That first afternoon, before we sit down for dinner, Martin appears at my door, holding out three toy dinosaurs. “They’re mine, but you can have them.”
“Oh, wow, thanks. I’ll just borrow them.”
“Okay,” he says. “For how long?”
“Well, for as long as they like it in here.”
He sets them carefully on my bedside shelf. “They’ll like it in here. It’s dark. They like the dark. They’re never scared.”
“Do they have names?”
“T. rex, Barosaurus …”
I meant name-names like Pete or maybe something Australian like Baz or Norbert but now I see that a boy can hardly find a better word to say, a word that confers more authority, than Ve-lo-ci-rap-tor.
“They’re from the Crustinsashus Period,” he says with pride.
“One of my favorites.”
“Really?”
“Totally.”
“Martin, dinner. Keely, too,” Milly calls from the kitchen, her voice sharp.
“Come on, Keely!” Martin says, holding out his hand. “See how my daddy can cook now.”
Dinner is ham and cheese on brown bread with some chips. None of it looks good to me, but I eat it all, because I’m a guest or, God help me, a role model. This would amuse my mother. It’s just the sort of mundane shit she wanted me to be worrying about.
“How long have you lived here?” I ask John as he moves Martin’s milk away from the edge of the table.
“Since Ellen and I got mar— Martin, put your napkin in your lap,” John says. Milly leans over and pushes Martin’s napkin onto his thighs. “For a while now, eight years. I guess actually nine.” I can’t tell whether this last year hardly registers or counts double. Maybe he can’t even remember it, maybe it’s all there is.
Milly eats every chip and then sits back in her chair.
“Eat your sandwich,” John says, tapping the table in front of her.
“I don’t like the cheese.”
“Take it off, then.”
“I don’t like the ham.”
“Amelia—”
She looks over at me, waiting to see if I will insert myself, which I will not.
“I’m not hun—”
“Now.”
She picks up her sandwich and takes a mousy bite, fake-chewing, reminding me of all the ways I found not to eat whatever awfulness my mother forced on me (bread crust, spaghetti sauce, dark meat) when I was Milly’s age.
As Milly stares at her sandwich, Martin runs his fingers around the outside of his, working the excess mayonnaise like a bricklayer does mortar.
John smacks the table with his open hand. “No fingers!”
Martin looks down as Milly takes another bite, bravely, like a soldier taking stitches in the field.
“Daddy—” Milly points at her brother, who is rolling his greasy hands around in his T-shirt.
“Martin! Use your serviette! And apologize to Kelly.”
To me? What do I have to do with any of this?
Martin apologizes without hesitation or, for that matter, feeling.
After a period of terrible silence, uneaten sandwiches disassembled on plates, John leans back, exhales, and says, “Who wants ice cream?” Ice cream? I hear my mother say. After that behavior?
“We do!”
“With toppings!”
So, John, who just moments ago was beside himself with frustration, heads to the kitchen to dole out treats. Someone needs a little backbone, my mother whispers.
While the kids are busy with their jimmies and chocolate sauce, John tells me about Pop, who lives in an in-law unit attached to the house. Pop is eighty-four. Pop lived most of his life in Fiji. Pop is a widower, too. He keeps to himself and is no trouble, and I am not expected to worry about him for meals or anything at all. He came over a couple of years ago, when Ellen first started chemo, and now he’ll probably stay.
Milly lifts her head from her ice cream. “Probably?”
“As long as he wants,” John assures her, committing to house the father of his dead wife indefinitely.
“He likes it here. Like the dinosaurs,” Martin whispers to me.
“I see,” I say, thinking less about Pop and the dinosaurs and more about John saying that Ellen was in chemo. I didn’t know it was cancer. It didn’t come up in the interview, and I didn’t have the guts to ask.
“And then there’s Evan, Ellen’s son from her first marriage, who lives in a room off the garage. He’s in and out, he won’t bother you.” How had Evan and Pop not come up before?
Martin announces he’s done. Finished, my mom corrects. Meat is done. Are you a slab of meat?
After dessert, I start to clear the table, but John shoos me away, saying I must be tired, and I take the opening to say good night.
Stretching out on the bed, I rotate my thoughts like a camera on a tripod, away from the Tanner kids and malignancies to the reason I am here. On a clean two-page spread in my journal, I make the official list of all the Life Eating I’m going to do, starting five months from today.
Hiking/Waterfalls—Radical Bay
Sailing—Whitsunday Islands
Camping—Fraser Island
Ayers Rock
Rain Forest—Cape Tribulation
Horseback Riding
Scuba Dive—Great Barrier Reef
Bungee Jump—Queenstown
Fjords—New Zealand
Fox Glacier
Beach Time/Island Hopping—Fiji
I sit back and stare at the list. THIS IS IT, I write at the bottom in all capital letters. THIS IS IT!