and his father staring at her. There was an awkward moment where no one said anything, and she at least had the good grace to look a little embarrassed.
“Hurry up, Seth,” she said. “We really are going to be late.”
She left. Seth just stood there with his handful of cereal, until his father, without a word, started sawing slowly on the counter frame again. The familiar yearning to get away rose in Seth’s chest like a physical pressure, so strong he thought he might be able to see it if he looked.
One more year, he thought. One year to go.
His final year of high school lay ahead of him, and then he would go off to college, (maybe, hopefully) the same one as Gudmund and possibly Monica. The location didn’t matter so much as long as it was as far as possible from this damp little corner of southwest Washington State.
Far away from these strangers who called themselves his parents.
But then he remembered there were smaller escapes closer to home.
An hour of clarinet, he thought. And the weekend’s mine.
He thought it more angrily than he expected.
And at the same time, he realized he wasn’t very hungry anymore.
10
Seth wakes up on the larger of the two red settees, and once more, it takes him a moment to re-emerge from the –
It really can’t have just been a dream.
He’d been asleep this time, he knew, but like the last one, it had been far too vivid, far too clear. None of the shifting vagueness of a dream, none of the changes in scene or inabilities to move or speak properly or lapses in time or logic.
He had been there. Right there. Again. Living it.
He remembers that morning, as clearly as if he’d just watched it on television. It had been summer, months before the Baby Jesus incident, just after he’d gotten his first part-time job waiting tables at the local steakhouse. Gudmund’s parents had flown to California for business, leaving Gudmund to watch over a house that looked out onto Washington’s cold, tumultuous ocean. H and Monica had come over for a while, too, and they’d all done nothing, really, except drink some of Gudmund’s father’s forgotten beer and shoot the shit and laugh themselves incoherent at the dumbest things you could think of.