Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

“So you didn’t like it? I mean, Mom said she heard you liked it.”

“Sure, why not?”

“Then how come you’re back?”

“Oh, I dunno. I guess it’s hard to go to class when you’re pregnant.”

I pick up the remote. Archie hits the turlet. Credits roll. Then a commercial for a Kawasaki that looks like a lunar lander. Maybe one day I’ll get a bike, ride it all the way up to Oregon, drink some of that good coffee, cut a hard line through the switchbacks along Route 1, take dumb chances in and out of every bluff.

“You know what’s weird, though? You don’t really look pregnant.”

Cher yawns.

“That’s because I got un pregnant. Okay, Dilly?”

HER SUITCASE STAYS next to the sofa for a month, every night TV and pretzels and not much to say. Especially about her chapped lips and bouncy knee and the hickeys that ring her neck like pearls.

Jonelle refuses to leave the bedroom: How much longer? and Isn’t this our house ? and Some people pay this thing called rent . I bring up ice creams and sodas. I bring up magazines and kisses. Sometimes the magazines help, especially ones about the heiress who looks like a fish, or about Brad Pitt, who sleeps with this mannequin that adopted half of Equatorial New Guinea.

“What am I supposed to do, kick my own sister out?”

“Yes.”

I lay my palm on Jonelle’s stomach. “And what kind of example would that be setting for him or her?”

“Oh, please.”

After dinner Cher has an announcement.

Mom’s all, “What is it? Cancer?”

“I’m fine,” Cher says.

“She’s fine, Ma. It’s okay.”

“So you’re going back? Are you going back to school?”

Cher grabs three fingers of hair, arranges it on top of her head.

“Actually, I’m getting married.”

“To who?”

“Just a guy from the neighborhood,” Cher says.

“See? A guy from the neighborhood, Ma. It’s okay.”

“Is it someone we know?”

“Definitely,” Cher says.

WADE RENTS OUT the whole VFW and everyone just stands there, hot and sweaty in powder-blue suits, grumbling around the cash bar. Jonelle stays at home with Dilly Jr., new and perfect and healthy pink, so beautiful I can barely breathe, letting him exhale for both of us. Mom’s not feeling so hot, can’t make it either.

All the flowers say, COMPLIMENTS OF AMAYZING GRACE AND GROCERY!

All the Diet Cokes say, COMPLIMENTS OF AMAYZING GRACE AND GROCERY!

There are ten tables, ten couples, ten dudes who sling glossy triangles on ten corners.

Somehow I get through the dinner and the speeches, don’t say a word. My collar’s too tight, shoes too small, one beer follows another as Kool and the Gang Cel-e-brate, good times, c’mon while my sister and her train of lace spin across the floor, dancing, dancing.

On Monday Cher comes by for the last of her stuff, a shirt, a sock, the other earring. She puts her finger against her lips, shhh , but Mom hears, all, “At least take some soup, here’s a Tupperware,” and then also with the phonebook open to the section on annulments, “It’s not too late!”

“Who gives advice?” Cher says. “That can’t even come to a wedding in the first place?”

Mom makes a face like Pearl Harbor morning plus 60 Minutes being cancelled. Jonelle crosses her chest and spits on the floor, some eye hex even Gypsies don’t believe in. “You and your tore-up husband, pffft. ”

“Wait, what?” Cher says, laughs.

Jonelle reaches into the sink and throws the clear disc that usually spins in the microwave but is currently soaking even though the atomized noodles and beans are impervious to hot water. It digs into the wall and then hits a stud.

The sound of glass.

Doors slam. Upstairs and downstairs.

Dilly Jr. starts to cry.

I sweep him up and press him tight against my chest. It’s possible he’s actually scared, has some internal meter that senses turbulence, but I think he just wants a hot dog and a ball and some soda and to take off his pants and throw rocks and scream with pure milky glee, so totally ready to evolve into a tool of nonstop motion and fun.

FOR A WHOLE YEAR stories waft around, different characters, different versions, Cher did this or Butterfly did that. How they’re the reason all those cats are missing. How Cher gained a hundred pounds and carries a TEC-9 in her purse. How Butterfly keeps monkey heads floating in pickle jars on a shelf made of bones.

Dilly Jr. doesn’t care. He’s busy learning. Up and around, trembly thighs and then step, step, flop. He’s got six hairs and two teeth, top and bottom, little choppers that bite my knuckle, ravenous with love.

After Christmas Mom gets sick.

Just a bit and then really. The doctors at first are all tubes and pills and Press here for the nurse , but after a while, practically, You might as well just go home, we could use the bed . The night she passes, Mom puts her hand on my neck and whispers that she loves me. I love her, too. Always has. Same here. I’m a good boy. Only because she made me be. Great things are coming. How badly I wish she could be there to see them.

The last thing is Tucson.

The church next to the plot next to her grandfather’s headstone, where she intends to be buried.

I promise her, absolutely, if that’s what you want.

THEY SEND THE BODY ahead on a refrigerated train, and who knew such a thing could be paid for or even existed? Then on Friday, Wade and Cher glide up in a new Buick. Jonelle refuses to go. “Fifteen hours? In a car? With them?”

“But it’s my mother.”

“Exactly.”

I put on my wedding suit and slip into the backseat, Cher with her hair up, a deeper red than usual, like it’s been dipped in the Ganges.

“Sucks and all, homes,” Wade says, a license to say stupid things since he’s covering gas. “But I liked your mother. She had style.”

Cher rolls her eyes. “Guess what Mr. High Roller did. Mr. Top of the Line? Just guess.”

When I don’t answer, she holds up a bouquet of flowers, shows the side of the wrapper that says, COMPLIMENTS OF AMAYZING GRACE AND GROCERY!

It’s quiet all the way to the interstate and then Wade goes, “Hey, Dillard?”

“Yeah?”

“Buckle the fuck up.”

And so I do.

JUST OVER THE BORDER a hose comes loose and we’re towed to the station. By the time it’s fixed we’re late for the viewing and Tucson is still two hundred miles, nothing but desert and the radio, I’m a cowboy and On a steel horse I ride .

“Man, you’d pound your nuts to jelly on a steel horse,” Wade says.

The funeral home’s dark, door locked. Cher hits the horn beep and then the door bang until a janitor comes to the window, some Russian waving his mop. “Is to close, you see? Is not open.” Wade flashes him a ten and then a twenty and then three twenties. The Russian lets us in. Red carpet and curtains and ceilings. Way in back, Mom. Still in her coffin, all powder and rouge, I never once in my life saw her wear makeup. She looks like someone graffitied her, THIS EXIT FOR REAL NATIVE CRAFTS!

“Sorry, Dillard,” Wade says, then goes and sits in the car.

It seems so dumb, tears. I wipe them from Dilly Jr.’s cheeks every day like they’re nothing.

“Shhh,” Cher says, nails on the back of my neck, tall in black stilettos. I nod and she scratches, a sing-song of mourning and comfort that somehow feels older than either of us. I put the flowers on the casket, too long in the car and now a powder gray. Cher fixes Mom’s dress but leaves her shoes, which are on the wrong feet. Upstairs there’s the sound of one of those floor buffers, a rotary thing that crosses the planks in wide, reverent arcs.