Life Is Funny by E. R. Frank Page A

out?”
    â€œNah,” I lie. “I’ve got to go.”
    *  *  *
    We spend most of Memorial Day weekend unpacking the Hamptons house and buying it new furniture. My mother’s face is back to normal, and my parents are in a good mood. On Saturday afternoon my father sneaks me away with him to toss the football around on the beach while my mom conference calls with some new wedding clients about flower arrangements. Walking close to the surf, my dad pulls me in under his arm and asks me to start thinking about what I want for my fifteenth birthday. “I want you to stop hitting her,” I tell him, but the wind by the ocean and the breakers are pretty loud, and I don’t think he hears.
    After soft-shell crab in a restaurant with a sunset and ocean view, they hold hands while we walk through the town center past ice-cream shops and antiques stores. I walk a little ahead of them so nobody knows they belong to me.
    â€œYou’re not embarrassed, are you?” my mom calls out.
    â€œStop it, Mom,” I say, trying to be loud enough so she can hear, but not so loud the whole street can.
    They speed up and skip next to me, swinging their arms, just to embarrass me more.
    â€œCome on,” I tell them.
    People are looking at us now. My father kisses my mother right there in middle of the street.
    â€œI’m walking back,” I warn them.
    They laugh.
    In about three weeks, she’ll answer the phone wrong, or buy the wrong kind of toothpaste, or bring the wrong shirt to the wrong dry cleaners, and he’ll bash her all over again.
    *  *  *
    In the back of the Range Rover, on the way home to Brooklyn, I try to figure out what to do. That’s how I usually spend my time in a car lately, thinking about what to do. Maybe that’s because the first time I saw him hit her was while we were all driving somewhere.
    I was little. Four, or maybe five. We were going to Vermont for my first ski trip. My father had asked my mother to drive for a while, and then he got mad at her because she didn’t put on her turn signal. Then he got mad because she changed the radio station, and then, after she didn’t have the right change for the toll, he got mad again. When she said it was impossible to drive safely with him yelling at her like that, he fist-hit her smack in the jaw, and she swerved, and my stomach felt like it was on a sideways elevator, and he told her she better learn to drive safely no matter what he did, and he hit her again, and she swerved again, and I thought and thought about what to do, and by the time we reached the ski lodge, I still hadn’t figured it out, and when my father told everybody we’d had a little accident and that she’d hit the dashboard, and my mother let him keep the lie, I started to cry, and someone at the ski lodge gave me a Tootsie Pop, and I still didn’t know what to do.
    *  *  *
    Sam’s going to his aunt and uncle’s tomorrow in Pennsylvania, but the Jag is finished this morning.
    Over the phone he’d wanted me to tell my father it was ready, but I didn’t. I just walked to the shop on my own, like it was a regular day. Only it doesn’t feel like a regular day. I don’t feel regular. I feel mad. I was mad the minute I heard Sam’s voice on the phone. I don’t know why exactly, but I’m sick of his voice. I’m sick of him.
    â€œYou ready to drive it?” I ask Sam at the garage.
    â€œYou’re killing me,” he goes.
    â€œJust drive it,” I say. “You know you want to.”
    â€œNah.” He shakes his head. “It’ll get you into trouble.”
    â€œI don’t care.”
    â€œI do,” he goes.
    â€œWhat’s your problem?” I ask him.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œYou have to do the right thing every time?” I sound like an asshole. I can’t help it.
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” he