Follow the Leader

Matt is in the front room. Thought-provoking hip-hop is playing. My mother is lying on the couch, her face is covered in a blanket and I assume she’s sleeping.

“Is she okay?”

“She just took a Valium.”

It's a fucking mad house in here.

“She’s sleeping, right?”

“Don’t look so worried. I just checked her breath.”


“I think Andrew and I are breaking up.”

“What? He just came to visit you.”

“I know. So, Matt, do you want to come with me?"

He looks young and his eyes fold into his face, wanting to go back from where they came.

“I don’t know Marla. I get why you want to talk to Dad’s old wives but it was a lot of work to get a picture of Dad that I like. I don’t want to fuck with it.”

I nod.

“This is a good song.”

“You’re telling, me chicken-head.” He starts clucking like a lunatic.

“You’re going to wake up Mom.”

“Yeah, she’s sleeping so lightly over there.”

He takes my hand and we start dancing. We hop around my drugged mother, hop around the memories of my father, hop around the house we grew up in. We pretend we’re fish and we swim to each other through all the rooms on the bottom floor. Then he’s a fisherman and he casts his rod and hooks me. I swim towards him and we waltz for a bit until I tell him my dyscalculia makes it hard for me to follow the leader. After he does the running man for five minutes straight, I fall to the ground laughing.

I start laughing with such hysterical feeling that I feel like I’m breaking something inside me. I think if I decided to, I could easily start crying. I think whether or not I decide to, I might start crying.

Matt reaches down and grabs my hand.

“It’s time for the robot.”

I don’t want to get up.