On an Edge of Glass

cool.”
    “Oh.”   My bottom jaw hangs loose like it doesn’t know what to do. 
    Julie ’s cool?
    I’m about to ask him to elaborate when dad cuts in , his eyes peeking over the top of the leather-bound menu.  “Elizabeth, what are you going to order?”
    There it is.  Elizabeth.  My parents can’t seem to get on the don’t-call-me-that bandwagon. 
    Ben sneaks a sideways glance at me.  His eyebrows are high and his mouth is twitching.  I die a little bit.
    “ Ummm… probably just a salad or something.  My stomach’s feeling queasy.”
    Dad tsks.  “I wonder why,” he says all fake innocence and charm.  “ Ben, has Elizabeth ever told you about the time that she ordered sweetbreads when she was seven?  She thought that they would actually be made of bread.”  He laughs to himself.
    First of all: why would I tell Ben about ordering testicles for dinner when I was a kid?
    Second of all: no, no, no!
    Ben smiles, flashing that solitary dimple at me and my pulse wavers. 
    “No, to be honest Mr. Glass, Elizabeth hasn’t told me all that much about herself,” he says.
    Dad looks properl y put out.  He furrows his brow, stretches his arms out over the sides of the booth and before I can stop him—before I can steer the conversation into safer territory—he’s off.
    And so begins the lunch that nightmares are made of.
    From the dredges of hell, my father pulls out every single embarrassing childhood story about me.  There’s the time that I locked myself in an outdoor trunk, and when I measured out two cups of salt for the cookie batter instead of sugar, and how I threw up on Jacob Hoffman’s shoes when he asked me to be his girlfriend in the seventh grade.  And there are more—way too many to count.  My brain starts to hurt with the horror of it all.               
    Even after we finish our lunch, my dad’s still going.  His eyes are glazed over with fondness, and he’s chuckling as he describes a tiny rosy-cheeked Elizabeth that I can barely remember, demanding a hot pink cast when she broke her arm after falling off a playground slide.
    Ben isn’t moving.  He’s sitting back in the booth looking at me, and he’s got this expression on his face that sends goose bumps up my arms.
    And I’m thinking about the t ime years ago that my parents took me to California and we drove north from the resort to see the redwoods.  I stood at the base of a stand of ginormous trees, and looked up through the lens of the camera that my grandmother had sent for Christmas.  But they didn’t look like the redwood trees from the photographs I’d seen.  It was like squinting through a kaleidoscope—all greenly light and twinkle and strange hypnotizing lines.  I told mom what I thought and she said, “The trees are the way trees have always been, Elizabeth.  What’s different is the way that you’re looking.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Vinyl Vertigo
     
     
    Back at the house, things are still in hangover mode.  The television is on an endless cycle of infomercials.  Ainsley and Payton have crashed on opposite ends of the same couch.  Their socked feet are entangled.  There’s a half-eaten bowl of pre-packaged macaroni and cheese between them with two forks sticking out.  And Laurie has been resurrected from the floor.  Now she’s slouched in the armchair with a droll look on her face and a bag of microwave popcorn in her lap.
                  Dad and I trade goodbyes in the doorway because he says that he’s in a “time crunch” to get to that conference.  I think that maybe he just wants to avoid another foray into my home, a.k.a. The Hotbed of Iniquity. 
    He squeezes me one last time.  He shakes Ben’s hand enthusiastically and tells him to, “Watch out for my girl.”  Meaning me I guess.  The exchange makes me cringe in embarrassment, but Ben takes the whole thing in stride—grinning and nodding his head appropriately.
                  And then dad is gone, and Ben and I are standing side by side surveying the scene in front of us.  I should probably grab a garbage bag and start with the small stuff, but it’s like I would rather have pins shoved under my fingernails than clean-up day-old party trash at the moment.
                  Ben must be thinking the same thing because he turns to me and says, “I’ve got to go do some stuff.  Want to come?”
                  That’s how I wind up in the passenger seat