George Saunders - Tenth of December - Stories

“Only with harshness,” she said.

“Still, you can’t help but love the Flemings,” he said.

“We should be so wonderful,” she said. “When was the last time we rescued a Russian baby?”

“Well, we do all right,” he said. “We can’t afford to fly a bunch of Russian babies over here, but I think, in our own limited way, we do just fine.”

“We can’t even fly over one Russian,” she said. “Even a Canadian baby with a harelip would be beyond our means.”

“We could probably drive up there and pick one up,” he said. “But then what? We can’t afford the surgery and can’t afford the college. So the baby’s just sitting here, in America instead of Canada, still with the lip issue.”

“Did we tell you kids?” she said. “We’re adding five shops. Five shops around the tri-city area. Each with a fountain.”

“That’s great, Mom,” Ryan said.

“That is so great,” Renee said.

“And maybe, if those five shops do well, we can open another three or four shops and, at that time, revisit this whole Russian-harelip issue,” Ryan’s father said.

“You guys continue to amaze,” Ryan said.

Renee stepped out with the baby.

“I’m going to step out with the baby,” she said.

4.

The baby had taken its toll. Renee seemed wider, less peppy. Also paler, like someone had run a color-leaching beam over her face and hair.

The baby did look like an elf.

The elf-baby looked at a bird, pointed at the bird.

“Bird,” said Renee.

The elf-baby looked at their insane pool.

“For swimming,” said Renee. “But not yet. Not yet, right?”

The elf-baby looked at the sky.

“Clouds,” Renee said. “Clouds make rain.”

It was like the baby was demanding, with its eyes: Hurry up, tell me what all this shit is, so I can master it, open a few shops.

The baby looked at me.

Renee nearly dropped the baby.

“Mike, Mikey, holy shit,” she said.

Then she seemed to remember something and hustled back to the porch door.

“Rye?” she called. “Rye-King? Can you come get the Mart-Heart?”

Ryan took the baby.

“Love you,” I heard him say.

“Love you more,” she said.

Then she came back, no baby.

“I call him Rye-King,” she said, blushing.

“I heard that,” I said.

“Mikey,” she said. “Did you do it?”

“Can I come in?” I said.

“Not today,” she said. “Tomorrow. No, Thursday. His folks leave Wednesday. Come over Thursday, we’ll hash it all out.”

“Hash what out?” I said.

“Whether you can come in,” she said.

“I didn’t realize that was a question,” I said.

“Did you?” she said. “Do it?”

“Ryan seems nice,” I said.

“Oh God,” she said. “Literally the nicest human being I have ever known.”

“Except when he’s hitting,” I said.

“When what?” she said.

“Ma told me,” I said.

“Told you what?” she said. “That Ryan hits? Hits me? Ma said that?”

“Don’t tell her I told,” I said, a little panicked, as of old.

“Ma’s deranged,” she said. “Ma’s out of her frigging mind. Ma would say that. You know who’s gonna get hit? Ma. By me.”

“Why didn’t you write me about Ma?” I said.

“What about her?” she said suspiciously.

“She’s sick?” I said.

“She told you?” she said.

I made a fist and held it upside my head.

“What’s that?” she said.

“A lump?” I said.

“Ma doesn’t have a lump,” she said. “She’s got a fucked-up heart. Who told you she’s got a lump?”

“Harris,” I said.

“Oh, Harris, perfect,” she said.

Inside the house, the baby started crying.

“Go,” Renee said. “We’ll talk Thursday. But first.”

She took my face in her hands and turned my head so I was looking in the window at Ryan, who was heating a bottle at the kitchen sink.

“Does that look like a hitter?” she said.

“No,” I said.

And it didn’t. Not at all.

“Jesus,” I said. “Does anybody tell the truth around here?”

“I do,” she said. “You do.”

I looked at her and for a minute she was eight and I was ten and we were hiding in the doghouse while Ma and Dad and Aunt Toni, on mushrooms, trashed the patio.

“Mikey,” she said. “I need to know. Did you do it?”

I jerked my face out of her hands, turned, went.

“Go see your own wife, doofus!” she shouted after me. “Go see your own babies.”

5.

Ma was on the front lawn, screaming at this low-slung fat guy. Harris was looming in the background, now and then hitting or kicking something to show how scary he could get when enraged.

“This is my son!” Ma said. “Who served. Who just came home. And this is how you do us?”

“I’m grateful for your service,” the man said to me.

Harris kicked the metal garbage can.

“Will you please tell him to stop doing that?” the man said.

“He has no control over me when I’m mad,” Harris said. “No one does.”

“Do you think I like this?” the man said. “She hasn’t paid rent in four months.”

“Three,” Ma said.

“This is how you treat the family of a hero?” Harris said. “He’s over there fighting and you’re over here abusing his mother?”

“Friend, excuse me, I’m not abusing,” the man said. “This is evicting. If she’d paid her rent and I was evicting, that would be abusing.”

“And here I work for a beeping church!” Ma shouted.

The man, though low-slung and fat, was admirably bold. He went inside the house and came out carrying the TV with a bored look on his face, like it was his TV and he preferred it in the yard.

“No,” I said.

“I appreciate your service,” he said.

I took him by the shirt. I was, by this time, good at taking people by their shirts, looking them in the eye, speaking directly.

“Whose house is this?” I said.

“Mine,” he said.

I put my foot behind him, dropped him on the grass.

“Go easy,” Harris said.

“That was easy,” I said, and carried the TV back inside.

6.

That night the sheriff arrived with some movers, who emptied the house onto the lawn.

I saw them coming and went out the back door and watched it all from High Street, sitting in the deer stand behind the Nestons’.

Ma was out there, head in hands, weaving in and out of her heaped-up crap. It was both melodramatic and not. I mean, when Ma feels something deeply, that’s what she does: melodrama. Which makes it, I guess, not melodrama?

Something had been happening to me lately where a plan would start flowing directly down to my hands and feet. When that happened, I knew to trust it. My face would get hot and I’d feel sort of like, Go, go, go.

It had served me well, mostly.

Now the plan flowing down was: grab Ma, push her inside, make her sit, round up Harris, make him sit, torch the place, or at least make the first motions of torching the place, to get their attention, make them act their age.

I flew down the hill, pushed Ma inside, sat her on the stairs, grabbed Harris by the shirt, put my foot behind him, dropped him to the floor. Then held a match to the carpet on the stairs and, once it started burning, raised a finger, like, Quiet, through me runs the power of recent dark experience.

They were both so scared they weren’t talking at all, which made me feel the kind of shame you know you’re not going to cure by saying sorry, and where the only thing to do is: go out, get more shame.

I stomped the carpet fire out and went over to Gleason Street, where Joy and the babies were living with Asshole.