I don’t feel any different when I wake up on my eighteenth birthday. I don’t feel older or mature or free. I feel inadequate, if anything, because I know what I was supposed to be at eighteen and it’s not what I am. My dad’s brother, my Uncle Jim, got really down with himself when I was fourteen and he came to stay with us for a while to “re-evaluate.” My mom said that it just happens sometimes when you get older. You get halfway through with your life and you realize you haven’t done the things you wanted to do or become what you’d thought you’d become and it’s disheartening. I wonder if it’s a special kind of disheartening when you get to that place at eighteen.
Margot’s car isn’t in the garage when I get home from school. Normally she’s sleeping at this hour, either in bed or in a chair by the pool. I know she made sure she had the night off because Margot loves birthdays and she’s been more excited than me about this one.
I kick off my shoes and toss my backpack on my bed and barely make it to the kitchen when the doorbell rings. Standing on the other side of the door are Margot, my mother, my father, Asher and Addison. My mother is holding a cake and her smile just barely falters before she catches it. I’m in the doorway in my school clothes and make-up. My mother has never seen me like this. She’s seen glimpses of it, but not the full effect all at once, and I think it devastates her a little. Margot looks like Margot, my brother looks resigned, my father barely looks and Addison doesn’t know what to look like. I think she wonders what she’s doing here as much as I do.
They’ve done the Surprise! Happy Birthday! thing in the doorway, so I step out of the way and they come in—cake, presents and all. My parents suggest going to a restaurant, but I don’t want to go out. It’s three-thirty and there’s too much of a chance of running into people from school, so Margot calls for pizza and puts the cake in the refrigerator while everyone crashes in the family room to wait for the food.
“We could probably still get you a ticket if you want to come with us for Thanksgiving,” my mom throws out. It took exactly forty-three seconds from the time she got into the house to bringing it up.
“The house is sick. You should see it, Em. Three fireplaces. A balcony. Hot tub.” Addison’s face turns pink and my brother looks at her apologetically. Bringing up the hot tub in front of the parents is really an amateur move.
“You could bring someone, too, if you want.” That comes out of left field. I wish she would stop trying. My mother’s hope is a weapon. I see Margot watching me from the kitchen. I wonder what, if anything, she’s told them about my extracurricular activities. “Margot says you eat dinner with a boy’s family every Sunday. What’s his name?” She turns to Margot.
“Drew Leighton.” Margot’s still looking at me. No mention of Josh Bennett and I wonder why she’s kept that to herself but told them about Drew.
“Drew,” my mother repeats. “That’s right. Why don’t you call him now? He can celebrate with us. We’d love to meet him. You know him from school?”
I nod.
“They’re in debate together,” Margot answers for me.
“Addison’s on debate,” Asher interjects, and maybe we can turn the conversation on her, because Drew Leighton is too close to Josh Bennett and my family isn’t getting anywhere near Josh Bennett.
“Debate Drew Leighton?” It’s the first time I’ve heard Addison’s voice. It’s all soft and feminine like her. She’s sitting next to Asher, holding his hand, and it kind of pisses me off. “I know him! He’s—” she cuts herself off before she continues and I smile at her. I can’t help it. We both know what she was about to say. “He’s a really good debater. Everyone knows him.”
“Really?” Asher looks at her dubiously and then over at me and I know he plans to find out the truth of it later.
I nod and she stifles her own smile and continues in a more appropriate direction.
“He came in third in state last year and everyone knows he’s the biggest threat in extemp and LD. No one wants to go up against him this year.” She sounds almost reverential. It’s understandable when you’ve seen Drew debate, and she obviously has, or at least she’s aware enough of it. I’m almost proud to hear someone talk about Drew for what he should be talked about, but it’s a rare thing. I find myself smiling at her for real, and maybe I’m not so pissed about Addison holding my brother’s hand after all.
We eat pizza and everyone relaxes and I find myself missing my family and wondering if maybe I didn’t exaggerate everything. Maybe it wasn’t so forced and awkward. Then again, maybe it’s just not awkward because I’m watching from the outside right now. It may be my birthday that brought them here, but they’re in their own element and I’m just looking in. Even Addison has a place, in this picture, with my family. I’m the outsider.
Asher goes on about school and baseball and homecoming. Margot talks about nurse shortages at work and how the schedule is starting to kill her a little bit. My dad doesn’t say much. He just glances at me every once in a while and I try to work out what he’s seeing when I look at his eyes, but they tell me nothing and I wonder if they’re just a reflection of my own. Ever since the day I told him to stop calling me Milly, and then stopped telling him anything else at all, there’s been very little between us. My mother still tries, but my father has lost all hope. Maybe he’s the smart one. Though it doesn’t make me feel any better. My father has shut down and it’s worse than any anger or disappointment he could level at me. The man who was the source of all my smiles now can’t even conjure one himself. I’m a coward and a fraud and I murdered his spirit. There’s something about knowing that I broke my father’s heart that makes me hate myself a little more than I already do.
We get done with dinner but we all ate so much pizza that no one can even think about cake yet. Except maybe me. I can always think about cake.
My mother and Margot move a pile of presents from the counter to the table in front of me. There are way too many of them, but I wish there weren’t any, because I don’t want to feel grateful and there’s nothing they can give me that I need anyway.
I open them all and feel like I’m under a microscope where my every facial expression is being studied and it makes me want to scream, but I can’t. So I just swallow it like dirt and blood.
The last present is the smallest box, and I should know to be scared by the anxious expression on my mother’s face. Or maybe my father’s face tells the real story, because he looks like he thinks this is a really bad idea and he’s probably said as much to my mother a hundred times. I rip open the paper and I’m holding a brand-new, jacked-up iPhone.
My mother starts extolling the virtues of the phone as if I don’t know everything it can do, for example, reveal my exact whereabouts at any given moment. I don’t need to listen to the sales spiel, but I’m right back in the room when I hear the kicker.
“You can keep the phone and we’ll pay the bills. The only condition is that you call and talk to us on it at least once a week.”
I smile. I can’t help it. Up until two and a half minutes ago, I was genuinely enjoying this day. I had actually chastised myself for being upset that they had come and let myself think that maybe this would be a turning point. But it’s not a turning point. It’s an ambush.
My family has taken my birthday and turned it into an intervention. They all trade off explaining to me how my behavior is hurting them. I find out, in great detail, how my failure to speak affects each and every member of my family. I listen to all of it. They haven’t tied me to the chair so I can’t escape or enlisted the help of an objective third party to impart the proper amount of guilt while keeping us all focused on the problem at hand. Me. There’s no reason I have to stay here and listen to this, but I do, until every one of them has spoken.
Except Addison. She just looks uncomfortable. I think they pulled a bait and switch on her, too, with the whole birthday party idea. She looks like she wants to bolt as much as I do, and I feel kind of sorry for her. I wonder if we could make a run for it together.
When they’ve all finished. I smile. I love them and they love me and we all know this. I hug my brother. I nod to Addison and Margot. I kiss my mother and father on the cheek. I leave my awesome iPhone on the table and I walk out the door.
My mother’s camera is still sitting on the counter, untouched. She didn’t take one picture.
I walk into Josh’s garage and climb up onto the workbench, crossing my ankles. Josh wanted to put another coat of finish on my chair, so it’s out of commission right now. I thought it looked fine, but he kept pointing out why it didn’t until I gave up and let him do it.
“My mother turned my birthday party into an intervention,” I say. As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I cringe, realizing that it’s probably pretty crappy to complain about your parents to someone who doesn’t have any. It’s like bitching that your shoes are too tight to someone who’s walking across broken glass barefoot.
That’s the irony of Josh and I, and it shames me every time I think about it. He has no family. No one to love him. I’m surrounded by love and I don’t want any of it. I piss all over what he would thank God for, and if I needed more proof that I have no soul, then there it is.
“When was your birthday?” He looks up at me.
“Today.”
“Happy birthday.” He smiles, but it’s sad.
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t tell me,” he says, walking over to put his drill on the charger before turning back around.
“People who go around advertising their birthday are douchebags. It’s a fact. You can look it up on Wikipedia.”
“So, intervention?” He tilts his head.
“Yep.”
“I wasn’t aware of your drug problem. Should I hide the silver?”
“I think it’s safe.”
“Heavy drinking?”
“No. But you might beg to differ.”
“True. I’ve seen the ugly side of your drinking and I hope never to go there again.” He comes around and climbs up on the workbench next to me. Close enough that his leg touches mine, and it’s grounding. “So what are we intervening?”
“Silence.” He looks at me skeptically when I answer. “They want me to talk.”
“If you spent every night in their garage they might rethink that.”
“Jackass.”
“There’s my Sunshine,” he says, kicking my foot.
“They gave me an iPhone with the condition that I call and speak to them on it once a week.” I brush the sawdust into a pile next to my leg and poke a hole in it so it looks like a volcano.
“Not what you wanted, huh?”
“I was hoping for implants.”
He nods thoughtfully. “Always helpful with the job search after college.”
We sit for a minute without talking. My legs start swinging out of instinct and he reaches over and stills them with his hand, but he doesn’t say anything and then finally—
“Was the cake at least good?” He knows where my heart lies.
“Didn’t even get to it.”
“That’s the real tragedy. Forget the intervention.”
“I’m not hungry anyway.”
“I’m not talking about the cake,” he says, taking my hand and pulling me down from the counter before I can protest. “I’m talking about the wish.”
He makes me wait while he goes back into the house, and a few minutes later we are driving away in his truck with a red plastic beach pail full of pennies on the seat between us.