“The world’s a garbage dump,” she said, folding the towels. “But there is beauty, right Mal? Malcolm knows.”
“Knows what?”
“He knows about beauty in unlikely places.”
“How do you know he knows about that?”
She looked at me warily. “I just do.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what you’re talking about.” My mind stumbled over the enormous boulders of mistakes strewn in this path I’d committed to. “Maybe that’s not what he’s thinking.”
She stared at me, but I could tell she wasn’t seeing me. She was seeing something else, maybe a baby lying on the concrete ground of a gas station. Her faced closed in on itself, and I knew I had hurt her.
“What if you’re wrong?” I said, unable to stop myself. “What if you’re wrong about him?”
“I’m sure I’m wrong about most things,” she said sharply. “Isn’t that what Mrs. Poole says? All those notes?” She leaned over and picked up Malcolm’s sand toys then wriggled her shoes onto her sandy feet. She took Malcolm’s hand and they walked back toward town. I was left alone, my anger unspent, the adrenaline from my first overt act of rebellion making me jittery. I went home, found my bike, and rode out to the drainage ditch where I’d buried the gun. I did not dig it up, but it made me feel good to be near something that had the potential to make me powerful. I heard the muted sound of an explosion, and in the far distance, at the foot of the Chocolate Mountains, I saw the sky flare and then dim, and I knew they were dropping bombs at the training ground. How I wished I was there, among those soldiers and those sounds and all that destruction.
When it was fully dark, with nowhere else to go, I returned home. Richard was gone. Laurel stood by the stove with her back to me. When she turned, I could tell she’d been crying.
“What happened to Richard?”
“Yes. Exactly. What did happen to him?” she said sarcastically. But her tears were starting again. “What an asshole.”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing. He does nothing. Mistakes don’t just happen, right? People make them. He takes no responsibility for what he does. You have to take some goddamn responsibility in this life. Do you know that?” She searched my face, and I wondered if she was talking about Richard or me.
She turned back to the stove, lifted a pan of scrambled eggs, and carried it over to the table.
“The knob,” I said. “You forgot to turn off the knob.”
She slammed the pan down on the table, left it there, and turned off the burner. Something began to smell sweet and smoky.
“Lift it up!” she said.
“What?”
“The pan! Lift it up!” she repeated, rushing toward me. She picked up the pan and stared at the mark burned into the table.
“It’s not my fault,” I said reflexively.
“Oh, shit,” she said, her tears running over her cheeks.
During dinner, she ate little and stared distractedly away from the table toward the blank television screen. The silence of the meal was punctuated only by Malcolm’s occasional sounds and the clatter of dishware. When his plate was empty she gave him two more slices of bread. When he finished those, she gave him another.
“Shouldn’t he stop?” I said.
“What?”
“He’s had five pieces of bread.”
“He’s hungry.”
“I thought we were supposed to—”
“Oh, God!” she exclaimed. “I’m so tired of all these rules. I don’t care what that lady says.”
“It’s what you say.”
She dismissed me with a wave of her hand.
“Want to play?” I said to Malcolm, standing up and trying to distract him from the food, and Laurel from whatever internal conversation was making her forget how to care for him. “We can do World War One bombers,” I said. “Or African explorers.” I cleared his plate. He held on to my arm to stop me, but I didn’t give in, and he moaned. Laurel stood and reached into a high cupboard, producing a package of ginger snaps I didn’t even know was there. She poured the wafers onto a plate and put it in the middle of the table.
“Isn’t this sugar?” I said.
“I need a little sugar today, okay? I need it. So we all get sugar. It’s not going to kill us.” She lit one of her clove cigarettes, took a drag, then stubbed it out. “I’m going to lie down. Don’t bother me.” She headed toward her bedroom.
“It’s a bath night.”
She wheeled around. “I just can’t do this by myself,” she said, her voice pitched as if we were in the midst of an argument. “I can’t.”
“What?”
“This,” she said, waving her arm to include the trailer, Malcolm, and me. “It’s too much! I’m just one person, okay?”
“I’ll do it. I’ll give him a bath,” I said as she disappeared behind her card curtain.
After the fifth cookie, Malcolm started to bounce around so I took him outside. We ran up and down the street pretending we were Special Forces infiltrating Vietcong strongholds until Malcolm was so tired he fell to the ground. I lifted him up and carried him home.
Laurel was already asleep. I watched her through the openings between the strands of cards. She had passed out in the clothes she had been wearing and had not even taken the time to get under the covers as if her need to disappear into unconsciousness had been urgent. I didn’t know what had happened between her and Richard. I assumed it had to do with me and what I had said to her on the beach, although if someone had asked me to explain why I thought so, I would not have been able to tell them. But I was used to construing truth out of meaningful looks and unsaid words, and I needed no proof or logic to convince myself that I was at the root of her unhappiness.
NINE
Mrs. Poole handed me a pamphlet called Plants of the Southern California Desert. “Anything in there, you throw out,” she said.
While she worked with Malcolm in the kitchen, I sat on the front porch and studied the guide. There were black and white drawings of plants along with descriptions and maps that showed where the plants were likely to grow. I read about iodine bush and greenfire, about wild grape and bedstraw—all plants I’d heard my mother name. I carried the pamphlet to the garden and slowly began to try to match the plants in the book with the ones that sprouted between and around the rows of vegetables. By the end of the hour, I had made a small, neat pile of the weeds and grasses I was pretty certain were the viruses Mrs. Poole had spoken about. I wondered if she thought Malcolm had a virus and that if she pulled it out of him he would be better. I hoped she could do it but not too quickly, because Mrs. Poole’s house was beginning to feel like a respite from my own, which had lately become heavy with the dark weather of Laurel’s unhappiness. She moved from one activity to the next with a kind of remoteness, as if half of her was paying attention to a conversation that was taking place only in her mind.
In among the discarded weeds lay a saltbush plant. This was one of Laurel’s favorites. She had shown me the sharp spine and the delicate flowers. I picked up the plant, trying to see what my mother admired about the lank and dusty thing just as Mrs. Poole came around the corner of the house followed by Malcolm. She placed her hand on his shoulder. To my surprise, he did not react badly. She smiled proudly.
“No session next week,” she said.
“Why not?” I was disappointed by the news and because she took no notice of my work.
“I will be out of town on Friday. Let your mother know.”
“What about the library?”
She laughed. “You should run the school! I’ve arranged for a substitute.” She glanced at the garden. “You’ve done a good job today, Ares. I’m pleased.” She handed me two single dollar bills and a note for my mother.
On the bike ride home, I stood on my pedals and reached into my pocket. The dollar bills were warm and soft like a puppy’s ear.
DURI
NG THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, the atmosphere at home pulsed with the energy of things unsaid. Laurel came home from work, made dinner, and lay down on her bed. Richard came around to see us, and some nights she went to Slab City to see him, but she found no occasion to take us walking in the desert or swimming in the sea. She told us she was sick and not to make noise because her head hurt. She was irritable, yelling at us when we made a mess with the pillows on the couch, or when I left my shoes lying around, which I had always done, and which she had never minded before, but which now represented a number of character deficits including lack of respect for her, treating the house like a garbage dump, disregard for how much things cost, and general thoughtlessness. Occasionally she would play with Malcolm, but where she once had endless patience to help him make his piles or to read him books he did not pay attention to, now she quickly lost interest and ended up sitting next to him silently, fingering his hair, staring at the walls or at her hands. Her depression hovered watchfully above us at all times so that it felt like a betrayal to smile or laugh. My time at home began to feel like time in a prison cell. The smells of Laurel’s flowery shampoo, the grainy sweetness of her slow-cooked oatmeal, Malcolm’s heedless farts—all of these things made me want to erupt. My room began to smell different too: sharp and sweet and rancid at the same time. I bathed each morning and evening to try to rid myself of this new odor, but whenever I crawled into bed each night, and especially after I masturbated, that smell was there again, clinging to me.
My desire to please Mrs. Poole filled my body with extra air and made me feel that I was too big for my skin. This enormous feeling’s proximity to its own extinction made me experience a continuous, pleasurable anxiety. Sometimes, when she passed me in the school hallway, she looked at me blankly as if she didn’t recognize me. But other times she would say hello or pat me on the shoulder. She had a particular smell that wasn’t apparent at first but only surfaced after being in her presence a while, at which point a powdery, clean scent floated toward me as if hovering not in the air but somehow on top of it like a cloud. I was certain that none of the other boys at school could smell this perfume and I was proud of my secret. When she smiled at me, I felt like a bug with a foot suspended over it; I knew something darker and obliterating would follow. When she took away that smile, I felt an aching humiliation, like when the teacher asked for my homework and then watched with silent condemnation while I searched in the trash bin of my backpack for the nonexistent paper.
I WAS FILLED WITH A giddy excitement when we returned to her house two weeks later.
“The garden needs help,” she said when she greeted us at her door. “But get your homework done first.” She ushered me into the living room then joined Malcolm in the kitchen. I listened to her familiar words as she alternated between stern directives and playful cajoling. Malcolm did something right and she offered him his choice of reward: a peanut butter cracker or a Slim Jim.
I studied her bookshelf, which was dominated by a set of classic books bound in leather. I scanned the titles—The Good Earth, Vanity Fair, David Copperfield among them—recognizing how much there was to know and how little of it I had mastered. There were also some big hardback novels by Irving Wallace, the edges of the yellowing jackets peeling like Band-Aids left on too long. Books about marine wildlife nearly filled an entire shelf. Four photo albums filled in the rest of the space. I opened one and paged through it. The photos were taken long ago. Mrs. Poole looked younger, almost like a girl, her face unlined, her smile hopeful as if the future were a gift she was about to open. In one shot, she stood with her then beardless husband on a fishing boat. Mrs. Poole, grimacing, held a big fish by a hook, leaning away from it as if she thought it was still alive and might bite her. Her hair was caught in a red scarf, the ends of which flew out in the wind like a kite’s tail. There were other pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Poole in places I didn’t recognize—green places with lawns and leafy trees that cast shadows at their feet. I turned to a page full of pictures of Mrs. Poole cooking at an outdoor barbecue, of the couple in a convertible waving, of Mrs. Poole coming out of a camp tent, her hair messy, her shirt held together with one hand, her other hand held out toward the camera to stop it from seeing what it saw. There was a shot of her lying on a beach—a wide, sandy expanse unlike our own—wearing shorts and a blouse. She held the blouse up so that her pale stomach was exposed to the sun. A strip of black bra peeked out from underneath the bunched-up shirt.
“Finish your work?” She stood in the opening between the kitchen and the living room. She stared at the book in my hands.
“Yes,” I said, feeling heat rise up my face.
“You’re welcome to borrow any book you like,” she said, coming toward me. “As long as you ask first and return it promptly.”
I could barely look at her. Perhaps she had known about The Gold and Gods of Peru all along. Maybe she had been waiting for the best possible moment to humiliate me, and now, with my hands on a picture of her practically naked body, she had found it.
She took the photo album from me, closed it, and replaced it on the shelf. She straightened all the albums so they stood at attention, their edges flush with the wood. Then, as if on a whim, she took another album off the shelf and opened the pages to snapshots of her, her husband, and Kevin. Both parents flanked the boy, all three looking as if they were in a police lineup.
“We visited him. That’s where we went last week,” she said, staring at the pictures. “Usually we go on Sundays, but…” she drifted off. “He looked…healthy,” she continued, rejoining her thought somewhere down the line. “He gained a little weight. He says the food is pretty good, actually.” She closed the album and put it carefully next to the others. “Well, I’m not much for cooking anyway, so I imagine he’s getting better food there than here,” she added.
Malcolm appeared at the door.
“Finished your treat?” Mrs. Poole said, brightening. Her face opened into that rare, generous smile, and for the first time I realized that she truly liked my brother, and I dared to believe she liked me too. He opened his mouth. Bits of brown were stuck in his teeth. She went to him and put her arm around his shoulders. “Who doesn’t like Slim Jims, huh?” she said, leading him into the kitchen.
THE NEXT WEEK, I STOOD alone at her door. “Malcolm is sick,” I said when she opened it.
“You didn’t have to come all the way out here to tell me that,” she said. She was barefoot. Her toenails were painted a surprising orange. “You could have just come to the library.”
“I forgot.”
“You should remember those kinds of things. Then you don’t have to waste your time.”
“I don’t mind.”
She began to shut the door.
“My mom had to take him to work with her,” I said quickly, trying to hold her attention.
“I hope he had a chance to rest.”
“There’s lots of beds there,” I said, and when she looked confused, I told her about the spa, because mentioning beds made me feel like I had said something unseemly.
“Well, I hope Malcolm gets better soon.” She moved once again to shut the door but stopped when she realized I wasn’t leaving. “Do you need something?”
“I thought…the garden,” I said.
“My husband got enthusiastic this weekend, so I think we’re in pretty good shape for now.”
“Oh.”
“I can’t invent work that doesn’t exist, Ares.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“You were looking forward to getting paid.”
“It’s only two dollars.”
“Only two?” she laughed. “I thought I made you a good deal.”
“You did.”
“I guess two dollars doesn’t mean a whole lot anymore,” she said to herself. “Everything’s so out of proportion.”
“Out of proportion to what?”
“To my expectations, I guess,” she said. “But I suppose I’ve always been a little naive.
”
I didn’t know what she meant but I didn’t want the conversation to end. “I’m thirsty.”
“Alright,” she said. “You can drink Malcolm’s juice. I’ve already poured it out anyway.”
For the first time, I sat at her kitchen table. She had laid out the flash cards and wooden shapes she used with Malcolm along with a glass of juice. She had emptied a box of animal crackers onto a plate and arranged the animals in a line. None of the cookies were broken. She must have gone through the box and discarded the monkeys without tails and the lions with no heads. I picked out a tiger cookie and bit off a paw.
“Kevin used to bite off the feet first just like that,” she said. “Then the tail, then the head. He saved the body for last.”
“’Cause the body’s the biggest part. It has the most cookie.”
“I’m not sure that much theory was involved as far as Kevin was concerned. He’s more the impulsive type. Like most boys, I suppose. It took me a while to get used to it. Maybe you’re different.”
“I’m not different.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being different.”
“How old is he?”
“Fifteen.”
“He probably doesn’t eat animal cookies anymore.”
“Oh, he’ll eat a box if I buy them,” she said. “Some things you never grow out of.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say so I ate in silence, my eyes roving the room as I slowly chewed. One of the kitchen cabinets stood ajar, and I could see that the shelves were lined with boxes of many different kinds of cereal. The idea that she thought about the future when she went shopping was strange and spoke to me of a life so different from my own. Laurel shopped meal by meal. Sometimes we went to the store and she would stand in an aisle, staring at the stacks of food on the shelves. “So, what do we feel like?” she’d say, as if our choices were limitless and we could have roast beef any day of the week.
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