Not anymore. I like volleyball.
That’s not a sport, really.
Sometimes grown-ups didn’t get it. They remembered volleyball as a laid-back backyard barbecue pastime, or a gym requirement. They had no idea how fierce and cool the sport had become, how girls had taken it over. Maggie decided to change up on her dad again.
I can’t see Emmaline really keeping LaRose all the time.
Really?
If he goes to their school that’s a difference. A compromise. And if that’s the deal, I shouldn’t be left out. I should be going there. He should have all his family in one school.
There are tough kids at that school. Drinking. Drugs?
Drugs are everyplace. Plus, remember? I’m an outcast. I’m severely hated.
Now Peter laughed. Maggie couldn’t even pretend to pity herself. There wasn’t a whine in her. He was proud of her and she knew it.
Awww, Dad, come on. Snow and Josette have traditional values and all that. They’re A students. They’ll have my back. Plus their big brother Hollis. And there’s Coochy, I mean Willard. We should all be together, Dad. It would really help LaRose.
Peter kept wiping his hands. The cracks in his palm and the wrinkles in his knuckles absorbed the oil so his hands looked like ancient etchings of hands. His tired blue eyes rested sweetly on Maggie. He knew his daughter. He remembered the years of teacher conferences. The teachers were wrong. She was not disturbed. High-spirited. That was it. She was too high-spirited for their dull expectations of girls. So. Could things get any worse? Maybe she was right. Keeping LaRose was some kind of last-ditch test for Emmaline. Maybe allowing the kids from both families to go to one school would help Emmaline come out of it. Things would balance. Whatever happened, Snow and Josette had become like sisters to Maggie. They were half cousins. Cousins and sisters. It struck him that this was the first time since Dusty that Maggie had really wanted something, asked him to help her. So he said yes. And yes, he’d try with Nola.
OLD RUMMY. HE’S giving out hints again. See?
Father Travis watched the gray-skinned gray block of talking head. They were sitting out a morning of weird September heat at the Dead Custer.
It’s not supposed to be this hot, Romeo complained.
It is what it is, said Puffy.
Romeo hissed in exasperation. Everyone was saying It is what it is as though this was a wise saying. They would say it with a simple hand lift. To get off the hook, they would say it. They would say it when too lazy to finish a job. Or often when watching the news.
And it ain’t what it ain’t, said Romeo.
Father Travis didn’t register this comment. He just sweated, stoic, with a jar of Puffy’s special iced tea. Last night he’d entered the whirling energy, the black aperture, silence. Before the screams, he was suddenly with Emmaline, naked, their bodies moving and planing, slick with sweat. Father Travis rolled the cold jar across his forehead.
Romeo squinted at the TV, nodding.
There’s that clue. Chemical weapons. They showed some diagrams. Fuzzy gray recon pictures shot off a satellite.
They’re pulling together a case, he muttered.
Father Travis cocked his head and looked sideways at the shapes pictured on the screen. On 9/11 he had watched the Towers dissolve and thought, They’ve learned. After that, over and over, he’d sifted down in his dreams with the others, his body flayed by the acceleration of the building’s mass. He watched the news, flipping channels. It was like the barracks bombing never happened. Nobody made the connection. What was the connection? It hurt to think. He felt himself disintegrating. One night that September, he had gone off the wagon. He drank the bottle of single malt scotch an old friend from the Marines had sent to him. He’d stayed in bed the next morning—sick for the first time in his history as a priest. It had felt like the thing to do.
Hey Father, said Romeo. Can I ask you something?
No.
How come you quit trying to convert me?
This was an opening for Father Travis to say something mildly insulting that they would pretend was a joke but know was true.
I didn’t want to have to baptize you, said Father Travis.
How come?
I’d have to sponsor you. Promise to stand between you and the devil. But there is no space, nowhere to stand.
Haha! Romeo preened in delight. No place to stand! Between me and the devil!
This remark would make the rounds, Father Travis knew. Romeo would repeat it to everyone he saw in the hospital corridors. Knowing that, Father Travis usually gave more thought to what he said to Romeo. But right now he was having trouble. He couldn’t sit still, anywhere. He had to get out of the Dead Custer. He had to get out of every place. He had to get out of his skin.
I have to go.
Was it something I said? Romeo was joking. It was always something that he said. He caught the priest’s arm. Wait. What would you say to a kid joining the National Guards?