Parker
Actually, it wasn’t so much the sitting on the laps that was torture. It was uncomfortable, that was for sure, but it wasn’t complete torture. It was all the illegal U-turns Mr. Hanson kept pulling when he realized several times he was going the wrong way and had to turn back. It was the annoying “Picnic Basket” game the little ones had going on in the backseat. It was the “101 Dalmations Sing Along” playing in the CD player up front. Yes, this was hell. I was certain of it.
“I went on a picnic and in basket I brought an aardvark, a book, a cat, and a...dalmation,” I heard Zac’s voice say from the back.
But whatever hell I was going through, I’m sure it wasn’t quite as bad as the one Zac was having to endure, sitting in the back with his little sisters and Mackenzie on his lap, playing along with them. They were quite particular about the game, how it was played, and what words you could choose. Several times he had tried to pick words that were beyond their vocabulary, and they all got pretty mad about that. Actually, it was a good thing they didn’t know the definitions to some of the words he had picked. The kids had come extremely close to asking their mother what the words meant, but he had stopped them quickly and picked another word instead.
“Walker, you missed a turn,” Mrs. Hanson pointed out.
“Oh no,” I mumbled, echoed by both Taylor and Isaac.
“I did not miss a turn, Diana,” Mr. Hanson said back through gritted teeth. “This is Barings Street. Barings Street goes to Heart Avenue and then Cummings Road and then you turn left on Seaman Street and that’s where Annie lives.”
“That sounded dirty,” I mumbled.
Taylor chuckled.
“We’re supposed to be on Barrett Street, not Barings Street,” Mrs. Hanson pointed out.
“Taylor?” Mr. Hanson said, looking into the rearview mirror at me and Taylor.
“Watch the road!” Mrs. Hanson said.
“Mom’s right,” Taylor said quietly.
Loud enough to be heard.
“Oh, you couldn’t just keep it to yourself could you?” I said as Mr. Hanson started turning the wheel and I braced myself.
“How much longer do you want to be here?” he said back.
It was curious that every time Mr. Hanson got lost, he consulted Taylor. Apparently Taylor was just better at remembering directions than the rest of them. That was what I kept telling myself anyway.
“Ow!” Isaac said as I fell back on him again, nearly causing him to fall on a sleeping Zoe (the Hansons were adamantly opposed to putting her up front in her car seat as are most parents, so she got stuck with us. Hence me on the lap).
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Taylor?” Avery said, leaning forward and tapping her brother on the shoulder. We both turned to her at the same time, something that obviously freaked her out a little bit, but she quickly hid it.
“Yes?” he said, not unkindly, shifting under me so he could turn to face his little sister better.
“What’s a eunuch?” she asked.
I turned away, stifling a laugh.
Taylor cleared his throat, not very amused.
“Who said that word?” he asked.
“Zac.”
“Zac, come on,” Taylor said. “Nice words.”
“Taylor,” Zac said, his voice conveying how stressed out he was at that point, “I am beyond nice words right now. I have played about seven rounds of this game in a row and the way Dad’s going, it looks like it’s going to be seven more. If you want to play, you can pick nice words. But I’m not going to at this point.”
Taylor sighed. “I’ll play with you, Avery. Zac’s out.”
She nodded and Zac looked more relieved than I had ever seen him.
“Start over,” Jessica said, sounding almost as annoyed as Zac.
They started the game over. And over. And over. And over. Zac was a little off in his estimation. There were at least twelve more rounds of the “Picnic Basket” game before we even turned on Annie’s street. And then about three more as Mr. Hanson struggled to find her house. With Taylor distracted, he didn’t notice that we passed it at least three times.
Once we were finally in the driveway, hardly anybody even waited until Mr. Hanson put the van in park before they were unstrapping/untangling themselves. We were desperate. And the ride home wasn’t going to be anymore fun than this was.
I stumbled out of the van, nearly tripping over my own legs. Quickly straightening myself out, I took a good look at the house for the first time. It was small and quaint, white with blue shutters and a nice little garden outside. The lawn was a little neglected and there were no garden gnomes. Otherwise, it was sickeningly picturesque.
The only two elements missing were probably the most important ones. Annie and Lawrence. Now, generally, when one is expecting company, I think it’s customary to meet them at the door, lead them in, offer them a drink, lead them to the backyard, offer a drink a couple more times, and then sit down for a lively discussion on the rising prices of gas. But neither of them were anywhere to be found.
Mr. Hanson cleared his throat. Zac kicked at the gravel. Mackenzie hopped from foot to foot, having announced halfway through the ride that he had to go pretty badly. Taylor blushed. I raised an eyebrow.
We came all this way for this?
Luckily, one of us noticed the smoke rising from the back of the house (you’d think with ten people, one of us would have noticed sooner than that) and made our way there only to find Annie and Lawrence hovering over a grill, Annie holding the spatula and every once in a while threatening her husband with it. That looked like a healthy relationship.
“Are we early?” Mr. Hanson asked once we were close enough.
I checked my watch. No. We were late. Very late. It was a wonder they hadn’t given up on us.
“Oh!” Annie said, whirling around. “Hi. We didn’t realize you guys were here yet.”
“Yeah, we’re kind of hard to miss,” I said.
She laughed, knowing I was getting her back for what she had said to me when I discovered her in the living room the other day.
“Well, come on, sit down. Can I get anybody anything to drink? Coke? Lemonade? Beer?” she said, leading us over to the picnic table. We all sat down, trying hard to avoid the dried bird poop and failing miserably.
“I’ll have a lemonade if that’s all right,” Mrs. Hanson said out of politeness.
“Right,” she said. “Anybody else?”
We all shook our heads.
“All right then,” she said, turning toward her house. “Don’t touch that grill, Reese!” she called as she passed Lawrence.
“I’m gonna take Mack to the bathroom,” Taylor said, disappearing into the house, Mackenzie’s hand in his.
A few seconds later, Annie reappeared with Mrs. Hanson’s lemonade in her hand. She set it down carefully in front of Mrs. Hanson, who took a polite sip.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No problem,” Annie said back.
“I like your apron,” I commented before she went back to the grill, where Lawrence was trying to be inconspicous about pushing around the Italian sausages we had seen on there on our way in.
She looked down at her stained apron that said in bright red lettering, “I Can’t Cook, But You Can Kiss Me Anyway!”
“Oh, thanks,” she said. “A friend made it for me.”
“I see,” I said.
She smiled before turning back to everyone else at the table. “Can I get anyone anything while I’m here? Soda? Juice? Beer? Water?”
“I’ll take a beer,” Zac said.
“Okay...,” Annie said, before realizing who was talking. She grinned at him and shook her head, turning back to the grill. “Reese! I told you to stay away from there!”
“They were going to burn,” he pointed out.
“Just...go over there,” she said, gesturing toward us.
Mumbling like a scolded child, Lawrence made his way over to where we were sitting. He sat down next to me and smiled sarcastically.
“Are we having fun yet?” he said.
We all laughed a little out of politeness.
“Where’s Taylor?” he asked.
“He took Mack to the bathroom,” Mrs. Hanson told him.
He nodded.
As if on cue, the back door opened and Taylor and Mackenzie appeared. Mackenzie ran out of the house like there were banshees after him and Taylor followed behind calmly, a serene expression on his face and his hands in his pockets.
“What happened?” Mrs. Hanson asked as she took Mackenzie into her lap and he hid his face.
Taylor’s attention was turned to Lawrence.
“Weren’t you guys supposed to get that toilet fixed weeks ago?” he asked curiously.
“Why? Did it overflow again?” Lawrence asked back.
“Almost,” Taylor replied.
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to call someone about that. There’s just been so much going on lately,” he said, gesturing vaguely to indicate “everything.” “But I suppose this is a good opportunity to warn everyone about the bathroom. If you go, stay for a minute after you flush. If it looks like it isn’t going down, the plunger’s right next to the toilet.”
With a scrunched up nose, I vowed to not go into their bathroom if I could at all help it.
“Uh, Lawrence, I think your wife is setting herself on fire,” Mr. Hanson pointed out, gesturing toward where Annie was fighting back some rather large flames, the result of one of the sausages falling through into the fire.
“Okay, I think it’s mutiny time,” Lawrence said, getting up from his seat.
“I’ll help,” Mr. Hanson said, also getting up from his seat. Together, they walked over to Annie, who, after a half-hearted battle, relinquished her cooking responsibilites and joined us at the table, also settling down next to me.
From there, it was small talk between the adults for a few boring hours. Not only were rising gas prices mentioned, but also the fluctuating price of coffee and the rising price of cigarettes (even though nobody at the table smoked). Somehow that led into a discussion on the relability of certain brands of refrigerators, stoves, and microwaves. How, I don’t know. It’s a special talent only adults tend to possess and I’m really not looking forward to being cursed with it.
As we talked, Mr. Hanson and Lawrence also fought the ruthlessness of the grill, trying their hardest to properly cook the Italian sausages, hamburgers, and hot dogs, but somehow failing miserably. So miserably that Lawrence actually got into the car and drove off to pick up a pizza.
When he came back with it, the conversation thankfully stopped for a while as we all dug in. It really wasn’t that bad of a meal, but as soon as it was over, the conversation picked up again. I rested my head on the table and closed my eyes, noting that everybody else at the table who was under twenty was doing much the same thing.
“Hey, you guys,” Annie said so brightly I could almost see the lightbulb above her head going on, “I have a soccer ball if any of you would be interested in a game of soccer.”
Six heads perked up immediately, including my own. Mackenzie groaned and put his head back down. Zoe ignored all of us, too interested with her plastic spoon.
“I guess that’s a resounding yes,” she said. “Come on, the ball is in my garage.”
We all got up and followed her to the small garage in the back of the house. It wasn’t so much a car garage as a lawn mower ‘n’ junk garage. It almost seemed as if you could find the entire history of the Lawrence family in there if you looked hard enough. There was an old love seat in one corner, two old bicycles and an old computer in the middle, and a desk with various papers and photographs strewn on top of it in another corner.
As we waited for Annie to dig out her ball, I surveyed the things on top of the desk (yes, I know it’s not polite, but it was interesting all the same). Most of the papers were pretty uninteresting, but the pictures were quite fascinating. One of Annie and Lawrence on what looked like their wedding day. An old one of Annie sitting on a couch, a small baby in her arms. One of Lawrence sitting on the same couch, holding what was presumably the same small baby in his arms. Even one of Annie standing backstage at some concert with a famous singer, though I couldn’t tell you his name.
But there was one that especially caught my eye and once my eye caught it, it dwelled for what seemed like hours.
There, laying on the desk was an old picture of a young man, standing in the middle of a park somewhere. He wore all black and thin-rimmed granny glasses, his hands in his pockets, his lips upturned in a shy smile. His hair was short and a medium shade of blonde. His eyes were a very intense green.
He was me and Taylor in ten years’ time.
I turned the picture over, trying to be discreet and Annie rummaged around in her various piles of junk looking for her soccer ball. There was no name or date on the back. It was easy enough to see that the picture was old as it was slightly yellowed, but there was nothing to else to indicate its age or the identity of the man in the picture.
I shuddered, turned my eyes away, and replaced it on the desk. I didn’t want to think about it. There were a lot of things I had been avoiding thinking about for the past week or so, but this...this only added more to the mystery of Annie. I was beginning to think that I didn’t want to solve that particular mystery anymore. I was going to get myself into a lot of trouble.
“Parker! Think fast!”
I came back to reality just in time to avoid getting hit in the face with a large, round soccer ball. Surprised, I picked it up off the floor, observing that it wasn’t quite the ancient, deflated thing I had expected it to be after being buried in Annie’s garage like it was.
“Shall we?” I said, gesturing toward the door.
From there, we split up into two teams and proceeded to play what was, to me, a rather quiet game of soccer. I was used to the relatively violent Saturday games Julian Drew, Adrian Drew, Rob, Caleb, Eddie and I held in Julian’s back yard where if Mrs. Drew didn’t have to come out of the house to either check if someone was all right or tell someone to be quiet, they were going to wake the baby, you weren’t playing right. More often than not, it was those days when we took out any aggression we had built up during the week on one another. There was a lot of pushing and shoving, even a few fights, all forgotten by the Monday we were required to go back to school. It wasn’t exactly good-natured playing, but I guess it could be what you might call therapeutic.
This was much more fun. There was no yelling or fighting, just playful screaming and loud giggles and laughter. The pushing and shoving was represented with the much more creative “pick them up and carry them with you as you ran with the ball” technique. Mostly, it was the girls who suffered through this particular tactic, but at one point, Isaac did jokingly pick a protesting Zac up off the ground. They didn’t even make it two steps before they fell over, Isaac saying that Zac had gotten way too big to do things like that with.
After a while, a few things did get frustrating for either team, but if it annoyed someone enough, they simply called for a time out and shouted out their grievance.
“Hold it!” Zac said at one point after I had scored a goal. “I think Parker and Taylor should be on the same team. I’m having trouble figuring out which one to help and which one to defend against,” he explained.
So, Zac and I switched sides without argument and the game went on.
It lasted about three more hours before we all got too hot and sweaty to go on. As we all made our way back to the picnic table, all the adults were smiling at us indulgently. They had been watching the entire time.
“That was interesting,” Annie commented. “Have you ever played on a team, Parker?” she asked.
“Once,” I said. “But I mostly play with my friends.”
“You’re pretty good,” she said.
“Yes, one of my few athletic abilities, I’m afraid,” I said. Then, deciding to go back on my vow from before, “Where’s your bathroom, by the way?”
She described the directions to me, adding “The plunger’s right next to the toilet if you need it.” I nodded my thanks and disappeared into the house.
The house, on the inside, was just as neat and quaint as it was on the outside. I wondered if they had had someone do their interior decorating or if one of them was especially talented in color coordination. The colors were bright and intense. It was like being in a jungle.
More than that, there were photographs absolutely everywhere. At first I glanced at them, thinking of my own enormous collection hanging on the wall around my dresser. It wasn’t long until my innocent perusal turned into a search. Maybe there were more pictures of the man. Maybe if I found one, I could see the picture in normal lighting and see that the man didn’t really look like us at all. Maybe I would see that they were only pictures of Taylor dressed up in old clothing and made to look like a slightly older picture (okay, so that was a little out there...).
There was no such luck. I didn’t find another picture of the man in my wanderings. I only found various pictures of Annie and Lawrence, one or two pictures of some baby (presumably the same one in the pictures in the garage) and, interestingly enough, one of Annie, Lawrence, and Taylor standing together in a park somewhere. That one was sitting atop a hutch in the middle of the hallway that led to the bathroom. I picked it up and stared at it for a few moments, knowing I was being pretty rude by doing so, but not really caring. It was curious that there were no pictures of the other Hansons in the house.
I didn’t dwell on it too long. I still really needed to use the bathroom.
I turned away from the picture to find myself face to face with two doors, one to my right and one to my left. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out which one Annie had told me to go in.
“Uh-oh,” I said to myself. “Well, Mr. Lowell, what’ll it be, Door Number One or Door Number Two?”
I paused and decided on the one on the right. Slowly, I opened the door and immediately found that it was the wrong one. My first instinct was, of course, to close the door and go to the other one instead. Something drew me into the room, though. I was suddenly curious to see what was in there. Part of me told me not to, but the other part of me told me that I had already breached etiquette a million times by going through all their pictures.
Inside the room was nothing special. There was a sloppily made bed, a dresser, and a small desk. It was obvious that the room was inhabited, or had been at one time, but the bed was too small to occupy both Lawrence and Annie (assuming that they were a couple who slept in the same bed). Whoever had been there last really hadn’t bothered to clean up very well.
I wandered over to the desk and found a photograph sitting on top of it. It was pretty much the same one as the one outside on the hutch, taken the same day with the same people in it. Only in this version Taylor was kissing a giggling Annie’s cheek. Raising an eyebrow, I moved to the picture beside it. A slightly younger picture of Taylor with his arms around his brothers. Beside that one was one of Mr. and Mrs. Hanson, both of them wearing Santa hats and kissing each other.
Hmm.
I would have stood there to contemplate what I was seeing longer, but I heard the door in the back squeak open and immediately dashed out of the room, quietly closing the door behind me and dashing into the other room, which turned out to be the bathroom. Once in there, I stared at myself in the mirror for a minute. What was going on?
If you had a road, what would you name it?
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Seven