scrubbed its forelegs together.
5
Michael, on the front porch. He paced. He hunched inside his winter coat, dragged on a cigarette, picked at the spongy floorboards with his toe. The planks were rotting, flaking apart. What a fucking dump. Whole place was falling apart. It was amazing how quickly a house began to disintegrate, how opportunistic the rot and damp were. One good stomp and he could crack any of these boards.
The screen door creaked and Ricky’s head extended horizontally out of the door frame. “Supper.”
“Be in in a minute.”
Ricky’s head retracted into the house, the screen door slammed, then the door snicked shut behind it.
But a few seconds later Ricky’s head was out again. “She says now.”
“Tell her in a minute.”
“I told her. She says ‘in a minute’ isn’t ‘now.’”
“I know ‘in a minute’ isn’t ‘now.’ That’s why I said ‘in a minute, ’because that’s when I’m coming in: in a minute. Jesus.”
Ricky came out onto the porch, shut the door behind him. “The fuck are you doing out here? It’s freezing.”
Michael held up the cigarette.
“So come inside and smoke it. It’s freezing.”
“You seen this?” Michael nudged a long splinter in one of the floorboards with the toe of his penny loafer. He worked it back and forth until it flaked off. “Look at this.”
“I know. It’s a fuckin’ mess. We’ll fix it in the spring maybe. Come on, let’s go. It’s cold, I’m hungry.”
Michael scowled.
“What’s a matter, Mikey? You got a headache?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I don’t have a problem.”
“You’ve got a puss on.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You do. I’m looking right at it. Puss.”
“I don’t have a puss.”
“You do. I’ll be in in a minute. ”
“Fuck you, Rick.”
“Fuck you, Rick.”
Ricky smirked. The same charmed, blithe, princely grin he’d been deploying since the day he was born, four years after Michael. Ricky had smirked before he even had teeth, as if he knew, even as an infant, that he was no ordinary child.
The gloom Michael was feeling lifted a little, enough that he could shake his head and say “fuck you” again, warmer this time, fuck you meaning stick around.
“Let me bum one of those, Mikey.”
Michael dug the pack of Larks from his pocket, and Ricky lit up using the end of Michael’s cigarette.
“Jesus, would you look at this,” Michael said.
The brothers peered through the window into the dining room, where an enormous red-faced man was taking his place at the head of the table. Brendan Conroy settled back in his chair, made various adjustments to his fork and knife, then shared an inaudible uproarious laugh with Joe Daley, who sat at his left hand.
“Honestly,” Michael said, “I think I’m going to hang myself.”
“Don’t like your new daddy?”
“What ever happened to waiting a decent interval?”
“Dad’s dead a year. How long do you want him to wait?”
“Longer.” Michael considered. “A lot longer.”
Ricky turned away. He took a deep, contented pull on his cigarette and gazed out at the street, at the unbroken line of little houses, all looking drab in the winter twilight. December in Savin Hill. Cars were parked nose-to-tail up and down the street. Soon there would be fights over who owned those spots; around here, shoveling a parking spot was tantamount to buying it for the season. Christmas lights were beginning to appear. Across the street the Daughertys had already put up their five ludicrous plastic reindeer, which were lit from the inside. There had used to be six. Joe had broken one in high school when he came home drunk one night and tried to ride it. The next day Joe Senior had made Joe march across the street and apologize for riding Mr. Daugherty’s reindeer. What he ought to have apologized for was riding Mr. Daugherty’s daughters, which Joe did with the same gleeful droit du seigneur he exercised over all the neighborhood girls. Even Eileen Daugherty, the youngest of the three, took her turn-in Joe’s car, if Ricky was remembering right. That last coupling precipitated a brawl between Joe and Michael, because Michael had loved Eileen ever since kindergarten. He’d imagined that Eileen had somehow defied her genes and was not like that, until Joe set Michael straight, explaining that his conquest of the Daugherty sisters was really a sort of territorial obligation, like Manifest Destiny, and he’d needed Eileen to complete the hat trick, and anyway she had been a screamer. All of which had led Michael to throw himself at Joe, despite Joe’s size, because he couldn’t stop loving Eileen Daugherty even after she had offered herself up to Joe for the ritual goring. Maybe Michael loved her even now, deep down, the memory of her at least. He was that kind of kid. What ever happened to Eileen? Ricky turned back to his brother, “Hey, what ever happened to-?”
But Michael was still engrossed in what was behind the window, a fresher outrage. “Would you look at this? Look at Joe! What the hell does he think he’s doing?”
Inside, Joe Daley and Brendan Conroy were holding up their glasses of pale beer, laughing.
“Look at him, with his head up Conroy’s ass. He’s like a tapeworm.”
“Conroy could use a tapeworm.”
“Really, Rick, the whole thing, it’s just-Doesn’t this bother you?”
“Not really. Hey, what ever happened to Eileen from across the street? You ever hear about her?”
“No.” Michael did not glance away from the window.
Joe’s wife, Kat, came out onto the porch. “Are you guys coming in or you want your supper out here?”
“Michael’s mad.”
“I’m not mad-”
“He thinks Mum’s going to lose her virginity-”
“I didn’t say-”
“-to Brendan.”
Kat thought it over. “Well,” she concluded, “she’ll probably wait till after dinner anyways.”
“There, see?” Ricky smiled. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Come on. In.” Kat herded them inside with a dish towel, and in they went. There was something about Kat- Kathleen-that suggested she wasn’t taking any shit. She was just Joe’s type, big and hippy and good-looking and stolid, and the Daley boys as a rule did not fuck with her.
Michael went in first, wearing a sour-mouthed pucker. Ricky gave him a playful biff on the back of the head, and Kat rubbed his shoulder, both gestures intended to cheer him up.
The house smelled of garlic, and the girls were bustling from the kitchen to the table with a few last things.
Amy sped past: “Hey, Michael. Thought we’d lost you.”
Little Joe passed without a word. Joe’s son, Little Joe, was thirteen and had taken over the title “Little Joe” from his father, who had been Little Joe to his own father’s Big Joe. The Daleys did not believe in Juniors and III’s and IV’s; too Yankee. So each succeeding Joe got a new middle name. The current Little Joe was Joseph Patrick. At the moment he was sulking, Michael had no idea about what.
Margaret Daley, the materfamilias, tweaked Michael about a “disappearing act,” which tipped his mood downward again. Over the years Michael had evolved an exquisite sensitivity to his mother’s voice, so that he could
