“Did I do that?”
“Gone and done it to me again,” Cody said, and he staggered to his feet and walked away.
On a weekday when his father was out of town, his mother shopping for supper, his brother and sister doing homework in their rooms, Cody took his BB gun and shot a hole in the kitchen window. Then he slipped outdoors and poked a length of fishing line through the hole. From the kitchen, he pulled the line until the rusty wrench that he’d tied to the other end was flush against the outside of the glass. He held it there by anchoring the line beneath a begonia pot. When his mother returned from shopping, Cody was seated at the kitchen table coloring a map of Asia.
After their homework was finished, Jenny and Ezra went out back. Ezra had been showing Jenny, all week, how to hit a Softball. (It seemed her classmates chose her last whenever they had a game.) As soon as they had walked through, Cody rose and went to the window. He saw them take their places in the darkening yard, bounded on either side by the neighbors’ hedges. They were a comically short distance apart. Jenny stood closest to the house and held her bat straight up, gingerly, as if preparing to club to death some small animal. Ezra tossed her a gentle pitch. (He was no great player himself.) Jenny took a whizzing swing, missed, and retrieved the ball from among the trash cans beside the back door. She threw it in a overhand so stiff and deformed that Cody wondered why Ezra bothered. Ezra caught it and pitched again. As the ball arched toward the bat, Cody felt for the fishing line beneath the begonia pot. He gave a quick tug. The windowpane clattered inward, breaking in several pieces. Jenny spun around and stared. Ezra’s mouth dropped open. “What was that?” Pearl called from the dining room.
“Just Ezra breaking another window,” Cody told her.
One weekend their father didn’t come home, and he didn’t come the next weekend either, or the next. Or rather, one morning Cody woke up and saw that it had been a while since their father was around. He couldn’t say that he had noticed from the start. His mother offered no excuses. Cody, watchful as a spy, studied her furrowed, distracted expression and the way that her hands plucked at each other. It troubled him to realize that he couldn’t picture his father’s most recent time with them. Trying to find some scene that would explain Beck’s leaving, he could only come up with general scenes, blended from a dozen repetitions: meals shattered by quarrels, other meals disrupted when Ezra spilled his milk, drives in the country where his father lost the way and his mother snapped out pained and exasperated directions. He thought of once when the Nash’s radiator had erupted in steam and his father, looking helpless, had flung his suit coat over it. “Oh, honestly,” his mother had said. But that was way back; it was years ago, wasn’t it? Cody journeyed through the various cubbies and crannies of the house, hunting up the trappings of his father’s “phases” (as his mother called them). There were the badminton racquets, the butterfly net, the archery set, the camera with its unwieldy flashgun, and the shoe box full of foreign stamps still in their glassine envelopes. But it meant nothing that these objects remained behind. What was alarming was his father’s half of the bureau: an empty sock drawer, an empty underwear drawer. In the shirt drawer, one unused sports shirt, purchased by the three children for Beck’s last birthday, his forty-fourth. And a full assortment of pajamas; but then, he always slept in his underwear. In the wardrobe, just a hanger strung with ties—his oldest, dullest, most frayed and spotted ties—and a pair of shoes so ancient that the toes curled up.
Cody’s brother and sister were staggeringly unobservant. They flitted in and out of the house like birds—Ezra playing his whistle, Jenny singing parts of jump-rope songs. Cody had the impression that musical notes filled their heads to overflowing; they left no room for anything serious. Auntie Sue got dressed in blue, Jenny sang, put on shoes and rubbers too … Her plain, flat voice and heedlessly swinging braids somehow reassured him. After all, what could go so wrong, when she skipped past with her ragged rope? What could go so very wrong?
Then one Saturday she said, “I’m worried about Daddy.”
“Why? “Cody asked.
“Cody,” she said, in her elderly way, “you can see that he doesn’t come home any more. I think he’s left us.”
“Don’t be silly,” Cody told her.
She surveyed him for a moment, with a composure that made him uneasy, and when he didn’t say any more she turned and went out on the porch. He heard the glider creak as she settled into it. But she didn’t start singing. In fact, the house was unusually quiet. The only sound was his mother’s heels, clicking back and forth overhead as she put away the laundry. And Ezra wasn’t playing his whistle. Cody had no idea where Ezra was.
He went upstairs to his mother’s bedroom. She was folding a sheet. “What’re you doing?” he asked. She gave him a look. He settled in a ladder-backed chair to watch her work. She was wearing a housedress that he very much disliked, cream colored with deep red streaks across it like paintbrush strokes. The shoulders were shaped by triangular pads that unbuttoned and removed when it was time to wash the dress. Cody had often thought of stealing those pads. With her shoulders broadened, his mother looked powerful and sharp and scary. On her feet were open-toed shoes and short white socks. She traveled rapidly between the laundry basket and the bed, laying out stacks of clothing. There was no stack for his father.
“When is Dad coming home?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, “pretty soon.”
She didn’t meet his eyes.
Cody looked around him and noticed, for the first time, that there was something pinched and starved about the way this house was decorated. Not a single perfume bottle or china figurine sat upon his mother’s bureau. No pictures hung on the walls. Even the bedside tables were completely bare; and in all the drawers in this room, he knew, every object would be aligned and squared precisely—the clothing organized by type and color, whites grading into pastels and then to darks; comb and brush parallel; gloves paired and folded like a row of clenched fists. Who wouldn’t leave such a place? He straightened, feeling panicky. His mother chose that moment to come over and smooth his hair down. “My,” she told him, smiling, “you’re getting so big! I can’t believe it.”
He shrank back in his seat.
“You’re getting big enough for me to start relying on,” she said.
“I’m only fourteen,” Cody told her.
He slipped off the chair and left the room. The bathroom door was closed; he heard the shower running and Ezra singing “Greensleeves.” He opened the door just a crack, snaked one arm in, and turned on the hot water in the sink. Then he traveled through the rest of the house, from kitchen to downstairs bathroom to basement, methodically opening every hot water faucet to its fullest. But you couldn’t really say his heart was in it.
“Tull?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
“Is this the Tull residence?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Darryl Peters,” the man said, showing a business card.
Cody took a swig of beer and accepted the card. While he was reading it, he sloshed the beer bottle absently to get a good head of suds. He was wearing dungarees and nothing else; it was a blistering day in August. The house, however, was fairly cool—the living room dim, the paper shades pulled all the way down and glowing yellow with the afternoon sun. Mr. Peters looked in wistfully, but remained on the porch with his hat in his hand. He was way overdressed, for August.
“So,” said Cody. He nudged the screen door open with his bare foot. Mr. Peters caught hold of it and stepped inside.
“Would your mother be in?” he asked.
“She’s taken a job.”
“Well, then, your … is Ezra Tull your father?”
“He’s my brother.”
“Brother. Ah.”
“He’s in.”
“Well, then,” Mr. Peters said.
“I’ll go get him.”
Cody went upstairs and into Jenny’s room. Jenny and Ezra were playin
g checkers on the floor. Ezra, wearing shorts and a sleeveless undershirt full of holes, stroked his cat, Alicia, and frowned at the board. “Someone to see you,” Cody told him.
Ezra looked up. “Who is it?” he asked.
Cody shrugged.
Ezra rose, still hugging the cat. Cody went with him as far as the stairs. He stopped there and leaned over the banister to eavesdrop, grinning. Ezra arrived in the living room. “You want me?” Cody heard him ask.
“Ezra Tull?” said Mr. Peters.
“Yes.”
“Well, ah … maybe there’s been a mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“I’m from Peaceful Hills Memorial Gardens,” Mr. Peters said. “I thought you wished to purchase a resting place.”
“Resting place?”
“I thought you filled out this mail-in coupon: Ezra Tull, your signature. Yes, I would like an eternal home for myself and/or my loved ones. I understand that a sales representative will call.”
“It wasn’t me,” said Ezra.
“You didn’t fill this out. You’re not interested in a plot.”
“No, thank you.”
“I should have known,” said Mr. Peters.
“I’m sorry,” Ezra told him.
“Never mind, I can see it’s not your doing.”
“Maybe when I’m older, or something …”
“That’s all right, son. Never mind.”
Cody climbed to the stuffy, hot third floor, where Lorena Schmidt sat on his bed with her back against the wall. She was new to the neighborhood—a tawny girl with long black hair, one lock of which she was twining around a finger. “Who was that?” she asked Cody.
“A cemetery salesman.”
“Ugh.”
“He came to see Ezra.”
“Who’s Ezra?”
“My brother Ezra, dummy.”
“Well? How should I know?” Lorena said. “You mean that brother downstairs? Blondish kid, good-looking?”
“Good-looking! Ezra?”
“I liked his kind of serious face,” Lorena said. “And those pale gray eyes.”
“My eyes are gray.”
“Well. Anyhow,” Lorena said.
“Besides,” said Cody, “he gets fits.”
“He does?”
“He’ll fool you. He’ll look as normal as anyone else and then all of a sudden, splat! He’s flat on the floor, foaming at the mouth.”
“I don’t believe you,” Lorena said.
“Some people think he’s dangerous. I’m the only one brave enough to go near him, when he gets that way.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” Lorena said.
She twisted around to the head of Cody’s bed and lifted a corner of the window shade. “I see your mother coming,” she said.
“What? Where?”
She turned and flashed him a grin. One of her front teeth was chipped, which made her look unstable, lacking in self-control. “I was teasing,” she said.
“Oh.”
“You ought to’ve seen your face. Ha! I haven’t even met your mother. How would I know if she was coming?”
“You must have met her,” Cody said. “She’s a cashier now at Sweeney Brothers Grocery. Folks around this neighborhood call her the Sweeney Meanie.”
“Well, we do our shopping at Esmond’s.”
“So would I,” said Cody.
“How come she works? Where’s your father?”
“Missing in action,” he told her.
“Oops, sorry.”
He gave a casual wave of his hand and took a swallow of beer. “She runs the cash register,” he said. “Look in Sweeney’s window, next time you go past. You’ll know her right off. Walk in and say, ‘Ma’am, this soup can’s dented. Can I have a reduction?’ ‘Soup’s soup,’ she’ll say. ‘Full price, please.’ ”
“Oh, one of those,” Lorena said.
“Tight little bun on the back of her head. Mouth like it’s holding straight pins. Anybody dawdles, tries to pass the time of day, she’ll say, ‘Move along, please. Please move along.’ ”
He was smiling at Lorena as he spoke, but inside he felt a sudden pang. He pictured his mother at the register, with that anxious line like a strand of hair or a faint, fragile dressmaker’s seam running across her forehead.
Cody took every blanket and sheet from Ezra’s bed and removed the pillow and the mattress. Underneath were four wooden slats, laid across the frame. He lifted them out and stored them in the wardrobe. With great care, he set the mattress back on the frame. He drew a breath and waited. The mattress held. He replaced the bedclothes and he puffed the pillow and laid it delicately at the head. He lugged a pile of magazines from their hiding place in his bureau, opened them, and scattered them on the floor. Then he turned off the light and went to his own bed, across the room.
Ezra padded in barefoot, eating a sandwich. He wore pajama bottoms with a trailing drawstring. “Oh, me,” he said, and he sank into bed. There was a crash. The floor shook, and their mother shrieked and came pounding up the stairs. When she turned on the light, Cody raised his head and stared at her with a sleepy, befuddled expression. She had a hand pressed to her heart. She was taking in gulps of air. Jenny shivered behind her, hugging a worn stuffed rabbit. “Good Lord preserve us,” their mother said.
Ezra looked like someone in a bathtub full of cloth. He was having trouble disentangling himself from his sheets. One hand, upraised, still clutched the half-eaten sandwich. “Ezra, honey,” Pearl said, but then she said, “Why, Ezra.” She was looking at the magazines. They were opened to pictures of women in nightgowns, in bathing suits, in garter belts and black lace brassieres, in bath towels, in useless wisps of transparent drapery, or in nothing whatsoever. “Ezra Tull!” she said.
Ezra worked his way up to peer over the edge of his bed frame.
“Truly, Ezra, I never suspected that you would be such a person,” she told him. Then she turned and left the room, taking Jenny with her.
Ezra emerged from his bed, flew through the air, and landed on Cody. He grabbed a handful of hair and started shaking Cody’s head. All Cody could say was, “Mmf! Mmf!” because he didn’t want their mother to hear. Finally he managed to bite Ezra’s knee and Ezra rolled off, panting and sobbing. He must have knocked into something at some earlier point, because his left eye was swelling. It made him look sad. Cody got up and showed him where he’d stashed the slats. They fitted them into place, heaved the mattress back on the frame, and attempted to smooth the blankets. Then Cody turned out the light, and they climbed into their beds and went to sleep.
Sometimes Cody dreamed about his father. He would be stepping through the doorway, wearing one of his salesman suits, bringing the afternoon paper as he always did on Friday. His ordinariness was astounding—his thick strings of hair and the tired, yellowish puffs beneath his eyes. (In waking memories, lately, he was not so real, but had blurred and leveled and lost his details.) “How was your week?” he asked, tediously. Cody’s mother answered, “Oh, all right.”
In these dreams, Cody was not his present self. He had somehow slid backward and become a toddler again, rushing around on tiny, fat legs, feverishly showing off. “See this? And this? See me somersault? See me pull my wagon?” His smallness colored every act; he was conscious of a desperate need to learn to manage, to take charge of his surroundings. Waking in the dark, the first thing he did was stretch his long legs and lift his arms, which were becoming veiny and roped with muscle. He thought of how it would be if his father returned some time in the future, when Cody was a man. “Look at what I’ve accomplished,” Cody would tell him. “Notice where I’ve got to, how far I’ve come without you.”
Was it something I said? Was it something I did? Was it something I didn’t do, that made you go away?
* * *
School started, and Cody entered ninth grade. He and his two best friends landed in the same homeroom. Sometimes Pete and Boyd came home with him; they all walked t
he long way, avoiding the grocery store where Cody’s mother worked. Cody had to keep things separate—his friends in one half of his life and his family in the other half. His mother hated for Cody to mix with outsiders. “Why don’t you ever have someone over?” she would ask, but she didn’t deceive him for a moment. He’d say, “Nah, I don’t need anybody,” and she would look pleased. “I guess your family’s enough for you, isn’t it?” she would ask. “Aren’t we lucky to have each other?”
He only allowed his friends in the house when his mother was at work, and sometimes for no reason he could name he would lead them through her belongings. He would open her smallest top bureau drawer and show them the real gold brooch that his father had given her when they were courting. “He thinks a lot of her,” he would say. “He’s given her heaps of stuff. Heaps. There’s heaps of other stuff that I just don’t happen to have on hand.” His friends looked bored. Switching tactics, Cody would show them her ironed handkerchiefs stacked so exactly that they seemed encased by an invisible square box. “I mean,” he said, “your mothers don’t do that, do they? Do they? Women!” he said, and then, musing over some mysterious metal clasp or something that was evidently used to hold up stockings, “Who can understand them? Really: can you figure them out? She likes Ezra best, my dumb brother Ezra. Sissy old Ezra. I mean, if it were Jenny, I could see it—Jenny being a girl and all. But Ezra! Who could like Ezra? Can you give me a single reason why?”
His friends shrugged, idly gazing around the room and jingling the loose change in their pockets.