The Dwelling: A Novel (33 page)

“Hey!” Petey said, but he felt like he’d shouted it and was embarrassed. The words were absorbed into the trees, the garden, the air.

He heard the little girl giggle. They were in the garden, hiding.

It was a tangle of overgrowth and perennials. It was thick. While he wouldn’t have estimated its size, it was well over eight feet deep. Large backyards (and the lack of an alleyway) were a feature that only this neighborhood could boast. The only feature. He couldn’t see the children through it.

Where he was at the edge of the garden, hesitating, he called another trepidatious, “Hey!” half expecting at any moment to be pelted with dirt, rocks, epithets.

Hey fat kid.
He stood with his hands in the pockets of his (too small in front) jacket, and waited for it.

The little girl poked her head through the brush and waved.
Come play.
She giggled. She laughed. Her whole posture was laughter, even when not a sound came out of her mouth. Her skin was white, and so was her hair. The boy—and Petey thought he might be her brother, for no reason at all—was fair too.

He ran through the small opening between the garden in their yard and the back way, made by boys just his age over the years, and found them.

When Barbara finally looked up from her typewriter she was shocked to see that it was already after five o’clock. It had taken nearly two hours to type three letters and her résumé. She hoped they didn’t give her a typing test. Did they still do such things?

There had been no word from Petey. He was still outside.

She got up from the dining-room table and allowed herself a great stretch. On the floor beside her chair there were a half-dozen balled up pieces of paper. Probably not a great ratio, but the three letters and her résumé were absolutely error-free. She shuffled through each again, marveling at the tidiness of the pages and the facts of her life written, literally, in black and white. It didn’t seem to amount to much. She piled the pages beside the typewriter and picked up the little balls from the floor. Cradled in her blouse, they looked like snowballs.

Tomorrow she would go to the library and make copies, pick up envelopes and then deliver all three by hand. Maybe she would get an interview on the spot. She would wear her yellow suit, the one she’d bought for Dennis’s cousin’s wedding. About two months before he left her.

Don’t start.
Instead, she wondered if it would still fit.

She started supper, expecting Petey to come through the door at any moment. She cooked efficiently and by rote, one ear half-cocked for the sound of the door.

They were having spaghetti. With a practiced motion, she pulled a frying pan out of the bottom drawer of the stove and plunked it on a burner. Oil went in, and after a suitable waiting period of a nanosecond inspired by the notion that it was already after five, she put the meat on the oil and cut up an onion.

The onion went into the frying pan with the meat. Its smell filled the kitchen in a good way and she realized she was hungry. She picked up the garlic, and peeled it, the smell sharp in her nose—
oh geez I’m hungry Petey must be starv
—wondering then, where was he?

In the yard. Did he say he was playing in the yard?

Garlic peeled but still in her hand, she pulled open the heavy back door and peered through the screen door. Just as she was going to push it open and call for him, Petey came bursting through the tangled mess of the garden, boughs and limbs grabbing at his jacket. He stumbled at the edge, into the dirt and scrambled up again. Alarmed, hand on the door, she would have jumped out screaming for him, but he was laughing. His broad face was split in an open-mouthed laugh, and he looked behind him, twisting his neck and shoulders just once before getting onto the grass and stopping. He crouched, hands on knees, and breathed heavily from his run. He faced the bush.

She watched, smiling, with him, for whomever it was who chased him.

No one came out after him. Petey dropped to the grass on his back. Dead leaves and twigs clung to his jacket and jeans. He tugged down the front of his jacket, but his T-shirt had pulled up and she could see the white flesh of his stomach.
That jacket’s too short.
It had lasted only one season. Boys grow.

He lay on his back on the grass for a moment, then rolled onto his side, his body facing the house. Still smiling, his cheeks red from the fresh air and exertion, he steadied himself with a hand pressed to the ground.

Still no one had come out of the garden.
He’s playing by himself.
The thought made her suddenly very sad, the laughter false, an attempt at cheering himself up, maybe. Playing alone. Her heart sinking, she decided she would let him phone Jeremy that night after supper.

Hand on the small, cold handle of the screen door, she was about to push it open, when she saw, but did not hear, Petey say something. Into the air.

His lips moved, eyes focused on something in front of him. He jutted out his chin, exposing the soft flesh of his neck.

Do you like butter?

As quickly as he’d done it, he tucked his chin fully into his jacket as though something had tickled him. Then he ran two fingers under there and looked at them as though expecting to see something.

Do you like butter?

“PETEY!” Barbara pushed open the screen door and called him, her voice near a screech. He looked startled and sat up, glancing just once to his side. A guilty look might have crossed over briefly.

“What?”

“Time to come in,” she said, voice shaking. “Supper time.” He scrambled up on his feet then, joyfully she thought (not the least bit embarrassed), and ran to the back door, not looking back again, exactly, but slightly turning his head in that direction in a way that disturbed her even more than what she thought she might have seen.

She held the door open and he squeezed past her. “What’s for supper?” he demanded, dropping his jacket to the floor and kicking off his running shoes. One landed at the narrow wooden door to the Murphy bedroom.

“Pick up your jacket, pick up your shoes,” she said. She pulled the screen door shut and closed the heavy wooden door. She locked it, and looked once more out of the window. The backyard was empty.

“What’s for supper?” Petey poked his head over the stove and lifted the lid, looking at her inquiringly. “Spaghetti?” he asked hopefully.

Barbara crossed her arms over her chest, chilled from the open door. “Yup,” she said.

Petey gave a whoop of delight and ran into the living room. In a moment she heard the TV prattling.

Shaken, she lifted the lid and poked at the hamburger meat browning. She turned up the element. The garlic. It was still in her hand. It was warm. She put it on the counter and began chopping it into small pieces to put in the presser.

For just a split second, she thought she’d seen something.

Just as Petey looked at his fingers, he had half glanced beside him. So had Barbara.

Trick of the light.

When he’d glanced beside him, like a single frame of film in a movie, there had been a flash of something.

Beside him there had been a little girl. (Not
a
little girl;
the
little girl.
My mother’s dead.)
She’d been holding a buttercup.

Trick of the light.
For the first time since their first night in the house, the house that had begun to feel like home felt strange.

Over dinner, she asked him. “Who were you playing with outside?” She kept her voice cheerful.

He didn’t look up from his spaghetti. “No one.”

“Oh,” she said. “I thought I heard kids.”

Petey shrugged.

“You were playing by yourself? All that time?”

He looked at her sideways, under the cover of his thick lashes; a sly look, her mother might have said. He didn’t answer right away, the hesitation equally suspicious. “Uh-huh.”

He slurped a long piece of spaghetti into his mouth, the sauce splashing off it around his mouth. “Petey, don’t do that, you’ll get it on my papers.” The typewriter and her stack of letters and the résumé sat undisturbed at the end of the table.

“Want me to move them?” he asked, looking up finally.

“No. Just don’t eat like a little piggy.”

“’Kay.”

Barbara didn’t press him and he seemed preoccupied through much of dinner. She told him about her job prospects and rambled on about what she would do if she got a job, about whether or not he would be home alone and, finally, what she was probably going to wear. His responses were monosyllabic.

“Are you okay, honey? You seem awfully quiet. Maybe there’s something you want to talk about?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“You’re not saying anything, though.”

“I just said something,” he said indignantly. Barbara sighed and gave up.

“Can I phone Jeremy tonight? Is my punishment over?” he said suddenly, animated for the first time since coming inside.

Even trying to listen and not listen at the same time, Barbara only heard half of the conversation. It was typical. After the initial awkward hellos and stiff how-are-yous, they made noises and laughed and made more mouth noises. Jeremy must have started on some kind of team because Petey said, “Did you score?” and listened without saying anything for a long time while, she supposed, Jeremy regaled him with a story. Once everything sounded normal, Barbara’s mind wandered away from the conversation. The television was still on and she cleared the table half-listening to the news, half-listening to the conversation, the words filtered through her mother’s radar, listening mostly to the emotions behind them. Jeremy seemed to do most of the talking. Petey answering him in much the way he’d answered Barbara at supper, with one word, or commented,
Oh, yeah?
There was a lot of giggling and (hand covering the phone) secret messages passed—likely on Jeremy’s side as well—and more mouth/animal noises.

The call was long-distance and after Petey had been talking for a half hour she went into the hall. He was sitting on the bottom stair, with the phone cord curled around the banister.

“No
way,”
he said into the phone. There was a garbled answer on the other end.

He repeated, “No
way.”
It went on for another five
no ways
before she got his attention. He looked up at her, wide-eyed, and covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “I’m talking on the phone,” he stressed, in a remarkable imitation of her. She rolled her eyes, smiling. She tapped her watch and gave him five fingers.

“Okay,”
he said. Then he said, into the phone,
“Way,”
and there were hilarious giggles.

She watched television from the dining-room table while she packed up her papers and typewriter, finally looking at her watch again. Five minutes was
way
up. What the hell could two eight-year-olds talk about for so long?

Just before the hall she heard, “—yeah, a couple.” Then silence. There had been a change in his voice. It was neither defensive nor matter-of-fact, but somewhere between. He said, “Around here.” And “They’re really great,” between silences. Her heart thumped a little in her chest. He was talking about kids and there was just enough fuel in the air for her to believe that he was talking about friends. From school?

“—this guy and his sister. When can you come and sleep over?” he asked, and it sounded to Barbara like a subject change.

Then Petey volunteered Barbara to pick Jeremy up for the big sleepover and she went into the hall. “Petey, five minutes are up. Say good-bye to Jeremy.” And she stood waiting for him to do it.

“Can you pick Jeremy up, so he can sleep over?”

“We’ll talk about it later.” He whooped and repeated what she said into the phone; then he asked her again,
when?,
but she eyed him menacingly and the commiseration sounded like it was about to start and Barbara was losing patience.

“Enough, Petey. It’s bathtime.” And he hung up, reluctantly, with a whispered, “I’ll talk her into it.”

And he tried, all the way up the stairs. She reminded him that he would see Jeremy very soon, when he went to visit his dad in their old city. Petey snorted. “Dad’s never going to come get me,” and it stung. She knew she should defend Dennis, it was in every child-of-divorce book available, but she found she couldn’t. He had called only once since they had moved in, and then not a word. She supposed he thought he was giving them time to settle in and whatever else he could convince himself of, but he still hadn’t called and it was hard to explain that away to a little kid. Instead, what she said was, “You want bubbles with that?” in her best McDonald’s voice.

“No,” was his answer.

She sent Petey to his room to pick out pajamas and strip down. He surprised her by closing the door to his room to do it. He was getting private. He was about that age.

The tub was gleaming and white in the false light of the bathroom bulb. Its claws dug into the floor, looking as though they had sprung outward with her approach. Silly.

Boldly she grabbed the plug—an old friend by now, she’d examined it for any sort of fault—and pushed it firmly into the hole. Then she turned the hot tap on, full blast, and while the tub filled she got a clean towel for Petey and laid out shampoo and soap for him.

He came out with his robe on, tied at the middle in a huge bow. She smiled, amused.

“You ready, Hef?”

“Huh?” he said, flashing her a rude look, understanding, if not the joke, the intent.

“Never mind, pile in. You want me to go?”

He bent over and checked out the claws on the feet of the tub. “They look real, hey?”

“But they’re not. How about I do something in the yellow room while you bathe? Would that be best?”

He stood in front of the tub, robe still intact as if waiting for her to leave. “Uh-uh. That’s okay. Go downstairs, okay? I’ll have my bath and tell you when I’m done.” He looked behind her, into his room.

She followed his gaze. There was nothing there. “You forget something?”