Gingerman by Tony Bertauski

Author:Tony Bertauski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DeadPixel Publications

17

“You’ve lost weight. Henry, look at him.” Mom turned the iPad. Chris’s dad was drinking orange juice from the container. “He looks like a skeleton. Are you eating, hon?”

“Plenty, Mom.” Which wasn’t true. Unless coffee counted.

“Well, you should get plenty of turkey tomorrow. They’re not vegans, are they? I didn’t see that in the literature. Are you going to make dessert? Look what we did.”

She aimed the iPad at the dining room. The table was already set. Candles, plastic placemats and little pumpkins with oak leaves and contorted sticks from the front yard. Same arrangement every year. Name tags, too. One for each member of the family, including Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle Thomas and Aunt Jessie.

Chris’s picture was taped to a chair.

He was never a fan of dry turkey and lumpy potatoes. Uncle Thomas would tell a new joke. Mom would laugh. He’d tell her to sign it to Yu. She would say it wasn’t appropriate in front of the children. He would say they weren’t kids. Dad would tell Yu when Mom wasn’t looking. Sometimes Chris would.

Grandpa, Uncle Thomas and Dad would fall asleep in front of the television. Football was on. Chris would help clean up. He made the dessert. There was never any left. Aunt Jessie would make oyster stuffing. There would be plenty put in Ziplocs for everyone to take home and throw away.

“How are ya, sport?” Dad said. “Any news?”

“Not really.”

Chris didn’t feel like reporting the fall challenge. It felt tainted, for some reason. He’d gone through the entire cycle of emotions—from nervous, to confused, to content, to happy and back to confused.

“You all right?” Mom tilted the iPad.

“Just tired, Mom.”

“Oh.” Her X-ray vision didn’t work as well through the screen. She could tell something was on his mind. If he was in front of her, she would dig the secrets out of him. But it was hard to do it from a thousand miles away on a ten-minute call.

“Your sister wants to talk. Here.”

Yu walked off with the iPad.

“I want to say goodbye when you’re done,” Mom called.

Yu went to Dad’s office. Chris could still hear the television in the next room.

Hi, she signed. How’s it going?

“It’s… strange. But okay. You?”

She looked over her shoulder. Mom was watching from the other room.

Want to switch?

“Okay. Why?”

Tell you what I found.

She didn’t want Mom to know what she was saying. They’d developed their own signs and signals to confuse her. It started when they were in third grade. Mom didn’t like it. No one likes secrets, Mom would say. It was the same reason Kogen hadn’t understood her when she said she didn’t like him at the Visitors’ Center.

Your guidance counsellor, she said.

Kogen? It took Chris a few seconds to catch on.

I thought he didn’t seem right. I looked him up. He’s from a small town. They brag about him, so it was easy to find. He was taking college classes in middle school. Played lacrosse, won a state championship, won some other awards. I did the math.

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