“The contest haunted me today.”
Jeff started laughing but quelled it because he wasn’t sure if his sister was losing her mind.
There had been no hello, no salutation, no small talk.
Melissa just started the conversation “The contest haunted me today.”
“Like a flashback or something?” Jeff asked, trying to sound more concerned than he actually was.
“Kinda. I’m sorry I was so pissed about the turtle.”
Jeff had been making a sandwich with the phone pressed between his shoulder and ear. He dropped the knife spreading the mayo, certain that Melissa heard the clatter, and almost dropped the phone.
“You’re sorry?”
“Yes, Jeffrey, I’m sorry.”
“So what brought this on, today, wintertime…though this is New Year’s Day. Is the apology part of a resolution or some new self-help thing or…?
“No, goddamnit, Jeff. I was watching Becca and Henry play a game against each other. Some role-playing, adventure thing. It’s the only thing in the world they have in common, I swear.”
“Like you and me and the pond.”
“Different, but similar…”
Now Jeff was having a flashback.
Their dad, with a cigarette dangling from his lip, telling them he had cancer and didn’t have long.
In Jeff’s mind, Melissa had won the first contest that day, because he had started crying well before she did.
Their dad– gruff, no-nonsense, had said “get the tears out now because ya can’t cry every day and the damn cancer ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Then he made the next announcement, the big one, the one that would alter their relationship.
“You’re a year and four months apart. You can’t share my GTO. You’ll strangle each other over who gets to use it when.”
Jeff was fifteen at the time, drooling over the prospect of getting his driver’s license.
“And I can’t just give it to the oldest kid arbitrarily. My dad did that ‘oldest first’ crap and I hated it. The GTO is really the only thing I have of value and I ain’t putting it in the goddamn Auto Trader and selling it to some asshole who will customize it or wreck it or both.”
Jeff remembered their dad taking three full drags on his smoke, flicking the butt out the screen door. Then he said: “Y’all decide on a contest or two that’s fair to both of you. No arm rasslin’, no feats of strength. Beyond that, I don’t care what it is. Monopoly, Scavenger hunt, whatever. Y’all conduct the contest yourselves and come tell me who won. Winner gets the GTO.”
Melissa spoke, and Jeff came back to present time.
“Henry and Becca were chasing some mythical beast, I forget what it’s called if I ever knew in the first place, and a tree came to life, stuck out a root and tripped Becca. Henry killed the creature and got a magical sword and a bunch of gold or coins or something…”
“And the root reminded you of the turtle.”
Melissa paused, annoyed that she hadn’t had a chance to say it first.
“Yes, Jeff, it did.”
They had sat at the kitchen table, first protesting that the GTO wasn’t important, Jeff sobbing, then Melissa hugging her dad and softly crying into his Ramones Rocket to Russia shirt.
Their dad insisted that ownership of the GTO be decided before he went to bed. Jeff forgot what kind of parent-to-child alchemy their dad had used, but he convinced them that they owed it to him to make a quick decision.
Jeff remembered thinking that Melissa might crack and just say “I don’t want the stupid thing.”
The muscle car was Regimental Red and Melissa hated reds and pinks and all things associated with typical girls.
But she dug into the task of deciding what contest they would use that was fair to both of them, getting two sheets of paper and two pens so they could each make a list of potential contests.
When they compared papers, Jeff had written “distance pissing” third and Melissa angrily scratched that out first.
Jeff remembered their dad watching NASCAR, but looking over at them while they made the list and smiling, his gold incisor glinting.
When the race ended, he got up and went to the Kow Loon, the Chinese restaurant that was the closest place to their house that served booze, drinks with exotic names that came in fancy carved mugs. Their dad always let them take a taste of the drinks, and Jeff had a strong taste memory of the fruity concoction.
“Is Becca okay?”
“She didn’t really trip, Jeff, it was her character in the game.”
“I know that Melonball, but like, did she freak out?”
“Like I did about the turtle? Not as bad, but she was pissed and it made me think…”
They had decided on skipping stones at the pond down the hill from their trailer. There were two ponds by Livingston Estates, a name far too fancy for the tattered doublewides right off the freeway. North Pond kids were allowed to swim in.
Easterbrook Pond was smaller, swimming was prohibited, and the rumor was that all the septic units flushed into it. So it was always deserted, and Jeff and Melissa claimed it as their own.
Jeff had begged for a board game, but Melissa vetoed anything with dice as being too random. It had to be a skill.
“After Becca calmed down,” Melissa said, “I realized that the game is programmed to do that based on the activity of the character and random occurrences…”
Jeff said “yeah,” but his mind was still at the pond, the perverse nature of their excitement that when Dad got back from the Kow Loon, they would have the GTO decision for him.
His mind was still on how, somehow, their father had used his four-wheeled child to take the sting and shock out of the news of his illness. How he had taught them an immediate lesson in cooperating and making decisions without his counsel.
They decided on best of seven stone skips, and a twenty-minute time limit for finding seven suitable stones. Melissa timed them on her plastic Detroit Lions watch that Aunt Cheyenne had gotten her with a fill-up and a full-service car wash at Marathon.
They chose their stones, they chose their spots on the side of the pond, they even decided they could call timeout if pudgy, mouthy Colby Donahue came by the pond to bug them.
“...And I realized their whole lives are programmed in some way, Jeff. Always on their phones, or waiting for the bus to go to dance and volleyball…”
The contest came down to the 7th skip. Jeff had been relieved that they weren’t going on total skips, but counting each individual round as one contest.
The methane smell was strong that day. Someone could have truly been convinced that all the septic systems did dump into Easterbrook Pond.
Melissa went first in the seventh round. She had somehow saved a really good flat stone for last, while Jeff had used all his best ones early.
The stone hit the water with such a loud plunk that Jeff thought she might have thrown a sinker.
But it hopped, then veered left and kept skipping for a five.
Jeff had to tie five or skip six to win.
The sun had just started tickling the tops of the trees and the shadows on the water got a bit tricky for skip counting.
Jeff had lost the idea of the GTO, lost the idea of his dad being sick, he just didn’t want the shadows to cheat him out of any skips.
His not-so-flat rock hit close to the edge, soared forward–too high Jeff thought at first–then caught the back edge of a ripple and bounded forward, three, four…
A turtle surfaced right in front of it.
It was a musk turtle, Jeff would say later, its dark shell almost a shadow itself, but shadows don’t make ripples in water or sibling relationships.
The stone glanced off the shell-that skip technically would be five, Jeff would say hundreds of times over the next few years, then bounced off for two more.
Jeff celebrated the victory itself before it sunk in that in less than a year he would be driving a Regimental Red 1967 GTO that sat under a carport in a cover that cost more than their dad’s whole wardrobe.
Melissa screamed for a do-over because of the turtle interference. Jeff was not having it. In his mind, the stone skipped six times if you didn’t count the turtle.
“It would have sunk without the damn turtle!!” Melissa yelled and Jeff remembered Colby Donahue slowing down on his bike at the top of the hill near their trailer.
“Dad wanted us to settle this fair and square. I won the most rounds, even not counting the turtle skip. I win. Dad will be furious if we argue about it.”
Melissa had sprinted up the hill to the trailer.
Jeff looked out at Easterbrook Pond and thanked the turtle, now resubmerged, that he would forever claim had nothing to do with his victory.
“I want Becca and Henry to experience the randomness and beauty of nature. I want to move them somewhere where they have access to a pond of their own.”
“Yeah,” Jeff said, “a pond of their own would be cool.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
Then finally, stronger than before, Melissa’s voice said “I’m serious, Jeffrey. I want to move them out of the city. I need a loan to put a downpayment on a place.”
Jeff remembered getting back to the trailer and seeing the note Melissa had written to their dad that said: “Jeff wins the GTO” with a smiley face, before locking herself in her room.
She played nice in front of their dad but called Jeff “cheater” and “turtle boy” at school.
Jeff wanted so badly to say something to their dad, but couldn’t. He had been so thrilled that the decision had been made that he whooped for joy.
Melissa held her anger in in front of him and unleashed it on Jeffrey, every day, or what felt like every day.
If she was down at the pond and Jeff came down she left. For a while, Jeff was afraid she was going to kill turtles.
Their dad made it five years. Jeff was in college when he finally got the GTO.
Melissa refused to ride in the car, though after Henry was born she stopped calling Jeff “turtle boy.”
“I’ll give you some time to think about it, Jeffrey. “
“Where do you want to move, Melissa?”
“Not sure, exactly, but somewhere out closer to you so the kids can get to know their uncle a little better would be nice.”
Jeff thought about their dad, picking up the note from Melissa with the smiley face. She was locked in her bedroom. Jeff got the huge bear hug. He could still smell the Viceroys and the Singapore Sling.
“I’ll loan you the money, Melonball. Find a place out here with a pond.”
“You don’t know how much it’s going to be, Jeff.”
“I don’t give a fuck. If you’re gonna move closer, I’ll loan you the money. But make me a promise, okay?”
“What kinda promise, Jeffrey?”
“ When I turn sixty, I want Henry and Becca to choose a contest to see who gets the GTO.”
“When you die?”
“Nope. Right then. No feats of strength, no skipping stones, no video games.”
***
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"somehow, their father had used his four-wheeled child to take the sting and shock out of the news of his illness. How he had taught them an immediate lesson in cooperating and making decisions without his counsel." Profound.
I’m reminded of my dad, he would have done this….but he died before my brother forgave him. I’m crying good tears