Chuck Logan - Homefront

“Mom’s taking a shower,” she said.

“Yep.”

“I’ll pick out some clothes for her to wear.”

“Hey, that’s good, honey.”

Up on tiptoe, peering at the pot. “Ah, what’s cooking?”

“Spaga,” Broker said, using her baby word for his venison spaghetti.

She grinned, turned, and ran up the stairs.

Kit in motion: this house they rented from Uncle Harry was small, half the size of their home up in Devil’s Rock. But Mom didn’t want Kit going to school in the woods, so they’d moved into the Stillwater apartment. Then Mom got sick, and they were back in the woods again. Because people here didn’t know her up and couldn’t tell that she was different now. Just for a while, Dad said, until Mom’s arm got better. When her arm was better, the rest of her would be better too.

Kit was used to her mom being real strong, bossing whole platoons and companies in Italy, so sometimes it scared her, seeing the way she wandered around smoking cigarettes in her pajamas and robe all day. Most of the other kids at school had their moms coming in, picking them up, talking to the teachers. Helping out. With her it was always her dad. And he never came in, just waited out in the truck.

Kit went into the closet next to the room where Mom slept and dug through some boxes. Up on tiptoe, she searched through some clothes on hangers, picked a few, then came back into her room and plopped them on her bed. Then she opened the door to the bathroom. Mom was standing at the sink, drying herself with a towel. She put the towel aside, opened the cabinet over the sink, and took out a jar of skin cream, removed the top, and dabbed some on her face.

That was a good sign.

Fresh from the shower, wreathed in steam, Mom had some color to her face. Mom was smoother now. She used to be too thin, laced tight with dents and veins. Could see the muscles sliding back and forth under her skin when she moved. Now she was filled out all around. Still sort of skinny, but not the way she used to be skinny. Kit understood she was not like other moms; but, of course, Kit hadn’t seen other moms naked in the bathroom.

Nina Pryce peered into the steamy bathroom mirror. At thirty-six she still looked fit, for a civilian.

Five-nine. One hundred and forty-five pounds. She’d gained ten pounds on the disabled list. She was getting breasts, a suggestion of fullness creeping into her hips and rear end.

Curves, for Christ’s sake.

The nagging thought: did Broker like her this way; ripening like a pear…?

Dependent on him.

A lot of moms were in shape. Gym-rat skinny, Dad called it. But not like Mom used to be. For instance, other moms didn’t have the kinda purple gouge in their left hip and a bigger glob of purple scar on their butt. Where the E-ra-kee shot her during the war in the desert, the war before the one that was on TV now. The one before Kit was born. Didn’t have a big grinning skull-and-crossbones tattoo on their right shoulder.

Kit entered the bathroom cautiously, feeling her way into her mother’s mood. In a general way she understood that Mom wouldn’t get on her about the fight at school. She knew Mom didn’t have the strength for that right now.

“It’s okay, Little Bit,” Nina said, turned her warm green eyes on Kit, smiling in real life.

Kit brightened and smiled back. Mom only called her “Little Bit” when she was feeling pretty good. Auntie Jane had called her Little Bit. And Mom’s smile was only a little bit sad.

“So what’s this boy like, you got in the fight with?” Nina asked.

Kit made a face. “He’s a bully. He swears more than all the other kids put together. He knows the F word.”

“Hmmmm,” Nina mulled.

Kit tilted her head. “Can I say…hell?”

“Okaayy…” Nina drew it out, curious.

“Hell is a swear word. But no one says, ‘The H word.’ Why is that? And what’s the big deal about the F word?”

Nina fingered a snag in her hair and studied her daughter. “What do you think it means?”

“Don’t know. But it’s cool, because the older kids say it a lot.”

Nina put down the comb, wrapped a towel around her middle, came into the room, and sat on the bed. “Well, it’s complicated,” she said.

“That don’t sound like an answer. Sounds like another question,” Kit said.

“I don’t think you’re ready for this. You sure you really want to know?” Nina asked.

“I want to know,” Kit said, furrowing her forehead, attentive.

Nina scrunched her lips meditatively, “Okay. It’s like this. The F word is initials. Like your name: Karson Pryce Broker. The initials are K.P.B.-”

“Yeah,” Kit said.

“The F word is the same way. F.U.C.K. means ‘For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.’”

“I don’t get it,” Kit said.

“It’s about…sex.”

Kit shook her head.

“Okay. Sex is a way of talking about making babies. Remember our talk about how Daddy and I made you?”

Kit’s face contorted, recalling the description of Dad’s testicles being full of swimmy things that swam out his penis into Mom’s vagina, hunting for this egg. She had looked at her father funny for a month after that.

“Mom, that’s gross.”

Nina nodded. “And so is the F word for someone your age.”

“I’m going to change the subject,” Kit said.

“Fine,” Nina said.

“Can we play the game?” Kit asks.

Nina smiled. “Okay.”

Days when Mom was feeling better, like now, she’d let Kit play dress-up on her, like she was a special doll. Something she would never have done last year in Italy. Kit would parade the clothes she’d selected. But first she’d comb Mom’s hair.

“I like it you’re letting your hair grow,” Kit said, gently drawing the comb through her mother’s hair, ratting out the snags.

Broker stood at the foot of the stairs and listened to the muted girl talk drifting down from Kit’s bedroom on a mist of hot water and body lotion. He smiled and sagged a little with relief, hearing the normal chatter. More and more there were these tiny healing moments, cutting back the bleak days.

He went back into the kitchen, where steam from the boiling kettle of pasta water had fogged the windows. When his girls came down for dinner, he saw that Kit had talked Nina into an artifact of her student days at the University of Michigan, this ancient flowing green jabala with threadbare gold embroidery. She had applied lipstick, dots of rouge, and streaked eyeshadow. Nina’s red hair, for years shorn mob-cap short, had grown to an ambiguous length two inches off her shoulders. Kit had pinned it with barrettes at odd angles. A single crude braid dangled from the left side of her forehead.

Nina managed a wry smile and rolled her eyes. Kit led her by the hand, pleased with her efforts.

Broker encouraged, smiled back. “All right, looking good. Kit, go wash your hands.” He placed a salad bowl on the set table, returned to the stove, thrust a ladle into the churning kettle, plucked a strand of pasta, took it in his fingers, and tossed it against the maple cabinet next to the stove, where it stuck in a curlicue.

Done.

“Al dente, bravo,” Kit said in approval, emerging from the half bath off the kitchen. Her expression changed, remembering something. She dashed from the room.

As Broker drained the noodles in the sink, he heard Kit running up the stairs. Nina moved in beside him, began to grate the Parmesan. Their elbows touched.

“You look like a harlot in that getup,” he said quietly.

For the first time in a long time, she sideswiped him with her hip.

“Hey,” he muttered, his voice close to faltering at the warm pressure of Nina’s flank nudging him.