Tremendous Things Read online

  I put Templeton down just as Mup crawled out from under the sink, a triumphant grin on her face. “Fixed the leak. I’ll get dinner started— Ugh. Wil.” Mup pointed at Templeton. He was pulling himself across the floor by his front legs, dragging his bum along the linoleum. “You know what that means.”

  I did. “Do I have to do it right now?”

  “He’s leaving skid marks of poo on the floor. And you know what we agreed on. You’re his—”

  “Primary caregiver. I know.” This had been made clear to me when the Mumps let me adopt him. I scooped him up again, holding him a little farther away this time. “You’re lucky I love you so much,” I whispered into his good ear. Then I carried him upstairs to do the deed.

  * * *

  —

  Once we were done, I took Templeton to our local parkette for a quick pre-dinner walk. The walls on two sides are covered in colorful murals and graffiti. Lloyd, who runs the Jamaican patty shop, and Viktor, who runs the cheese shop, sat on their favorite bench in their parkas, smoking a joint. They’re fixtures in the park, no matter the weather or the time of day. We said our hellos. Lloyd added, “That is a face only a mother could love.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking about Templeton or me.

  When we got back, Mum was in the kitchen too, setting the table. She was dressed in a business suit, her long, dark hair piled on top of her head. My mothers are both beautiful women: Carmen is short and Rubenesque, with masses of black curls; Norah is tall and slender, with long, chestnut hair and incredible cheekbones. I only mention this because how Mum gave birth to a troll like me is a mystery. Especially since the donor’s profile page said he was a handsome Harvard grad who almost made the Olympic rowing team….

  I think he was more likely a very good liar who donated his sperm because he needed the extra cash.

  Mup put bowls of kale-and-white-bean soup on our small Formica table. She cooks on the days she gets home first, and those are the best days because she is a much better cook than Mum, but we keep this to ourselves because Mum gets defensive if we mention it.

  We took turns telling each other about our days. It’s a Nuñez-Knopf family tradition. When it was Mum’s turn she said, “I was background in a restaurant scene today. I had to pretend to be in love with this old fart. He must have been thirty years my senior. It was dull as dishwater.” After Where There’s a Wolf went up in flames, Mum’s acting career followed suit. But, like Carmen, Norah is resourceful. She decided that no role was too small, and now she takes on a lot of work as a background performer. She also has a great eye for finding vintage items at garage sales; she cleans them up or refurbishes them, then sells them for a profit on Etsy.

  I slurped up the last of my soup. “I don’t think I mentioned,” I said, knowing full well I hadn’t, “Mr. Papadopoulos needs the deposit for the exchange trip by Friday.” The French students weren’t just coming to stay with us; we were supposed to visit them in Paris, too, in April. I guess that’s why it’s called an exchange. The school Parent Action Committee was covering some of the costs, but we were responsible for most of it.

  The Mumps exchanged a glance. “How much?”

  “Four hundred dollars,” I said. “The total is sixteen hundred.”

  I heard a stereo sucking in of breath. Mum busied herself with taking down one of the many retro cookie jars that line the tops of the cupboards.

  “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought,” I said. “I don’t have to go to Paris. I don’t think I’d enjoy it, anyway.”

  “Why on earth not?” asked Mup.

  “Different language, different foods, different culture…” I made a face.

  “It’s true you don’t like change,” said Mum. She took some of her homemade pumpkin cookies out of the red-and-white-polka-dot mushroom jar and turned to Mup. “He wouldn’t even do sleepovers with Stewart when he was younger because he liked to be in his own bed. We had to drive to the North Shore more than once to pick him up in the middle of the night, remember?”

  “But this is why he should go. He needs to get pushed out of his comfort zone.”

  “Eventually, yes,” said Mum. “But it’s a lot of money. And Paris will be there when he’s older, and perhaps more…adventurous of spirit?”

  They did this sometimes, talking about me in the third person, like I wasn’t in the room.

  Mup turned to me. “Have you got any money saved from your job?”

  “A bit. Not as much as I’d hoped.”

  “Well, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We can manage the deposit. I’ll take on some extra Uber shifts.” Driving Uber is the second of Mup’s three jobs. “I’ll write a check tonight. Just don’t give it to your teacher till Thursday at the earliest; the funds should be there by then.” Mum pursed her lips but said nothing. “And on that note, I’m going to clock a few hours behind the wheel.” Mup kissed us both and headed out.

  After we’d washed the dishes, Mum let me choose a movie from our massive DVD collection; she buys them for next to nothing at garage sales. I picked our all-time favorite musical, West Side Story. We curled up on the couch. Templeton sat on my lap. But, even as we sang along to “Gee, Officer Krupke,” I had to fight off the wave of loneliness that was building up inside me.

  I was always home on Saturday nights, with one or both of my mothers and my dog. Even Sal had a standing Saturday night date, playing pinochle with a bunch of his age-appropriate friends.

  “Are you looking forward to your billet’s arrival?” Mum asked during “A Boy Like That.”

  “Yes.” I paused. “I just hope…”

  “Hope what?”

  “I just hope Charlie will like Toronto.”

  “Of course he will. Why wouldn’t he?”

  I didn’t have the guts to tell her what I was really thinking, which was:

  “I hope Charlie will like me.”

  Like a willow branch

  Rippling

  And swaying in the breeze

  a lune by Wilbur Nuñez-Knopf

  “Good God, brass section, you sound like a bunch of dying cats!” Mr. Papadopoulos shouted on Monday over the din, his voice cracking. “Focus!” He waved his baton in the air, revealing massive sweat stains on his red-and-white-checked shirt. His bald head was shiny with sweat.

  I stood in the back, concentrating on every note. We were rehearsing “O Canada” one more time before our guests arrived. It didn’t require much playing from me except at the end. Anticipating my moment, I stood up. Mr. Papadopoulos looked my way….I picked up my metal beater…held my instrument with a bent arm, just below eye level…and, on Mr. P’s cue, I executed a perfect two-sided roll.

  The triangle really is an underappreciated instrument.

  * * *

  —

  A few minutes later, Mr. P told us to gather up our things and head to the parking lot. I hurried to join Alex—the boy who, for a brief, glorious time, had been my other good friend. Alex had arrived at PET Senior School in mid-September. His mom and dad both worked at the same bank, and they’d been transferred from Calgary to Toronto. Alex is short and round, with thick black hair that falls into his eyes on a constant basis and a mouth full of metal. Back then at least, his clothes made him look like he had an office job: pressed button-up shirt, pressed pants. Everything looked a little too tight for his husky frame. He even carried a briefcase.

  In other words, he was a perfect target for Tyler Kertz.

  When he took the stool beside me in science class on his first day, I could tell how nervous he was, because he was blinking rapidly and humming tunelessly to himself. Five minutes into class, he dropped his pencil. He hopped off his lab stool, bent down to pick it up—

  And tore a hole in his pants with a riiiiiiiiip, right down the seam of the bum.

  A row ahead of us, Tyler swiveled around at the sound,
his sharklike senses on high alert; he’d just smelled blood, and he was ready to pounce.

  “Excuse me,” I blurted. “Beans for dinner last night.”

  Tyler and some of the other kids looked at me with disgust. “You’re so gross, Wank.”

  I pulled off my beige sweatshirt and handed it to Alex without a word. He tied it around his waist, blinking furiously.

  He caught up with me in the hallway after class. “Hey. Thank you. I don’t know why you did that, but—thanks.” I wasn’t sure why I’d done it, either. Maybe I’d decided I had nothing—no dignity, no reputation—left to lose. “Can I give you your sweatshirt back tomorrow?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “I’m Alex. Alex Shirazi.” He’d smiled up at me. “And I need to buy some bigger pants!” Then he’d burst out laughing, mostly from relief, and he kept on laughing for a long time, until finally I was laughing, too.

  After school we realized we were heading the same way, so we walked together, and it turned out we lived a mere two blocks apart. So we started walking to and from PET together, and pretty soon we were hanging out after school, too. I found out that Alex loved watching shows like the late Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown and other cooking shows like Chef’s Table and Salt Fat Acid Heat. He liked to try to replicate some of the recipes for his parents, and sometimes for me. We discovered we had weird stuff in common, too; like, we both love board games (especially Carcassonne) and we both love a lot of the same music, because our parents brought us up on a similar diet of singer-songwriters like Carole King, Feist, Tom Waits, Cat Power, and a whole bunch of others.

  It was like we’d known each other for years, not weeks. In no time we were telling each other the kind of stuff you only share with someone you really trust. Like, he told me about his tics, and how they got bad when he was nervous (and I didn’t tell him I’d already noticed). He told me he’d come out to his parents a year earlier, and at first his dad had been upset, but now he was his biggest advocate; he’d even marched with Alex in Calgary’s Pride Parade. I told him all about my time capsule letter, and the aftermath. We made a pact that everything we told each other would stay between us. We even created an elaborate handshake to seal the deal: right-hand shake followed by left-hand shake followed by right elbows touching followed by left elbows touching followed by a twirl and a bow.

  One night when we were hanging out in his rec room, Alex played me a piece of music on his keyboard. “That was great,” I said. “Who wrote it?”

  “I did.”

  “Seriously? That’s amazing.”

  “Thanks. I just wish I could think of lyrics to go with it. But I’m no good at that.”

  It sounds crazy, but I actually got goosebumps.

  The only people who’d read any of my poetry were the Mumps and Sal.

  That evening, I let Alex read some of my stuff, too.

  The first one he set to music was a poem called “Freefall.” “You have to sing,” he said. “I can’t carry a tune.”

  At first I refused. Unless I was in the safety of my own home, I never, ever sang out loud.

  But Alex persisted. “Of course you can sing in front of me. I’m your friend.”

  Your. Friend.

  So I sang. I know I sucked. But it didn’t matter. We just liked the process. Alex set more of my poems to music, and, when we weren’t playing Carcassonne or 7 Wonders, we played our songs in the privacy of his basement, to an audience of none.

  “We’re like Elton John and Bernie Taupin,” Alex declared one night, after we’d watched Rocketman on Netflix. “Except you’re straight and I’m gay.”

  We had so much fun. In his rec room, we didn’t have to worry about the Tylers of the world. Sal was right; having a friend my age was all kinds of awesome. It made the snake pit of high school a bit more bearable.

  But as Mup likes to say, “Things that seem too good to be true usually are.” One day in early December, Alex locked eyes with Fabrizio Bianchi at band practice, and boom—they fell head over heels in love.

  I told myself I was happy for him.

  But mostly, I was unhappy for me.

  * * *

  —

  Alex was folding up the legs of his keyboard when I approached. “How was your weekend?” I asked.

  “Great! Fab and I hung out. I introduced him to Nina Simone. He’d never heard of her before, can you believe it?”

  “Wow,” I said. “Does he live under a rock? What kind of idiot hasn’t heard of Nina Simone?” I attempted a lighthearted laugh.

  Alex gave me a wounded look, and even though I towered over him, I suddenly felt much smaller.

  Fabrizio strolled over, carrying his trumpet. He’s wide and stocky with close-cropped blond hair, and he has a bold fashion sense that some might call cool and others might call a desperate ploy for attention. Even today, he’d added a bright orange scarf to go with our ugly band uniforms. “Hi, Wilbur.” He said my name the same way every time, as if he’d heard my pet had just died. He gave me a quick glance up and down, taking in my beige pants and my gray sweatshirt, and pursed his lips like he’d just sucked on a lemon.

  He didn’t have to say it; if I thought he was a narcissistic attention-seeker, he thought I was a pathetic schlub.

  “Hi, Fabrizio. Interesting scarf.”

  “It’s an ascot,” he replied.

  Please.

  “Let’s get a move on, people!” Mr. P shouted.

  We all headed toward the door. I hoped to get past A Certain Someone unnoticed. Alex and Fabrizio made it past unscathed. Jo Lin, carrying her recorder, got past him, too.

  I wasn’t so lucky. “Great work today, Frank. That note you played…that single, solitary note…it really brought everything together. Sheer magic.”

  Yes. Tyler Kertz is in the band. It is so unfair. Band is supposed to be a refuge for the non-athletic kids; we deserve a safe haven, too. But Kertz is one of those annoying crossovers. Not only is he on the school swim and basketball teams; he also plays saxophone. And he’s excessively good-looking.

  Worst of all, he acts like he’s better than the rest of us, like we should be grateful he graces us with his presence. And Mr. P feeds into it, because, well, Tyler is a good sax player, and Mr. P thinks he adds a certain panache. But he’s also a constant, low-grade jerk. He calls Oliver, the bassoon player, Oily-ver because his hair’s kind of greasy. Jo Lin is Ghost because she’s super-shy and quiet. Alex is Ayatollah because of his Iranian background. And while Tyler mostly stays away from overtly homophobic digs, he sometimes switches out the b in Fabrizio’s name for a g. He also took way longer than he should have to call Laura—who until last year used a boy’s name—by her proper pronoun.

  But for some reason, we all take it. Even though we outnumber him, twenty-five to one. Maybe we’re all just resigned to thinking that this is a microcosm of life, and we might as well get used to it. In my darker moments, I wonder if the others figure that they’re the lucky ones; since they don’t get it as bad as I do, why rock the boat?

  I tried to step around Tyler, but he stepped with me. Then he poked his finger into the soft flesh of my belly. “Is it a boy, or a girl?”

  I wanted to kick him in the nuggets. But I don’t know how to fight. I couldn’t even come up with a good comeback.

  So what did I do instead?

  I laughed. Like I thought it was funny, too.

  And I hated myself almost as much as I hated him.

  * * *

  —

  We stood outside, waiting for the French students to arrive from the airport. I jumped up and down to stay warm. Even though it was freezing outside, Mr. P had insisted we keep our coats off so our billets would see our band uniforms: black pants paired with orange suit jackets, because orange and black are our school colors. The jackets must have been designed
in the eighties, because they have enormous shoulder pads and smell of decades of BO.

  “I’m nervous,” I said to Alex.

  “Me too,” he admitted, blinking rapidly.

  “I hope they speak English, because I only speak un poo français.”

  “It’s pronounced peu,” said Fabrizio. “Un peu français.”

  I tried again. “Poo.”

  “Peu.”

  “Poo.”

  “Peu.”

  “That’s what I keep saying!”

  Alex laughed. “You’re right, Wil. You speak poo French.”

  Suddenly Tyler was beside me. “You might want to stop jumping up and down, Wank. Or get a bra. Your moobs are jiggling.”

  Poppy, standing nearby, stifled a giggle.

  I stopped jumping. Alex gave my hand a quick squeeze.

  “I think I see them,” said Fabrizio.

  A yellow school bus rounded the corner and pulled up to the curb. As soon as the doors swung open, we started to play “O Canada.”

  A glamorous woman appeared at the top of the stairs. She wore a gray coat over a red dress, and high heels even though it was cold and snowy. Her hair was pulled into a bun, and her lips matched the color of her dress. Mr. Papadopoulos broke into a big grin and said, “Geneviève! I mean—Mademoiselle Lefèvre! Bonjour!” She was much taller than him, and when they hugged, his head was squished between her breasts. He looked very, very happy.

  “Gross,” said Fabrizio between notes, and I silently agreed.

  When we’d finished “O Canada,” the students started spilling out, carrying their instruments. “They look just like us,” I said.