I spent two minutes in my room, then slid open the window and climbed out.
I rode to the general store and wandered down an aisle filled with cans of beans and precooked spaghetti, bags of rice and pasta. I walked up the next aisle, where the soft white bread loaves that sat at the bottom of the stacks were finally, at this late hour, exposed. They looked like fighters at the end of a losing round.
“How much?” I asked Ed, the big-chested owner of the store who stood behind the counter.
“Like it says on the price sticker.”
“But it’s mushed up.” I showed him the loaf.
“It’s still bread.”
“It’s for my mom.”
“You want it?” Ed said as the phone rang.
“My mom says to get day-old bread because it’s cheaper.”
“Then you have to wait until tomorrow.” He moved away from the register to answer the phone. I put two dollars on the counter. I didn’t wait for the change.
Once I had ridden onto the highway, I stopped. I lifted up my shirt. I was sweating so much that I had to peel the Playboy I had stolen from the rack below the register off my stomach. On the cover, two naked women held pink satin over their breasts. They were sisters. I ripped open the bag of bread, took out two slices, and tossed the rest of the loaf by the side of the road.
A half hour later, I threw a pebble at Kevin’s window. When he climbed out, I handed him the magazine.
“Nice going,” he said, running his eyes appreciatively over the cover and taking a cursory look at the centerfold before throwing the magazine back inside his room and taking off around the corner of the house. I sat on the gravel and waited for his return. As usual, he came back jittery and glassy-eyed. He handed me a can of Coke and climbed back through his window. He held up the magazine and gave me a thumbs up. I rode back home, wishing I had not gotten rid of the rest of the loaf of bread. But there was something about my hunger, the emptiness of my body, and the exhilaration I felt having succeeded in my biggest theft yet that made me feel fast and light, like I could hover above the life around me and not be part of it.
THIRTEEN
Laurel put Richard in charge of Saturdays. Even though I argued loudly against being babysat, he made me and Malcolm accompany him to his new job maintaining the wind turbines for the power station. Despite my resistance, standing in the field of turbines gave me the same thrill I felt when I watched a marching band go through its choreographed paces. The rows of converters were neat and intentional as the rows in a strawberry field. The tall stalks gleamed an improbable white in the dusty brown landscape. Malcolm and I watched as Richard climbed the shaft of one turbine, his tool belt hanging low on one thigh, weighted down by wrenches and screwdrivers. He inched his safety strap up the metal rungs as he slowly rose higher. When he first got the job, he told us the requirements were having no fear of heights and being willing to work for next to nothing. He said lots of Indians worked the job because they had the best balance of any people on earth. I placed a hand on the second rung of the ladder and hoisted myself up.
“Get your ass down! Now!” Richard yelled, and I dropped to the ground.
Malcolm wandered down a row of the tall windmills, slapping his hand against each shaft as he passed. Richard reached the top of the ladder and balanced near the pinwheel arms of the turbine. He leaned out, anchored by his safety harness. I imagined what would happen if the harness broke and he fell. I could see his long body wheeling through the air, hammers and wrenches and screw guns fleeing, putting distance between themselves and the disaster. This was not the first time I had fantasized about disaster. The night before, Malcolm and I were watching Happy Days. Malcolm sat on his heels, his usual two feet from the television, while I lay on the couch behind him imagining what it would be like to put my hands around his neck and squeeze and squeeze.
Richard descended the ladder, the hollow stalk resounding with his movement. “Finito,” he said, jumping down from the third rung and landing beside me. “Where’s your brother?”
The land spread out from where we stood like the page of a book, and Malcolm was nowhere to be seen.
“Aw shit, Ares,” Richard said. “All you had to do was keep an eye on him. Is that too damn much to ask?”
As he called Malcolm’s name, I took off down a row of turbines. I knew Richard had seen into my thoughts, knew that I had wished him and my brother dead. I felt sure that if he caught me he would kill me. I ran along one row after another, trying to lose myself, but it was impossible to disappear. The turbines were too uniform, the land between them barren. Anything alien stood out like a shout.
“Ares! Boy! What the hell?” Richard called as he ran toward me, letting his tool belt drop to the ground. I crouched down and covered my head with my hands, waiting for the worst.
“Jesus Christ,” Richard wheezed. “What the hell’s going on?”
I peered through the triangle of my arms. He leaned over, hands on knees, catching his breath. Malcolm wandered up in back of him. I lowered my hands.
“He was just by the Jeep,” he said, standing up. “He was just grabbing some shade. Why’d you have to go off like that? Nearly killed me.”
THAT EVENING, LAUREL AND RICHARD were in a playful mood. He put on a Fleetwood Mac album and danced around as she prepared dinner. He moved like a tall robot, his elbows jutting out, his hands slicing air like he was doing karate. Malcolm hopped around the room.
“C’mon Ares,” Richard shouted over the music. “Let’s see your moves.” He turned to Laurel. “Honey, time to teach your boy to dance.”
Laurel smiled, dried her hands with a dishtowel, and moved toward me. When I realized what was happening, I backed up against the wall, holding out my arms to keep her away. She started to sway, her stomach riding comfortably in front of her like a ship cresting the swells of the sea. “Come on, baby. Dance with your big fat mama,” she said, holding out her hands. I was horrified as I reached for her. She swung us left and right, moving nimbly despite her girth.
“Move your feet, man,” Richard said. “It’s called dancing.”
His voice made me self-conscious. “Let go,” I said, dropping her hands and jamming my own into the pockets of my jeans. Laurel cocked her head and pouted but was quickly swept up by Richard, who spun her away from me. She looked into his eyes, smiling as his hand traveled up and down her back and over her ass.
I went into what was now officially their room and closed the door. Richard’s belongings occupied the top of my old dresser—his beat-up cowboy hat, a can of deodorant, a hard glasses case, a few crumpled dollar bills. One of his shirts claimed the back of my wooden desk chair. I slid open the top dresser drawer. Nestled among Laurel’s underwear and bras sat her woven jewelry basket. I poured the earrings and necklaces out onto the bed. I fingered a chunk of turquoise that hung from a red silk cord, a feathered earring, a necklace I’d made in kindergarten out of gum wrappers. Something caught the light, and I moved things aside and found a gold cross I’d never seen her wear. I imagined it must have been something from her childhood, maybe something her parents had given her. I was surprised she’d kept a cross, and the new, hateful voice inside me called her a hypocrite. I heard her throaty laugh close to the door. I put the jewelry back into the basket quickly and replaced the basket in the drawer, arranging the underwear around it so it looked as though it was never moved.
WHEN I SAW KEVIN THE next week, he told me he needed money. “She used to give me allowance. But that’s a ‘pri-vil-ege,’” he said. He lay on his bed staring at the ceiling. I stood nearby, tossing the baseball and catching it in the stiff glove.
“I don’t have any money,” I said, the lie clanging like a warning bell. I had saved all the money I had ever gotten—birthday money, Christmas money, the money I’d made weeding Mrs. Poole’s garden.
Kevin clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth dismissively.
“Why should I give you my money?” I said.
&nb
sp; “Why should I let you hang around with me?”
“Who else do you have to hang around with?”
He sat up and snatched the ball out of the air.
“You want to play catch?” I said.
“No, I don’t want to play catch,” he said. “I want a fucking cigarette. Get me a smoke, man.”
“Abracadabra,” I waved my hands in the air. I held out my open palm and offered him the imaginary cigarette.
“I’m not kidding, little brother,” he said. “Make yourself useful. Do you know what this is like? Do you have any idea? I go to school. I come home. I go to school. I come home. They watch me like a hawk. Especially him.”
“Maybe your real mom will come and get you soon.”
“My real mom is a strung-out bitch. She probably doesn’t even remember I exist.”
“What’s her name?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“’Cause I want to know.”
“Regina.”
“Regina,” I repeated. Then I started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“It’s a funny name. Regina. Re-geen-a.”
“It’s not funny,” Kevin said, but he was suppressing his smile.
“Words sound funny when you slow them down.”
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“Laurel.”
“Lore-el,” he said, drawing out the syllables until they were Silly Putty in his mouth. “Lor-el. Whore-el.”
“Reg-eye-nah. Va-gi-na.”
“Mo-ther.”
“Fuck-er.”
“Mother fucker.”
“Mother fucker,” I said. “Mother fucker, mother fucker, mother fucker.”
“Have you ever?”
“What?”
“Fucked your mother.”
“What?”
“Your massage-lady mother? Have you?” He looked at me strangely for a moment, but then his face broke open into a wide grin, and he laughed. “I got you, little brother! You should see your face,” he sang.
“That’s messed up. You’re messed up.”
Something came over him then. His laughter disappeared and his expression drew inward. “I don’t have anything inside me. I don’t have anything.” He looked shriveled, as if whatever it was that animated him died at that moment. For an instant, I could see what he would look like as an old man.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the cross I had stolen from my mother’s jewelry basket. I held it out to him. “Maybe you can sell it.” I dropped the necklace in his hand. I thought about my mother looking in her basket and not finding her necklace. She would be sad. I told myself I didn’t care.
FOURTEEN
When Malcolm and I arrived home from Mrs. Poole’s house that afternoon, Richard was already there, sitting outside the trailer on one of the beach chairs, drinking from a thirty-two-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew.
“Did you get off early?” I said.
“The job and I had a parting of the ways.”
“You got fired?”
“I’m not interested in repairing wind turbines for the rest of my life.”
“You only did it for a few weeks.”
“Long enough to have experienced it fully. The rest is just repetition and routine.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Right now I think I’ll sit here and enjoy this soda and your company, if that’s okay with you.”
We were still outside when Laurel came home. Malcolm sat in Richard’s lap while Richard read out loud from Laurel’s dog-eared copy of Passages.
“This is a homey picture,” she said, smiling. “Although Winnie the Pooh would be more like it.”
“There’s a lot of interesting information in here,” Richard said. “Although most of it’s dead wrong.”
“Like you would know, being an expert about women.”
“Hear that, boys? Your mother called me an expert.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” she said, climbing the stairs to the door.
Malcolm knocked his head back against Richard’s chest.
“Oww. Shit,” he said, laughing. He banged on Malcolm’s head. “What’ve you got in there?”
“I’m so fat!” Laurel screamed from inside the trailer.
“Hey, that’s our baby you’re talking about,” he called back.
She came to the door wearing cut-off shorts she had left unzipped to accommodate her size. She lifted her man’s undershirt to reveal the swollen orb of her stomach. “I’m a whale,” she said. “I’m a buoy. I could save your life.”
“You already have.”
She looked down at herself, smiling proudly. “How come you’re home so early?”
DURING DINNER, WE ATE IN tense silence.
“Jobs are jobs. There are a million of them,” he said, finally.
“Not here. There aren’t a million jobs here. Where we live,” she said.
“I’ll be fine. I always am.”
“You say that,” she said doubtfully.
“I say it because it’s true.”
“Depends on your definition of ‘fine.’”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She shook her head, staring down at her plate. “It’s not just about you anymore.”
“Do you think you need to tell me that? What do you guess I’m doing here anyway? Enjoying the heat?” The threat of an explosion competed with the effortful quiet of his voice. After a long silence, he reached out and brushed Malcolm’s hair out of his eyes, then tickled him behind the ears. Malcolm wiggled in his chair.
“Let him eat,” she said. “You’re distracting him.”
“I’m playing with him.”
“We’re eating. This is dinnertime.”
“There sure are a lot of rules in this house.”
“Is that a problem for you?”
“It might be.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Threaten me. This is not conditional,” she said. “This,” she repeated, clasping her stomach like a basketball, “is not conditional.”
“Everything is, honey. Everything.”
She sighed and turned toward me. “What happened today?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Ten hours of nothing?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m just trying to have a little conversation here, Ares. It’s what people do.”
“Talk to your mother,” Richard said.
“Fuck you.”
“Whoa,” Laurel said. “Where did that come from?”
“Hey, watch that mouth!” he said.
“I don’t want Malcolm to hear that language,” she said.
“Why?” I said. “It’s not like he’s going to imitate it. He doesn’t talk.”
Malcolm moved his arm, and his glass of milk fell over. Instinctively, everyone pushed away from the table. Richard stood, his hands flying into the air as if to prove his innocence. The milk ran quickly off the table onto Malcolm’s lap. He began to rock back and forth.
“It’s okay,” Laurel said, simultaneously throwing her napkin on the spill and reaching for him. She led him to the couch and began to strip off his shirt. His arms flailed at his sides. “Ares, get me some clean clothes for him,” she yelled over his shrieks.
I didn’t move.
“Did you hear your mother?” Richard said.
“Is this what it’s going to be like from now on?” I said. “The two of you against me?”
“What the hell are you talking about? Go help your mother.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Could someone help me here?” Laurel said. She had her arms around Malcolm’s naked body, trying to keep him still.
“Oww, shit!” She doubled over, her hands on her stomach.
“Laurel?” Richard said, moving quickly to her.
“He kneed me.”
“In your stomach?” He took Malcolm by the shoulders. “You
cannot do that,” he said, emphasizing each syllable.
“Don’t hurt him,” I said.
“You shut up!” Richard said.
“It’s okay,” Laurel said, sitting up and taking Malcolm from Richard’s grasp. “I’m fine. He’s upset because of the milk.” Malcolm began to moan.
“He kicked you in the stomach.”
“It was an accident.”
“You should lie down.”
“I’m fine. Come on, baby,” she whispered to Malcolm. “Take a deep breath.”
“I want you to lie down,” he repeated. “You need to take care of my baby.”
“Your baby?” she said, turning to face him. “I was taking care of your baby just fine on my own before you showed up. Now suddenly I’m incompetent?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I just need someone to get him some fresh clothes. That is what I need.”
I got Malcolm’s clean clothes out of his dresser and handed them to her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Looks like you’ve got it all worked out here,” Richard said. “Looks like you don’t need me.”
“This is exactly what I don’t want,” she said. “I don’t want to take care of you, too.”
“Why is it so goddamn hard with you, Laurel? Can you tell me that?”
I left the trailer then. I heard Richard call after me a few times and I heard the beginning of a threat. I got on my bike and rode.
THAT NIGHT, WHEN KEVIN CLIMBED out of his window, I told him I wanted to go with him.
“No.”
“You can ride me on the handlebars.” I caught his arm. “I’ll show you something cool.”
Kevin shook me away. “Get off me, man.”
“Then forget about taking my bike.”
“Screw you.”
I ran to the curb and picked up my bike. As I wheeled slowly away, my heart pounded.
“You’re a pain in the ass, little brother,” he said. He was beside me, breathless from trying to catch up. I slid off the seat, and he got on. Then I hiked myself up on the handlebars.
We fell twice, getting tangled up in each other. He called me a faggot, I called him a sissy and an asshole. I was determined and goaded him back onto the bike after each fall. Finally, when we managed to figure out how to ride without falling, I lifted my arms to either side of me.
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