Hard Eight

“He’s hungry,” Amanda said. “He’s going to cry like that until you feed him.”

I found a box of cookies in the cupboard and held one out to Oliver.

“No,” he yelled, and he knocked the cookie out of my hand.

A scruffy-looking dog rushed in from the bedroom area and ate the cookie before it hit the floor.

“Oliver doesn’t want to eat a cookie,” Amanda said.

Lula had her hands over her ears. “I’m gonna go deaf if he don’t stop this howling. I’m getting a headache.”

I got a bottle of juice out of the refrigerator. “Do you want this?” I asked.

“No!”

I tried ice cream.

“No!”

“How about a leg of lamb?” Lula asked. “I wouldn’t mind having some leg of lamb.”

He was on the floor now, on his back, kicking his heels against the tile. “No, no, no!”

“This here’s a full-blown tantrum,” Lula said. “This kid needs a timeout.”

“I’m telling my mother you made Oliver cry,” Amanda said.

“Hey, give me a break,” I said. “I’m trying. You’re his sister. Help me out here.”

“He wants a grilled cheese sandwich,” Amanda said. “It’s his favorite food.”

“Good thing he didn’t want the leg of lamb,” Lula said. “We wouldn’t know how to cook that.”

I found a pan and some butter and cheese, and I started the bread frying in the pan. Oliver was still bellowing at the top of his lungs, and now the dog was yapping, running in circles around him.

The doorbell rang, and I figured with the sort of luck I was having it was probably Jeanne Ellen. I left Lula in charge of the grilled cheese sandwich, and I went to answer the door. I was wrong about it being Jeanne Ellen, but I was right about my luck. It was Steven Soder.

“What the hell?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Visiting.”

“Where’s Dotty? I need to talk to her.”

“Hey,” Lula called from the kitchen, “I need an opinion on this grilled cheese.”

“Who’s that?” Soder wanted to know. “That doesn’t sound like Dotty. That sounds like the fatso who hit me with her purse.”

“We’re in the middle of something right now,” I said to Soder. “Maybe you could come back later.”

He muscled his way past me and stalked into the kitchen. “You!” he shouted at Lula.

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Not in front of the k-i-d,” Lula said. “You don’t want to use that kind of violent talk. It stirs up all kinds of latent shit when they get to be teenagers.”

“I’m not stupid,” Amanda said. “I can spell. And I’m telling my mother you said shit.”

“Everybody says shit,” Lula said. She looked to me. “Doesn’t everybody say shit? What’s wrong with shit? ”

The grilled cheese looked perfect in the fry pan, so I lifted it out with a spatula, slid it onto a plate, and gave it