“Matty, I finished your tail feathers! Come take a look!”
I find Mom in the dining room after washing the grime off my hands from shooting around in the driveway. The table and floor are covered with craft supplies. After years of staying home with me and now again with Murray, Mom is an arts-and-crafts Jedi. She can do things with a hot-glue gun that would make Martha Stewart envious. But as I stand next to her to take a look at her creation, I immediately start to panic.
“Mom. No, Mom. Mom, I cannot wear that.”
She has the full costume laid out across the table. She ignores me and pulls a tight white beanie down over my head.
“You agreed to go trick-or-treating with Murray tonight. He begged me to let you take him. Instead of me. Do you have any idea how hard that is for me?”
“Can’t I wear the old troll mask or something? An old bedsheet for each of us?”
“Yes, Matthew, even though Murray’s had this exact idea picked out for the past six months—never once wavering, no matter how many great ideas I’ve tried to put out there—I think you should go ahead and wear a ratty old mask that your brother hates. That would be awesome of you.”
I start to respond, but Mom’s just getting warmed up. The line between playful sarcasm and pissed can get blurry.
“And, you know, it’s not like I’ve been working on this costume for the past week or anything. I know you’ve been really busy playing in the driveway and not doing your math homework on this beautiful Saturday, so you probably haven’t had time to notice.”
“Hey, hey, I don’t think the sarcasm is necessary. I’m the one who’s going to be humiliated here, Mom.”
The complete costume: bald eagle mama and chick.
Me: white beanie cap, which Mom crocheted herself; rubber beak; one of Dad’s old, gigantic brown wool sweaters, with feathers sewn into the sleeves for wings; and the final piece—bright yellow skinny jeans that Mom probably found on the clearance rack at Sears, possibly in the juniors’ department, with horizontal stripes drawn in black Sharpie down the legs and long brown tail feathers hot-glued to the butt.
Like I said: arts-and-crafts Jedi.
“Seriously? Those pants? Can’t I wear my own jeans? Nobody’s going to care what I’m wearing anyway.”
“Murray cares. He’ll notice right away that you don’t have the right bird legs.”
“Do you see these things?” I say, holding the yellow skinny jeans up to me. I’m getting desperate. “Do you know how tight they’re going to be? Where am I supposed to keep my nuts in these things?”
Mom turns and grips the edge of the table. That line between playful and pissed is less blurry now that I’m clearly on the other side of it.
“They’re bird legs, Matthew,” she says through gritted teeth. “It’s a costume.”
“But—”
“And if you like,” she continues, clutching the hot-glue gun, “I’m sure we can find somewhere to put your nuts.”
“Mom—”
“Since they’re clearly big enough for you to talk that way to your mother.”
She looks me in the eye as she says that last part, her nostrils flared.
“You’re right,” she says finally, but I have a feeling she’s not suddenly understanding my side of things. “Nobody out there is going to care how you look. But your little brother does. So try to get over yourself, Matthew. This night isn’t about you anymore.”
“Ugh,” I say, my final statement of resistance, throwing the skinny jeans back on the table in front of her. I mutter an f-bomb to myself as I turn to leave the room. I know she hears it, but she doesn’t say anything else, just lets me storm into the living room to flop onto the couch and turn on the TV. She’s probably saying the same things under her breath—I can hear her throwing stuff back into craft bins and slamming drawers.
Mom and I don’t do this often. We both tend to try to defuse tension with humor—sometimes inappropriate—but that doesn’t always work when you’re the cause of each other’s tension.
Twenty minutes later, Mom comes back in the living room and sits down next to me on the couch. We stare at SportsCenter in silence, neither of us really watching. The strain from our little episode is gone, but my stomach still churns at the thought of knocking on every door in the neighborhood in full mama-bald-eagle regalia. I know no one really cares what some fifteen-year-old kid is wearing to take his little brother trick-or-treating, but that doesn’t mean I can just roll with looking like an idiot when inevitably some hot high school girl answers the door to hand out candy between make-out sessions with her leering boyfriend.
“Dude, nice pants.”
“Ha, yeah, thanks. They’re supposed to be bird legs.”
“No, yeah, I see. Love the yellow. They girls’?”
“No, no, pretty sure they’re just old skater jeans…Not mine…My mom bought them…uh…”
“Yeah. Here’s a Twizzler. Have fun trick-or-treating, douche.”
Mom takes the remote from my hand and clicks off the TV. She gives my leg a gentle squeeze as she stands.
“Come here a minute,” she says, walking up the stairs. I don’t know where this is headed. She sees me hesitate, unsure about her change in tactics. “Come on, Matt. I want you to see something.”
I stand and follow Mom to the top of the steps, where she silently pushes open the door to Murray’s room.
“He’s been wearing it all day,” she whispers, and stands aside so I can see into his room. Murray sits on the floor in front of his bed in his bald-eagle-chick costume. Stuffed animals are arranged all around him: he’s immersed in his favorite imaginary game, Animals! Animals! Animals!
Murray’s costume: matching homemade beanie with little tufts of white feathers sewn in, matching beak, tan fleece sweatshirt, and the bottom half of a papier-mâché egg attached by suspenders, made to look like he’s in the process of hatching. I notice his costume does not include yellow skinny jeans.
Murray’s light brown curls jut out from beneath his cap, his beak hanging loose from his neck so he can give voices to his animals.
“Murray,” Mom says softly, “you wanna show Matty how you look in your costume?”
Murray is immediately on his feet, beaming, as though he’s been sitting there waiting for this moment all day. Which I suspect he has.
“Matty! Look at my baby-bald-eagle costume!” Murray puts the beak back over his nose and starts flapping his arms and screeching, running around in circles on his town rug before crashing into my legs and laughing.
“You look awesome, buddy. Very nice.” I smile and noogie his white-capped head.
“Where’s your costume, Matty? Aren’t you gonna get dressed as the mommy bald eagle for trick-or-treating?” Without waiting for my response, Murray bounces over to Mom’s legs and latches on. “Is it time to go trick-or-treating now, Mommy? Is it? Is it?”
“Soon, Murray, soon. I told you, after dinner, once it starts to get dark out.”
Murray gives a high-pitched woo-hoo! and flaps back to the scene on his rug. Just like that, he’s in his own world again, which I now notice involves two stuffed animals trick-or-treating through the town on his rug. What I thought was a random explosion of stuffed animals, action figures, and play food is really an intricately organized system.
Mom and I watch in silence for a minute before she looks up at me, eyebrows raised, with a hint of a smirk on her face.
“Dirty move, Mom. Dirty move.”
Mom’s smirk blooms into a wicked smile. She kisses me on the cheek and smacks me on the butt on her way out the door. When I reach to wipe my cheek, she calls from halfway down the steps, “You’re just rubbing it in!”
Freaking Mom.
The doorbell rings while I’m still lingering in Murray’s doorway, and I think it must be some way-early trick-or-treaters.
“Matt, Tabby’s here!”
Oh sweet mother of shit.
“Tabby!” Murray bolts past me and flies down the steps to find her, little tufts of white trailing in his wake.
Holy fucking fuck.
When I reach the bottom of the steps, Tabby is already gushing over my mom’s costumes in the dining room, the two of them shoulder to shoulder.
“Oh my gosh, those skinny jeans look perfect!”
“I know, right? Can you believe Matt’s not going to wear them? He’s just going to pull out that old troll mask again, probably scare poor Murray to death.”
Tabby whirls, her eyes finding me at the bottom of the steps, where I give a weak smile and wave.
“Matthew Wainwright. You are wearing this costume.”
She’s not smiling.
Murray, whose winged arms are now wrapped around Tabby’s legs, looks up first to Tabby’s face, to Mom’s, and finally across the room to mine.
“Matty, why are you wearing the troll mask?” he asks, his voice rising in panic. “I thought you were gonna be bald eagles with me.” The corners of his mouth are dipping downward, his cheeks turning that blotchy red they always do right before he loses it.
“No, no, no, I didn’t say that, Murray!” I look to Mom, avoiding Tabby’s stare. “Mom, I did not say that!”
Mom again chooses to remain silent, shrugging and raising her eyebrows behind Tabby’s shoulder, as though this dramatic turn of events is just as surprising to her. At which point, up against these three impossible creatures, I give in to the fact that there’s no way out—I’m going to be rocking some seriously tight yellow skinny jeans tonight.
“C’mon, Murray, of course we’re going to be bald eagles together.”
When Murray decides that I’m telling him the truth, I finally look at Tabby and give another weak smile.
“Tabby, why don’t you give me a hand in here,” my mom says. “Mark will be home from work any minute. You can stick around for dinner.”
“Ohh, it’s baked ziti night, isn’t it?” Tabby’s voice is friendly, but her eyes narrow. She gives me an almost imperceptible shake of her head before following Mom into the kitchen.
Dad retreated to his downstairs office immediately after dinner, nabbing a handful of Milky Ways from the trick-or-treat bowl on the way. He’s the main tech guy at a neighboring school district, and he does work a lot from his computer downstairs, but I have a feeling he’s hiding from the barrage of tiny strangers who will be on his porch over the next few hours. He’s not the most social of creatures. I have him to thank for my general awkwardness in any and all social situations. No idea how he won over Mom. I’ve always assumed that Mom chose him—walked up to him somewhere, said, “I’ll take you,” to which my dad just shrugged and followed her home.
He’s always had a special spot for Tabby, though. When Mom asked if he was heading down to do more work as he was rummaging through the candy bowl, he winked at her (smooth, Dad), then lobbed a Milky Way to Tabby. “Keep the birds out of trouble tonight,” he said before retreating down the steps.
Tabby smiled without looking up and said, “Will do,” while tearing open her Milky Way. Which answered that question—the eagles, it seemed, would not be flying alone this evening. Awesome.
So now I’m standing in the bathroom, wondering what’s going on with Branson’s party, trying to make sure this itchy-ass sweater is long enough to cover the top of a pair of jeans that were apparently designed for a young lad or lass whose butt crack measures only an inch and a half from stem to stern. I thought the skaters just pulled their pants down really low, but seriously, where are the rest of these fucking pants?!
Mom calls for me to hurry up, that trick-or-treating starts soon. I take a deep breath and step out for them all to see.
“Oh, Matty,” Mom says, “you look great!” She puts a hand over her mouth. I stare at her. I think for a moment she’s forgotten that I’m a six-foot-three high school freshman, and that this is, in fact, not in any way adorable.
Tabby is able to smile and nod for all of twenty seconds, her lips pursed tight and trembling, before bursting out laughing. She can’t even look me in the eye, her body convulsing, doubled over. Mom starts laughing then, too, throwing her arm around Tabby’s shoulders, and Murray joins the action, dancing around me screeching, “MAMA! MAMA! CHEEP CHEEP! MAMA! MAMA! CHEEP CHEEP!” in his most enthusiastic baby-bald-eagle voice. When Tabby looks up between convulsions, there are tears running down her cheeks.
“You guys suck.”
A few minutes before the official start time, Murray’s still running circles around me, out on the driveway now, while Mom and Tabby take pictures, Mom with her mega-camera, Tabby with her phone. Which is also the moment my grandparents’ giant white land-yacht pulls up in front of the house.
Fuck me.
Murray pauses midflight around his mama bird and makes a beeline for the car. Gramma scoops him up into a hug as soon as she steps out of the passenger seat, careful not to crush his papier-mâchéd bottom.
Grampa climbs out of the driver’s side, beaming. He’s a big man. Tall—taller than me—and athletic-looking, save for the magnificent, third-trimester belly that hangs off the front of him. He has a thick head of white hair, a blinding smile, and a deep, booming voice. He’d look like a senator if he weren’t always wearing sweatpants. He’s a long-retired school principal, and Dad claims he hasn’t seen him in dress clothes since the day he retired.
“Grampa! We’re going trick-or-treating!”
“Hey, how ’bout that?” he says, pulling out one of Murray’s arms to inspect his wing. “How’s my Murray?” he says, bending down to kiss the top of Murray’s head, his eggshell still at Gramma’s shoulder. Gramma’s tiny. The Wainwright men’s infatuation with pocket-size women is apparently genetic.
“We had to come see the mama bird and the baby bird take flight!” Gramma says to Murray, then smiles at me.
Grampa looks me up and down, a sympathetic look on his face.
“Sweet Jesus,” he says, shaking his head.
Help me, I mouth.
“You’re a good man, Matthew.” He places a hand on my shoulder, then looks over my shoulder and booms, “All right, Tabby’s here!”
Tabby’s standing next to Mom, that huge, goofy grin plastered to her face. She only has one real grandparent left—her dad’s mom, who lives in a nursing home over an hour away, and who really isn’t all that nice.
“Hi, Grampa Wainwright,” she says.
“What’s shaking, T-Bone? How’s high school?” he says, ambling up to them, and Tabby’s smile grows somehow wider. I watch her face as they small-talk. It’s like she turns into a little kid around my grandpa. I swear, he could pull a quarter from her ear, and she’d jump up and down with glee, begging him to do it again.
They chat with Mom, Grampa’s arm around Tabby’s shoulder, while Gramma takes more pictures of the eagles. When Gramma pauses between shots, Grampa, without a word, gently shoves Tabby over to us, so that she’s in the pictures, too.
They can pretend like they’re surprised to see her, but there are three Halloween goodie bags poking out of Gramma’s purse.
Once we get started, it’s not so bad.
Mr. Hodgson’s house is tough: “Dear Lord, Matthew. What did that woman do to you?” But other than that, most people laugh—in a nice way, mainly—and swoon over Murray. At every single door, after a muffled “Trick or treat!” from behind his beak, Murray says to the person, “This is my big brother, Matt! He’s a mama bald eagle, and I’m a baby bald eagle!” which, from at least half of the houses we stop at, earns him an extra fun-size candy bar. With Tabby’s dad, who’s sitting on his front step in an authentic Ghostbusters uniform, it gets Murray an extra full-size bar. Because that’s just the kind of badass Tabby’s dad is.
And once I get laughed at the first few times, I start to relax. Yeah, Tabby is here to witness it all, and yeah, people are laughing because I look utterly ridiculous—all justifiable reasons to be mortified—but shit, it is funny. After a while, I laugh when people open the door and get a look at us, too.
And every single time Murray and I step off the porch and head back down to the sidewalk, Tabby is standing there smiling.
Every single time.
When we get back to our house nearly two hours later, Grampa’s land-yacht is gone. The eagle chick is about to crash, delirious from exhaustion. I’ve been carrying his pillowcase for him for the last hour, which is so stuffed full of candy I can’t even twist the top closed to throw it over my shoulder.
Murray runs to Mom as soon as we walk in the door. When Mom swoops him up in her arms, Murray’s whole body deflates into hers. Mom takes him immediately to his room to get ready for bed, smiling at Tabby and me as she heads up the steps—loving-Mom smile this time, not wicked-and-manipulative-Mom smile. We don’t hear a single protest or plea for candy. Murray’s wiped.
Without even thinking, Tabby and I head downstairs to the den and settle in on the floor in front of the sofa, just like we’ve done after trick-or-treating together every year since we were Murray’s age. I dump all of Murray’s candy into a pile on the floor.
“Damn,” I say, in reverence to the mountain of treats before us.
“I’m not sure we ever got this much candy combined back in the day.”
And—just like we’ve done every year—Tabby and I set about organizing all the candy according to a strict hierarchy: at the top, candy bars and all things chocolate; next, anything gummy and/or fruity, liberally including items like SweeTARTS, Sprees, and Bottle Caps; next go all lollipops and Tootsie Rolls; and finally, all the crap that will get eaten only out of desperation—unidentifiable hard candies, homemade treats of various origins, raisins, and the like. And off to the side, existing outside the candy hierarchy, in a pile closely guarded on the other side of Tabby’s legs, lie the Nerds. Because Tabby is a Nerds fiend.
It is a glorious sight when it’s all organized, displayed before us. It’s almost too beautiful to eat. It stings a little, knowing that this is all Murray’s, though I suspect most of the Nerds will be smuggled out of here when Tabby leaves.
She absently runs her hand through the pile of Nerds boxes, like she’s stroking a beloved pet.
“You know those are Murray’s, right?” I say, trying to give her the same hard look she used on me earlier.
“What?” she says, almost startled. “Of course I do,” she says then. “I’m not going to eat Murray’s candy.”
I stare at her, down at her hand still swimming through the pile of Nerds, then back up to her eyes again.
She narrows her eyes and tears open the first little box. “Like you weren’t planning to scarf down like six of those Kit Kats?”
Actually, I eat eight of them. Tabby’s polishing off her fourth box of Nerds when her phone buzzes. She pulls it from her pocket and immediately busts out laughing.
“Oh my gosh!” she says, fighting to keep the Nerds in her mouth.
“What?”
“It’s from Lily,” Tabby says, a hand over the wide grin on her face.
She reaches over to show me her phone. There on the screen is Liam Branson, decked out in a lame-ass pirate costume, a sheepish grin on his eye-patched face, looking into the camera, like he knew where this picture was going. Beneath it, I catch a glimpse of Lily’s text: chk out ur boy ;)
“That’s pretty funny,” I say, forcing out a laugh and pulling the bald eagle cap from my head, running a hand through my matted hair. The Kit Kats in my stomach turn to lead.
Tabby types something to Lily that I can’t see, before shoving her phone back in her pocket. She’s still smiling as she goes for another box of Nerds.
“So what’s with the ‘ur boy’ thing?” I ask, trying to sound innocent, like the interested, inquisitive friend I’m supposed to be. “Are you guys, like, together or something?”
“No.” Tabby laughs. “Lily’s acting like her brother won’t stop talking about me and stuff. It’s stupid.” The color rises in Tabby’s cheeks as she rubs her hands on her lap. “Besides, he’s a senior.”
After a minute of awkward silence, she picks up another box of Nerds. “I could eat these things all night.”
“So I’ve noticed,” I say, and wait until she’s tipped the rest of the box into her mouth before asking what’s been at the back of my mind all night, pretending that I’ve suddenly realized it. “Weren’t you supposed to be at their Halloween party tonight?”
Tabby shrugs without looking up from her empty box of Nerds.
“Lily really wanted me to. But it’s no big deal. It’s all upperclassmen anyway.”
Exactly, I say in my head. Very sensible. Older guys, never good.
“And besides, I couldn’t miss trick-or-treating with you and Murray! It’d be the first time we ever missed going together!”
“That’s true,” I say, smiling.
My heart swells and sinks at the same time. She chose trick-or-treating with me over going to Branson’s party, a party I know he specifically wanted Tabby to attend, whether Tabby’s willing to admit it or not. Granted, she also picked Murray over him, and I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.
But her words stick in my brain: It’d be the first time we ever missed going together. And it kills me because there will be a first time. This miraculous streak will end. And there’s a damn good chance it ended when we walked back into the house tonight.
Tabby takes out her phone, looks at it again, and types something in before putting it away. She stretches her legs out in front of her and yawns.
Dad walks in then from his office and finds us surrounded by spent wrappers, an impressive display of candy still before us. He rubs us both on the head as he steps between us, plucking a Snickers from the pile.
“I love trick or treat.”