After Dakota Part 7

Meredith shouts back, "Fine, we're leaving!"

They ride their bikes to the arroyo, where the red and yellow state flag balloon pa.s.ses overhead. It's so close they can hear the whoosh of the flame. Claire gets her camera out of her purse and clicks a couple of shots; one of the men in the gondola waves down at them.

They follow it for several blocks through the next neighborhood, pedaling fast past the horseshoe driveways, trying to stay directly beneath it. Eventually, the girls run out of gas and stop their bikes at the edge of a field full of young soccer players who buzz around like orange and white ants. Claire takes one final picture.

"I wish we could ride in a balloon," Meredith says, pink-faced.

"My mom would say no." Claire imagines what they look like to the men in the balloon. What the world looks like. When you get as far up as some of the balloons, everything below would be like a miniature city, the kind in an electric train set. Plastic people waving and smiling next to plastic trees as the train snakes around and around.

What would it be like to crash in one of those?

"Let's go to the mall," Claire says.

"I'm not supposed to go that far without telling Pat."

"She's playing tennis, remember?" Claire starts pedaling. "C'mon, race you."

At the mall food court, they go from Hot Dog on a Stick, with its pretty girls in colored stripes, to Orange Julius, where a line of blenders whirs in tandem. From there it's Contempo Casuals, The Limited, and Dillard's, where Meredith zig-zags among the jewelry counters, practically drooling. Claire likes jewelry too, but not enough to spend all day leaning on gla.s.s cases. The saleswoman watches them from under her beehive hairdo.

Claire sees the coat display the moment they enter Juniors. White, with fur around the collar and sleeves. She hands Meredith her Orange Julius cup and tries it on in front of the triple mirror.

"That is literally the nicest coat ever," Meredith proclaims. "You look so pretty."

It is the nicest coat ever. Claire's glad she tried it on first; now she has dibs between the two of them.

Meredith looks at the dangling tag. "Real fox fur. Someone killed a fox to make that."

"And he's already killed so I might as well wear it."

"Claire, it's two hundred bucks!"

"I'll ask for it for Christmas." She and Bryce each get one gift from their parents, so they have to make it count. Not like Meredith, who gets a ton of stuff and even gets presents on Easter. And has her own phone in her room!

Meredith leans close to the center mirror to pop a zit on her forehead. Claire spins left and right like a fashion show model.

After the mall, the girls stop at the pharmacy, with the old man up at his high counter, counting pills into bottles. Grouchy and always wiling to hara.s.s kids, yelling at them to leave their backpacks outside of his cluttered, dusty empire. Inside, the usual routine: Meredith looks at the spinner rack of Harlequin romance novels, Claire pockets some candy, they walk out. They share a Hershey bar on the way home; while Meredith won't steal anything herself, she's more than happy to reap the rewards of someone else doing so. In her entire life, Claire has paid for something at the pharmacy maybe twice.

Yet they've never stolen from anywhere else, never even been tempted. It's the old man's fault for being so mean.

At home later, Claire's dad stands on the back porch, trying to light the barbecue. "Hi, Clarabelle, see some balloons today?"

"Uh-huh. Where's Mom?"

"Search me." He jumps back when the flame bursts.

"I need to tell her what I want for Christmas."

"Already decided in October?"

"It's a coat."

"It is?" He takes pieces of chicken off a plate, coats both sides with Pam cooking spray, lays them on the grill. "We're having chicken tonight. That ok with you?"

"Sure."

"Because if there's something you'd rather have..."

"Chicken's fine, Daddy." She goes inside. A rainbow striped balloon floats out over the mountains.

The next morning, the Vanzants are back at church ("The Life G.o.d Blesses") and Claire has a perfect view of them from the pew across the aisle. Mrs. Vanzant looks only at whatever she's holding, first the hymn book, then the Bible. Mr. Vanzant sports a frown worthy of a cartoon character, so severe it looks like someone drew it on him.

Claire used to look across this same aisle to where Dakota sat with her parents. Those days when the two girls' eyes met were the best; Dakota would mouth the song words extra dramatically toward Claire, or draw on the program: smiley faces, Tic-Tac-Toe grids.

Their own service going on under the surface of everyone else's.

Other days, Dakota's eyes stayed closed, or aimed toward Pastor Mark and the choir. Claire could stare for the entire hour shouting Look over here! inside her head and never be acknowledged.

Pastor Mark says from the front, "G.o.d blesses our life not because we deserve it, but because He is gracious and kind. As the New Testament puts it..."

Hands keep reaching forward from the pew behind the Vanzants, grabbing their shoulders, squeezing, withdrawing. When Claire leaves for her leisurely bathroom stroll, she wants to invite them to come so they can get away from all the attention. Sometimes people just want to be left alone.

29.

Cameron sits across from his dad, Hal, at Red Lobster. "Get anything you want, son. This is a monumental occasion?" His dad's voice goes up at the end of certain sentences, creating random questions throughout a conversation. He's already informed both the hostess and the waitress of his boy's eighteenth birthday. Cameron hopes this isn't one of those places where everyone comes out and sings. He used to have his birthdays at Farrell's ice cream parlor, where they rang a bell and made a big deal; that stopped being appealing long ago.

The real celebration would come when Bryce hit eighteen in a few months.

His dad b.u.t.ters a biscuit. "I heard about the gal next door. Deborah."

"Dakota," Cameron snaps back.

"Really too bad, she was a cutie." He starts reminiscing about Dakota and Cameron's younger years on the cul-de-sac, throwing out random moments like the kids tying their sleds to the back of Mr. Ingalls' pickup truck as if to justify getting her name wrong.

His dad's scalp shines through his peninsula of hair. He wears gla.s.ses, too, the only other one on either side of the family besides Cameron. Thanks, Dad. As long as the hair stays, all is forgiven.

The day the Iranian hostages were released in January, 1981, Cameron's parents sat him down in the living room after school. The TV was on the whole time, pictures of President Reagan, men filing off an airplane, hugs, crying. This followed a period when his dad had been gone on several business trips, where he'd disappear for days with no warning and no explanation (to his son, at least).

A thought hit Cameron there on the couch: What if these mysterious trips had something to do with the hostages? What if his dad...? That would be awesome. But then his mom was dabbing her eyes with a ball of Kleenex. She and his dad kept looking at each other, like they were daring the other person to talk first.

Finally, his dad said the word.

Separation.

We're not talking about divorce, one of them would say, and the other would nod.

On TV, a woman waved a little American flag.

Cameron sat in his room afterwards wondering how to feel. He wouldn't tell anyone besides Bryce; if people at school found out, he'd be looked at like, what's wrong with you that your parents split up? His dad knocked on the door and came in without waiting for a reply.

"I wanted to see how you're processing everything?"

"It's fine," Cameron said.

"You know the Iran situation?" His dad sat in the middle of the bed. "Well, I'm kind of like one of those hostages. A hostage in a marriage that isn't working. Now, I'm not saying your mom is the Ayatollah or anything. It's more like... You'll understand when you get older." He stood up, patted Cameron on the knee, and with an "All righty," walked out of the room.

After his dad moved out, Cameron saw him once every weekend, during which they rode around in the big flatbed truck Dad hauled porta-potties on during the week. They watched a lot of TV at the apartment, or worked on model airplanes, or went to movies where Cameron often caught his dad sleeping. Back at the house, the old power tools sat untouched, the garage an abandoned laboratory. His mom stayed in her pajamas a lot.

Eventually the S word became the D word. Father's parting gift to son was the car.

Now, after the obligatory college talk come the five hundred questions about how the car's running, and then whether or not Molly is seeing anyone. Sucking the meat out of a shrimp tail, his dad says, "You may be wondering about my personal life." Cameron isn't. "Remember Louise?" Louise. They've been together, broken up, back together, etc. If Cameron saw his dad during a breakup phase, he heard non-stop what a mistake she had been; once, he even asked Cameron to punch him if he ever mentioned getting back together with her.

"I've asked her to marry me?"

Cameron holds a piece of fried fish midway between his plate and his mouth, unsure if he's heard this correctly. Louise is going to be his stepmother? Louise, who calls him "Cam-Man"?

"I see you're surprised," his dad says. "To be honest, I never thought I'd latch on the old ball and chain again?" He chuckles, attacks another shrimp.

"When?"

"Oh, sometime this year I guess. She was on me about the proposal, so that'll shut her up for a while. Maybe we'll have a holiday wedding. Whaddaya think?"

Cameron thinks he doesn't want to be the one to tell his mom this news. "Sounds good, I guess."

His dad says he hopes Cameron can accept Louise as part of the family, and that Louise has made noise about wanting a baby but that he thinks he can talk her out of it (or secretly get a vasectomy). This monologue unfolds for the rest of the meal, stopping only when the waitress brings out a piece of chocolate cake with a candle in it. At least there's no song.

When Cameron gets dropped back at home afterwards, his dad hands him an envelope. "A little something, now that you're a man?"

Cameron opens it up in his room. Inside, a birthday card with a $50 bill, and a typed piece of paper: A father's advice to his son on turning eighteen 1) Always treat a full gas tank as empty. That way you'll never run out.

2) If someone can't explain something to you in a way that makes sense, it means they don't know what they're talking about.

3) Expectations are premeditated disappointments.

4) Never pa.s.s up an opportunity to pee. You don't know when you'll have another.

5) Two aspirin before bed after a night of drinking.

6) Never tell a woman your secrets & never tell her secrets to anyone else!!!

7) When grilling hamburgers, don't press down on the meat with your spatula. That will squeeze out all the juiciness.

8) Don't marry before your 30th birthday (your mother and I made this mistake).

9) The world runs on bulls.h.i.t. You can either figure out how to work with that or suffer trying to fight it.

10) Wear a rubber.

30.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n Arabs," Mr. Swanson keeps repeating to the TV, his face and hair almost a matching shade of red.

"Joe, the kids," Mrs. Swanson says as she straightens his tie.

They stand in the living room, watching a news report about Beirut. Images of smoke and fire and people running. Claire sits on the couch with the twins, Gabe and Donna; she pictures Beirut on a map, squeezed between Syria and Israel.

"We should get the h.e.l.l out of the Middle East," he goes on, angling his head so he can see the TV around his wife's disapproving face. "Then bomb those people back to the Stone Age."

"We're going to be late." Mrs. Swanson pulls on his arm. He keeps cursing under his breath as they leave for their fancy party at the fancy hotel. The grinding shut of the automatic garage door marks the start of Claire being in charge.

Gabe and Donna immediately want to change into their Halloween costumes: Luke Skywalker and Tinkerbell. Claire gets the camera from her backpack and has them pose throughout the living room. They have matching blue eyes that make them look vaguely alien.

"What are these?" Gabe asks as he pulls the Tarot cards from Claire's open backpack.

She takes the pouch from him. "They're, like, special cards."

"Ooh, ooh, can we play?" Donna bounces up and down, her wings flapping. Gabe joins in on the begging.

They sit in a circle on the living room floor. Their game is something akin to Go Fish: pentacles are traded for wands are traded for swords. Characters like The Hermit mean you get to take another person's cards. No one gets upset; they simply adjust the parameters of the game as needed.

When it's story time, Gabe says, "Tell us about one of the pictures."

"Which one?" Claire asks from the chair next to Donna's bed.

Donna pulls out the three of swords: a giant red heart pierced in triplicate. Claire unfolds the tale of the princess who offered her love to three different suitors, only to be betrayed and hurt by each of them. After the third one, the princess locked herself in a tower for the rest of her life, never to be harmed by the outside world again.

"The United Nations Resolution quote 'deeply deplores the armed intervention in Grenada, which const.i.tutes a flagrant violation of..." Claire knows she should look up at the audience, but she keeps her eyes locked on her notes. "'...international law and of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of that state.'"

Mr. Hagen has divided the cla.s.s in half, to debate the U.S. invasion of the island of Grenada. This is a country Claire would not have been able to place; it barely seems like a country at all. Everyone on both sides has already spoken, so it falls on guess who to wrap it all up at the podium.

"So, in conclusion... um..." Orion, who closed out the affirmative side, never looked down. Claire looks up. "We have shown that America was not threatened by the military takeover of the government."

Claire makes the mistake of trying to put her eyes on everyone in the room, like they learned in public speaking cla.s.s last year, and sees stupid Isabel sitting closest to the podium.