What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay by Amanda Cockrell

Author:Amanda Cockrell [Cockrell, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

12

Wuffie has invited Felix to Christmas dinner. Which we absolutely have to go to Wuffie’s house for, all of us, for the sake of the child—who is me. After what happened on Thanksgiving, I’m not so sure it’s a great plan. Felix will probably save Mom from a charging bull or something.

Mom decided that Ben and Grandma Alice and I ought to spend the night at Wuffie’s on Christmas Eve, so that the child will have both parents together on Christmas morning. I think Felix talked her into it and I don’t know if that’s good or bad—if he’s been interceding, or if Mom is trying to figure out how they will all be civilized for my sake once she and Ben are divorced. I asked Ben whether, if they actually get divorced, he can get any custody of me, and he just shrugged and looked sad.

“Don’t you care?” I asked him.

“About you? Of course I do, Angelfish.”

“About Mom!”

He sighed. “Yes, I care.”

“Then why don’t you take that thing out of your script?” I figured it was worth a shot.

He raised an eyebrow at me. “That thing?”

“Whatever it is she didn’t want you to say. She wouldn’t tell me what it is. Why don’t you just not?”

He made that noise he makes when he’s irritated, a kind of click with his teeth. “Because there is only a certain point to which I’m willing to be bullied.”

“Bullied? But you’re writing about her !”

“Angie, you don’t know everything.”

“Then tell me!”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Yes, it is! You’re getting a divorce! Maybe.”

“That doesn’t make it your business.”

“Who else’s is it?” I demanded.

“Mine and Sylvia’s,” Ben said. “As I would think would be obvious.”

“And I’m just some … some … ping-pong ball to bat back and forth between you?” I said. “Like a—a pawn?”

“Except that no one’s fighting over you,” Ben pointed out. “You are not tragically featured in the tabloids yet.”

“All right,” I admitted. “Hokey dialog.” And mixed metaphor, Mom would have said. “But I really hate this.”

“I know. But if you have any Parent Trap–style shenanigans up your sleeve, ditch them,” he warned me.

“I was planning to get you and Mom snowbound together in an isolated cabin so you could meet cute all over again,” I said (this is the plot of one of Ben’s movies). “But it doesn’t snow here.” I stomped out.

So on Christmas Eve we went to Wuffie’s, and Mom slept in her old room with me, and Grandma Alice slept in the guest room, and Ben slept on the sofa.

I wondered what Mom and Ben were going to do about presents for each other. When I asked, earlier, Ben said, “A tiara,” and Mom said, “An exploding cigar,” so I gave up.

Mom was whistling “Angels We Have Heard on High” while we got undressed and I climbed into one of the twin beds. The other one still has her old stuffed animals on it, and she picked up a rabbit and looked at it.

“I don’t know why Mother doesn’t throw these out,” she said.

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