Antsy Does Time

“Antsy! Hi!” She sounded maybe a little more enthusiastic than she had intended to. I think that was a good thing. Then she looked at me fu

“What? Oh! No, it’s just the herbicide.”

She looked at me even more fu

Kjersten apparently had a whole range of looking-at-you-fu

I took a deep breath, slowed my brain down—if that’s even possible—and tried to explain our whole dust-bowl project in such a way that I didn’t sound either moronic or certifiably insane. It must have worked, because the fu

Then Mrs. Ümlaut called from the kitchen. “Are you staying for di

“Sure he is,” Kjersten said with a grin. “He can’t drive home with his eyes like that.”

“I... uh ... don’t drive yet.”

She nudged me playfully. “I know that. I was just kidding.”

“Oh. Right.” The fact that she was old enough to drive and I wasn’t was a humiliating fact I had not considered. Until now. As I thought about this, I could tell I was going red in the face, because my ears felt hot. Kjersten looked at me and laughed, then she leaned in close and whispered:

“You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”

That embarrassed me even more.

“Well,” I said, “since I’m mostly embarrassed around you, I must be adorable.”

She laughed, and I realized that I had actually been clever. I never knew there could be such a thing as charming humiliation. Gold star for me!

Tonight Mrs. Ümlaut made fried chicken—which was as un-Scandinavian as hamburgers, but at least tonight there was pickled red cabbage, which I suspected had Norse origins but was less offensive than herring fermented in goat’s milk, or something like that.

It was just the four of us at first—once more with a plate left for Mr. Ümlaut, like he was the Holy Spirit.

Sitting at the Ümlaut di

That’s kind of how I felt at di

“I had a consultation with Dr. G today,” Gu

“I don’t want to hear about Dr. G,” Mrs. Ümlaut said.

Gu

“Dr. G never gives good news,” she said. It surprised me that she didn’t want to hear about her son’s condition—and that she hadn’t even accompanied him to the doctor—but then everybody deals with hardship in different ways.

“I may have more time than originally predicted,” Gu

That wasn’t quite what he had told me, but I could see there were more layers of communication going on here than infomercials on a satellite dish—which, by the way, I am forbidden to watch since the time I ordered the Ninja-matic food processor. But I suspected that whatever treatments Gu

Then, as if that wasn’t enough, an entire new herd arrived. Mr. Ümlaut came home.

I always hear people talk about “dysfunctional families.” It a

The best you can really hope for is a family where everyone’s problems, big and small, work together. Kind of like an orchestra where every instrument is out of tune, in exactly the same way, so you don’t really notice. But when it came to the Ümlaut orchestra, nothing meshed—and the moment Mr. Ümlaut walked through the front door everything in that house clashed like cymbals.

It started with the di

Mr. Ümlaut came into the kitchen without a word, noticed there was a guest at the table, but didn’t comment on it. He took out a glass and dispensed himself some water from the refrigerator door.

’You’re home,” Mrs. Ümlaut finally said, bizarrely stating the obvious.

He took a gulp of his water, and looked at the table. “Chicken?”

Without standing up, Mrs. Ümlaut reached over and pulled out his chair. He sat down.

I took a moment to size the man up. He was tall, with thi

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said to me.

His cool gray eyes made me feel like I was on a game show and didn’t know the answer.

“Antsy, this is my dad,” Gu

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, then silence fell again as everyone ate.

I don’t do well with silence, so I usually take it upon myself to end it. My brother says I’m like the oxygen mask that drops when a plane loses air pressure. “People stop talking and Antsy falls from the ceiling to fill the room with hot air until normality returns.”

But what if normality is never going to return, and you know it?

I opened my mouth, and words began to spill out like I was cha

I was feeling light-headed, and then realized I had said all that without breathing. I figured maybe I should have put my own oxygen mask on first before helping others, like you’re supposed to.