Watching a Train Wreck

I’m not usually home when Jenn wakes up.  I don’t know if throwing up is her normal routine after opening her eyes and dropping her feet to the floor.  I make Charlie check in on her first.  I hide behind him in case it’s messy.

“Are you okay?”

“Side effects of Zoloft,” she says.  “Sorry, I didn’t have time to close the door.”

She flushes the toilet, hops downstairs like a carefree teenager, and starts looking around the kitchen for food.  Watching her is better than a sitcom.  I would have moaned in bed all morning.

She opens the freezer.  “I’m eating the General’s waffles.”

Because the skateboarder is vegan, he keeps his hoof-less foods in a meat-free zone.  The General keeps her Doritos and Snickers bars in her own cupboard.  Jenn doesn’t touch the vegan’s food, but I’ve noticed the General opening her cupboard, sighing then putting empty food wrappers in the trash.

The General is fifteen and in High School.  Jenn is an adult, fully loaded with food stamps.

“You probably shouldn’t do that,” I say. 

“She eats my stuff.”

My bullsh*t meter goes off.  I find myself walking out the front door and waiting in the Jeep. 

“Remember when you first moved here?” Charlie says, taking over.  “You used your food stamps to buy groceries.  You did that once.  I haven’t heard you offer again.  You eat everybody’s food.”

“No, I don’t,” Jenn says.  “I go to the store every day.”

“You’re supposed to replace what you eat if you eat something that isn’t yours.”

“No one’s taking me to the store.”

“What?”

“I’m going home anyway,” Jenn says.  “I’m moving in with my friend.  I’m not comfortable here.”

She didn’t elaborate what she meant by “here.”  “Here” as in Oregon, or “here” as in this particular half-finished imitation of third-world permanent accommodations?

Charlie joined me in the Jeep.  We found the noisiest coffee place and stayed a long time.

We find we’re much better parents when we do this.  Instead of getting angry at our kids, we go to a loud place and vent all our frustrations.  We say to each other what we wish we could say to our kids.  We get to a point where we’ve gone over and over the situation so much that we know exactly what we’d say next time the issue comes up.  We come home and wait.  Situations tend to repeat themselves.

We return calm and slosh-full of hot liquid, the perfect way to start a work day in cold, gray Oregon.  Charlie puts on his tool belt and starts working on the deck, even though it’s threatening to rain.  I’m upstairs working on a project.  Jenn’s bored, watching another “Law and Order” rerun.

The vegan skateboarder drives up and parks in front of the remaining bark dust pile.  He fumbles with something in the passenger seat.  He might be cleaning but it’s hard to tell in an 18 year-old boy’s car.  He looks like he’s moving things around, lost and confused as usual.

Charlie looked up from pounding the deck railings together with rounds of finishing nails.  Being a Cop, when he has a gun in his hand, he uses it.  “Good time to practice,” he said.  

He aimed the nail gun at the skateboarder’s car and shot the windshield.  The paint on the skateboarder’s car is good, but the windshield is shot.  It is now, anyway.

The skateboarder froze in his seat.  When he regained movement, he turned his head and looked over at Charlie with his mouth hanging open.  He waited until Charlie got bored playing nail-gun-Cop and went back to work on the railings.  Then he ran for cover as fast as he could.  This isn’t the first time he’s been shot at by his step-Dad. 

The last time Charlie was putting in a door.  The skateboarder walked by him toward the kitchen.  Charlie meant to shoot him in the back, but the nail tumbled in the air and hit him in the ear. 

“Ow,” the skateboarder said, and continued into the kitchen like everyone gets shot in the head once in a while.

Charlie got this idea when the skateboarder was particularly lazy.  It was long past noon and everybody was up and working on things except the skateboarder.  He was sleeping.  About 1:00 pm, Charlie went upstairs to wake him.  He was working, so he had the nail gun in his hand.  He noticed the thick covers over the skateboarder and calculated a safe distance from which he could shoot without really hurting him.

“Last chance,” Charlie said.

“Go away.”

Charlie let off a few rounds.

“Stop it!”  the skateboarder naturally said.  He looked over, saw what Charlie was doing, then covered his head with the blankets.

“Get up,” Charlie said then let off a few more.

“Stop it!  You’re crazy.”

Charlie laughed about it the rest of the day.

“Jill’s working, the skateboarder’s in his chat rooms, and I’m bored,” Jenn says to Charlie.  She sits down next to him while he’s measuring railings.  “You’re working so I’ll talk to you.”

Charlie notices the skateboarder hiding in the garage.  He’s 6’2” so it’s difficult for him to hid anywhere, particularly in the garage full of unused work materials and future Goodwill donations.

“I see you,” Charlie says to the skateboarder.  The skateboarder runs outside.

“I was going to throw this in the truck,” he says, “but you didn’t open the door.”

“That would have sucked,” Charlie said.  Jenn’s laughing, along with the skateboarder.

“When I move back to Albuquerque,” Jenn said, “I’m sending you a list of things you can do to get into trouble.”

“Just make sure the General doesn’t get that list,” I said.

“That would be bad,” she says.

The phone rings.  Jenn sometimes sits by the phone, waiting for her semi-ex-drug-running boyfriend to call.  She cries all day when he doesn’t.  Even if he does, she sits by the phone.  I’ve almost forgotten how to use it.

“Why do you want to talk to him?” she says.  She looks at Charlie, then slowly, like a little kid in trouble, hands the phone to him.

“My Mom wants to talk to you,” she says.

Charlie goes outside to talk.  Jenn opens the window to listen.  She can’t hear.

“Go out there and find out what they’re saying,” she says.

I do.  I’m curious, too.

There was nothing to hear.  Jenn’s Mom talks more than I do.  Charlie didn’t say a word for a long, long time.  Jenn shut the window and I played around with the placement of the front yard river rock.

Charlie said a few things quietly then hung up.  Jenn stood waiting by the door.

“You hate it when we’re talking about you, don’t you?”  Charlie said.

“Shut up.”

“It’s all bad.”

“Shut up,” she said again.

We decide to sneak off for sushi.  On the way, Charlie told me why Jenn’s Mom called.  “She wanted to know the real reason Jenn’s coming back to Albuquerque.  ‘Did you guys get into a fight?’ she asked.  ‘Did she burn her bridges again?’”

“’No,’ I said.  ‘I told her she could stay a couple of months.  The first month was fine.  Now her semi-ex moved up here to live at the Sunset Transit Center.  That’s when it became painful.  We watched her put all her hopes and dreams into some drug-running dirt bag.  We told her it’s like watching a train headed for disaster.  We don’t want front row seats.’”

“’I want you to get him back for what he f*cking did to her,’ Jenn’s Mom said.  ‘I want you to hunt him down like a f*cking dog.  He doesn’t know who he’s f*cking with.’”

“Is she with the Mafia?” I ask.

“That’s how she talks.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“’Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ I said.  ‘I’ll get him.’”

“You don’t sound too excited.”

“That’s the last thing I’m going to do,” Charlie said.  “I value my relationship with my daughter more than I value my relationship with my ex.  If I get Jenn’s semi-ex extradited to New Mexico, he’ll be in her life again.  He was in jail while they were together once before.  I’d be giving him a ticket right back into her life.”

No amount of Zoloft would help that situation.

A little help? [] 5:32:07 PM