T. Boyle - If the River Was Whiskey

At dinner that evening, Anthony gave them their first taste of his why-don’t-you-get-off-my-back look, a look that was to become habitual. His hair stood up jaggedly, drawn up into needlelike points — he must have greased it, Ken realized — and he slouched as if there were an invisible piano strapped to his shoulders. Ken didn’t know where to begin — with the scowl, the nudity, the desecration of library books, the tape player and its mysterious origins (had he borrowed it — perhaps from school? a friend?). Pat knew nothing. She served chicken croquettes, biscuits with honey, and baked beans, Anthony’s favorite meal. She was at the stove, her back to them, when Ken cleared his throat.

“Anthony,” he said, “is there anything wrong? Anything you want to tell us?”

Anthony shot him a contemptuous look. He said nothing. Pat glanced over her shoulder.

“About the library books…”

“You were spying on me,” Anthony snarled.

Pat turned away from the stove, stirring spoon in hand. “What do you mean? Ken? What’s this all about?”

“I wasn’t spying, I—” Ken faltered. He felt the anger rising in him. “All right,” he said, “where’d you get the tape player?”

Anthony wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then looked past Ken to his adoptive mother. “I stole it,” he said.

Suddenly Ken was on his feet. “Stole it?” he roared. “Don’t you know what that means, library books and now, now stealing?”

Anthony was a statue, big-headed and serene. “Bzzzzzzzz,” he said.

The scene at the library was humiliating. Clearly, the books had been willfully destroyed. Mrs. Tutwillow was outraged. And no matter how. hard Ken squeezed his arm, Anthony remained pokerfaced and unrepentant. “I won’t say I’m sorry,” he sneered, “because I’m not.” Ken gave her a check for $112.32, to cover the cost of replacing the books, plus shipping and handling. At Steve’s Stereo Shoppe, the man behind the counter — Steve, presumably — agreed not to press charges, but he had a real problem with offering the returned unit to the public as new goods, if Ken knew what he meant. Since he’d have to sell it used now, he wondered if Ken had the $87.50 it was going to cost him to mark it down. Of course, if Ken didn’t want to cooperate, he’d have no recourse but to report the incident to the police. Ken cooperated.

At home, after he’d ripped the offending photos from the walls and sent Anthony to his room, he phoned Denteen. “Ken, listen. I know you’re upset,” Denteen crooned, his voice as soothing as a shot of whiskey, “but the kid’s life has been real hell, believe me, and you’ve got to realize that he’s going to need some time to adjust.” He paused. “Why don’t you get him a dog or something?”

“A dog?”

“Yeah. Something for him to be responsible for for a change. He’s been a ward — I mean, an adoptee — all this time, with people caring for him, and maybe it’s that he feels like a burden or something. With a dog or a cat he could do the giving.”

A dog. The idea of it sprang to sudden life and Ken was a boy himself again, roaming the hills and stubble fields of Wisconsin, Skippy at his side. A dog. Yes. Of course.

“And listen,” Denteen was saying, “if you think you’re going to need professional help with this, the man to go to is Maurice Barebaum. He’s one of the top child psychologists in the state, if not the country.” There was a hiss of shuffling papers, the flap of Rolodex cards. “I’ve got his number right here.”

“I don’t want a dog,” Anthony insisted, and he gave them a strained, histrionic look.

We’re onstage, Ken was thinking, that’s what it is. He looked at Pat, seated on the couch, her legs tucked under her, and then at his son, this stranger with the staved-in eyes and tallowy arms who’d somehow won the role.

“But it would be so nice,” Pat said, drawing a picture in the air, “you’d have a little friend.”

Anthony was wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with red and blue letters that spelled out MEGADETH. On the reverse was the full-color representation of a stupendous bumblebee. “Oh, come off it, Pat,” he sang, a keening edge to his voice, “that’s so stupid. Dogs are so slobbery and shitty.”

“Don’t use that language,” Ken said automatically.

“A little one, maybe,” Pat said, “a cocker or a sheltie.”

“I don’t want a dog. I want a hive. A beehive. That’s what I want.” He was balancing like a tightrope walker on the edge of the fireplace apron.

“Bees?” Ken demanded. “What kind of pet is that?” He was angry. It seemed he was always angry lately.

Pat forestalled him, her tone soft as a caress. “Bees, darling?” she said. “Can you tell us what you like about them? Is it because they’re so useful, because of the honey, I mean?”

Anthony was up on one foot. He tipped over twice before he answered. “Because they have no mercy.”

“Mercy?” Pat repeated.

“Three weeks, that’s how long a worker lasts in the summer,” Anthony said. “They kick the drones out to die. The spent workers too.” He looked at Ken. “You fit in or you die.”

“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Ken was shouting; he couldn’t help himself.

Anthony’s face crumpled up. His cheeks were corrugated, the spikes of his hair stood out like thorns. “You hate me,” he whined. “You fuck, you dickhead — you hate me, don’t you, don’t you?”

“Ken!” Pat cried, but Ken already had him by the arm. “Don’t you ever—” he said.

“Ever what? Ever what? Say ‘fuck’? You do it, you do it, you do it!” Anthony was in a rage, jerking away, tears on his face, shouting. “Upstairs, at night. I hear you. Fucking. That’s what you do. Grunting and fucking just like, like, like dogs! “

“I’ll need to see him three days a week,” Dr. Barebaum said. He was breathing heavily, as if he’d just climbed several flights of stairs.

Anthony was out in the car with Pat. He’d spent the past forty-five minutes sequestered with Barebaum. “Is he — is he all right?” Ken asked. “I mean, is he normal?”

Barebaum leaned back in his chair and made a little pyramid of his fingers. “Adjustment problems,” he breathed. “He’s got a lot of hostility. He’s had a difficult life.”

Ken stared down at the carpet.

“He tells me,” Barebaum dredged up the words as if from some inner fortress, “he tells me he wants a dog.”

Ken sat rigid in the chair. This must be what it feels like before they switch on the current at Sing Sing, he thought. “No, you’ve got it wrong. We wanted to get him a dog, but he said no. In fact, he went schizoid on us.”

Barebaum’s nose wrinkled up at the term “schizoid.” Ken regretted it instantly. “Yes,” the doctor drawled, “hmmph. But the fact is the boy quite distinctly told me the whole blow-up was because he does indeed want a dog. You know, Mr., ah—”

“Mallow.”

“—Mallow, we often say exactly the opposite of what we mean; you are aware of that, aren’t you?”

Ken said nothing. He studied the weave of the carpet.

After a moment, the doctor cleared his throat. “You do have health insurance?” he said.

In all, Anthony was with them just over three years. The dog — a sheltie pup Ken called “Skippy” and Anthony referred to alternately as “Ken” and “Turd”—was a mistake, they could see that now. For the first few months or so, Anthony had ignored it, except to run squealing through the house, the puppy’s warm excreta cupped in his palms, shouting, “It shit! It shit! The dog shit!” Ken, though, got to like the feel of the pup’s wet nose on his wrist as he skimmed the morning paper or sat watching TV in the evening. The pup was alive, it was high-spirited and joyful, and it brought him back to his own childhood in a way that Anthony, with his gloom and his sneer, never could have. “I want a hive,” Anthony said, over and over again. “My very own hive.”