by Sean Desmond
Oglesby gave Dan a cool, ominous look that suggested he rise to the occasion. Dan returned fire with a cocky scout’s salute that disguised a cascade of internal panic. Yup, I’m screwed.
“The rest of you will be the Vox Populi and graded on your debate, which will factor into the vote made by the judges. So study Mr. Orwell’s allegory well. Consider Atticus, Prince Hal, Daedalus, and all the other heroes we’ve encountered, and ponder how their words and deeds could help win you the Blaireric. The Game will happen April fifteenth, a week from today.”
Dan felt the pressure coil in his shoulder blades. He knew what was on the line without Oglesby’s saying it: If I win the Game, I’m a Norwegian rat for sure.
* * *
“Why are all the signs in . . .”
“Vietnamese?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Welcome to East Richardson.”
Steve O’Donnell made a turn off Campbell Road into a subdivision. It was Dan’s first time visiting Sticky’s house, and their plan was solid: a sleepover with little sleep—Sticky’s mom would come home, everyone would go to bed, and then the boys would duck out for a little late-night action downtown. Rick had warned Dan that spending the night at Sticky’s house was something special. As they pulled up, Sticky’s littlest sister, Mary Kate, was sitting in the oil smudges of the driveway, spinning the working wheel of a broken upside-down tricycle. There were a lot of half possessions littered across the front lawn. MK was the youngest of six and the only girl. Sticky’s oldest brother, Dennis, was gone for the weekend to a track meet in Houston. Since his parents’ separation, Sticky’s mother had been working as receptionist/reporter/copyeditor/ad sales manager/publisher for the Echo, Richardson’s local paper, so all the O’Donnell kids were latchkey. After St. Paul’s let out, the three middle boys—Connor and the twin eleven-year-olds, Brian and Brendan—roamed the creeks and strip malls of Little Saigon like wolf whelps. That MK was amusing herself, all right but unsupervised, meant the pack had made it home.
Stick sidled through the front door with a precipitous, checked-out weariness that made him seem like the man of the house. Nothing was on fire, but nothing was under control. School clothes, shoes, and book bags were strewn as if the front living room had been evacuated. At some point in the past, the kitchen had been raided for peanut butter and jelly, leaving jam trails and licked jars on the dining room table, along with a lice comb, literally called the Nitpicker. All of this mess weighed on Stick, who, finding his brothers in the back TV room wrestling over the gun for Duck Hunt, started barking orders at his siblings. Everyone was starving, and so Dan returned to the kitchen with Stick to help stack grilled cheese sandwiches for the toaster oven.
“When’s your mom get home?”
“Six usually.”
Dan knew better than to ask about Sticky’s father, but his absence was the invisible elephant looming behind any O’Donnell family conversation. Two years prior, Mr. O’Donnell had moved out of the house, and was living with a “roommate” down in Oak Lawn. He had also left his job in flood insurance claims and become a flight attendant for Southwest.
MK pranced into the kitchen with her permanent runny nose. Sticky stanched it with a paper towel, and MK started rooting through drawers she could reach.
“What do you want?”
“Scissors.”
“For what?”
“I’m gonna fix the tricycle.”
“Not gonna happen, baby girl. Want some Honey Nut?”
Sticky pulled the cereal box out of the pantry and then ducked his head into the fridge.
“Dang, no milk, MK.”
“That’s okay, I need the scissors now. And a hammer too.”
“Put that tricycle up in the garage. You want Honey Nut with water?”
“Naw,” she replied with sweet disappointment.
Dan poured himself a glass of tap water. Bleh. It had a foul sulfur smell that the O’Donnells were used to and no longer noticed. A calico cat jumped up onto the kitchen counter. It was one of several felines loosely associated with the household.
“What’s its name?”
“I just call it Asshole.”
A loud thud sent Asshole scurrying, and the house rattled to the rafters. This was followed by three seconds of silence, then bloodcurdling screams. Stick and Dan ran into the TV room.
“Connor, what the hell?” Stick hollered, his voice stern and reedy.
“It was Brian!”
Brendan was lying on the ground, crumpled in pain. His hands around his own neck.
Stick turned to the other twin. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!”
Through tears came Brendan’s police report. “He tried to choke me and then he suplexed me.”
“Knock it off, all of you. Mom is going to be home in a minute, and she doesn’t need your shit.”
“My neck really hurts.”
“You’re fine, Brian, get up. The next person who starts wrestling, I’m throwing into a figure four.”
Connor, who was an awkward, husky thirteen, wasn’t buying it. “You’re not Dennis, Stevie, you can’t kick our asses. We’ll gang up on you.”
And then Sticky and Dan both smelled it—the grilled cheeses burning under the broiler. They ran back as brown smoke was just starting to waft out of the toaster oven.
“Fuck.” Sticky pulled the rack out with a mitt and dropped it on the stovetop.
Dan felt terrible as Stick’s mood slid from bad to worse. “Just black on the corners. You can still eat these,” he offered.
“Too burnt. And they’re all too picky. Goddamn it.”
“Sorry.”
As Sticky scraped the blackened lava flow of Kraft singles into the trash, MK came wailing back into the kitchen.
“Stevie, Stevie, I saw Daddy!”
“What?”
“He drove past the house. I saw him from the driveway.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! He slowed down and waved at me.”
“He’s not supposed to be near the house,” Sticky said darkly. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t make this up, MK.” He crouched down to look her in the eye. “We can’t make things up.”
“I’m not making it up!”
“Okay.” Sticky turned to Dan, unsure what to believe. “That’s creepy if it’s true. But MK imagines a lot—”
“I’m not pretending this time!” MK started to fidget like she had to pee.
“Don’t tell your brothers.”
“Why not?”
“It will just upset them, and they’ll tell Mom.”
“Oh.” But MK wanted to blab to the whole world, and Sticky knew it was useless to tell her otherwise. She wiped her nose with her fist. “Is Daddy coming back?”
“Christ.” Sticky looked up to the shitty popcorn ceiling for an appeal. Oh, baby girl. Another wrestling move in the TV room shook the house. Everyone was hungry, and Sticky’s mom was late getting home.
* * *
Tired from her marathon day in court, Anne inspected the skinless chicken breast rotating and thawing in the microwave. Dan was gone, and Pat had called semilucid with some sort of “car trouble” in Addison. Lord knows with that man. I’m past the point where I want to know. So Anne found herself with a rare evening home alone.
The pink cut of chicken looked less appealing with each turn. The water for the rice pilaf simmered in the pot on the stove. Anne reached into the pantry for one of the three dozen cans of Del Monte green beans she had bought on triple-coupon day at Tom Thumb for ten cents each (no limit per customer).
Her déjà vu returned and with it everything familiar and anxious. Her thoughts of the trial and her marriage churned together. Guilty as sin, but watch, he’ll walk. Anne d
arkly considered her own options. Like Raleigh, she was searching for a way to pull free.
Is this it? This is how it’s going to go?
She put the can back. She turned off the stove. She punched stop on the microwave. She riffled through her purse, looking for cigarettes. Out. She poured a drink. She checked the mark she’d notched on the bottle of Wolfschmidt. Anne let out a weary, saturated sigh. No change. He’s sneaking from somewhere else. She dug through her purse again. I know I have one left. Instead she found her old address book. A bad idea came to her, and she thumbed through the names from long ago until she found the listing for . . . her friend . . . Father Ronan Carroll. She pulled out her MCI card, went to the phone in the den, and started dialing the dozen numbers it took to make a long-distance call.
Halfway through she hung up. This is crazy. He is just a man. He’ll let me down too. A storm was rolling in—every night, high temperatures tangled with the wet Dallas spring, leading to thunderclouds and sudden downpours. Through the glass patio door, Anne watched the silent heat lightning with a sense of dread. She didn’t know what to think about this priest, or any of the men in her life. Dan will hate me for it. And Pat will become a drunk cripple with no one. And so she sat and cried through unwelcome tears.
But if she couldn’t leave, she could still see him, right? Maybe Pat will get a job back in New York. She could make her choice then. She picked up the phone and called the rectory. He’ll be back from evening Mass by now. She just wanted to have an option. Someone to be possible for her. The phone rang and rang until finally a young scholastic with a thick Puerto Rican accent picked up.
“I’m trying to reach Father Ronan Carroll.”
“May I ask who is calling?”
“Anne Mulligan.” She wasn’t sure why she used her maiden name.
“And this is regarding . . . ?”
“A personal matter.” Her voice sounded disconnected, suspicious.
“One moment.”
Anne cradled the receiver closer, trying to will herself through the call. She closed her eyes and prayed for him to pick up. This is a dumb idea, Annie. But she just wanted to hear his voice.
“Hello, this is Father Faherty.” An older man.
“Yes, I’m trying to reach Father Carroll.”
“May I ask what this is regarding?”
“I’m a friend and colleague from Fordham and I’d like to—”
“I see,” he said, cutting her off—This is the priest who hears Ronan’s confession. “Well, Father Carroll is not here anymore.”
“Excuse me?”
“Father Carroll is no longer ministering the College of New Rochelle. He took a new assignment.”
Anne sat back, unable to think.
“Do you know where I can reach him?”
“The Kakuma Mission.”
“Where?”
“It’s in Kenya, dear.”
* * *
“Here, give me the phone.” Sticky pulled the snaggled extension cord from Dan and looked up a number in the St. Paul directory.
“The Budnips family. I can work with that.” He dialed the number. “Hello, is Merrill Budnips there? . . . Good evening. Mr. Budnips, I’m Steve Austin calling from the Baskin-Robbins on Belt Line Road. We’re running a fun little contest down here. If you can name all thirty-one of our flavors in under a minute—ah shit, he hung up.”
Dan searched the parish directory. The two of them were sprawled across the floor and bunk beds in Stick’s room, which he shared with Dennis. Stick had the lower bunk with Peanuts bedsheets that he pretended were his younger brothers’, but Dan didn’t really care. The rest of the room was clearly Dennis’s: running trophies, a Cowboys calendar that made tight end Doug Cosbie look like a sweaty gigolo, an acid-lettered poster of Tawny Kitaen, and a framed and signed green Adidas track jersey from John Treacy, the Irish Mudlark, who was Dennis’s cross-country idol. The room smelled like Tinactin.
Dan took back the phone. “Let me try . . . oh, here’s a good one. Barbara and Jeff Turdlinger.”
“No way.”
“Look, I’m not making it up.”
Dan dialed the number and got Barbara’s daughter, who—quickly checking the directory—was Marsha, sixth grade.
“Marsha, why the hell did you hang up on me? Excuse me? Excuse you! What kind of relationship is this where I just give and give and you just take and take?”
Sticky shoved his head into the Linus pillow on his bed to stifle howls of laughter. Dan smiled as Marsha tried to answer and calm him down.
“Marsha, don’t act like you don’t know who this is. Fine, I’m going to put Uncle Turd on.”
Dan passed to Stick. He had a scratchy voice useful for prank calls.
“Marsha, why you treating Junebug like this? He knows about your flatulence and he’s okay with it—ah, too much, she hung up.” Sticky tapped the switchhook on the phone. “That was a good one. We should call Ursuline girls.”
Stick fetched the white pages while Dan contemplated his next victim.
“Want to do the survey?” Stick suggested.
“That never works. Let’s do ‘leave a message for Lupe.’”
“Okay, I’m Gonzalez then.”
Dan picked a number at random from the phone book and dialed.
“Hola, me llamo Guillermo. Quien es? No habla español? No problemo. Is Lupe Gonzalez there? No. Okay, I need to leave a message . . . That’s okay, you just tell Lupe I have his rooster. Okay? Don’t worry about it. Just tell him I have his rooster and everything is bueno. Comprende?”
Dan hung up and handed the phone to Sticky. “Can we smoke in the backyard?”
“Nah, my sister might see us. She’s asleep now, but she gets up a lot, creeps around.”
Why am I so itchy for coffee and cigarettes? Dan wondered.
Stick had talked to his mom around eight. She was trying to close the edition but had to run to the printers in Addison and wouldn’t be back until late. The plan to break out and raise hell had stalled. Stick’s mom would call in a pizza delivery. Put the brats to bed. Home by ten. Sorry, hon. Will make it up to you and Dan.
“Steve-o, what are we going to do?”
“Tonight? I don’t think—”
“No, I mean in life. What do you want to do when you grow up?”
“Probably become a porn star. I don’t fucking know. What are you going to do?”
Dan was too shy to say for real. “Well, I don’t want some boring-ass job, working at some company, killing myself like my dad, over what? To make money?”
“Yeah.” Sticky nodded. “Screw that.”
“I want to move back to New York, and read books, and figure shit out.”
“You should become a writer. That’s what Oglesby wants you to do.” Stick said it point-blank, and it was gratifying for Dan to hear it from someone else.
“Maybe.” Dan hesitated but couldn’t say it, as if naming what a Norwegian rat trainee wants would jinx things.
“All I know”—Stick hit redial on the touch pad—“is we need to get the fuck out of here.”
“Hola, esto es Lupe. Any messages? What do you mean wrong number? Who called? Guillermo? I told that cocksucker to stop screwing my chickens.” And he hung up and giggled.
Dan propped his head on the corner of Stick’s clean laundry pile. “We should have rented a movie or something before we came home.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Stick felt bad. They were stuck in the house and missing the rest of the crew cruising down to Deep Ellum.
“It’s okay. Let’s do the survey one. C’mon.”
“I dare you to call Cady Bloom with the survey.”
“Nope.” I can’t talk to a girl in front of an audience, even if it’s Sticky.
“Don’t be a chickenshit, Malone.”
“Okay, wa
it, let me do a quick one to build up to it.” Dan leafed through the pages of Southwestern Bell and picked a number.
“Hey, man, it’s me, I got rid of the body. Now here’s what I need you to do. Shit . . . didn’t work.”
“I’m looking up the Blooms.” Sticky started flipping to the B’s in Dallas proper.
“Stop, I’m not ready.” I need a distraction, Dan thought. “Do you guys have like a liquor cabinet or anything?”
“Mom threw it all out when . . .” Stick didn’t finish that thought but kept looking for the Blooms’ number. “Here they are. They live on Joyce Way? Fancy schmancy Preston Hollow. I’m dialing.”
“No!” But Dan was coming around on it. It would be fun to prank her. Not the worst excuse to call.
They wrestled for the phone, struggling quietly so as not to wake up the little bears in their beds in the next room. Stick eventually got his foot in perfect position for a groin shot. Dan called mercy before Stick racked him.
“Call your girlfriend, playboy.”
“She’s not my . . . I’m doing Chinese delivery instead.”
“No, do the survey.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
Dan dialed, and Cady’s mother answered with an East Texas cackle.
“Hello, is there a Cady Bloom present at your domicile?”
Somehow that brought the girl to the phone. On second thought, this is the stupidest . . . too late. Dan covered the receiver with a washcloth and used his best bored, bureaucratic voice.
“Uh, yes . . . good evening, Miss Bloom, I’m Noman Clature calling on behalf of the United Coalition for the Prevention of Tragedy and was wondering if you had a couple minutes this evening to discuss some issues important to all Americans.”
“Who is this?”
“Yes, the coalition is a part of the Walter Mondale Achievement Institute. Let me ask you, Miss Bloomer, are you the person in your household who does the majority of the shopping?”
“Uh, no.”
“Excellent, the next question is about baloney. How often do you use coupons when purchasing sandwich meats?”
