Bedfellow

by Jeremy C. Shipp

  “I don’t want a man like that in my house,” Imani says, setting the plate on the table.

  “Yeah, I get that. Just promise me you’ll think it over.”

  “Okay.” Despite her promise, Imani knows that she’ll never agree to allowing a man like that in her home. If Marvin wants to go find the guy and enlighten his mind, then he should do that and leave the family out of it.

  While she’s cutting out the brontosaurus-shaped cookies, she finally hears the front door open. She washes her hands and walks into the living room. “You’re late,” she says. “You could have texted me.”

  “Sorry,” he says, but he doesn’t sound sorry. He doesn’t give her his usual kiss on the side of her mouth. He doesn’t even look at her. “Marvin needs me upstairs.”

  “Can you at least help me set the table first?” she says.

  But her husband heads upstairs without so much as a glance over his shoulder. After standing in the living room for a few seconds, Imani decides not to follow him. She’s feeling especially anxious at the moment, and she’s in no mood for a big argument.

  When Tomas’s friend finally arrives, Imani yells upstairs for her son but he doesn’t appear.

  “He must have his headphones on,” Imani says. “I’ll go get him in a minute.”

  For a few minutes, Imani chats with Everest’s mother, who only seems interested in talking about local traffic conditions. Somehow, Imani manages to keep a smile plastered on her face the whole time.

  Once the mother leaves, Imani approaches Everest and says, “Can I get you anything?”

  He glances up from his small tablet, with his Nikes on the ottoman. “My mom said you were making macaroni.”

  “Yes, sweetie, but do you want anything before dinner? Can I get you a drink? Orange juice?”

  “No.”

  At this point, Tomas descends the stairs and stands close to his mother.

  “Why don’t you two go play outside,” Imani says. “I’ll let you know when dinner’s ready.”

  The two boys look at each other and then march outside in silence. Tomas isn’t the most sociable kid in the universe, so Imani’s somewhat surprised that he’d invite someone over beyond Pablo. She’s proud of her son for branching out.

  Continuing the preparations for Dino Din, she thinks about that look Hendrick gave her when he first got home. He’s seemed distant before, but never quite like this.

  Back when she was a kid, Imani would tell herself that if she cleaned the house perfectly, if she cooked her mother’s dinner perfectly, then everything would be all right. And right now, even though she hates herself for thinking it, she tells herself the same thing. Prepare everything just right and your world might not fall apart. Maybe he’ll still love you, after all.

  Tomas

  Playing outside with Everest isn’t the anarchic nightmare that Tomas expects. There’s no flicking. There aren’t even any insults. But Tomas isn’t at ease. He fears that at any moment, the bully will wander off and find the entrance to the tunnel. Tomas doesn’t think Everest could cause any permanent damage to the courtyard, but Tomas doesn’t want him there, anyway. In the end, the worst thing that Everest does is intentionally dribble the basketball in a few puddles so that he can get Tomas wet.

  They only play for a few minutes before they’re called in for Dino Dinner. Once they sit down, Tomas’s mom says, “Okay, dig in, everyone. Here’s the chips and seven-layer diplodocus. And for the meat-eaters among us, here’s some Jurassic pork.”

  “Mom, no,” Kennedy says, squishing her own cheeks together with both hands.

  “We should have tri-tip next time,” their mom continues. “Then I could say tri-tip-ceratops.”

  “Mom.”

  Once they dig in, Everest points a fork at the pterodactyl eggs in the middle of the table. Then he leans over to Tomas and says, “Is that where the creatures come from?”

  “No,” Tomas says.

  When Everest reaches for one of the eggs, Tomas drops his fork, knowing that the bully will crush the object in his hands. He’ll say, “Sorry,” like he does at school when he breaks the chalk in half, but he won’t really mean it.

  “Be careful with those,” Tomas’s mom says, just in time, and Everest quickly pulls his hand away.

  Freeing his held breath, Tomas picks up his fork again. He pokes at his Jurassic pork. Usually, during Dino Din, his mother will repeat her infamous pterodactyl joke or she’ll ask Tomas what he thinks various dinosaurs sound like. “I am an allosaurus,” he’ll say, in a deepish, gravelly voice. This evening, though, his mother spends much of her time staring down at her plate. Even Kennedy barely says a word. Tomas usually enjoys the quiet, but the silence at this table feels heavy and palpable, like a dark mist suddenly filling the room.

  When Tomas looks across the table, his uncle gives him a brisk thumbs-up, using his hand that’s resting beside his plate. Uncle Marv smiles in a way that makes his face almost unrecognizable. Generally, his uncle only displays a slight, lopsided smirk. Now he grins broadly, stretching his lips far across his face.

  Tomas knows that his uncle’s proud of him for facing his bully and his fears. He knows that his father wants to take him to Thomas’s Bar & Grill to celebrate what the boy’s accomplishing today. But right now, Tomas doesn’t care about any of that. Now all he wants is to get this dinner over with so that Everest can go back home, far away from the puddles and the courtyard and the pterodactyl eggs.

  Thankfully, Kennedy breaks through the silence with some information about the Salem Witch Trials. Tomas listens carefully until she talks about how the men hanged two dogs. Then he tries his best not to listen anymore.

  After Dino Din winds down, Uncle Marv says, “Hey, did I tell you guys I finally finished my new project? Maybe I should give Tomas the first look, since he contributed a bunch of the drawings.” He looks at Tomas now, still smiling like before. “Your friend can come too, if he likes.”

  “Go ahead, boys,” Tomas’s mom says.

  And so, Uncle Marv leads the way upstairs, into his room. He sets the cardboard box on his bed, so that the diorama is facing the boys. Tomas peers into a small, cluttered room with burgundy brick walls and a tan floor. Of course, Tomas recognizes his potbelly stove and his dress form and his industrial sewing machine table. Like before, the drawings become hazy for a moment and then swell into three-dimensional objects. Black smoke spirals upward from the stove, and the tiny sewing machine needle moves up and down. Carefully, Uncle Marv sets three Tiny Uncle Marvs into the box. The three tiny uncles are wearing different clothes from the usual helpers, so they must be the extra ones who always stay in Uncle Marv’s room.

  “So,” Uncle Marv says, tapping the top of the box with a finger. “This is based on a scene from The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. These guys aren’t the best singers in the world, but they have been practicing fairly faithfully in their free time. Okay, guys. Go ahead.”

  The Tiny Uncle Marvs clear their throats simultaneously and then begin singing a song about working together. Tomas has never heard this particular song before, but he can tell that they’re all off-key. While the Marvs sing, they dance awkwardly around the room. One of them accidentally trips on another Marv’s foot and then knocks the potbelly stove over.

  When Everest reaches toward the scene, the real Uncle Marv says, “Don’t touch them while they’re performing.”

  After the song ends, the helpers bow slightly and Tomas claps.

  “Do I get to have one now?” Everest asks.

  “Yeah, of course,” Uncle Marv says, his finger tapping over and over against the cardboard box. “Hey, Tomas, could you go get your mom for me? I need to ask her something.”

  Tomas nods and walks out of the room. As soon as he crosses the threshold of the doorway, he hears Everest say, “Let me go. Let me go!”

  Tomas quickly turns back, but Uncle Marv’s room now blazes with amaranth-colored fire. For a few seconds, some of the flames look a little like arms r
eaching out to him. Everest screams then, somewhere in the rosy red fire, and the door slams closed.

  Rushing downstairs for his mom, Tomas hopes that the enlightenment will be over very soon. He finds his mother in the living room, walking in his direction, with an anguished look on her face.

  By the time he reaches her, Tomas can’t remember what it is he wanted to say.

  “Sweetie, what’s wrong?” his mother says, wiping a tear from his cheek.

  “Nothing,” he says. “I’m gonna trampoline.”

  Outside, Tomas walks past the trampoline, however, across the stepping stones and through the tunnel. He sits on the wet floor of scarlet and russet and golden bronze. From one jacket pocket he pulls out the bodybuilding mouse and the headless bobblehead and the army man who only fears balloons. From his other jacket pocket he lifts out his helper and sets him on the leaves.

  Little Uncle Marv uses his powers to make the mouse’s mouth move. “Come on, guys,” Little Marv says, syncing his voice with the mouse’s mouth movements. “Let’s defeat that croc-topus.”

  “Yeah!” Tomas says, holding the army man.

  As the two of them play together, Tomas holds his breath from time to time in order to keep his good luck from abandoning him. Everest’s mom said that Everest was too sick to come to Dino Dinner after all, but there’s always a chance that the bully’s mom will call up again and say that Everest is feeling much better now. She could say he wants to come this evening to play. Tomas takes another deep breath, and for now he feels lucky that he can be here in the courtyard, alone with his helper.

  Tomas jumps a little when a crow shrieks from above. When he looks up, he doesn’t see the crow, but he notices a branch that looks like an arm with long, outstretched fingers. For some reason, the sight makes him shiver in the back of his neck. But then he turns his attention back to the army man in his hand, and his goose bumps fade away. Whether he’s facing a tree monster with gnarled hands or a croc-topus, he has nothing to fear in the courtyard. Here, the heroes always win.

  Hendrick

  Most of the time, Hendrick doesn’t like to stay in the same room as Imani when she’s in one of her moods. She’ll skitter from place to place, straightening and scrubbing and reorganizing. And every once in a while, she’ll give Hendrick a reproving look, as if he should be straightening and scrubbing and reorganizing along with her. She usually succeeds in making him feel guilty.

  But this afternoon, as Imani Swiffers the hardwood floors in the living room, Hendrick feels perfectly at peace. He sits side by side with Marv, watching some strange movie about the Garbage Pail Kids that Marv ordered online. When Hendrick turns his head to look at his wife, he feels as if he’s still watching a TV screen. Marv promised that the imp could give him a more carefree life, and so far, the little monster is certainly delivering. Hendrick takes another sip of his Old Fashioned.

  “I told you this is a fun movie,” Marv says.

  “Yeah, it’s great,” Hendrick lies. But, with the imp’s powers flowing through him or whatever the fuck’s going on, even this terrible film doesn’t have the power to dampen Hendrick’s mood.

  While Imani’s dusting the family photos on the wall, the doorbell rings, twice.

  Imani opens the door and a blond woman says, “How did everything go?” She then steps into the house without being invited in.

  “Excuse me?” Imani says.

  The woman smiles a little and says, “Was Everest any trouble? If he broke anything, let me know.”

  “Oh, you’re Everest’s mom,” Imani says, passing her Swiffer from one hand to the other. “On the phone, you said Everest was too sick to come. Why are you—”

  Imani finishes her sentence with a gasp, because the blond woman faints and slams her head on the hardwood floor. A moment later, Imani’s knees buckle as well, though she doesn’t collapse so quickly. She ends up sitting, with the Swiffer still in her hand.

  Hendrick himself feels a little dizzy. When he tries to stand up, Marv puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “Hey, don’t worry. I’ll take care of this.”

  So, Hendrick stays put and takes a sip of his Old Fashioned. He only feels a minor twinge of guilt for not helping his wife and the big-busted blond woman, but then again, in any kind of emergency, you’re much better off letting Marv handle everything. Imani still doesn’t seem to understand that, though, because she’s staring at him from the floor, giving him one of her most pleading looks. He can’t blame her, really. Imani still thinks that Marv is her twin brother. She doesn’t understand that he’s more than human. He’s always watched over Hendrick, and he’s never grown a day older. Marv’s promised that with his help, Hendrick won’t grow any older either.

  While Hendrick muses about all this, Marv’s standing next to the women, tapping two fingers on his forehead. Eventually, Imani closes her eyes and curls up on the floor.

  Reaching into his pocket, Marv pulls out one of his creatures.

  “I don’t want to go with her,” the creature says, looking up at Marv. “She’s not even one of our people.”

  “Sorry,” Marv says, and he does sound genuinely remorseful. Placing the spare imp in the blond woman’s purse, he says, “Well, try to keep her busy for as long as you can.”

  “Yeah, I will.”

  While Marv heads back to the couch, Imani and the blond woman open their eyes and stand. They look confused, but only for a moment.

  Rubbing her forehead, the blond woman says, “Thanks again for letting me apologize in person. I had no idea Everest was . . .” She sighs. “As soon as he’s over this bug, I’ll bring him over to apologize as well. And if he ever bullies Tomas again, please let me know.”

  “Thank you,” Imani says.

  After Everest’s mother leaves, Imani picks up the Swiffer and rubs at her head again.

  As he observes all of this happening, Hendrick feels a little like he’s watching a complex TV show from the middle of the season. But he doesn’t care too much, really. He doesn’t need to understand. Marv will take care of everything.

  Kennedy

  Kennedy finished up her Salem assignment before dinner, but the assignment isn’t quite done with her yet. As her room darkens with the sunset, the teenager bounces from website to website, scavenging whatever morsels of information stand out to her. She doesn’t write the details down, but she sometimes repeats the sentences to herself a few times. She wants to remember all this, so she can tell Alejandra about it later.

  On her odyssey, she reads about how Tituba, who helped propel the whole witch hunt with her confession, later retracted every word. She was a slave, and she said her master bullied her. Kennedy reads about how an infant died in prison during the trials, and how someone collected the urine from the bewitched girls in order to harm the witches. She reads about how women were stripped to their undergarments and tied up and thrown in icy water. She reads about men who would stab women with needles, all over their bodies, in order to see if the women were evil.

  The jarring sound of shattering glass yanks Kennedy back into reality. She looks down and sees orange juice and pale pink glass shards all over the floor.

  “Agh,” Fantastico says, standing on her desk. “I was leaning against your cup and, well, I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Kennedy says.

  While she sops up the orange juice with a used bath towel, Fantastico says, “Can you put me down on the floor? I can help.”

  So, Kennedy uses a washcloth to push the broken glass into a pile, and Fantastico picks shards with his hands. When Kennedy tries to object, the helper tells her that he’s fine and that he has thick skin.

  After dropping a couple handfuls into the larger pile, Fantastico says, “I . . . I’m sorry I can’t do more for you, Ken. I can only pick up the small pieces.”

  “It’s okay, really. It’s just a glass.”

  “Yeah.”

  Moments later, Kennedy notices a thick, translucent liquid leaking from her friend’s
hands. “Is that blood?”

  “Well, in a sense. But it’s fine. I can hardly feel pain.”

  Kennedy sighs and sprints into the bathroom for one of those poop-themed Band-Aids that her mom insisted on buying. She finds Fantastico still carrying splinters of glass on his outstretched palms.

  “Stop that,” she says, and lifts him back onto the desk. Using a pair of her crafting scissors, she slices a couple strips off the Band-Aid. The bandages still don’t fit exactly, but she wraps up his hands anyway.

  While she’s finishing up with the glass, her mother comes in and crosses her arms over her chest. “Sweetie, why aren’t you using a broom and dustpan?”

  “I don’t know,” Kennedy says. “I thought this would work okay.”

  Her mom bites at a sparkly purple fingernail and says, “Hmm, I suppose you did do a tea-riffic job. That would work if you were drinking iced tea.”

  “It was orange juice.”

  “Well, you win some, you lose some.” Her mother walks over and picks up a splinter of glass that managed to flee to a far corner of the room. “I was thinking of going on a quick night stroll. Want to come? Tomas says he will.”

  “Yeah, sounds good.”

  Her mother drops the splinter of glass onto the larger pile. “Could you ask your dad and uncle if they want to come? I’m going to change shoes.”

  Her mother disappears, leaving Kennedy feeling a little concerned. The only time her mom ever wants to hike on a freezing night like tonight is when she’s in super anxiety mode.

  Downstairs, Kennedy finds two helpers arm-wrestling on the ottoman, grunting. Meanwhile, her dad and uncle sit side by side on the couch, staring at the muted TV. Her father brings a glass to his mouth, and some of the liquid dribbles down his chin. He doesn’t seem to mind.

  “Do you guys want to come to the haunted trail?” Kennedy says.

  “Sorry, kid, I’m stuffed,” her uncle says, patting his belly. “If I moved, I think I’d explode, Monty Python–style. Have you seen that sketch?”

  “I don’t think so,” the teenager says.