The Dwelling: A Novel (34 page)

He shook his head. “’Kay, go now, Mom. Okay?”

“You don’t want me to wash your hair? Do your back? Rotate your tires?”

“No.”
He sounded annoyed and she frowned.

“Okay, okay, okay—I’m going. Call me if you need anything.” And she shut the door behind her as she went.

Petey hurried through his bath, giving only casual consideration to the big angry feet on the bottom of the tub. There was something bad about the tub and Petey knew and accepted that in the way that no adult would have, or would even have understood. He washed his hair, not pausing to make it into a soapy crown the way he usually did. Instead, he soaped up and lay on his back, swishing his head back and forth to rinse it good. He lingered just for a second, enjoying the warm water that he sloshed over his tummy and tried to fit himself in such a way that his whole body was underwater at the same time and found he could no longer do that. He was too tall. That made him smile. He would be nine, next birthday. He sat up and pushed the hair out of his eyes. The floating white mountains of soap were destroyed by giant hands and feet, but not all of them. He was in a hurry.

The sooner he was done with his bath, the sooner he could get back into his room. He was sure they would come. Maybe all of them.

They had a secret. They had promised they would tell him.

Soon.

Barbara was checking her lipstick in the little mirror in the living room when the phone rang. She pursed her lips and debated answering it. She was ready to head out. It had been a terribly busy morning. First she’d had to drag Petey out of bed. Then she’d quickly dressed and run down to the library and copied her résumé (six copies…too optimistic?) and each of the letters, for her records. Then she’d come home, typed the addresses and attentions on envelopes and carefully, with the reverence due a minor god, she folded each letter and résumé and sealed them in the proper envelopes. Then she had a shower and put on her second-nicest outfit—she’d decided to save the pretty suit for the actual interviews—and she was ready to go.

The answering machine was not yet hooked up. She needed a battery for the clock, which she would pick up on her way home, so that if she did get any calls about the jobs and she was
in the yard at the store in the can
she wouldn’t miss them. But it was not hooked up yet, and the phone jangled at her.

It could be school. Petey hurt or in a fight. She answered it on the fifth ring.

“I was starting to think you weren’t home.” His voice was so familiar, so very familiar, that it actually took a second for her to place it, as though it was gauzy, behind a curtain.
Barbara Parkins, do you remember
this
voice from your past?
Barbara froze speechless.

“Barbara? It’s Dennis,” he said.

“Hullo.” Her face felt stiff and doughy at the same time. Her cheeks felt cold as though the phrase
the color drained from her face
wasn’t a cliché at all, but happening then, to her.

“So, uh, how are you?” She swallowed before answering. Her voice sounded weak.

“I’m fine.”
I don’t care how you are. Got herpes yet?

There was a pause at the other end as though he was as uncomfortable (impossible) as she was. In a strange way, she wanted him to speak, to hear his voice again.

“Petey’s at school,” she said.

“I know that.” He was calling from his office: in the background she could hear the clatter of the open room. She heard him close a door—his—and then it was quieter. “I’m actually calling to talk to you.”

Her heart did a little flip, even as she pushed it down. It was not about
that,
but her stomach ignored her and got hard, acidy.

“Oh,” was all she managed.

He cleared his throat. “This isn’t…easy for me. At all. I want you to know that.” His voice softened and she wondered,
Is he talking about the divorce ohmigod?
and then he sniffed and cleared his throat again.

“Are you crying?” she asked suddenly.

He laughed. “No. Got a little cold coming on, I think. Went skiing of all things, last weekend. My ass hurts, too.” He laughed again.

She gave her head a shake.
Skiing?
He’d never taken her skiing. She felt suddenly tired, as if his voice had the power to drain her of all her energy and good intentions. “What do you want, Dennis? You didn’t call to tell me you went skiing, did you?” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice. If he had wanted her back, she supposed he wouldn’t now. It was all moot anyway. She hated him. His voice was draining her. She hoped he died from his cold. Hoped it escalated into a venereal disease.

There was a long pause during which she had time to think more vile things of him. She searched her mind as to what he wanted and assumed that it was either to cut off her alimony or child support or to see Petey on the weekend.

“I don’t know how—” and then, in the space before he said that it was much, much more than that, in her gut she knew it was going to be something LARGE, whether it was the breath he took next or the stiff sound behind his bluff.

“I’m getting married.” And then an explosion from somewhere internal complete with flashing, blinding light behind her eyes, squeezed shut tight; she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t, wouldn’t speak
(what to say?)
and pain, never well-buried, came. Her face hurt, a sting like a wasp, her nose stopped up and she had to open her mouth to let air inside, it didn’t come in and she wanted to gasp—

“Are you okay?”

She didn’t answer, couldn’t think of a single word to say. Her lip started to quiver and her eyes filled with tears and she was angry and scared. Everything hurt and she still couldn’t breathe. Finally, she gasped at the air, and it sounded like a deep, annoyed breath. She believed that.

“Barb?”

“Remarried,” she said finally.

“Yes, well—”

Tears ran down her cheeks.
I’ll have to redo my makeup.
One dangled from her chin and dripped onto the collar of her blouse.

“Well, I don’t know. Say something,” he said weakly.

You’re a dirty lying asshole bastard I hope you rot in hell I hope your bitch is barren I hope you get cancer Aids herpes mono—

“Is it her?” It came out cracked, fearful.

“Her who?” he said, but she knew from his voice that they both knew
her who,
and that it was.

“I have to go.” She pulled the phone from her ear and was about to slam it down when she heard him yell, “Wait! I need to ask you something else…”

Too weak to refuse, too weak-stupid to give up hope,
ha ha just kidding let’s get back together,
she put the phone slowly back up to her ear.

She made a sound into the mouthpiece. It was all she could do.

“I want Petey to come this weekend. I’ll come and get him. I want him to meet Phyllis. I know this is short notice, but I know he’ll want to come and, I mean, let’s be adult about this. It’s time. You know what I mean?”

Her name was Phyllis. All this time I didn’t even know her name.

“Phyllis,” she said.

Dennis sounded relieved, maybe just to hear his beloved’s name. “Yeah, that’s right. Phyllis is her name. You’ll really like her—I do want us to be okay with this, Barb—” he said more, but Barbara never heard it. She hung up the phone and bounded up the stairs, trying to run, to run away from the phone, in a blind panic. Not blind. She made it as far as halfway up and then collapsed in a heap, sobbing, screaming, wailing her pain out to the house, the wails and sobs bouncing off the walls and coming back to her. She was blasted with the sound of her own pain.

For nearly an hour she stayed like that, until the wails subsided into sobs.

Once, under the stairs, from in the Murphy bedroom, her wail was echoed with another scream, one of a different kind of pain. Wrapped in a shroud, a veil of tears, she heard nothing. Not the scream and not the low, single bar of music that played right after. She also didn’t hear the little patter of footsteps in the room above her. Or the creak of a rope scraping against a beam in the attic.

She didn’t hear any of it. She was a wall of pain and nothing broke through.

Once a week in the afternoon, Mr. Casem, the big gym teacher whose voice sounded mad even when he wasn’t, taught Good Health to Mrs. Waddell’s grade three class. During this period, Mrs. Waddell would retire to the staff room to mark papers and complain about grade three. Her most recent application to the high school had been rejected and Mr. Waddell was not thrilled with the prospect of his wife either spending a year away from him in another city to teach grade anything-after-eight, or with uprooting himself and moving somewhere for a job of hers. He was tired of hearing about it, too. Mrs. Waddell spent period six explaining this to Miss Trainor, who nodded sympathetically. She had a husband herself.
At least you’re not teaching Good Health,
Miss Trainor said, and the two of them laughed. There was
that.

Mr. Casem was a man of few words at the best of times, most of those shouted or grunted, either positively or negatively, and his early days of teaching—of wanting to guide very young children into the joyous world of organized sport and team building—were fast fading. And he hated teaching Good Health. He was forever in search of a subject that didn’t limit him to actual parts of the body, but which generated lively discussion so that he only had to moderate. His fallback subject matter was always “physical fitness.” Whether he noticed or not, the kids got a lively discussion on physical fitness nearly every other week.

“This week, our topic is fitness, a mind and body experience,” he began, quite pleased with his intro. He had come up with the “mind and body experience” the night before. His wife had liked it. He spoke in a neutral tone, emphasizing phrases rather than points. The kids sat in alert positions, eyes front, backs straight, waiting for any deviation of character to signal an explosion. Mr. Casem’s temper was legendary. Mostly born of myth.

“Physical fitness is a gift we give our bodies. Your body is your temple, I think that’s even in the Bible somewhere; it is your responsibility to keep it in top working condition. There are many ways to do that,” he said. And with that he turned toward the blackboard. It was the one pleasure of Good Health. He wrote:
STAMINA
,
ENERGY
,
APPEARANCE
,
STRENGTH
, in large block letters across the top of the board where the chalk rarely visited and the paint was still dark as pitch. When he was done, he faced the children dramatically, brow glowering with the seriousness of the subject.

“Stamina!” he yelled out. The kids jumped. “You must exercise regularly and to the ends of your stamina in order to BUILD stamina!”

“Energy!” he shouted again. Energy was a gift from the exercise gods.

Strength was gained on the playing field and off with regular, rigorous exercise.

“Appearance! Appearance is improved with regular exercise,” he intoned. “You won’t be fat and flabby and pasty and breathing heavily when you exercise regularly!” Although Mr. Casem avoided looking directly at Petey, a number of the kids around him glanced and snickered silently. Andy Devries, who was seated two rows over from Petey and closer to the front, poked his buddy Marshall and pointed.

“No one wants to be a loser,” he said, more softly. He then proceeded to give examples about how each of the four topics improved the other areas of life, mind and emotion. It boiled down to: if you were strong, attractive, had an acceptable amount of stamina and energy, your self-esteem bubbled over and you were a guaranteed Big Man on Campus.

“And everyone wants that, right, girls?” he asked, and added a wink. From Mrs. Waddell’s desk he took a brown manila folder and withdrew a sheaf of papers. He counted the rows of desks.

“Okay, get out your pencil crayons.” He handed a bunch of papers to each row. “Each row represents a food group,” he said. “Color ’em up and we’ll discuss them when you’re done. The room sounded like shuffling papers for a while and then there was silence except for the scratch of pencils on paper.

Petey took a photocopied picture of a cow from the girl who sat in front of him. His row was meat. He chose a black pencil crayon and drew irregular circles on its body until it looked like a Dalmatian.

He had not listened to much of what Mr. Casem had been saying. His notebook was open in front of him, and at the top, in his neat, small printing were the words, G
OOD
H
EALTH
. Underneath that was a fair rendition of the field from his dream.

It was a flat, front view that tapered off into a fine perspective drawing of a hill in the distance. He had added little bunches of witchgrass and crabgrass, surrounding clusters of tiny buttercups. He didn’t draw the sun, but when he looked at the picture he could see the blue sky and the wisps of clouds. He tilted his head and appraised it. It was pretty good. Just looking at it made him want to be there.

He discarded the black pencil and colored the sky blue in his own picture instead. He made the buttercups a bright yellow and was just starting into the grass when Mr. Casem passed his desk.

“What’s your name?” he asked sternly.

Petey looked up and stiffened. His face went red. “Peter.”

“Peter
Who?”

“Peter Parkins.” He snapped Peter’s notebook up off the desk. The hand-out picture fell gently to the floor.

“Up,” he said. He pointed to the front of the class. Petey stared up at him pathetically hoping he didn’t really mean it. “Up! Up! Up!” he shouted, and the shout echoed in the room. Petey jumped up out of his desk knocking his knee on the edge. Mr. Casem put a firm hand on his shoulder and nearly pushed him to the front of the class, which had gone silent and was holding its breath interestedly, terribly grateful it wasn’t them and, in their way, very sorry for Petey.

Mr. Casem’s face was mottled with red, especially his ears, and Petey could see that he held his jaw stiff, teeth clenched.

“Mr. Parkins has colored his picture and wants to share it with us,” he said. He jabbed the notebook at Petey. “Go ahead,” he said. Petey looked down at the floor and couldn’t look up.

Petey felt a hitch in his chest. He wanted to cry but held it in. He was afraid. Everyone was staring. Through the windows on the north side, he could see the sun shining on the playground. The school shadow stretched out to touch the first set of goalposts.

Mr. Casem grabbed the notebook and held it out to the class.

“Here’s Peter’s food group,” he said sarcastically. “Maybe he could tell us what it is. Mr. Parkins?”

“It’s a field,” Petey said quietly. Mr. Casem made him repeat it.

“Oh, yes, I see,” he said, looking down at it. “Here is the grass, and the sky and these little yellow things are…what?”

“Buttercups.”

“Buttercups. Can you explain to me why you’re not doing the assignment?” He spun Petey around so that they were facing. The class watched, still breathless, eyes wide. Somewhere there was a murmur of something that might have been words. Mr. Casem blew up. He pointed to the class, his face crimson.

“Do not speak when I am speaking!” he shouted. Benita started to cry. He only glanced at her and grabbed Petey by his shoulder, getting close to his face.

“Why are you drawing pictures when I gave an assignment!”