WHAT ROGER KNOWS, WHAT HE HAS ALWAYS KNOWN, is that his brother Davy is the best. The best student, the best athlete, the best loved. When his mother makes roast beef for dinner, she gives Davy the extra pieces, trimmed of fat and sliced just right. When Davy practices the trumpet, everyone has to be quiet so as not to disturb him. Davy can sing like a bird, run like a cheetah, do science like Einstein, and write poems like Robert Frost. Davy is bigger than life.
That is why when he got drafted and sent to Vietnam, Roger’s mother started lying on the couch in the afternoons with a damp cloth on her forehead and the curtains drawn.
“Entertain yourself,” she tells Roger.
Roger knows how to do that. He has been entertaining himself for his whole life. He goes into Davy’s empty room and touches everything on the desk. The typewriter. The trophy for football and the other one for baseball. He picks up the books lined up there. The Making of the President and In Cold Blood. Roger picks up In Cold Blood and reads: On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.
Creeped-out, he puts the book back on the desk. Why would Davy read a book like that? He stretches out on Davy’s bed with its brown-and-gold plaid blanket and stares up at the ceiling, pretending he’s Davy. What would it feel like to be his brother? To be so special? Did he lie here at night and fantasize about going into space? Or playing his trumpet in a jazz band? Or kissing his girlfriend, Diane? Ever since Davy left for Vietnam, Diane comes over for dinner every Tuesday night. She brings dessert from one of the Italian bakeries. His mother pretends to be grateful for the pastries, but later she will say, I didn’t leave Rhode Island and a bunch of wops to eat cannolis in Connecticut.
Diane’s hair is short in the back and teased on top, with little bangs. She outlines her eyes in thick black eyeliner and sometimes she wears false eyelashes and short white go-go boots. At some point during the evening she breaks into tears and tells them how much she misses Davy. Before he left for Vietnam he gave her a tiny diamond ring. They are not engaged; they are pre-engaged. Even though Roger’s mother spends a good part of her days and nights crying, whenever Diane cries his mother stays dry-eyed. She lights a cigarette and sits back in her chair and watches Diane through narrowed eyes.
“I love Diane,” Roger always says after Diane leaves. “Don’t you love Diane?”
“You’re twelve years old,” his mother tells him. “What do you know about it?”
From Davy’s bed, Roger sees Davy’s old ventriloquist’s dummy sitting on the top shelf of the bookcase. For a while, Davy used to sit in the living room and practice ventriloquism, holding the dummy on his lap and talking without moving his lips. Except he did move them. Roger always saw them wiggling. He never pointed that out, though, because everybody always said what a good ventriloquist Davy was, how they couldn’t even tell that was his voice coming from the dummy.
Their sister, Debbie, used to be afraid of the dummy and she cried whenever Davy practiced his ventriloquism. Use your voice, she used to beg. But Davy just kept wiggling his lips and moving the dummy’s mouth, swiveling its head and flapping its arms. Davy was the oldest. Then came Debbie, five years younger. She used to have pretty soft blond hair and a soft belly. But now she is all hard sharp angles in hip-hugger jeans and a ratty Army jacket. Her hair turned a muddy brown and hangs down to her butt. She stays in her room mostly and plays Bob Dylan records. She is only three years older than Roger, but she seems much, much further away from him than that.
Roger takes the dummy down from the shelf and stares at his creepy face. His cheeks are round, like he’s hiding food in them, and his nose is like Bob Hope’s. Roger can’t remember the name Davy gave the dummy, so he renames it Mike Nesmith after his favorite Monkee. He wishes he had a knit cap like the real Mike Nesmith wears for his Mike Nesmith. Maybe his Mama Jo will knit one for him. Even though Mama Jo smells like onions frying and maybe vaguely fishy, he loves her more than anything. Roger likes to sit on her lap and pinch the wrinkly skin on the top of her hand together, then watch how it stays that way for a long time before slowly settling back into place. Mama Jo is ancient.
Roger sticks his hand in Mike Nesmith’s back and makes his arms and legs flop around. He swivels the head and opens and closes the mouth.
“Roger?” his mother calls wearily. “What are you doing?”
“Entertaining myself,” he answers.
“You’re not in Davy’s room, are you?”
“No,” he says, lifting Mike Nesmith’s right leg and crossing it over his left one.