Peter said, “How you doing there?” His voice was perfectly friendly.
“Doing fine,” she said. “I’m just making a grocery list for supper. And Cheryl’s off swimming in the Dumont girls’ grandma’s pool, and Erland’s here in the kitchen.”
“Very cozy,” Peter said.
“I’m thinking I might fix my chicken-rice dish.”
“As for me, I’m going to eat at the club,” he said. “The usual something-stuffed-with-something, I suppose. Jim and Sarah Burns invited me.”
“That’ll be nice.”
“Well, as long as Sarah doesn’t get going on those genius kids of theirs,” he said.
“Is everything all right with the house?”
“Yep. Manuela came to clean this morning. I think she asked me where you were, but you know I can’t understand a single thing she says.”
“You did see to it she got her money, though, right?”
“Of course I did. How’s it going with Denise?”
“It’s going fine,” she said.
She didn’t tell him Denise could manage the stairs now. Or that she’d gone back to work.
After she hung up, Erland asked, “Who was that?”
“Peter, of course,” she told him. “Who else would I call ‘honey’?”
“Well, Sean maybe.”
“No,” she said, and then she wondered why it was any of Erland’s business, and what gave him the right to sprawl here so intrusively with his long stringy legs stretched halfway across the kitchen floor and his elf hat pulled over his ears. She frowned at him, but he was too intent on prying into her life to notice. He asked, “How come Peter left before you did? Did you-all have a fight?”
“No, we did not have a fight,” she said. “He just needed to get back to work.”
“His lawyer work, right?”
“Right,” she said. She was dragging a step stool over to the cupboard above the stove now, hoping to locate some rice.
“Is he the kind of lawyer for criminals, or what?”
“No, for mergers and acquisitions.”
“What’re those?”
She didn’t answer, because she couldn’t imagine that he really wanted to know. She stepped up onto the stool and peered into the depths of the cupboard.
“It would be handier if he was a criminal lawyer,” Erland said in a thoughtful tone.
“Handier in what way?” she asked. Oh, good: rice. A cup or so in a cellophane bag. She grabbed hold of it and got down off the stool.
“Like if you were ever arrested, for instance,” Erland said. “When the cops allowed you one phone call, you would have someone to call.”
“That does set my mind at rest,” Willa told him. She put the stool back in the broom closet.
“ ‘Because otherwise, what would a person do? Me, for instance: I would have no idea who to call.”
“Why not Sir Joe?” Willa asked.
“Sir Joe is not a lawyer!”
“No, but he could ask around for one.”
“Who would he know to ask?”
“Well, Erland?” she said. “It looks like you’ll just have to not get arrested.”
He slumped in his seat.
“My recipe uses breast meat,” Willa said, mostly to herself, “but I’m thinking I’ll change that to thighs and just up the baking time. Thighs have a lot more flavor.”
“When I was a kid,” Erland said, “I used to collect all these useful tips for criminals from the back pages of comic books. Well, they didn’t say they were for criminals, but who else was going to need them, right? They told how to cover your footprints and all; how to not leave fingerprints. Like, did you know you can make an impression of a key by mashing it into a warm Hershey bar? If you wanted to steal someone’s keys without them finding out, let’s say. Only thing I couldn’t figure was, when you asked the locksmith to cut you a key from the pattern on a Hershey bar, wouldn’t he want to know why?”
“Well, or even if he didn’t,” Willa said, “how would he physically fit the Hershey bar into his cutting machine?”
“Now that I think about it, I bet they just made up that tip to fool little kids with,” Erland said.
He started chewing on a fingernail. Willa hated when people did that. She looked away; she wrote “chicken thighs” on her grocery list.
“Could Peter be a criminal lawyer right now if he wanted to, or would he have to go back to school first?” Erland asked, speaking indistinctly.
“I’m not sure,” she said. She glanced over at him again. “Stop doing that,” she said.
He took his finger out of his mouth and sent her a cowed look.
“Sorry,” she told him. “It makes my teeth twang when I see people biting their nails.”
“Okay,” he said meekly.
“Sorry,” she said again. She really was sorry; she knew she’d been rude. To make amends, she said, “Wouldn’t you like to take your hat off? You must be roasting.”
“Naw, I’m okay.”
“How come you wear a knit hat in the summertime, anyhow?”
“I’ve got this real frizzy hair,” he said.
“Well, I know what that’s like.”
He obviously didn’t believe her. “No, like even my frizzes have frizzes,” he told her. “If I was to take my hat off, right away every hair on my head would be zinging up a storm. I’d look like those circus clowns with the big poufs of curls sticking out on both sides.”
He had those anyway, but Willa didn’t point that out. She said, “When I was a teenager, I used to squeeze my head into a tied-off length of nylon stocking every night at bedtime. It didn’t work, though. Now I just get treatments.”
“Treatments?”
“At my beauty parlor.”
He squinted at her skeptically.
“You’ll see what I’m talking about if I stay around much longer,” she told him. “Already it’s beginning to feel a little bit crinkly.”
She lifted one hand to her hair and made tiny pinching motions to demonstrate, but Erland didn’t seem impressed. He started biting his nail again, and then stopped himself. He said, “I wish I was a grownup.”
“Well, kids can get treatments too, you know. Not that I’m saying you should.”
“I just hate this not being in charge of my own life,” he said.
“Oh. Well. Right,” Willa said. She had never been one of those grownups who told young people they were lucky to be young.
“Did you-all get a phone call from that cop guy?” he asked suddenly.
“What cop guy?”
“The one that was going around before asking who saw the shooting.”
“No,” Willa said, “I don’t think so.”
“He phoned Sir Joe last night. He said he was checking did any of us have any new thoughts on the subject.”
“Denise didn’t mention it,” Willa said.
He gave a furious swipe to his nose with the back of his hand. Willa looked at him more closely. “Erland?” she asked.
No answer.
“Erland? Is something wrong?”
He made a giant sniffing sound. Willa passed him a paper napkin from the basket on the table, and he took it without looking at her and blew his nose.
“It was me,” he told her in a muffled voice.
“Excuse me?”
He folded the napkin to a dry spot and blew again. “I’m the one that shot her,” he said.
Willa pulled a chair out from the table and sat down.
“I didn’t do it on purpose, honest,” he said. “I was just trying to stop this guy from waving a gun around. I didn’t mean to shoot her.”
“Better start at the beginning,” she told him.
He drew in a breath and said, “Well. I’ve go
t this friend, right? Or kind of a friend. Magnus, his name is. I know him from my chemistry class; he was the Locker Bomber.”
“The what?”
“But don’t tell anybody, okay? I mean, he doesn’t do that anymore. So anyhow, on the day I’m talking about I ran into him at the deli. And when we left he started walking alongside me and so I was like, Whoa! Magnus the Locker Bomber is walking alongside of me! Because he’d never acted all that friendly up till then, see. And I was hoping he wouldn’t split at the next corner or whatever, so, I don’t know, I just happened to mention that my brother had a gun.”
“Sir Joe has a gun?”
“Right, and so—”
“What does he have a gun for?”
“What do you mean, what for? He just does. And I was, I don’t know, making small talk and I happened to tell Magnus about it. And he said he’d like to see it. And at first I was glad, because that meant he’d have to come home with me, and I said ‘Sure.’ So we went to my house and I unlocked the front door and Cheryl was all—”
“Cheryl was there?”
“Yeah, she was out front because lots of people were, they’re watching this noisy truck across the street, and she and Airplane are watching too but she stops watching and comes after us saying, ‘Hey, Erland, what you up to? Who’s that you got with you? Where you-all going?’ and like that. But I told her, ‘None of your business,’ and me and Magnus went on inside. Sir Joe keeps his gun in his mukluks, so—”
“In his what?”
“In these boot-looking Eskimo slippers that some girl gave him for Christmas one time. He says only fools keep their guns in their nightstands, because that’s where a burglar looks first. So me and Magnus go up to Sir Joe’s room and I get the gun from his mukluks and Magnus right away grabs it. He’s acting all expert, checking it out, looking down the barrel…He tucks it in the waist of his jeans and I say, ‘Okay, give it back now, hear?’ But he pays me no mind; walks out of the room with the gun still jammed in his jeans. ‘Magnus?’ I say. I’m following him. I’m starting to get mad. I say, ‘Come on now, Magnus, I’m serious,’ but he says, ‘What you in such a sweat about?’ and heads on down the stairs to where the front door is standing open and Cheryl is shading her eyes and looking in through the screen with Airplane next to her.”
“Cheryl!” Willa said.
“Yeah. I already told you. So Magnus says, ‘Out of my way, fatso’—talking to Cheryl, you know—and she steps back real quick and he walks onto the porch. And I’m following; I’m saying, ‘I mean it, Magnus,’ but he says, ‘Oh, Erikson, you are such a fag. Relax.’ And he takes hold of the gun and sticks it out straight-armed like he’s aiming across the street. I know he wouldn’t really have pulled the trigger, he’s not a total moron, but I was so damn mad, you know? I felt like the whole situation was just getting past my control. You know how when you’re mad you hear this kind of rushing sound in your ears? So I hear this rushing sound and I reach out and yank the gun away from him. I didn’t even think I’d get it! I thought he’d be hanging on too tight! But I guess he wasn’t expecting I’d grab it and so all at once it was there in my hand and then it kind of, you know. Went off.”
Willa groaned.
“I didn’t mean for it to,” he said.
She said, “What were you thinking? You could have shot Cheryl!”
“I know,” he said. “Or Airplane.”
“You’re an idiot!”
“But it went off all on its own, I swear! I thought it would be locked or something! And I’m so surprised I just drop it, and I’m standing there looking down at it and when I look up again, Magnus is clear to the street and walking fast. And first I think, Whew! Nobody noticed, because they’re still watching the truck; only one looking at me is Cheryl. Cheryl is, like, shocked. And then I see that Denise is sitting flat in her front yard and I think, Uh-oh.”
“You had no business letting that boy come anywhere near this neighborhood,” Willa said.
“I know! I know that! I just got carried away. I was trying to make an impression. I mean, Magnus Alden, Willa. And you don’t get what things have been like for me. I don’t have any friends. I’ve only been here two years and everyone else at school has known each other since kindergarten. And girls don’t like me, and teachers hate me, and the only sport I don’t suck at is baseball but the one time the coach let me play I made the final out and had to wear the Backpack of Shame.”
Willa looked at him blankly.
“Pink,” he said. “Pink satin. With rhinestones spelling out ‘Desiree’ across the back.”
“That is absolutely no excuse,” Willa told him.
“No, I realize that,” he said humbly.
“So Cheryl knows how her mother got shot?”
“Right.”
“Why didn’t she tell anyone?”
“She doesn’t want people finding out it was Sir Joe’s gun, is why. You know how she is about Sir Joe.”
“Still, though,” Willa said. “Under the circumstances…”
“But what’s bugging me is Sir Joe finding out himself,” Erland said. “I did put the gun back again exactly where I found it, but sooner or later he’s going to notice it’s been fired.”
“Good,” Willa said.
“He can’t, Willa. That can’t happen. Sir Joe’s my only relative.”
“So?”
“He’ll tell the police. He’ll let them send me to reform school; he’ll say I can’t live with him anymore. He didn’t want me in the first place, you know. I had to beg and plead with him. He said he wasn’t around enough to take good care of me and blah-blah-blah but I pleaded on bended knee, and even so he would have said no except I’d have had to go to a foster home and everyone’s heard what those are like.”
He dabbed at his nose with his napkin. Willa looked away.
“Maybe you could just clean the gun and reload it,” she said after a minute. “Or no, not that”—because she remembered all those newspaper stories about people who got killed cleaning guns. “Forget that,” she said firmly.
He looked relieved.
“Maybe he’ll just never take the gun out again,” Willa said. “Why would he, anyhow?”
“To shoot a burglar, maybe? And he’ll pull the trigger and the gun won’t fire and the burglar will shoot him instead?”
“But it must have other bullets in it, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” Erland said.
“Isn’t there one of those…chambers that you spin around and put bullets in?”
“I think those are only in westerns.”
Willa was silent a moment, considering.
“I thought of maybe just disposing of it,” Erland told her.
This didn’t seem like such a bad idea, at first glance. “In the garbage,” Willa agreed. “Buried beneath eggshells and coffee grounds and such.”
“But then how about when a burglar shows up?”
“Though why would a burglar show up in this…not-rich neighborhood?” Willa asked.
Erland shrugged. “He might not know we’re not rich?” he suggested.
The front screen door slammed, and Cheryl called “Willa?”
Willa said, in a hurry, “You have to tell Sir Joe.”
“No!” Erland said.
“There’s no other way,” she said. “Trust me. You have to tell him the honest truth, and throw yourself on his mercy.”
“I can’t,” Erland said.
“I’ll go with you, if you like.”
“What good would that do?”
But then Airplane came bounding into the kitchen, followed by Cheryl and the Dumont girls, all three of them with damp hair and sunburned noses. Cheryl said, “Guess what…” and then she said, “Erland? How come you’re here?”
“Hey, Cheryl,” he sai
d morosely.
“What are you two talking about?”
Willa said, “Oh, nothing,” at the same time that Erland said, “I told her about you-know-what.”
Cheryl drew in a sharp breath. So did Patty and Laurie, which made Willa glance toward them in surprise. Patty clapped a hand to her mouth, and Laurie said, “Uh-oh.”
“You told them?” Erland asked Cheryl.
“Well, you told Willa,” Cheryl said.
“That’s different! Willa just…wormed it out of me. Jeepers, Cheryl! Why not put an ad in the newspaper?”
“We swear-hope-to-die we won’t say Word One,” Laurie announced solemnly. “We would never. We will carry it to our graves.”
Willa said, briskly, “Well, anyhow. We’re all going to forget this ever happened, isn’t that right?”
“Right,” the three girls murmured, and then they edged out of the kitchen, sliding their eyes toward one another.
“I’m done for,” Erland moaned once they were gone.
“All the more reason you have to talk to Sir Joe,” Willa said.
Erland still looked unconvinced, but at least this time he didn’t refuse outright.
* * *
—
In the evening they watched Space Junk—Denise and Cheryl and Willa and Airplane, along with Hal, who had taken to hanging around a lot lately. Denise sat pointedly at the opposite end of the couch from him with her eyes fixed firmly on the screen, and Hal kept leaning forward to say things like “Denise? Are you having trouble sleeping now that you’re alone? Because I am, I don’t mind telling you.” And Denise would say “Huh.” And Cheryl said “Ssh!”
Willa had grown very fond of Space Junk. Just the sound of the woo-hoo music made her feel happy and anticipatory. And Cheryl and Airplane felt the same way, of course. But Denise was clearly watching only because Cheryl had coaxed her into it, and Hal didn’t even bother pretending. From time to time he would yawn aloud, “Ho-hum,” and then “Denise?”
“Ssh!” Cheryl told him.
Even while Willa focused on the show, though, a part of her was running through Erland’s confession. She wasn’t the least bit worried that he would be sent to reform school, because after all, the shooting had been purely accidental. But she was sure this could get Sir Joe into a lot of trouble. There must be some sort of law about adequately securing your firearm, wasn’t there? And although she doubted that he would go so far as to throw Erland out of the house, she really couldn’t be certain.