The Art of Adapting Read online

  “Not your style of music?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “The songs are fine. But there’s something about these young wannabe hippies, in their hemp clothing and Birkenstocks, singing sad songs while Mom and Dad pay their way through college. It’s like a façade they wear, not who they are. Ask them about politics and they know nothing. Ask what they’re doing for the environment and they’ll say they recycle. I’d rather they skip the dress-up and find some meaning in their lives.”

  “Wow,” Lana said. “You’d probably think my kids are the most self-centered people on the planet.”

  Mitch looked up in surprise. “I’m sure your kids are great. How can they not be? They’re your kids.”

  Lana smiled and accepted the compliment, but felt less attracted to him now that she’d seen beneath the cool, gorgeous surface. He wasn’t lacking in depth, but maybe in experience. Lofty idealism was great for an early-thirties bachelor, but for a mother in her forties it just seemed like a way of making the world harder to accept than it had to be.

  Mitch sipped his loose-leaf tea, set his white porcelain cup down, and sighed. “She also looks a bit”—he held up his index finger and thumb about an inch apart—“like my ex-girlfriend. Maybe that’s what I’m annoyed about.”

  Lana looked over at the girl, lanky and thin with long light hair and dark almond-shaped eyes, her narrow face almost gaunt. She could not have been more opposite from Lana.

  “I’ll loathe her with you, then,” Lana said. She held up her mug, and after a brief moment of narrowing his eyes at the singer, Mitch smiled and clinked his cup to hers. It was the most interesting part of the evening, this glimpse into Mitch’s private life, the hint of untidy emotions.

  14

  * * *

  Matt

  Matt emerged from his room and into the blinding morning light as soon as the garage door’s squeaking, grinding, and whole-house vibrating had ceased, signaling the house was now empty. Lana had the loudest garage door he’d ever heard. There must be something loose in it, he decided, because there was no way it was that loud on purpose. After breakfast he’d look it up online, find her garage door opener brand, and figure out how to fix it himself. Matt liked repairing things, especially when taking them apart and putting them back together meant they’d be quieter.

  The whole house was quiet, which was exactly what Matt wanted. Except that when he was alone in the house all day, that’s when he missed the drinking and the pills most. He needed to keep his mind busy all day and at night to stop thinking about it. He had programming to do for Bill, but he needed more. He needed to think about something even while he was coding. Because Matt’s mind was fast-processing. That’s what his doctor had told him, and he liked that phrase, because that’s exactly how it felt in Matt’s mind. Fast. Too fast, sometimes. He needed layers of thoughts to be going at all times. Or one really good topic to focus on, to keep all other thoughts away.

  He’d promised both Lana and Nick Parker that he’d never see Spike again. He wanted to keep that promise, not so much because Nick had been so angry, but because Lana had been so sad. She’d cried when she told him how worried she’d been. He felt her sadness in his chest. It had filled Matt’s whole body until he almost cried, too. Matt hated crying. His tears or anyone else’s. It was too much for him. It made him want to act out and drive the feeling away with something bigger and more physical. So he needed to never make Lana cry again.

  He didn’t care so much about how Nick felt. He didn’t like to make people angry, but he heard Lana telling Nick to let it go, that it was a family issue and he wasn’t family. That made Matt feel better. Lana had sounded mad at Nick as she said it. Matt didn’t like to be too close to angry people, because anger got into his chest just like sadness did, but it was easier to drive the anger back out again. The sadness took hold much longer and stronger.

  Matt had met Lana’s friend Mitch, too. They’d gone out on a date. Mitch hadn’t said much to Matt, and Matt liked that about him. He liked Mitch better than Nick, so if Lana was interviewing potential boyfriends, Matt wanted to vote for the nicer one. He told Lana that he liked Mitch better than Nick. He didn’t really care about learning to hit a baseball that much. He liked Mitch’s quiet over Nick’s anger.

  Lana had laughed and said, “At this point, I’m not sure what the hell I’m doing. They’re both too perfect and too flawed all rolled into one.”

  Matt had no idea what that meant, but he knew people made contradictory statements on purpose to show when they were conflicted. And he knew how it felt to be conflicted. Matt was conflicted most of the time.

  Matt kept his curtains closed and his room dark, but the rest of Lana’s house was startlingly sunny. And dusty. It seemed like Lana was cleaning all the time, but mostly it was just messes the kids left everywhere: trails of clothes and papers and packages for things and empty plates and cups. She swept and vacuumed every weekend, but she didn’t dust surfaces or scrub hidden corners very often.

  Matt kept his room organized, but he wasn’t much better about the cleaning. He hadn’t dusted or vacuumed in there since moving in, and his dirty clothes and trash kept getting mixed up in piles on the floor and under the bed and desk. But his desk and shelves were neat. Everything on his desk and shelves was there for a reason, and the order mattered. Matt couldn’t explain it to anyone else, why the hardback and paperback books had to be on separate shelves, why the hardbacks were sorted by size, from biggest to smallest, while the paperbacks were in alphabetical order by author. Why his journals had to be either blue or green. Why they had to be stacked on the right rear corner of his desk and nowhere else, blue journals on top and green ones on the bottom of the stack. But these organizational details gave Matt a sense of calm that other people’s systems just didn’t. He was glad that Lana let him set up his room the way he needed, and that she never came in and cleaned it. But he really did need to dust in there at some point. Now that he was out in the sun, he could see how dusty the whole house was. It made his lungs itch just thinking about it. Matt paused to watch a smattering of dust dance through a stream of light. He swept his hand through the beam and watched the dust scatter like silt in a stirred pond.

  He hadn’t been to his favorite pond in months, not since moving in with Lana. He needed to get back there soon, to little Evan’s Pond, to see the families of ducks and clutches of frog eggs that would soon become tadpoles. Tadpoles were one of Matt’s favorite things. The tadpoles would be hatching any day, and he liked to see them before they hatched, when they were nothing more than tiny black specks. Looking at those little seedlike flecks, you wouldn’t guess how much life was brewing inside, the fascinating creatures that would emerge: capable of growing tails and reabsorbing them, sprouting legs and developing into entirely different beings in such a short amount of time. Matt watched their metamorphosis each year, returning every few days to see their development. He wished he had that ability, to transform himself into another type of creature. Something that functioned better in the world he’d gotten stuck in.

  But before he could return to the pond, Matt would need a car. And to have his driver’s license reinstated. He was nearly through his four-month suspension from driving under the influence. Then he’d be able to drive again. He didn’t have many places to go, but he wanted to have the option. If he didn’t get his license and a car soon, the tadpoles might all be gone before he made it back to the pond, their metamorphosis complete. Fully developed frogs didn’t hold the same fascination for Matt as tadpoles.

  The real trouble for Matt would be deciding which car to get. He needed to research all of his options, check the various safety features, see how well each car held its value. Then he needed to choose the best year, make, model, interior color, exterior color. Matt could hold all of the necessary information at once in his fast-processing brain and parse through it rapidly. But making a final decision, any final choice on anything, usually presented a problem for him. Processing was e
asy. Decisions were hard.

  For food and clothes it was easier when he used a schedule or routine. Chicken every Wednesday. Corn every night. Blue shirts every day but Friday. Levi’s every day. He had found a few tricks for getting things done faster. But with a new choice to make, and every car option to consider, the sheer magnitude of deciding could become paralyzing. Matt needed time to weigh the consequences upon consequences of each possibility. That could take months, a year even. The tadpoles would be long gone for sure.

  Lana had just left with the kids, off to work and school and the hectic busy days they all complained about but never changed, and left her coffee, again, on the kitchen counter, where Matt stared at it for several minutes. It was in a white plastic travel cup and presented Matt with another case of epic indecision. Knowing what the problem was didn’t help him any. It just stressed him out more. He had things to do. He needed breakfast. He had programming work to finish for Bill. But what should he do with the cup of forgotten coffee? Cleaning up was one of his new jobs at the house, but what to do with a travel cup still full of coffee? Empty it and put it in the dishwasher? Lana wanted everything in the dishwasher, she was very specific about that. But she hadn’t had the coffee yet, and Lana didn’t like to waste food. There was half-and-half in the coffee. Warm dairy products were an ideal environment for growing microorganisms. Lactic acid bacteria. Coliforms. Even Pseudomonas fluorescens. Should he put the travel mug in the refrigerator? Maybe it didn’t need refrigeration. It was a plastic cup, the kind meant to look like a white paper cup with a bright pink sleeve around it, and not a real, proper thermos. Matt had a good thermos. A metal Nissan one that kept tea hot for hours. Matt touched the sides of the plastic cup and felt the heat within seeping out. That wouldn’t do. Not at all. He moved it into the refrigerator.

  Matt made his English muffin, spread it with a thick slab of butter, and filled his blue cup with milk. He set up his TV tray by the front window and arranged his food. He settled down and pictured the cup in the refrigerator. It wasn’t sealed. Shouldn’t dairy products be in a sealed container? He headed back to the kitchen and wrapped the whole thing in plastic wrap, so the drinking and air holes in the lid were covered securely. He put a rubber band around it for safekeeping, then returned it to the refrigerator.

  Matt settled by the window again and ate his breakfast. The street in front of the house was busier than usual. Two Toyotas, both white, four Hondas—red, blue, black, and a sporty tricked-out version in saffron-yellow—and a silver Lexus drove by in the first three minutes he sat there. Usually the morning rush was over by now. These cars all seemed to be in a hurry, every one of them exceeding the speed limit. Maybe everyone was running late today. A little red pickup truck went by and it made Matt happy. It reminded him of something from his childhood, but he wasn’t sure what. Maybe his grandfather had a truck like that. He’d ask Lana later. He wondered if he should consider a truck instead of a car. He got one of his journals, a blue one, and listed the cars he’d seen in green ink. He put a star next to the red truck. He’d keep track of what he saw and liked, and start narrowing down his options that way. A silver minivan went by. Matt wrote it down and put a big red X next to it. He didn’t like minivans.

  While he waited for more cars, he noticed there were a lot of dogs out. Matt had never had a dog before, because his brother Stephen had been allergic to them. Stephen died when Matt was seven, so he didn’t remember him that well, except that he was very sick and in and out of the hospital, sick first with leukemia and then sicker with the treatment to kill the leukemia cells. And then Stephen had died, so they could’ve had a dog then, because no one else was allergic to them, but they never did get a dog.

  Matt gave the dogs their own page in his notebook, and wrote a little description of each one in blue ink. The Newfoundland, black and bearlike, was familiar. It passed by every day between eight a.m. and eight-fifteen a.m. But the Great Dane was new. White with black spots. Harlequin. It moved like a smallish horse and his owner ran to keep up with it, but you could see the dog wasn’t in any hurry to go anywhere. Then there was a mastiff, beastly and slobbery and taking up more space than any dog reasonably should. The mastiff squatted its huge body down low to the ground and pooped an enormous pile on the lawn of a neighbor. Matt had to look away as the owner used two plastic bags to gather the feces.

  Touching feces was something Matt never did. Spike had said that when Matt collected his nail clippings it was the same thing. Human waste, he’d called it. But it wasn’t the same. For one thing, nail clippings didn’t smell. Matt’s especially. He washed his hands thoroughly several times a day, and always cleaned under his nails. Pinworms could lurk there, and all sorts of other nasty bacteria. Matt just thought it was interesting that his body could produce nails endlessly. It was one small way that Matt was like a tadpole. He couldn’t grow legs, but he could grow fingernails and toenails. He just kept them to remind him of the tadpoles when there were no tadpoles to see.

  Matt looked back out the window just as the mastiff and its trash-bag-toting owner continued on their way. It wasn’t just a day for large breeds, but the largest breeds of all. It was like a parade of enormous, exaggerated animals. A Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, with huge dogs on leashes replacing the big balloon cartoon characters on cables. This thought made Matt smile, but no one was there to see it, his happy smile instead of his stressed or unhappy one. He wrote it down in his notebook, the dogs-as-parade-floats idea. He’d probably never tell anyone about it, because they wouldn’t understand, but he wanted to hold on to it, this happy thought to start his morning.

  His favorite thing about the big window in Lana’s living room was the chance to see so many things without having to interact with them. He found it exhausting, trying to manage the social cues everyone else understood, trying to make eye contact so people knew he was talking to them, remembering not to smile unless he wanted to show he was happy. There were so many rules for interacting with people, and Matt had a hard time remembering them all. Forgetting the rules could make people angry and mean, when Matt never meant any harm to anyone, ever. It was easier just to avoid talking to people unless he had to.

  The other nice thing about the big window was that it kept out most of the noises from outside. Matt preferred watching things to hearing them. Noises overwhelmed him a lot faster than visuals did. Unless it was noises he liked, like the bird and traffic noises on the noise machine Lana had given him for sleeping. He could see why all of his rules confused people. He knew he had a lot of rules. He just couldn’t understand why everyone else cared so much. He never complained about their rules. Why did they have to judge his?

  Matt didn’t believe in any gods or afterlife, but he believed there was an order to the universe, even when it felt lopsided. And because of that, he was sure there would be some smaller dogs coming soon to offset all the Macy’s parade big ones he’d seen. He waited and waited. His breakfast was gone and he had work to do, not just the programming work for Bill but the noisy garage door opener to disassemble and reassemble. But once he’d had the thought about the smaller dogs coming he was committed to waiting for a smaller dog to pass by. Even a medium-sized dog would do. His leg began to itch, and his lower back started to ache. He became increasingly anxious about the whole thing, the lack of a not-huge dog to set him free from his post. He capped and uncapped his blue pen, over and over, waiting.

  Then, finally, a medium-sized, light-stepping, lean red dog passed by, with soft hanging ears and a not-slobbery mouth and a coat so short Matt could see every muscle moving beneath its velvety skin. It was the most beautiful dog he’d ever seen. Matt had to fetch his laptop to look it up. Vizsla, he learned. A Hungarian breed. Because of their color they were easily confused with Rhodesian Ridgebacks, but Vizslas had a rust-colored nose instead of a black one, and obviously no ridge of hair that grew in the opposite direction along their spine. The red dog he’d seen pass by definitely had a reddish brown nose. And no ridge
. It had been a Hungarian Vizsla, for sure.

  Matt spent the morning learning all there was to know about Vizslas. They were similar in build to the Weimaraner, but smaller in size. And “golden russet,” as the American Kennel Club called them, instead of gray. Vizslas were hunting dogs, one of the smallest of the pointer/retriever breeds. Matt wasn’t a hunter, but he could see the benefit in having a dog that did both: point out the bird, and bring it back to you after you shot it down. Not that he wanted to shoot birds. Matt loved birds. He loved birds more than dogs. Or had, until he saw that Vizsla loping past. He waited for nearly half an hour for it to pass by again, but the owner must’ve taken a different route home. He longed for it, that lean, lithe red dog with the springy step and princely air, the long neck and not-too-docked tail, the narrow hips and slender feet. He’d never really wanted a dog before. But now he did. He wanted a Vizsla. He needed one. There was no Stephen with allergies to stop him now.

  He gave up waiting for the Vizsla to return and settled at his desk. He had a messy string of code from Bill, an old program that had run fine until the system update broke it. He found several blocks of unnecessary code that needed to be trimmed, but he hadn’t found the real problem yet. It was just a matter of time, though. He scanned the code while the dog trotted around in his mind. He was able to work better while thinking about the rust-colored dog of his dreams. Vizsla. He had to look up how to say it. Veeshla. That’s what it sounded like. It was an affectionate breed. Every website had said so. One even called them Velcro dogs, saying they liked to be in constant contact with their owners. And there was a funny Hungarian phrase that he’d come across: “To own a Vizsla is to have a dog on your head.” Matt wasn’t affectionate. He didn’t like touching. And he never wanted a dog on his head. But the Vizsla might just change all of that. Would touching a dog be like having a person touch you? He didn’t like other people’s hands on his skin: the germs and the roughness and the sweaty palms or cold fingers. They hurt him, even when they thought they were being gentle. But a Vizsla, with that short soft velvety coat of fur. That might feel nice against Matt’s palm. He needed to find out.