He didn’t exactly want to eavesdrop on the arkie-barkies, but the house was small and it was practically impossible not to overhear . . . unless he left, that is, a strategic retreat he made more and more frequently this winter. And he sometimes felt that, as the older kid, he had a responsibility to listen. Mr. Jacoby liked to say in history class that knowledge was power, and Pete supposed that was why he felt compelled to monitor his parents’ escalating war of words. Because each arkie-barkie stretched the fabric of the marriage thinner, and one of these days it would tear wide open. Best to be prepared.
Only prepared for what? Divorce? That seemed the most likely outcome. In some ways things might be better if they did split up—Pete felt this more and more strongly, although he had not yet articulated it as a conscious thought—but what exactly would a divorce mean in (another of Mr. Jacoby’s faves) real world terms? Who would stay and who would go? If his dad went, how would he get along without a car when he could hardly walk? For that matter, how could either of them afford to go? They were broke already.
At least Tina wasn’t here for today’s spirited exchange of parental views; she was still in school, and probably wouldn’t be home directly after. Maybe not until dinner. She had finally made a friend, a bucktoothed girl named Ellen Briggs, who lived on the corner of Sycamore and Elm. Pete thought Ellen had the brains of a hamster, but at least Tina wasn’t always moping around the house, missing her friends in the old neighborhood, and sometimes crying. Pete hated it when Tina cried.
Meanwhile, silence your cell phones and turn off your pagers, folks. The lights are going down and this afternoon’s installment of We’re in Deep Shit is about to begin.
TOM: “Hey, you’re home early.”
LINDA (wearily): “Tom, it’s—”
TOM: “Wednesday, right. Early day at the library.”
LINDA: “You’ve been smoking in the house again. I can smell it.”
TOM (getting his sulk on): “Just one. In the kitchen. With the window open. There’s ice on the back steps, and I didn’t want to risk a tumble. Pete forgot to salt them again.”
PETE (aside to the audience): “As he should know, since he made the schedule of chores, it’s actually Tina’s week to salt. Those OxyContins he takes aren’t just pain pills, they’re stupid pills.”
LINDA: “I can still smell it, and you know the lease specifically prohibits—”
TOM: “All right, okay, I get it. Next time I’ll go outside and risk falling off my crutches.”
LINDA: “It’s not just the lease, Tommy. The secondary smoke is bad for the kids. We’ve discussed that.”
TOM: “And discussed it, and discussed it . . .”
LINDA (now wading into even deeper water): “Also, how much does a pack of cigarettes cost these days? Four-fifty? Five dollars?”
TOM: “I smoke a pack a week, for Christ’s sake!”
LINDA (overrunning his defenses with an arithmetic Panzer assault): “At five a pack, that’s over twenty dollars a month. And it all comes out of my salary, because it’s the only one—”
TOM: “Oh, here we go—”
LINDA: “—we’ve got now.”
TOM: “You never get tired of rubbing that in, do you? Probably think I got run over on purpose. So I could laze around the house.”
LINDA (after a long pause): “Is there any wine left? Because I could use half a glass.”
PETE (aside): “Say there is, Dad. Say there is.”
TOM: “It’s gone. Maybe you’d like me to crutch my way down to the Zoney’s and get another bottle. Of course you’d have to give me an advance on my allowance.”
LINDA (not crying, but sounding on the verge): “You act as though what happened to you is my fault.”
TOM (shouting): “It’s nobody’s fault, and that’s what drives me crazy! Don’t you get that? They never even caught the guy who did it!”
At this point Pete decided he’d had enough. It was a stupid play. Maybe they didn’t see that, but he did. He closed his lit book. He would read the assigned story—something by a guy named John Rothstein—that night. Right now he had to get out and breathe some uncontentious air.
LINDA (quiet): “At least you didn’t die.”
TOM (going totally soap opera now): “Sometimes I think it would be better if I had. Look at me—hooked through the bag on Oxy, and still in pain because it doesn’t work for shit anymore unless I take enough to half-kill me. Living on my wife’s salary—which is a thousand less than it used to be, thanks to the fucking Tea-Partiers—”
LINDA: “Watch your lang—”
TOM: “House? Gone. Motorized wheelchair? Gone. Savings? Almost used up. And now I can’t even have a fucking cigarette!”
LINDA: “If you think whining will solve anything, be my guest, but—”
TOM (roaring): “Is whining what you call it? I call it reality. You want me to drop my pants so you can get a good look at what’s left of my legs?”
Pete floated downstairs in his stocking feet. The living room was right there at the bottom, but they didn’t see him; they were face-to-face and busy acting in a dipshit play no one would ever pay to see. His father hulking on his crutches, his eyes red and his cheeks scruffy with beard, his mother holding her purse in front of her breasts like a shield and biting her lips. It was awful, and the worst part? He loved them.
His father had neglected to mention the Emergency Fund, started a month after the City Center Massacre by the town’s one remaining newspaper, in cooperation with the three local TV stations. Brian Williams had even done a story about it on NBC Nightly News—how this tough little city took care of its own when disaster struck, all those caring hearts, all those helping hands, all that blah-blah-blah, and now a word from our sponsor. The Emergency Fund made everybody feel good for like six days. What the media didn’t talk about was how little the fund had actually raised, even with the charity walks, and the charity bike rides, and a concert by an American Idol runner-up. The Emergency Fund was thin because times were hard for everyone. And, of course, what was raised had to be divided among so many. The Saubers family got a check for twelve hundred dollars, then one for five hundred, then one for two. Last month’s check, marked FINAL INSTALLMENT, came to fifty dollars.
Big whoop.
???
Pete slipped into the kitchen, grabbed his boots and jacket, and went out. The first thing he noticed was that there wasn’t any ice on the back stoop; his father had been totally lying about that. The day was too warm for ice, at least in the sun. Spring was still six weeks away, but the current thaw had gone on for almost a week, and the only snow left in the backyard was a few crusty patches under the trees. Pete crossed to the fence and let himself out through the gate.
One advantage to living in the Tree Streets of the North Side was the undeveloped land behind Sycamore. It was easily as big as a city block, five tangled acres of undergrowth and scrubby trees running downhill to a frozen stream. Pete’s dad said the land had been that way for a long time and was apt to stay that way even longer, due to some endless legal wrangle over who owned it and what could be built on it. “In the end, no one wins these things but the lawyers,” he told Pete. “Remember that.”