“Sorry I was a dink this morning,” he apologizes.
She nods and suddenly moves closer, to touch his nose and mouth with her fingertips.
“Honey, what happened to you?”
“Accident. Just an accident.”
She raises an eyebrow and pats his stomach. “Get enough supper?”
He burps expressively and they both laugh.
She reaches for the teakettle. “I’m making tea. You want some? There’s cake on the table.”
Grinning, Sam whacks off a huge chunk of the devil’s food cake, his favorite, and she slips a plate under it for him. He finds some French vanilla ice cream and buries the cake in it, making Pearl laugh. He carries her tea tray upstairs for her.
Chewing on the nipple of a water bottle and shaking a ring of oversized plastic keys in spasmodic jerks, Indy sits, seemingly weighted by her thickly diapered bottom, on the bed next to Reuben, who is reading. She looks up at Sam at the same instant Reuben looks over the glasses on the end of his nose, and their faces crinkle with an identical delight.
And then Reuben frowns. “Ouch. You and Rick get into it again?”
Eyes downcast and red surging to his face, Sam tightens up, twitching for a way out.
“Sorry about this morning.”
“We’ve survived worse,” Reuben observes and with deliberate compassion does not pursue the question.
“Do you suppose he did have another go-round with Rick?” Reuben asks Pearl when the boy takes his leave, having asked with excessive consideration if it would disturb them for him to use the shower. “He’s all sweaty, like he’s been playing ball all day.”
Sitting on the end of the bed diagonally to him, Pearl crosses her ankles and pens the baby between her legs. Dropping her keys, the baby crabs along Pearl’s thigh. “In the kitchen he told me it was an accident.”
Reuben folds his glasses and places them and his book on the nightstand.
“I wonder if he didn’t try hanging his face off the rim? Went up to jam it and came down too close?”
Pearl touches her own mouth. “Ow. Be lucky not to lose some teeth.”
“Or break his nose. He’d be embarrassed to admit it too.”
Pearl hesitates. “Or maybe he was fighting again.”
“He’s always been a peacemaker, kind of kid who breaks up fights. But he’s my son too. What he didn’t inherit, he’s learned from my example. When Bri beat Karen up, I was the one who taught Sam the proper response was beating the shit out of Bri. Taught him his fists were the answer, at least some of the time.”
“Boys fight sometimes,” Pearl points out. “With their friends, too. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. And Sam’s always banging himself up on his own.”
Reuben punches his pillow up. “Why aren’t kids born with a suit of armor? They could moult, like armadillos.”
Pearl laughs.
“Dunno. We break but we mend, baby. Yes we do,” she coos to Indy.
27
Sun still slugabed below the horizon, the world dead as dogshit and shivering, Sam waits at the Corner. She’s late and it’s frigging colder than the heart of the goddamn cosmos. To improve the frigid hour, he parks and goes into the coffee shop, which opens even earlier than the diner does, and buys a couple of cocoas. Tips open the lid of his lunch bucket and props hers inside to keep it from spilling and empties his and she’s still late. People waiting at the gym for him and she’s—what? not doing her frigging hair, that’s for sure. Shaving her head maybe. Must take some time. Tesla on the radio, covering “Signs.” A little gem of sixties libertarianism. The singer demands to know what right a landowner has to post his property.
“Paying the frigging taxes and the mortgage on the woodlot you just took a shit in gives me the right,” Sam sneers at himself in the rearview mirror. “So fuck you, you longhaired hippie faggot. Get a fucking haircut. Get a fucking job.”
But there’s no one to laugh with him at his countryman’s shuck. And there’s still no sign of Deanie.
Throwing the truck into park in the high school parking lot, he grabs for his duffel with one hand and slams down the lid of his lunch bucket with the other. An odd rubbery resistance registers and the smell of cocoa instantly permeates the cab. Flipping up the lid, he sees the crushed cup, milky brown puddles on the waxed paper of his sandwiches, rivulets glazing the yellow of banana peel. Swearing, he claps the lid down again and shoves the pail into his duffel.
The girls’ coach, arriving a few minutes before him, has opened the gym and practice is under way.
“Where’s Gauthier?” Rick asks him on the court. “You finally back the truck over her?”
Sam ignores him but Rick’s not the last to make inquiries. It’s clear the shouting match in the parking lot on Friday afternoon is still a hot topic on the grapevine. With the abrasions on Sam’s nose and the blue patch of bruise visible on his upper lip to add to it, conclusions aren’t just leapt to, they’re jumped, mugged and bushwhacked.
“What’s the bald bitch look like?” Bither demands. “You give as good as you took?” Having seen Sam with his face undamaged on Saturday, Mouth has no reason to assume any connection, but Sam reddens anyway, since after all, the conclusion is more or less correct.
Turning away from Mouth, Sam encounters Melanie Jandreau’s uneasy glance and he goes stony, pissed off all over again about the parking lot fray. She chews her lower lip and wipes nervous hands on her sweatpants.
The girls’ coach halts him at the door at the
