Bear, halfway through his second piece of Camdend, announces, “Mr. Calhoun caught Brody Mancuso with a vape today.”
Tyr looks up. “In school?”
He nods. “In the bathroom.”
“Any of your friends doing it?” Tyr asks.
He shakes his head. “A girl in another class got caught last week.”
“What?” Mom and I say at the same time.
Tyr says, “Don’t start, kid. That stuff wrecks your lungs. They’re not as cool as the kids doing them want you to think they are.”
“I know,” Bear says, looking at me. And that’s the comfort I needed to know that I also recognize that this first family dinner isn’t normal in this house, and he feels it.
Tyr nods and goes back to his food.
“That’s too young to be vaping,” I say.
“That’s horrible,” my mom adds. “I will kick your ass if you touch that stuff.”
Bear looks up at her, then at me. He hides his smile because we both know she’s bluffing.
“I won’t,” he says.
I try to remember a single time in the last decade that anyone other than me said something like that to my brother in this kitchen, and there hasn’t been a single time. I hate to say it but my mom’s too late. She looks at me, and I grab my glass of wine.
After dinner, my mom stands up to clear the plates.
Tyr says, “Sit down, I got it.”
She sits back down.
He looks at Bear. “Help me out, kid.”
Bear gets up without arguing. They take the plates to the sink. Tyr is washing. Bear is supposed to be drying but he is mostly just standing there holding the towel and listening to whatever Tyr is saying to him. Mom watches them for a second. Then she turns to me.
“You okay, baby?” she asks, and I still.
“I’m great.”
She looks at me, asking as if she actually cares. “You sure?”
I don’t want to make this more awkward than it already is, so I nod. “Yeah, Mom. Why?”
“You’ve been quiet.”
“I’m fine,” I say, but there’s something at the bottom of my throat that’s trying to crawl out.
She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand once. Once. Then let’s go and picks her glass back up. My heart starts racing because of her touch. I cannot trust my face for another sixty seconds in this kitchen.
I stand. “I’m going to use the bathroom.”
“Okay, baby.”
The bathroom is clean. The towels smell like detergent. There is a candle on the back of the toilet that has been used. There is a hand soap I do not recognize. The bathmat is new. The chihuahua is quiet, which is new. I sit on the toilet with the lid closed and count to sixty. My hands are trembling. I refuse to cry.
I go back out.
