“You know,” he said, “I can’t say a damn thing.” He put his hand out, resting it heavily on Steven’s chest, and just sat there.
“What do you want to say?”
“I really don’t even know that.”
Well, that was okay, but it got uncomfortable. Steven, to say something, asked for another sip of water.
“How’s the pain?” Big Ed asked. “You need some more pills?”
“No, okay?”
“You’re the boss.”
The room got blurred up slightly. He leaned his head back against the pillow. “What’s in those things? The pills, I mean.”
Ed picked up the little brown plastic bottle. He said: “It’s called Percodan. ‘Extremely addictive. Use only under the direction of a physician.’ Well, we’re doing that.”
Steven said: “I don’t think I’m addicted. I really don’t want it, except for the pain. It makes me too tired.”
Ed put the bottle back down. “Well, that’s what it’s for.” He shifted again on the bed, as though he were thinking about getting up. But this was one of the longest conversations Steven had ever had with him, and he wanted to keep him there without being too nerdy about it.
“You know, drugs aren’t that cool,” he said, then blurted ahead. “I smoked some weed with the guys that beat me up.”
His dad simply nodded, taking it in. “How’d you like it?”
“You’re not mad?”
“I’ll get mad later. Right now I’m still just glad you’re alive. You mind if I have some of your water?” He poured half a glass and downed it in a gulp. “The pitcher’s almost empty,” he said.
He got up, blocking the light from the door as he passed through it, and left Steven alone. He heard a clock ticking somewhere, then some water running in the bathroom down the hall. He looked around the dark room at the rock-and-roll posters. Suddenly he didn’t like them very much. They seemed kind of phony and stupid. They were one of the few things he and Eddie hadn’t agreed on, but Steven had always felt that he had to have something that set him apart at home so they’d know he was alive.
His father returned with the pitcher filled up and sat back down where he’d been, on the side of the bed. Steven’s foot was beginning to throb slightly.
“You want to do me a favor?” his dad asked.
“Sure.”
“You want to try those things, try ’em at home.”
“I don’t think I-”
But Big Ed interrupted. “Look, there’s going to be lots of things like marijuana. Beer, for example. Or maybe cigarettes or cigars or something, although God forbid you get into that. Sex…”
Steven almost jumped at the word.
“Sex, no, don’t bring that home.”
Was Pop, grinning at him like they were friends, saying this stuff out loud to him? It blew him away. “But the other stuff- you want to experiment, even with some other guys, you bring ’em around and go out to the garage and check it out. But do it here, okay? So we can be sure you’re all right.”
“You’d let me smoke weed?”
“I wouldn’t be too thrilled about it. I wouldn’t want it to become a habit, but it probably wouldn’t kill you. It didn’t last weekend, did it?”
“Almost.”
Steven hung his chin down to the cast, but Big Ed lifted his head with a finger. “You’re gonna do things we don’t like. Hell, I’m sure we do things you hate. But we’re living together here, and everybody cuts everybody else a little slack so we can get along. The main thing is we’re a family, we stick together. Sound like a deal?” He punched him lightly under the chin.
That hurt a little, jerking the collarbone around, but obviously Big Ed hadn’t meant it and Steven would take a lot more physical pain than that if his dad would talk to him like this once in a while.
“But what about Mom?” Steven asked.
“What about her?”
“What if she doesn’t, uh, want to let me do stuff? Or even want me around?”
Ed slumped. His face clouded over. “Of course your mother wants you around.”
Steven tried a response, but it didn’t work. Big Ed sighed deeply. “Your mother is having a hard time, Steven. We’re all having a hard time.”
“You don’t think I wish Eddie were still here?”
“No, I know you do. It’s not that. It’s just your mother… she’s…”
“She wishes it would have been me instead of Eddie.”
Ed shook his head. “No, she doesn’t. Not on any level. She loves you, too, just like she loved Eddie.”
There wasn’t any use arguing over that one.
“She’s just having a hard time accepting it. Her world’s all turned around, and maybe she’d doesn’t know where to put things so well for a while. Haven’t you ever felt like that?”
He nodded.
“So, what I was saying about giving people some slack, maybe you’ve gotta be the first one. Try and understand what she’s going through if you can.”
“I know what she’s going through. I miss Eddie too. So bad.”
Big Ed took a deep breath. He swallowed, then jerked his head around toward the hallway. Still looking away, he spoke hoarsely. “We’re all taking it differently, I suppose.”
Steven’s foot was really hurting now. He kept forgetting how bad it was, and hoping every time that it would let up the next time the pills wore off, but that wasn’t happening yet.
He let a long time go by, or what seemed a long time, with his dad staring off somewhere breathing hard every couple of seconds. Then he said, “Pop.”
Big Ed slowly came back around.
“I think I need one of those pills pretty soon. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
“Yeah there is, Pop. There really is.”
His dad reached for the medicine bottle, opened it and shook out two pills. “Well, let’s start fresh, then. We’ve got a hell of a family left here, okay?”
He popped the pills and drank a little of the water.
“Maybe Frannie’s kid will make up for Eddie a little. Mom might like that.”
Big Ed jerked again as though he’d been stung. “Frannie’s kid? What do you mean, Frannie’s kid?”
It frightened him, Ed almost yelling like that. “You know, the kid Frannie’s gonna have. Her and Eddie’s kid.”
“Frannie’s pregnant?”
He strained to remember. Who had told him that? Damn. The pills were working gangbusters already. His eyelids were lead.
Was it Jodie? He was sure it wasn’t Mom. No, it wasn’t her. Maybe Frannie while she’d been staying here?
He couldn’t put his finger on the exact time he found out. “I don’t know,” he said lamely, “maybe I just dreamed it. I don’t remember.” But he knew he hadn’t been dreaming at all. He couldn’t recall even a scene from one dream.
Big Ed seemed to calm down. He put his palm flat against Steven’s forehead again. “It’s okay,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll find out about that tomorrow.”
He felt his dad’s bulk get up from the bed. Big Ed’s hand went through his hair, surprisingly gentle, and he felt a kiss on his forehead.
Maybe Pop did love him. And if he could only do something so Mom might think he was okay, they could all live together, maybe someday be happy again.
But it was getting harder, almost impossible, to keep thinking. He was sure Frannie was pregnant, but if Jodie and Mom and Frannie hadn’t told him, who had? The only other people he’d talked to had been Father Jim last night and that guy Hardy today. And how would either of them know? Frannie would definitely have told Mom first, wouldn’t she?
The light faded, then was out completely. He forced his lids apart, and there was Eddie standing in front of one of his posters, just looking down at him, smiling. He went to reach out to him, but then he was asleep.
Hardy, slouched over the table, was looking into the priest’s face perhaps a foot from his. Something was there, still unsaid after a lot of talking, and the idea kept popping up between them like an insistent panhandler checking out the pickings at the late-night tables in near-empty bars.