The Animators(58)

Snow day 1989. Fifth-grade studio shot. Christmas 1994. Jared shows a pony for 4-H. Church Easter play 1990 (Methodist).

“Thanks,” Mel says. “She passed on about six months ago, actually. She was in prison when she died. Sorry to say.” Her voice is smooth and even; she is in professional mode, this is an interview.

She comes to the last photograph, freezes. Flashes it at me, wide-eyed. Summer before sixth grade. Me and Teddy Caudill on the trampoline in the backyard. Our arms are slung around each other’s necks.

Mom stops, drink in hand. “Oh, look at that,” she says, voice small. She reaches out and slides Shauna’s cigarettes over.

Mel flaps the photo. “Cute kid. Neighbor?”

Mom closes her lips around a cigarette before muttering, “Mmmm hmm.”

Shauna follows suit. Mel removes her own pack from her pocket. Soon the room is filled with haze. I see Mel flip the photo to the back, marking it with her thumb.

I lean over her, grab her smokes.

“Sharon, no,” Mom yells.

Mel swats me on the head. “Smoke right now and it’ll make you dumb.”

This makes Mom laugh. I light up anyway.

Shauna rises. “Hold on, that’s the bus coming. I want the kids to come over here. Mom’s doing supper, Sharon.”

“That’s great.”

Above the new television, an old family portrait hangs. I place it at 1986 or ’87, that Sears crimson tint again. We are bunched together, Mom slim in the face, Dad standing behind her, nose not yet red with broken capillaries. I see Mel linger, comparing it to the old newspaper clipping of me, glancing between them. She’s looking for demonstrable reproductions, line and shape. She’s looking for a better way to draw me.

She straightens and looks to me. “Always pictured you as a fat kid,” she says. I hear Shauna chortle from the kitchen.

—

Supper is all of Mom’s specialties together, a spread for my benefit: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cornbread, beans and weenies. Kent has crept in through the kitchen door while Mom cooks, silently lifts a hand to Mel and me. For dessert, Mom informs us that Kent insisted upon baking a pie. “He loves to bake. It’s an apple pie with whattyacallit on top. Whiskey sauce. Iddint that something?” Kent hears this, shrugs.

Kent owns the laundromat where my mother has worked since I was in high school. He’s a big, affable guy, lots of ropy muscle on top, potbelly jutting out just enough to be sociable. Likes NASCAR and, apparently, baking. Doesn’t say shit. I’ve spent a few Christmas breaks silently watching Jeopardy! with Kent. Sometimes he whispers answers aloud. He’s right often enough to surprise me. And he always, without fail, gestures to Alex Trebek as the credits roll and sighs, “Asshole.”

I once asked him why he hated Alex Trebek so much.

He stopped to think it over before saying, “He’s smug.” Which shocked me so much I shut up.

The whole town had known about our mother’s affair with Kent—it was the story that ruined my senior year. I have a clear vision of Jenni Bibbins and Karly Ingram hovering over their cold Bunsen burners in chemistry, giggling at me, neither bright enough to come up with anything to say other than Yer mom’s a skank. I told Mel this and it gave her a chuckle. “Right on, man. Funny how people think it’s always the dude stepping out. I respect that. Lady wanted some dong for her tang? She went out and got it. Case closed.”

I stared at her.

She sobered. “Well. Consider the source. You know my mom. Give me some credit for having the decency to put pants on in the morning.”

I’ve never had a problem with Kent, but Shauna balked hard at the idea of him and Mom dating. The residual bitterness of knowing that Mom cheated on our dad with Kent hits Shauna in a sore place, though Mom cheated on Dad at least a few times that we know of—during one of their more monumental fights, he screeched the accusation at her and she was angry enough to bellow, Yes I did, you drunk piece of shit, and I’d do it again, not realizing all three kids were within earshot.

Mom has held her ground, however. Kent is here to stay. It is our burden to accept it.

Dad’s death was a one-vehicle car accident blamed on slick roads, though the floor of the ’95 Pontiac was strewn with beer cans and a half-shattered Beam bottle. He and Mom had been separated for over a year before the wreck. The divorce itself was never finalized; instead of a divorcée, she became a widow.

When I return to the living room, I am surprised to find Kent actually talking to Mel. He has told her that he has a brother living in Orlando. “Hot as hell down there,” he says.

“Yeah it is. What’s your brother do?”

“Runs a farm. Grows produce.”

“No kidding,” Mel says. “Spent part of my growing-up on a swamp farm.”

I sit nearby and pretend not to listen. “Your folks’ farm?” Kent asks her.

“My aunt Shelly did.”

“Hard life, them farms.”

“Yeah. Learned a lot, though.”

I want to ask what, exactly, she learned when Caelin and Jaeden bang through the door, dropping backpacks on the floor, rummaging through Mom’s fridge before entering with Yoo-hoos in hand to gawk at me. They are both uncomfortably fair, something alien from their father’s side of the family, but when Caelin is informed that Mamaw has run out of chocolate Snack Pack, her displeasure is written all over her face in exactly the style of Shauna.