“But I did use my words. I told her she was taking too long. The words didn’t work.”
I was with Zoe on this one. Sometimes Jeanine leaves you no choice. Besides, she’s a drama queen. Most of the time, Zoe doesn’t even break the skin.
2
An hour later, we piled into the car and headed upstate on the highway along the Hudson River.
Somewhere in Westchester, my parents came clean. This road trip wasn’t just about Pink Ladies and buttermilk ice cream.
“Surprise!” Dad said louder than you should ever say anything in a car, even if it is a station wagon.
“I don’t understand,” Jeanine said, leaning as far into the front seat as the seat belt would let her go. “You bought a house? Why?”
“Because we loved it,” Dad said. The smile on his face was so big, it took up the whole rearview mirror.
Mom turned around, smiling the same huge smile. “And because it’s beautiful.”
“And because it’s something different,” my father added.
“So it’ll be like that place on the Jersey Shore Sam’s family has?” I said.
“That’s a vacation home,” Mom said.
“So what will this be?” I still didn’t get it.
“A home home,” Dad said.
That instant, it was as if all the air had been sucked out of the car. It felt like we were on a plane falling out of the sky, and those oxygen masks should have been dropping down from the ceiling of our car.
I couldn’t speak. I looked at Mom, who was still turned around, and tried sending her messages with my brain to ask if this was really happening. And she must have understood, because she nodded.
“I don’t feel good,” Zoe said. I could feel her tugging on my sleeve, but I didn’t do anything.
“Here, sweetie,” Mom said as she reached back, pulled one of the old yogurt containers (also known as vomit buckets) off the armrest of Zoe’s car seat, and handed it to her. Throwing up in cars, or really anything that moves, is normal for Zoe.
“You’re gonna love it,” Dad said, still grinning at us in the rearview mirror, the mirror I now wanted to chuck something at, shattering its stupid, happy face.
I think my parents kept talking. I’m not sure because all I could hear were my insides screaming as we dropped out of the sky.
“I don’t understand. Why do we have to move?” Jeanine said, her voice catching at the end so that “move” sounded like two words instead of one.
“We don’t have to. We want to,” Mom said.
How could I believe that when I’d never heard them talk about leaving the city? Not once. Not ever. Besides, would they tell us that we had to move even if that were the truth?
This had to be Oscar McFadden’s fault.
Oscar McFadden was the reason my father had lost his job a month before. Oscar McFadden was the reason the bank where my father had worked since before I was born didn’t even exist anymore. Don’t ask me how. All I know is, the guy took the bank’s money and put it into some crazy scheme that lost more than the bank ever had in the first place. He’d hidden what he was doing so Dad didn’t have a clue, but once all the money was gone and the bank had gone up in smoke, it didn’t matter what Dad knew. Just having worked in the same room as that crook meant no bank would ever hire him again.
“We really want something different,” Dad said.
I hated the way he kept saying that. This wasn’t something different. This wasn’t even something. This was too big for something. It was everything.
What if Dad still had his job at the bank? Would he still want everything different then?
“Look, Dad and I have lived in New York our whole lives. We know what that’s like. We thought it was time to try living someplace new,” Mom said.
“Once you guys see the place, I’m telling you, you’ll get it. And, Tris, just wait. The land is so beautiful. You’re gonna love it,” Dad said.
“You think I’m gonna love the dirt and the grass and the trees?” I said.
“Yes, Tris, you,” he said, pointing at himself in the mirror.
What was he talking about? I wasn’t a nature kid. I knew those kids. They were the ones always digging in the dirt looking for worms at the playground when we were little, and now they went to sleepaway camps where the toilet was just a hole in the ground.
“Wait till you see the pond!” Dad went on, all excited like he was talking about a wicked roller coaster and not a large hole filled with water. “You can swim in it in summer and skate on it in winter.”
“I don’t know how to skate,” Zoe said, the words echoing out of her vomit bucket.
“We’ll teach you,” Mom said.
“I hate skating,” I said.
“Why?” Dad said.
“You just go in circles. It’s boring.”
“Not on a pond. On a pond, you can go anywhere,” he said.
“No, you can’t. You’re still skating in circles. They’re just bigger circles.”
“But we could fall through the ice,” Jeanine said, suddenly panicked. “Zoe can’t even swim. She’ll drown.”
“I swim,” Zoe said.
“With water wings. Are you going to ice-skate in your water wings?” Jeanine said.
“Can I, Mommy?”
“Look, nobody needs water wings for skating because nobody’s falling through the ice, got it?” said my mother, all serious now. She clearly wanted us to drop the whole subject.
“How do you know?” I said, glaring at her. I didn’t care what she wanted. I might never care what either of my parents wanted ever again. And I didn’t care about ice-skating on the stupid pond either, but I couldn’t win an argument about moving.
“Have you thought about any of this at all?” Jeanine shouted as she burst into tears.
“Why’s Jeanine crying?” Zoe said,
