considerate he was being. “What do
“World what? I’d like a recorder,” Ezra said.
They crossed an intersection with a swarm of sailors. “Well,” said Cody, “you’re not getting one.”
“I know that.”
“You’re getting a cap with turn-down earflaps and a pair of corduroy pants.”
“Cody!” said Jenny. “You weren’t supposed to tell.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ezra said.
They separated for a woman who had stopped to fit her child’s mittens on. “It used to be,” Jenny said, “that we got toys for Christmas, and candy. Remember how nice last Christmas was?”
“This one’s going to be nice too,” Ezra told her.
“Remember down in Virginia, when Daddy bought us a sled, and Mother said it was silly because it hardly ever snowed but December twenty-sixth we woke up and there was snow all over everything?”
“That was fun,” Ezra said.
“We had the only sled in town,” Jenny said. “Cody started charging for rides. Daddy showed us how to wax the runners and we pulled it to the top of that hill … What was the name of that hill? It had such a funny—”
Then she stopped short on the sidewalk. Pedestrians jostled all around her. “Why,” she said.
Cody and Ezra looked at her.
“He’s really not ever coming home again. Is he,” she said.
No one answered. After a minute they resumed walking, three abreast, and Cody took a pinch of Ezra’s sleeve, too, so they wouldn’t drift apart in the crowd.
Cody sorted the mail, setting aside for his mother a couple of envelopes that looked like Christmas cards. He threw away a department store flyer and a letter from his school. He pocketed an envelope with a Cleveland postmark.
He went upstairs to his room and switched on the goose-necked lamp beside his bed. While the lightbulb warmed, he whistled and stared out the window. Then he tested the bulb with his fingers and, finding it hot enough, wrapped the envelope around it and counted slowly to thirty. After that he pried open the flap with ease and pulled out a single sheet of paper and a check.
“He’s not here,” Cody said.
She came to stand in the doorway. “Where is he?” she asked. She was out of breath, untidy-looking. Her hat was on crooked and she still wore her coat.
“He went to get the laundry, like you told him to.”
“What do you know about this?”
She bore down on him, holding out a stack of snapshots. The one on top was so blurred and gray that Cody had trouble deciphering it. He took the whole collection from her hand. Ah, yes: Ezra lay in a stupor, surrounded by liquor bottles. Cody grinned. He’d forgotten that picture completely.
“What could it mean?” his mother asked. “I take a roll of film to the drugstore and I come back with the shock of my life. I just wanted to get the camera ready for Christmas. I was expecting maybe some scenes from last summer, or Jenny’s birthday cake … and here I find Ezra like a derelict! A common drunk! Could this be what it looks like? Answer me!”
“He’s not as perfect as you think he is,” Cody told her.
“But he’s never given me a moment’s worry.”
“He’s done a lot that might surprise you.”
Pearl sat down on his bed. She was shaking her head, looking stunned. “Oh, Cody, it’s such a battle, raising children,” she said. “I know you must think I’m difficult. I lose my temper, I carry on like a shrew sometimes, but if you could just realize how … helpless I feel! How scary it is to know that everyone I love depends on me! I’m afraid I’ll do something wrong.”
She reached up — for the photos, he thought, and he held them out to her; but no, what she wanted was his hand. She took it and pulled him down beside her. Her skin felt hot and dry. “I’ve probably been too hard on you,” she said. “But I look to you for support now, Cody. You’re the only person I can turn to; it may be you and I are more alike than you think. Cody, what am I going to do?”
She leaned closer, and Cody drew back. Even her eyes seemed to give off heat. “Uh, well …” he said.
“Who took that picture, anyhow? Was it you?”
“Look,” he said. “It was a joke.”
“Joke?”
“Ezra didn’t drink that stuff. I just set some bottles around him.”
Her gaze flicked back and forth across his face.
“He’s never touched a drop,” Cody told her.
“I see,” she said. She freed his hand. She said, “Well, all I can say is, that’s some joke, young man.” Then she stood up and took several steps away from him. “That’s some sense of humor you’ve got,” she said.
Cody shrugged.
“Oh, I suppose it must seem very funny, scaring your mother half out of her wits. Letting her babble on like a fool. Slandering your little brother. It must seem hilarious, to someone like you.”
“I’m just naturally mean, I guess,” Cody said.
“You’ve been mean since the day you were born,” she told him.
After she had walked out, he went to work resealing his father’s letter.
Ezra landed on Park Place and Cody said, “Aha! Park Place with one hotel. Fifteen hundred dollars.”
“Poor, poor Ezra,” Jenny said.
“How’d you do that?” Ezra asked Cody.
“How’d I do what?”
“How’d you get a hotel on Park Place? A minute ago it was mortgaged.”
“Oh, I scrimped and saved,” Cody said.
“There’s something peculiar going on here.”
“Mother!” Jenny called. “Cody’s cheating again!”
Their mother was stringing the Christmas tree lights. She looked over and said, “Cody.”
“What did I do?” Cody asked.
“What did he do, children?”
“He’s the banker,” Jenny said. “He made us let him keep the bank and the deeds and the houses. Now he’s got a hotel on Park Place and all this extra money. It’s not fair!”
Pearl set down the box of lights and came over to where they were sitting. She said, “All right, Cody, put it back. Jenny keeps the deeds from now on; Ezra keeps the bank. Is that clear?”
Jenny reached for the deeds. Ezra began collecting the money.
“And I tell you this,” Pearl said. “If I hear one more word, Cody Tull, you’re out of the game. Forever! Understood?” She bent to help Ezra. “Always cheating, tormenting, causing trouble …” She laid the fives beside the ones, the tens beside the fives. “Cody? You hear what I say?”
He heard, but he didn’t bother answering. He sat back and smiled, safe and removed, watching her stack the money.
