A. Homes - Safety of Objects - Stories

“You know,” Ben said, when they were finished smoking and were putting perfume that Sally had stolen from her mother between their fingers so they didn’t smell like tobacco, “I like you better than Julie. Julie wears dresses.”

Sally pulled a pack of gum out of her pocket and they both popped huge wads into their mouths to clean their breath.

“I hate girls who wear dresses,” Ben said, as he chomped down on the gum, lips smacking.

They climbed up the hill and out of the woods. Secretly Sally smiled. Julie and Ben were a year older than she; they would be eleven before she was even ten and they were best friends.

“Sal Lee.” She could hear her mother’s voice over the top of the hill. It came through in broken phrases like a radio with static. “Sal Lee. Sal Lee. Come. In this house. Now.”

It was late afternoon; the edge of the sun was just dropping back behind the house at the top of the hill. The TV antenna, the highest point on the block, was set off against the sky like the peak of a church and glowed like gold.

Cars with fathers coming home from work pulled into driveways, throwing shadows across chalk-drawn hopscotch games and ending basketball tournaments by parking in the court. The echoes of metal car doors slamming shut bounced off the brick houses.

Ben and Sally walked slowly, as though they were tired.

“Sally,” her mother called, her voice clear now. They were one backyard from home. “Is Ben with you?”

Sally and Ben gave each other guilty looks and wondered if they were in trouble for the fires, the smoking, or the perfume Sally stole. Neither said anything.

They came around the edge of the house, with innocent expressions spread across their faces as though they’d been Scotch-taped there.

“I’ve been calling you for twenty minutes,” Sally’s mother said. “You’re sleeping over tonight, remember?” she said to Ben. “Your mother dropped off your things. She’ll call later, to say good night.”

Ben’s father disappeared a long time ago. His parents weren’t divorced, but his father just went off one day and never came back. Sometimes the police would think they found him or found a clue that would help them find him, but nothing ever came of it. Sometimes Ben’s mother had meetings for work at night and if the housekeeper was off Ben spent the night at one of the houses up or down the block, wherever there was someone willing to have him.

“Because we have company tonight,” Sally’s mother said, making a big deal over Ben even though he ate over often enough to be called a regular, “we’re using the grill.”

They looked out onto the back patio where Sally’s much older brother Robert was leaning over the grill, attending to the chicken pieces with the kind of precision and commitment seen only in boys in their very late teens who are determined once and for all to do something right.

He didn’t look up when his mother called him.

“Robert,” she said over and over again and she tapped on the glass door to the patio. “Robert, how much longer?”

“Seven minutes, maybe seven and a half,” he said.

Ben looked out at Robert. Robert was taller than anyone he knew, and thinner than anyone he’d ever seen. Ben stood at the kitchen door watching him, until finally Robert took the chicken off the grill and brought it inside.

“Dinner’s ready,” Sally’s mother said. Sally’s father came out from the den, and Ben and Sally washed their hands and dried them on a dish towel while Robert looked on with mild disgust.

“Your nails,” he said to no one in particular. But Ben went back to the sink and washed his hands again, this time scraping his nails back and forth against the soap, leaving five troughs in the Ivory.

The conversation at dinner somehow took Ben away from Sally and divided them into sides, male against female. Sally didn’t like it. She didn’t like being lumped together with her mother and treated like a maid. She just wanted to sit there like everyone else. She hated her father for telling her to get up and get the salt, and Robert for saying, “While you’re at it, get some ice cubes,” and her father even more for saying, to Ben, “Is there anything you need while Sally is up?”

After dinner, Robert and his father balled up their napkins, threw them into the middle of their plates, and got up from the table. Ben sat at the empty table and waited for Sally to finish helping her mother with the dishes.

When everything was washed and dried they were allowed out again. The sky had dropped down into the shade of blue where everything is still, the moment just before night.

“Don’t go out of the yard,” Sally’s mother said.

Ben and Sally hid behind the metal storage shed in the carport and shared a cigarette.

Ben tried a new thing where he took a deep drag and exhaled straight into Sally’s mouth as she inhaled and then when she exhaled there was nothing left.

“Let me do it to you,” Sally whispered.

Ben shook his head and took a drag and this time kept it for himself.

Through the screen door, they heard her mother asking Robert, “Are you sure you turned the grill off? I feel like I smell something burning.”

They each took one last drag and then Ben put the cigarette out on the bottom of his shoe and Sally jammed the half-smoked Marlboro back into the pack and hid them again in her sock.

Sally’s mother came to the door, opened it, and called Sally’s name. Behind the storage shed Ben and Sally held their breath and waited.

“Sally,” her mother called again.

Ben’s foot slipped and he fell against the metal shed, with a thud that sounded like the shed had burped.

“Five more minutes,” Sally’s mother said, going back into the house and letting the screen door close behind her.

Sally pushed Ben into the shed and again it made the same burping noise.

“Great,” Sally said, and she popped gum in her mouth and rubbed White Linen between her fingers.

“Gimme gum,” Ben said.

Sally threw him a piece, which landed in a puddle on the ground.

“Another one,” Ben said.

“Sorry, last piece.” And Ben picked the gum out of the puddle, wiped it on his shirtsleeve, and put it in his mouth.

* * *

“I’ve made up beds for the two of you in the extra room downstairs,” Sally’s mother said.

Actually “downstairs” was the basement.

“I don’t want to be kept up all night with your horsing around,” she said.

Sally looked at Ben. The basement scared her. She didn’t even like going down there during the day and certainly never planned to sleep there.

“We can stay in my room,” Sally said. “We’ll be quiet.”

Sally’s mother shook her head.

“Then Ben can sleep in Robert’s room,” Sally said.

Ben stood in the hall between Sally and her mother, feeling uncomfortable, and unwanted.

“Robert’s too old to be having people sleeping in his room,” Sally’s mother said, patting Ben on the head. “You’ll be fine downstairs. Wash up and get into your pajamas, then you can watch TV for half an hour.”

All during their TV show Sally thought about sleeping in the basement. She thought about the big closets in the recreation room. She thought about the furnace room and what might be in there. She thought about being downstairs in the darkness so far from everyone asleep upstairs. If she was scared she couldn’t tell Ben because he’d think she was being a baby, or worse, a girl. All during the TV show, she thought about staying awake all night.

“Good night,” her mother said to her as she kissed her forehead.

All three stood at the top of the stairs.

“I put extra blankets down there in case it gets chilly. Don’t stay up all night,” Sally’s mother said.