Both of them exaggerated whenever they got in a fight. I’d call it melodrama but that wouldn’t be exact. Their fights were more like the slapstick of lapsed communication. My father had wanted to pick Barbra up at the airport with all of us. He said he wanted it to be a family affair. My mother said my father didn’t need to involve all of us any more than he already had in his saviour fantasy.
I thought, the saviour fantasy is a family affair.
My father had made up a bedroom for Barbra in the basement even though we had a spare room upstairs. ‘An eighteen-year-old needs privacy,’ my father said. He set up Barbra’s makeshift room – a box spring and mattress surrounded by curtains, a bar fridge, and a bridge table with a shitty computer – right where me and Joel played Reaper of Souls.
‘I want to have the house presentable for this girl and it’d be nice if you would all help me,’ my father shouted as he picked at the bottom of the fridge.
‘Shhhhaaa!’ yelled Abigail from the family room.
My mother swiped her phone.
My father found some kind of hairball in the fridge grate. He put it on the counter in front of my mother. ‘What’s this?’
My mother frowned and kept staring at her phone. ‘A piece of shmutz.’
‘This girl is coming all the way from Israel – don’t swear at me, Ruth – and she’s going to have nothing to eat.’
My mother threw her phone in her purse and got on her jean jacket. ‘A house produces shmutz.’
‘You are not a martyr, Ruth. Don’t act like a bloody martyr.’
My mother laughed. ‘Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?’
Then my mother whipped open the pantry door so hard that it hit the wall.
‘Stop making noise!’ screamed Abigail.
‘You’re making your daughter upset.’
‘I’m making bloody tuna.’
My mother jerked around the kitchen, leaving cupboards and drawers open as my father kept spraying and wiping the fridge. My mother slit two cans of fish, whipped the tops into the sink. She’d been applying for teaching jobs for the last six months but she hadn’t heard back yet. My mother usually made tuna salad with celery and pickles. I watched her dump way too much mayonnaise into a bowl. Then she heaped clumps of the gunk onto pumpernickel bread.
‘You’d better not make this girl feel uncomfortable,’ my father said.
My mother smashed a bunch of bread together and wrapped the sandwiches in plastic. ‘Don’t worry. She’s all yours. I’m going to a film.’
‘Stop it!’ said Abigail from the other room.
‘Tell your sister where I am,’ my mother said to me on her way out. My father slammed the fridge door and went after my mother.
I walked back down to the family room. Fatima, pinkeyed, now posed in a fluorescent green bikini beside a horse who nosed her right between the thighs.
‘God, this show is really fucked up.’
‘I love Fatima,’ whispered Abigail.
The phone rang once upstairs. The TV was too loud. I sat down beside my sister who was sucking her fingers. Why was my father so obsessed with the food? Why was my mother acting so angry? I thought, maybe she just didn’t want to take care of another kid? I mean, she didn’t need to take care of me anymore, but Abigail, even at eleven years old, was work. And my mother was always writing for school now, doing work.
I let Abigail put her feet on my lap. I thought the headshot on the fridge would not want even to eat dinner. I thought she’d be jet-lagged. She’d want to go straight to sleep.
I had just started The Metamorphosis. Gregor the cockroach fell off his own bed. I thought I’d tell my dad we should just order pizza or something – tuna fish on pumpernickel was way too specific. That girl probably hated tuna. I thought we should just ask her what she wanted to eat.
I heard my father pounding down the stairs. ‘Two hours!’ he yelled before he left through the front door.
I was thinking of my mother in the theatre alone. She was probably so mad because my father seemed so concerned about this one Ethiopian-Israeli orphan. It’s true that he seemed to have these weirdly elaborate plans for her – making bedrooms, cleaning up, planning outings and visas – when he didn’t ever seem to be doing that kind of extra stuff for us.
After two more episodes of America’s Next Top