Zen and Xander Undone (8 page)

Xander drives me nuts, but I still dread the day she leaves us. She's practically my whole social life. It's not that I wouldn't like to have other friends. It's just that after dealing with Xander twenty-four hours a day, I don't have the energy for anyone else.

“So, Adam,” Xander says with a sly look at me as she kicks at the little bits of gravel in the gutter. “What would you say if I told you that our mom might have had an illicit affair?”

This makes me so mad that I punch her shoulder, which sends a bolt of pain through my back.

“Your mom wasn't selfish enough to do something like that,” he says angrily. Adam's dad had an affair with a woman at work, another lawyer, and ran off to Boston to be with her. Adam goes to see him only four times a year, and when he comes back home he's in a bad mood for at least a week. “Believe me. Your mom wasn't the type.”

“Then explain this.” Xander grabs his hand and pulls him over to sit on a park bench under a sumac tree. She tells him the whole story about how we stole the documents from Mr. Blackstone, and the missing statue. “Who do women give six-thousand-dollar statues to when they die? Statues of
lovebirds?
” Xander raises her dark blond eyebrows at him and waits for his explanation.

He thinks about it, his fingers thrumming on his bony knee.

I get impatient with them both and carefully lower myself onto the ground near them. It feels wonderful to be lying down. I look up at the sky, which is speckled with tiny clouds, and I realize that it's been a very long time since I went cloud watching. That's something I did with Mom when I was very small, only I didn't know that I was supposed to be looking for shapes in the clouds. I just lay there, making up random stuff, like closets stuffed full of candy, or pirates with black eye patches. When Mom finally figured that out, that the stuff I was saying had nothing to do with watching clouds, she took me in her arms, laughing, peppering my face with kisses.

“I see why you think she might have been involved with the guy,” he finally says, “but how do you know she didn't know him before she got married?”

“That's a good point,” I say. “She's had that statue since before I can remember, Xander.”

“When was the statue made?” Adam says.

Xander has to think about it for a minute. She closes her eyes, probably visualizing the website she'd looked at, reading it all over again. Sometimes I'm so envious of her mind that I could cry. “The website said nineteen ninety-five. Yeah. That's right. Because I remember thinking it was the same year Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman produced the first Bose-Einstein condensate.”

Adam looks at me to see if I understand what she's just said. I shake my head.

“It's a model that displays quantum mechanics on a macro scale, you doofuses,” she says, lisping like a nerd so we understand she's really making fun of herself.

“And when did your mom marry your dad?”

Xander probes her memory, but I'm the one who can answer this time, though I don't really want to say it. “Nineteen ninety.”

“So John Phillips gave Mom the statue
after
she was married,” Xander says smugly.

“After we were born,” I add softly. This question had teased at the back of my mind ever since we found out about Phillips. Now it's certain. If Mom had an affair, she wasn't just cheating on Dad. She was cheating on us.

We're all quiet for a few minutes.

“Do you see?” Xander raises her eyebrows at Adam triumphantly.

“I see,” Adam says impatiently, “but what I don't get, Xander, is why you're acting like you
want
it to be true.”

I give Xander an accusing look.

She blusters at us. “Of—of course I don't want that!”

“Oh, yes you do,” I tell her. “And I know why. Because if Mom slept around you don't have to feel so bad about doing it too. But you're going to be disappointed. Because she didn't. She wouldn't do that to us.”

Xander blanches. “I don't sleep with
that
many guys.”

“Okay. So you don't
sleep
with the guys,” Adam says, but bites his lip immediately, seeming to regret letting the words out.

Xander pulls into herself, and I feel bad. “Xander, I think we should drop this right now,” I say to her, but gently, so she'll know I'm sorry about what I said.

She looks at me with narrowed eyes. She doesn't forgive so easily.

“Actually, Zen, I'm inclined to agree with Xander,” Adam says in his most reasonable-sounding adult tone. Lately he's been getting on his high horse with us. It has always been annoying to Xander, and now I find it totally enraging. “Now that you know about this Phillips guy, I don't see how you can forget about it. Besides, I'm sure you'll learn that their relationship was innocent. Then you don't have to worry about it anymore.”

Xander perks up at this, but she's still mad. “I'm not a slut,” she tells him, wounded.

He doesn't answer. He just lets his eyes trail down her thin white tank top and back up to her face. He raises one eyebrow.

“Bras are medieval,” she tells him before getting up and flouncing away from us. We watch her go until she turns around and yells angrily, “Hey prudy-boy, is your mommy home?”

“Oh, man,” he mumbles before getting up and jogging to catch up with her.

I'm not exactly thrilled either, because I know what she's about to do. She's going to ask Nancy.

When I catch up, hobbling, Adam is trying to talk sense to Xander. “Let me handle it, okay? If we don't do this tactfully, Mom'll clam up.”

“You think I'm not tactful?” Xander says.

I snort. She turns around to glare at me.

“I'll ask her,” Adam says. “I know how to handle her.”

To this, Xander says nothing.

We climb up the front steps of Adam's house to find Nancy sitting on the porch swing reading a horror novel. All Nancy reads is horror. She loves Stephen King, and she owns every one of his novels in hardcover. They take up three whole shelves on her bookcases. Right now she's reading something by Clive Barker, biting her bottom lip with dread. We're all standing over her, waiting. When she looks up at us, she jumps in her seat.

“Jesus, Mom, didn't you hear us come up the steps?”

“Yeah,” she says breathlessly. “I did.” She picks up a huge tumbler of lemonade and takes a swig. “What are you guys up to today?”

“Nothing much,” Adam says as he sits down in a wicker chair. She makes room on the swing for me and Xander, and we all start swinging together.

“Wheee!” Nancy says as she kicks the swing higher, holding her arms over her head like she's on a roller coaster. This is why I like Nancy so much. She's goofy. “How are the hellions today?” Nancy asks as she pushes the swing even higher. “Starting up a rock band? Going on tour? Can I be a roadie?”

“Actually, we were just wondering if our mother was a cheeky harlot,” Xander says casually.

Adam drops his head into his hands.

The swing creaks to a stop. Nancy's floppy brown hair falls in her face. Slowly she smoothes it away.

“Mom. The hellions have found something interesting about Marie, and we're just wondering.” He looks at her level, so she knows he's not kidding around. “Did Marie ever mention a guy named John Phillips?”

“No,” she says without even pausing to think about it. She stands up and gives Xander a freezing glare. “I've never heard the name,” she says before turning on her heel and slamming through the front door.

“She's lying,” Xander says flatly.

“You had to plunge right in, didn't you?” Adam yells.

Xander shrugs. “I thought she'd laugh.”

“Why? It wasn't funny.” He shakes his head before going in the house.

I turn on Xander. “You're the harlot, not Mom.”

Xander jumps up and darts through the front door. I go into the kitchen to find her standing toe to toe with Nancy. “I'm sorry I said it that way,” she pleads. “Just tell us what you know so that we don't have to think the worst!”

Nancy starts mixing herself another glass of lemonade, shaking her head, staring into the yellow liquid. “How do you know about him?” she says quietly.

Adam insinuates himself between Nancy and Xander, who he glares at until she backs away and sits down at the kitchen table.

“They found his name in some papers,” he tells Nancy, using his most reasonable tone. “And she left him a very expensive item.”

“The birds.” Nancy lifts her eyes to his face. Her lips are trembling. She doesn't want to talk about this.

“Yes,” I say. “How did you know?”

“Because I'm the one who took them to the lawyer.” To Xander she says, “She didn't tell me anything about him. She just told me not to ask questions, and to deliver the statue with a letter.”

Her tearful eyes pass over me and Xander. She isn't mad anymore. She's looking at us with real love. “Girls, your mother was an honorable woman.”

“I know,” Xander whispers.

I can't say anything, so I nod. I'm so furious with Xander for digging all this up, I could sever her carotid with a single strike. I really could.

I
LOVE THE SMELL
of sweaty mats. And musty floorboards. And is that a touch of rancid turtle effluence?

According to my doctor, I can resume normal activity. I wasn't sure he remembered specifically that I'm a shotokan instructor, but I didn't remind him. Being away from the dojo has me off kilter, and I've been crazy staying at home all day long with Xander obsessing about Mom's supposedly illicit affair.

Mark is in the office, tapping on the adding machine. He's sitting with his back to me, his legs spread wide, so he looks like a Kabuki dancer. I try to sneak up behind him, but before I'm even halfway to the office he says without turning around, “Zen! Good to have you back!”

“It's good to be back!” I say, and drop to the floor to do my stretches.

Mark carefully folds up a bunch of receipts and stuffs them into an envelope. “We're well into the black this month!”

“Great!”

He sits down across from me and starts doing stretches. His dark eyes trail my limbs appraisingly. “Still stiff?”

“Yeah.” I push myself a little further, working against my sprain. I feel something give and I can stretch fully, but not without pain. I try to wipe my face clean, but Mark sees my grimace.

“Are you sure you're ready for this, Zen?”

“Oh yeah.”

He stops stretching and watches me quietly. I get more and more nervous under his gaze until he finally speaks. “Okay, but you're here to correct form today. You're not doing any moves.”

“I can't teach without doing moves.”

“You can't do shotokan with a ruined back,” he says sternly. He starts stretching again, but his face remains serious. “The most important thing you can do is take care of your body, Zen. That's in shotokan and in life.”

“I know that.”

“You're still in pain.”

His gaze is so steady, I'm not sure if he's still talking about my back or if now we're talking about Mom. Suddenly I feel weepy, and I duck my head so that my hair falls in front of my face like a blond curtain. I feel a hand on my shoulder and look up to see Mark blinking away tears. “It's been a rough year.”

I nod. For a second, I'm tempted to tell him about John Phillips, because Xander's obsession has started to rub off on me, but I can't talk about it. It's too raw. And I don't want it to be real, even if I can't stop thinking about it.

“You've been very brave, Zen.”

I push away my sadness, search for a topic other than Mom. I still haven't told Mark about that guy I kicked, and it really is something I should discuss with my sensei, anyway. “Mark, I had a confrontation, and I used shotokan.”

He leans away from me, waiting for me to say more.

“A guy was messing with Xander, and I kicked him.”

“Messing how?”

I tell him the whole story, leaving nothing out. There aren't many people in my life I can talk to like this, but with Mark, I'm completely honest. When I'm done I search his eyes, looking for the forgiveness I need from him, but I don't see it. Instead I see a distance between us as he considers my story.

“Was kicking him necessary?” he finally asks. His tone is clinical, but his eyes are grave.

I try to remember back to that night. It was important that Frank be prevented from forcing Xander into his car, but part of me wonders why I didn't try screaming first. He might have let her go. “I wasn't thinking clearly. I was scared.”

“And you were angry,” he says, reading me perfectly. He takes a deep breath. He has never looked at me this way before, as though he's not sure what to expect from me, like he thinks I'm dangerous.

“Yes,” I say softly. “I was very angry.”

“What move did you use?”

“Roundhouse kick.”

“To the
head?
” he asks, surprised. “That was your
opening
move?”

“He was trying to force Xander into his car,” I say to defend myself. But I sound false.

He tilts his head. “Did you call the police?”

This stops me cold. We didn't call the police.
Why
didn't we call the police?

He watches me a long time, his eyes narrow and appraising. He seems about to speak, but then we hear a reedy little voice call, “Hai!”

“Hai!” Mark says, but his eyes are on me. “We'll talk later.” He rubs my back, right in the sore spot, but it feels nice. “No moves, right?”

“Okay,” I say reluctantly.

The students trickle in. Nick's freckled face colors when he sees me, and he seems to want to say something, but he can't bring himself to speak. “Hey, Nick, want to help me with these mats?” I ask him.