Good Neighbors(47)

“You’re scared that unless you help him, he might hurt you?”

“No, Mom. You’re not listening.”

“You’ve said that twice, honey, that I’m not listening. But I am. What makes you think I’m not listening?”

Tears of frustration ran down Dave’s face. She had the power to do this to him. No one else. Which was why he only ever talked to her when it was house-on-fire-absolutely-necessary. “Mom. Please. Dad’s sick and Adam can’t say shit unless FJ Schroeder tells him to. It’s just us and you know that. Please, Mom. Listen to me. The Rat Pack are lemmings and so are their parents and because of them Mrs. Wilde is in the hospital. What do we do?”

She turned a page. He noticed that there was sand oil underneath her fingernails. Which meant she’d been out with the mob last night, too. For once, his parents had agreed on something. A terrible something.

“So you think worse things will happen. That must be scary. Is that scary for you?”

“You’re a piece of shit,” he told her.

Her expression was dumbfounded.



* * *




The mean Markles took the incident with the brick hardest of all.

Crash!

Mark whaled his pillow into a Tiffany lamp that shattered against his father, Dominick Ottomanelli’s, bare, swollen feet. Pieces of painted glass specked the floor and his miraculously uncut skin. “Jesus! What’s wrong with you?” Dominick asked.

Mark dropped his pillow and started laughing. Michael followed. It wasn’t good-humored laughing. It was hysterical, Shelly Schroeder–brand laughing, because they’d sneaked out last night and followed the adults. They’d thought it would be funny. An adventure. Life-and-death, but not really. Life-and-death in Deathcraft, when the creepy things crawl out and you have to hide until morning.

And then the bricks, and Arlo Wilde’s horrible, low-pitched moan as he’d helped Gertie into the ambulance while she held her fragile baby belly, and the knowledge that it was their fault. They’d known, even when confessing, throwing out the word rape like it meant nothing, that their mother would tell everyone. They’d known this and done it anyway, for a free PlayStation.

They’d done this. They’d hurt sweet Mrs. Wilde. Maybe they’d murdered her baby, too.

They’d run back to their house last night before the rest. In the dark of their adjoining rooms, pretending to sleep, Mark had dry-heaved. Michael had put the heel of his hand into his mouth and bitten hard enough to leave a mark that was still angry eighteen hours later. A swollen semicircle of teeth.

Today they’d traded bedrooms. An old game from preschool that they hadn’t played in years. They’d been answering to the wrong names. It was an effort to be someone else. To run from their very skins, except it didn’t work. As brothers, the new skin they assumed wasn’t much different.

They directed outward, too. They flung their dirty laundry from closet bins. They took gardening shears to the trampoline and punctured it in six places. They tore up all their mother’s green beans and mint. And now, tracking bitumen through the house, they jammed pillows deep inside their cases and let fly against lamps and books and each other.

“Clean this up. Money doesn’t grow on trees,” said Dominick, a man of medium build with a giant belly. Bitumen oil crammed the crevices of his ears. The Tiffany lamp lay dead at his feet.

“Mom cleans,” Mark said.

“Don’t be gay,” the other said. Michael.

Together, almost of one mind, they hit their dad too hard with double pillows.

“You’re such a fat slob,” Mark said, his expression a pained and furious grimace.

Dominick stepped on blue stained glass; the bulbed eye of a dragonfly. Blood ran along the floor. His eyes watered. Real tears from their giant hulk of a father, with fists like boxing gloves. This wasn’t what they wanted. They wanted to be yelled at. Punished for what they’d done. Set straight and exonerated. They wanted a capable person to take charge of this house, and reverse the terrible thing that had happened first to Shelly, then to Mrs. Wilde, and now to all of them.

“Come on, Dad! Grab a pillow!” Michael cried. He swung again, this time with his fist, straight at Dominick’s groin.

They expected him to yell.

Daintily, he walked backward, feet trailing blood. His voice stayed soft. “Boys. I know it sucks being cooped up, but you’re being too loud. Do something quiet. Play the video game your mother bought you.”

The Markles smiled sidelong. Finally. It would happen. Finally, this would bring order. Mark pointed at the PlayStation. The thing they’d been bought, for selling out the Wildes. “Too much static. There’s no point,” he said.

The PlayStation was smashed to wires and plastic. Tiny pieces caught the hard sunlight.

“Why do you do these things?” Dominick hissed, cheeks wet with tears. Then he shut Mark’s door, leaving them quite alone.



* * *




Dominick found his wife, Linda, in the kitchen. She was a round woman who wore overalls and soft, comfortable shoes with open toes.

“I can’t take them,” he said. “They’re monsters.”

Normally, she defended them. Talked about the nanny on TV, who claimed it was super important to be your kid’s advocate and best friend. This time, she burst into tears. “They’ve been so bad today!”