Michael Collings - The Slab

“I don’t think the girls ever got to play with the video games, not once,” Linda said, tacitly agreeing with Jay. The evening had been rough on the girls.

And it was even rougher, Jay knew, because Grandpa Abe had spent most of the time sitting silently in the old bentwood rocker Grandma Matty had bought as a young mother. He hadn’t even rocked very much; he spent the evening staring at a spot on the wall opposite, six inches under the faded, antique-framed photograph of his own grandparents-Jay’s great-grandparents-stiffly postured for a formal wedding portrait. He had sat and stared and spoken very little

Jay sighed. Obviously things weren’t going as well here as he had been led to believe through Abe’s telephone calls. He reached over and flicked the light off. Moonlight streamed through the curtainless window, striking him full on the face. The light cast the stuffed animals and birds into sharp relief. He rolled away, covering his eyes with his forearm.

Linda nestled close against his back, her arm over his side. “Try to get some sleep,” she whispered in his ear. “Tomorrow will be better.”

It wasn’t.

The girls woke at seven, before anyone else was awake, and crept into the family room and turned the television on. They dialed the volume knob so far down that the sound emerged as little more than a blurring murmur. They sat three or four feet from the screen, neither moving, neither making a sound. But something woke Thad up anyway, and when he sat up in his bag and saw the two girls staring intently at a cartoon he had grown tired of when he was ten, he yelled, “Hey, get out of here, bugs! We’re sleeping.” Thad yelling full-voiced was in itself an interesting phenomenon, one capable of waking everyone else in the house.

It did. It jerked Jay from a tangle of hateful dreams that had kept him tossing and turning all night on the narrow bed. For her part, Linda had not dreamed, but Jay’s restlessness had perforce communicated itself to her. Jay was up and out the door before Linda was fully awake.

Within five minutes, the only person still asleep was Grandpa Abe. The door to his bedroom was closed, and Jay heard no movements behind it as he hurried down the hall to see why the girls were crying. He rounded the entryway only a few steps in front of Linda, who was followed closely by Ellen. Elizabeth was whimpering, but Anna was screaming full volume. Thad had her by the upper arm, his fingers gripping so tightly that even Jay could see the bloodless white of the boy’s knuckles. Anna was almost off the ground, only one toe brushing the carpeting. The television screen was black, and Thad clutched the on-off button in his other hand.

“ Hey!” Jay yelled, forgetting for an instant that the six-foot-one, straggly-haired ape wearing only a pair of drooping boxers hanging from his bony hips was his own nephew. “What’s going on?”

Thad let go of Anna instantly-so fast, in fact, that the girl almost fell. Elizabeth grabbed her and steadied her. Thad spun around to face Jay.

“Uh, Uncle Jay,” he said, as if that flicker of recognition were deserving of special notice. “Uh…we were sleepin’ and the bu… the girls came in and turned the TV on and woke us up and…”

Jay crossed the room, stepping deliberately over the cocoon-like lumps that were Josh and Colin-both of them sitting up breathless, wide-eyed, and tousled. When he was less than a foot from his nephew, he spoke in a voice that was so low and calm and controlled that he barely recognized it as his own. “You touch her again, punk, and I’ll break every bone in your body.”

Thad stared down at his five-foot-nine uncle and started to say something.

“I mean it,” Jay said before the boy could speak. “Every bone in your fucking body.”

‘“Jay!” Linda’s voice registered disbelief. Jay never cursed.

Jay whirled to see Linda at the entry to the family room, Ellen pressed close behind. For an instant, it was as if a thick red curtain had parted from before his eyes.

He blinked.

When he looked back at Thad, he was shocked. There wasn’t a wild-eye, hippie-type hulk towering over him. It was his nephew, the boy he had dandled on his knee. A skinny, fifteen-year-old boy whose emotional growth had not yet caught up with his body. Jay remembered vaguely his own teenage years, how difficult and rare it was to wake feeling like anything other than a temperamental grizzly on the constant prowl for mayhem.

“Uh, listen, Thad, I’m sorry,” Jay began.

“Get away from him!” Ellen jerked at Jay’s arm, forcing him to turn and face her. “Get your filthy mouth away from my son!”

Jay was so stunned at what he had said and at the unreasoning fury he had experienced, at what he felt- knew — he would have done to the boy in another moment or two, that he couldn’t speak. He strode past Linda, who was crouching by Elizabeth and Anna to reassure them. He walked past Mitch, who was cinching up his robe in the entryway and obviously wondering what he had missed.

Jay continued on to the back bedroom. He entered and shut the door behind himself, meticulously careful not to slam it. He dimly heard Ellen’s raucous voice, interrupted and punctuated here and there by Mitch’s deeper, grating bass. Once or twice Linda’s voice came through as well. Thad didn’t appear to be saying much.

Finally, even the dim rustle of voices died away, and Jay was left with silence and turmoil. What the hell had he been doing? Okay, so the kid shouldn’t have grabbed Anna like that, but did that make it all right for Jay to come on like gangbusters. And what in hell made him spit out language like that. He rarely used it, never to family, especially not in front of Linda and the girls. He shook his head and sat staring at the floor.

A long while later, Linda cracked the door open and slipped in.

“Ellen and Mitch and the boys have gone out to get something to eat. Your Dad’s still asleep. The girls are reading.”

Jay nodded numbly. Linda rested her hand on his hands, where they lay limply across his thighs and loosely clasped.

“I talked with Ellen. I know you didn’t get much sleep last night. You must have been having a humdinger series of nightmares. You were moaning and tossing and turning all night long.”

Jay touched her cheek. “You didn’t get much more, did you?”

She flushed. “Anyway, I think Ellen understands. You were just overtired, worried about Grandpa Abe, upset. And Thad apologized for losing his temper and breaking the television knob and grabbing Anna like that. He was pretty shook.”

“I guess. I would have been if it happened to me,” Jay said softly.

“So the upshot is that I think everything is pretty well smoothed over.”

They sat quietly for a long time, just the two of them, side by side on the edge of a narrow, lumpy rollaway.

When Abe Morris woke at ten-twenty, the house was deathly quiet. He stared around him curiously, as if he were seeing the room for the first time. Then something in the back of his brain shifted, and the familiar furniture and pictures and clothing snapped into place and he knew where he was and who he was.

But aren’t Ellen and Jay here? he wondered briefly. I was sure they came here.

He got up, feeling every savage bite of pain in his joints and bones. He dressed slowly, wishing that he could just remain in bed and sleep and dream, but knowing that for some reason he had to get up.

That’s it, Jay and Ellen are coming today for dinner. For…what was it, yes, Thanksgiving. The family all together for Thanksgiving.

He smiled.

Then the smiled faded. He looked down at the unruffled quilts and pillow on the far side of the bed.