Petey would be home any minute. New school.
God, let it be okay.She really felt like crying again when she thought of her boy, alone in a new school. She didn’t cry, but felt the sting of it behind the cloth. She’d cried herself out, maybe for that day. At least for that afternoon. Nights were harder. But for all the terrors of her day, they did not involve the staring eyes of three hundred new people. And he wassensitive.
As if in answer, there was a sudden, muffledthump! at the front door. Barbara pulled the cloth off her eyes and guiltily dropped it in a ball on the hidden side of the couch. She waited for a moment, thinking it was Petey. The door was unlocked.
When nothing happened, she got up. Her heart jumped a little at the thought that maybe a neighbor was dropping by to say hello and welcome them, maybe a Welcome Wagon lady with all kinds of goodies and coupons and baby-sitting advice. Someone nice, and her age. Divorce would be an asset, but she would be willing to overlook an intact marriage. She put a smile on.
Her socked feet padded comfortably on the cool tiled floor in the hall. She pushed her fringe back, damp from the cloth, and knew how she would look. She had put on a good twenty pounds over the last year and it was not kind on her. It was sloppy-fat and her frame was not large enough to hide anything, not even five pounds. Her lips pressed together and she frowned. There was momentary debate over opening the door at all.
Loneliness won out. Barbara fixed the smile, pushed her hair behind her ears and tugged her T-shirt—at least it was clean—down over her front, and pulled the door open, hoping she looked suburban, relaxed and only as unkempt as any new homeowner(Oh, hello! Come in! Excuse me, but I’ve just been fixing a tap!).
A gust of fresh air shuttled in through the open door, but the stoop was empty. She panicked, sticking her head out of the door—had she taken too long? There was no one on the path or on the street beyond the hedge at the end of the yard. Crossing her arms over her chest against the cool spring breeze, she stepped onto the stoop to get a better look and trod on something soft that gave. She lifted a foot and looked down simultaneously.
Her smile broadened into something real and she let out a little squeal of pleasure.
On the stoop (decidedly crushed by her foot) was a little yellow bouquet of buttercups. She bent over and scooped them up, letting go of a little groan at the sight of their stems, broken and flattened, bleeding green from having been stepped on. Two of the blossoms had been crushed as well. She bent her head and brought the flowers up to her nose, knowing already how they would smell, the wet way they would brush under her nose.
Do you like butter?
They were limp and battered as though having been carried a long way and Barbara, smiling, looked around again, scanning the street this time for a smaller neighbor, a child, maybe with her mother, coaxed into leaving the new family a hand-picked bouquet. Even when she walked down the sidewalk to the end of her yard, she still couldn’t see anyone, big or small, who might have left such a delightful welcome on the step.
“Thank you!” she called out into the open street. She gave another round glance, but saw no one.
Maybe it will be all right,she thought. It was chilly out. The buttercups were cold in her hands, the green juice bleeding onto her fingers. She knew from experience that it wouldn’t come off easily, but would stay for an hour or so, until it wore off. Still smiling, she went inside, closing the door softly.
She dug around in kitchen boxes, finally coming up with a little blossom vase and put the flowers into water and placed them in the center of the dining-room table where she could see them and be reminded every time she did that they weren’treally alone, that there were people everywhere. Kind people.
Barbara stepped away and admired them for only a moment, and then Petey got home, his nose bloodied, his lip fat, and all the delight went out of the day.
Fat kid! Fat kid!Andy Devries and Marshall Hemp had taken off as soon as someone in the crowd had said,He’s hurt. Pushing himself up off the hardened earth, spitting mud out of his mouth, Petey Parkins remembered what exactly had been said, it had beenshaddup the fat kid’s hurt and then Andy and Marshall had taken off.
Petey spat again and mud sputtered out with saliva, but instead of a good hard hork onto the mud, something that might have salvaged some of his dignity, even just to him, the muddied spittle stayed mostly on his bottom lip. He swiped at it with the back of his hand, his mouth tender where his teeth had mashed into the tissue.
Fat kid.
He sniffled snot to the back of his throat. His nose was running. He’d cried.Cried. His face would be ridiculously red against his pale freckles and there would be more dirt, mixed with sweat, under his hairline. He could feel it running down his temples. There was nothing for him to wipe his nose with. He wore a white T-shirt, pulled out and over his pants to hide the large bulk of his belly. If he wiped it there, everyone would know. The snot tickled under his nose. Petey swiped at his eyes with the hand that wiped off the spit.
“Paul?”
He would have to use his fingers and then what? He couldn’t bear to let it run into his mouth. The kids who had gotten off the bus to see the fight had mostly disappeared, bored now that it was over or scared they were going to get caught. They were all but gone.
“Paul?” Petey realized someone was talking to him. He flinched instinctively, cringing against whatever new horror was in the works. When none came, he answered. “It’s Peter,” he said, emphasizing out of habit the last syllable of his name. He said it that way nearly every minute to his mother, who still called him Petey. He told her and told her and told her that he was going to be Peter at the new school. At the old school he’d been Petey the Weenie.
“Oh,” said the last kid. There was no taunt in the voice, but Petey stayed poised for it anyway. Alert. He spat again. He thought he might taste blood. Nothing came out that he could see. His lip hurt inside. He’d scraped his knee and palms landing from the first push—Andy Devries—while Marshall laughed but looked angry, and prepared for the next part, which was to kickthe fat kid’s ass. “You okay? You’re that new kid, right? You okay?”
Petey’s nose was about to drip. He had no choice. He squeezed his nose with his fingers and pulled it away. He held his hand out in front of him, horrified. He walked a couple of steps to the edge of the sidewalk and wiped it on the grass there.
“Make it grow, eh?” Petey looked up at the kid talking. He was skinny and tall, older than Petey. He stared at him with rounded eyes and easy smile, and it took a second but Petey felt more than saw the blankness behind the eyes. The retard smiled at him, and when Petey didn’t bite or snarl or try to punch him, he closed up the distance between them and patted Petey gently on the back.
The unexpected tenderness, or the fact that it was coming from a retard, stung his face and he felt the horrible taste of tears coming back. “It’s okay now, they took off,” the kid said smiling, nodding with deep understanding. “Andy’s bad,” he added. “He’s a super-shit.”
Petey nodded back, sort of, then bent over at the waist, leaning the full weight of his substantial upper body on his knees. His right knee throbbed, but he didn’t favor it. Instead he let his head fall and the snot run out of his nose.
The kids at the old school had been used to his fatness. It had come on him gradually over his eight years. It had been a side issue. Instead he’d been a crybaby. Petey the Weenie. If the kids from the new school saw him crying like a baby now, they’d figure it out. He hoped no one could see, hoped the moron couldn’t or wouldn’t tell, hoped the ground would start to shake and an earthquake would wipe out the whole snot-running city. And, of course, at the old school he’d had Jeremy. His best friend—his only friend, really—in the whole world.
An ache began like a black hole in his stomach at the thought of Jeremy and his friendly face, any friendly face, and the tears threatened then never to stop, to stay as long as the earth stood, long enough for another Ice Age, or another
comet to hit the earth and destroy everything like it had when the dinosaurs lived there. He sobbed harder, feeling sorry for himself, sorry for familiar faces, even for the familiar assholes of the old school. The old taunts.
Fartin’ Parkins.He hoped they didn’t figure that one out.
Sideways glances on either side showed deserted, quiet streets. Far away he could hear the girls’ field hockey team practicing. Just him and the retard. Tears of sublime misery poured from him then and by only hairs he resisted just dropping to the ground and letting it rip, letting the tears swallow or kill him or just anything that would let him be dead.
“He’s a shit, that Andy Devries,” the kid said. “A shitty shit,” he added, and giggled. He repeated “shit” another four times and seemed to get wrapped up in it. “I have to go. You want me to come home with you?”
Just what he needed, to be walked home by the local retard—he stopped himself.
“Nah,” he said, standing up. He wiped his hand across his nose, wiped the mucus on his shirt, suddenly not caring who saw. “Nah, I’m okay.”
“I better go. My mom yells.” The kid took off, running up the street, leaving Petey alone.
His house, their new house, was on Belisle Street. It was almost four blocks from the corner and he realized with fresh horror that he didn’t know what kids, if any, lived on Belisle, or if they were watching, waiting for him to walk by so they could toss a new taunt out at him, maybe morehey fat kid, orwhale boy or something new likefatass or maybe they would just moo or oink when he walked by, hiding behind curtains, doors, fences, their parents still at work and no one home to stop them.
He sighed deeply and let it turn into a snuffle. He wiped again at his nose and it hurt too. His jeans were dirty. His mother would notice that, but first she’d see the snot on his shirt and be disgusted right up until she realized by looking at his(fat) face that he’d been crying. Then she would cry too. Or maybe she would just get that blank look and tell him quietly to go change. Then she’d disappear someplace in the house and he wouldn’t even be able to hear her.
Periodically he looked up at the houses, uncertain still which one was his. They were mostly the same on the block, old-fashioned but fixed up. Renovated. That’s what theirs was, renovated. The ad had said, “newly renovated.” His dad—before he left, of course, and stopped being his dad or (not so bad),Your Father had becomeThat Asshole, Your Father —had renovated their basement for a year, adding walls and a bar and eighteen tiny little lights that recessed into the ceiling, running all along one side of the basement (he’d said they were “a bitch to put in, just abitch.” Whenever someone came over, Petey’s dad shuffled them down into the basement and gave them a drink from the bar and told them what abitch the little lights had been to put in). Then he left it as though it had been the last order of business. It was as though once he finished the basement he had nothing else to do and so he left. Then his mom started crying and didn’t stop for months. She didn’t cry as much as she used to, but she still wasn’t easy to pin down to one mood. Sometimes when Petey was still at his other school (not so bad) he would come home to find her sobbing in the living room looking through old photo albums like someone had died, the house quiet, breakfast dishes in the sink or even on the table still, the place smelling like cigarettes and coffee, her eyes puffed out and so red he could barely see them. Other days Time Marched On—that’s what she said sometimes, like an announcement, “Well,time marches on,” and she’d ruffle his hair, but it was okay, because even though he wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, those were usually the best days.
On Time Marches On days, he might come home from school and she would be in her bedroom trying on every piece of clothing she owned, coming out to show him different outfits and asking him bizarre questions about colors and styles until he wanted to tell her,Mom, Regis says to phone a friend, but he never did. Those times her voice was on the edge of something scary that he didn’t recognize but knew instinctively that he had to humor heror else —never knowing what theor else was.
He crossed the street onto his block, the last one, and saw with mortification, that his mother had tied a huge,HUGE red bow to the front door, so that he would be able to find it among the other newly renovated old-fashioned houses. (On the other hand, it went quickly through his mind that if the bow was there, it meant at least she wasthinking and that meant it might be aTime Marches On day, instead of aThat Asshole, Your Father day, but it was quick and rote and meaningless in the face of new torments such as Andy Devries and Marshall Hemp.) Without thinking about it, he swept his eyes stealthily around the block, searching for kids, any kids, even little ones, who might have seen. The streets were bare, the houses staring back. Of course, you couldn’t seein them.
Petey ran past the four houses between him and home, the first plan of action to rip that bow off the door before someone saw (Hey, fat kid! You get your house as apresent?).
Actually he didn’t run, he scurried. Petey only ran when he was going to get beaten up. The rest of the time he scurried, like a bug, hoping not to be noticed.
He yanked the bow off, hearing ariip! with a certain amount of satisfaction, and then he pulled the door open. His mom looked up, a smile forming on her mouth, lips moving in a standard greeting, maybehi honey how was your day or maybehow was school sweetie, but her whole face seemed to crash once she really looked at him and she leaped to her feet. “Oh, Pe-tee,ohmigod, oh, my poor baby, yourface—” his mother cried when she saw him and crossed the floor in three long strides, dropping to her knees and pulling him into her body like a tiger, lunging.
He let himself be pulled in. “Peter,”he managed, before he burst into tears and succumbed completely to the rest of her mother-talk, soothing and hurtful at the same time, because she was crying too, and it was all his fault.
They went into the kitchen where his mom ran cold water over a dish-cloth and held it softly to his lip asking him, without expecting his answer, if it felt better, if that helped andthere there. Then they went to the little kitchen table where they’d eaten breakfast in the morning. He’d had Count Chocula cereal. So far they’d eaten breakfast and lunch in the little kitchen and dinner at the big table in the dining room. On their way to the table, his mom holding the cloth on his mouth, Petey noticed that a package of chicken was thawing on a plate on the counter.
He told her what had happened, but avoiding the things they said through pride and something like self-protection. She soothed andaaahed and poor-babied him until Petey began to calm down. There was a crossover moment when his mother’s voice began to fade, the words becoming sounds and when Petey’s mind began to shift to other things soothing.
“I’m going to phone their mothers,” she said.
“Can I have some pudding?” he asked, just seconds before she finished closing her mouth on the last syllable. It had come out too sharply, too fast.
“What did you say their names were? You have to tell me their names again,” she said. “I’m going to call them. This is a terrible thing to happen. You’re a new boy in school. Theschool,” she all but spat out the wordschool, “should have been watching out for you. Especially if they have such terrible boys there. I’ll call the school, too.” She finished by picking up the cloth that Petey had let fall to the table. His lip had swollen to the point of feeling foreign against his teeth. His tongue couldn’t stay away from it. The tenderest part was right in front of his chewing teeth.
“Mom?” he asked again. He couldn’t repeat the whole question. Couldn’t break the spell.
Barbara stared at him. She heard him. She chewed her own lip, the same place as Petey’s sore spot. Her thinking look. Her eyes dragged away from him, to the counter where the microwave and its little green LCD clock were.
“It’s almost supper time,” she said, her tone changing, carefully losing its animation.
There were no words, but no silence, between them. Petey’s lip throbbed. He needed something in his mouth. He needed
it to feel good in there, something creamy, sweet. Something that would take away the taste of the blood and snot. That was all.
“I’m hungry,” he said simply. His mouth hung open in his round face, bottom lip protruding, giving him a slightly moronic expression.
Barbara shut her eyes against him. Her arms crossed over her ample chest—more ample with the extra weight gained since the break-up. From inside, her chest tightened. The beginnings of panic rose not in her mind, but in her body. Her right leg began to shake and she raised her shoulders, tightening her neck muscles. She got up from the table. Tried to sound offhand.
“I’ll have supper ready in a jiff, honey,” she said sweetly. “You have to give me the names of those boys. I’m going to call their mothers. I mean it. This can’t go unpunished.” But the initial anger had passed, and while she meant it, it came out sounding like filler. She knew that. Tasted it.
She pulled the big frying pan out of a box on the floor. She opened the fridge door and grabbed the four potatoes that were left in the bag hastily bought the other night. There was a can of peas in a box by the microwave. She plunked the frying pan onto the stove and turned up the element to medium, then began shuffling through boxes for the oil. She ran across a can of mushroom soup. She would use it for a gravy. Petey liked that. That would be good. She found the can opener and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Petey reach into the cupboard where she had laid out the treats the other night with almost tender consideration.
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