On their final evening, Thursday, the cleanup was more extensive. Every leftover had to be dumped, and the refrigerator shelves had to be emptied and wiped down. Jeannie’s Hugh was in his element. “Throw it out! Yes, that too,” he said when Stem held up a nearly full container of coleslaw. “No point hauling it all the way back to Baltimore.” The three of them slid a glance toward Red, who shared his sister’s horror of waste, but he was thumbing through one of the trashy magazines and he failed to notice.
“What’s the plan for tomorrow?” Denny asked. “We leaving at crack of dawn?”
Hugh said, “Well, I should, at least. I’ve got half a dozen messages on my cell phone.” He meant messages from the college. “Lots of stuff to see to in the dorms.”
“So,” Denny told Stem, “that means fall is coming.”
“Pretty soon,” Stem said. He returned a not-quite-clean plate to the sink.
“You don’t want to wait too long to move back home,” Denny told him, “or the kids will have to switch schools.”
Stem was drying another plate. He stopped for a second, but then he went on drying. “They’ve already switched,” he said. “Nora registered both of the older boys last week.”
“But it makes more sense for you to move back, now that I’m staying on.”
Stem laid the plate on a stack of others.
“You’re not staying,” he said.
“What?”
“You’ll be leaving any time now.”
“What are you talking about?”
Denny had turned to look at him, but Stem went on wiping plates. He said, “You’ll pick a fight with one of us, or you’ll take offense at something. Or one of those calls will come in on your phone from some mysterious acquaintance with some mysterious emergency, and you’ll disappear again.”
“That’s bullshit,” Denny told him.
Jeannie’s Hugh said, “Oh, well now, guys …” and Red looked up from his magazine, one finger marking his place.
“You just say that because you wish I weren’t staying,” Denny told Stem. “I’m well aware you want me out of the way. It’s no surprise to me.”
“I don’t want you out of the way,” Stem said. They were facing each other squarely now. Stem was gripping a plate in one hand and the towel in the other, and he spoke a little more loudly than he needed to. “God! What do I have to do to convince you I’m not out to get you? I don’t want anything that’s yours. I never have! I’m just trying to be a help to Mom and Dad!”
Red said, “What? Wait.”
“Well, isn’t that just like you,” Denny told Stem. “Spilling over with selflessness. Holier than God Almighty.”
Stem started to say something more; he drew in a breath and opened his mouth. Then he made a despairing noise that sounded like “Aarr!” and without even seeming to think about it, he wheeled toward Denny and gave him a violent shove.
It wasn’t an attack, exactly. It was more an act of blind frustration. But Denny was caught off balance. He staggered sideways, dropping the plate he held so that it shattered across the floor, and he tried to right himself but fell anyhow, his head grazing the edge of the table before he landed in a sitting position.
“Oh,” Stem said. “Gosh.”
Red stood up, slack-mouthed, with his magazine dangling from one hand. Hugh was hovering in front of the fridge and saying, “Guys. Hey, guys,” and gripping his washrag in a useless sort of way.
Denny began struggling to his feet. His left temple was bleeding. Stem bent to offer him a hand, but instead of accepting it, Denny lunged at him from a half-standing position and butted Stem in the sternum. Stem buckled and fell backwards, slamming against a cabinet. He sat up again, but he looked groggy, and he raised a hand tentatively to the back of his head.
All at once the kitchen was full of fluttering women and shocked, wide-eyed children. There seemed to be a multitude of them, way more than could be accounted for. Abby was saying, “What is this? What’s happened?” and Nora was leaning over Stem, trying to help him up. “Keep him sitting,” Jeannie told her. “Stem? Do you feel dizzy?” Stem went on holding his head, with an uncertain look on his face. Shards of the plate lay all around him.
Denny stood backed against the sink. He seemed bewildered, more than anything. “I don’t know what came over him!” he said. “He just went from zero to sixty!” Blood was traveling down the side of his face, darkening the olive green of his T-shirt.
“Look at you,” Jeannie told him. “We’ve got to get you to an emergency room. The two of you.”
“I don’t need an emergency room,” Denny said, at the same time that Stem said, “I’m okay. Let me up.”
“They both have to go,” Abby said. “Denny needs stitches and Stem might have a concussion.”
“I’m fine,” Stem and Denny said in chorus.