Reality Boy

My reflection doesn’t have any demands.

All demands have been removed from my reflection. Roger, my professional demand-remover, has done a spotless job.

Should is a dirty word. No one should do anything for you. You deserve nothing more than what you earn. Reality Boy is still angry, though. Because Reality Boy knows he deserves all kinds of shit he never got.

The longer I stare at myself in the mirror, the more I want to punch myself. Right in the face. I want to break my nose. Split my lip. Bite a hole in my cheek. I want to beat some sense into me. Instead, I punch the toilet stall door. It swings in and slams into the toilet-paper holder. My hand is numb. But not as numb as the rest of me.

32

EPISODE 2, SCENE 15, TAKE 2

WE WERE SUPPOSED to be making chicken Parmesan for Mom and Dad’s anniversary dinner, but Nanny didn’t really seem prepared for cooking. She was agitated. As we sloppily prepped food she kept saying Mind my shoes! Don’t splash on my dress!

She handed me a Ziploc bag full of bread crumbs and cornflake crumbs and flecks of seasoning that Tasha had mixed together. She said I would shake the fillets of chicken around in there. She called them fill-its.

Tasha corrected her. “Fill-ays,” she said.

Nanny gave her a look. “Don’t be cheeky,” she said. Then she plunged a chicken fillet into the bag I was holding and secured it.

“Now give it a good shake!” she said. And I shook it because she and the director acted out how to shake a chicken fillet in a bag.

Then Lisi took charge of the cheese-and-sauce part, and laying the fillets into a shallow ceramic dish, and Tasha, who’d preheated the oven to exactly 350 degrees, put the whole thing in and set the timer.

I still had the lump on my head from two nights earlier, when Tasha had pushed me down the stairs.

Mom and Dad were at a movie. We’d gone shopping that afternoon, and Nanny would be taking care of us while Mom and Dad ate a romantic dinner and did stuff parents do when they’re alone. Hold hands, presumably.

At least for the cameras.

Because I don’t think Mom and Dad held hands. Or kissed.

In fact, it was that afternoon when I realized that Mom and Dad didn’t seem to like each other very much. They’d fought a lot while the kitchen was being remodeled. And before that. And before that, too. I vaguely remembered them fighting when I was really little. I vaguely remembered Dad once saying he was leaving.

Part of me—the six-year-old me—still daydreamed about that. I daydreamed that he’d take me with him. I wasn’t sure if I’d made it up in my own head or if Dad had really said it. It would be one of those things I’d ask Lisi when we finally talked.

If we ever talked.

When Mom and Dad came in from their movie, they acted so surprised about the chicken Parmesan. Nanny and Tasha had checked it in the oven a few times to make sure it was perfect. We’d chilled a side salad. We’d made garlic bread. We served it all up to them and I even pulled Mom’s chair out for her.

We kids went upstairs with Nanny, who said it was time to get ready for school in the morning and to get ourselves ready for the week. She told Tasha to go into her room and gather her homework and make sure she had her laundry put away and organized. Then Nanny took Lisi and me into my room along with a cameraman. She looked at her watch. “We have an hour to play any game you want,” she said. “Then Nanny has a hot date.” She kicked off her very un-nanny high heels and loosened the belt on her dress and sat down on the floor at the end of my bed.

Without a word, Lisi went into her room and brought back Clue. Nanny called it Cluedo, which made Lisi and me laugh. Lisi did the cards-in-the-secret-envelope part because she never cheated, and I sometimes couldn’t help myself.

We played three games in that hour.

Nanny said, “You two are little dotes, you know that?” When we looked at her like we didn’t know what dote meant, she explained. “It means you don’t cause any trouble.”

Lisi stayed quiet. In my head I counted the times I’d caused trouble. I certainly counted crapping on stuff around the house as causing trouble. I concluded Nanny must be drunk. Maybe that’s what a hot date was.

Nanny looked at Lisi. “Did Tasha ever play Cluedo with you like this?”

Lisi shook her head. “Tasha hates us.”

“Tasha doesn’t hate you,” Nanny said.

“She tells us all the time,” Lisi said. “She calls us names and hits us.”

I reached and felt the lump on my head from two nights before. “She pushed me down the steps because she hates me.”

“I’ll look into that,” Nanny said. “Would that make you feel better?”

Lisi’s face was red now. “It won’t change anything.”

I added, “Yeah.”

“Mom and Dad never care what Tasha does to us.”

For a split second Nanny looked like she understood. Like maybe she knew—like maybe she remembered her promise, on the first day she came this time, to make things in the house fair for me. Then she said, “Let’s change things up, will we? I want to be Mrs. Peacock this time!”

The cameraman got the entire hour on tape until Tasha started screaming in her room like someone had stabbed her.

Nanny got up and ran to Tasha’s room and knocked on the door, telling the cameraman to stay in the hall.

By this time, Mom was halfway up the steps. “What are they doing to her?”

“I’ve got it,” Nanny said. “Go down and enjoy your meal.”

“How could you let this happen?” Mom asked.

“Tasha’s in there on her own,” Nanny said.

Mom clearly didn’t believe it. “Where’s Gerald?”

“He’s been with me for the last hour,” Nanny said. She pressed her mouth to the crack of the door. “Tasha! Open up the door!”

Tasha screamed, “I need Mom! I need Mom!”

“I’m here!” Mom called.

Tasha slowly opened the door and Mom gently pushed Nanny out of the way and went in.

Nanny, Lisi, Dad, and I stood in the hall until Mom opened the door and demanded that we come into Tasha’s room to see what was going on. There was a giant turd in her bathroom sink. Allegedly. I didn’t get to see it, but I admit I was curious because I’d only ever seen my own turds and I wondered what other people’s turds would look like.

Nanny said, “Gerald didn’t do that. He was with me for the last hour. We were playing a board game. On camera.” She seemed completely pissed off that Mom was somehow blaming her for this.