Shelly pressed her face against the screen, coughed one more time, and sucked deep of the clean summer night air, looked at the empty driveway, the dark land around the house. In the distance, over the low treetops, she could see the lights from the highway.
“Mom,” she said, not turning back, “we got to go downstairs and help out Blaine. I think he got messed up with the tar baby. He — he was picking on me, and he turned around and went downstairs, and I think he’s in the basement…”
Shelly paused. In the distance, she could hear a car engine straining up a hill; crickets rubbed their legs together in the long grass of their front yard, and the thin breeze made the leaves of the birch-tree around the side rustle like paper. From inside the house, she heard a sound that must have been the refrigerator, a rattling whine as the compressors got going.
From Mom, she didn’t hear a thing.
Shelly took another breath, turned around to face the bed and made her way slowly to the still, dark form laying atop the sheets. Shelly swallowed hard. The tar smell was pretty awful as she got closer, but she was expecting it now and she knew better than to breathe too deep.
Shelly stopped by her bedside, and looked down at her mother, Mom lay flat on her back, buck-naked, on top of the bedspread still wet with shower-water. Her feet were apart, and her hands were spread from her torso so no limb touched another. The tar had tinted her flesh from head to foot; it matted her hair, and gathered in globs around her shoulders and across her wide breasts, like tiny birthmarks. Mom’s eyes were open, and they looked at Shelly steadily. Her chest swelled as she drew a breath to speak.
“Mom’s not—” she paused, shut her eyes, and continued, her voice rough and deep, like she had a cold “—not feeling good now, honey. You go to bed.”
Shelly shook her head. “No, Mom, I was telling you: Blaine’s gone to the basement, I think.” She stomped her foot, and heard her voice go whiny. “You got to come!”
“No good,” said Mom. “Knee’s acting up again.”
“I think Blaine’s in trouble, Mom. You got to come help him.”
Mom licked her lips, then made a face like she’d bit a lemon.
“Tar’s everywhere,” she said. “Even on m’ mouth.”
“Mom—”
“Hey!” Mom’s voice took some energy. “Don’t you take that tone with me! This is my house, Missy!”
Mom lifted her hand up, as if to cuff Shelly, but she didn’t get far: whether it took strength or will to pull away from her bed, Mom didn’t seem to have enough of either.
“Your Daddy,” she said, “is a very bad man.”
Shelly opened her mouth to argue some more — to point out that Dad wasn’t the one who wouldn’t get out of bed to help his son; that Dad had paid for his crimes, if he’d even done them in the first place; that Mom wasn’t always the nicest lady in town either. But she remembered why she was here: Blaine, she feared, had gotten himself into some pretty immediate trouble; and Mom was in some kind of trouble too. She didn’t like to move around much as a rule since her knee had gotten hurt, but tonight, it seemed like she was drained. It was like when that tar baby had latched onto her breast, it had sucked something vital out of her.
“Don’t know why I married him,” said Mom, shutting her eyes.
“Maybe,” said Shelly, “Dad would be better if you didn’t keep being so mean.”
Mom’s brow crinkled.
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Shelly,” she said.
“I know what I see.” Shelly stepped away from the bed. “Dad trying to fix things, and you lying in that bed.”
Mom’s eyes opened now, and Shelly could see they were wet with tears. Now she did lift her hand, and brushed the air near Shelly’s arm. Shelly flinched away — she didn’t want those sticky-black fingers anywhere near her.
“You don’t know him,” said Mom, her voice nearly a whisper.
“He’s my Dad,” said Shelly. “Never mind about Blaine. I’ll just help him myself.”
Shelly stepped back into the hallway. A taste of salt came into her mouth as she closed the door on her Mom, but she swallowed it and made her way downstairs.
Dad had left the light on in the kitchen, and he’d left his empty beer out and Shelly’s empty Coke-can out too. The smell was better down here, because he’d also left the kitchen door open, and a breeze washed through the screen door and through all the rooms on the first floor.
And of course the door to the basement was shut tight.
Shelly knocked on the door. “Blaine?” she called. “You all right?”
“Shelly!” Blaine sounded like he was muffled by something, talking through the hood of his snowsuit. “Shelly! I’m sorry I called you names!”
Shelly stepped back from the door. Now it was her turn to be speechless; in all her life, Blaine had never once apologized for anything.
“Shelly? You still there, Shelly?”
“I’m here,” she said, cautiously.
“I’m sorry, Shelly!”
Shelly took a breath. “You’re forgiven.”
“Great,” said Blaine, and his voice returned nearer to normal.
“Give me a hand down here, will you? Bring down a towel, and—”
“—some turpentine?” Shelly finished for him.
Blaine laughed nervously.
“Yeah,” he said.
Shelly laughed as well. It was like a weight had been lifted from her. All the way down the stairs, she was sure whatever happened with Mom had also happened with Blaine; the tar baby would suck the life out of him like it did from Mom. But he sounded okay, even improved by the experience.
Shelly went over to the counter, where Dad had put the can of turpentine, and lifted it down. She grabbed a tea-towel from the handle to the stove. “I’m—”
She was about to say coming, but she stopped, as a set of headlights appeared at the end of the driveway, and the sound of a truck engine broke the quiet. Bright headlights washed across the kitchen, shuffling shadows from one end of the room to another.
The truck rolled to a stop beside the kitchen — it was a big pickup truck, painted bright red, and Dad sat in the driver’s seat. In the passenger seat, Shelly saw, was a long-haired, bearded man she hadn’t seen in a couple of years: since when she was really small, and Dad hadn’t been to prison for his second time.
It was Mark Hollins.
The man Dad had robbed the grocery store with — the one who’d gotten off with hardly any time in jail at all. He was laughing at something Dad was saying, and then he stopped and looked in through the window — straight at Shelly. He was still smiling, at least with his mouth — but his eyes had a different kind of look to them. If Shelly had been thinking of enlisting Dad’s help in cleaning up her brother, pulling him out of whatever he’d tangled himself up in downstairs, the look in Mark Hollins’ eyes dissuaded her.
“Shelly!” Blaine’s voice was plaintive. “Come on!”
Shelly looked away from Hollins, and opened the basement door.
“I’m coming,” she said. By the time Dad and Mark Hollins were out of the new truck, Shelly had closed the door behind her and was making her way down to where Blaine had gotten himself stuck.
The air had been okay on the first floor, but it was bad again in the basement. Shelly wasn’t caught by surprise by it this time, though; even before she turned on the light, she expected the tar baby’s stink would be the worst where it lived.
When she turned on the light, Shelly thought she might never breathe right again.