That November was a doozy. Ice, snow, cold. Dad was on the road non-stop, zig-zagging across the south, studying golf courses. He was head greenskeeper at our local course and he was taking the winter to learn what he could from southern courses open year-round. He had to shut his course down with the first early snowstorm in late-October. Unlucky for his course, but lucky for his trip. Before he drove off, he swore me in to my duties while he’d be gone.
I was standing in the cold wind, and he was sitting in his warm Chevy. He raised his right hand up and had me do the same. “Joseph R. Riles, it is your duty keep the sidewalks and driveway free of snow and ice; to help your mother keep the house clean and neat, and with the dishes after meals. And keep your room clean.” Mother didn’t hear any of this. She was already shut-up in the house, mad as could be that he’d actually take this trip. “And take care of your mother.” He promised to be home before Christmas. With that, he patted me once on the cheek and backed out of the driveway onto Highway 18.
Dad had been talking about this trip for years, but now that it was here, my mother wanted nothing to do with it. The day he left, she didn’t even say goodbye to him. She locked herself in the bedroom. She stayed in there all morning and all afternoon. I sat in my room all day, waiting for her to appear.
At five o’clock that night, she came out. She didn’t say a word. She walked straight downstairs and started making dinner as if nothing had happened. I followed her down and set the table. She made dinner—salisbury steak and frozen green beans—in silence. She was quiet like that for about a week. She barely said Boo.
Each night, as we sat down to eat, she’d pour herself a drink. She’d drink that one, and then, after dinner, she’d pour a second. By that time, she had started into him: Tony this, Tony that. She said his name—Tony—as though an oily hairball were lodged tight in her throat.
Then she said, “A loser, Joey, a loser.” I had been trying all day to get the courage up to call Julie Gaston and I was already nervous enough; I didn’t need to hear her say that. I forked the Hamburger Helper—noodles and hamburger and onions and peas—into my mouth.
“That’s what he is,” she said. “You’re the one who should be upset. He’s never here for you.”
I pushed my food from one side of my plate to the other; it left behind a pool of grease. “He’s working.”
“That’s right, I forgot. He’s providing this fancy life for us. Hamburger Helper, for crissake.” She got up from the table, her plate still half-full. “Take care of the dishes, hon?”
I nodded and drank the last of my milk. She went out to the living room and I hurried through the last of my supper. I listened as she turned the television on. Then she called out to me, “Make me a drink, hon. Just a splash of brandy.”
I did as I was told, and left the bottle on her TV tray next to her glass. She settled back into the couch with her drink.
Keeping the walks and drive free of ice and snow proved full-time work. It wasn’t even winter yet, and already I was tired of shoveling and chipping at the ice. I vowed to make the best of it. I would skate and sled. Mostly, though, I would dream about spring and green grass. And Julie Gaston.
Throughout late autumn and early winter, my father’s postcards came from Southern towns with funny names. I’d place the rest of the mail on the kitchen counter for my mother to look through when she got home, but the postcards only made her get angry. I began taking the postcards without showing her or telling her, taking them with me up to my bedroom. In the near-dark and quiet of late afternoon, I’d lay in bed and try saying the strange names out loud: Nacogdoches, Kosciusko, Socapatoy. Then, I’d try it without making any sound at all, mouthing the words slowly, feeling the odd blend of sounds in my jaw, my teeth, my tongue, my lips. Tangipahoa. Pocataligo. Wetumpka. Then I would remember.
The next morning when I’d arrive at school, when all the other kids were at their lockers or mingling in the hallways, I’d slip into the library. Mrs. Wittwer, the librarian, would be at her desk. “Hello, Mr. Riles,” she’d say.
“Hello, Mrs. Wittwer. Any new Encyclopedia Brown?”
“Not yet,” she’d say. “I’ll let you know.”
Then I’d make my way over to the rack of atlases, hidden from Mrs. Wittwer’s desk by the newspaper rack. I had memorized the page numbers of all the southern states Dad planned to visit—Alabama, page 6-7; Mississippi, 30-31; Oklahoma, 52-53, and Texas, 58-59—so I could go straight to them. I would trace my father’s path. I’d follow him wherever he went.
The day before I had raced home from school. I hadn’t had a postcard from my father in over two weeks but this day the one from Tahlequah arrived. It would be on pages sixty-six and sixty-seven. Oklahoma. Tahlequah. Tahlequah.
I had begun tucking the postcards under my mattress, as far away from my mother’s eyes as I could get them. But I heard the back door open and close. She was home early from work. I panicked and placed them in the drawer with my underwear. It had been two months since I had so much as shared one of them with my mother, and for several weeks they had arrived one every five or six days. My mother had overheard me. She poked her head into my room. “Talequah? You know he’s not coming back. You know that don’t you?”
But then on Sunday night, when he placed his weekly phone call, she would talk, talk, cry, fight, and by the end of the conversation she’d be laughing, telling him to hurry home. The calls ended a couple of weeks later. And the postcards were fewer and far between.
His postcard from Talequah had read:
Joey,
I saw on the news about the storm. You’re keeping the walks clear, right? I had Thanksgiving dinner at a place called the Golden Pheasant. Deep fried turkey! Can you picture it? I’d give anything to have been there with you and your mother.
Love, Dad
After I’d crawled in bed that night, my mother came into my room. She went straight to my dresser, straight to my underwear drawer. She pulled out the postcard from Talequah and set it on top of my dresser. She didn’t say a word.
****
It was my sixth-grade year. When school would let out, I’d meet David at his locker and together we’d walk together as far as Division Street. From there he turned east and I turned north, running those last three blocks home as fast as I could without slipping on the ice that that had formed in all the low spots. One day I fell and my knee thunked against the ice and immediately began to throb. I’d use my key to let myself in through the back door and check to make sure my mother wasn’t home yet—if her purse wasn’t on the counter and there was no whiff of her flowery perfume, I knew I had made it. I’d race through the house to the front door and, through it, to the mailbox, hoping for a postcard.
The next day I left for school, walked until out of sight of my house, then I ran, and went straight to the library, straight to the atlas section, to check out where my father was, even though I knew it was only where he had been. I would then pretend to be him, sitting behind the wheel of the old Chevy, with a road map folded over the steering wheel, and I’d pick a highway, the highway he would pick, and I’d guess where he would go next, where he would be now, where the next postcard would come from.
I opened the drawer where we kept the phone book. It squeaked, but the water drowned the noise. I flipped hurriedly through the thin pages. Harold Gaston . . .
538-6759. I didn’t know that her father was Harold, but it was the only Gaston in the book. He must be Julie’s father. Whispering the number twice, then three times, I quickly put it to memory.
I replaced the phone book, then turned off the water. Suds had risen above the top of the sink. I plunged my hand in at the drain, but the water scalded me. I ran cold water over my hand, then more, to cool the dishwater. With Julie’s phone number running through my head, I washed the dishes, then dried them.
I went out and sat in the rocking chair opposite Mom. She appeared to have dozed off. “Mom.” She didn’t stir. Her breathing was sleep-heavy. “Mom,” I said, louder this time. She didn’t move. The TV was blaring; I got up and turned the volume even higher, then went back out to the kitchen.
538-6759 . . . I lifted the phone from its cradle; as I dialed, I held it close to my chest to deaden the sound. A click, three rings, then a man’s voice. “Hello,” he said. I pulled the phone cord as far from the doorway as it would stretch, and I thought of what to say. My mind went blank, numb.
“Hello?”
I panicked and hung up.
From the living room, Mom called, “Who are you on the phone with?” My knees felt ready to cave in. She’d seen me hang up the phone. I walked out to face her.
“What?” I asked. I could feel my body shaking.
“Who was that?”
“David,” I said.
“David? Was it a girl?” Part of me wanted to tell her, but there was a hardness in her face and voice that frightened me.
“It was David. I’m going over to his house.” We had already planned to meet after dinner, so it wasn’t really a lie. Mom turned back to the television.
“That wasn’t really David, was it?”
“What?” I thought of the postcards under my mattress.
She looked at me. “How come I couldn’t hear you?”
“I was just talking.” She inhaled deeply on her cigarette, then exhaled a cloud of smoke.
“Is your homework done?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t be late. It’s a school night.”
* * * *
I rang the bell and Mrs. Sutter yanked the door open and thrust herself toward me. My own mom was pretty, I suppose; but next to Mrs. Sutter, Mom’s blond hair and thin face made her look mousy and pale. Mrs. Sutter was tall, with shiny black hair that crashed in long waves down her body. She was Sophia Loren, without the Italian accent.
“What can I do for you, Joey?” she asked. Always she asked this same question, like a riddle. She was a beautiful Sphinx. If I gave the wrong answer, she would smother the life out of me, suffocate me in the deep nest between her breasts. She thrilled me, scared me.
“Is David home?” I asked.
“Yes, come in.” She stepped aside and I passed, careful not to brush against her. “He’s up in his room, studying.”
At the top of the stairs, I stopped a moment to listen to the music pounding in David’s brother’s room: Let’s get together, before we get much older . . . . I found David stretched across his bed, reading a comic book, The Further Adventures of Aquaman. He jumped up, slapped me five, then fell back onto the bed. “Did you call?”
“No. My mom was on the phone,” I lied. I plopped down into his black, bean bag chair and Rex, David’s German shepherd, came over and licked my face. “I thought maybe I could call from here.” There was a phone at the top of the stairs, outside David’s room. His parents would never know.
“I suppose so,” he said. He looked unsure. “You want to call her now?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t know; I was afraid I might hang up again.
“Go ahead. It’s a piece of cake.”
“I wish.” I took off my parka and threw it on the floor.
“She likes you. How many times do I have to tell you? I heard her say it myself.”
“I don’t know.” I could feel the pressure driving into me.
The door burst open. “What are you dinks up to?” It was Tom, David’s brother. David ran to the door to push him out.
“Get out of my room, snot-face.” Tom was thin and bony and rectangular, like a ladder, and he towered over David, but David was smart and used his extra weight to get leverage. He pushed with all his might, and Tom, who had only socks on, began to slide backward. Both of their faces were beet-red, which made their pimples stand out even more.
Tom freed himself from David. “All right, pussy. I’ll get you later.”
“Hi, Tom,” I said.
David sat down to catch his breath.
“Joe here is trying to get up the nerve—" David began.
“Don’t,” I said.
“—the nerve to call Julie Gaston.” Tom’s greeting had been a formality, his daily chance to call us dinks or dorks or queers; now, he stepped into the room.
Tom said, “Not bad, Riles. Looks run fine in that family.” Tom would know. He was an eighth-grade basketball star and, despite the pimples, he always had two or three girls following him around. “Well, I’m out of here, losers.”
David looked at me, raised his eyebrows and threw his hands open as if to say, Well?
“Okay.” 538-6759 . . . I stepped into the hallway, Rex following at my heels, and dialed. Again, a man’s voice. I panicked, wanted to hang up. “Is Julie there?”
“Just a minute.” I heard David behind me—he got up and moved to the door. I kept my back to him, took a deep breath. Someone picked up the phone.
“This is Julie.”
I bent my head down into my chest, to muffle my voice from David. “Julie, this is Joe Riles.”
“Hi, Joe.” She sounded pleased.
I blurted, “I was just wondering if you’d want to maybe go to the school Christmas party.”
She laughed. “We have to go to the Christmas party.” She was right. Afternoon classes were canceled for it.
“I know. I mean—"
“I know what you mean,” she said. “I’d love to go with you, Joey.”
“That’s great.” I wanted to say more, to tell her how I felt whenever she passed me in the hall at school. I didn’t know what to say.
Finally, Julie said, “Well, I guess I’ll see you in school tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Good night.”
I waited for her to hang up. “Good night, Joey.” And then the line went dead. I closed my eyes and pictured her—her short black hair, her crooked nose and green eyes, and her white teeth with the small gap in front. I stepped back into David’s bedroom. Everyone looked forward to Christmas break. Now, in my gut, I could feel how much I'd miss the chance to see Julie every single one of those days.
David dove onto his bed and turned back to his comic book. “Way to go,” he said. I wanted something more from him—some sign that he understood all that this meant—but I knew I would not get it. “What now?”
I said, “Let’s go outside.” He tossed the comic book aside. Rex followed us outside and started barking. David’s father shouted at us to keep it down.
* * * *
We started walking toward the skating rink, but half-a-block down we ran into the Lorenz brothers—Jimmy, who was older than us and always tried to boss us around, and Bobby, who would tag along with us until he got scared or hurt and started to cry. They had their sleds with them. We told them we’d get ours, and meet up with them.
The snow was good and slick and the ravine behind David’s house was made for speed. With the Lorenzs’ help after the blizzard earlier in the month, we had pushed the wet snow into two huge mounds. We then had packed the mounds as hard as we could and splashed them with water to ice them over. The goal was to hit the jumps head-on and still cling to the airborne sled.
We stood at the top of the hill. Jimmy said, “Last year we studied the Seven Wonders of the World. Here, gentlemen, we have the Eighth—the Great Ice Boobs of Mount Horeb.” We all laughed; Bobby laughed until I thought he’d pee his pants, which he sometimes did. I doubted he even knew what boobs were.
Being the oldest, Jimmy went first. He barely hit the mound on the right but roared as if the blow had dislodged his spleen. After chasing down his sled, he ran up the hill. “Did you see that? Did you see that?” David went next. He missed, completely. For once, though, Jimmy didn’t razz him. I glanced off the mound and sprawled dramatically. Only a fourth-grader, Bobby was up; he’d had time to think, and it had terrified him. He looked down the slick, steep hill and saw a nauseous, dark ride. I thought he would back out, but he didn’t. Usually, I’d have to pretend not to notice him dragging his feet behind the sled. Tonight, he showed more spunk. As with each of us, Rex chased him down the hill, barking. Bobby slid fast, hit the mogul square, wiped out hard. He walked up the hill, his chest and shoulders shaking with his tears, Rex dancing around him, barking. I was proud of him.
“I’ve got an idea,” Jimmy said. Every idea that ever struck Jimmy Lorenz came to him at the precise moment his brother started crying. Usually, I thought it was to distract us from his own embarrassment. Other times, his ideas seemed to well up like love for Bobby. Jimmy’s motives seemed important to me—the difference between Jimmy the Creep and Jimmy the Valiant—but I could never be sure. He looked from David to me. “Let’s snowball cars. Like egging houses, only we don’t have to buy any eggs.”
I had never egged a house or thrown snowballs at a car. Neither had David. I doubted Jimmy had, either; we would have heard about it.
“I don’t know,” David said. “It’s getting kind of late.”
“Late? It’s not late.”
"You’re chicken,” Jimmy said. Bobby had stopped crying.
“I’m not chicken. I just don’t know if it’s such a good idea.”
Jimmy hopped on one foot, then the other, dancing a silly jig. In a baby’s voice, he sang, “Davey Sutter’s a pussy, Davey Sutter’s a pussy.” I wished I could punch Jimmy, to stop him, but the few times we had fought, he had torn me apart. He was dumb but wiry and powerful.
“Shut up,” I said. “We’ll see who the pussy is.”
“What did you say?” asked Jimmy.
“We’ll see who the pussy is.” I scooped up a handful of snow and packed it into a ball, then walked off. Over my shoulder, I called, “Are you coming, or not?” At the corner, I turned down Third Street in search of prime snowball launching terrain. The guys followed, but I stayed ahead of them. I was in charge. I felt reckless, afraid. My breaths came slow and hard like I was dredging them up through swamp weeds and muck. Still, I set myself to prove Jimmy the chicken, the pussy.
Down inside, I knew this wasn’t about Jimmy. Twenty-four hours a day, my head teemed with the electrified images of Julie. At night with my eyes closed, she would brush against me and my skin would dance. If I concentrated, I could rack these images into focus—smiling lips, the sweep of soft hair across shiny forehead, a smooth stretch of ankle and calf, or wrist and forearm, or neck and shoulder. A close-up would emerge, flash, disappear, leaving me with a strange hunger and loneliness. Each day I’d store up fresh glimpses and glances of her, if even from a distance. She was flesh and blood. The one time I had tried to talk to David about all of this, he had pretended to listen, but his face had stiffened and paled and he’d turned to the TV. He was my best friend—at times, it seemed, my only friend—and I needed to talk to him. I didn’t want to throw snowballs at cars any more than he did, but I felt trapped.
We passed each house slowly, scouting for cover with clear angles to the street. I knew these yards by heart from chasing down baseballs and hiding during nighttime games. But this was different: the stakes had been raised. The ecstatic fear I had savored while hiding, then being stalked in Mr. Gunther’s row of lilac trees during a game of kick-the-can now seemed childish. By the time we reached Atkins Street, I knew what I must do. The streetlamp shone down on me, and I felt powerful. “I’ve got a plan,” I said.
“Riles,” Jimmy said, “this was my idea.”
“For once, just shut up,” I shouted. Jimmy shut up.
The week before, an eighth-grader named Gary Keltner had been handed a three-day suspension for busting a school bus window with a snowball. At the time, I had cheered his punishment. Gary had stepped over the line of civilized behavior Dad had chalked inside my head and he should be punished. Now, forgetting all about Dad, I too crossed that line.
“We’re not doing anything tonight. Tomorrow night—"
“Chick—" began Jimmy. I gave him a look and he stopped.
Then I told them my plan. First, we would make snowballs. Then, we would dip them in water, so that they would freeze to solid ice. We would meet tomorrow night, haul the ice balls out to the highway, and wait for cars.
David looked at me as if I’d gone batty. Jimmy said, “Not bad, Riles.”
“One more thing,” I said, “Everyone wears dark clothing.” Then we got to work. I had something to prove, and I would prove it. “And Bobby, you stay home.”
* * * *
Without looking away from the television, Mom reached for her Pall Malls, tapped one out, and lit it. “You’re home already?”
“We didn’t feel like doing much.” I walked through the living room and started up the steps.
“Don’t you want to watch a little television?” I stepped back into the living room.
“I forgot, there are some math problems I didn’t finish up.”
I went to my room and closed the door. I turned off the light, changed into my pajamas and crawled into bed. My knee was throbbing. I pictured Julie as I had seen her the night before at the skating rink. Her hair done up like Dorothy Hamill's. Her fuzzy blue sweater. Her grey, wool skirt. Her soft-blue tights.
I fell into sleep dreaming of her. Her beauty paralyzed me. I could not step forward. Then, Julie was alone on a sheet of ice, skating. She circled and circled, etching tight figure-eights into the ice. I could see the swell of her breasts beneath her sweater. I kept my distance and watched.
* * * *
The next morning, it took me right through breakfast to remember for sure whether I had called Julie or not. The phone call had mingled with my dream. When I knew that I had called, my stomach twisted itself up like a pretzel. I wanted to see her, to say hi; I dreaded seeing her, afraid I’d have nothing to say.
I was late getting to school and missed seeing Julie at her locker. I did my best to pay attention during reading class, but my brain was flying around like a swallow. The bell finally rang and I made my way to Science. Ahead, approaching, there she was. She and Angie Retzlaff were walking arm-in-arm, and they both smiled. “Hi,” Julie said.
“Hi,” I said. And she was gone.
I didn’t run into her again all day, but the pit in my stomach had filled up with something that felt good. I thought it might be Julie’s smile. When Math let out, and school was over, I went to my locker. Angie Retzlaff was standing there, alone. I saw Julie at the far end of the hallway. She saw me, then turned quickly to the bubbler to take a drink.
“Hi, Joey,” Angie said.
“Hi.” Panic seized me. Julie had changed her mind. She didn’t like me. She would never smile at me again.
Angie leaned against my locker. “Julie’s my best friend.” I waited for more.
“Yeah, I know.”
“I need to know. Do you really like her, or do you only kind of like her?” She was staring straight into my eyes, and I had to look away. My ears grew hot.
“I really like her.” She grabbed my arm and let out a tiny squeal.
“Good, because she really, really likes you. Call her tonight, okay?”
“Okay.”
Like that, she walked off, then skipped down the hall toward Julie. Julie waved at me. I waved back.
* * * *
After school, I ran all the way home. There were no postcards.
Jimmie showed up at David's alone. Bobby was sick, Jimmy said. I was glad he hadn’t come. To prove he was in charge, Jimmy carried the shallow cardboard box packed full of our frozen ammunition. We left Rex behind in the garage on the chance his barking might give us away. We made our way down the ravine.
“I don’t know about this,” David said quietly to me.
I glanced at him and he knew we were going through with it. “It’ll be all right.”
We entrenched in a shallow between the apartment building and a row of cedars. We each selected an ice ball and took a practice toss. Jimmy and I hit the asphalt and the balls shattered in a spray of ice. David’s fell short. He shrugged his shoulders; he had given it his best shot. I saw through him. His heart wasn’t in it. We waited. I reminded myself that this was my idea. I reminded myself that the sooner we were finished, the sooner I could get home to call Julie. I wondered what I would say to her. I could call from David’s. Or I could wait for Mom to fall asleep, then call. I’d think of something to say. She really, really likes you.
Headlights lit up a speed limit sign on the highway and we launched. Five seconds later the car inched past. We adjusted our timing. A car came from the other direction. It passed into view and beyond as we were letting go. We judged the next one better: Jimmy and I overthrew; David underthrew. We wasted one more round of ammunition when an approaching car turned down a driveway at the last minute.
There were two balls left. Jimmy and I each took one. The black stretch of highway lit up. “This is it,” Jimmy said.
“This is it,” I said. I reach back with all my strength. Jimmy’s drifted high and lazy. I threw mine on a line straight into the backseat window. The glass burst, the car squealed to a stop, the driver jumped out. Jimmy ran and the driver spotted us. I turned, ran after Jimmy. David fell behind, puffing for breath. I turned to him. “Hurry up!”
“I am,” he said. He still held the box. I knocked it out of his hand.
“Your garage,” I said, “and keep Rex quiet.”
I let him get ahead, then I followed a few steps behind. At the top of the ravine, David fell and slid down the hill. I looked back: the driver was gingerly stepping around the corner of the apartment building. I paused, waited for him to see me, then ran to my left, along the edge of the ravine. To keep from slipping, I drove my feet hard into the crusty snow. The man was gaining on me. I descended into the ravine, then followed the bottom all the way to Hinton Street. I crossed in the semi-darkness between streetlamps. Mrs. Graves’ sideyard was glare ice and I fell. I got up, my knee and hip aching, and made it through her yard to the alley, where her wall of arborvitae shielded me. I paused, gasping.
Suddenly, the man emerged from the ravine into Hinton Street. I ran down the alley, crossed Fuller Street and leapt into the ditch. Hoping he hadn’t seen me, I scrambled to the ice-choked culvert and squeezed inside, legs first. I steadied my breath, then took off my hat and listened. The culvert was a vacuum: no light or sound. I reached my hand inside my jacket and felt my heart thump. My pants sopped up the icy water of the culvert and my thighs grew numb. My bad knee throbbed. I lay there as long as I could stand it. It might have been thirty minutes, or maybe five.
I kept away from the light of streetlamps, weaving my way through backyards and sideyards, as I made my way to David’s. He was in the garage, at his father’s workbench. Rex sniffed at my wet pants, then lay down on a bed of blankets in the corner.
“God, it took you long enough,” David said. He picked up a wrench and examined it carefully as if I had interrupted him in the middle of an emergency repair.
“I got away,” I said.
He eyed me from head to toe, then chuckled. “What happened to you? It looks like you had an accident.” I looked down. My jeans were wet from knees to crotch.
My throat tensed and my lips quivered. “I had to hide in a culvert.” My voice sounded angry.
He looked down at my pants again. “You’d better change your clothes.” I saw his lips nudge into a half-smile. My jaw tightened. Didn’t he know the risk I’d faced to save him? He said, “I’ve got to go in.” He dropped the wrench into the toolbox. “Come on, boy.” Rex trotted behind him and they both disappeared into the house.
David had turned on me. As I walked home, my body throbbed, shivered. My knee ached. The skin of my thighs rubbed against the icy, hard denim of my jeans. My hip was stiffening up and my skin felt hard and my bones brittle.
* * * *
I locked the door behind me. All the postcards Dad had sent to me were spread out on the kitchen table. There was a note. “When you get home, you have some explaining to do.” She had been in my underwear drawer. She had been under my mattress.
Barnaby Jones was on TV. Mom was asleep on the couch; her glass was empty. Later, I would have to rinse it out. That task had fallen to me, too.
As I passed through the living room, Mom grumbled something in her sleep. In the dark of the staircase, I began stripping off my wet clothes.
I threw them in a pile in my bedroom. I took my pajamas with me and walked naked into the bathroom, started the bath water, then wrapped a towel around my waist. I sat on the toilet and waited. I saw her legs in her blue jeans; I saw her snug cotton sweater, her small breasts pushing out; I saw her shy smile, beautiful even with her braces. I saw all of her and I wondered what it would feel like to press up against her.
I dipped my toe in the water, then turned the temperature up and let it run a few seconds more. I closed the bathroom door and took off the towel. I stepped into the water, and my body flared with pain, especially my knee. I sat down and the water seared my butt. Then I lay down and pulled the shower curtain shut, tight. David seemed far away. The heat of the water now spread through me; my whole body tingled. I closed my eyes and saw black dots against a bright red field. Julie came back into my head, and I started to rub myself.
It was then I heard Mom call to me from the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t answer. “Are you up there, Joey?” she asked, again.
I sat upright, leaned forward. “Yes.”
I heard her feet on the stairs and I held my breath. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t breathe. She was outside the bathroom door. “When did you get in?”
Leaning forward, eyes closed, feeling my breath. “A while ago.”
There was a moment of silence, then her footsteps moved away, down the hall. I ran the hot water again. Steam rose in the tub. I lay back in the water and tried to relax. Sweat trickled down my face. I reminded myself that I had to call Julie.
Mom knocked on the door. I sat up, slowly, quietly. I waited.
“Joey. Joey, can I come in and talk? I need to talk.”
“Just a minute—I’m almost done.”
“You can finish up while we talk.” The door clicked and swung open. Bent way forward, I saw my mother’s figure, blurred by the shower curtain, move across the room. She set a glass on the vanity, then lowered the toilet lid and sat down.
“What do you want for Christmas, Joey?”
“I already told you, Mom.”
“That’s right. Your dad . . . You’re a good boy, Joe. You know that—don’t you, Joey?” She paused. “Don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. I sat still, leaning forward.
“Everything will be okay with us, Joey.” Her words were thick from brandy. “We need to look after each other.” There was a pause. I could see the shadow-figure of her body, limp, with hands folded on her lap. She reached for her glass, took a drink, set the glass down.
I looked at the bath fixtures, the wall before me. A thin, even line of grey caulk filled the gap where the ceramic tile met the porcelain of the tub.
“You’re a good boy, Joey. Not like your father. You’re a good boy, aren’t you?” she asked. I said nothing. I wanted her to be gone. I closed my eyes and tried to picture Julie. All I saw were black dots against the flame-red field of my eyelids. “We’ve got to stick together, Joey. Do you understand that? I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She stopped. I thought she might be leaving and I opened my eyes. She lit a cigarette. “You’re a good boy. Do you understand that? Do you understand what I mean?”
I tried to think of dancing close with Julie. I couldn’t picture it. “Yes,” I said
“He’s never coming back.”
She talked for a long time. I sat there, bent over and still. I vaguely remembered helping my father to do this, to re-caulk the tub, and I wondered where he was right then.
Jeff Moreland was born and raised in Wisconsin. His work has appeared in The Apple Valley Review, The William and Mary Review, and The Cream City Review. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and taught high school English for twenty years before attending the M.A. program in Fiction Writing at UW-Milwaukee. He currently lives in West Allis, Wisconsin, with his girlfriend and a rescued cat and dog.