“How can you say you like Hydrox better? Everybody likes Oreos. I bet even God eats Oreos.”
“God doesn’t eat Oreos.”
“How do you know?”
“He doesn’t have to eat at all, stupid.”
“How do you know? You don’t know. Just shut up. You don’t have to watch.”
Natalie scowled at Nathan, torn between her desire to stomp out of the kitchen and her interest in watching her little brother attempt to build the world’s tallest stack of Oreos.
The smell of crushed chocolate hung in the damp warm air like a drug. Nathan crouched on his knees on a kitchen chair. His glasses, which seemed too big for his delicate face, kept sliding down his nose as he leaned over the table.
At eight, Nathan was a confirmed contest enterer. Even before he could write his return address he’d had a passionate interest in contests. He entered sweepstakes, jingle contests, scratch and win lotteries. The most he’d ever won was a five dollar gift certificate from Hallmark. But, like any gambler convinced that the next roll of the dice will return all his losses, Nathan was always ready to spend the time it took to fill out forms, decode puzzles and send in official entries.
Natalie, from the mature perspective of a soon-to-be teen, viewed her brother as an obsessive twerp and found a perverse pleasure in watching him fail.
A fly buzzed in through a hole in the window screen and circled slowly, noisily above the table. Natalie waved her hand at the fly. Nathan ignored them both. A pile of rejected Oreos grew slowly beside him. Only perfect, uncracked, unchipped cookies could be used in the competition. According to the rules listed on the Oreo website, contestants would have just 30 seconds to build the tallest stack, and, in order to qualify, a tower had to remain standing at least three seconds after the last cookie was added.
In trial runs Nathan had discovered that it was relatively easy to quickly construct a stack of 14 or 16 of the chocolate discs, but once he got above 20 the tower developed a tendency to tilt. And once that started, it became a matter of balance and counter-balance.
Nathan frowned in concentration. Intently focused, he reached for cookies without taking his eyes off the teetering tower.
“It’s going to fall,” predicted Natalie.
“Shut up,” hissed Nathan.
Each time the stack crashed, more cookies got chipped and cracked. The mound of rejects grew steadily at Nathan’s elbow. He had persuaded his mother to buy three packages of Oreos so he could practice stacking before the local contest date at the Annandale Wal-Mart. Now, with two days to go, he was beginning to doubt himself. So far he’d only been able to get up to 27 Oreos. He felt pretty sure that would not be good enough to win. It might not even be enough to get him to the semifinals. The winner would get a week vacation at Disney World, which would be okay with Nathan. But, in truth, he didn’t care so much about the prize as about the idea of winning. To be a winner. That was the goal.
Natalie scooped a handful of broken cookies into a bowl. She poured milk on them and began eating them with a spoon.
“You know,” she said between bites, “this is a pretty stupid contest. I mean, what’s the point? Who cares how many Oreos you can stack? You know what the point really is? To make kids buy more Oreos. It’s just a gimmick. Why not stack Hydrox? Or make a comparison to see which one stacks better? That would at least be interesting.”
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t. I just hate to see you waste your life trying to do stupid stuff.”
“At least I don’t waste my life talking on the phone for hours about nothing.”
“You wouldn’t understand what we talk about.”
“Well you don’t understand this so why don’t you just leave me alone?”
“Natalie, haven’t you got some homework you should be doing?” said their mother, sweeping into the kitchen with two plastic bags of groceries and an air of efficiency. “And Nathan, I want you to have all of that cleaned up before your father gets home.”
Natalie padded out of the room. Nathan sighed as the 26th cookie fractured the delicate balance and another tower toppled. Aware that his father frowned on contests, Nathan relied upon his mother to help him purchase the necessary products to qualify for entries. He never believed that “no purchase necessary” stuff and hoped to influence the judges by demonstrating that he was a bona fide consumer.
“Put all the broken cookies in this Tupperware, honey, and hide the rest of them in the bottom cupboard,” said Mrs. Tyler, who engaged in a tacit conspiracy with her son to keep his father from finding out about the contests. Mr. Tyler worked as a claims adjuster for an insurance company and frowned on any scheme which promised something for nothing.
“You shouldn’t be wasting your time and my postage with that nonsense,” he would say to Nathan, whenever he caught him filling out a sweepstakes entry.
That night at supper Nathan’s father gnashed his pork chop in a brooding silence that the children recognized all too well. Nathan concentrated on shrinking himself, a trick he’d learned by the time he was five. As he dutifully shoveled peas and potatoes into his mouth, he imagined himself as invisible, his chair empty, his plate mysteriously emptying itself. In this way he had learned to duck the stray bolts of wrath that crackled off his father at the end of a long irritating day.
“Sit up straight, Natalie. Move your fork to your mouth, don’t dive your head to your plate,” said Mr. Tyler glancing coolly at his daughter whose face quickly flushed.
Mrs. Tyler laid her fork down and stared at the tablecloth without speaking.
Mr. Tyler banged his knife against his plate and said, “I suppose you think I should just let them be? Let her grow up thinking it’s perfectly okay to eat like a pig at a trough? Well one of us has got to teach them some table manners.”
Nathan tried to keep eating – get to the finish line, then you can leave the table – he understood how it worked. But when he stole a glance at his sister across the table he saw a tear fall from her cheek onto her mashed potatoes. He wondered if that would make them taste better. He decided probably not.
Mr. Tyler finished his dinner without another word and left the table. A minute later they could hear the steady rhythm of the TV remote clicking, as their father contemptuously dismissed the creative efforts of all the major networks and several dozen cable channels.
As Nathan crept to his room he could hear his mother talking softly with Natalie, soothing her wounded feelings. Nathan felt lucky that he hadn’t been the chosen target that night. But he thought Natalie overreacted anyway. He knew his father was overworked. Still, Nathan was determined that when he grew up he would never come home so tired that he snapped at his own family.
He pulled on his Pokémon pajamas and slid into bed. Lying there as the house quieted, Nathan wondered if a lot of kids would show up for the contest. Maybe he would be the only one. Maybe Natalie was right. Maybe it was stupid.
Then he wondered if he could build the tower faster if he put the cookies on in pairs. There wasn’t any rule against it, was there? He watched shadows rolling across his bedroom ceiling from the lights of passing cars as he dozed off.
Waking later in the utter darkness, Nathan realized he must have fallen asleep, but for some reason he was electrically awake. He remembered the idea of stacking the cookies in pairs and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Then he thought, why not go down now, while everyone was asleep, and try it out? He sat up and listened to the stillness of the house for a minute. Then he stepped out of bed and stealthily crept down the stairs.
He reached the kitchen door and began to breathe easier. Stepping in, he was about to reach for the oven light switch when he noticed the shape at the table, silhouetted by the light of the microwave timer.
“What are you doing up?” said his father.
“I was just going to get a glass of milk,” said Nathan.
“Maybe you’d like some cookies to go with it.”
Nathan froze, trying to gauge his father’s mood. He couldn’t quite see his face in the dark. Had he found the cookies? Nathan tried to persuade himself that his father wasn’t angry.
“Maybe. Yeah. That would be nice,” he replied carefully.
“You don’t mind if they’re broken cookies, right?” said his father innocently, pushing the Tupperware canister toward Nathan. “You want to tell me why we have all these broken cookies? Or should I guess? Will I win something if I guess the right answer? Maybe a new stereo? Or a trip to Disney World? Or a guest appearance on The Tonite Show?”
“You were right the second time,” said Nathan.
Nathan’s father flipped on the overhead light and sat back down at the table. He was wearing the black Harley Davidson T-shirt he liked to sleep in. Nathan used to think the T-shirt made his dad look cool, but at that moment he just looked tired, and somehow sad.
“So you want to tell me what’s going on with the cookies, Nate?”
Nathan sighed and folded his arms on the table. “There’s this contest the day after tomorrow and if I can build the tallest stack of Oreos I can win a trip to Disney World,” he said.
“So, I’ve been practicing,” he added.
His father looked at him and then looked inside the canister of cookies.
“Who bought the cookies?” he asked.
“Mom got them for me.”
“I see.”
Nathan sat still, watching his father, waiting. He’d seen his father explode over much smaller things. But he’d never seem him like this – quiet, thoughtful, in the middle of the night. Somehow Nathan felt like they were disconnected from the rest of the world, suspended at this kitchen table in some strange time warp. Maybe in the morning it would be like it never happened.
Then his father said, “So what’s your plan? Do you have a strategy? How are you going to win?”
Nathan hesitated for a moment. Then he looked up into his father’s sad brown eyes and said, “Well, I’ve been working on just stacking in the regular way, you know, like everybody does. But tonight I had an idea. I think if I stack them in pairs it will go up twice as fast and it won’t be any more unstable, so it might work.”
“You think so, huh?”
“Yeah. I think maybe so.”
“Well, maybe you should try it out and see.”
“That’s what I came down here for.”
“I thought you wanted a glass of milk?”
“Well, I guess I’m not really thirsty.”
“Well, I guess you better try out your idea then, so you can get back to bed. Do you mind if I watch?”
“No.”
His father watched as Nathan pulled out the unopened packages of Oreos and began setting up to build. With his new method, Nathan swiftly piled a tower of 32 cookies before the fall.
“That’s pretty impressive. Maybe you should consider a career in engineering,” said his father with a smile.
“Maybe,” said Nathan.
“Well, I think I’m going back to bed,” said his father. “Can I ask you one thing?”
“Sure.”
“If you win the trip to Disney World, will you take me with you?”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I already promised Mom,” said Nathan.
“Maybe that would be just as good,” said his father.