Somehow Aunt Laura made Dad change the cat litter and clean the bathroom and come to my soccer game tonight. He didn’t sit in the stands reading a book either. He tried to, but she grabbed his book and shook her head. Not like she felt sorry for him, which is how most women shake their heads at Dad. Aunt Laura knows that Dad used to read books at my games way before Mom died. It’s not like he’s stopped paying attention to us or taking us out. Just like he hasn’t stopped cleaning the bathroom or changing the cat litter. He never did those things in the first place. He can’t get it through his head that he has to do them now. Aunt Laura says he should have done them even when Mom was alive.
It was nice to have everyone at my game for a change. Sammy cheered in stereo each time I scored. Instead of sounding like an insane child with the split personality of his dead mother, it sounded very cool and musical. He cheered, “Way to go, Josh!” in his own voice, then, “That’s my boy!” in the girly voice, with two claps in between. It caught on. Half the team was cheering in two voices by my third goal.
After the game, the coach let me and Sammy kick a ball around the field. Sam scored two goals on me. I was going easy on him, but he did well. He’s faster than I remembered. He’s been walking backward for so long, I forgot how fast he can run forward.
We bought drive-through ice-cream cones after the game and took them to the park. Our neighbor was there—Sam’s coach, Mr. Simpson, as in “Simpson is my last name”—with his daughter, Chloe. She was up on the rubber tires of the jungle gym, and her dad was saying, “Aren’t you going to come down the slide? Why don’t you come down the slide?” Parents always do that. Once a kid finds something they actually want to do, the parents try to get them to do something else. “Oh my god, you’re having too much fun up there, you better come down.”
When Sammy finished his cone, he climbed up the jungle gym to play with Chloe. Five seconds later they were rolling down the slide on top of each other. They kissed and ran around backward holding hands. It was so cute, I couldn’t stop laughing. Seriously, I was worried I might never stop. I got that weird hysteria thing where in the middle of a laugh you think you might cry like a baby.
The same thing happened to Dad, and he actually did start to cry. Big heaving sobs that made Mr. Simpson walk halfway across the park to get away from him. Dad was all hunched over shuddering. I shouted out that it was just an allergy attack and not to worry.
When he calmed down to a regular cry, Dad said he was sad because Mom wasn’t there to see us—to see me scoring at my game and Sammy kissing a girl in the park. He said every happy moment with us in the whole future of our lives will hold the sadness for him that Mom isn’t there to see it. I have to admit, that’s a good reason to cry.
Earlier today, Sammy and I went around taking pictures and making drawings for the Mom Book, so we’ll have a record of places like Mom’s garden and the bike path and the park bench she liked best. While we were out, I saw Karen walking up the street with a towel under her arm. She must be back from camp. I shouted her name, and she looked around and saw me, but she didn’t wave. I shouted again, but that time she didn’t even look. I asked Sammy if he wanted to go to the pool, but he said no because swimming causes drowning.
I hope he’s not getting a phobia about swimming. Phobias can start out as rational fears—like a fear of drowning when you’re not a good swimmer. The more you let the fear scare you, the more it becomes crazy and irrational. I read that phobias are the most common mental-health problem in North America. That’s really hard to believe, because Mom and Mr. Smitts are the only two people I’ve ever met with a phobia, whereas psychos are everywhere.
The most common phobias are of animals— especially dogs, mice, insects and snakes—plus storms, heights and closed-in spaces. I had never heard of a fear of storms before. It’s called brontophobia. There are many rare phobias too. Like dentophobia, which is a fear of going to the dentist. Nobody likes going to the dentist, but some people spend years in agony with their teeth rotting out because they’re so afraid to go.
There’s papyrophobia, which is a fear of paper. People with that phobia will run away from newspaper stands, or they’ll leave a restaurant where someone is reading the paper. Maybe the woman who jumped off the bus to have a cigarette was actually papyrophobic and somebody beside her cracked open the comics.
Maybe papyrophobics were hit on the head with a rolled-up newspaper when they were little. Or maybe they watched their parents hit the dog they loved with a newspaper. How else could you become afraid of paper?
Some people are so phobic they can’t even leave the house, and they spend their whole lives alone and afraid. They start off as normal people. Maybe they’re afraid to speak in public, but they have to do a speech for school. They totally bomb, and their fear gets worse. Then they go to the mall, and a pretty girl asks for directions. They stutter and the girl laughs at them, and their fear gets even worse. Eventually going anywhere feels so awful they can’t do anything except stay home.
I have to make sure Sammy doesn’t become one of those sad people. He should eliminate his fears by facing them one at a time. He seems to be totally over his fear of little girls—but since that took thirty seconds with Chloe to overcome, I’m guessing it wasn’t a real phobia. It can take years of therapy to get over a real one.
I told Aunt Laura about behavior-modification therapy for overcoming phobias. I said Mom should have done that. Aunt Laura patted my hand and said, “Josh, honey, half the people on the road would lose control of their cars if a snake slithered out between their feet.” She’s probably right. It would freak you out even if you liked snakes. Dad nearly crashed the car and killed us all once when a bee flew in through the window and landed on his thigh. He totally spazzed out, and he’s not even apiophobic, which means afraid of bees.
Whoever put the snake in Mom’s car might not even have known about her phobia. That makes the list of suspects practically endless.
I just shut my light off and looked at the stars, but then I realized we missed the Perseids meteor shower two weeks ago, so now I’m bummed. This year there was no moon on August twelfth, which is the peak of the shower, so we would have seen a million shooting stars. It happens every August and it’s named after the constellation Perseus, the Greek hero. At Mom’s university, in the office across from hers, there’s a poster of Perseus holding up Medusa’s head. Mom couldn’t even look in that direction because of the snakes. It was a creepy poster, partly because of the severed head, but mostly because Perseus was totally naked, which is a weird way to fight monsters.
Every August when the Perseids happened, Mom and I would drive out to an abandoned farm outside of town where the light pollution isn’t bad, and we’d lie down on a pile of blankets to watch the meteor shower. Once all four of us went, but Sammy was so afraid of the dark he ruined it by saying, “I hear something coming,” every two seconds. So usually just Mom and I went. This year would have been especially great with no moon.
It still happened—the meteors fell all over the sky—but I didn’t see it. There’s tons of stuff like that happening right now. There’s a new IMAX movie, and new exhibits at the museums, and maybe even a fair. Life is going on around me, but I’m missing it all. Like that Einstein exhibit Mitchell told me about. Mom would have already taken me to that.
I’ll have to start reading the newspaper. Mom was the only person in my family who ever knew what was going on.