If Wylie noticed it, he gave no sign. He tucked his long hair delicately behind his ears and ate two servings of bacon and eggs. The silence didn’t seem to bother him even a bit. He put away five pieces of toast, an entire sliced tomato, and three glasses of juice.
When he finished, my mother ordered us to do the dishes, then wiped her lips with a napkin and gathered up her purse and keys.
“I have to go to work now, because that’s what responsible people do,” she said. “You will be here tonight when I get home at five.” She waited for Wylie to answer, but he didn’t. “Lynnie,” she added, and I nodded to make it clear I understood.
The silence lasted while I did the dishes and Wylie dried them and put everything away. I was looking forward to hitting the couch and checking on my old friends in celebrity television, with maybe a side trip to the Weather Channel. But Wylie’d started jittering — tapping his toes, just like our mother, and glancing out the window every fifteen seconds — and I felt compelled to pick up where her staring had left off.
He looked at me, annoyed. “Are you going to do this all day?”
“You heard Mom. If you leave, my life won’t be worth living.”
“Lynn, leave me alone. Where I’m going, you can’t follow.”
“And where is that?”
“To the bathroom.”
“So you’re not leaving, right? Promise me.”
Wylie sighed, and I stared at him until he nodded.
“Okay,” he said, “promise.”
I let him go. I stretched out on the couch, feeling drowsy— still tired from the night before — and when I woke up there was a coin of drool on the couch cushion and a woman on television extolling the long-lasting clean of a brand-new detergent. The house seemed ominously quiet.
I jumped up, checked the bathroom and the bedroom where I’d been staying, then doubled back to the living room and kitchen. It wasn’t like there were a lot of places he could hide, but I kept circling through the condo, purposeless and rushed, the way you do in dreams. The Caprice still sat in the driveway, its ivory paint glowing dully in the yellow light of the afternoon. I hopped up and down on the baking asphalt and then headed around back, where my mother maintained a small patch of lawn, and on a shady strip of ground along the side of the house I found Wylie, still moderately clean, snoring in the dirt.
One arm was flung over his side in a gesture of total exhaustion. He looked as if he’d literally fallen down asleep. For a couple minutes I sat in the weeds and studied him: the veins roping down his tanned legs, the slack fabric of my father’s too-big shirt against his chest, his nicks and bruises and scars. With shorter hair and glasses, I thought, he’d look eerily like the pictures I’d seen of my father as a young man. Did my mother see this too, every time she looked at him? I didn’t know how she could stand it. Seeing him now, exposed and asleep and alive, was almost more than I could handle.
I reached out and flicked my index finger against the thickly callused sole of his right foot, which he moved. I flicked the other foot and he moved that one too, then moaned softly. I flicked his arm and said, “Hey. Wake up.” He nestled his cheek deeper into the dirt, apparently too comfortable to budge. “Let’s play cards,” I said. “Or Monopoly. I’m bored.”
After some more flicking and a couple of well-placed pokes, he opened his bleary eyes. The circles beneath them had faded to a vaguer blue. “What are you, six years old?”
“I bet I can still beat you at hearts.”
“In your dreams,” he said.
“My years away from the game have only sharpened my thirst for victory,” I told him.
He sat up. He’d tied his hair back again, and although it was still shiny and thick, he’d managed to rub some dirt and weeds into it during his nap. He was looking like his old self again. “Youth and ability are on my side,” he said. “Let’s go.”
We spent the afternoon playing cards and drinking orange juice in the quiet living room, listening to so-called edgy pop music on the radio. I had the feeling that our truce would hold as long as I didn’t mention guerrilla tactics, mother’s wishes, alternative lifestyles, or weird friends. As a result conversation was limited. We stuck to the game and, in a hobby that dated back to childhood, the construction of elaborate snacks from whatever we could find in the kitchen. After a multi-course meal involving peanut butter, chips and salsa, bananas, ice cream, and popcorn dusted with Parmesan cheese, another round of napping ensued.
Our mother came home at the dot of five, and she didn’t come alone. Two seconds after I heard her pull into the driveway, a second car parked alongside the curb. David Michaelson stepped out into the street wearing another Western-style shirt and blue jeans held up with an elephantine silver buckle that would have been useful for attracting the attention of search-and-rescue planes overhead. Two young men then emerged, each a variation on the theme of David Michaelson: beefy, with dark curly hair and thick chests, but slimmer and clean-shaven. They had to be Donny and Darren, the sports stars.
“Oh, God,” I said.
Wylie didn’t even look up from his most recent snack, an open-face sandwich layered with tuna fish, cheddar cheese, shredded carrots, and olives. “And you wonder why I don’t like to come home.”
The Michaelsons helped unload countless grocery bags from our mother’s car and conveyed them up to the front door, as Wylie and I braced ourselves in the living room.
Our mother came inside first and greeted us with a brisk smile. “Children,” she said.
We were having a dinner party. Our mother established headquarters in the kitchen and ordered everyone about: arranging for the unstocking of groceries, the placement of appetizers, the ordering of cocktails.
“Lynn,” David said. “Wylie. What can I offer you both to drink? I believe we’ve got a full bar.”
I looked at Wylie, who sat with his head bowed, licking tuna juice off his thumb. “I’ll have some wine,” I said. “I’m sure Wylie wants a beer.”
“Alrighty then!” David slapped a large hand on my shoulder and went back into the kitchen, crossing paths with his sons, who sat down and slouched back in their chairs, so far that their muscular legs were almost parallel with their heads. Their faces were pale. I knew they both spent a lot of time playing hockey, but couldn’t remember which was Donny and which was Darren.
“So,” one of them said. “Long time no see.” He was wearing shorts and a pair of flip-flops with little fishes stuck on the plastic stems between his toes.
I gave them what I hoped was a polite smile. “Since we used to live next door, I guess,” I said.
“Yep,” the other one said. “Long time.”
When their father came back with the drinks, I drank half of mine and asked them how school was going. One of them launched into a complicated story about a fierce rivalry with another team, a saga of violence and retribution that had been going on all season. This led to a greatest-hits list of reminiscences, with highlights about practical jokes and personal vendettas. “So then we go, right?” Donny or Darren said. “And he body-checks me? And gets thrown out of the game?”
“That landed Donny in the hospital,” David said to me. He was sipping from a glass of red wine, and the bottom of his mustache was wet. “He had to have sixteen stitches. This kid was violent.”
“And that’s when Darren hatched his nefarious plan.”