She shrank back. “I just…I just…”
“Don’t act like you give a shit,” he said. He pulled on the clean shirt.
“Kevin, don’t do that. Don’t push me away. I’m trying to help you. Haven’t you talked about this in therapy?”
He looked at her evenly. “Visiting day is over.”
MRS. POOLE KEPT THE WINDOWS open during the drive home, and a hot wind blew into the car. She drove with both hands on the wheel, leaning forward in her seat as if she thought it would get her home faster.
“It’s a pretty good place for a prison,” I said.
She looked at me in alarm. “Prison? What are you talking about? He’s not in prison.”
“I just thought…The kids at school said…”
“The kids at school,” she said unkindly. “It’s not a prison. It’s a residential treatment center. He’s receiving help there.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s had a different kind of life from you, Ares,” she said. “It’s too hard for you to understand.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s not a prison,” she said again.
When she pulled into her driveway, she didn’t leave the car or indicate that she wanted me to get out, so I stayed. The front door opened, and Mr. Poole walked toward us. He wore a tie knotted loosely and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up revealing tanned and ropy forearms. He wore hiking boots, and despite his shirt and tie, he looked like someone more at home camping out than in an office. He shook his glasses open and put them on.
“Why doesn’t Kevin call him ‘Dad’?” I said.
“Kevin is our foster child.”
Mr. Poole leaned into the driver’s side window. “Long drive?” he said.
She nodded in a way that included a whole complicated answer to that question.
“How’s he doing?” he said.
“You should visit him and find out,” she said sharply.
“I had a meeting.”
She pressed her lips together as if to stop from saying the wrong thing. “His therapists gave him a good report. He’ll be able to come home soon.”
“Let’s not jump the gun.”
“He would be better off at home, not at an institution. We are not giving up on him.”
Mr. Poole glanced at me, then back to his wife. “We’ll talk about this later,” he said.
Riding home on my bike, I thought about the photograph albums in Mrs. Poole’s house and about how there were no pictures of Kevin as a baby or a little boy. Laurel kept all her photographs in shoeboxes, which I pawed through on occasion, mystified by the acts of banality and outright humiliation (me at a year, peeing an exuberant arc into the air) she had chosen to cement in time. In most of Mrs. Poole’s photographs, Kevin squinted into the sun, one hand shielding his brow as if Mr. or Mrs. Poole had forced him to take off his hat so that they could see his face. In those pictures, Kevin looked like he was reacting to a splinter.
TEN
A week later, Laurel was dressing for a rare evening out. We were all going to meet Richard at the Slab City Talent Show. “I’m not up for this,” Laurel said. She was half-dressed in a flowery Mexican skirt and her bra. She stood in the bathroom putting on makeup, something I had rarely seen her do. She stared at herself in the mirror to take in the effect. She smiled, then drew her lips into an exaggerated kiss, then seemed to give up on something and wiped the lipstick off her mouth with the back of her hand. Malcolm sat at the table, coloring with crayons. He made bold, angry gestures across the paper, layering color upon color. I showed him how to take the point of a pen and trace a design into the thick wax. He tore a gash down the center of his drawing.
“I’m going to lie down,” Laurel said, coming out of the bathroom. “Wake me up in fifteen minutes.”
“Are you still sick? Maybe you should go to the doctor.”
“I’m just tired.”
“You’re always tired.” I heard the edge in my voice. I wanted to shake her out of her depression. Or maybe I just wanted to fight.
“For God’s sake, Ares,” she said, exasperated. She headed toward her room.
“And you’re always going into your room.”
“I just need a little space.”
“You come home every night and all you want to do is get away from us.”
“Maybe you’re the one who wants to get away. You’re picking this fight, not me. I just want to lie down before we go out tonight. Help your brother out,” she said, going into her room and letting the curtain fall behind her. “He wants something.”
I looked over to see Malcolm standing in front of the refrigerator. “Tell me what you want,” I said. I opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of juice and an apple. “Don’t grab. Just tell.” I danced away from him as he reached for the apple. He let out a wail.
“What’s going on?” Laurel called out.
“Nothing.”
But Malcolm made another unhappy sound, and she pushed through the card curtain. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“We’re practicing.”
“Practicing what?”
“What he’s supposed to do.”
Malcolm reached for the apple again.
“No,” I said, pulling the apple away from him. “You want an apple? You have to tell me.”
“Cut it out,” Laurel said evenly.
“Come on, Mal,” I said, ignoring her.
“I said stop it!” She pushed me out of the way and took the apple from my hand, rinsed it under the faucet, and handed it to Malcolm.
“That’s not the way you’re supposed to do it,” I said.
“And what does your Mrs. Poole say is the way I am supposed to talk to my own child?”
“He does it right at her house,” I said. “He points sometimes.”
“Tricks,” she said. “She’s teaching him tricks. Like a goddamn dog. Well, fine. If that’s what it takes for them to keep him in that classroom, so that I can go to work, so that I can make money, so that we can eat and have a life, and I can take care of all the…all the shit that it’s up to me to take care of, I’ll play along. Because right now, I have more to deal with than I can manage.”
“She’s helping him.”
“Really? Is she going to stick around when things get rough for Mal? He’s got a whole life ahead of him. He’s going to be a teenager and then a man. Is she going to be there to help him when he’s a man? Is she going to love him the way we do?”
“She’s not his mother.”
“That’s right,” Laurel said. “I’m his mother. You are his brother. Malcolm is ours. Yours and mine. We brought him into this world.”
“I didn’t.”
“Do you see the way he looks at you? You are everything to him.”
“He doesn’t look at me. Sometimes he doesn’t even know I’m there.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. You don’t want to admit it, but it’s true.”
She stared at me. “You break my heart, you know that?”
“I don’t care.”
I watched her receive the blow of my indifference. The wound weakened her. I felt an angry gratification.
The talent show took place inside the Slab City Bar. The semipermanent structure was decorated with a reckless combination of objects. Wagon wheels were nailed to the walls along with old movie posters. A fake stuffed King Kong hung from one corner holding a Barbie doll in his hairy fist. Giant Chinese fans decorated the wall behind the bar.
Laurel’s skirt, studded with sequins, flashed in the lights of the room. Her cheeks shined with makeup. She stood at the bar with Richard, holding on to his arm as he ordered a beer for himself, 7Up for me and Malcolm. I was impressed by the burly bartender, whose mustache hung down on either side of his chin like an elongated frown.
The talent show was short. A woman wearing a long red dress sang There’s got to be a morning after… Another woman in a cowboy shirt sang “I Am Woman,”
but she got booed from the stage before she finished. An older couple sang “Moon River.” The woman’s blond hair was teased into the shape of a soft ice cream cone. Her partner played the saw, which sounded wobbly and sad as if it were crying, and the whole room grew silent.
“They’re pretty good,” Laurel said, applauding when the act was over. “I wonder if they were somebody once.”
“Everyone was somebody once,” Richard said, leading her to the dance floor. She danced sinuously, writhing her shoulders and leaning back so that the white curve of her throat was exposed. I cringed when I saw men eyeing her with interest. When she spun, her skirt fanned out around her, exposing her thighs. After a few songs, Richard left her on the dance floor to get a drink at the bar. She stayed where she was, eyes closed, swaying to the music. A biker started to dance close to her, trying to get her to open her eyes and acknowledge him, but when she didn’t, he gave up and moved away. Richard appeared at our table with a bowl of chips and two more 7Ups, one of which he put in front of Mal.
“I don’t think he should have any more soda,” I said.
“‘Should’ is a no-no word tonight,” he said as Malcolm slipped the straw into his mouth and began to inhale the drink. “A night like this is definitely for should-nots.”
“Maybe we should ask my mom.”
“Let her be,” he said, looking at Laurel dancing her private dance. “Just one night, let your old lady have some fun.”
“Dust in the Wind” started playing, and Richard returned to the dance floor. I tried to take Malcolm’s drink from him, but he made noises, and I didn’t want to risk a scene. Laurel broke away from Richard and waved her hands in front of his face. At first, I thought they were just going to do a fast dance but then I realized they were fighting. Laurel’s voice rose above the music, and other dancers looked at her. Richard tried to grab her arm, but she shook him off. A moment later, she pushed through the crowd and walked outside, and he followed. As Malcolm got down from his stool to go to her, he knocked over his glass. Soda and ice slid across the rutted wood table and spilled on his pants. I lifted the glass and tried to push the rest of the liquid away from the lip of the table, but he was already soaked. He began to hum and rock. Between the spill and the sugar, I knew what was coming. I tried to steer him to the door, but he was too immersed in his anxiety to move.
“Come on, Mal,” I whispered.
He flapped his arms and hummed loudly. People stopped what they were doing and watched. Some backed away. When I tried to grab him, he let out a piercing shriek.
The bartender appeared next to me. “You get him out of here now,” he said. “I could get shut down for having minors in here in the first place, not to mention he’s drunk.”
“He’s not drunk,” I said.
“Where’s your folks at?” the man said, scanning the crowd. “Christ. Who’s responsible here?”
Malcolm erupted again with a sound that was like an arrow headed straight for the eardrum.
“Jesus Christ,” the bartender said.
I put my hands on either side of Malcolm’s face. “Let’s count. One, two, three…”
“You need to get out of here right now,” the bartender said, gripping me hard on my arm.
“Four, five, six…” I continued, whispering into Malcolm’s hair.
“Okay,” the bartender said, making a decision. He picked up Malcolm and hoisted him over his shoulder. I caught sight of my brother’s face as he was carried toward the door. His mouth was stretched open but no sound came out. His eyes were huge.
“Get off him!” I yelled. “Put him down!”
The bartender didn’t stop.
“He’s not drunk!” I screamed as loudly as I could, but still the man did not stop. “He’s not drunk. He’s a retard! Okay? He’s retarded!”
The minute I said the word, I understood the depth and irrevocability of my betrayal. I felt unmoored, like an astronaut floating into space. The bartender lowered Malcolm to the ground. He was crying loudly now, his mouth open, saliva stretching from one lip to the other, his sounds ugly and pathetic. Everyone in the bar was staring, and so was Laurel, who stood by the door. I knew she had heard me.
“Get these kids out of here now,” the bartender growled at her.
She gathered Malcolm in her arms and held him close, patting him down as if she were trying to feel if this fresh shame had left him badly wounded. I stepped toward them, but her arms tightened around him, and I realized that she was not protecting him from the bartender but from me.
Richard stood outside the bar smoking a cigarette. Laurel, with her arm around Malcolm’s shoulders, headed toward our car. I hesitated.
“We’re leaving, Ares. Get in the car.”
“No.”
“Do what your mother says,” Richard said.
“Oh, please,” Laurel said. “Do not play daddy now, alright?”
“Shut the fuck up,” he said under his breath.
“Get in the car, Ares. Right now.”
“I want to stay with Richard.”
“Hey, ho!” Richard said, surprised. “I don’t remember extending the invitation.”
“Please,” I pleaded. “Please can I stay with you? Just for tonight?”
“Well, I don’t know about that, kiddo,” he said, glancing nervously at Laurel.
“I don’t want to go home.”
“Great,” Laurel said. “That’s just great.”
I moved closer to Richard.
“I didn’t say yes,” he said. “You should go home with your mother.”
“If he doesn’t want to come home, I’m not going to force him,” she said. “Take him. Get a taste of what you’ll be missing.”
“Fuck you.”
“That was my first mistake.”
Richard turned and headed for his Jeep. “Come if you’re coming,” he said. I ran and slid into the passenger seat just as he started the engine. “But you’re sleeping on the floor.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not giving up my bed for your bad mood.”
He gunned the engine. I watched as Laurel helped Malcolm into the backseat of her car. She stood in her open door. A corona of yellow light outlined her body and her loose curls, but I couldn’t see her face. I wondered if she was waiting for me to change my mind. But she shut Malcolm’s door, sat down behind the wheel, and drove away. Richard put the Jeep into gear and drove so fast out of the parking lot that I had to hold on to the dashboard.
“It’s like a getaway,” I said.
“You never get away,” he said. “You’ll be dragging your sorry ass and your sorry story around with you for the rest of your life.”
Instead of heading toward his trailer, he drove out of Slab City, onto the highway. He switched gears, the Jeep lurched, and we headed toward the dark outlines of the Chocolate Mountains.
“Where are we going?” I said, hugging myself against the wind.
“Just winding down. I’m not a person who can just go home and sleep. Need a little transition time.”
“Me too.”
“Yeah? What do you do to wind down?”
“Read, I guess.”
“I drive. I tried to figure it out once. I’ve probably driven more than half my life.”
“Where do you go?”
“Anywhere. It doesn’t really matter to me.”
“Where do you go when you leave here every year?”
“North. Where it’s cool. I don’t know how you people survive a summer here. It isn’t fit for humans.”
“What do you do there? In the north?”
“Depends what work there is where I end up. Depends how hungry I am.”
“I can’t wait until I’m old enough to drive.”
“Where will you go?”
I was embarrassed to have no ready answer. As much as I’d thought about leaving, I’d never considered a destination. My life was a half-baked idea that would never turn out. “Iceland,” I said, the first place that
came to mind.
“Iceland?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s a little bit of water between you and Iceland.”
“I’ll have a car that turns into a boat.”
“Amphibious,” Richard said appreciatively. “Now you’re talking.”
“And it’ll have a TV. And a refrigerator with anything you want to eat in it.”
“Sounds like my kind of car.”
I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.
When I woke up, the Jeep was parked. Richard sat beside me, smoking, squinting into the night as if it were a movie whose plot was hard to follow. The headlights of the car illuminated a hardscrabble landscape of boulders sitting complacently as gorillas, and low-lying ocotillo and cholla, their spiked tips pointing into the night like fingers. During the day, the land was a varied palette of browns but now it was just dark and darker. Five feet from where Richard parked stood a sign that read “Government Restricted Area—Keep Out.” There were no fences to enforce this, which made the warning even more menacing because it was up to each individual to figure out where the boundary between safety and danger lay. I scanned the washes and gullies that gave definition to the seeming monolith of the desert, and then my eye picked out something I was not familiar with that looked like a miniature blimp planted nose first into the ground. The impact of this thing had carved a shallow, thirty-foot-wide crater into the desert floor. Just as I turned to ask Richard what it was, a sound like a train barreling down on the Jeep roared by so close I felt the vibration in my chest. The ground beneath the car shook. Lights stung the sky as planes streaked overhead. I ducked. When I straightened up, my heart beat in time with the rhythmic pulse of helicopter engines as they flew by dropping bombs onto the ground.
“Cobra,” Richard yelled, pointing at a plane. “They got the Sea Knights out, too.” Something exploded and pieces of metal sprayed into the air. I pointed wordlessly. “Target practice,” he said. “Probably blew up an old five-ton.”
The sweet, metallic scent of jet fuel made its way from my nose to my brain. One hundred yards away a tree caught fire. For a moment, it looked like a man, frozen in the act of trying to escape disaster.
“Dumping napalm.” Richard shook his head. “Just some nice boys getting ready to bomb the shit out of some people they never met.” He checked his watch. “They’re almost done for the night.” And minutes later, as if at his command, the sound and lights of the planes disappeared, and the desert sky turned dark again, illuminated now only by the discrete fires dotting the ground and the stars above, so copious it was as if Malcolm, in one of his outbursts, had shaken a paintbrush and spattered that black canvas with a million dots of white.
The God of War Page 11