Come Clean

‘They had a run.’

‘Every pair? Oh for heaven’s sake.’ She checks her purse for lipstick, tissues and Tic Tacs as she shows me her back. ‘Get your coat, your father’s starting the car.’

At last, the Tylenol. I dump two out and pop both down my throat, but still no water glass. I slurp direct from the tap but can’t get a good angle, can’t sluice my mouth enough. The pills lodge halfway down my gullet, trapped in the furry sludge. I cough, grab my coat and a pair of sunglasses and follow Mom out to the garage where Dad glowers behind the wheel of the Volvo.

As Mom settles into the passenger seat, Dad motions for me to hit the garage door opener. The chain overhead creaks, the garage murk dissipates as the midwinter light crawls in through the widening opening. I don the sunglasses before it can reach my line of vision and try to catch a parental eye through the windshield. Dad’s already pulled down his visor and Mom’s staring straight ahead to where the lawnmower’s stored. Her face is splotched and extra puffy, but her eyes are dry, hard and glassy like marbles.

‘Come on, dammit,’ Dad grumbles. I scramble into the back seat next to his neatly folded overcoat and buckle up in double-quick time.

Dad eases the car out of the garage, checking his path in the rear-view mirror in case the rose bushes bordering the driveway are in a mind to scratch his paintwork. Once clear, he reaches to the visor for the garage door remote. He clicks, nothing happens. Click, click.

‘Goddammit!’

I know he wants to order me to get my ass up and shut that frigging garage, but for some reason he doesn’t. He leaps out, the car door hanging open and dives into the garage himself.

I take advantage of the opportunity. ‘Mom, look, I’m sorry, really I—’

‘Shut up.’

‘But—’

She doesn’t move her head one inch in my direction. ‘Shut up, shut up!’

The garage door begins its descent and Dad shimmies out beneath it just in time, the rubber seal catching the back of his suit jacket and leaving a smear of dirt that he doesn’t seem to notice as he climbs back into the car.

This is bad. Worse than the time you and I trapped the neighbour’s cat in the mailbox, worse than when we got picked up by the cop for loitering in the Kmart parking lot, worse than when you brought home the report card with two ‘D’s and I tried to forge Mom’s signature, worse even than when we skipped fifth period so Lloyd Taggart could drive us and Cindy round the block in his Dad’s Audi, even though he only had a learner’s permit and we hadn’t even started our semester of Driver’s Ed. I shiver and wish I’d gone upstairs for a new pair of pantyhose, wish I’d remembered my gloves.

I start coughing again and swallow hard to force the Tylenol down but the pills won’t budge. I cough until my nose runs. ‘Dad, please can we stop at the 7-Eleven for a Big Gulp of Diet Coke?’

‘You know the rule, Justine. Or have you forgotten that one too?’

‘Just some water then.’

‘No drinks allowed in the car. Now quiet.’

I lock my jaw to contain the coughs, my nose still dripping like a garden hose. I’d like to ask Mom for one of those tissues of hers, but I make do with the cuff of your old turtleneck.

We coast through the neighbourhood. Past Cindy’s house with the peeling green shutters, past our old elementary school, past the playground where you knocked your two front teeth out on the jungle gym. At the lights, we right-turn-on-red on to Route 5 and join the stream of Sunday brunch traffic. Dad speeds up and thumps the wheel if the lights threaten to stop him – as they do, one after another.

‘Damn timing mechanisms are way off,’ he mutters. We switch lanes, manoeuvre round slowpokes and honk at other roadrunners. As we crest one steep hill and then another, my stomach drops away, and I have to cover my mouth with my hand and bite back the bile.

‘Dad, I’m gonna be sick. Pull over.’

‘You know the rule. Scheduled breaks only.’

‘Dad!’

Twisting round now, Mom takes a good look at me. ‘I think you’d better stop, Jeff. She’s pretty peaked.’

Dad sighs, flicks on his blinker and gestures at other drivers. There are two lanes to cross to the shoulder and I’m not sure we’re going to make it. I’ve flung the door open and am familiarising myself with the gravel before Dad’s got the hazards on. Please, please, please. My stomach convulses, jolting my whole body. I feel wetness at my eyes but nothing else is coming up. Cindy told me last night I should puke before I went to bed: hurl, drink two great big glasses of ice-cold water, swallow three Tylenol, then pass out. It didn’t work. I wretch dryly a few more times and then get back into the car.

We drive on. Outside, Route 5 slips by – and before long so does the turn-off by Tastee-Freez for the road that leads to the cul-de-sac where our church is.

‘Aren’t we going to church?’

‘We’re going to the mall first.’

I consult my Swatch. ‘But church starts in fifteen minutes. We’ll never make it in time.’

‘We’ll go to the later service.’

A truck driver behind us leans on his horn, heralding another wave of nausea to crash over me. ‘Dad, please pull over again.’

‘Not on your life.’

‘I’m gonna be sick.’

‘You’re not going to be sick.’

My stomach rolls, pressing me forward into my knees. ‘I am.’

‘You’re not going to be sick.’

I heave again and here comes the long overdue foulness, spilling out into the well behind Mom’s seat. It splashes up on to my shoes and the grey leather upholstery.

Mom gasps, ‘Dear Lord.’

Our car swerves as Dad’s head whips round, the trucker’s brakes squeal, and the sudden motion only makes things worse. ‘Holy shit!’

I spit to get the lumps and acid burn off my tongue, but then another eruption flecks my loosened locks of hair and my skirt and your turtleneck, spattering on to my shins as it drums on to the floor mat. I grope for something to wipe my mouth and my hand lands on Dad’s overcoat. The belt droops into the vomit as I pull the coat to my face.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Dad flails at me with his right arm, the car veering into the adjacent lane to the blaring protest of other drivers.

‘Sorry.’

‘Dear Lord, I’m so ashamed,’ wails Mom. ‘First Joshua, now you. What’s the matter with you, Justine?’ She’s got a whole clutch of tissues unpursed now and is dabbing at her eyes.

‘Do you see what you’re doing to your mother? Did you think about that when you were gallivanting around last night?’

‘I wasn’t gallivanting.’

‘Don’t talk back to me, young lady.’

‘I wasn’t talking back.’

‘I’m warning you.’

‘Oh, Lord, Justine. How could you?’