Bridge of Clay(82)

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—

But yes, anyway, not long into January, the sun was high, and achingly hot. The racing quarter was searing. The distant traffic hummed to them. It turned casually the other way.

Henry was in the newsagent’s, up on Poseidon Road, just down from Tippler Lane, and when he came back out triumphantly, he dragged Clay into the alley. He looked left and right, and said it.

“Here.” A giant whisper. He pulled the Playboy from under his T-shirt. “Get a load of this.”

He handed him the magazine, and opened it to the middle, where the fold went across her body—and she was hard and soft, and pointed and amazing, in all the perfect places. She looked positively thrilled with her hips.

“Pretty great, huh?”

Clay looked down, of course he did, and he knew all this—he was ten years old, with three older brothers; he’d seen naked women on a computer screen—but here was totally different. It was stealing and nudity combined, on glossy printed paper. (As Henry said, “This is the life!”) Clay trembled amongst the glee of it, and weirdly, he read her name. He smiled, looked closer, and asked: “Is her last name really January?”

    Inside, his heart beat big, and Henry Dunbar grinned.

“Of course,” he said, “you bet.”



* * *



—

Later, though, when they made it home (after several stops to ogle), our parents were caught in the kitchen. They were down on the worn-out floor, and sitting just barely upright.

Our father was against the cupboards.

His eyes were a wasted blue.

Our mother had thrown up—it was a horrible mess—and now she slept back against him; Michael Dunbar sat only staring.

The two boys, they stood.

Their erections suddenly deserted them; dismantled, deep in their pants.

Henry called out, he reacted, and he was suddenly quite responsible. “Tommy? You home? Don’t come in here!” as they watched our mother’s fragility—and Miss January, rolled up, between them.

That smile, her perfect furniture.

It hurt now to even think of her.

Miss January was just so…healthy.



* * *



—

Early autumn it had to happen; there was a destined afternoon.

Rory was a month into high school.

Clay was ten years old.

Her hair had grown back, a strange and brighter yellow, but the rest of her was going-and-gone.

Our parents went out without us knowing.

It was a small cream building near a shopping mall.

The smell of doughnuts from the window.

A cavalry of medical machines, and they were cold and grey but burning, and the cancerous face of the surgeon.

“Please,” he said, “sit down.”

He said aggressive at least eight times.

So ruthless in the delivery.



* * *



—

    It was evening when they returned, and we all came out to meet them. We always helped bring shopping in, but that night there was nothing more. There were pigeons on the power lines. They were coo-less, watching on.

Michael Dunbar stayed at the car, leaning down, his hands on the warmth of the hood, while Penny stood behind him, her palm against his spine. In the smoothing, darkening light, her hair was like straw, all tied and tidied back.

As we watched them, none of us asked.

Maybe they’d had an argument.

But of course, looking back, death was out there too that night, perched high up with the pigeons, hanging casually from the power lines.

He was watching them, side to side.



* * *



—

The next night Penny told us, in the kitchen; cracked and sadly broken. Our father in several fragments.

I remember it all too clearly—how Rory refused to believe it, and how soon he’d gone berserk, saying, “What?” and “What?” and “WHAT?” He was wiry-hard and rusty. His silver eyes were darkening.

And Penny, so slim and stoic:

She steadied toward matter-of-fact.

Her own eyes green and wild.

Her hair was out and open, and she repeated herself, she said it: “Boys, I’m going to die.”



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—

The second time was what did it for Rory, I think: He clenched his hands, and opened them.

There was a sound inside of all of us then—a sound of quiet-loud, a vibration unexplainable—as he tried to beat the cupboards up, he shook them and bucked me off. I could see it, but couldn’t hear.

Soon he grabbed the person nearest him, who happened to be Clay, and roared right through his shirt; and it was then when Penny came at him, she finished across them both, and Rory couldn’t stop. I could hear it far away now, but in a moment it blew me back—a voice in our house like a street fight. He roared into Clay’s chest, straight through the buttons; he shouted right into his heart. He struck him over and over—till the fire was lit in Clay’s eyes, and his own turned flat and hard.



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—

    God, I can still hear it.

I try so much to keep my distance from that moment.