Mag’s mom answered the door. She looked shocked, just like Mag had when we met. However, this time, I didn’t look like I had just been beaten up. In fact, I had made a point of combing my hair before coming over to give off just the opposite effect. I leaned forward slightly to give Mag’s mom a better look at the top of my head, but she continued standing there in stunned silence, her mouth open and her hand over her heart.
“Hello,” I said, breaking the awkward silence. “Is Mag home?”
Mag’s mom freed herself from her daze by blinking hard a few times and adjusting her glasses. “Yes, she is. You must be Emerson.”
“That’s the rumor,” I said. I don’t know why I said that. I could have just said yes. I think I was trying to be funny to hide the fact that, no more than an hour ago, I had been fantasizing about beating my mom to death with a baseball bat. Besides, I got a smile out of Mag’s mom that seemed to come from her soul, which felt nice.
“Ah, Mag has told us about you,” she said. “Says you’re a nice lad.” I figured she was paraphrasing. I couldn’t picture Mag saying “lad,” although I had only met her the day before, and I suppose people can surprise you like that. She invited me inside.
“Thank you, Mrs…?”
“Please, call me Colleen.” She called to Mag that I was here. Then she stared at me some more, still trying to figure me out.
Mag came to greet me, and a moment later, her other mom, Gloria, came home with the groceries. I followed Mag outside to help bring them in, passing Gloria on the walkway.
“Hi, mom!” Mag said cheerfully. “This is Emerson.”
“Hi, mom!” I said in exactly the same way Mag had said it, just to be silly, thinking maybe my awkward ways would get a soul smile out of Gloria, too.
“Oh, my word!” Gloria gasped as she glanced at me. The bag dropped from her hand, the groceries spilling in all directions on the walkway. But she didn’t even notice. She simply stared at me, just like everyone did upon meeting me now, apparently. She looked like she was going to cry.
Colleen came outside and asked if everything was okay.
“Yes, everything’s fine,” Gloria said, still in a trance-like state, still not looking away from me. “Have you met Mag’s friend?”
“Yes. He’s a nice lad, isn’t he?”
“Yes, a very nice lad,” Gloria said. I had begun picking up the groceries she had dropped is why she said this, I assumed. Then she excused herself. She needed to go lie down.
Colleen attended to Gloria inside while Mag and I brought in the groceries. When we were finished, Colleen offered to drive us to the mall and give us some money for the arcade, as Gloria wasn’t feeling well and needed to rest. That sounded good to us (the part about going to the arcade), so we accepted the offer.
When it came to video games, Mag and I made quite a formidable team. Even though I had often gone to that arcade with my dad, I got further in a lot of the two-player games with Mag than I ever had with him. It was like we knew what the other person was going to do before they did it, like there was some kind of mystical bond between us.
Later, without planning it, we both got a Papa Burger with just pickles and an iced tea from the A&W in the food court. That was enough for me to confirm that our bond was indeed mystical. It shouldn’t have been, but after my lonesome morning, I was desperate to have a bond with someone. So, I decided that hamburgers and iced teas were symbols of mystical bonds.
Also, one of the many things that bugged me about people was how they force themselves to see signs that aren’t there (e.g., my mom and her birds), so maybe the fact that I saw one of these signs was a sign in and of itself.
The only damper on the afternoon came when the machine at the arcade that gives out quarters ate one of our five-dollar bills. We called the attendant over, but he said there was nothing he could do. “If I gave out quarters every time someone said this thing ate their money, people would start taking advantage.”
Mag protested, but the attendant held his ground. “Sorry, but it’s against protocol,” he said.
“YOU’RE against protocol,” Mag retorted, but it didn’t change the guy’s mind. There was nothing anyone could have said to change his mind. Once an employee mentions protocol, the discussion’s over. Nobody ever goes against protocol (unless it benefits them in some way, in which case everyone always does, but that wasn’t the case here).
We put another five in the machine and got our quarters, and the attendant made some motions with his hands that said, See? The machine works just fine.
But, other than that one blip, I couldn’t have asked for a more joyous afternoon. Being with Mag made me forget how sad I had been that morning. So, I aborted my original mission to tell her about my dark thoughts. If she didn’t understand them, if she didn’t understand me, it would have spoiled the rare good mood I was in.
Five o’clock (which was when Colleen said she would pick us up) came much earlier than I wanted it to. I used the tickets I had won at the arcade to get a comb, which I used to groom my hair like you wouldn’t believe. Even if this didn’t stop people from being so shocked at the sight of me, at least I could rule my hair out as a possible reason for it.
On the drive home, Colleen said Gloria was feeling much better and I was welcome to join them for dinner. I accepted, as the only decent food we had at my house was Pizza Pops, and they were my mom’s. Also, I was afraid of being lonely.
They ordered a large Hawaiian pizza. I didn’t like pineapple, especially not on pizza, but I pretended I did, as I was grateful for the meal and the company. During supper, Colleen and Gloria bombarded me with questions: if I had any siblings, what my favorite subjects were in school, if I played any sports, what my hobbies were, what my favorite video games were. They wanted to know everything. They didn’t ask anything about my dad, though; Mag must have wised them up to that situation.
We sat around the table for a time, eating and talking about all sorts of things—bumper stickers, for example, and the new blender Gloria had purchased at the grocery store (“Twelve speeds, this one’s got,” she pointed out several times).
There was plenty of merriment at that dinner table on that night, and as I ate my last bite of pizza, I decided pineapple wasn’t as bad as it had been at the beginning of the meal. I looked at Mag, Colleen, and Gloria and felt the sense of belonging I had been starving for since my dad’s mysterious death.
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I could hardly believe it, but I was happy. I was actually happy after the terrible, cakeless morning I’d had. And when Gloria brought out a McCain Deep & Delicious chocolate cake for dessert, I almost lost it and broke into tears of joy. But I held myself together; I didn’t want them to think I was weird and never want to see me again.
I’m not a sports guy, but I’ve heard people talk about them, and from what I’ve gathered, the greatest victories aren’t when you win by a hundred touchdowns. They’re when you were losing by a hundred touchdowns but fought back and won. That’s what this day felt like. I had “won” my birthday against insurmountable odds. I imagined my dad had pulled some strings from beyond the grave to bring Mag, Colleen, and Gloria into my life. They were my birthday present from him. And they were exactly what I needed.
The evening wasn’t perfect, however, on account of two particular events—one bafflingly painful and the other painfully baffling. The first happened soon after supper. Mag and I went down to the den to play some video games. She said we could dig out the NES if I wanted, which I did.
She led me to the storage room. Against the back wall were several rows of plastic bins and cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling. Mag admitted she had no idea which box the NES was in, but we were determined to find it.
She started passing me boxes, and my job was to move them aside until she found one labeled “Nintendo shit.” This went smoothly until the bottom of a box broke open as Mag handed it to me. The contents spilled from it, and some glass broke. I looked down and identified the broken item: a picture frame holding a photo of me.
“Don’t touch anything!” Mag said, but her command didn’t register. I was too intrigued by this photograph of me, and I picked it up. I had to get a closer look.
Mag jumped down from the boxes and tore the picture from my hand. The broken glass sliced my thumb pretty bad. Mag looked even angrier than she had been at Jason and Cody the day before.
“I said not to touch anything, you fucking moron!” she yelled. Then she punched me on the side of the face, and I went down.
Colleen rushed downstairs and demanded to know what was going on down here. She looked at me and noticed I was on the ground and rubbing my cheek. Then she looked at Mag threateningly. “What did you do?”
Mag looked at Colleen and took a long, shaky breath but didn’t say anything.
“What did you do?” Colleen repeated, more aggressively this time. “Did you hit him?”
Mag began to sob. “I’m sorry!” she said, suddenly looking like she was five years old.
She went to hug her mom, but Colleen refused to hug her back. “No. I’m not rewarding that kind of behavior. I understand that you’re hurting, but you can’t keep taking it out on other people. You need to learn to control your temper. I’m getting sick of having this conversation with you.”
Mag pulled away from Colleen and apologized.
“I’m not the one you should be saying sorry to,” Colleen said. “Apologize to Emerson and go to your room. You can clean this mess up tomorrow. The whole basement, actually.”
Mag apologized to me more sincerely than I’d ever been apologized to in my life and then went upstairs.
Colleen noticed my bleeding thumb and took me to Gloria, who sat me down at the kitchen table, where she cleaned and disinfected my wound. I could have done it myself, but Gloria seemed like she really wanted to. She performed every step of the process with great tenderness. Her hands were as gentle as flower pedals and made me feel safe. I wondered if Gloria was special or if this was simply what a mother’s love was supposed to feel like.
I thought about asking her why they had a photograph of me, but it didn’t feel like the right time. The house was filled with enough disconcertment as it was.
Once my thumb was bandaged, we agreed that I should be getting home. Colleen and Gloria said they really enjoyed having me over and hoped they’d see me again soon despite Mag’s outburst. “We’re going to have a talk with her and make sure nothing like that happens again,” Colleen assured me.
Gloria insisted on driving me home. She didn’t care how close my house was. It was dark, and she was adamant that no child should ever travel any distance alone at night.
When I got home, my mom still wasn’t there. Gloria, noticing the vacant driveway, asked where my mom was. I said she was out with some friends, which might have been true. I knew that Saturday was her drinking night (she drank on other nights, too, but always on Saturdays), but I don’t know for sure who she drank with. In any event, my response was satisfactory to Gloria.
I went inside and up to my room to play some Nintendo. This was when the second peculiar event of the evening took place. On my bed was a present roughly the size of a breadbox. It was wrapped in galaxy-style paper with a bright green bow.
My mom must have come home briefly while I was with Mag and dropped this gift off. I inspected the present for a tag or card. I found nothing of the sort, but, if anything, the lack of effort supported my hypothesis.
I unwrapped and opened the box to find a video game system I’d never heard of before. It was called the Butterfly Box, though it looked nothing like a butterfly. It did look a lot like a box, though. I had to hand it to them on that one. It also came with a butterfly-shaped controller. However, it did not come with a game, meaning I couldn’t play it.
The Butterfly Box had to have been from my mom. She probably picked it up cheap at the pawn shop on her lunch break. And the guy running the place had swindled her. He had said that this box and controller were everything you needed, that I’d be playing this thing non-stop, and that all sales were final. He had lied right to her face.
Apparently, it’s called being a good salesman, and some people congratulate themselves endlessly for it. “I could sell ice to an Eskimo,” they say with great pride. But if that’s true, you’re just taking advantage of people at that point, and I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of. Also, I’m pretty sure they don’t like being called Eskimos.
Even though I couldn’t play the Butterfly Box, I wanted to see what happened when you powered it on. Maybe I could at least get a sense of what the graphics were like. So, I hooked up the system and turned it on. However, I was presented with a blank screen and nothing more.
I put the Butterfly Box away and spent the next few hours playing Mega Man 3 on my NES. I replayed it several times in a row, trying to beat it as quickly as I possibly could. I eventually set a new personal best time of 40:29.
At around 1:30, I heard my mom bumping and slumping around downstairs. I went down to the living room to thank her for the birthday present. At least she’d tried.
She stumbled over to me and kissed me hard on the cheek. Her lips were cold, and her breath smelled of whiskey and cigarettes. She handed me a pack of Trident gum and said, “Happy birthday, kiddo!” She said it a lot louder than she needed to. It kind of hurt my ear.
“Wait,” I said. “If this is my gift from you, then who got me the Butterfly Box?”
“I dunno, I’m goin’a bed.”
I went to bed, too but had trouble getting to sleep. My mind was fixated on all the mysteries I had on my hands. What was Mag’s real name? What was causing her angry outbursts? Why did her family have a photo of me in their basement?
And, most confusing of all, who had gotten me the Butterfly Box? If it wasn’t my mom, it had to have been Colleen and Gloria. Nobody else cared about me enough to get me a birthday present. Yes, they had brought it here when I was at the arcade with Mag. Gloria not feeling well had been a rouse.
They knew it was my birthday today because they had been following me for years, taking photos of me, framing them, and storing them in their basement. I was convinced that every one of those boxes in the storage room was chock-full of photos of me. They were planning some kind of ritual with me. They had to be. There was no other explanation. But how did a video game system fit into their scheme?
I tried to decipher their plan, but I soon became so confused that I fell asleep.