12. Remi

Chapter 12

Remi

F ire crackling. Laughter in the air. Dinner dishes in the sink. Nora even brought out milk and homemade cookies. My cookie remained untouched and my milk next to it. I wanted to preserve it. I’d slipped into one of those too-perfect-to-be-real, moral-message-laden Disney shows. My whole life, I thought families like this were as real as unicorns, and I’d plunked myself into the middle of one.

I sat between Angie and Tony, holding cards with a cartoon horse, cow, rooster, goat, and pig plastered on the back, running wild with giant grins on their faces, and looking a bit frenzied. “So … when two of the same cards are put onto the pile, I have to do some action, and if I’m the last one to do it, I get the pile. Right?”

I pulled at my shirt, sweat beading underneath. The sun shining through the windows, coupled with the blazing fireplace, made me wish I could take it right off again. Nora and Angie’s faces flushed and glistened as well. Tony most likely couldn’t keep his body temperature up, and they were doing their best to keep him comfortable.

“There are two exceptions. First, on the Farm cards you have to do the actions in the same order as the symbols on the card.” Nora finished off her cookie and dusted crumbs from her hands.

“If a Farm Frenzy card hits the deck, you do all the actions forward as listed and then proceed to do them backward.” Angie glanced at her watch and then at me again.

I guessed she’d be leaving for work soon, given she wore navy-blue scrubs. “And for the storm cloud, hand in the air. For the heart, hand to the chest. Pictures of the green plants, hit the table. Image of the sun, back of the hand to the forehead flick the sweat.”

Tony fished a card with the bright red heart on it from the deck. “This card’s my favorite. It takes a lot of heart to be a farmer.” He nudged me and gave me the cutest little old man wink, topping it off with a nod toward his daughter.

As cross as a hog headed to slaughter, Angie narrowed her eyes at her dad and shook her head once. I grinned and wiggled my eyebrows at her, purposefully being peskier than a thorn in her side.

Angie cleared her throat. “If you’re the last one to do the motion, you take the pile. Winner is the one who gets rid of all their cards first.”

“You ready?” Tapping his deck on the table, Tony eyed me with a quirk of his lips.

I was about as ready as a hen in a hog hunt. I couldn’t even remember playing a simple game of Uno. I tried to think of one board game in the big house … Nothing. Not even chess.

Last time I’d held a deck of cards was at the high stakes table in Vegas.

I nodded, and Nora flipped the first card, Angie, me, then Tony. Round and round we went. The three Johnsons remained laser-focused on the revealed cards. Angie flipped her card. Competition must be genetic.

Farm Frenzy. I didn’t stand a chance. Grass. Cloud. Heart. Forehead, flick. They slapped the table, ran through the motions, and tapped it again before I had my hand in the air. The three of them looked so ridiculous I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Ha!” Tony shoved his pointer finger at me. “Remi gets the pile.”

Nora joined in my laughter while Angie’s cheeks pinkened.

“This game is a bit frenzied.” I gathered my massive pile of cards from the center of the table. “Y’all look like you were struck by lightning.”

A chorus of laughter erupted at my comment. I couldn’t help but compare them to my family. We never laughed like this around the dinner table. We never spent time together. Ever.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get better at it.” Flicking the cartoon-animal-covered cards like a professional poker Daniel Negreanu or a Phil Ivey wannabe, Angie met my eyes. “At least I hope you’re capable of improvement,” she mumbled under her breath.

Maybe she hadn’t intended for me to hear it, but I had. Tony and Nora kept chatting like they hadn’t caught her final comment. One mistake, maybe two … definitely less than a dozen this week, and she neglected to appreciate all the work I did for her. Flashing, neon arrows in my mind pointed to the wood bin full to the brim. If I hadn’t taken my shirt off, it surely would have pit stains and back sweat. Even still, it was damp from when I’d put it back on after chopping wood.

Card play resumed. It. Was. On.

Flip.

Flip.

No match.

The tension built with each card placed, the pile growing larger and—

Two suns! I slapped my forehead so hard I’d certainly have a red welt left over, then flicked aggressively enough to tweak my wrist.

Tony’s hand flicked a millisecond after everyone else. He groaned and took the cards. “That was a bad one. Don’t worry. I’ll come back.”

“Ow. That looks like it hurt,” Angie said to me, while she exchanged a half-smile with Nora. “Your forehead okay?”

“It’s fine as frog fur.”

My answer sent the whole table into a fit.

“That’s an interesting saying.” Nora set down a heart card. “Does everyone from Texas speak like that?”

“I reckon so.” The phrase slipped out before I realized how very Texas it was.

Once again, they all broke into hysterics. Not sure what made me so entertaining, I offered a curtesy chuckle, my focus remaining on the game.

Heart.

Cloud.

Plants.

Plants.

I slapped the table. A zinging sensation shot up my thumb and into my wrist. Milk sloshed over the rim of my mug onto the table. Game night at the Johnsons was as hazardous for my body as working their land.

“Oops.” I picked up my cup and guzzled my milk.

“Easy there, I don’t think this table can take another hit like that.” Tony wiped his eyes. “I haven’t laughed this hard in months.”

Nora took his hand and looked at Tony with such loving adoration, I wondered if it was an act. It couldn’t be. This home felt different. Like they all wanted to be with each other.

“So, Remi, what do you do for a living?” Tony met my eyes across the table while he sifted through his cards.

Dammit. I knew this was coming but thought I’d be better prepared when they asked. I kept my mouth shut, but I didn’t look away.

“I assume you do have a career—aside from a BASE-jumping farm laborer,” Nora said.

Angie remained quiet but hung on to every word.

I breathed in through my nose. “I’m on a sort of sabbatical right now. I want to live a different life from the one I was born into.”

Angie gnawed at her thumbnail, then scrunched her mouth together. My answer hadn’t satisfied her.

“Wait. That’s all you’re going to tell us? You’re on sabbatical? From what?” Angie waited for someone to play a card on the one she’d flipped onto the table, but both her parents were focused on me.

I met Angie’s analyzing stare. “I work in business. I was a … am a … cog in the machine of corporate America. Nothing too exciting about that.”

Suits and dinners with potential clients, closing deals and finding new ones—always with the pressure of if I failed, I’d lose this unspoken competition between my brother and me. Combined with the constant threat that my father would take away my inheritance, severing my lavish lifestyle. It would all end once I closed this deal. With the payout my father promised, I could cut myself free of that life.

Come to think of it, my mother and I didn’t see eye to eye either. I was a donkey born into a family of thoroughbreds. Despite my melancholic thoughts, I let out a soft chuckle.

“Your life has to be more exciting than farm life,” Angie said.

Studying the Farm Frenzy cards in my hand, I became a little boy again—the one who did everything under the sun to get his parents’ attention—guitar, basketball, debate team. The only thing getting any reaction was the time I went cliff jumping as a preteen. My mother hadn’t liked how I’d risked my life, and it kind of sent me on a collision course with every extreme sport imaginable.

How much would simple things like family game nights have impacted me as a little boy?

Didn’t matter. In extreme sports, I found a community where I belonged and a place where life became more than something to be endured. “Nothing is more exciting than farm life.”

I earned another round of laughter from Tony and Nora with that comment. Angie didn’t join them, but she didn’t persist in questioning me either. I settled into the game. Despite trying my best, the cards in Angie’s hand dwindled while I held most of the deck. I didn’t care. This night was wish fulfillment for me.

Angie played her last card and rubbed her hands together while we continued. Unless she lost this round, she’d win. The cards thumped down, each of us drawing out the suspense. Taunting Angie.

Farm. Frenzy. This time, I reacted on instinct.

Ignoring Tony and Nora, I watched Angie. Quick as lightning, she slapped her chest, table, table, chest, forehead, and threw her hand on the air … I matched her movements. My hand touched the table before hers.

I beat her. Breathing harder than I should, I sent her a triumphant look.

“Balderdash.” Nora slapped the table again. “I missed my heart.” She swooped up the cards.

Angie jumped to her feet and shoved her hands in the air. “I win.” She smiled and became mesmerizing—a glimpse of who she must have been before layers of grief and responsibility chained her to the ground.

She walked over to Tony and placed a kiss on his cheek. “I gotta run.” After squeezing Nora around her shoulders, she collected her purse and keys.

I squirmed in my seat and stared at my still-untouched cookie. The Disney-TV-family-ness of this moment soared past magnitude eight on my personal Richter scale. Angie was the one working around the clock, losing her father … going bankrupt. Comparatively, I had everything, and yet, I was jealous of her.

“Oh, don’t forget to feed the pigs their slop.” She leaned onto the table toward me. “And mind your fingers. They might chomp them clean off.” Her teeth clicked together in her overexaggerated biting motion.

Yeah. Right. I brushed off her words, made a show of not caring. But as she snorted like a pig then laughed as she walked down the hall, I clenched my fingers into a fist. The wild eyes of the pig graphic on the card at the top of the stack seemed to follow my movements.

Pigs wouldn’t do that. Would they?