Do as I say, not as I do—thinking of himself, knocking up Pearl on a drunken, careless night. A clear, sweet drunk it was and the carelessness a heartfelt abandon. He wasn’t so impaired, nor indifferent either, as to forget there could be a baby in it. Good enough, he remembers thinking, to the extent he could think at that time. Good enough. Some love deserves its own expression in a new life. If you want to be pretty about it. More crudely, knocking her up is a time-honored way to get a woman’s serious attention. Of her motivation he was ignorant and so remains—it may have been the same as his. They jumped off a cliff together, she as reckless as he, and it was a lovely freefall. He couldn’t regret it or its complications anymore.
Sammy, his manchild, making that wench testify tonight, was unwanted by Laura. He had his way about it and it might very well have put paid to the marriage. This is just the useless speculation of the small hours. As much good to fret about it as worry about Frankie and the goddamn war, or about his lost daughter. He thinks of the baby girl in her crib down the hall and wonders if someday he’ll be staring at the ceiling, advising himself not to stay awake over her. How do you do that? How do you not worry?
“Should have got the kid a dog when he wanted it,” he says to the ceiling.
Beside him, a tremor of laughter goes through his wife’s body.
Reuben scrapes mashed banana from Indy’s chin back into her mouth. As Sam and Deanie descend the stairs—Deanie reluctantly—he spares them an irritated glance. Deanie freezes. Pearl looks up from filling lunch buckets and smiles encouragingly. Sam nudges Deanie toward the bathroom. She looks from father to son and back again before scampering away. Reuben wipes the baby’s chin and rises from his chair. He reaches for his jacket and tosses Sam’s to him. Without a word, they leave the kitchen.
In the yard, they start the vehicles. Sam listens to his truck’s engine race before he idles down. His father opens the passenger door. The truck lists and then settles under Reuben’s weight. Sam’s long legs go slack as he slumps down behind the wheel. He makes himself meet his father’s furious eyes.
“I want to ask you two questions,” Reuben says.
“She’s on the Pill,” Sam counters swiftly.
Reuben rolls his eyes. “Isn’t that grand? What’s the answer to the second question?”
Sam shrugs.
“Jesus, Sammy.” Reuben’s voice gentles into weary puzzlement. “Are you out of your mind?”
Sam stares at the dashboard clock. “You don’t understand what Deanie’s been through—”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Reuben interrupts. “The child’s a mess. She’s vulnerable.”
“Dad, if she gets shipped out to some foster home outside of this SAD, she won’t be allowed to play basketball for at least a year.”
Reuben shakes his head. “I missed something. What does that have to do with you jumping her bones?”
“Nothing. Can’t you forget about that long enough to realize the most important thing is Deanie? All she’s got is hoops. She’ll go right down the toilet without it. Look, she’s sixteen. Why can’t she be emancipated, like Karen? Then she won’t have to go into DHS custody and she can stay with us.”
“Not us—with you. You want me to allow you to cohabit with a sixteen-year-old girl under my roof. You’re working what you want around to what’s good for her.”
Sam shoves his hands into his armpits and turns his hot face away from his father. “If she goes, I go.”
“Oh shit!” Reuben explodes in disgust.
“I’ll quit school. Get a job and a place to live.”
His father rakes his hair distractedly. “No, Sammy. That’s a terrible idea.”
“You don’t want her here, we can live in the horsebarn, like you did, or camp out in the farmhouse until summer.”
In the kitchen window, Pearl looks out at them. Breakfast is on the table by now but she makes no summoning gesture. Sam’s stomach aches for the French toast he can all but smell across the yard.
“Sammy, you’re too young to take on another person. Right now you’re letting your dick think for you. You want her where you can fuck her.” He pauses, studying the boy’s face for signs that the deliberate crudity has had the kind of cold-water shock he sought. A misery of conflicting emotion works Sammy’s features but what fixes them finally is an obdurate stubbornness. “You don’t understand—you live here together and get it regular from each other awhile and you’ll wind up marrying her—and you got a snowball’s chance in hell of making it work!”
“I’m too young to get married,” Sam says, “and anyway I never will—you get married, you just wind up divorced.”
Reuben winces.
Ignoring him, Sam presses onward. “You don’t understand. Deanie needs me and she needs me now. If I don’t love her, she’s going to think no one ever will—or can, on account of her face.”
His father is silent long enough for Sam to finally look at him again.
“Oh Sammy,” Reuben says, with enormous sadness.
The boy does love her, the mechanic sees, to think such a thing. Could be right about it too. If there’s any one moment in that wretched little girl’s life when uncritical love—maybe even passion—is necessary, it’s probably now.
“It’s my fault,” Sam croaks suddenly. “I was
