Catch
Even when Harley grabbed my mother’s butt while she was getting up to refill their drinks. “She’s really something, pal. You got lucky.”
My dad’s laugh was a small thing. A cricket ready to stop the moment something came too close.
I was trying to decide whether to stab Harley with my knife or my fork when my mother looked at me and mouthed the word: “No.”
I bunched my fists under the table. Angry. Hurt.
My dad never got angry. He just got smaller.
And then he was gone.
I was up because my mother had been up. Because she had been sitting in the kitchen, not crouched over Vogue or over a book as sometimes she was. Not simply sitting as sometimes she did. Sitting with a bottle of Jack, as my father and Harley sometimes did. Sitting and pouring this liquid the color of her eyes from bottle to small glass to mouth. Sitting there and not seeing me crouched on the fkoor. Playing with my Hotwheels but not playing. Moving the Hotwheels on the floor because if I stopped moving them, if I stopped making engine-noises and pushing the little chunks of metal and plastic across the floor she would think that something was wrong. And absolutely she could not think that anything was wrong with me. Absolutely not. I made myself invisible through movement and play. I acted out the motions of an unconcerned child. On the digital clock over the stove the blue numbers read 1:20. She got up. She staggered, leaned against the wall. Full of Jack, her voice swimming in it. “Going bed now baby you too ‘kay.”
“Night mom.” I would not look at her.
Pushing my cars. Not seeing her hip whack into the door frame. Not hearing her fall in the hallway, or her crying. Push the cars. Push the cars around the orange track and make engine noises. Push them and do not hear. Hear maybe but do not listen. She was going into her room now. She was crawling. Push the cars. Make engine noises. Vroom. Brrrrrr. Sobbing and then silence and then a heavy breathing from the bedroom. Asleep now.
Like a zombie I began doing things I had been told never to do. I made myself a bowl of cereal, climbing up on the counter to get at the high cabinets. I took it into the living room, where I switched on the television and stared at it, shoveling Cocoa Puffs into my mouth. I could not begin to tell you what was on the television, besides bright movement that dulled whatever anger and hate were in my mind. Besides voices, like my own moving the cars in the kitchen that made things invisible.
I heard the screen door pulled open, the hand fumbling with the doorknob. I did not move.
The door was flung open with a bang, and the frame filled with a dark shape, a pale and sweating face. Harley. He stumbled into the room. He’d tied one on, I guessed. But where was my dad? I got up and ran into the kitchen. From the drawer next to the sink I got the largest kitchen knife we had.
“Hey, boy! Boy!”
I peeked around the corner.
“Where’s your mother?”
“Not here.”
Harley’s face was pale and wrong. His mask had slipped off. His eyes rolled in the naked flesh. He tried to assemble the mask. Smiled. “She ain’t gone, is she boy? She wouldn’t leave you here. Pretty woman like that . . . leaveyoualone.”
I got the half-empty bottle of Jack and brought it in to him. Slapped it down on the TV tray. “She’ll be back. Went to the store. Here. Drink this.”
His eyes rolled. He picked the bottle up. Hands shaky. Brought it to his mouth and made half of it go away. “Got to have her . . .”
Have her? I was tight, a little coil of wires. Have her.
“Got to have her drive me.”
In the bedroom my mother’s breathing was loud, but he didn’t hear it. Would he hear it? Go in there? Have her? I would stab him. I would kill him.
“She be back?”
“She just went to the store. Where’s my dad?”
Harley shrugged. The sweat poured down his face. He smelled of something awful. Stink. Human waste. Maybe metal in there somewhere. Sweat. “Dumb son-of-a-gun. Should’ve known better . . . ”
He was trying to get up. Couldn’t somehow. In the flickering light of the television his face was a round whitish ball, a fat floating ball with eyes painted on it. The television laughed at him. It was funny. This big man who could not stand up.
