The Starving Children Want Ice Cream

Mag

I trudge up my driveway to the tune of birdsong and awakening car engines. People in this neighborhood get up way too early. It's unholy.

I don't see Christine immediately, but I'm neither deluded nor optimistic enough to assume that means I'm off the hook. I slam the door behind me. I need to get this over with. It takes her about 2 seconds to find me.

"What is wrong with you?" She rounds the corner like a train off its tracks, nearly going tits up in her slippers. I don't say anything, knowing she's not done. "I have been worried sick! Jack thought you got hit by a truck! You don't call, you don't text. I don't have a problem with you going out, Margie, okay, but you've gotta tell us if you're staying out to motherloving--," she looks around madly, "god, 5 am. You're gonna give me a heart attack, you know? Or a stroke. I'm 42, Margie, I can't have a stroke. Jack doesn't wanna be married to a frickin' stroke victim." Jack is fat and balding. He'd stay married to a houseplant if it told him his hairy-ass back was sexy. "I--" she takes a moment to adjust her bra straps, lets a sharp sigh out her nose, "I can't take this anymore, Margie. You're gonna kill me." She looks me over, shakes her head. "Don't you have anything to say?"
"I'm sorry, Christine." This is what she needs to hear. "Tell Jack I'm sorry, too. And I didn't see any trucks last night, so."
"You're missing the point."

I start up the stairs anyway. "I've gotta change. Education, right? Or am I not going to school?" I see her struggling. On one hand is punishment, the other holding the likely possibility of me not graduating high school.
"Yeah, fine. Go," she concedes. "We're not done, though." I've already cleared the landing. "And get Shan's crap from under the coffee table, please!" Thank god for wood floors.

A yawn overtakes me, bringing tears to my eyes, and I lean into my bedroom door frame. Only a couple more hours 'till I can sleep off the dirt of last night. Until then...I need clothes.

There is no room for traditional order in the Falco domicile--everything has its place, but no one know's where the fuck that's got off to, so the car keys just live in the fridge now.

Christine likes to pretend she's got her shit together so hard I think she's beginning to believe it. She wears silk pajamas and A-line skirts and doesn't drink (hard liquor) before noon. She goes to her colorist every four weeks to beat those brown roots back to blonde, paints her face to make the world damn sure this shit ain't Maybelline. On Saturdays she weed-whacks Jack's shoulders so he can wear wife beaters and khaki shorts and mow the lawn and barbecue like a suburban cliché, then starts off on a 24-hour manhunt that she tells him is actually Book Club with the girls.

They pay bills, drink coffee (her Irish, him straight), buy groceries. They try so hard to look like anti-fuckups because they both know she's sleeping around. It's cool, though. I mean, it's not "cool"; it's really bullshit, but everyone pretends it is, so it is. Lucky for them, the social worker doesn't come around much anymore. Anyway.

This organizational devil-may-care attitude most certainly extends to my own quarters, not as a choice, but a custom. I've got crap everywhere, basically. It's actually quite spectacular. If you didn't know me, you'd think I was a hoarder. But why Mag, you're obviously asking me, do you make people take off their shoes before coming in, then?

Because, I reply, amicable as fuck, I don't want possible dog-guano being tracked into my place of living. Personal preference. I've already got to lock the door every time I leave so Shan doesn't deuce on my bed while I'm gone. Forgive me if I'm a little shit sensitive.

Half-asleep, I rummage through the pile of clothes atop my bed and, finding nothing not smelling vaguely of ass and dog hair, try the closet.

It is an undeniable truth that I have not been within the confines of my closet since...ever, save for throwing undesirable objects behind it's door in fits of strong emotion and/or laziness. Hence, I approach with caution.

The smell hits me the hardest. Something between musk and death, my eyes are in definite danger of watering. I resolve to hang an air freshener. Or twenty.

Pinching my nose, I dive deeper, past piles of assorted shirts and pants, shorts and shoes years too old to fit me anymore. I never knew I had so much space. I pick my way over an upended crate, one of those organizational things you'd find at the Container Store (no time to reflect on the possible irony), nearly trip on a busted lamp emblazoned with pink and purple butterflies. Where are the clothes? There have to be clothes in here. I still can't tell what's making that smell...on second thought, I don't wanna know.

Feeling slightly ill,--probably the fumes--I'm about to split when something interesting catches my eye.

I grab it, half-buried beneath discarded towels, get a closer look. It's a notebook, one of those marbled ones, a small photo paper-clipped to the front cover.

Carefully, I pick my way back out to where the light is better. The book's furled with age and pressure, a taught rubber band wrapped around it's middle. It's got weight. Confused, I pull the photo out. It's...me. A lot younger. Maybe 3 or 4. Wearing braided pigtails I sit atop my father's shoulders, my arms wrapped around his neck. We're both grinning. My mom must've taken the picture.

I don't remember this. Why don't I remember this?

I flip it over. In a cramped script I vaguely recognize as belonging to my mother is this:
Magpie and Daddy, 2003
104 Montgomery St, San Francisco, CA 94129 

San Fransisco...we never lived in San Fransisco. I've never been. Or I just don't remember being there.

The notebook's unlabeled, the band fraying. What's inside?

Putting the picture aside, I set to removing the rubber band, stiff with age, curse as it pops my wrist. The pages fall open easily, but there's nothing written in them. It's empty.

I quickly flip through the pages, every one of them blank. Taking the cover by both sides I shake it roughly, and finally something flutters out. An envelope, fat and heavy. It's unmarked, too.

What is this? Jesus, what if it's, like, drugs? What if, by my opening this, I'm now entered into some unspoken narcotics...cartel and now I have to shove whatever illegal contents are in this envelope up my ass? I will not be a drug mule.

Before I let my imagination run any farther, I rip the envelope open, spilling what looks to be no less than $1000 on to my bedroom floor.
"Holy fucking shit!"

"Language!" Christine calls from down the hall.
"Sorry."

My eyes are watering again and this time it has nothing to do with the closet. I grab my phone.