Coca-Cola

The freckles on Kyle and Kevin Zoukowski’s faces were as if they had been spitting chocolate and forgot to say, “when” to stop. Their father calls them morsels from god, but their mother said her Uncles had the same sort of freckles and were all dead. They have never seen snow, but have seen cocaine poured down a toilet. Kevin Zoukowski took his father’s handgun and shot himself when he found Santa’s presents in their parents’ basement. Kyle still believed in Santa at the funeral. Believed in Santa two weeks later, even at school when Samantha and Andrew said Santa wasn’t real.

Kyle wouldn’t hear it. He was as real as the Coca-Cola ads made him out to be, the brownies in his grandmother’s stove, and the tadpoles in Lake Mini-Ha-Ha, where he and his brother used to sit under the willow tree and talk about girls. Spring would become summer, and summer would become fall, and the trees told him that Santa would be here soon, even though Samantha and Andrew said that the plants were lying.

Kyle spent many days at Lake Mini-Ha-Ha, a pond full of tadpoles surrounded by willow trees, long roots, and acorns. He was aware how midwestern this place was, despite being in the sixth grade and having only left the state twice, but both times were to Florida, and lakes were something much larger, and there were no acorns on the ground. He thought about Santa that afternoon. His parents were fighting, and his mother’s old makeup had dripped onto her pink bathrobe, which meant it was time to go, before his father got violent. Kyle had such a hard time grasping the fact that his old man could be so loving one moment and so violent the next, but he thought about Tony Messina’s dad and how he got fatter and smoked a pipe in their basement, watching reruns of Columbo and laughing. Mrs. Messina was a different sort of person to Kyle. She was quieter and had as many freckles as he, but he never saw her smile, even though she made amazing uncooked cupcakes and macaroni with just butter and no powdered cheese. He wondered what Samantha and Andrew were like at home and invited himself into both of their places. Places where Santa Claus was not real.

Kyle found out he was poor when he went to Samantha’s house. He counted eight refrigerators, each stocked with colored cans and bottles for children, adults, and the in-betweens, which seemed to be her brother, David, whose friends were filling a vodka bottle with water as they sat in black bean bags, playing Duck Hunter on Nintendo. David said I wore cool clothes, and didn’t know I liked Abercrombie and Fitch, but he was also quick to point out that Samantha was a dildo. She said he was, and he and his friend, Vincent Castillo, who frightened me, said she didn’t know what that was. She said she and I did, and then they asked me what a dildo was.

“You. You’re dildos, and there’s one in your father’s refrigerator. I’m taking it home with me.”

Vincent got angry about that, though it wasn’t his father’s refrigerator. He just always wanted to punch someone. David’s sister, Samantha, was a tall Asian girl who wore sweaters year-round despite her adopted brother telling her that only dildos did. He asked if I was gay, and I said, “Yeah, for your dad.”

The first black eye I didn’t have to lie about at school. Vincent punched me, made me shit my pants, and told me Santa wasn’t real, which was a lie, and then held me upside down so this shit would slide down my back as he dumped my head into a toilet bowl. His shirt was black and said “Mayhem” in bone letters.

Andrew’s house was very different. His parents smoked Kools inside and listened to a man named Frank Zappa when they were not bartending at catering events. They talked a lot about NASA and space exploration, but I rarely saw them without the same bow tie and vest. He had three sisters, and we all just sat in the kitchen, which I liked. His father looked like a baseball manager and was just as opinionated as a close game every afternoon. He loved cigarettes, wore baseball caps, had a mustache, leaned against the kitchen counter, and blew smoke into the ceiling fan while his wife, Clare, was always standing near the back door, reaching for another long cigarette. She looked like a librarian who could not stop smoking, so she worked at a banquet hall. Their house was the only one I saw where siblings could openly verbally insult one another without repercussions from their parents. Andrew’s sisters were Molly, Mac, and Max. They said he was fat and dumb, but they were older than him, and everyone had the cheeks of a rabbit. I said Santa was real, and the girls, their father, and Andrew left, but his mother stayed.

“Do you work?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Are you an…” But she stopped herself for some reason, a reason I never understood, because years later, after I had moved and came back to visit, she would run out of the house to greet me. She was always waking Andrew around 1 PM, while his sisters hung out at 7/11 in hot pants and yellow t-shirts, each with a sign that said ‘mine.’ Andrew woke up, looking peeved that I was the reason he had been summoned to the kitchen. Clare smoked by the back door while her husband worked. Andrew burped, looked at me, and asked his mom if Santa was real.

“No.”

I asked him if he wanted to go to Lake Mini-Ha-Ha, but he wanted to sleep more and farted. It was the last time I saw him before we moved.

The only one of the two I saw there was Samantha, and it always came as a surprise. She’d walk around the pond, growing, getting taller, and fuller than I, but she covered herself the best she could and occasionally tried to catch a tadpole. When she did, she’d throw it up as high as she could into the air and watch it land on mud, with its guts hanging from its mouth, still trying to breathe.

“I hear you guys throw quarter sticks of dynamite in her during the Fourth of July?” She asked.

I tilted back and raised my eyebrows like some Irish skunk.

“Some older kids do,” I said.

“Not you?”

“Not me. I don’t like hurting animals.”

“Why do you hang with the older kids then?”

I smiled. She saw my new braces. I said, “They love Santa.”

She rolled her eyes and smashed the dying tadpole with her Converse high-tops.

“Why do you believe that nonsense?”

I opened a Coke.

“Love Coca-Cola.”

She pressed her chin into her neck.

“You and your family do.”

“Hm?”

“You never want to go home, do you?”

“No, never.”

“Why?”

“Cause, it’s where everything is, and I don’t need everything.”

“You don’t? You look hungry.”

“I’m fine, I get presents about every year.”

“What happens in the other years?”

“Beats me.”