We saw Dr. Tierney today, and he didn’t ask to see our journals, not even to make sure we’ve been using them. When I told him about Dad’s time machine and Sammy’s psycho snakes, he said, “Let’s talk about you, Josh.” But when I told him that Sammy and I are collecting stories and photographs to make into a scrapbook about Mom, he scrunched his eyebrows together and frowned like that was a completely insane and puzzling idea.
So that confirms my poor opinion of psychiatrists. Except he gave us more journals, and they’re probably expensive. So that’s good.
Sammy loves the Mommy Book, which is what he calls our scrapbook. We haven’t even written it, but in his mind it’s already done. We started collecting pictures for it and planning which stories to include. Sam mentioned some of the less nice things about Mom, like how she yelled at me to stop combing my hair and get outside to the bus stop every morning last year. It must be a strong memory for Sam, because he asked about five thousand times, “Are, are, a-a-are we going to have a picture uh-uh-uh-of Mommy screaming at you in the morning?”
I can’t decide whether to include mean things like that or just leave them out. Maybe I can make them into funny jokes about life with Mom. But they were never funny at the time.
Man, she hated it when I was late for school. She’d go on and on about how we have a bus system so she shouldn’t have to drive me. She’d say, “What if we didn’t have a car?” and all sorts of irrelevant things like that. I only missed the bus twice in the whole year, but she yelled at me every single day to get out and wait for it. It’s only partly true that I combed my hair slowly on purpose to bug her. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to make her mad over something so stupid. She never got mad at other stuff, like when I lost my shoes or forgot my homework. But man, she got mad over the school bus.
At least she got me on the bus, which is more than I expect from Dad. I can see him driving off to work, waving at me in the window while I stay home gaming all day.
He took me to soccer on Saturday though. I scored three goals and we won the game. Sammy cheered, partly in his own voice and partly in his Power Ranger girly voice. It was very embarrassing to Dad, who stared at Sam like he was somebody else’s weird kid. Sammy told Dad he wants to play too, because Mom liked soccer. When Dad said it was too late to join, I told him that our neighbor is the five-year-old soccer coach. Dad said, “No way, Josh. They’d never let a five-year-old be coach.” I think he was actually making a joke, even though his expression didn’t change. That has to be a good sign.
Cheetah dropped by with some photographs this morning. Some happy pictures of Mom at work made me smile and then cry a bit. Cheetah hugged me and cried too. She was soft and warm, and it was nice to hug her.
Her name is actually Chaitan. She wrote it on a photograph of her and Mom. I think that’s a weird name because it’s a lot like Sheitan, which is Persian for Satan. Maybe she’s the devil, and she put the snake in Mom’s car. Except I don’t believe in devils. And she doesn’t seem like a devil. She’s awfully pretty. When I told her I’d thought her name was Cheetah, she said that was a good name and if she were African she’d want that name. So that’s what I’m calling her.
I told her that Ashanti families in Africa mourn people for forty days after the funeral. She said it was cool to know stuff like that, but when I asked her if I was a know-it-all, she said no. That’s good, because a lot of know-it-alls win Darwin Awards.
Cheetah already knew about the Darwin Awards. She said she told Mom about them a few years ago. I guess she’s been working on her PhD for a long time. When I asked her if she knew how the snake got in Mom’s car, she said no. But she looked guilty, so it’s hard to say. Maybe she was feeling guilty for liking the Darwin Awards—she started to cry when I said I hoped Mom wouldn’t get one. I told her not to cry, because some of them are funny, and it’s okay to laugh at the ones that were astoundingly stupid.
I don’t think Cheetah put the snake in Mom’s car. She was very nice to bring the photographs and let me call her Cheetah. When Sammy walked into the room backward and I explained why he did that, she told him it was an excellent idea. She even left our house walking backward. But since she was crying, if she dies, the last thing we’ll remember of her is her face all screwed up and weeping.
It’s hard to think that someone you just saw this morning might have died at lunchtime and you wouldn’t even know it. With Mom, there was a long time when I was bumming around at home thinking she was at work, but really she was dead. You have no way of knowing. You could say good-bye to your friend on the phone, then remember some joke he made, and think, “He’s such a funny guy. I’m sure glad he’s my friend.” But really he could be dead already. He might have tripped down the stairs and broken his neck.
Mom told the best jokes. She was on a hundred joke e-mail lists—it’s hard to see how she got any work done with all those jokes to read. She’d tell me the best ones. On the day she died, she said, “What did the Buddha say to the hot-dog vendor? Make me one with everything.” She laughed all bright and happy when she told me that. Sammy didn’t get it, of course, but she didn’t tell it for him. She told it for me. I know about Buddhism and being one with everything. She told that joke while she was unpacking groceries and putting away the hot dogs. I told it to Simpson later in the day, but he didn’t get it either. And by then Mom was already dead. It wasn’t right to tell her joke while she was dead. I wish I had known right away.
If there’s anybody who’s not actually in your line of sight right now, they could be dead. Dad might be sprawled in his time machine, dead of a heart attack. Or a brain attack. Maybe your brain shuts down if you get so stupid it can’t stand to live with you. Like if you’re building a time machine and ignoring your kids whose mom just died.
I went into the basement to show Dad the pictures Cheetah brought this afternoon, but he must have been out in the yard with Sammy. He has half the basement curtained off. Behind the curtain is a strange rocket-shaped construction covered in a tarp, which I’m guessing is his time machine. I didn’t want to look.
Dad’s journal was lying on a table behind the curtain. It wasn’t full of time-travel theories. It was full of sad thoughts about how much he misses Mom and how he doesn’t know if he can go on living and how much he loves me and Sammy. It was frightening to read that he’s so sad. I would rather he were just insane.
I don’t think Dad put the snake in Mom’s car anymore. He wrote that he thinks I did it as a prank. Or maybe he just wrote that to cover his tracks and set me up in case the police start investigating again, and they take his journal as evidence. He should know that I’m not a prankster. Okay, I put fake poop on the porch once. And on April Fools’ Day, I wrote a letter saying Dad won a million dollars a year for life. But I would never scare Mom with a snake.
If he reads my journal like I read his, he’ll find out it wasn’t me.
So I’ll say right here that it isn’t very nice of him to keep walking forward when Sammy asked him to walk backward. A total stranger did it! But Dad won’t do it for his own four-year-old kid who has obviously gone wacko, peeing the bed and speaking to Mom through a Power Ranger. How is Sammy ever going to get through kindergarten without being labeled a freak? It starts in three weeks.
I’d understand if Dad were trying to help Sammy break his walking-backward habit. But Dad’s not helping Sammy. He’s not even making him supper. We’ve been eating microwaved hot dogs and Mr. Noodles for five weeks straight. Tonight Sammy clapped when I gave him cinnamon toast. We could use a real dad.
I’m going to accidentally-on-purpose leave this journal on the kitchen counter by the coffeepot so Dad will find it and know for sure that I didn’t put the snake in Mom’s car. And he can learn that he’s failing as a parent.