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Jacob fed the dog. His younger cousin, Hannah, followed him outside. He could tell she was interested in the playground from the way she looked at it, and then the dog. To test the swings or the slide would be to brave Dances. “Don’t worry about it,” said Jacob. “It’s not very good.” He wrapped his hand around the nearest support and shook it fiercely. The whole set shivered, and the swing shook, and flakes of rust fell off of it. There was a sickly straining sound. “Chains would probably break if you swung too high.”
“Oh,” said little Hannah. She looked at the dog, who was nose-deep in his food. He paused to lick his chops, then nosed back in again.
♦◊♦
The adults distracted Hannah and Marvin with educational cartoons while they sat at the kitchen table catching up. Clara, the older cousin, sat at the table between her mother and father. Jacob brought a chair to the corner between his mother and Aunt Paula.
Clara listened politely with folded arms. Jacob followed her example, though he kept catching himself tonguing the dry skin on his lips, scratching the back of his head, or shifting in his chair. The grownups talked about work and where certain young relatives were going to school, what they would study, and the prospects for their future careers. Uncle Ellis said Clara would be a veterinarian one day. He said she was working part-time at the pet clinic already. He touched her back. She didn’t shrug it off. Aunt Paula was quick to add that Hannah had shown real aptitude in music, especially the flute. Clara, as her parents effused, examined her nails as if to consider having them removed.
Jacob waited impatiently for his parents to share his own accomplishments. He had made 15 model airplanes, spaceships, and trucks in the last year, as well as launching two model rockets from the back yard.
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Jacob waited impatiently for his parents to share his own accomplishments. He had made 15 model airplanes, spaceships, and trucks in the last year, as well as launching two model rockets from the back yard (both lost, when their parachutes opened, on the wind). He had read The Hunchback of Notre Dame—this time the full version, having discovered the one he read the first time was abridged. He had also mastered the back-stroke, painted part of a mural, and written a short story about a vegetable garden that talked to itself when everyone was asleep.
His parents did not mention these things. Gradually the conversation turned to money. Uncle Ellis agreed that things were hard all over. This was why he voted Republican. “Taxes,” he said. “You know you work one day a week for the government.” Jacob’s parents agreed it seemed unfair without disclosing how they voted.
“Whenever we get a little ahead, some catastrophe comes up,” said Jacob’s father. “We finally paid off the credit card, for instance. Then, wouldn’t you know it.” He grasped Jacob’s cheeks across the table, and pulled to make his son smile. A pained display of silver braces. “Suddenly we’ve got to spring for all this.” He let Jacob close his mouth. “Turns out we end up right where we started.”
“I know it,” said Ellis. “I know it.”
“Never a dull moment,” said Paula.
Jacob sucked his braces. There had been a lot of talk about what they could do with the money, and then a dentist visit where his gums bled. Then they knew what they’d do with the money.
He wandered out of the kitchen to catch the end of cartoons. When he sat down on the couch beside Hannah she told him he smelled weird. He said, “Well I haven’t showered yet, or used deodorant or anything.”
Hannah said the couch smelled weird too. “And your bathroom,” she said. “It stinks. My shoes stick to the floor.”
Her parents didn’t tell her to stop. It was six days before the electricity would go out.
♦◊♦
That afternoon they went to the zoo. Their father stayed home so they wouldn’t have to pay for his ticket. He said he had some things to do around the house. Jacob wanted to ask his aunt and uncle if everyone understood what his father was doing and they were only pretending not to out of politeness or if he was the only one who knew. It turned out not to matter because Uncle Ellis paid for everyone’s ticket.
The polar bear was asleep somewhere out of view. The dolphin show would start in an hour. The reptile house was closed for repairs. Uncle Ellis took each setback as if it was only a promise that the next thing would be that much better. If the komodo dragons were unavailable, the penguins would be playing football. If the penguins were listless, the giraffes would all stand on their heads. The girls shared facts about the animals. They knew which of the big cats were poor fathers. Clara quizzed her little sister on the hours owls kept. “Nocturnal,” said Hannah, “means they don’t come out in the daytime. Because they’re asleep.” Clara asked Jacob the next question. She touched the back of his neck when he got it wrong.
One of the elephants in residence was a painter. She had been featured in Time magazine, several hundred newscasts, and there was talk of a feature film that would foreground her relationship with a handsome young trainer with hair just long enough to tuck behind his ears. Most days the elephant did not paint. When she did it cost a small fortune for a ticket. The elephant’s handlers would rub her trunk and help her to choose colors. Today she was not painting. There was, however, a display of her work—some dozen paintings hung in a small, hastily-assembled hut beside the elephant rides (which were also closed for the day). The artist seemed to favor broad strokes, reds and blues, splashes of orange.
“They all look about the same,” said Jacob’s mother.
“They look like something I would draw,” said Marvin, but this was not true. He spent most of his time drawing battles. Uncle Ellis ruffled his hair.
They went to the monkey house. Marvin began to act out. He imitated the monkeys, loping around stupidly and then, crouching with one fist on the ground between his feet, pretending to groom his brother. Jacob swatted him away. Marvin shrilled. “Ook ook. Eek eek! Marvin so hungry!” He ran a circuit around his brother. “Jacob-Monkey swarming with delicious bugs!” Jacob lashed out again, missing, locking his own elbow painfully.
“Marvin,” said their mother. Without seeming to notice, she slid a lock of hair in one smooth motion from behind her ear to her mouth. “Marvin.”
He screeched and grabbed at his brother—at Jacob’s crotch, Jacob’s ankles. Jacob tried to stomp his hands.
“Marvin,” said their mother. “I’m going to count to three.”
“Oh!” said Marvin. He had spotted the Country Time lemonade stand. “Can I have frozen lemonade?”
“No!” said his mother.
“No,” said Jacob. “Don’t be greedy.”
“Come on,” said Uncle Ellis. “Don’t worry so much, Melissa. It’s on me.” Marvin was the only one who got a frozen lemonade, though Jacob thought he could have had one if he asked.
♦◊♦
They had hamburger stir fry for dinner with bell peppers and onions. Diet sodas for everyone, store-brand, which made them all burp, though Jacob’s mother said it was just as good as the name brand. Marvin tried to start a burping contest. The girls rolled their eyes.
Afterward the grownups drank blue margaritas. Uncle Ellis and Aunt Paula brought the mix. Paula mentioned they had brought a blender three times before Jacob’s mother ran their own—an older model with big, orange buttons and foggy glass, but it still worked. Paula plugged her ears. Uncle Ellis shouted over the chunking, pulping ice at Jacob’s father, who only smiled and nodded. It was about work, which Jacob’s father didn’t like to talk about. His job was answering a phone. He’d been found under his desk once, not asleep, not even shirking—only whispering into the receiver, asking for account numbers, for verification, social securities. They called Jacob’s mother about it as if she was somehow responsible.
As the grownups went more and more tipsy they told stories about each other, the stories less and less appropriate for Marvin’s ears. There was the one about Uncle Ellis and his first girlfriend buying rubbers at the pharmacy, together, holding hands. Of course the pharmacist made the sale and after the young lovers left he called their mothers. “He even saved a receipt to prove it!” said Jacob’s mother, “When he came home that night Momma had the evidence in one hand and her yellow yardstick in the other.”
Aunt Paula cleared her throat; Ellis sipped his drink. His upper lip was stained blue.
So were Jacob’s father’s teeth. His eyes were fogged like milk in tea. Ellis opened a beer for each of the men and they sipped quietly, spare hands planted on their knees, hunched.
“Can we watch a movie?” said Aunt Paula. “You guys have a great collection.”
“It’s mostly old stuff,” said Jacob.
“I love the classics.”
“The VCR’s broke,” said Marvin. He sucked air through his teeth. “We can watch Saturday Night Live.”
“The girls aren’t allowed,” said Ellis.
Clara, who had been reading in the kitchen with the lights off, blew raspberries.
They went back to the stories. Their father made another round of margaritas. Their mother got her hands on a bottle of beer. Some dripped down the side of her face, her neck, and onto her shirt, streaking her left breast. Jacob remembered when she was nursing Marvin. He wanted to tell her it was time for bed. Their voices were all changing—old accents floating to the surface like bobbers.
“Oh God,” said Uncle Ellis. “I just remembered. When mom caught you.”
“Ellis?” said Jacob’s mother. Her mouth curled up into a defensive smirk.
“You’d been sleeping naked for months,” said Ellis. “Everybody knew except Momma. Nobody wanted to say anything, but of course the doors didn’t have locks, and one night she wanted to look at you the way she used to do when you were sleeping. Only,” he slapped his knee, sloshing his drink wildly in the other hand. Jacob glimpsed his blue tongue. “Only, you’re not sleeping at all. And poor Momma, she screamed! You shouted at her you were itchy. You were so itchy, you said, please close the door.”
Aunt Paula laughed like a chicken. Jacob’s mother set to chewing her hair. “Ellis,” she said. She went to the sink and stared at the dishes for a while. Clara watched over her book, and the family over the half-wall between the living room and the kitchen. Jacob’s mother looked at the sink for a long time. Jacob came to her side. He wanted to touch the small of her back through her t-shirt. The sink was full of dishes. White plates with little blue flowers around their edges, drizzled with beef juice, scabbed with withered onions and bell peppers, greasy forks and steak knives piled up around them, and bits of onion peel.
“Melissa?” said their father. “Please be calm.”
Jacob touched his mother’s back. He felt the moisture collected underneath her shirt, which hung a little loose from the skin.
She threw her margarita glass. It broke into several large pieces, the circular base and the stem standing at the sink’s bottom, the body of the cup breaking into two eggshells. Blue pureed ice all over, even dotting the sill of the window that looked out on their neighbor’s yellow-gray vinyl siding. Clara snorted.
Jacob’s mother went to bed chewing her hair. Jacob stayed in the kitchen, staring into the sink.
“Okay,” said Ellis. “Time for bed everybody.”
Continued on the next page …
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