Нил Шустерман - Antsy Does Time

Then Gunnar dropped the bombshell. It was a bombshell I didn’t even know about.

“Mom’s taking us back to Sweden,” he said. “She’s taking us there for good.”

Although the news shocked me, I have to say I wasn’t surprised. Apparently neither was Mr. Ümlaut. He waved his hand as if shooing away a swarm of gnats. “She’s bluffing,” he said. “She’s been saying that forever. She’ll never do it.”

“This time she means it,” Kjersten said. “She has airplane tickets for all of us,” and then she added, “All of us but you.”

This hit Mr. Ümlaut harder than anything else that had been said today. He looked at them, then looked at me as if I was somehow the mastermind of some conspiracy against him. He went away in his own head for a few moments. I could almost hear the conversation he was having with himself. Finally he spoke with the kind of conviction we had all been hoping to hear.

“She can’t do that.” He shook his head. “She can’t legally do that. She can’t just take you from the country without my permission!”

We all waited for him to make that momentous decision to DO something. Anything. This is what Gunnar and Kjersten wanted. Sure, it wasn’t reconciliation between their parents, but it was the next best thing—they wanted their father to see what he was losing, and finally choose to do something about it.

I felt sure Gunnar and Kjersten had finally broken through that wall. Until Mr. Ümlaut released a long, slow sigh.

“Perhaps it’s all for the best,” he said. “Have your mother call me. I’ll sign all the necessary papers.”

And it was over. Just like that, it was over.

There are some things I don’t understand, and don’t think I ever will. I don’t understand how a person can give up so totally and completely that they dive right into the heart of a black hole. I can’t understand how someone’s need to gamble, or to drink, or to shoot up, or to do anything can be greater than their need to survive. And I don’t understand how pride can be more important than love.

“Our father’s a proud man,” Kjersten said as we drove away from the casino—as if pride can be an excuse for acting so shamefully—and yes, I know the man was sick, just as Gunnar said, but that didn’t excuse the choice he made today.

I felt partially to blame, because I was the one who convinced Gunnar and Kjersten to come. I honestly believed it would make a difference. Like I said, I come from a family of fixers—but what happens when something simply can’t be fixed?

I thought about my own father, fighting for his life, and winning, even as Mr. Ümlaut threw his life away, surrendering—and it occurred to me how a roll of the dice had given me back my father, and had taken theirs away.

The day was bright and sunny as we drove home, Gunnar in the back, me shotgun beside Kjersten. I wished it wasn’t such a nice day out. I wished it was raining, because the mind-numbing sound of the windshield wipers swiping back and forth would have been better than the silence, or all the false emotions of the radio, which had been on for a whole minute before Kjersten turned it off. Kjersten looked a little tired, a little grateful, and a little embarrassed that I had seen their seedy family moment. It made driving home now all the more awkward.

A lot of things made more and more sense now. Gunnar’s illness, for one. I wondered when he first began suspecting they might move out of the country. But being sick—that would change everything, wouldn’t it? It could keep his parents together—force his father to spend money on treatment instead of gambling it away. And since the best treatment was right here in New York, no one would be going anywhere. If I were Gunnar, I might wish I had Pulmonary Monoxic Systemia, too. Because the sickness of the son might cure the sickness of the father.

I held off filling our driving silence as long as I could, but there’s only so long you can resist your own nature.

“I had this friend once,” I told them. “Funny kind of kid. The thing is, his mom abandoned him in a shopping cart when he was five—and his dad treated him like he didn’t even exist...”

“So, do all your friends have screwed-up families?” Gunnar asked.

“Yeah, I’m like flypaper for dysfunction. Anyway, he had it rough for a while, did some really stupid things—but in the end he turned out okay. He even tracked down his mom.”

“And they lived happily ever after?” said Gunnar.

“Well, last I heard, they both disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle—but for them that was normal.”

“I think what Antsy’s saying,” said Kjersten, sounding a little more relaxed than she did before, “is that we’re going to be fine.”

“Fine might be pushing it,” I said. “I would go with ‛less screwed up than most people.’” That made Gunnar laugh—which was good. It meant I was getting through to him. “Who knows,” I said, “maybe your dad will turn himself around someday, and you’ll hear his wooden shoes walking up to your door.”

“Wooden shoes are from Holland, not Sweden,” Gunnar said, but I think he got the point. “And even if he does come around, who says I will?”

“You will,” I told him.

“I don’t think so,” he said bitterly.

“Yeah, you will,” I told him again. “Because you’re not him.”

Gunnar snarled at me, because he knew I had him. “Now you sound like my mother,” he said.

“No, it’s much worse than that,” I told him. “I sound like my mother.”

The fact is, Gunnar and his father might have been a lot alike—embracing their own doom, whether it was real or imagined. But in the end, Gunnar stopped carving his own tombstone. In my book, that made him twice the man his father was.

On Monday I finally listened to my phone messages—they were all back from the night we first went to the hospital, because my voice mail maxed out in just a couple of hours. The messages were all pretty much the same; people wondering how my father was, wondering how I was, and wanting to talk. The wanting-to-talk part always sounded urgent, suggesting something that was, at least in their worlds, of major importance.

And so on Monday I finally went back to school for the first time since Black Wednesday, ready to take care of business.

At first people slapped me on the back, offered their support, and all that. I wondered who would be the first to say what was really on his or her mind. I should have guessed that Wailing Woody Wilson would be the first to cross the line of scrimmage, and go deep.

“Hey, Antsy, I’m glad your dad’s okay and all—but there’s something I need to talk about.” The awkward look of shame in his eyes almost made me feel bad for him. “About those months I gave Gunnar. I know it was just symbolic and all, but I’d feel a whole lot better if I could have them back. Now.”

“Can’t do that,” I said, “but how about this?” Then I pulled a notebook out of my backpack, snapped open the clasp and handed him two fresh contracts, which I had already signed. “That’s two months of my life,” I told him. “An even trade for the ones you gave Gunnar. All you have to do is sign as witness, and they’re yours.”

He looked at them, considered it, and said, “I guess that works,” and he left.

It was like that with everybody. Even easier with some. Sometimes people never got past “Listen, Antsy—" before I handed them a month, told them vaya con Dios, which is like French or something for “go with God,” and sent them on their merry way.