A. Homes: Safety of Objects: Stories

“I was just looking,” I said.

“Whose room is this?” he said.

I shrugged.

“Whose?” he asked.

“Yours.”

“Did I say you could look? Did I say you could come in here? Did you ask? No!” he yelled into my face. “Some things belong to a person himself. They’re private and you can’t take them away.”

I could smell his breath. It was hot like a dog’s. I tried to turn my head away, but he held it straight. He held it with his thumb pressed under my chin.

“You can’t have everything. I don’t go into your room, looking at your things, do I?”

I wanted to tell him that my room was at home and the room down the hall didn’t have anything in it except a bed with blue flowered sheets and a Pepto Bismol — colored blanket. I wanted to tell him that he was starting to remind me of Rayanne because she always asked me to tell her things and then would explain them back to me all wrong.

“You really are a case,” he said and then walked out of the room. I followed him down the hall. “Are you a lost dog?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

He put his hand on my shoulder and I thought he was going to push me away and say get lost or something. I thought he might crack my head against the wall.

“Are you feeling better, Johnny? Are you ready to go fishing? Do you have a fever?” He pressed his hand up to my forehead, held his palm there for a minute, and then flipped his hand over so that the back side was against my head. I felt his knuckles digging into the thin crevice in the middle of my forehead. “It’s gone,” he said, taking his hand away and walking farther down the hall.

When his hand was off my head I could still feel the knuckles in that small crack in my skull. I thought about how I’d always figured that gap was a sort of structural deformity. I didn’t know it was normal. I thought it was something that could start moving, an earthquake of the mind. I thought the two halves might separate and split my head open. I thought the gap could close and force my brain out through my ears. It always seemed that if anything happened to that place, I’d end up the same as Rayanne. It was like a warning that something could go wrong and I’d be just like my sister. I rubbed my forehead, letting my fingers dip into that place. I rubbed and wished Randy hadn’t touched me there.

“Hey, Johnny, is it time for medicine?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“It’s good for you, come on.” Randy held out the bottle. His fingers were wrapped around the label. He unscrewed the top and took a small swig, swished it around in his mouth, and swallowed. I shook my head. “I’m not about to force you. That’s not what I’m about.” He recapped the bottle and put it down on the ledge above the sink. “My mother used to dose us sometimes. Sometimes at night she’d want us asleep and we’d still be going full speed, and she’d come into the bedroom, hold my nose until my mouth opened, and pour stuff down me; sometimes it was brandy, sometimes I didn’t know what it was. She always did it to me and not to my brother because he had asthma real bad and she didn’t want to mess him up.” He paused. “Are you hungry?” I shrugged. Randy opened the refrigerator. “A Fig Newton might work. I’m not a cookie person, but Fig Newtons aren’t really cookies, they’re more of a medical food, you know? There’s milk in here too. There you go, Johnny.” He handed me the cartons.

“I still want to call my mom.”

“No phone.”

“She’s probably wondering where I am.”

“No she’s not, Johnny. She knows you’re with me. I told you that yesterday.”

“But aren’t I supposed to go home soon? And why don’t you have a phone? Everyone has a phone. It’s probably illegal not to have one.”

“Don’t talk law and order to me. Everyone has a phone and a television, and every other one has a video recorder and a washing machine. And then they have microwave ovens. It doesn’t mean they’re smart. Start collecting things and you get in trouble. You start thinking that you care about the stuff and you forget that it’s things, man-made things. It gets like it’s a part of you and then it’s gone and you feel like you’re gone also. When you have stuff and then you don’t, it’s like you’ve disappeared.”

“You have empty bottles in rows all around your room,” I said.

“Empties aren’t stuff. What are you, stupid?”

“I’m not stupid.”

“Keep it that way,” Randy said, and then he walked away and I heard the slap of the screen door.

* * *

I walked from room to room eating Fig Newtons and drinking milk straight from the carton. I remember thinking it was great that no one was making me pour it into a glass. The rest of the house wasn’t much, just a living room with a busted-up sofa and a green chair made out of the same stuff as car seats, the stuff your legs stick to on summer days. I sat down on the sofa and then had to move over to save myself from one of those springs that you can’t see but all of the sudden pops through and stabs you in the butt.

I sat there eating cookies and sort of daydreaming. I thought that this was the kind of life I’d live if it was just me and my dad, no mother, no Rayanne. I thought about how everything in our house got all weird when my dad came to visit. My mother would run around putting everything into piles on top of the TV or the coffee table. Then she’d go to the grocery store and buy things like broccoli and veal chops. We’d have to put clean clothes on and sit with her in the living room until she heard his truck coming down the street, the gears shifting down. My father would come into the house and we’d be standing there like we were in the army and you could tell from his face that he wished he hadn’t come. It was like he wanted to sneak in and have us find him sitting there watching TV like he’d never been gone. It was like he made himself think that he didn’t matter, that his leaving didn’t matter. Sometimes he’d try and fake us out. He’d drop by without warning. Rayanne, my mom, and I might be out in the front yard and we’d hear the truck as soon as it turned the corner at the end of the street. Rayanne would look up and see him sitting twenty feet up in the cab and she’d take off, galloping toward the truck in her retarded way, legs getting tangled in each other, never sure which foot should go next.

The screen door slapped shut and somewhere in my head I heard it, but didn’t really know where I was. I was still thinking about my father, his truck, and the view from up in the cab.

“Hey, hey, Johnny,” Randy said. “Are you sleeping?”

“Not exactly,” I mumbled.

“What exactly?”

I shrugged.

“You don’t have to spend all day in the house. When I saw you out there playing ball, I figured you were an outdoor type.”

I shook my head.

“I like to watch TV. I watch TV and my sister comes in. I can’t stand her, so sometimes I have to get out of the house. My sister is retarded, did you know that?”

Randy nodded.

“No matter how old she gets, she’ll never be better than a seven-year-old. She calls my father “Uncle” because she says that daddies live at home and uncles just come and visit.”

“Yeah, well, get up. We’re going fishing. What we catch is what we eat for dinner.”

“I don’t know how to fish.”

“I’ll teach you, Johnny.”

I shrugged.

“Do you care about anything?”

I shrugged again.

“Don’t shrug. Either talk or don’t, but don’t goddamn shrug at me. It’s like saying go to hell, only worse. You’re saying it’s not even worth the energy it takes to say the words.”

* * *

I walked through the woods behind Randy.