Every Other Weekend

by Zulema Renee Summerfield

  “Quiet!” Kat snaps and again puts her face against the glass.

  Then something does happen, and it’s subtle and awful at once. Rick’s removed the gauze, the scalpel’s in his hand, he’s ready for the next cut, but then this thing happens, this tiny little thing, and if you weren’t paying rapt attention with your face against the glass you’d hardly notice it at all: a tiny flicker of hesitation stills his hand. It’s one of those things you’re not even sure you saw but you know you saw it, and the way it feels is like a minute ripple wriggling across the surface of the universe. It has meaning because Rick was in Vietnam, and though Nenny doesn’t know much about Vietnam, she knows this: you don’t hesitate if you were in Vietnam. Men who hesitate didn’t come home from Vietnam, because the men who hesitated are dead.

  Mom looks at him then because she felt it too, that naked trace of doubt, but Rick doesn’t even look at her, and he moves on because the moment has passed.

  Then, there’s blood. Lots and lots of blood. Even from a story up, you can see it gushing, pouring onto the concrete, matting up Cosby’s fur. Mom frantically starts scooping up gauze, and then more gauze, then more. The bleeding doesn’t stop, and the dog starts twitching and whimpering, clearly confused, and Mom is panicking and then Rick’s panicking too, and he’s scrambling to tip Cosby up, to somehow contain the flow, and Charles yells, “Oh shit!” and covers his mouth with his hand, and there’s blood all over the patio, there’s blood all over Mom and Rick, and all those walks that no one’s taking start adding up to miles, miles and miles and miles, because suddenly that gas station mutt has become the family dog.

  Kat loses it then. Tiny is crying and Bubbles is nervously flapping his hands and Charles is cursing up a storm and Nenny doesn’t know what to feel because she’s feeling everything at once—and Kat just loses her shit.

  “What the fuck is going on!” She slaps her hand against the glass. Mom and Rick look up, and it’s clear they had no idea the kids were there. Mom reaches up and pulls the mask off her face, and if the kids expect disappointment or anger, that’s not the look they get. They get another look altogether, which is a mix of fear and profound regret. It’s a look for when they’ve all seen something they should not have seen.

  Kat’s still shouting and then she’s throwing open the door. They hear her booming down the stairs, and then the outside door bangs open, and now they’re looking down at the top of her head too.

  “This is so fucked! It’s totally inhumane!” It’s the first time she’s said a word bigger than herself, so this is serious. She snatches up the surgical towel and the implements go crashing across the concrete. She kneels and presses the towel into Cosby’s neck, who’s still whimpering and shaking a little like a trembling leaf. This goes on for a long time: Kat holding that towel in place, Mom’s hand on her back. Even all the way from a story up, you can tell they’re crying. Rick sits beside them and stares.

  And then that’s it. It’s not really a big deal anymore. Turns out Rick hit an arterial vein, whatever that means. He manages to bundle Cosby up and get her to a vet, who puts stitches in her neck and fixes the wound. After that she’s fine, even though for a while she has bandages wrapped all around her neck and head that require changing. There might be a small shift, because the universe had rippled and all—a couple of occasional walks, someone buys a chew toy, Kat lets the dog sleep on her bed. But then Kat gets a new boyfriend and isn’t around much anymore, and everyone else mentions a walk here and there, but then they forget. Nenny still pets the dog, every now and then. Sometimes, she doesn’t. Sometimes, it’s just too much work to go and fetch the gloves.

  King of the Rats

  WHAT CHARLES does at night is anyone’s guess. It is October and the streets are filled with leaves.

  Late, when it is safe to do so, when everyone else has gone to bed and the house hums with sleep, Charles closes the door to his and Bubbles’s room and ties two sets of sheets together, end to end to end. The trick lies in treating the corners before you tie, taking the cloth between your thumb and forefinger and rolling back and forth, back and forth, until each sheet comes to a perfect point. Bubbles, who is afraid of everything, who gets squeamish around lizards and snakes, who balks at things other boys delight in—mud and worms and war and the rusted-metal taste of their own blood—huddles in his bed against the wall, his own sheets fist-balled beneath his chin, eyes like a scared rabbit’s and a shaking in his voice he cannot control.

  “Where are you going?” he whispers, and it’s like trying to cut glass with a slipper. Sad, really, the space between the world and some boys.

  “Out,” Charles says, matter-of-factly, as he slides the window open. He doesn’t even glance down, just tosses out the giant ball of sheet. It lands with a quiet thump a story below. He checks the tension of the bed-tied end, once, before climbing up on the ledge. He doesn’t say anything before he goes, and he never says anything when he gets back, but every night Bubbles imagines that he does. “G’night,” Charles says in the stone silence after he’s actually gone. “G’night, Bubbles” or “Be right back.” Every night Bubbles imagines it, not because he wants to but because he has to. It’s the only way that he can sleep.

  * * *

  Nenny will spend a lot of time in the coming years thinking about all of this, the details that cocoon these nights: the moon’s light pooling in the midnight streets, Bubbles trembling in his bed, the distant passing of cars. Or she’ll imagine Kat, kissing her new boyfriend on the little knoll in the front yard. His name is Jeremy and he’s obsessed with kachina dolls because his great-great something or other was an Indian chief. He’s gonna get a tattoo about it someday.

  “Where’s your brother going at night anyway?” he says when they’re done, which is probably a weird thing to say after kissing someone. If it wasn’t for his warrior lineage and the fact that he’s in a band, Kat would have dumped him weeks ago.

  “What are you talking about?” That glare of hers that could slice through walls.

  But then—or so Nenny imagines—Jeremy points, and Kat is shocked that no one’s noticed before: a ragged and obvious bald patch is etched into the ivy beneath the boys’ window, as if someone is taking a machete to it every night. Kat is so excited she doesn’t mind that Jeremy can’t kiss very well, and he’s a genius and a warrior all over again.

  There’s also this: Meli Sampsell was this girl who used to go to Sacred Heart, and she just talked and talked all day. She talked so much that Nenny didn’t even care when she moved away. Meli supposedly had this cousin with Barrette’s disease. Or…what is it? The one where you twitch all over the place and they have to tie you to your chair so you won’t fall on the floor. The cousin was on 60 Minutes even, and his mom was just like blushing and blushing, because in addition to twitching all over the place he also said “Shitfuckfart! Shitfuckfart!” That was part of the disease too, “Shitfuckfart!” He couldn’t help himself. And isn’t that sad? Isn’t that so sad? (Meli Sampsell, the first in their class to have braces, all that metal glinting in her face.) Anyway, her other cousin—the Barrette cousin’s brother—he, like, couldn’t even stand it anymore. It was “Shitfuckfart!” all day and then his brother lands on TV? Like, he loved his brother and all, but, God, can you even imagine? So the brother? He just totally snapped.

  And anyone listening to the story—for the first time, anyway—probably had some notion of what snapping looked like, but it wasn’t that kind of snapping at all. The brother didn’t go on a killing rampage or anything like you’d expect. Instead, he became a sort of steward of the night. (Where did Meli even learn that word?) He got his hands on a bunch of cave-diving gear and made this equipment belt loaded with whatever he’d need: some rope and hooks, a couple of those clippy things that only open one way. He wore one of those extra-strong headlamps that miners wear when they’re inside caves, because that’s what he was doing, that’s exactly what Barrette’s brother was doing every night: sneaking out to explore the
city’s bowels. His brother had this terrible disease and his mom was dying of confusion and shame, and he just couldn’t take it anymore, so he loaded himself down with gear and spent his time mapping the sewers at night. Supposedly they found all the maps later, his dad like “Son, what is this?” and his mom just crying some more. Of course there was never any real evidence that he played with rats, but that’s what Meli called him anyway and that’s the part that stuck: King of the Rats. He had them trained: he’d give one long sharp whistle and they’d all come running, from every corner of the city, eager and prepared to do his bidding.

  “He had them trained?” someone was bound to ask, because of course it sounded totally fake, like the plot to some stupid cartoon.

  “Trained,” Meli’d say, with such conviction that it became the truth.

  Anyway, that’s what Nenny thinks of when Kat breaks the news—the King of the Rats. Kat comes in and throws her purse onto the bed and proclaims, “Charles is in so much shit!” Her eyes are like two polished stones. But when Kat tells her the big news, Nenny can’t picture the gnawed-up ivy or the two-story drop to the ground. All she sees is a sea of rodents and Charles, arms raised, floating on their backs.

  Kat’s out like a light within minutes, but Nenny can’t sleep. She listens for the sound of something but she does not know what. Is this what it sounds like? What does it sound like? Feet crashing through ivy? Sneakers on pavement? Can he hear all the blood pulsing in his lungs? Do dogs bark when he runs by? Or some guy, someone’s dad or something, “Hey, what’s that kid doing out there?” What sound does a sewage grate make? What’s moonlight sound like when you’re climbing down a hole? She can picture the drip, drip, dripping, because they play that sound on Ninja Turtles all the time, but what’s the sound of one rat scratching? Twenty rats? A thousand? What’s the sound of a narrow tunnel when you’re the only light? And can he hear anything from above anymore? Does he hear cars passing overhead? If he stands directly beneath the house, what then? What’s the sound of a whole house sleeping? Or mostly sleeping but a little wide-awake? If your stepsister cannot sleep, does she make a sound? And if she does, is it audible? Can you even hear it over the din of all those rats?

  Spoiled

  ONE SATURDAY the washing machine breaks and the dryer’s close behind, and Mom says, “God dammit!” and slams the lid.

  “Nenny, go find some quarters.”

  “Quarters? Why quarters?” A hope bright and brief as a Skee-Ball scoreboard flashes through her.

  “Because. Why do you think?” Mom’s words are clipped and angry. She starts half slamming, half stacking things by the door—a box of detergent, baskets overflowing with clothes—while Nenny goes from room to room, hunting for quarters. It’s like trying to find rice in a hill of sand. She finds two in the drawer by the phone, a third in the paper-clip cup, and one under the couch. Not very promising.

  “Give me some quarters,” she says to Charles, who’s on the dungeon level of Mario even though he’s already beat it a million times.

  “What in the hell for?” he asks, but she sets her jaw and bugs her eyes in a way that says It’s Mom, you dweeb, and he catches the drift and runs upstairs. He comes back with a half-full sock—the only clean sock in the house, probably—and thrusts it at Nenny.

  “She’d better pay me back.”

  Even though Mom’s pissed, she lets Nenny come along and softens halfway through the drive. She’s like that: prone to rage and then gentle guilt for exposing the kids to her wrath.

  “You ever been to a laundromat before?” she asks.

  “I don’t think so,” Nenny says. It feels somehow unjust. Isn’t laundry, like, a great American pastime? Dad’s apartment building has a laundry room, but it hardly counts because it’s in the basement and only has two machines. “I guess not.”

  Mom smiles. “Boy, are you spoiled!” She looks at Nenny playfully, but Nenny just looks back. She sure doesn’t feel spoiled. Spoiled is a new Barbie every week and trips to the skating rink. Spoiled’s not sharing a room with Kat, who honks when she snores.

  “What I mean is, some families don’t have their own machines. Some families have to use the laundromat.”

  Have to? More like get to. Spudz Sudz is as wonderful as it sounds. A smiling cartoon potato scrubs itself on the front window, bubbles floating up to spell out the name. The unclear connection between a potato and laundry seems beside the point. For a dollar fifty a load, you can wash and dry your clothes while taking full advantage of the magazine rack (free) and, best of all, the bank of candy dispensers by the door (two quarters for a handful, worth every cent).

  Mom and Nenny practically have the place to themselves, which feels lucky. Mom lets Nenny pick out their machine, then dumps the clothes in and sprinkles in some Tide. Doing laundry at a laundromat lends the chore a kind of magic. The sound of quarters plunking in! There’s plastic chairs for while you wait! The machines sound like a hive of bees!

  You want to know what spoiled is? Spoiled is when your mom takes you, and only you, to a special place like a laundromat and presses two quarters for candy into your hand without being asked.

  An old man is sitting next to the candy machines. He’s got a newspaper folded in his lap and no laundry or quarters that Nenny can see.

  “You getting a gumball?” he asks. There’s something about him that Nenny cannot name: his plastic sandals, his hands crooked and bent like gross crabs. Nenny nods.

  “Little girls love gumballs, don’t they?” He seems to know a lot of little girls.

  “Nenny,” Mom says, like she’s done something wrong.

  “Aw, Christ,” he says suddenly, smacking his paper on his lap. “I’m just doin’ my laundry!”

  “We’re all just doing our laundry,” Mom says and calls Nenny back with her hand.

  A woman comes through the door then, and when she sees the old man, she starts yelling something in a language Nenny doesn’t understand.

  “Aw, Christ!” he shouts again and throws his paper down. “I live in this neighborhood too, you know!” Then, without warning, he slams past the woman and out the door.

  “No good,” the woman says, shaking her finger at Nenny and Mom. “No good,” she says again.

  “Yes, no good,” Mom says and pulls Nenny close. Nenny has no idea what just happened but suspects it has something to do with the old man’s hands, his watery-looking eyes. The woman goes into a room marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and closes the door.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later the laundry’s almost done, but Mom says, “Whoo! I’ve got to pee!” in a way that shows she’s been holding it awhile. She takes Nenny’s hand and they go to the back of the laundromat. Mom pushes the bathroom door open with her fingertips, then mutters, “Jesus fuck.” What’s more surprising? That Mom just said those terrible words or what they see: someone has taken a turd and, using it as a kind of pen, smeared shit all over the toilet and sink and walls.

  * * *

  In the car, Mom says, “Here,” and thrusts a bottle of hand sanitizer into Nenny’s hand. They swipe at their fingers in silence and then drive home, and they never go to a laundromat again.

  Chester

  MOM AND Rick are going out to dinner so they ask Chester to babysit. Chester’s their cousin since Mom married Rick. He’s tiny and scrappy and all of eighteen, with a moustache so scraggly it shouldn’t be there at all, really, and a kind of dumb sweetness about him like someone spilt bubble gum down his shirt.

  “You guys wanna make pizza?” It’s just Nenny and the boys because Kat’s on a date. They watch Chester with bewildered awe. Eighteen! He can buy cigarettes and dirty magazines if he wants to. He can vote, whatever that means. He can move out of Uncle Max’s house, for criminy’s sake, though he still lives at home, in a room decorated with tiger posters and a faux sheepskin covering half the floor.

  Chester pokes through the refrigerator until he finds what he needs. Gingerly, with the quiet skill of a surgeon, he lays f
our large tortillas across the counter. He coaxes ketchup from a bottle and smears it across them, sweeping his wrist back and forth. Then he piles on layer after layer of Kraft cheese, their plastic skins spilling off the counter to the floor. Four minutes in the microwave and—

  “Voilà!” he announces, presenting each of them with a plate. The pizzas look like nuclear fallout victims from TV. Nobody does anything, not even Tiny, who will touch dog poop if you pay him. Nobody except Bubbles, that is, who wolfs down every bite.

  Later, Chester says, “Is that a He-Man castle?!” and looks like he’s just won a prize. He makes Skeletor and He-Man wrestle to the death. Man-At-Arms scrambles to the top of the castle and does a twisty kind of dance. “Hey, Nenny, you got any Barbies?” He-Man kisses Barbie up against the castle wall, and the way he does it, it’s questionable whether Chester’s kissed anything before. Barbie shoots through the trapdoor, naked, then puts on a pair of mismatched shoes while Battle Cat chews on an eraser that came from who knows where. Skeletor and Stinkor have an oafish conversation about death.

  “You wanna die?”

  “You wanna die?”

  And then Chester can see that everyone’s bored, so they all go watch TV. Later, Tiny falls out of his bunk bed—just rolls right out—and lies there crying on the floor. To console him, Chester makes a pot of hot cocoa, but the pot somehow melts all over the stove. The whole house reeks of metal and burnt plastic. Tiny’s still lying on the floor.

  But Chester? Chester’s a pro. They don’t pay him $2.50 an hour for nothing, so what does Chester do? He buries the pot in the yard.

  Keeping Track

  AT THE end of October a new quiet descends upon the house like nothing Nenny’s heard before. Though she doesn’t know it yet, it’s the silent assault of approaching death. Gramma B’s been declining for months. That’s what they say, “a steady decline,” as though she’s slowly crawling down a hill. All her things keep showing up. New boxes arrive every day, junk and knickknacks and trinkets caked with dust. Mom says, “Gramma B is cleaning house. She doesn’t need all this stuff anymore.” But Nenny knows what Mom really means: Gramma B is going to die.