The Dwelling

by Susie Moloney

  People were keeping their distance. Paranoid and self-serving as that thought was, it niggled at her like a sore tooth, something she couldn’t help putting her tongue into from time to time. Even the children seemed to avoid walking past the house; they couldn’t all live on the other side of the street, could they?

  There’s no daddy living there, Mommy.

  Don’t go there, that woman isdivorced.

  From the red front door, to her aging car, to the daddyless front yard last weekend, everything about the Parkins house might appear different (although she was fairly sure that her five-year-old Volvo was worth more now than some of the cheap sports vehicles nosing their way up the street).

  When these things went through her mind she couldn’t help but think an equally unkindthey’ll get theirs, a suburban Cassandra in the middle of the calm. It surprised her, but she thought it just the same.

  She was angry. The reason was less distinct than the emotion, and seemed to stem from all kinds of places inside her.

  Fitness program.She was really angry at that bastard principal, telling her her business. She had an image of him in her head, that wasn’t far from right, a mealy little man, strutting around Middleton School. Maybe he would put Petey on probation until he lost a few pounds. Demote him or something. Bastard.

  She was so angry. She needed to find a target for the anger before Petey got home. She was angry with Dennis for putting her there, for not being there to help her figure out what was wrong. To say something to Petey; to show a united front, not just to help him, but to show him that school wasn’t the only place in the world. That he was special and loved. She couldn’t do that all by herself. Dennis hadn’t called in a week. What, exactly, was Petey supposed to make of that?

  And me, I’m very angry with me. Shame shame; pull it together, girl.

  Barbara was surprised at her feelings about Petey. They were a mix: of course, she was horrified that there had been another fight (of which she was sure he took the brunt) but that was enough. He couldn’t go through school fighting. In that regard, as much as she hated to admit it, Mr. Bastard Hadley was right. It was a new school and the things he did now would stick to him.

  Last night she had promised he could call Jeremy back home. She was going to revoke that privilege (not for long, he could call tomorrow, but she wouldn’t bring that up right away) as a means of showing him she meant business.

  A Suburban passed the house, and the woman driving looked over at Barbara sitting on the steps. It pulled into a driveway about four houses up, on the other side. The first of the after-work arrivals. The two on either side of her didn’t get home until six, sometimes later. Neither neighbor had children. She had caught a glimpse of the man on the west side. He was about fifty. Balding. She hadn’t seen his wife, not really, just their other car driving away. Following the Suburban was a little Mazda. It belonged to the same house as the Suburban. She pictured the two of them kissing hello, surprised at being home soearly together. They would cook supper together, maybe. And talk about their day.What did they know about a day? She would tell them about a day.

  She tried to still some of the anger, the pointless, unnavigable anger inside her. Watching the neighbors wasn’t helping.

  She spotted Petey before he saw her.

  He walked with his eyes peering at the sidewalk, looking up only occasionally, eyes swinging nervously from side to side and then down again. Her face, which had been stern, softened. Her heart went out to him and she got up off the bottom step and walked to the sidewalk to greet him.

  “Hey,” she said. He looked up then, startled. He was so young. Dwarfed on the sidewalk, barren except for him and her. He was late.

  “Hi,” he said. She opened her arm to catch him as he passed and she slipped it around his shoulders as the two of them walked up to the house.

  She debated over what to say. She settled on, “Got into a fight, huh?”

  He shrugged. That coalesced all the unnavigable anger in her, for better or worse. Worse.

  “Well, this is it, Peter Parkins.” She marched him into the living room. “Sit,” she said, pointing to the sofa.

  “Are you mad at me?” he asked, shocked.

  “Mad at you? Mad? Yes, I’m mad. This is unacceptable. This is two fights in only a few days!” She stood above him, hands on hips, bending at the waist to emphasize her points. “Do you think it’s easy for me to start over? I have no one here helping me out! It’s me and you. That’s it, Petey. There’s no one going to come and give us a hand here, we’re on our own!” The anger spewed out of her, only partly directed at him.

  Her voice got louder. “We’re supposed to be on the same side!” she shouted. “You can’t just go around fighting, the school calling me up in the middle of the damn day! I can’t fix everything!” Petey stared at her incomprehension. Briefly she noted his wide eyes, his slack mouth.

  “I can’t have this. We have to work together, that means you and me, both of us staying out of trouble, both of us trying to get along, both of us trying to make a go of things here, in our new life—”

  “Mom—” he started, his voice quavering.

  “Don’t interrupt! You’re grounded from calling Jeremy for two days, and I would like you to stay in your room until supper, got it?” Petey started to cry, and she softened some, but at the same time felt an irrational satisfaction. Her insides were shaking. She wanted to scream at him, wail at him until everything in the universe straightened out.

  “Mom! Just let me tell you—” His face was red and he’d wrapped his arms around his middle as though for protection. He couldn’t get the sentence out, but started bawling like a little kid (like a little kid falsely accused, the thought crossed her mind). Her heart went out to him and she was on the verge of crying again, too, and that brought up thatThey’ll get theirs feeling of something giving. As though this situation was somehow going to be cathartic for both of them. Everyone needed a heads-up once in a while. This was his.

  He’s only eight. My god.

  “I don’t want to hear it. There is no excuse for all this fighting. You have to learn to get along. To fit in. Like I do. We both have to.” Shaking, worried that it was going to get worse, she strode away from him into the kitchen and whipped open the cupboard next to the fridge. She grabbed two puddings, and pulled a spoon out of the dish drainer beside the sink.

  She went back into the living room, the break making her feel worse, somehow, her legs shaking with anger. Not at him. At this. Whatever “this” was, it had less and less to do with Petey.

  She shoved the cans at him, and the spoon, her face twisted into an angry shell. “Go to your room till supper,” she said.

  He stared at her, still crying. He opened his mouth to say something, but the look on her face made him stop. He took the puddings and the spoon and went upstairs.

  Barbara collapsed on the sofa and cried.

  He spooned pudding into his mouth, hardly tasting it over the salty tear taste.

  When the pudding filled the front of his mouth, he pressed his tongue into it until it spread out, over roof, over tongue, over teeth. He curled his tongue through it and then swallowed. It took about three seconds, and he did it every time. He was still crying a little, and every now and then he paused in his ritual to sniff. When his nose started to run he stopped completely (pleased because the break in the ritual meant that it would go on longer) and blew his nose. Then he started again.

  Goddamn her.

  He couldn’t hear her crying. He was wrapped in his own misery so tightly that he was almost completely unaware of anything except the feel of the pudding in his mouth. It was chocolate.

  He sat on his bed with his back to his closed door and contemplated his misery. His mom was so mad. She didn’t even listen to him tell his side.

  Goddamn her.Swearing was bad. So was she.

  Petey was preternaturally aware of the second can of pudding on his dresser. Even as he emptied the tin he was eating, s
craping the last bits from between the sides and the score on the bottom, he was aware of the other can. He licked the spoon clean and then traded the two, leaving the empty one on the dresser. The new tin opened with a satisfyingsnick. He licked the lid, dropping it on the bed when he was done.

  He ate the second tin of pudding slower.

  The window in his room overlooked the front yard. It was cracked open halfway, and he could hear the noise of the street. Traffic could be heard far away, on Macallum, the busy road where the grocery store was. Trees blocked his vision, but he could hear kids, not far, up the block. They would be playing road hockey. He knew that. They were older kids. He’d seen them. He squinted and tried to see them through the branches of the pine tree that dominated the front of the yard next to theirs. He thought he saw a stick in midair. The sun had dimmed behind a cloud and it looked more spring than summer. Probably it would rain. Wash out the field behind the school and no one would have to play soccer for a while. That would be good.

  Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement in his own yard. He looked into the corner, where the hedge turned. It was just budding, but even without the leaves it was thick.

  Two children stood in the corner, looking up at him. He paused, spoon midway between tin and mouth, surprised.

  His first thought was to duck out of sight. Not let them see him. But they were in the yard. His yard.

  Instead, he shifted onto his knees and got closer to the window.

  It was a little girl and a boy, the boy about his age. The girl was really little, like maybe four or five, coming up only to the boy’s chest. He didn’t recognize them from school or the block. He’d never seen them before. They were barefoot, their feet pale against the new sprouting grass. The little girl wore a dress that was too long for her and he couldn’t make out the color: it was like it was colorless, or gray even. The little girl raised her hand in a tentative wave. She was smiling.

  Petey smiled back and raised his hand to wave back, the spoon coming up, vestiges of the last mouthful of pudding in ridges along its length.

  The boy smiled back. He brought up his hand in what Petey thought was going to be a wave, but instead the boy gestured.Over there. He pointed to the other side of the yard. Petey looked. A grocery bag had blown up against the hedge and was held by sharp twigs, its edges fluttering. Garbage wrapped around the underside of the bushes. There was nothing there.

  What?

  When he looked back, the kids were gone.

  He twisted his head to see as much of the hedge along the side of the house as was possible, but there was no sign of them. He opened his mouth to call them, trading glances between where the two had stood and where the boy had pointed. He stuck his head up close to the screen, but they were gone.

  They disappeared.He kept looking for them, twisting his head on his neck to see as far along the house as possible, but they were nowhere to be seen. They’d run away when he looked the other way.

  Not enough time.His glance away from the hedge had been nothing, a shifting of his eyes.

  They disappeared. Because they weren’t there.His mind had played a trick. With unease, he turned away from the window. His eyes landed on his closed door.

  He got up and opened it. He ate his pudding looking out into the hall, almost as if he were expecting to see something.

  Barbara sat on the couch in the quiet living room for half an hour. She only cried for a few minutes, but the tears had served what the lashing-out at Petey had not: she had calmed down.

  After several minutes of staring blankly out of the front window, looking barely out past the hedge, feeling both terrible and better, she got up. It was time to start supper.

  The door to the goodie cupboard was still open. As she went to shut it, mentally going over the preparations for dinner, she glanced inside.

  What she saw: Kraft Dinner. Alphaghetti. Bugs ’n’ Dirt. The space where the puddings had been was empty. A can of Pringles had been jammed into the back beside a jar of chocolate spread. Quik-drink mix. Kool-Aid (with added sugar, no more measuring!). Even the tinned fruits were in syrup rather than juice.

  She stared into the cupboard as though seeing food for the first time. She reached in and pulled out a bag of Gummy Bears. The label said they were made with real fruit juice. The miniature boxes of juice also claimed(claimed?) to be made with real fruit. Weren’t they? Weren’t theysupposed to be made of fruit? An opened bag on the bottom shelf spilled Reese’s peanut-butter cups, only two left. When had she bought those? Saturday morning when she went for milk. Three mini-Oreo bags were missing, too, and those were supposed to be for lunches (but she didn’t watch, did she?). The case of Coke she’d bought on Saturday was also nearly gone, and she’d bought those for herself. A bag of cookies had not been properly shut, and when she reached out to close it she found it empty. A wholebag! She hadn’t had even one.

  This was the form her mothering had taken.

  Oh god I’m sorry I’m so sorry.

  Barbara closed her eyes and pressed her forehead for a moment against the hard, cool edge of the pantry door, pressing until she could feel a mark forming. Her lips felt numb, her stomach/womb—something—full of stones. It lasted just for a moment.

  She could throw it away. Throw it out into the garbage: that was what it was, after all. Junk. She could pull jars and bags and boxes and packets of sugar-laden, fat-laden foods, useless but for the soothing quality of the fat as it rolled over your tongue and slid down your throat, kissing visceral boo-boos away when your mother was weeping in the bathroom with the door locked until supper. When your mother is sitting in her lawyer’s office begging for some way to hurtreally hurt your father. For when your mother stares at the wall for two hours, her mind a blank except for pain. Pain. Pain.

  How many times had he come to her in the last year, when she sat in her fog.Mom? And she had looked up at him seeing not her son at all but Dennis’s face. And how many times had she answered with,I bought some ice cream would you like some? How many trips to the grocery store had been for junk food? She herself had gained twenty pounds since that first horrible night that she’d learned about the affair. How many suppers had been canned spaghetti, Kraft Dinner, beans on toast with hot dogs, served singly because she had no appetite and it was easier to just open something for him? How many? How many nights had he eaten alone in the kitchen and where had she been? How many late nights had Barbara looked up from the television to find that a whole Sara Lee cake was gone? How many times had there been only half a cake to start with? How many times had she come across Petey in the kitchen, in front of the open fridge, spooning cake, ice cream, pudding into his mouth, a vague blank expression on his face, chewing incessantly…eyes half hooded in something akin to pleasure? Or maybe just a brief absence of pain.

  Oh god. Fat kid they called him.Her fault.

  She could throw it out.

  Her eyes drifted away from the cupboard to the little window that looked out into the backyard. The tangles of bush and dead flowers that were there would bloom soon. There was a lot of work to be done in the yard. She could throw out all the junk, and they could start eating the right things. She could make Petey help her in the yard. They could go bike riding. She could talk him into Little League, or at least swimming lessons. She could start right that moment.

  The kid had so few pleasures.Cruel to be kind.

  Barbara closed the door on the pantry and started supper. Upstairs she heard water running into the tub, splashing as it hit what sounded like a half-full bath. A few seconds later the accustomedpop! and the sound of water draining. She ignored it. They were having pork chops.

  “Do any of the kids from school live on the street?”

  Petey jumped. “Huh?”

  “Do any of the kids from school live here, on our street? Anyone you might like to invite over?” He stared at her, his forehead furrowed. She thought he was thinking about it. He was thinking about the kids he’d seen in the yard. He hadn�
�t mentioned it to her. There had been little conversation.

  Petey’s grounding lasted only until supper time, and while she hadn’t relented on calling Jeremy, she’d let him watch TV. He was watchingSabrina the Teenaged Witch. It was a rerun. He hated it anyway.

  “No,” he said slowly, after carefully judging her face, deciding if she was trying to get him to tell her something. “Nobody.”

  In the dark of his bedroom, Petey dreamed.

  Come play.

  Peter stood at the edge of a wide field overgrown with witchgrass. It was summer, or at least the sun was high and bright: he could feel himself squinting against it, the corners of his eyes getting sore with the effort.

  “Peter!” someone shouted. In the middle of the field a little girl waved. She smiled widely. The hand that waved held a bundle of grass that she had braided into a sheaf.Come play! she called. Other voices rang out. Singing? From behind the girl came an older boy. Peter shrank back, but the boy smiled and waved.Come on! he yelled.You’re missing it!

  He’d waved back, suddenly realizing he was smiling. They wanted him to join them. To come play. He started across the field, feeling the witchgrass slapping at his hands as he ran.

  He topped a rise in the field and looked out over the expanse of grass. He felt like he could see for miles. The girl giggled and ran, waving him to follow. Behind her were other kids, all of them different ages. There was the older boy, maybe as old as twelve, and four other boys. There was only one girl, and she was about five. Her hair was wispy and soft like a baby’s. Her dress reached to her knees and past, he couldn’t really tell: the wind blew it every which way so that it never looked the same way twice.