Competition and Camaraderie
by VATERGrrl
"Good morning!" As I shuffled groggily into the kitchen, Emily set a mug of coffee down on the kitchen's granite-topped island, anticipating my need for caffeine before I could think to form the request.
"'Bordig." I did my best to not grunt a reply to my stepmother's cheery greeting, but I was afraid it might well have sounded like a growl anyway. Before my first jolt in the morning, I was less than coherent, and even farther from perky.
"Did you get enough sleep?" She folded a paper towel into quarters, creasing the edges with her short, unpolished fingernails and sliding the resulting square over the granite countertop toward me.
"Yeh, I thig so." I took a large swig of coffee but, rather than place the mug back on the impromptu coaster, I set it to the side, using the towel instead to blow my nose into. The prolonged scraping noise, like dragging a heavy cardboard box over asphalt, made me wonder if I were developing some sort of super-rapid-onset sinus infection.
"Where are Dad ad Briad?" I hadn't seen or heard them since I'd woken up.
"They went to the grocery store to get all the ingredients for chicken soup. Brian thought you might want some." Although my father didn't cook terribly frequently, and cooked even less since he'd met Emily, he enjoyed making chicken soup from scratch, and I'd been sent back to my apartment more than once in a wintertime with a huge container of the stuff. This visit, apparently, would be no exception.
"I'll have to thag hib whed he geds back." I sniffled, rubbed under my nose with the paper towel once more before looking for a garbage can to toss it into. "Doctor Dad" had lectured me frequently in my youth about the importance of keeping my germs to myself, and although I tended to be a careless slob in my own apartment, I tried to follow the rules of the house when I visited him and his new family.
Emily hooked the top of her foot around the large plastic garbage can near the refrigerator and pulled it within throwing distance.
"Thag you." I dropped in the balled paper towel, snuffled again but immediately regretted it. "Hiiih-ighshhooo!" I clamped my hand to my nose as quickly as possible, but not before I'd sprayed the counter top with a germ-laden mist of spittle.
"Bless you." Emily picked up a sponge from a rack above the sink, spritzed it with some sort of disinfecting product, and then ran the damp sponge over the countertop before me. "Would you like some pancakes for breakfast?"
Her motions, as well as her question, were so matter-of-fact that I was momentarily rendered speechless. "Uh, uhb, er."
"I already have the batter prepared - I can make a stack in the time it would take you to go find a box of tissues."
"Ohdly if id's dough trouble." I replied automatically. The last thing I wanted to do was to inconvenience her.
True to her word, by the time I came back a few moments later, a fresh box of tissues in hand and a handkerchief in the pocket of my bathrobe, she was flipping a stack of golden circles onto a plate with practiced motions. She reached into the refrigerator and took out something I couldn't see, but then I heard a hissing noise, and when she set the plate of flapjacks before me, I saw that she had crafted a little smiley face on the top one with whipped cream, two golden chips forming the pupils.
"Enjoy." She placed a fork down next to the plate, noted my half-cup of coffee and refilled it with the efficiency of a waitress at Chase's Pancake House, a local restaurant that filled to capacity five minutes after opening every Saturday and Sunday morning.
"Do I have to leave you a tip?" I cut through the stack with the side of my fork, relishing the combination of whipped cream, butterscotch chips and fluffy, springy batter.
"Nah, it's on the house today." She reached for her own mug, green ceramic with the logo of a pharmaceutical company stamped on it. I'd been given a promo mug from Kimberly Clark, their current slogan "Kleenex says `Bless You'" in royal blue on a white background. I didn't know if Emily had chosen it specifically, or just reached for the nearest mug in the cabinet, but it seemed a fitting choice for me that morning, as I had to drop my fork after every few bites to grab for more tissues and do my best to aim my sneezes into them.
"Done?" Emily asked ten minutes later, as I swallowed the last bite of sweet pancake and set my fork tines down on the empty plate.
"Yeah, thags. Thad was a really good breagfasd."
She looked over at the clock on the microwave as she swept my plate off the counter and carried it over to the sink. "That might count as lunch, actually. It's almost twelve thirty."
"Oh, dough! I was pladdig to be ub a lot earlier." I had a million things to accomplish, starting with going over the notes I'd taken in yesterday's interview with Lynn.
"You needed a little extra rest." That was all the mention my stepmother made of my conduct last night, and I was grateful for her circumspection.
"I guess, bud I deed to d - huuuh." My breath caught, the persistent itch in my nose welling up like a new lava dome on Mount Saint Helens, and I snatched the handkerchief from my robe pocket to try to contain the explosion.
"Hrrr-ISHFFF! ESHKOOOFF! ISHGHOOO!" My body rocked forward toward the counter, and I had to grab at it with one hand to avoid falling off the stool I sat on.
"Would you like another dishtowel?"
"Huh? Uhb, dough, I doad - hisshh! I doad deed ode, thags." The handkerchief I held tight to my nose was, however, rapidly growing damp past the point of comfort or use, battered with each wet sneeze.
"Uhbguhhh." I muttered, the closest I could come with my stuffy nose to a mild expletive, and slapped the wet hanky down on the granite slab of the countertop, sniffling as forcefully as I could.
"Here, use mine." When I heard Emily's voice, I feared for a moment that I was being offered another skimpy, flimsy feminine hankie like the one Heather had given me at my office Friday afternoon. Instead, a large blue bandanna was pressed into my hand, and I snorted inadvertently in surprise.
"Whed did you sdard carryig?" I made it sound as if she was "packing heat" or toting some sort of contraband, rather than a man's handkerchief, which seemed to amuse her.
"While the seven continents were still one, Grasshopper," she joked. "No, not that long ago, but I had a feeling you might need one this morning."
"By disorgadizashud shows thad buch?" I was the sort to forget pens, pencils, even my house keys, and if something wasn't a habit with me, it tended to be neglected.
"Mmm," she offered diplomatically, neither saying yes or no but allowing me to admit to myself that when it came to looking after myself, I was a hopeless doofus.
"Thags, Eb." I set aside the cloth for a moment, not wanting to muck it up immediately, and opted instead to blow my nose into more tissues, pausing to take out another few when the first bunch was full. Even a third round didn't seem to be making a dent in my congestion, prompting Emily to suggest I try inhaling steam.
"I guess id couldud hurd." I took a last, hard swipe under my nose and coughed into the used tissues I still held.
"I think I still have some eucalyptus and menthol essential oil. I can't guarantee that they have medicinal properties, but if you aren't allergic, they'll at least feel like they're helping free up your breathing." She bustled about the kitchen, setting a kettle of water on the stove to boil and bending down to heft a large porcelain bowl from a low, under-counter cabinet. It settled onto the counter with a thud, and I felt bad that I hadn't offered to lift it for her.
"Now, all we need is a towel - maybe a handtowel from the bathroom, something large enough to make a tent."
"Probably a beach towel," I told her. "By head is kide of big."
"I wouldn't say that big, but if that's what you'd like. Take the kettle off when it whistles, and I'll be right back to help you get this thing set up." Emily left me to stare at the kettle, a small, stainless round thing that looked as if it got a lot of use, but she came back before the thing made much sound beyond a hiss.
"Now, you go sit down at the dining table, and take this with you." She tossed a bathtowel in my direction, and I draped it over one shoulder so that I had both hands free to lift up the mixing bowl.
"I'll gid the bowl, Eb," I said, snatching it away from her before she could protest. Throwing the clean bandanna into the bowl, I walked gingerly from the kitchen to the adjoining dining room, settling myself down at the same chair I'd used last night. Emily came into the room a moment later, the box of tissues under one arm. She lifted the bandanna up and out of the bowl, substituting a stream of steaming water. "And, now, for the rejuvenating scents." She pried two small glass bottles from her front jeans pocket, uncapping both and shaking a few drops from each into the water.
Even with my nose as stuffed as it was, I could smell the subtly sharp eucalyptus and mint wafting up from the surface of the water.
"Just lean over the bowl - not too close, though, you don't want to get scalded. And then put the towel over your head like - yes, there you go." I was familiar with the procedure - my father had performed it repeatedly for me as a kid, as I'd been prone to sinus infections in the winter - so I performed each step automatically. Soon, my head and face was enclosed in a steamy mini-sauna, and I tried as hard as I could to inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth.
"The tissues are right here if you need them." Emily guided my hand over to the box, resting my fingers near the opening at the top.
"Ogay, thags, Eb. I've god id frob here."
"Just let me know if you need anything - I'll be in the kitchen helping the men make soup." She left me alone to inhale and exhale slowly, the steam from the bowl rising in a fine, warm mist. Five minutes later, my nose was actually running - something of a miracle, I felt - and I had to grope for tissues so I could blow out the congestion. It became something of a rhythm: inhale, sniffle, pull out tissues, blow, crumple up tissues, add to the mini-mountain, and repeat.
I was just getting the hang of it, my nose achieving a state of semi-soothed equilibrium, when I heard someone enter the room. "Taaahhhmmm?" Brian's questioning voice forced me to lift the towel from over my head, and a great swirl of steam rose before me to momentarily obscure his face and his signing.
"Wait, buddy, back up. What were you saying?" I rolled the towel down and draped it over my shoulders and behind my neck. "I couldn't see you."
"I want to show you something." His signing was quick, insistent, and for a moment I feared someone was hurt.
"What?"
"Something," he signed mysteriously, but the slow quirk of his mouth led me to release my pent-up breath and relax.
"Okay, just let me grab some tissues." I took the entire box with me, holding a clutch of them under my nose as I followed my kid brother into the living room. When I got there, I noticed the Playstation Brian had bested my father on the evening before had been replaced with a slim, long black console, and a cartridge slightly larger than a deck of cards had been fit into the slot in the middle of the machine. Two clumsy black joysticks sat near the console, one on either side.
I moved toward the left side of the console slowly, not quite believing what I was seeing. But the slightly sticky black plastic coating on the joystick was familiar, the red button in the upper left corner as bright as I recalled it being ten years earlier, though it was much smaller in my hand now.
"You like it?" Brian was grinning, nearly dancing with excitement, as he watched me flip the small silver switches on the sleek plastic console, first up, then back down.
I sat down next to the console, placing the box of tissues at my side and drawing out two to blow my nose into before I tried to say anything. "Brian, this is..." I groped for the words. "I haven't seen this since..."
"I wanted you to be happy." Brian brushed his hand upward on his chest, smiled again to emphasize the sign for happy.
"Thank you, B," I signed in return. "I am very happy now."
"So, I can kick your butt, then?" He pointed to the console, grabbed the right joystick.
"Fun-ny." I took an extra long time to brush my index and middle fingers down the bridge of my nose, repeating the gesture for emphasis. "I'm the master of River Raid."
"No, too old." Brian's fist wiggled down from his chin, as if he was stroking a long, thin beard.
"Watch and learn, baby boy," I kidded, starting the game and taking the first turn. Most of the old strategies I'd developed years ago came back to me, like slowing down over fuel tanks to get as much out of them as possible, then blowing them up at the last possible second. I even had a squadron patch from Activision, the company that made the game - they had sent them to anyone who could document a certain high score.
However, when Brian's turn came to play, he easily trounced my total, winging off into new territory before his last jet fell out of the sky due to lack of fuel. To add insult to injury, he did a little victory dance, his feet drumming on the hardwood floor.
"I could have done better," I signed, "but that helicopter shot me down when I sneezed."
"Yeah, yeah." Brian's signs were flippant, dismissive.
"Yeah, yeah? I want a -" I stopped in mid-sign to grab for the handkerchief I had stuffed in my robe pocket, cupping the cloth around my nose to guard Brian from my germs. "Uh-ishkkk! Hih-shhhh! Iptschhhh!"
"Bless you." My father must have come in during my segment of play, as I hadn't even heard him until then, but he was sitting on the couch watching Brian's chiding of me with more than a little amusement
"Thag you." I pushed the `kerf back into my pocket and took a handful of tissues from the box, blowing into them until my head felt a little clearer. The combination of steam and an adrenaline rush from playing the videogame seemed to have helped quite a bit, and I found I could breathe through my nose without sniffling.
"Where did you find this old thing?" I pointed toward the console.
"Oh, I put it up in the attic years ago, after you got your first computer."
I had veered away from video games in high school, preferring the newness of computer-based games like Zork and Deadline, but I was glad that my father had had the foresight to keep my old Atari around, technological relic though it was.
"It was fun," Brian agreed. "Even if it's old." Again, he emphasized the sign for old, and I pushed his shoulder lightly.
"Hey, some old things are good. Like Dad."
"Yeah. He's ancient!"
"Older than dirt," I agreed, prompting my father to take the chenille blanket from the couch and throw it at me. It tented out over my head, and I had to push my arms out from under it in order to sign.
"Hey, B, did you turn out the lights? Where did everybody go?"
Brian giggled, and the sound was nice to hear. My kid brother was hardly morose, but I felt good knowing that my sense of humor could be understood by him.
I was starting to push the throw off of me when I felt my nose begin to itch again, and I bent forward with a sharp, uncovered "Haaahhh-ICHOOO!" The chenille draped in front of me fluttered out, and Brian laughed, thinking it even more amusing than my previous discombobulation.
"Ha, ha," I muttered, realizing a moment later that Brian couldn't see my lips to read them while my face was still covered. I lifted the throw off of my head, settling it close around my shoulders like a long, royal cape. "As I was saying before," I signed imperiously, forcing myself to scowl. "Ha, ha."
"Anyway, I demand a rematch later. When I'm not sick." I dug my handkerchief back out for emphasis, glad for it a moment later when my nose began to itch and wriggle. "Huh-ihh... hehhh." I scrubbed at my nose with the `kerf, trying to drive away the itch, but my desultory efforts seemed no match for the rising level of irritation, and I ducked my face down and away to the left, into damp folds of cloth.
"Hih-isheeeeww! Ick-shooo! Hept-chooo!" Even after three moderate sneezes, my nose was still itching, and I blinked my watering eyes as rapidly as I could, feeling moisture rolling down my cheeks in small, irritating droplets. I brushed the tears away with my shoulder, the chenille throw absorbing them quickly and making small, nearly-black damp patches on the dark purple.
"Heeere." I heard a soft ripping sound, then felt a tissue being pressed to my face.
"Uhb, Briad, dough." I flinched away from him, keeping one hand pinched tight around my nose while trying to sign with the other. "I don't want you sick, too."
There was hurt and incomprehension in Brian's bright blue eyes when I could finally look at him, and his mouth was pulled down into a frown. Had I not been sick, and trying to keep my distance, I would have hugged him, but I had to make do with my inadequate signs.
"Brian, no, you're great. But my germs are..." I tried to make an attacking, biting gesture with my free hand. "They want to get to you."
My answer seemed to mollify him, and he nodded, his expression brightening a little. "So I stay back?"
I nodded, the gesture turning into a quick sneeze. "Ichhh! Snfff!"
"Bless you." Brian placed both fists under his chin, thumbs up, moving them out and down diagonally while fanning out his fingers. He looked a little like the pope blessing the faithful, minus the pointy hat and grave expression.
"Thanks." I contemplated using my handkerchief again, but it was too damp to be of much use, and I crammed it back into my bathrobe pocket, settling for yet another bunch of tissues and doing what I could to blow into them without having them touch my irritated, bright red nose.
"Dad?"
My father automatically pulled his own handkerchief from his pocket, assuming that was what I was about to ask him for, but I shook my head.
"No, I needed to know if you still have my suit here. I have to look professional tomorrow - the start of the trial and everything, you know."
"It should be in your bedroom closet." Dad shrugged, tucked the handkerchief back away. "If it's not there, ask Emily. She'd have been the last person to see it."
I'd last worn the suit, the only one I owned, at Pete Hattwell's memorial service almost a year ago, and before that, at my father's wedding to Emily, where I'd stood as best man and Brian had been the insufferably cute four-year-old ring bearer. Since the service for Pete, however, I hadn't seen the suit, hadn't even given it a thought.
"Okay, I'll go take a look-see." I got up off the floor with a grunt of effort, the purple throw falling from my shoulders as I stretched my arms up toward the ceiling. Brian, remaining seated cross-legged on the floor, pulled the throw to him, then bunched it up and flung it in the direction of the couch.
True to my father's words, my suit was hanging up, neatly pressed under a plastic cover, in my bedroom closet. I took off my robe and replaced it with the suit jacket, wanting to make sure it would fit. If anything, it was the slightest bit loose, reminding me that I hadn't eaten much of anything in the last few days.
I hoped, peeling off the suit jacket and hanging it back up, that my journalism skills would prove a better fit tomorrow than the jacket was today. It wasn't just a matter of professional pride, but loyalty to my best friend Cory and his girlfriend, who was the focus of the trial. If I didn't do a good job by them, and for Heather, who'd nearly attacked me in my office in her passion to see justice done for her best friend, I knew I'd be haunted by the image of a fragile, terrified Lynn for the rest of my life.
"To do the work, you must be worthy." It was a small but intense thing Professor Hattwell had told me, weeks before he'd died. I knew he'd been referring to the oral history project, and to finishing the work that he knew he wouldn't live to see completed, but I couldn't help but apply it to the trial. Was I worthy to cover the trial? Could I really do this work, this reporting?
I had to be, I told myself as I grabbed a towel from the hook on my bedroom door and went to take a shower. As the hot water ran down my long hair and over my body, it seemed to wash away my fears along with sweat and grime. I focused my attention on pouring shampoo into my cupped palm, slapping it onto the crown of my head and pulling it through my hair, working up a thick lather. While the bubbles slowly popped and subsided, I scraped a bar of soap over my torso, around my buttocks, and down my legs, balancing carefully against the side of the shower stall to wash between my toes. Ten minutes later, I felt the hot water running out, and I gave my hair one last rinse in the cooling stream before shutting off the tap and setting wet feet onto the thick white bathmat on the floor.
Drying off my body and putting on clean clothes was a quick, easy process, but drying my hair took a good deal longer. It wasn't Crystal Gayle length, by any means, but it hung past the bottom curves of my shoulder blades, and I liked the rugged, bad-boy air it gave me, rebel-without-a-Harley. It also reminded me of my Makah ancestry, the way that men of previous generations had grown their hair as long as the women as a sign of their strength and courage. But my hair could also be a disadvantage, I found a few minutes later, when a sneeze snapped me forward and a lock of wet hair, propelled by the momentum of the sneeze, whipped across my eyes. I cursed, thumbed it back, and fished through the drawer of my nightstand in hopes of finding an elastic band to tie back my hair. When I couldn't find one, I cursed again and made my way downstairs, where the air seemed filled with the aroma of chicken stock, carrots, and garlic.
"Dang, that smells good." I sniffed the air, poked my head around the corner into the kitchen where my father and Brian were peering like two mad scientists into a steaming pot.
"I made it, but I let Dad help." Brian signed proudly, gaining a laugh and a hair ruffle from his "helper".
"Yes, I require close supervision, don't I? And you must be feeling better, if you can smell this." Dad pulled a ladle up from out of the pot, and I could see steam rising from it. "You want a bowl?"
"Yeah." I felt genuinely hungry for the second time in two days, and I figured it had as much to do with knowing how much care had gone into the food as it did with my slowly-improving health. "Yes, I would, please."
Dad spooned up a large bowl of chicken soup for me, making sure to include plenty of chicken and bits of cooked carrot in my portion. Brian received an equally generous portion and, just as he had at dinner the previous evening, he consumed his snack in half the time it took me to eat the same amount.
"You're really slow." Brian strung out the sign for slow, then added in old for good measure. "Old?" I protested, gobbling down as much soup as I could. "You go set up the game and I'll show you slow and old."
Our River Raid rematch stretched on for an hour, neither side wanting to admit defeat, but this time, unencumbered by constant sneezing and sniffling, I was able to gain the upper hand, and when my score finally edged above Brian's, I did a condensed victory dance, making sure he knew that I was teasing him very gently. He took it well, sticking his tongue out and blowing a loud raspberry sound at me. "Plllfft!"
I leaned over, gently grabbed his head, and ground my knuckles lightly into the top of his head. "Noogies!" I shouted, even though he couldn't hear me, and he shrieked indignantly even as he grinned from ear to ear.
"Boys, boys!" Emily stared at us, fists on hips, and shook her head slowly from side to side. I let go of Brian and tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.
"No roughhousing here. I don't want either of you to crack your heads open on the coffee table."
Ah, yes, I thought, watching Brian assure his mother that, no, we weren't going to hurt each other. According to Cory and Rose, mothers seemed to live in fear that their children would crack their heads open, as if their skulls were fragile little eggshells. My father had largely refrained from using that warning, but he'd come up with a few good ones of his own as I was growing up.
"Anyway, dinner's ready, if either of you two feel like eating."
Brian jumped up immediately at the prospect of dinner, and I had to wonder how he managed to eat so much and yet stay skinnier than a toothpick. I got up more cautiously, feeling just the slightest twinge of a tickle starting up in my sinuses, and realized that I'd not bothered to tuck another handkerchief into my jeans pocket.
"Er, I'll be down in about five minutes?" I rubbed the back of my wrist under my nose, pressing up lightly to stave off a sneeze. Taking the steps to the second floor two at a time, I was able to get to my bedroom and slam the door closed before a loud, forceful "huh-igsh-chhhh!" came out, doubling me over.
"Grahhh." I'd hoped that the shower, and the earlier steaming, had eradicated my cold, but I didn't seem to have that luck. Reluctantly, I reached for a plain white `kerf, the last one in the stack my father had placed on my nightstand the night before, and shoved it into the front pocket of my jeans.
Dinner turned out to be make-your-own tacos, and I filled up three hard yellow taco shells with a combination of spicy ground beef, lettuce, cheese, and chopped tomatoes. There was even a bowl of freshly mashed avocado, and another bowl filled with sour cream, and I took a few dabs of both to top my meal. Brian, following behind me, matched my choices step for step, and I had no doubt he'd be able to eat everything he'd piled on his plate, with room for a full desert and likely half of mine as well.
Conversation turned out to be as fun and simple as the food, and as I crunched through my second taco, I realized that the hesitation and sense of false propriety that had burdened me since Saturday morning, when I'd fought through fatigue and growing symptoms of a cold to be a "good" reporter and, later, a "good" stepson, had evaporated like the steam from my shower. All that remained was a sense of warmth, ease and belonging. Even when I had to drop my third taco abruptly back onto my plate to scrounge for my handkerchief and then sneeze into it, it didn't embarrassing in the least, just one more thing that happened. Brian blessed me with his papal gesture, I signed a thank-you, and we both kept on eating, finishing our meals within moments of each other. There was a palpable sense of camaraderie around the table, and something that I had not experienced until that moment: family.
This is the third of three parts in a cycle of vignettes set between "The Interview" and the first part of "Trials". The title sucks, I know, but I was stuck trying to come up with anything in the range of C_____ and C_____ to match the previous two entries.