Reality Boy

“Tasha tried to kill me again last week,” I’d said on take one. They didn’t like that. Tasha protested. Things got loud.

So someone yelled “Cut!” and we started over and I was given instructions not to speak until a question was posed directly to me.

Nanny looked worried, though. She eyed Tasha. She knew.

“Action.”

“Nice to see you all again,” Nanny said. “I’m very excited to hear of your proh-gress.”

Mom smiled and said we’d been better behaved. She said she felt more able to handle the family now that house rules were in place and chores were still getting done.

Dad said he’d been busier at work than usual and felt that “the kids” were doing great. He said that he and Mom got to go more places together—once-a-month dates made possible by our newest babysitter.

“Gerald, how are you doing in school now that you’re in first grade?” Nanny asked. This was my cue to say something that wouldn’t ruin the scene and that would segue us smoothly into scene three, which would be an overview of our charts and chores and all the things Nanny had done for us. I was told to say School is great. My teacher is really nice.

But I thought about the question. Gerald, how are you doing in school? I thought about my answer. How do you think I’m doing? And why would I think you really care? What a load of bullshit.

“School would be better if Tasha wasn’t trying to kill me all the time,” I said.

“Cut!”

47

I DEMAND A mother who isn’t this person.

When I tell her I’m sick today and not going to school, my mother responds with, “Well, I’m not letting this get in the way of my plans with your father.” She bends her forehead into the shape of a W.

Dad sits there looking confused. I shrug and apologize.

“We RSVP’d to this wedding ages ago,” Mom grumbles. “And we have to leave at ten.”

“I’m sorry,” I say again.

“You go pack, Jill,” Dad says. “I want to talk to Ger on my own.”

She leaves, still clearly disappointed in my behavior even though I haven’t crapped in her shoes.

I demand to crap in her shoes. One. Last. Time.

“You okay?” Dad asks.

“Yeah. I just feel sick,” I say. I point to my stomach.

“Hungover from birthday celebrations?”

“That was two days ago. And I worked, remember?”

He nods. “Anything you want to talk about?”

“Nah.”

“You’re not doing drugs, are you?”

“Jesus, no.”

“Drinking?”

“Not unless you’re there,” I say.

“You got a girl?”

“Maybe,” I say. “Nothing serious.” My poker face is perfect.

“You’re not going to bring her here while we’re gone, right?”

“Never,” I say, thinking of the screwing-rodent rodeo in our basement.

He looks at me, worried. “You sure nothing’s wrong?”

I look at him, worried. “I’m sure everything is wrong,” I say. “I just have to wait it out, like Lisi did.”

“Huh,” he says. As if I’m being unreasonable.

“Or we could buy that house with the pool,” I say.

He sighs.

“Think about it,” I say.

He looks at the clock and motions for me to follow him into his man cave, where he shuts the door behind us and opens the liquor cabinet. He pours himself a small glass of liquor and mutters about how Mom will drive anyway. It’s nine o’clock in the morning.

“I hate going to weddings,” he says. “Everyone is always so f**kin’ happy. It’s all about futures and celebrations and all these people acting like marriage is some dream-filled Twinkie.”

“It isn’t?”

He smirks at me. Before he can say another word, the racket starts. Quietly at first. Ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom. Slowly.

He swigs back the end of his drink and says, “Mom is leaving Tasha in charge. I know that sucks. If you want to sleep at a friend’s house, that’s fine with me.”

He knows I don’t have any friends.

“Call me if she does anything stupid,” he says. Ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom.

“Do you have unlimited minutes?” I ask, and we both laugh.

Once they finally leave, I pick Hannah up from school (she sneaked out the band room door and met me on the street) and we drive to Franklin Street. On the way there, I tell her about what I’ve figured out.

“I don’t belong in Mr. Fletcher’s class. I never did. I’m fine,” I say.

She nods.

“But my mom wanted me to be retarded so Tasha would be happy. And she wanted Tasha to be happy because Tasha used to hit her all the time, and Lisi and me, and there’s more stuff to the whole thing, but we can talk about that another day. I mean—what kind of mother wants her kid to be retarded?”

“Can we please start saying learning disabled or something?”

“But that’s what she called me,” I say. “It hurt and shit.” You know how your mother is.

She squeezes my arm. “That totally sucks, you know?”

“But I’m fine, right? I’m not re—learning disabled, am I?” I look over at her as I drive. “Am I?”

“Gerald, did you ever think that her calling you that could have, you know, let her off the hook for all the shit she did to you? Like—the stuff from the show?”

“What do you mean?”

“This is totally going to break rule number three,” she says.

“Go for it.”

“Well, maybe she needed a reason for you to be, you know—doing what you did? So she decided that something was wrong with you, not her.”

“You mean a reason for me to be crapping?”

“Yeah,” she says.

“Huh,” I say. Then my brain races. So, my mother needed me to be retarded learning disabled because it would explain why I crapped during Network Nanny.

Shit.

My mother wanted me to be retarded because it was easier than her turning into a good mother.

Shit.

Nathan and Ashley are watching a National Geographic miniseries about the deepest parts of the sea. It’s their day off.

Ashley isn’t baking anything and Nathan says it’s too early for beer. I find this ironic because I watched my dad drink straight Scotch at nine o’clock this morning.