Only Child(48)
Right then Mommy came in the living room. “Jim, let go of him. What are you doing?” she said to Daddy, and she grabbed Andy’s other arm and now they were both standing there with Andy in the middle, and it looked like they were going to pull him from both sides.
“I’m throwing him in his room. This kid is overdue for a grounding!”
“That’s not how we’re supposed to be handling these types of situations,” Mommy said, and her and Daddy stared at each other in a mad way over Andy’s head.
“OK, why don’t you tell me how I’m allowed to handle it then, Melissa, because your way is working so damn well,” Daddy said, and he let go of Andy’s arm. “So glad I tried to rush home to be with my family on Halloween!” And then he went in the hallway and slammed the front door. A minute later I heard his Audi turn on and drive out of the driveway.
“That’s what I get for helping you, you little snitch,” Andy said, and gave me a push.
Mommy said, “OK, that will do, Andy,” and she took him upstairs for a time-away.
I bent down to pick up the candies Andy dropped. It was all Reese’s and Butterfingers, all candies with peanuts in them.
I thought about last Halloween and the fighting, and I looked at Andy’s sad face in the picture. I wanted to say something to him, that I was sorry that he got in trouble, because he was actually trying to help me with the peanut candies. But I didn’t say it out loud, the words stayed in my head only.
[ 29 ]
Snow and Milkshakes
THE DAY AFTER HALLOWEEN, in the morning, it started to snow and that was a surprise—to see snow and not rain. The sky looked white and the air looked white from the snowflakes twirling around, and all the gray from the rain was gone. First it was rain, rain, rain for all the days and weeks since when the gunman came, and now, just like that, it stopped and there was snow instead even though it wasn’t even winter yet. It was the first day of November.
Mommy wasn’t in the bed again. It was like she was too mad to lie down and sleep now, and she went from sleeping all the time to no sleeping at all. Daddy was in the bed, and I tried to tell him about the snow, but he rolled over the other way. “Let me sleep for a bit, bud,” he said with a sleepy voice, so I went to find Mommy downstairs. She was in the living room, making all the decoration pillows on the couch all straight in a line.
“Mommy, it’s snowing!”
I went to the living room window to watch the snowflakes fall down and land on the piles of leaves on the ground.
“I saw,” she said. “Finally, a break from the rain. Don’t get too excited, though. It’s not going to stick.”
“OK, but if some of it sticks, can we go sledding?”
“It’s not going to. Don’t get your hopes up. I’m going to be very busy today anyway,” Mommy said, and left the living room. “Hey, Zach,” she called from the kitchen. “Let’s get you some breakfast and then I want you to get dressed. There are some people coming over to the house in a bit, so I want everything squared away by then.”
“What people?” I asked.
“People I need to talk to.”
The doorbell rang right when I came down from getting dressed. I opened the door and Ricky’s mom stood outside, and this time she wore a coat, but she still looked cold and her face looked very white. I noticed a lot of reddish-brown spots on her nose and cheeks, and some snowflakes were on her hair, it was reddish-brown, too, except at the top it looked like it was coming out of her head in a different color, gray. The last time she was at our house, Daddy told her she couldn’t be at our house anymore, but now she came back. I wondered if Daddy was going to get mad at her.
Mommy came from behind me and walked out on the porch to give Ricky’s mom a hug. It was a long hug, and I watched how their hair was touching, the reddish-brown from Ricky’s mom and the shiny brown from Mommy. I looked up the stairs. Before I came down, Daddy was in the shower and maybe he wouldn’t come down yet and see Ricky’s mom.
“Nancy. Come in, please. Let’s head into the living room,” Mommy said, and they both sat down on the couch, very close together.
I sat down on the chair across from them, and like two seconds later I heard Daddy’s voice in the hallway: “Hey, Zach, do you want to come to the…?” He walked in the living room and then he saw Ricky’s mom sitting on the couch with Mommy. He stopped walking and finished his sentence very slow: “…store with me?” But he didn’t look at me, he stared at Ricky’s mom like she was a ghost or something. Ricky’s mom stared back at him, and I saw her chin was moving up and down fast.
“What is this?” Daddy asked.
“Geez, Jim, that’s polite. You remember Nancy Brooks, right?” Mommy said, and just when she said it the doorbell rang again. “Here come the others.” Mommy got up and walked out of the living room to open the door.
Daddy walked a couple steps toward Ricky’s mom and then stopped and looked over at me. “What’s going on here?” he asked Ricky’s mom in a quiet voice.
“Melissa, um, called me,” Ricky’s mom said. Her voice sounded like she was out of breath, like she just ran really fast. “She asked me over, and a few other parents of the…victims. For a meeting.”