“Your voice isn’t that high,” I offered.
“Well, on the phone I try to be super polite, so my voice is soft. It’s no big deal. That’s not really what made me so mad.”
“No, I know, but still.”
“Yeah, thanks, but the point is, I got angry and I kicked a hole in the wall and my mom ran in and I told her what was happening. We got in the car and drove to my dad’s office, and she started shouting at him in front of other people, and then, well . . .”
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t really remember, honestly. Sometimes, when I get really stressed, I just kind of lose myself? Like I go into some trance, my ears start ringing. I feel kind of fuzzy and hot. And I can kind of be . . . destructive, I guess. Not often, right? But sometimes. Anyways, my mom says that I jumped on my dad and tried to claw his eyes out and some of my dad’s employees had to drag me off of him and hold me down. Like, they sat on me for a pretty long time. They said I was speaking in tongues or something.”
“Jesus, Zeke,” I said, but I kind of wished that I had been able to do that to my dad.
“My dad’s secretary asked if she should call the cops, and he said not to. He said we’d get me into a hospital or something, but my mom nixed that. She packed us up, and we drove here because this is where my grandmother lives. I guess my mom grew up here, but she never really talked about it, and she doesn’t seem so jazzed about being back. So we’re here until my mom decides what to do about my dad. She says we might be here forever or we might go back in a month. She just doesn’t know.”
“That sucks,” I told him.
“And, I don’t know, I want to go back home. I miss my house, you know? I have to go back to school at the end of the summer, right? But I don’t really feel like it would be so great if my mom just went back to him. Unless he really changed. But how long would it take for someone like that to change? It feels like it could be a long time.”
“My dad left us,” I told him. “Two years ago. He got his secretary pregnant, and he told my mom just a few days before their anniversary because the secretary was getting mad at him for not telling my mom, and then a few days later, he and this woman moved up north. I guess he’d been planning it for a while. He got a transfer. I think it was a promotion. I don’t know. He kept saying ‘a fresh start,’ but he meant for him and this woman and, you know, that dumb baby. It’s a girl. And you know what they named it?”
“What?” he asked.
“Frances,” I said. “That’s my grandmother’s name, his mom. I never even knew her; she died when I was little. But still. I mean, that’s my name.”
“That’s fucked up,” he admitted.
“I thought so,” I said. “My mom really thought so.”
“Does he call the baby Frankie?” he asked.
“I’m afraid to ask,” I said. “He sent us a birth announcement, and it was all fancy so it just said Frances.”
“Do you talk to him?” he asked.
“Never,” I said. “He sends us money because he has to, but I don’t talk to him. I’ll never talk to him.”
“I haven’t talked to my dad since we moved here,” Zeke told me. “I keep thinking maybe he’ll call, but he doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t have our number.”
“Would you talk to him if he called?” I asked. I felt like his answer was important.
“Probably not. Not because I don’t want to talk to him, but I feel like it would hurt his feelings if I shut him out. Like, he should be punished, right?”
“He should be,” I told him. I wanted to grab his hand for emphasis, but I was weird around boys. I was weird around people in general. I didn’t like touching people or being touched. But Zeke needed to know. You had to choose sides. And you always chose the person who didn’t fuck everything up. You chose the person who was stuck with you.
“So,” he said, looking up at me. “We’re both kind of alone in the same way, right?”
“I guess so,” I said. He looked like he might kiss me. Or maybe not. I’d never been this close to a boy. I knew there had to be a moment, some signal, that regular people could sense in order to go from being people who didn’t kiss to being people who kissed. What the hell was it? How could I make sure not to do it until the exact right moment? His eyes were so dark, but they kind of twinkled. I felt light-headed.