Safe Passage (26 page)

    
Patrick winked at her, thinking she had refused because he couldn't drink with her. "Ah, acts of charity," he said. But it wasn't. She had rolled around in bed with him all those years and hadn't been able to help it. But that was over now. Her sons were born, grown, dying. At a certain point the father was no more important than a tomcat or papa bear, essential at the moment of conception and then of no consequence at all…and the mother was alone, raising them, caring about them, waiting for them to die. And afterward she would be condemned to care for a
blindman
who strutted around like the emperor without his clothes. She turned away from Patrick and Alfred and Cynthia, toward the stereo. She took off
Mefistofele
and found another record.

    
"Don't worry," she said to Alfred. "I won't play it loud."

    
"I think, ladies and gentlemen," he said as the music started, ''that this afternoon we're in for a steady diet of Chopin polonaises."

    
There was sarcasm in his voice, but
Mag
didn't care.

CHAPTER 10

    
Simon had never been so angry with his mother. Not only was she into her loud classical-music routine, not only had she reversed herself on the matter of his ear, but also she had turned his alarm clock off this morning so he hadn't gotten up to deliver the papers.

    
When he first woke up and came downstairs, she was already gone. "Off to work," his father said, which made no sense. His father had been blind again. "Don't worry, she'll be back soon," he'd said. In the meantime, no papers were in the driveway, nothing…only one
Freestate
Sentinel
lying on the kitchen table.

    
"I think she delivered them for you,"
Izzy
told him. "She was dressed like she had."

    
"She never does that by herself."

    
"Well, today she did."

    
They told him about Tim O'Neal calling home. They told
   
him Tim didn't know whether Percival had been in the build

ing
that got blown up or not.

    
Right then he remembered everything he'd forgotten during the night. He started to sweat. There was nothing he could do—not even deliver his papers. A little while later his mother came home. She didn't speak to anyone, just went in the living room and turned on the stereo. He followed her in and yelled over the music: "Why didn't you wake me up?"

    
"I didn't sleep all night," she yelled back at him. "Gideon came."

    
"I mean, it's my route. How did you even know which houses to do on the other section?"

    
Some high-voiced opera lady was singing, louder than an actual person would sing in real life.

    
"I think I did all right," his mother screamed. "I was just sitting here half the night, Simon. I needed something to do."

    
His mother's skirt and blouse were wrinkled, not crisp like they usually were when she went to work. Her face was wrinkly, too. Another time he would have thought it was nice of her to get up for him. It wasn't as if she loved going out in the cold. But the papers were something he was supposed to be responsible for. His father had said so. It seemed like he ought to be able to do
something
.

    
"Well, if you're going to get up again tomorrow, don't do it without me," he said over the music.

    
She didn't apologize, only turned the stereo up louder. A little while later Alfred arrived and made her turn it down, but Simon had been annoyed all day. His mother should at least let him handle his own newspapers and his own ear.

    
"Some girl is on the phone," Darren was saying.

    
"Who?"

    
"What am I, your secretary?" Darren asked.

    
Simon got up and went into the phone room.

 
   
"Simon?"

    
It was Hope
Shriber's
voice—the Jesus freak. Shit. She would ask, in her low-voiced, gossipy way, "Heard anything yet?"—the way people had been asking all day yesterday and all day today. When he said no, Hope would go into her Christ Our Savior/Kingdom of Heaven spiel the way she did in social studies when they were doing Religions of the World. She'd say if Percival were dead, that meant he was with Jesus; it meant he was spending eternity in the Kingdom of Heaven—talking as if that was the best thing that could happen; you couldn't ask for anything better. He was so angry that even before Hope said another word, he had in mind to tell her Percival was nineteen years old and had plenty of time to think about eternity later, thank you very much. And that would be the end of it.

    
"We didn't want everybody in the class calling you separately because we thought that might be too much, so I'm calling for all of us," was all Hope said. "We just want you to know that we're thinking about you." She didn't even ask if they'd heard any news.

    
"Yeah, well thanks," Simon said. It was the first time he'd thought about how everyone else had been in school all day, how normally he himself would have been there, too—sitting in class and going to the cafeteria for lunch, eating school pizza and watching
Pooter
dance, almost falling asleep while Mrs.
Bettleheim
droned through seventh-period history. He felt as if he'd been away from that a lot longer than just one day.

    
He imagined Hope sitting by the phone in her house, with her honey-colored hair falling over the receiver, and her eye shadow and lip gloss worn off the way it always was by the end of the day. In some ways, except for her religious craziness, she wasn't so different from everybody else. It seemed to him now that he was the different one.

    
"What I want to do," she said, "is have a moment of silent prayer for your brother in home room. I was going to ask Mr. Forsythe today, but I wanted to ask you first. I don't want to do it if it's going to make you mad."

    
He should have known that was coming. He was surprised she was even asking permission. He guessed she knew how annoyed he'd be otherwise. Sometimes in class they really went at it, Simon saying, "A lot of times God just has
nothing to do with it
," and Hope's color getting so bright he thought she was actually going to sputter.

    
"That's just ridiculous, Simon," she'd say in a voice just on the edge of tears—the kind of voice the twins had when they got upset—and Simon would feel half bad about getting her so riled up and half good that he could get to her so easily.

    
But Hope wasn't sputtering today. There was a long pause on the phone. Then she said in a small, tentative voice, as if she thought maybe he'd hung up on her: "Simon?"

    
He didn't answer right away. He was thinking about how his father had said yesterday he was using the Angel Solution to decide about his ear. He was trying to let God bail him out; he was trying to make a deal. He wasn't doing that at all.

    
A thickness rose in his chest. His father had tried to make an ass out of him in front of the whole family.
And his mother, too, first with his ear and then with the newspapers.
What did they want from him? If he died under the anesthetic, he would be like Percival blown up: Simon Singer one minute and the next minute nothing at all. And that would be all right. But maybe it would never happen. Maybe they wouldn't let him do it. There was nothing he could do.

    
Then he thought: How could a moment of silent prayer hurt? How could it hurt to pray for Percival, just in case?

    
"I guess it would be okay," he said.

    
"Thanks, Simon," Hope said. "I'll call you tomorrow and let you know if Mr. Forsythe lets us do it. Or maybe I'll call him at home right now and call you back. Take care."

    
"Take care yourself," Simon said, and hung up.

    
Gideon had come downstairs. He was saying hello to everybody, but he looked awful. He kept rubbing his legs.

    
"What's the matter?" his father asked Gideon, squinting because his eyes had opened up not long ago and he still couldn't see very well. "You have a cramp?"

    
"Yeah, pins and needles, that's all. Must have slept in a weird position."

    
Simon had not thought Gideon would space out over Percival. They didn't even like each other that much lately. But everyone could see that he was in a bad state.

    
Darren came walking into the family room. "Visitors," he said to Simon. For a minute Simon was glad for an excuse to get out of there. Then he realized it was probably Hope. Of course if it was Hope, her father must have brought her—her father the Jesus Freak—and they'd want to come in and pray right now, not wait for a moment of silent prayer in class tomorrow, and that would make everything even worse.

    
But it was
Pooter
and Boozer standing at the door. They never came to his house. They couldn't drive yet, and it was too far from J Street to walk over here.

    
"Hey, man, how'd you get here?" Simon asked.

    
"Come see," Boozer said.

  
  
They all went out on the front walk. There was this '64 Chevy convertible in the driveway, one Simon knew belonged to an older guy name Marcellus, and there was Marcellus himself, sitting in the front seat.

    
Pooter
and Boozer fidgeted around on the walk. "I bet you're really freaked out, Simon,"
Pooter
said. It was the kind of thing Percival always used to say.
Pooter
got a real uncomfortable look on his face when he spoke, and it made Simon feel a little better.

    
"All of you can come inside," Simon said. "Marcellus, too."

    
"No, man," said
Pooter
. "You come down here and take a look at this car."

    
They all walked down into the driveway. Marcellus's convertible was some car. It was twenty years old and shinier than the new
'84s
. It was too cold to have the top down on a day like this, but they had it down anyway. Marcellus pointed out the upholstery and the rebuilt engine.

    
''He put fifteen coats of wax on this baby,'' Boozer said.

    
Simon admired it all.
Pooter
and Boozer had talked about this car a lot at school, but Simon had never thought to go see it. He remembered
Percival's
old car. It was just this shiny, though of course not a convertible. In summer Percival took off his shirt and washed the car in the driveway. Simon always helped. They washed it in the sun, letting the water from the hose slosh over their bare feet. Then Percival pulled it into the shade under the sugar maple where they waxed it, rubbing circles of thick paste wax onto the metal and then rubbing it off until the dark green color of the car shined through from underneath. When Percival went into the Marines,
Izzy
took that car down to College Park, but he was too busy with his research to wax it or even change the oil. Percival had been using a different car last year when he taught Simon how to drive.

    
Thinking about all that might have made Simon sad right now, but with
Pooter
and Boozer standing there, it didn't.

    
"Listen to this sound,"
Pooter
said, turning the car radio on and letting "Beat It" boom out onto the driveway. Then
Pooter
must have decided it wasn't right to turn Michael Jackson up so loud under the circumstances, and he quickly turned it off.

    
"Don't worry about that," Simon said, thinking about his mother playing the stereo twice this volume. He turned the radio back on, lower, to show
Pooter
it was all right. Boozer
moonwalked
backward on the driveway.

    
"You don't see chrome like this no more," Boozer said.

    
"You sure don't."

    
"Of course, it don't get no gas mileage," Marcellus told him.

    
"Yeah, but who cares?"

    
"That's what I say, man, who cares?"

    
Simon could see how proud Marcellus was.

    
It was getting dark.

    
"Hey, Simon, you hang in there,"
Pooter
said.

    
"I hope your brother's okay," said Boozer. He said it in a way that made Simon think he would be.

    
They waved when they drove off. Simon felt a lot better.