I’ll take an S, Pat!
The studio audience of Andrei and Henrietta’s favorite game show, Wheel of Fortune, applauded and cheered as Vanna White, a tall, blonde hostess in a sparkled blue evening gown, stepped like a beauty queen across the front of the lit-up game board. Gliding across a glittering green platform on a reflective stage, Vana smiled as she rotated two blank white rectangular spaces to reveal the letter behind them.
Across the room, on either side of a large, fieldstone fireplace, sat Nevena’s parents. On the left was Andrei, leaning away from the fireplace with his right elbow on the padded wooden arm of the torn, imitation leather easy chair. His stubbled chin rested on the heel of his right palm with a cigarette between his first and middle fingers, legs crossed left over right, left hand in a fist, perched on his hip with his elbow up. He was relaxing at the end of a long day of roofing. The smoke from his cigarette curled up over the brim of his baseball cap before joining a cloud that hung in the room.
On the other side of the fireplace, also contributing to the cloud of smoke, sat Henny, tapping her ashes into a small brass ash tray shaped like a turtle with little turtle legs. Beside the ash tray sat a small coffee cup filled with Suisse Mocha Swiss Style Instant Coffee Beverage and a flimsy pack of Marlboro Red cigarettes with the Marlboro Miles proof of purchase already torn off. Henny sat in a straight chair, one that looked like it may have previously sat in the waiting room of a doctor’s office; it was padded but was by no means soft or comfortable.
She was leaning forward, both elbows propped on the wooden arms of the chair but one hand up with a cigarette between the first and middle finger, her gaze hungrily fixed on the television, mouth slightly agape. “T!” she exclaimed.
I’m gonna go with...F, Pat!
As the buzzer alerted, there was a resounding agreement that the foolish contestant had made the wrong choice.
“Youuuuu stoop!” Andrei’s abbreviation for ‘stupid’.
“No, no, no, T!” shouted Henny, simultaneously.
Ohhh, nooo—sorry! No F’s....Samantha! Your turn. Will you spin or buy a vowel?
I’ll spin, Pat!
“T!” shouted Henny once again as the glimmering, colorful Wheel of Fortune spun, the pointer clicking past each monetary and travel prize. Andrei took a last drag of his cigarette that brought the fiery edge of the cherry right up to the filter, then snuffed it out and folded it over itself, pressing it for a moment until he no longer felt the heat under his thumb. He smiled, watching the wheel spinning until it slowed, and stopped, at the $200 space. One could smell the burned filter.
I’d like an R, Pat!
As soon as the buzzer sounded, the contestant began to lament and Pat Sajack gave condolences while Andrei and Henny exchanged another look of fatigued superiority. Between them, sitting on the floor in front of the fieldstone fireplace, ten-year-old Nevena played with her Barbie dolls, who were rock climbing. The buzzer called her attention away from the daring adventure that was in progress, and when she saw her parents smile at each other, she smiled too.
Everyone’s head turned when the front door slammed, followed by a slightly gentler slam of the French doors between the front room and the kitchen. Andrei stiffened, Nevena’s eyebrows raised, she tucked both of her lips between her teeth, and a blonde Barbie fell 300 feet to the canyon floor. While another Barbie with chestnut hair climbed down to help her, Nevena’s fifteen-year-old brother, Andreson, who would be sixteen in two months, came tromping through.
He took strides that couldn’t have been anything less than five feet, to get from the front door, through the kitchen, to the living room and his bedroom door just to the right of the television, as fast as possible. Henny greeted her eldest child with a brief moment of sing-songy warmth.
He acknowledged the occupants of the living room with a teenaged nod of his baseball cap as he entered and quickly darted into his bedroom, swinging the door closed with a thud behind him.
Andrei’s left foot began swinging in a small circle.
I think I need a T, Pat!
Ding!
There are four T’s!
“Finally!” shouted Henny, laughing. Andrei lit another cigarette, and did not smile. From the moment the front door slammed, his look of amusement had switched to that of braced anticipation, but he continued to stare at the television and grit his false teeth. Nevena had been listening to her father and brother arguing quite a lot recently, and so when she saw that look on her father’s face, she knew what to anticipate.
From the other side of her brother’s bedroom door, Nevena heard three glass clinks. Tink, tink, tink. Andrei ashed his cigarette while uncrossing his legs and crossing them again right over left.
The contestant on the television solved the puzzle and, though the car dealership commercial that followed was seven decibels louder than the gameshow (that was already terribly loud), Andreson could be heard coughing fitfully in his bedroom. After the Big R commercial there was another coughing fit, throughout the entirety of the carpet commercial.
Five-eight-eight, two-three-hundred, Empire!
Tink, tink, tink, tink.
Andrei fumed, sitting with his chin propped on the heel of his left palm. He barely had to move his hand when he took a drag off the cigarette, inhaled deeply, and, still unmoving, exhaled through his nose, sending the smoke in a stream straight downward until it hit his chest and curled outward. It reminded Nevena of a dragon.
Andrei ashed his cigarette, “Andreson!”
Nevena’s heart began beating slightly faster. She pretended not to pay attention, and her dolls continued rock-climbing.
“Yeah,” came Andreson’s voice through the door.
“Come aut here,” Andrei’s voice boomed back at the door.
Then Nevena heard her brother have another coughing fit in the next room, accompanied by the tink tink tink sound, then the clomp of his boots, the swift turn of the handle, and the creak of the door as he yanked it open. Andreson lumbered out through a billow of smoke and stood halfway between Andrei and the television. Nevena couldn’t resist a glance from the corner of her left eye and saw her brother’s face, lips somewhat pursed and poised for confrontation, one eyebrow higher than the other, eyes red and glazed and looking only at the floor in front of his father’s feet.
Andrei chose his words for a moment, reached over, snubbed out his cigarette though it was only a quarter of the way smoked, and then spoke abruptly, the words almost running together, “Ay doun’t wont you smouking.”
Andreson harumphed, almost imperceptibly. “Ok, dad.”
“Breeng it aut here and put it on the teible.”
This harumph was less imperceptible. “Runnin’ low?”
Nevena wasn’t sure what was happening, but her heartbeat resounded throughout her whole torso with such force she felt a slight push forward and back with every beat. Her need to see danger when it was coming overtook her and she looked at her father just as he was looking at her, and as soon as their eyes met, she quickly looked back down at her dolls. And then even though she wasn’t looking at him, she could see his indignation; she could feel it emanating from him.
“Dhat stuff...” he looked at his son, “wil’ ruyin your life.”
Andreson rolled his eyes.
“Breeng it aut here.” Barked Andrei. Andreson’s eyes widened a little as they darted to meet his father’s severe gaze, then quickly trailed back to the floor. “Now,” he said, raising his eyebrows and lengthening his upper lip.
Andreson shook his head and, in the instant in which he moved toward his bedroom door, Nevena thought he moved to comply but instead he slammed it behind him, making her jump. Nevena looked at her mother who, though she was still looking at the television, had stiffened as if she too were bracing for an impact; she was paying attention.
Andrei stood, took three steps to Andreson’s bedroom door and opened it abruptly, without knocking. Nevena could only see her father’s back and could only hear the shouting intensify. She could hear the words just fine, but she couldn’t hear them, and the sound of the spinning Wheel of Fortune clacked in her ear, drawing her eye to the television until she heard a loud, hard, clap. Her eyes snapped back over to see them struggling just inside the bedroom door, her brother shouting “I’m gonna kill you!”, taking a swing.
“Stop it, both of you!” Shouted Henny from her chair, gripping the wooden arms.
“Oh yah?” shouted Andrei as he knocked Andreson down onto the bed and put both hands around his son’s throat, “Hau are you gouing to do dhat when ay’m on top of you? Hah?”
It wasn’t always like this between them.
Andreson, at one time, was a straight A student; he was on the yearbook committee, the scholastic bowl team, and the baseball team. He and his friends would have pick-up games of baseball, soccer, and touch football. For the most part, he wasn't much of a troublemaker in school.
One day, Andrei was working in his half-acre garden on the outskirts of town, and his friend Dan Short drove by, as he always did around that time of day, and decided to stop and say hello, as he sometimes did; Dan’s son, Andreson’s classmate, Jacob, was with him that day. And Dan, like he always did when he stopped to say hello on a sunny afternoon, had brought a rolled cigarette of Mexican cannabis.
Andrei and Dan had smoked marijuana together many times. Dan and Jacob had smoked together many times. But the three of them together, smoking a joint that day, would set off a chain of events that changed the very course of history for the entire Petrichov family and all its future generations.
It thrilled Jacob to no end that he’d partaken of an illegal substance with his classmate’s father; so much so, in fact that he couldn’t contain it, and simply had to tell the entire school, “I smoked a joint with Drei’s dad!” That link in the chain set the hallways of Milford High School all abuzz, and from first bell to last, jokesters of the school were pinching imaginary roaches to their lips and squinting at him.
Then, the next link in the chain, in Mrs. Lardner’s U.S. History class during current events, Andreson’s classmates had somehow found themselves on the topic of parents’ drug use in the home.
“You would know about that, wouldn’t you Drei?” said Mrs. Lardner with a sly smile. The other students were titillated by the scandalous implications, and she was so very pleased with herself for her clever joke.
In that moment, all of the light went away from Andreson’s face, and after that, even though it would sometimes briefly return on occasion, it never came back quite as bright. In that moment, he was rendered speechless, only because a teacher had never cut him up and served him to the sadistic amusement of the other kids before. His indignation led to shock, and his shock quickly led to anger; one that would fester for the rest of his life. Mrs. Lardner had betrayed him in such a way that would cause him to scorch the very earth beneath himself.
It was only a few days after his humiliation that he stole some of his parents’ cannabis and shared it with his friends, and Jacob Short was there, too. It wasn't long after that, he began, one by one, to stop participating in extracurricular activities.
Andreson wanted to punish his father, and he wanted to beat Mrs. Lardner’s face until she didn’t have one anymore. He began involuntarily visualizing himself getting vindication in some grand violent way.
After a while, his violent thoughts seeped out into volatile words. His pet name for Nevena used to be Booger-Butt (a remnant of her diaper-wearing days). Now, whenever she would annoy him as she was wont to do, he didn’t just tell her to go away like before; he told her, “Go-the-fuck-away-before-I-kick-your-teeth-in, dipshit!”
His anger was one thing that never went away.