“Nice to be home,” he said at breakfast, which was Cheerios, bacon and eggs, raisin-cinnamon toast, orange juice, coffee, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. For lunch there would be homemade split-pea soup, Waldorf salad, fried bologna sandwiches, and warm brownies. For dinner, a slow-cooked pot roast with carrots, potatoes, and scallions, braised brussels sprouts, a citrus congealed salad, and double-fudge chocolate cake with Blue Bell ice cream. Denise had taken the day off from work, “this special day” she kept saying at breakfast, which Kathryn echoed in swoony Hallmark tones, then Ray tumped the coffeepot and placidly motored into the den, leaving the mess for everyone else to clean up. As they hurtled around the kitchen with rags and paper towels, the Fox News theme came thundering from the den.
“Does he watch that all day?” Billy asked. His mother and sisters turned to him with long-suffering eyes. Welcome to our world.
After breakfast Billy took his little nephew out to play. It was a mellow fall morning, the blue sky-dome stretched high and tight with that sweet winesap smell in the air, the honeyed, vaguely melancholy scent of vegetable ferment and illegal leaf burns. Billy figured they were good for ten, maybe fifteen minutes before he, Billy, was bored out of his mind, but half an hour later they were still at it. Based on his highly limited experience with small children, Billy had always regarded the pre-K set as creatures on the level of not-very-interesting pets, thus he was unprepared for the phenomenal variety of his little nephew’s play. Whatever came to hand, the kid devised some form of interaction with it. Flowers, pet and sniff. Dirt, dig. Cyclone fence, rattle and climb, grit links between teeth. Squirrels, harass with feebly launched sticks. “Why?” he kept asking in his sweetly belling voice, its tone as pure as marbles swirled around a crystal pail. Why him wun up the twee? Why him nest up theah? Why him gadder nuts? Why? Why? Why? And Billy answering every question to the best of his ability, as if anything less would disrespect the deep and maybe even divine force that drove his little nephew toward universal knowledge.
What to call it — the spark of God? Survival instinct? The souped-up computer of an apex brain evolved from eons in the R&D of natural selection? You could practically see the neurons firing in the kid’s skull. His body was all spring and torque, a bundle of fast-twitch muscles that exuded faint floral whiffs of ripe pear. So much perfection in such a compact little person — Billy had to tackle him from time to time, wrestle him squealing to the ground just to get that little rascal in his hands, just your basic adorable thirty-month-old with big blue eyes clear as chlorine pools and Huggies poking out of his stretchy-waist jeans. So is this what they meant by the sanctity of life? A soft groan escaped Billy when he thought about that, the war revealed in this fresh and gruesome light. Oh. Ugh. Divine spark, image of God, suffer the little children and all that — there’s real power when words attach to actual things. Made him want to sit right down and weep, as powerful as that. He got it, yes he did, and when he came home for good he’d have to meditate on this, but for now it was best to compartmentalize, as they said, or even better not to mentalize at all.
Patty emerged from the house, shading her eyes against the sun. She took a seat on a lawn chair at the edge of the patio.
“You guys having fun?”
“You bet.” Billy was rolling Brian around as if breading a fish filet, coating his sweater with crunchy brown leaves. “He’s an amazing little guy.”
Patty snuffled a laugh around the cigarette she was lighting. Former hell-raiser, high school dropout, teenage bride; in her midtwenties she seemed to have slowed down enough to start thinking about it all.
“He sure doesn’t lack for energy,” Billy called.
“Briny’s got two speeds, fast and shut off.” Her lips produced a tight funnel of smoke.
“How’s Pete?”
“Fine,” she said, a bit wearily it seemed. Her husband, Pete, worked the oil rigs around Amarillo. “Still crazy.”
“Is that good?”
She just smiled and looked away. In Billy’s memory she was always so lithe and bold; now she was packing saddlebags on her hips and thighs, spare tubes on her upper arms. With the extra weight had come an almost palpable air of apology.
“When do you go back?”
“Saturday.”
“You ready?”
“Well.” Billy gave Brian a last roll, and stood. “I guess I’d just as soon stay here.”
Patty laughed. “That sounds like an honest answer.” Billy walked over and sat on the low patio wall near her chair. Brian remained where Billy left him, lying flat on his back, staring up at the sky. Patty cut her brother a shy look. “How does it feel to be famous?”
Billy shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”
“All right then, sort of famous. A lot more famous than the rest of us’ll ever be.” She had a taste of her cigarette, tapped off the ash. “You know, you sort of surprised a lot of people around here. I don’t think this was what they were expecting when they put you up in front of that judge.”
“I know I didn’t have the best reputation around here. But I wasn’t the worst fuckup in my grade.”
She laughed.
“Or maybe it’s just…”
“What.”
“I just hated school so much, hated everything about it. I’m starting to think that was what was fucked up, a lot more than me? Keeping us locked up all day, treating us like children, making us learn a lot of shit about nothing. I think it made me sort of crazy.”
Patty chuckled, a low gunning of the sinuses. “Well, I guess you showed them. What you did over there—”
Billy hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and looked away.
“—that was something. And we’re all really proud of you, your family. But I guess you already know that.”
Billy tipped his head toward the house. Out here the roar of the TV was an underwater growl. “Not him.”
“No, him too. He just doesn’t know how to show it.”
“He’s an asshole,” Billy said, lowering his voice for Brian’s sake.
“That too,” Patty acknowledged pleasantly. “You notice I was never much interested in hanging around the house? Mainly I just feel sorry for him now. But then I don’t have to live with him, do I.” She shrugged, examined her cigarette. “You heard the latest? About the house?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s kind of fucked.” She did that gunning chuckle again, a nervous habit. Billy wished she’d stop. Out in the yard Brian was sweeping his arms and legs back and forth, making leaf angels.
“Mom wants to take a loan out on the house. She says there’s a hundred, hundred ten equity in it, she wants to use that to pay down the medical bills. Kathryn looked into it and she’s like, no way, you can file for bankruptcy and wipe out most of the medical bills, plus you get to keep the house. But if she does the equity loan and then can’t make the payments, she and dad lose the house. And even with the money from the equity loan, they’re still gonna owe a ton of medical bills.”
A ton. Define ton. Billy was afraid to ask. Random neighborhood sounds came their way — a dog barking, a car door slamming somewhere, a stack of two-by-fours clattering to the ground.
“What do you think she should do?”
“No-brainer, dude. File for bankruptcy and keep the house.”
“So why won’t she?”
“Because she’s worried what everybody else might think. And Kat and me are like, who gives a flyer what people think, you can’t gamble the house.” Patty crushed her cigarette against the patio wall. “You know what Idis McArthur told her after church one day?”