The new kid’s voice is funny, too loud – Hey, Retard Voice, why you sound like such a ree-tard – so he doesn’t talk much. He eats at the long kitchen table, head down, shoveling, his rail-thin body burning off the calories before he finishes chewing. The Couch Mother arises to refill her jug of Crystal Light, and Dubronski leans across the table and swats Shep’s fork as it goes into his mouth. Shep emits a faint bark. The Couch Mother whirls. ‘What’s wrong, Shepherd dear?’ He winces, shakes his head. When Couch Mother disappears again behind the refrigerator door, he dips his mouth into a napkin, drools blood.
A dream. Beneath flickering eyelids Mike’s mind dances with fantasies of domesticity, of waffle irons and cream-white linens. He wakes up cramped on the too-small cot, staring at a ceiling blotched seaweed brown from water damage.
Back on the yellow plaid cushion. Waiting. Shep out front. Couch Mother engrossed in a talk show and a cantaloupe in the TV room. Outside, Dubronski hammers Shep into the dirt. Shep gets up, jeans torn, knees bloodied. Even Tony M can horn in on the action, can knock the small kid down. Mike can hear Dubronski shouting, exasperated, ‘Stay down, douchebag! Stay down.’ Shep rises again. Mike turns his eyes to the end of the road. There is no station wagon there.
Now it is sloppy-joe night. Zucchini was on sale yesterday, so it substitutes for onions. Zucchini bits are not meant to appear in sloppy joes, with good reason. But the foster children are hungry; they eat with relish. The Police da-da-da from the crackly radio by the toaster. Dubronski has just taken his insulin – Remember, Charlie darling: Cold and clammy, you need some candy. Dry and hot, you need a shot – so he must wait fifteen minutes to eat. When the time is up, he scrambles to the kitchen. On his way back, he pauses behind Shep, extends his overladen tray above Shep’s head, lets it clap to the table in front of him. The sound is like a gunshot in a bank vault, but Shep doesn’t so much as blink. A spray of runny meat spatters his face. Unfazed, he scoops a fingerful off his cheek and pops it into his mouth. The Couch Mother looks at him sidewise, her chins ajiggle, and the next day Shep arrives late to school wearing hearing aids from the Shriners Hospital. On the playground at recess, Dubronski heat-seeks his target. ‘Hey, look at the old man! Shep needs hearing aids like a old man!’ A crowd has gathered. Shep pulls the flesh-colored units from both ears, drops them to the asphalt, crushes them under a sneaker. His stare is level, Zen-like, and for once his voice is even. ‘I don’t need anything.’
A rumor makes its rounds, something involving Shep’s drunk of a dad and a gun with blanks. Like a stubborn shellfish, Shep will not let himself be pried open, will not let his treasure spill. Whereas Mike has strength, Shep has will, and Mike is sharp enough to know which is the rarer commodity.
Time scribbles forward a few months and there Mike is, still on the piss-smelling yellow cushion, nose pigged against the bay window. An unearthly light pervades 1788 Shady Lane, turning it slate gray; it is a black-and-white movie. The street is empty. A station wagon makes the turn, and Mike feels his heart soar. It nears and – yes – pulls to the curb and – yes – that is a man, a solitary man who climbs out – yes – and makes his way up the walk, and a fall of light breaks through the trees and the slate gray pall, lighting his face in full color and – yes – it is his father. Mike runs to the door and is swept up in strong arms, he and his father spinning like a shampoo-commercial couple in a field of foxtail yellow, and he hugs him, feels the cheek warm against his own, the grit of stubble beneath the clean shave, the crinkle of the starched collar. His father sets him down and says, I am so sorry. I came back for you at the playground, and you were gone. I’ve been looking for you all these months, every waking hour, for-going food and sleep, and look – he holds out his shirt cuff with the bloodred blotch – this is just a splash of cranberry juice, and look – he points to the car, and there, waving from the passenger seat, his mother, her smile sending out a light all its own and –
Mike is shaken awake. He tugs away, buries his face in the pillow, rooting out remnants of the dream. But the wide hand is persistent. He rolls onto his back, stares up at the perfumed face, lax with gravity. ‘Michael dear, come with me.’ Instantly he is drenched in panic sweat – another move, another abandonment – but he is walking, in underwear, on ice-numb bare feet, following Couch Mother to doom or desertion. She moves on hushed footsteps; the house creaks under the weight of her. Into the kitchen, into a slant of yellow thrown by the outdoor security lamp, and Mike squints and sees on the table: a cake. His name frilled in frosting. He looks at Couch Mother, but she is watching the cake, her eyes alight. This is their little secret. His mind sputters. ‘It’s not my birthday.’ ‘No,’ Couch Mother says, ‘it’s our birthday. A year to the day I got you.’ His breath leaves him in a huff. He lunges to her, hugs, burying his face in the soft folds of her nightgown. He says, ‘I love you,’ and she says, ‘Let’s not get carried away.’
The next day he finds himself again on the cushion. Waiting. The bay window, smudged with a thousand marks from his nose and forehead. A thousand and one. Waiting. He thinks back on the time he has passed on this cat-piss cushion and wonders if this is all life is, one year after the last, nothing memorable, a sun baked torment. Outside, Shep is receiving his daily beating. He lies on his back in the fall-gorgeous leaves, Dubronski brandishing a fist over his face. ‘Stay the fuck down, runt. Stay down.’ Shep finds his feet. Mike’s eyes move through the arcade of yellow-orange leaves and their geometric patterns to the end of the street, to the station wagon that has still not appeared. Waiting. He tries to stop time, to freeze the image like a photograph, this unextraordinary moment, just to have it, just to have something he can hold on to, something he can keep. He waits for his father.
And then, at once, he hates him.
Shep is standing again – no, not anymore. Tony M, inexplicably wearing an Angels batting helmet, is cackling that idiotic laugh, thumping Dubronski’s shoulders, leaping with joy. Shep manages to get to all fours, but he has halted there. For the first time, he has lost momentum. Dubronski jeering, ‘I told you, you fuckin’ deaf runt. I told you I’d make you stay down.’ Shep looks up at him, the looming fist, unable to rise to it. Mike knows now that if Shep doesn’t rise, something beautiful will die out there on the browning front lawn of 1788 Shady Lane.
Mike walks outside. Dubronski stands over Shep, victorious. Tony M and three others have formed a half circle around Dubronski, crowing victoriously. They turn when the screen door bangs. Mike crosses to them, Dubronski’s unease registering on his broad features. Mike walks in front of the half circle, stands facing Dubronski, two feet away, the distance of an upper-cut. Shep is behind Mike, still on all fours; Mike can feel the heat of him against the backs of his calves.
Mike says, loudly, ‘Get up.’
He hears Shep breathing hard. He hears Shep grunt with exertion. And then Mike reads the shadow.
Shep is standing.
Dubronski’s face flushes. ‘You queers deserve each other,’ he says, but he is backpedaling, knocking through the others, dispersing them. They go inside. All is quiet at 1788 Shady Lane. Dusk is coming, and there will be dinner soon.
Shep brushes himself off, as composed as a businessman lint-rolling a suit. Mike heads up the walk.
Shep follows.
‘Where did you get these?’ The Couch Mother stands over them, legs trembling from the exertion, the mini liquor bottles dwarfed in her flushed, pillowy palm.
Mike and Shep are ten. They are now the same height, but Mike is wider still, more solid, whereas Shep’s body, pulled thin like taffy, can’t seem to catch up to him.
Shep says, ‘What?’
He has learned to speak softly to control his voice, to over-compensate for his bad hearing, for the guttural bursts and blurred consonants. People lean toward him to distinguish his words. They take a step or two in his direction. He draws the world to him, if it is interested. Generally it isn’t. So he has learned something else. He has learned to use
his semideafness to his advantage.
That is never clearer than at this moment.
The Couch Mother’s gaze shifts from Shep, zeroing in on Mike. He stares at her ash-speckled crocheted sweater, grimaces, and says, ‘Valley Liquor.’
The Couch Mother frowns, her face folding in and in around her lips. ‘We are going back there to return these, and you are both going to apologize and take whatever punishment you are due. Do you understand me?’
Mike watches the fifty-milliliter nips of Jack Daniel’s disappear into her elephantine purse. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says.
Shep says, ‘What?’
The Couch Mother is not fooling, because she marches them outside and lowers herself into her long-suffering Pontiac. Mike has seen her drive only a few times before, and only to the hospital when someone needs stitches or a fever won’t break. The passenger seat is stripped to the coils, and her seat is shoved back so far that Shep has to sit on Mike’s lap in the back. With dread they watch the scenery roll by while the Couch Mother navigates streets, grunting against the non-power steering, her stomach adding friction to the wheel.
In no time they are behind the counter at the liquor store, standing at attention before Mr Sandoval, who never lets them handle the comic books, who grimaces when he counts their change for Dr Pepper bottles, who hates them. Mike mumbles out an apology, and Mr Sandoval, who has set aside his cursing, hateful self before the Couch Mother, makes a big show of patronizing magnanimity.
It is time for Shep to apologize, but Mike knows that he will not. Shep is not like him or anyone else; he is made of steel and concrete; he cannot be broken.
‘Shepherd dear, your turn.’
‘What?’
‘You’re not going to play this game with me. Now, apologize to Mr Sandoval this instant.’
‘What?’
It escalates until Mike is uncomfortable, until he backs away so his shoulder brushes the real-size liquor bottles on the shelves behind them. He notices a picture Mr Sandoval keeps taped to the cash register – his daughter. It is school-picture day, and she beams proudly, but her little skirt is stained and tattered at the edges. It reminds Mike of the communal shirts in the dresser, and he is flooded with guilt, his assumptions cracking apart one after another, like dropped eggs. But his remorse is temporary, because the Couch Mother’s voice has risen so as to drown out all thought.
Just when it seems Shep will triumph, that he has worn them down into defeat, he mutters, ‘Sorry.’
Mike is shocked. He has never seen Shep cave in, and he fears the act will diminish him irrevocably. On the ride home, Mike pouts. Shep turns on Mike’s lap, studies his face, his own expression unreadable. And then his lips twist in his version of a smile. Tugging up his shirt furtively, Shep flashes the pint bottle of Jack Daniel’s he has shoved down his pants.
A blurred half decade, and they are fourteen. Shep has taken to wearing a pendant of St. Jerome Emiliani – patron saint of orphans – that he stole from a pawnshop. While Mike awaits his growth spurt, Shep has, at last, grown into his feet. He towers, husky with premature muscle. Despite some acne, he now buys Jack Daniel’s without getting carded. At the home, Charlie Dubronski lives and breathes in constant fear, but Shep has never laid a hand on him. He just looks at him now and then, and that is enough.
Mike and Shep have ridden the bus over to Van Nuys Park, where the ice-cream man forgets to lock the back of his truck, so Bomb Pops can be stolen while he’s distracted with paying customers. They have made their way over to the far baseball diamond, where a father, son, and grandfather play ball. The boys lean against the chain-link by the backstop and watch cynically. The grandfather pitches, the son bats, and the father plays somewhere between shortstop and left field, retrieving the ball and tossing it back. They have a pretty good system down. The boy, who is about their age, dribbles a grounder to his father.
Mike says, ‘He can only hit the pull,’ and Shep remarks, ‘’Cuz he’s not good enough to go the other way.’
The father’s car, a straight-off-the-lot forest green Saab, is pulled up onto a patch of dirt behind the fence, and the boy’s bike, an expensive-looking ten-speed, leans against the bumper.
Mike says, ‘Nice set o’ wheels,’ and Shep says, ‘The 900’s a piece of shit.’ Mike agrees out loud but secretly loves the Saab, its sleek lines, its odd angles, how it’s not afraid to be ugly and beautiful at the same time. The car reeks of affluence and power, of accomplishment and control. In its unblemished paint, he sees his own wavery reflection, his idealized self, a future he cannot yet discern. The dealer’s plate stares out at him – WINGATE DEALERSHIP: WE HAVE WHAT YOU WANT! – and he thinks the name, like the car, boasts of success. Wingate. Win-gate. It has a ring.
A voice from the baseball field shatters Mike’s reverie, the father calling out, ‘Ready for a Fudgsicle?’ For an instant, in his disorientation, Mike mistakes the man as speaking to him. But then the son smiles and tosses aside his bat and three generations set out across the park for the ice-cream truck Mike and Shep just looted.
Mike watches them walking away. The boy’s longish blond hair curls out from beneath his cap and makes Mike ashamed of his and Shep’s buzz cuts. He hates that his whole stupid appearance is a concession to head lice.
Shep walks around the fence and picks up the bat. He comes back. Kicks over the kid’s bike. ‘Wanna piss on it?’
This is something they have done before.
Mike shakes his head.
Shep says, ‘Car first?’ He never uses extra words.
Mike stares at the beautiful Saab, and it seems a shame, but there is something burning deep in his chest that wants a way out. He’s not sure what it is, but it has to do with the white gleam of the father’s teeth when he called to his son about getting a Fudgsicle. Mike says, ‘I don’t know.’
Shep says, ‘Why?’
He is embarrassed, but it is Shep, and he can tell Shep anything. ‘I mean, if my mom is alive, I owe it to her not to wind up in—’
Shep says, ‘There is no past.’
Mike coughs out a laugh. ‘No past?’
Shep’s lips part, showing off the slight overlap of his front teeth. ‘There are only two things in life: loyalty and stamina. Everything else is just a distraction.’
‘What about responsibility?’ He is channeling the Couch Mother and hates himself for it.
Shep speaks quietly, as always. ‘You’re not a son. You’re not a brother. No one wants you. So. Make it your own. You can be whatever you want to be. And right now? You’re a man with a task.’
Mike takes the bat. One headlight goes with a satisfying pop. The moon-crescent ding distorts the shine of the hood, the next even more so. He is lost in a haze, in something sticky sweet and unslakable.
Mike’s forearms ache. He stops, pants. Across the park, on someone’s boom box, Bon Jovi is going down in a blaze of glory.
Shep takes the bat. He beats down on the bicycle, wheels denting, spokes flying, metal clanging.
A voice from behind them. ‘Hey, loser. Hey. That’s my bike.’
The boy has run ahead of his father and grandfather.
Shep says, ‘What?’ The boy steps forward, repeats himself. Shep says, ‘What?’ The boy leans in for a third try. Shep head-butts him, and the boy goes down screaming and the father is running at them, and Mike is frozen; he has fought plenty, but an old-fashioned respect for adults has locked him up. The father grabs Mike around the neck, hard, with both hands, and Shep blurs over, closing the space in no time, and then the father is bent backward, choking, Shep’s hand clamped over his throat.
Shep says, in his trademark hush, ‘I’m gonna let go of you. But don’t touch him again. Understand?’
The father nods. Shep releases him. Offers the boy his hand, helps him up. Says, ‘Don’t call me a loser.’
There are sirens. Shep’s mouth is Bomb Pop red, and Mike is quite certain his is, too.
At the station the desk cop says, ‘The S
hady Lane boys, what a surprise.’
Mike and Shep are sent to different interrogation rooms. Alone, Mike stares at the wall, memories of similar rooms flooding back. You remember your mom’s name? Hello? What’s your mom’s name? A detective comes in, sits down, reads the report, sighs, and throws it on the wooden table. ‘You’re not worth the chair you’re sitting in, you foster-home piece of shit.’
Mike thinks, Make it your own.
‘You did about fifteen thousand dollars of damage.’
His stomach clutches at the figure. It might as well be a million. Mike knows at that moment: his life is over.
He looks down at his wrists, cinched in flexible plastic handcuffs – kid handcuffs – because the steel ones kept slipping off at the park.
‘Before we ship your ass to sentencing,’ the detective continues, ‘your victims want to confront you.’
Panic overtakes dread. ‘I don’t want to see them.’
‘Well, guess what? When you’re a lawbreaking degenerate, you don’t get to choose your options.’
Mike closes his eyes. When he opens them, the kid is there, freckled cheeks tight with disdain, the detective and the father at his elbows. The grandfather stands in the back, arms crossed. ‘You gonna apologize?’ the kid asks.
Mike knows it is in his self-interest to do so, but he looks at the kid’s ironed shirt, the smudge of chocolate in the corner of his mouth, and can think only, Never.
The kids points at Mike. ‘You’re a nothing. You wreck my stuff because you don’t have anything and you’ll never be anything. Well, guess what? It’s not my fault your life sucks.’
Mike closes his eyes again, for a very long time. He hears footsteps, the door creak open and click shut. When he opens his eyes, the grandfather is sitting across from him. Alone. The man says, ‘That was my car.’
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