Boy, oh boy.
But I was holding it just because I had to pee—don’t get any dirty ideas.
I got up the stairs without too much difficulty, a step at a time. And when I was just behind the door I leaned forward and listened.
They were all getting breakfast ready. I figured the kitchen must have been right behind the door where I was standing, because I heard the sink and plates clinking and the usual breakfast stuff like that. Laura’s dad was there, which was pretty unusual because she’d told me he traveled constantly and was never around that much. She actually sort of bragged about how much he flew, and how sometimes he did it on this private jet that was owned by his company on some kind of weird private jet time-share that I couldn’t ever understand anything about except that it sounded extremely glamorous.
Anyways, he was talking in Spanish, actually not talking but sort of yelling, though not in an angry way, because he had to talk over his wife, Laura’s mom, who was talking even louder than he was. And in the background Jack was banging around with something made of metal, maybe a frying pan or something like that, and he was answering his mom with these little monosyllabic answers when she asked him, rapid-fire, “Have you packed your bags? Did you take your medicine? Did you put the brace on your foot? Well, did you?”
I didn’t quite get that last part, because in the basement he hadn’t limped or anything, but I guessed maybe he’d banged up his foot being such a hotshot running back for the Stanford team.
I was sort of getting an idea here of the family dynamic. I must admit it wasn’t anything like I’d thought. I mean, at my house, to tell the truth, everybody is always sort of still exhausted when we wake up and we all kind of slog around and practically bump into one another just trying to stay on our feet. But here there was this sort of frenzied panic, and nothing like the sort of cozy, loving family scene I’d imagined, with everybody sitting around the table like in a cereal commercial.
But what was worst was that every few seconds all I heard was her mom yell, “LAURA!”
She yelled it super loud—I mean earthshakingly loud—because I guess Laura had gone back upstairs and was still dawdling in bed or something. You’d figure yelling once was enough, but her mom must have thought she was deaf or something, because a second would pass and then there’d come another big blast: “LAURA!” I mean, I think she yelled it, like, ten times, and after yelling it she would say to Jack or to her husband these little needling comments about Laura and her habits—I mean these sort of nasty little comments that she said almost to herself, and I’m not even going to say what they were, because I hated hearing them.
When Laura finally did come down, she had barely said good morning when her mom really just sort of jumped on her. “What was taking you so long? You know your brother has a flight this morning! You only think of yourself, young lady! We are a family here, unless you don’t know that. Do you know it? Have you forgotten?” Her voice sounded very sharp and unfriendly. And in the meantime, Laura’s dad wasn’t even paying attention and never broke in to come to her defense or anything; he was off somewhere in the background talking Spanish really fast on the phone, totally oblivious to what was happening between Laura and her mom.
Jack, he couldn’t have cared less either, except that every once in a while he’d say something like “Hey, Laurs, can you toss me that juice?” or “Laurs, spin me that butter, will ya?”
I mean, I got her mom’s point about making everybody late, and it’s certainly something I’ve been guilty of plenty of times at my house, but really her mom sort of jabbed at her when she spoke, and I couldn’t stand hearing her. I knew she was in a panic to get Jack to the airport, but she really did sound a little mean, and maybe more than a little. And to tell the truth, she didn’t even give Laura much time to answer, because obviously Laura hadn’t exactly jumped at what Jack was making in the frying pan and had grabbed something else to eat, and her mom just went at her again, saying, “Are you really going to eat that? Don’t you remember you have an eating disorder? Do you want to be fat—is that what you want, young lady? Now that you quit gymnastics, is your ambition to be fat?”
By this time, even though I had to pee like a racehorse and was literally squirming on the top step standing on one foot, I was starting to get pretty upset. I don’t want to disrespect her mom or anything, but I was like, God almighty, what a bitch. I mean, here she is in this incredible house, and she has literally the most beautiful girl in the entire world for a daughter—at least that’s my personal opinion—and all she can do is say this nasty panicked junk, and Laura obviously can’t even answer except to sort of mutter sure once in a while, and yes ma’am, in such a quiet way that I could hardly hear her beautiful voice.
I was totally shocked. Because the big thing is that when she was with me, Laura had done nothing but compliment her mother, just like with her dad. I mean, she complimented and praised her all the time. She even bragged
