Kids These Days

by Drew Perry

  “That doesn’t help.”

  “Do you want to go down to the beach?”

  She walked over to a painting of seagulls, stared at it like she was waiting for them to tell her something. “You can’t work for him anymore,” she said. “You just can’t. You have to quit.”

  “I know.”

  She ran her finger along the top edge of the frame and checked for dust. Then she turned back around. “I guess we might as well go down to the beach,” she said. “We live here.”

  The turtle pickup was back. The woman had her headlights on even though it wasn’t dark enough to need them. She was half a mile down the beach, and coming our way. Alice said, “We can’t give her back. Not now.”

  “What?”

  “Olivia. Delton. She can’t go back to that house. Carolyn’s got to get out of there. She’s got to get the kids out.”

  “Slow down,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me that,” she said. “Now he’s out there bribing thugs?”

  “I don’t think he was a thug. I think he was off his meds or something.”

  “And on top of that, the school—” She stopped walking. “This is it. It has to be. This is too much.”

  “He didn’t bribe the guy.”

  “You said he did.”

  “I said he was going to try to.”

  “Oh, great, then. Never mind.”

  A few condos down, somebody set off a few bottlerockets. I said, “I don’t think he knows for sure what he’s doing anymore.”

  “Is there anything that makes you think he’s ever known?” she said.

  “Today was different,” I said.

  “In what way?”

  “He didn’t—” I was almost at a loss. “He didn’t take that very well.”

  “How could anybody take that well?”

  “You didn’t see it,” I said. “You didn’t see him.”

  The shrimp boats out on the water were starting to pick up the pink of the sun. It was a hell of a thing to be standing there. I felt sure we were on the edge of the world. Beyond here there be dragons, is what it felt like. Alice said, “I think something’s happened to our lives.”

  “We’re having a kid,” I said.

  She folded her arms across her chest and faced into the breeze. “A girl,” she said. “I think it’s a girl, too.”

  “You didn’t say so.”

  “I’m saying now. When I talk to her, it feels like a girl.”

  “Do you want to find out next time we go in?”

  “You do,” she said.

  “I’m fine either way.”

  She said, “I still want to be surprised.”

  “We could name her Olivia,” I said. “It’s a good name. And she’s not using it.”

  “I think that’s bad luck.”

  “We could name her Middleton.”

  “Do you ever imagine her?” she said. “Can you see her?”

  “I’ve been able to imagine her all along.”

  “But is it—is it getting any better?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m walking,” I said. “I’m walking on the beach with you.”

  “I need to know where you are,” she said. “I need to know if you’re alright.”

  I was not. I knew I was not, and that there was little chance I would be, and that I could tell her neither of those things. I knew that until the kid was born, or until Alice got the next all-clear from Varden, and then however many more all-clears we’d need after that, that I’d be damaged. And I was coming to rest pretty surely on the idea that, give or take, that was the ride I’d be on for the rest of my life—that the only real calm I’d ever see again would be the demilitarized zone between one crisis and the next. As soon as somebody stopped by to let me know something was alright, that the threat had passed, the next new thing would ride over the horizon at us, whip out a naked leg, and shake us down for lunch money. Maybe Mid was right. Maybe I did need the Pray N’ Wash. What can we pray for today? the kid would ask. All of it, I’d tell him. Every single piece of it. Here, I’d say. I brought a list.

  “I do like it down here,” I told her, which was no kind of answer. The turtle woman was closer now. You could make her out behind the windshield. “I like Delton. She seems like a person.”

  “She is a person.”

  “And I like Mid,” I said. “I—”

  “I like him, too, Walter, but Jesus Christ.”

  “I think he’s not right,” I said.

  “No kidding.”

  “What I mean is, I don’t think he understood how all that was supposed to work today. And that’s not him. Or it doesn’t seem like him.”

  She said, “Is this supposed to be making me feel better?”

  “It’s not supposed to be doing anything. I’m just trying to talk to you. I think it scared the shit out of him. It scared the shit out of me.”

  “Say it,” she said.

  “Say what?”

  “Say something terrible could have happened.”

  “We don’t know that,” I said. “We don’t know anything like that.”

  “You could have been killed.”

  “I don’t think that’s totally true,” I said.

  She said, “You have to take care of him.”

  “Take care of him how?”

  “You can’t let something happen to him. Carolyn couldn’t take it.”

  “I thought you said she had to get out of there. Take the kids. That was just now, right?”

  “She does, Walter, but that doesn’t mean he can—And you. You guys can’t be out there—”

  “We won’t be out there. I’m quitting. Like you said. There’s no ‘you guys.’ ”

  “You have to take care of him. You have to watch him for a little while longer.”

  “You’re not making any sense,” I said.

  “Just promise me, OK? At least while we still have Olivia. Until whatever this is with the police works out. Stay with him until then. Promise me you’ll make sure—”

  “You want me to quit,” I said, “and you want me to save him.”

  “You’re the only one he might listen to.”

  “He doesn’t listen to me,” I said. “There’s no listening.”

  “But maybe you can keep him from—Maybe you can stop things like today from happening. That can’t happen anymore. Whatever that was can’t happen. Not while she’s in our house. We have to keep them safe.”

  It was lunatic, what she was asking me. It was plainly impossible. And I told her I’d do it. Because it was right. Because it was one thing, finally, I could say yes to and know I meant it. She moved toward me, fit her body up against mine. I took hold of her hands. There was water in the air, spray off the ocean, but if you looked north, you could still make out the St. Augustine lighthouse. You could figure out, in one small way, where you were. We stayed down there until it was nearly dark, until it was time for Delton to come back home—time for us to be back upstairs, waiting, hoping hard for the sound of her key in the door.

  7

  For the first few days, we survived: I kept going to work, kept coming back home. We fed Delton. We fed her friends when they came by to check out the arrangement. We fed Nic a sandwich one afternoon while we all stood around waiting for Delton to get out of the shower. They were going to the go-carts. “Drive carefully,” I told him, feeling for all the world like I was the one on some security camera, like someone somewhere was watching me. “Check your blind spots. Use your turn signals.”

  “I will,” he said.

  “The car is not a toy,” said Alice.

  Delton arrived in the hallway, towel wrapped around her, armpits to knees. She said, “But the go-carts are toys, right?”

  “It’s complicated,” I told her.

  “Is it?” She laughed at her own joke and disappeared into her room.

  She’d covered all four walls in tinfoil. Her first official act under
our roof. She said it made her feel like she was in the future. It took almost twenty rolls of foil, and Alice drove her back to the grocery two or three times to get enough. They were bonding, she said. I looked in there while they were out getting the last of it. It looked horrible. Most of it was crooked. I’d have loved it if I was fifteen.

  I found myself keeping an eye out for the Pete Bretts of the world. Something like that happens once, and it begins to seem possible around every corner. Everything’s a potential threat. I was waiting for signs and signals. Every day, I told Alice, it felt like we were getting closer. That’s because we were, she said. No, I said. That’s not quite what I mean. One morning, Alice and Delton gone somewhere—off buying more foil, or scouting for some new project—Hank flew by in his parachute, and I stood on our balcony, pulled my own shirt up over my own belly, and waved. He snapped a fast salute, like what I was doing was as ordinary as anything else, and sailed on by.

  Sunday morning, early. I’d been up since before dawn, sneaking around my own house and trying not to wake anybody. I was on my second pot of coffee, shaky but more or less awake, and flipping through one of Sandy’s bird books: descriptions of plumage, nesting tendencies, variant foot coloring in juveniles. I found a category called “Casual or Accidental Seabirds.” I looked for my own picture. Mid didn’t even ring the doorbell—he just came through the door and stood in the front hall, looking like a lit match. “You should probably knock,” I said.

  “Somebody fucking stole one of the Twice-the-Ices,” he said.

  “It’s seven in the morning,” I said.

  “And somebody stole one of our machines.”

  Delton opened her door. “Daddy?” she said.

  “Hi, sweetheart.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Having an emergency.” He looked in behind her. “What did you do to the walls in there?”

  “It’s tinfoil,” I told him.

  “Why?” he said. “Never mind. Walter, who fucking steals an ice machine?”

  “Curse jar,” Delton said.

  “Diplomatic immunity,” said Mid.

  “Stole it how?” I asked.

  “I mean it is no longer there. There is no Twice-the-Ice. There is an empty concrete pad and no machine. It is absent. Gone. Goodbye.”

  I said, “Are you sure?”

  “How could I not be sure? I already called Friendly and Helpful. They’re meeting us out there.”

  “What does it have to do with them?”

  “Nothing, probably, but I asked them to meet me, and they said yes.”

  “Did you tell them why?”

  “I said it was an important business matter.”

  Alice came out of our bedroom wearing a tank top and red fleece pants. Her belly was clear under the shirt, obvious in a way I was coming to like. “What’s going on?” she said.

  “Somebody stole one of the Twice-the-Ices,” Mid said. “Some fucker.”

  “Who would steal an ice machine?” she said.

  “My point precisely. It has to be an act of war.”

  “War?” Alice said, looking at me.

  He said, “Walter, we have to go get it back.”

  “Let’s get some breakfast first,” I said, wanting to slow him down. “We can talk about it on the way.”

  He turned to Delton. She looked eleven now instead of fifteen, looked sleepy the way a little kid does. He said, “I guess that could be the right idea.”

  “What?” she said. “Is it something you can’t talk about in front of me?”

  “We can talk about anything you like,” he said. “This is just something I need to get squared away, alright?”

  “I guess,” she said.

  Alice said, “I’m not sure if—”

  “We’ll be careful,” Mid said. “No need to worry about us.”

  “Why do you have to be careful?” Delton asked.

  “We don’t,” I said. “It’s only breakfast.”

  “And a small amount of avenging,” Mid said. He was hyped up—he was having trouble holding his hands still, kept putting them in his pockets and then taking them back out.

  Delton said, “You guys are weird.”

  “Not as weird as you, Livvy,” he said.

  “Nobody’s weird as me.”

  “Keep it up.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “I know you are,” he said, and they stared at each other, some parcel of information trading hands, until she stretched up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. Then she went back in her room and shut the door.

  Alice said, just above a whisper, “Maybe you should let the authorities handle this?”

  “I can still hear you,” Delton said from behind the door.

  “We are,” Mid said. “That’s what we’re doing. We’re meeting them out there.” I knew Alice was wanting me to think of something—come up with a way, any way, to send Mid off on some other mission. “We’re the victims,” Mid said, but she didn’t hear him, or didn’t act like she did. She put one hand on her belly. She waited for me. When she saw I had nothing, she turned around, headed for the bedroom. She was mad. It wasn’t me, I wanted to say. Or, I’ll do what I can. I’ll try. I’ll be back soon. “You ready?” Mid said, and even though the answer was a sure no, I put my shoes on, checked our closed bedroom door, gave up all over again, and followed him down to the car.

  “They don’t look open,” I said. He’d driven us to Pomar’s, the little roadside place.

  “Pomar’ll be here, though. He’s always here.”

  “This early?”

  “Usually.”

  I stood behind him while he knocked on the closed door. Soon enough a guy wearing a white button-up and swim trunks opened it. None of his clothes really fit right. Pomar. “What?” he said.

  “Somebody stole one of my Twice-the-Ices.”

  “Wasn’t me,” said Pomar.

  “Shrimp on toast?” Mid asked.

  “If you help me cut some lemons. I’m behind on prep.”

  “Deal,” Mid said, and we went in.

  Closed, the restaurant felt like an exhibit. All the TVs were off but one, which was playing a cable financial show on mute. Stock prices scrolled along the bottom of the screen, red for losers and green for winners. It was hard to remember a life where those had actually meant something. Nothing had been the same since they switched from fractions to decimals, one of my buddies at the bank used to say. Fred Fairhead. A tall guy who’d take you to lunch and draw graphs on napkins. I wondered what work he was doing these days, what town he might’ve landed in, who he was supposed to keep watch over. Pomar set us up at the bar with cutting boards and a five-gallon bucket of lemons. “I can’t believe somebody stole the fucking thing,” Mid said. “Just the logistics, you know?”

  Pomar poured coffee into rocks glasses. He said, “I can see not believing it.”

  “You’d need a truck, for starters,” Mid said. “Who has a truck like that?”

  “Circuses,” said Pomar.

  “Circuses?”

  “Ever passed a circus out on the road? They got trucks. They carry things.”

  “You think the Ringling Brothers took my machine?”

  “You asked who had trucks,” Pomar said. “I gave you a good answer.”

  “You made the payments, right?” I asked him. “It is actually stolen?”

  “Nobody came and repossessed the machine. I made the payments.”

  Pomar said, “It’s a fair question.”

  “Fuck off,” Mid said. He halved a lemon, then held his knife up in the air. “But I’ll tell you who’s got a big enough truck.”

  “Who’s that?” I said.

  “That goddamn pirate. It’s him. I bet you anything.”

  “And the circus was a bad answer?” Pomar said.

  “We met this guy,” said Mid. “He had a truck that would about do it.”

  “How would he know it was yours?” I said.

  “He would.
He would have some way.”

  “Like an actual pirate?” Pomar said. “With parrots?”

  Mid said, “In a grocery store, more like. But he had this tow truck.”

  Pomar looked at him like he had more questions, but maybe knew better. He was pulling on some history I didn’t have. He took a handful of lemon wedges out of Mid’s pile, put them in a little bowl. “Sixths, OK?” he said. “Not eighths. You keep these skinny ones for your toast.” He turned around and went through the swinging doors into the back.

  Out the big front windows, the sun was burning us into true morning, still and cloudless again. Quiet. Mid cut lemons. I cut lemons. Pomar dropped a lid in the kitchen, cursed at it. “Don’t worry about the foil in Delton’s room, by the way,” I said, aiming for something good to tell Mid. “We let her do it. Alice helped her hang it up.”

  “I’m not worried,” he said.

  “It couldn’t be the pirate guy,” I said. “He can’t have put that together.”

  “I’m on file with the county to operate there. I pulled permits. Or he could have worked it backwards through his uncle.”

  “It took a crane to put them down,” I said.

  “He didn’t strike you as the kind of guy who might be able to figure his way around a crane?”

  I said, “He struck me as the kind of guy who had bodies in the yard.”

  “Here,” Mid said. “Feel this. Feels just like a real heel.”

  “Right.”

  “So that’s my point,” he said.

  “What is?”

  He picked up a lemon, turned it in his hand. “We need to go out there. Go pay him a visit.”

  “No way.”

  “Somebody has to go out there.”

  “Get your buddies to do it,” I said. “Your cops. Get them to park in the driveway and flash the lights and do what they do.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “What would we do, anyway?”

  “If what?”

  “If we went out there and he had it?”

  “Fuck, man, I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t gotten that far. Ask him for it nicely?”

  “What, like it was a ball we hit in his yard?” I said. “And then what?”

  “Why do you have to make it so complicated?” he asked me.