Treasure Island!!!

sole adventure. “Come here, look at this,” she said, refusing to see how her souvenirs embarrassed me. “My hair was so dark then!” “This is a photo of your father and Don Tatum, playing table tennis. You should have seen how hard Don returned the ball. He had to change the rubber on his paddle every week!” It was as if she had no shame.
    “Maybe Adrianna hates you,” I said, “but I’m sure she’ll get over it. He’s her first boyfriend, you know.”
    My mother clucked dismissively. “What about Eddie Wisbey? That nice red-headed boy from . . . ”
    “They never went out. I forbade it.”
    “You’re so
hard
on your sister. She wasn’t terribly attached, was she? I mean, I know he’s a nice man. And very sensual. Probably more available emotionally now that he’s matured.”
    “Mom, stop! I
cannot
hear this kind of information.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “ . . . easier to fight you with a cutlass than hear this kind of talk.”
    “I thought you liked candor.”
    “I like
my
candor. There’s a big fat difference.”
    “There certainly is. Do you want any dessert?”
    I shook my head.

    In the days immediately following my mother’s revelation, I began to feel just a bit more like Jim Hawkins. Not the Jim Hawkins I had long admired—the boy who sails off to seek treasure, and upon discovering the crew is a murderous gang of pirates, grabs a gun and heads east to the shoreline, careless, clear-headed, and brave. I was more like the Jim Hawkins when absolute blackness settles on the island, and adrift in a coracle, he is unable to pinpoint the position of the anchored ship.
    My mother and I continued to have dinner and she continued to release little pieces of information about her affair with Don Tatum. Often this information acted like a time-release capsule in that, when she shared it, I didn’t immediately feel its impact. She might ramble on, impressed with my maturity, and I might nod, feeling somewhat interested, neutral, or, I thought, inured; but before an hour passed I would be reeling from the unwanted information, clutching my head and feeling dry-mouthed, about to vomit. To make matters worse, Adrianna seemed to intuit that my mother was confiding in me. She and Don were on the rocks—I didn’t know the details, but figured she was giving him a hard time about having concealed the maternal history—and every morning, before she went to work, she barged into my room, her breath reeking of coffee and Listerine, and knelt over my bed, hissing at me to tell her everything Mom had said. “I don’t know anything, I don’t know anything,” I’d murmur and try to fall back asleep. One morning she got so angry she pelted me with stuffed animals before she left.
    The lowest moment came at half past eleven on the fifth night. Distraught, I had gone to bed early, and was tangled in a thick woolly sleep when there came a knock on the door. When I didn’t answer it, my father came in. He was bleary-eyed and wearing his pajamas. It seemed frighteningly intimate.
    My father has never done anything remotely sexually inappropriate—I find it hard to believe my father has ever done anything remotely sexual—but I have seen a lot of TV movies about incest, so I pulled the blankets up to my chin.
    “I need to talk,” he said.
    “Keep indoors, men,” says the Captain when Long John Silver humps up to the stockade waving his white flag. “Ten to one this is a trick.”
    “Talk about what?”
    My father looked so stricken at this question that I decided to rip out the heart of my remark and hand it to him, bloody and throbbing, because in some ways here was the man-to-man talk I’d been reading in
Treasure Island
and wanting.
    “Dad, I don’t have the slightest desire to talk to you. Whatever’s going on in this house is between you and Mom and Adrianna.”
    He leaned against the door. “It’s a family matter. You’re a part of this family. Let me come in a minute. I’ve been sitting in the car six hours straight and my back is killing me.”
    “Whose fault is that? If you had any communication skills you wouldn’t need to sit in the Taurus. I don’t even believe in your despair. Anybody who was really upset would gas themselves, right? But you’re just sulking, waiting for someone to ask you how you’re feeling. It’s passive aggressive, Dad. Just go make up with Mom.”
    This little whiff of temper seemed to both surprise and animate him. He stepped into my room and