The Arctic Attic Escape
It’s my ninth year hearing Mom and Dad sing New York, New York, off key, to the thunking of tires running over expansion joints on the George Washington bridge. I feel like Tundra the polar bear at the Bronx Zoo. The thunking is my cage clanking open, releasing me into the wild of my Aunt and Uncle’s brownstone. Each year my parents leave me there to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Each year I barely survive.
Dad reaches back and jostles my knee. The cuff of his gray sweatshirt stained with grease from his cafeteria job at the prep school that’s too pricey for me to attend. In the rearview, Mom’s cracked lips look like ice on the windshield before the car is warm. This morning she asked, did you brush your teeth? even though she already knew, having felt the dry bristles, that I hadn’t.
At their house, Dad doesn’t park. He just turns on the hazards, forcing me to step into slush and retrieve my suitcase from the popped trunk. Mom leans out the window and howls my name. It echoes off the buildings and I run to her so the noise stops. She tucks a stuffed snowy owl into my arms, and I think, you don’t know me anymore, I haven’t touched a stuffed animal for years. I wave goodbye and imagine them never returning, forever asleep under the white snow drift comforter at their hotel, abandoning me.
The heavy oak door creaks open. Uncle Billy and Aunt Sam appear dressed in silk, like cake-toppers on their delicious marble steps. Uncle Billy has oil money which is how Aunt Sam got to move to the island. They usher me in with promises of the best sleepover ever and I follow them, tentatively, up and up to the tropical leaves guest bedroom to unpack. Aunt Sam smoothes my clothes onto puffy satin hangers while Uncle Billy discovers more of the stuffed animals Mom embarrassingly packed in my bag. He lines them up on the duvet then selects the arctic rabbit and together they start to hop. I grab the narwhal and join in swimming with it on the carpet while Aunt Sam pecks around the loveseat holding the snow bunting. Soon they are jumping on the bed, recklessly, knocking everything to the floor. They are the kind of adults that break things.
They hop and fly up the spiral staircase to the attic so I swim after them. A box tips over and out spills leather, sequins, feathers and fur. Uncle Billy ties a cape around his head, straps aviator goggles to his chin, and starts to limp towards me, growling. I throw the narwal at him, horn first, sure it can impale any creature, but he keeps coming. Aunt Sam slithers underfoot, her arms form a mouth with her nails the teeth. The creatures rip open my stuffed narwhal and feed on its fluffy flesh. During the carnage I hide behind a doll house replica of their brownstone and wonder, if I look close enough, will there be a doll sized me hiding in the attic.
For dinner they feed me hard cheese from last night’s party, the only thing in their fridge other than champagne. Aunt Sam watches me too closely as I eat, saying, you should have tried the stuffed narwal it tasted like cotton candy. Uncle Billy pours himself another double vodka and gives his apologies because the food for tonight’s event won’t arrive until after I go to bed. So I ask, can I sleep in the attic? They both shrug and Aunt Sam replies, just don’t wake us in the morning, tonight will be a late one. As an adult I’ll be a wolf and selfish indifference a wounded caribou, but, here, now, the freedom of their uncaring feels like love.
I put myself to bed among the feathers and fur. Under cashmere blankets the bright city pours in through the skylight. The party goes all night, as it does every night for them, but in the attic it sounds muffled, like walking on snow. In the morning I find the kitchen a mess of empty bottles and dishes floating in the sink. The housekeeper is off today so I clean everything, feeling a part of this household, then try to make them a frittata, but I don’t know how to turn on the stove and there are no eggs or butter or milk. Just an empty fridge. By noon I’ve eaten six stale crackers, eight olives and a handful of brie chunks I fished out of the trash.
The doorbell rings around five. The beluga whale helps me turn the heavy brass knob and we hope Uncle Billy has ordered takeout from bed. It’s Mom and Dad. In their wide eyes I see my reflection; my hair a nest, a dijon mustard smear on my cheek, and my pajama top, buttoned all wrong, melting off my shoulder. They pull me to them, smelling like rock salt and regret. I want to go home, I say into the steam of their body heat. Mom walks me to the car, buckles the seatbelt, and squeezes in next to me for warmth. On the drive home, after she falls asleep, I pull the stitching from the beluga tail, remove the stuffing, and taste it. It’s not cotton candy, it’s nothing, the flavor of adulthood. My stomach growls, I’m hungry for Dad’s famous grilled cheese.
Dad Left Us During a Mast Year for Acorns
Stepping out of the car our feet couldn’t find the ground. So we rolled on top of them, tumbling and laughing until we fell, their sharp tips piercing our knees. Mom told us to find branches with dead leaves and broom them off. We swung sticks and sliced the acorns into the woods. Scientists now know that every eight years oak trees coordinate this bounty using fungus on their roots to send chemicals and soft electric signals to each other. Back then, us brothers aged 7, 8, and 11, also had a subterranean feeling when Dad called to say, “Sorry boys, can’t join, stuck at work all weekend!”
We helped Mom unload the car and cheered when we spotted the proper processed fixings for s’mores, not the usual organic no added sugar imposters in our kitchen at home. The tent reeked of years in the basement, laying in the dark corner we never touched, not even to retrieve our accidentally kicked Al Rihla soccer ball. We snapped together poles and pushed them into sleeves. We hoisted up our new smelly home then jumped in with pillows and sleeping bags to stake out a cozy spot under the branches.
Lighter fluid is how we started the fire. It burst bright yellow then mellowed to orange as we gathered acorns in our sweatshirt pouches. The oaks were exhausted overproducing but it meant more saplings come spring. We threw acorns into the fire hoping they would explode like tiny bombs. Instead, they held the heat, glowing long after we brushed teeth, peed on a tree, and listened to Mom read the “True Story of Smokey the Bear.” As we crawled into the tent the fire pit looked like a pond, the acorns reflected stars, mirroring the constellation above.
On Sunday we crashed through the front door of our house with ash under our nails, dried leaves in our hair, and smelling of fire. The thrill of sitting on the toilet and flushing distracted us from the uncomfortable stillness. That is, until we carried the tent into the basement and saw nothing in that corner where Dad’s golf clubs had been. Nothing but the circular discoloration of dust around where his bag sat untouched until that weekend.
We came up from the basement and found Mom at the sink, scraping crusty oatmeal from the black fire stained pot. Her cheeks were pink and sun kissed but we saw her tiredness and, even then, understood all she held. She remained steadfast through our head shaking no’s, stair stomping and door slamming screams, and pillows, wet from tears, thrown at her. When we became dormant she read us Smokey the Bear again, kissed us, then tucked an acorn into each of our hands before turning off the light. It was one of the burnt ones, scrubbed clean, still intact from the fire that made it glow so bright. Us brothers never camped again.
Tara Van De Mark is a recovering attorney now writer based in Washington, DC. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart, The Best Small Fiction, The Best of the Net and has recently appeared in BULL, Lincoln Review, GoneLawn, Citron Review, and Tiny Molecules. She can be found at www.taravandemark.com and lurks around X/twitter and bluesky @TaraVanDeMark