We Are Not Ourselves(101)

“You’re going to go to juvenile court,” the first officer said. “We take this kind of thing seriously around here. You should know that right now. This isn’t wherever you came from.”

“Jackson Heights.”

“Wherever the hell.”

? ? ?

A little while later, his parents arrived. When his mother walked in, she smacked his face. His father looked more concerned than furious.

He was grounded from everything but cross-country practice. At the juvenile court in Eastchester, the DA offered a plea deal: thirty hours of community service. Connell had to stand before the judge. “If I ever see you in my courtroom again,” the judge said, “you’d better have a toothbrush with you.”

On the way out, his mother added her own threat. “If you ever disgrace me like that in this town again,” she said, “don’t come home. And don’t even think of taking another drink until you turn twenty-one. You’re not even close to man enough to handle it.”

“Sorry, Mom.”

“Not even close to man enough,” she said again.





36


Because Ed’s floor project had taken over most of the kitchen except for a narrow path between the refrigerator, sink, and stove, they ate their meals in the dining room. She was going to have to give up the dining room when Ed turned his attention to the rotted-out floor beneath it, but in the meantime she was determined to enjoy it. She had pinned up a bed sheet to separate it from the living room, which was packed not only with its own furniture but also with the pieces destined for the den and the foyer when Ed was done with the bricks. The dining room was her sanctuary. She had brought it to such a fastidious level of completion that it looked like a little theater in which a nightly drama was staged. The china leaned against the back of the cabinet, the polished candlesticks stood sentinel on the breakfront, the crystals sparkled in the chandelier after a chemical bath, and the white field of the lace tablecloth suggested a pristine altar.

Ed took a seat, rivulets of sweat still running from his head. He dropped his drenched forearms on the table and wiped his brow with the napkin she’d folded neatly.

When the kitchen floor was finished, the new cabinets and countertops could be installed.

“I don’t know why you don’t let me bring a contractor in for the floors,” she said. “We have money for help.”

“I’m doing a fine job,” he said.

“I don’t want to live like this. We didn’t buy this house to live out of boxes. I want a real kitchen.”

They had some money to work with. After they’d paid the depreciation recapture tax (she regretted the low rents she’d charged the Orlandos all those years; the house had hardly generated “income” to speak of) and put 50 percent down on the new house, they’d pulled over forty thousand dollars out of the Jackson Heights house to make improvements with.

“You’ll have your precious kitchen,” Ed said. “The floor will be done soon enough.”

“We’re already two weeks from November, Ed. We could bring guys in and have this done in a day. They probably have machines that could do this in a couple of hours.”

He grabbed her by the wrist, leaned into her.

“One guy touches that floor—one single guy that’s not myself or Connell—and I’ve had it. Do you understand?”

She wrested herself free. “Have it your way,” she said bitterly, rubbing at her wrist. “But don’t expect any help from that boy. You’re going to be the hero on this, be the hero. He’s not helping you. He has too much work at school.”

“I don’t need his help.”

She could almost taste the disgust she felt. A curd of sarcasm gathered in her mouth.

“Good,” she said. “This is just beautiful. This is everything I dreamed it would be.”





37


At the gas station, when his father went inside to pay, Connell’s mother whipped around to him in the backseat.

“I just want you to know,” she said, “how much this means to your father. I would have preferred to stay in a nice bed-and-breakfast by the mountains and look at the foliage. But your father wanted to do this for you. You remember that, and be grateful. Do you hear me?”

“Fine,” he said.

“And I have a bone to pick with you. What did you say to upset him before we left this morning? He said it was between the two of you, but I could tell he was bothered by it.”

“Nothing,” Connell said.

“I’m sure it wasn’t nothing.”

“He’s right. It is between us.”

“Don’t get testy with me,” his mother said. “You live under our roof. Don’t you forget that.”

He didn’t want to tell his mother what he’d said. It would confirm that he was just the sort of brat she’d been implying he was. He didn’t know why he’d said it; it had just come out. He and his father had been standing near the sink together. Connell was rinsing his dish before he put it in the dishwasher, and his father reached across him for a hand towel, and as he did so, Connell said, “You have bad breath.” His father looked at him quizzically, and Connell said it again, a little differently this time: “Your breath stinks.” His father put his hand up to his mouth to blow some air into his nose, and then he looked at him with a look that could have been hurt, confused, or grateful, Connell couldn’t tell which. “Thanks,” his father said, again inconclusively, and he left the room and headed to the bathroom. He didn’t come out for almost an hour. Connell heard him brushing his teeth endlessly in there, the tap running while he brushed, and then silence, and then the tap running again.