by Christopher Wachlin

I get a job, but my brother visits for supper and my parents don’t care about my news. And he’s not being nice about it. And all my parents keep saying is I have two days.

They want me out of the house by the 30th, but I’m only nineteen. I don’t have a high school diploma. My dad says there’s nothing to talk about. I have to be out and that’s it.

“Sure, Dad. It will be my pleasure.” Some prick waiter said that at my cousin’s wedding.

But my parents go back to talking with my brother like I’m not there. Whenever I try to talk they interrupt me.

“You’ll feel stupid,” I shout, “when you hear what else I did today. I downloaded GED stuff from Bay Bekahl College.”

Now instead of interrupting they don’t say anything. I wait. Nothing. They don’t care.

“You don’t care.”

“Travis,” my mom finally says, pushing her glasses up on her nose and brushing crumbs from her Tahoe sweatshirt, “we talked about this. It’s too late.”

They ignore me again.

What’s so great about them? They’re not the fastest songs on the CD. You can see it in their underbiting jaws. You can see it the way Mom uses her hands too much to talk and the way Dad’s flycatcher mouth sits ready. Especially whenever my brother goes on and on about the stupid sporting goods store he works in.

I’m really pissed and after ten more minutes I’ve had enough. Now like I said my brother’s been a dick ever since he showed up. Right away, as soon as he’s in the door, he won’t lend me twenty bucks even though I have a job now. (And why can’t he eat at his place? Why does he have to come back home?) So watching them all talk like I’m not here I’m pissed.

I guess you could call it a kinetic Freudian slip instead of a verbal one—I meant to butter my bread, but instead I drove my knife into the back of my brother’s hand.

My brother was all like he was going to kick my ass, but he would’ve found out the hard way except that Dad got between us. I had their attention. Do you think it lasted? They started talking over me again. Shouting at me. Interrupting me more!

 

***

 

The next day.

Whenever my dad tells about his stupid idol Neil Young as a kid slamming this other kid in the head with a dictionary, he laughs his ass off. But what I did? No way. Even though what I did was accidental and Neil Young’s was on purpose because he had to get the dictionary from the teacher’s desk. Lovely, as my Rhode Island cousins say. Here on the California side of the family we say, well I don’t know because I don’t pay much attention to our talk.

My parents will be sorry. Wait ’til I’m a famous singer or rapper or scientist or something. (Some scientists are creative.) I could rap about my dad screwing up the plumbing when he fixed the sink, or my mom’s deformed elbow, which curves like a little coat hook, or how they get invited to graduation parties or Confirmation or First Communion parties (relative stuff), but don’t have friends to invite them to party parties. If I go with the scientist thing I could make a hypothesis of why my parents had 1.5 children instead of 2.5, and do experiments.

So like I said, the next day. They don’t exactly have me arrested, but I get a talking-to from this cop who keeps looking at my wall of posters of my favorite band, Widespread Panic.

Back when I quit school, my parents acted like because I didn’t get a job I was immoral or something, like because I don’t worship material things I have a problem. And I don’t think that just because I’m a better person than they are that they should get to say whatever they want. Even though the world’s not fair, I don’t think we should live like it ought to be unfair.

But I show my parents up. I run away. Up here in the city there are people that actually care when someone’s down on their luck.

How do they like that? How will it feel when they have to admit that their cold ways forced their child to run away from home?

 

This story originally appeared in Fault Zone: Words from the Edge, edited by Lisa Meltzer Penn, and published by SF/Peninsula Writers, a branch of the California Writers Club. Fault Zone: Words from the Edge will go into another printing soon, from Sand Hill Review Press.