Meringue CAROLINE LINDER

	She is telling me she is worried that my father won't find another job, she is worried my brother might do something reckless: she is worried about us all, in a nutshell, but will trouble herself to explore it in detail now that she has an audience. Not that I'm calloused to her worry, fear, pain, whatever. I know it's real and I listen, I witness it, I do what I can to show some kind of respect for it; I give it credence. But that's all I can do, it's not like we're having a conversation, and besides, what could I do to help any of it? It's not a matter of saying anything because I have a rule of never giving advice, even if it's asked for. I've found that there's a certain amount of mystery, uncertainty in every person, and I frankly do not feel it my place to presume anything. Basically people can be pretty weird, and even messy, if that makes any sense. There are just certain lines that I will not cross, you know? It's quicksand, and I don't want to fuck with it. It's actually easier to deal with my mother when I'm a little drunk. I can only focus on one thing, so as I watch her talk she's got all my attention. Sometimes when I come in after drinking my mom accuses me of smelling like it, which I won't deny, but she swears it exudes from my pores, like I'm sweating the stuff; so I sit in an armchair on the other side of the room where she can't smell me. If she's up this late she either gets on me about drinking or else she's so caught up in worry that I have to sit there and listen to her. It's sort of a trade off. I don't mind too much as long as I'm not the subject of one of her late night lectures. Everything is dark except for the living room, and light from the lamps cast shadows high on the white walls. Upstairs my father is asleep. I sit there; legs crossed, sipping my tea, nodding my head. The tone of her voice is calmer now, slower. She sounds more resigned than upset and I know she's finally winding down, or maybe the chamomile tea is working. I watch one of her hands move over the sofa upholstery distractedly and I am shocked to see how loose, mottled her skin looks. The lamp beside her gives off a dull glare and her face appears tired, her features a little smudged. The skin of her neck is slack and has a thin, papery texture. My mother is getting old. I remember how her breasts fell a few years after she turned forty. Not that it was really noticeable, my mother has always had a real youthful air; but as she moved about the kitchen one day I noticed a certain thickening around her waist and how her cableknit sweater hung bagged and lumpy. That's the first time I ever thought about my parents getting old. I mean, for your whole life they're bigger than you, have just as much energy as you and then one day you realize you could beat the shit out of them. It's sort of funny. Weird, too. I mean, when I was a kid, all I wanted was to be grown up. I figured I'd do cool adult things like drive cars and have sex and go to bed whenever I wanted while at the same time I'd suddenly be privy to a world of knowledge and sophistication by sheer fact of age and size.   So now I'm twenty: I don't have a car, I still haven't had an orgasm, and I sleep all the goddamn time anyway. I'm still just as stupid, too, and feel even stupider when I think that maybe I actually miss having someone around to tell me what to do. When I was little I didn't think about a goddamn thing until I got older. Like one day I looked in a mirror and saw myself, I mean really saw myself, for the first time. Two eyes and a face that moved when I moved and I suddenly realized that it was my body and I was inside it. So there I am staring into this mirror absolutely stunned and from that point on I'm just a total egomaniac. And I don't even give my parents a second thought because they are simply a given; they've always been there. They come with the car and the house and the neighborhood and the school and the church and everything else. Presentation is everything. To see our family together all dressed up at a nice restaurant, you'd never imagine anything that goes on, we all look so goddamn nice. My brother and I are pretty good-looking kids: tall, healthy, regular-featured. We have great posture, naturally straight teeth, impeccable manners. Our parents love to show us off, introduce us around; it's some big trip for them, the fact that they could reproduce successfully. I guess that's sort of a compliment for us. But sometimes we'll be out somewhere and I'll catch a glimpse of the whole family in a mirror or maybe a plate glass window and at first I can't even recognize the faces; everyone looks a little skewed. Maybe it's just me and my brother, even though we're dressed and groomed to a 't,' there's something decidedly freakish about us. We look so healthy, so all-American, and at the same time just a little crazed. We have the same big jawed, straight white smiles that give us a bloodthirsty look. Maybe it's just the way our eyes bug out when we get excited, or the saliva glistening on our teeth that makes us look like serial killers. You know, like the really crazy ones, the ones who are kind to animals and help old ladies across the street; the ones you'd swear were normal till you found out they had like thirty bodies buried in the back yard. Not that we'd ever kill anyone, we're perfectly well-adjusted.   I don't get to see my brother much. Things are pretty tight at West Point and he's home only a couple of times a year, for holidays and stuff. I guess I miss him. We were the biggest pals when I was maybe fourteen and he was seventeen. It's like we understood each other better than anyone. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we were raised in the same household, under the same circumstances. I mean, I know plenty of siblings who either hate each other or are completely apathetic, but it's like me and my brother became allies at some point. All those family vacations and fifteen hour car rides; we were either gonna kill each other or be friends. I kept thinking during the last part of ninth grade that this was it, that my brother was gonna graduate and leave home and that would be the last of it, the regular everyday stuff like going places together or fighting over who had to do the dishes. It was late that summer after ninth grade when we drove him out to Fort Jackson, me and my dad, to get on the bus for boot camp. 5:30 a.m. and the only things lit up are fast food places and gas stations. For some reason I'm sitting up front, crammed between them and for a second it's like we're just going to school, but then we turn and go to the Fort and it's almost dawn and there's all these kids running around out front and my brother looks at us, just stops for a second and looks at us, and then says goodbye, like he's just gonna be gone for the weekend; he says goodbye and walks to the bus and doesn't look back. Now I see my brother and it's cool, we hang out some when he's home but I don't think I really understand him; not like in high school. After being in the army two years and now at West Point, his world is completely different from mine. Bivouacs, military arts, uniforms, and all that shit. Five years of that and how could it not change you? It amazes me that he can even thrive in that like he has; I can't fathom it all. I still can't imagine what he was thinking that morning he said goodbye to us in the darkness.