Max Booth III - We Need to Do Something

“Why are you looking at me ?” I ask, horrified.

“You better watch your butt, Sis! Aliens are gonna put stuff in it!”

“What do you mean?” Dad says. “What kind of stuff?”

“Like, big machines and cameras and… and… and stuff. The lady said they were taking all of her memories and learning about humans.”

“I knew it,” Dad says, rocking back and forth. “Fuckin’ aliens. It’s fuckin’ aliens.”

Meanwhile, Mom hasn’t stopped giving Bobby a look of complete bafflement. “What… what shows have you been watching?”

Bobby shrugs. “I don’t know. Shows about butts, I guess.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I tell him. “Why would they go through someone’s butt to learn their memories?”

“Probably because that’s where your brain is, Sis.” He grins, forming a new joke in his head. “You have a butt brain, Sis! A butt for a brain! A brain for a butt! And it smells like poop . So much poop .”

Dad slams his hand against the sink counter and we all jump, stricken silent. “Goddammit, Bobby. This isn’t fucking funny . Are you serious or not? Is that what these aliens did?”

Bobby’s lips start quivering. He’s trying not to cry. “Y-yes. I’m serious.”

Dad’s jaw clenches as he shakes his head. “Any goddamn alien tries that kinda shit with me, I’ll break their fuckin’ necks, and that’s a promise. Ain’t nobody puttin’ nothin’ up my ass. Not while I still got a heartbeat, at least.” He folds his arms across his chest and inhales deeply before rocking against the door. The rocking has gotten more frequent lately. Plus his hands keep shaking.

I’ve always wondered if he became an alcoholic before or after he and Mom got married. It’s not exactly a question I can ask either of them without receiving an irrational response. If he’s always been attached to a bottle, then why did she ever marry him? What could she have possibly seen in him? Nothing about his character has ever seemed even remotely appealing. I’ve never seen them laugh together. I’ve never witnessed them engage in a conversation concerning each other’s interests. Come to think about it, I don’t even know if they have interests. Dad goes to the bowling alley and drinks. And Mom? She… what? Spends time online? Chatting to people on Facebook like some kinda ancient dinosaur. Who is she always talking to, anyway? It’s not like she has any friends—at least, no friends I’ve ever met.

It’s funny. Sitting in the tub now, watching him blubber and make a total fool of himself in the bathroom—it’s this same kind of drunken recklessness that ended up driving Amy and I together in the first place.

I was running late and could hear the school bus pulling up in front of my house. Its engine always sounded ominous, as if promising certain doom, like old bones rattling in a haunted house. Only made it halfway down my driveway before realizing what every head inside the bus was staring at through the windows. At first I thought he was dead, sprawled out in the middle of our front yard, face down in the grass. Instead of fear or dread I felt something more peculiar: hope. Yet, when I approached Dad’s unconscious body and discovered he was still breathing, my emotions evolved into a bitter disappointment. Everybody feels bad for the girl who discovers her father dead in the front yard. But the girl who discovers her father passed-out drunk in the front yard? Forget about it. Nobody’s ever going to speak to her again.

I kicked him in the ribs. He groaned and rolled over, still out of it. Everybody was watching us. I could feel their eyes like lasers digging into my back. Fuck it, I thought, and stormed the opposite direction. The bus driver waited maybe ten seconds before closing their doors and pulling away. I refused to give any of them the satisfaction of looking back and revealing the tears streaming down my face. I would be the talk of the school for at least the entire day over this incident. Did you hear about Melli? Her dad’s a drunk waste of space, passed out on their front yard. We saw her find him this morning and instead of helping she started stomping on his body before running down the street. Yup. She’s a total psycho.

And they wouldn’t be wrong. I was a total psycho.

What kind of daughter kicks her own unconscious father in the ribs?

I should have stepped on his face instead.

Fast, frantic footsteps replaced the sound of the bus engine. “ Wait! ” someone shouted behind me. “ Wait up! ”

This time I did turn around, hands tightened into fists, prepared to fight any motherfucker giving me shit. Except, it was Amy. We’d been casual friends by then. Sitting together at lunch. Giggling in class over inside jokes. But we still hadn’t talked much about our personal lives. I hadn’t confessed the deep shame I felt being my father’s daughter. Realizing she’d witnessed my incident nearly made me crumble to ash.

“What are you doing?” I asked, trying not to cry and failing.

She grabbed my hand and it felt so good, I never wanted her to let go. “C’mon, we’re taking a personal day.”

“What are you talking about?” I’d asked. Truthfully I still planned on attending school. I was just going to walk, take a shortcut, be a little late but nothing too controversial. I’d never ditched a day in my life and the thought of doing so secretly petrified me. And now this very beautiful girl was dragging me away, saying we didn’t need school, saying to hell with them all. Did I think of her as beautiful yet? Of course I did. But would I have admitted it?

I don’t know.

“Where are we going?” I asked her, and she shrugged, told me she had no idea, did it matter? And, after a moment of consideration, I found it didn’t matter. I would have gone anywhere with her.

That was the day we both experienced our first kiss.

That was the day we fell in love.

All thanks to Dad’s alcoholism.

It’s weird to think about, but if he’d been sober, I’m not sure any of this would have ever happened.

Would we have still fallen for each other, without first bonding over Dad’s front-yard incident?

And, if we hadn’t fallen for each other, would I have still agreed to help with the ritual?

But it doesn’t matter, because that’s what happened.

And now we’re stuck here, suffering the consequences.

It’s Dad’s fault. It’s my fault. It’s everybody’s fault.

We dig our own graves and then we jump headfirst.

Bobby’s sprawled out on his back between Mom’s legs, head resting on her thigh as she pets his hair. Dad sits on the toilet, elbows digging into his own thighs, face buried in his palms. It’s impossible to ascertain whether he’s asleep or simply resting. I remain in the bathtub, wishing for the coldness of the porcelain to return. Sweat pours down all four of us and refuses to cease its flow.

“Tell me again,” Bobby says.

“Tell you what, baby?” Mom asks.

“You know what. Please.”

“Okay. Where would you like me to start?”

“Tell me about how fat you were.”

Mom stretches out her hands from her stomach, outlining a pregnant belly. “So fat, if you would have poked my stomach hard enough, it might have exploded.”

“Gross!” Bobby says, giggling.

“It looked like I was smuggling a great big watermelon beneath my shirt.”

“What’s smuggling mean?”

“Like it was hiding.”

“Like we’re hiding in the bathroom?”

“We aren’t hiding, baby.”

“Oh.”

Mom clears her throat and continues the story. “But, instead of a real watermelon, all I had under there was you, and you were begging to come out.”