Thora and Allison applauded.
“This is it?” Deacon asked. “This is your big talent? You showing off you can do a push-up with a man sitting on your back? I could do that, please don’t make me prove it.”
“No,” Roland said. “This is the talent.”
Roland proceeded to do twenty push-ups with Deacon on his back, the final four of them on his knuckles.
“This is humiliating,” Deacon said. “I mean, impressive, but humiliating.”
“I’m enjoying the show,” Allison said. Roland wasn’t a show-off, so it was quite a sight to see him putting his strength on display.
“That’s it. I’m out,” Deacon said, clambering off his brother’s back after Roland hit twenty. “Show’s over.”
He collapsed back down into the big chair as Roland stood up and dusted off his hands.
“Thanks, little brother,” Roland said, smiling angelically. “Much obliged.”
“So am I,” Allison said as she reached for Roland’s arms. The push-ups had made the veins in his biceps bulge out, and she planned on running her hands over them for the next ten hours or until she was no longer stoned out of her gourd.
Roland sat down on the chair and dragged her into his lap. Allison went willingly and happily. It was nice to feel like a girlfriend, part of a couple that other people knew about. No secrets here.
“Someone else go,” Deacon said. “Thora, you do a thing.”
“I don’t have any talents, either,” she protested.
“Now we both know that’s a lie,” Deacon said, then proceeded to poke her repeatedly in the arm saying, “Go, go, go,” with every poke.
“Fine!” She stood up at last with a put-upon sigh. “Pot doesn’t interfere with inner ear stuff, does it?”
“I have no idea,” Deacon said. “But now you have to do what you were going to do.”
“I really don’t want to end up in the hospital.” Thora took her cardigan off and tossed it to Deacon.
“I have never had a better idea in my life,” Deacon said.
“Zip it,” she said. “If you make me laugh, I’ll fall over.” Thora stood in the middle of the floor on the checkered rug and took a steadying breath. Then she raised her arms in the air and bent backward in a bridge.
“Bravissima!” Deacon said.
“One problem,” Thora said from the floor. Her voice sounded strained and nasal. “I can’t get back up.”
Deacon hopped up and wrapped his arm under her lower back and lifted her back to a standing position. Once she was up, he spun her in his arms in a silly parody of a waltz. He spun her once more and led her back to the chair.
“Your turn,” Thora said to Deacon. “What’s your talent?”
“You’ve been smoking my talent for two hours. It’s Allison’s turn.”
“I don’t have any talents, either,” Allison said.
“Enough with the false modesty, people, and fucking do a thing,” Deacon said, fists in the air as if he were about to start a cartoon battle with them all.
“Fine. I can do a thing. I have some poems memorized. I don’t know if that counts as a talent, really, or a skill.”
“Recite!” Deacon said, and snapped his fingers.
With a sigh Allison rose and stood in the middle of the room on the rug, which had apparently become their stage.
“Let’s see...” she said. “I’ve got London by William Blake. ‘I wander thro’ each charter’d street, / Near where the charter’d Thames does flow...’”
“No, boring, stop,” Deacon said. “Better poem, please.”
“Um...” Allison tapped her foot on the carpet. “‘Because I could not stop for Death—/ He kindly stopped for me...’”
“No death poems,” Deacon said. “Don’t you know any fun poems?”
“Fun poems?” Allison asked. “Well...maybe one fun poem.”
“Bring it,” Deacon said.
“A sonnet,” Allison began. “From the—”
“No Shakespeare,” Deacon said. “Don’t you dare say Shakespeare.”
“A sonnet,” Allison began again, one decimal louder to get Deacon to shut his trap, “from the Earl of Rochester. Otherwise known as the most notorious libertine in history.”
“Now,” Deacon said, snapping his fingers and pointing at the ceiling, “we are getting somewhere.”
Allison cleared her throat. She raised her hand like a poet of yore. She recited the poem.
“I rise at eleven, I dine about two,
I get drunk before sev’n, and the next thing I do,
I send for my whore, when for fear of a clap,
I spend in her hand, and I spew in her lap;”
“I love poetry,” Deacon said with a sigh.
Allison continued.
“Then we quarrel and scold, ’till I fall fast asleep,
When the bitch, growing bold, to my pocket does creep;
Then slyly she leaves me, and, to revenge the affront,
At once she bereaves me of money and cunt.
If by chance then I wake, hotheaded and drunk,
What a coil do I make for the loss of my punk?
I storm and I roar, and I fall in a rage,
And missing my whore, I bugger my page.
Then, crop-sick all morning, I rail at my men,
And in bed I lie yawning ’till eleven again.”
Roland, Thora and Deacon all applauded and Allison bowed.
“I knew I should have been an English major,” Deacon said.
“I didn’t learn that from my professors. I learned it from McQueen.”
“I knew I should have been a rich guy’s mistress,” Deacon said.
“Why do you have poems memorized?” Thora asked her.
If she had been stone-cold sober, Allison wouldn’t have answered the question. Or she would have answered it, but not truthfully. But that night in the attic with these strangers who were starting to feel like her family again, she was feeling safe enough to be honest.
“There was this girl, Katie, at the group home they sent me to after my mom died,” Allison said. “She told me what to do to get adopted. She had five rules. Rule number one—don’t cry. Nobody likes a crybaby. Rule number two—don’t complain. Nobody likes a whiner. Rule number three—smile. Rule number four—don’t ask for anything. Rule number five—learn a trick.”
“Like memorizing poems?” Thora asked.
She shrugged. “Eighteen years later and I still can’t break the habit,” Allison said.
“How many poems have you memorized?” Thora asked.
Allison didn’t want to answer. She did it, anyway.
“Hundreds,” Allison said. “Hundreds and hundreds.”
Roland stared at her before dragging her back into his arms.
“It’s okay,” she said, resting her head on his chest. She didn’t realize she’d started crying until he’d held her.
“That’s the saddest, sweetest, dumbest thing I’ve heard,” Thora said. “You were a kid, not a puppy.”
“It worked, though. I recited a poem to your dad the day he came to meet me.”
“You did?” Deacon asked. “Not that poem, I hope.”
“Lewis Carroll,” Allison said. Roland wiped the tears off her face with the corner of his T-shirt.
“That explains a lot,” Deacon said.
“What?” she asked him.
“Explains you.” Deacon pointed at her. “You when you came here, I mean. For months you didn’t break a single rule. Didn’t talk back. Didn’t fight. Didn’t raise your voice. You walked on eggshells. Dad was scared to death you’d act like that forever. He knew you thought if you broke a single rule...you’d be out the door. First time you got in trouble for...what was it?”
“Fight over the TV,” she said. “You wanted to watch The X-Files.”
“And you wanted to watch...what?” Deacon asked.
She coughed her answer. “Powerpuff Girls.”
“No wonder we fought,” Deacon said.
“You forgive me?” Allison asked him. Deacon reached out and pinched her nose.
“You can’t blame a kid for being a kid,” Deacon said. “Even if she is a dumb kid with terrible taste in TV shows.”
Allison grabbed Deacon by his nose and pinched it. “Your turn. Put on a show and stop making me cry. And rolling a decent joint does not count as a talent.”
She released his nose and he stood up. “I do have one talent,” Deacon said as he took his place at the center of the rug. “One very special talent. One very special Oregon-themed talent...”