by Drew Perry
Delton frowned. “Mom’s always saying stuff like that, too.”
“Well, you’ve got a lot going on.”
“I don’t have a baby,” she said.
Alice said, “Would you like to—” I was trying to catch her eye, but she was focused on Delton, up on her ladder. “I mean, if there’s anything at all—”
Delton said, “I went to health class, OK? We saw the video.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Alice said.
“Still,” Delton said. “Let’s really not talk about that.”
Alice said, “Just tell me you’re being safe. Or that you feel safe. Anything like that.”
Delton curtseyed on the top step. It was like ballet. “Uncle Walter and Aunt Alice,” she said, in her fake deep voice, “I am practicing the safest of sex. Practicing and practicing.”
“You don’t have to share that kind of thing,” I said.
“Anything she wants to tell us is fine,” Alice said.
“Too soon?” I said.
“Just in time,” Delton said, turning back to the wall. “Hard to say when the world’s going to end.”
I said, “What does that mean?”
“It’s something Nic says.”
“All we’re trying to say is that we’re really sorry all this is happening,” said Alice.
“Why are you apologizing?” she said.
“Because you shouldn’t have to—”
“Because a normal fifteen-year-old shouldn’t have to blah, blah, blah,” said Delton. “Fill in the blank. Dad in the hospital. Is that what you mean?”
“It’s part of it,” Alice said.
“But there are no normal fifteen-year-olds,” she said. “There is no normal anybody.” She pulled another pushpin out. “This is pretty wild, though. I never knew anybody who got shot before.”
Alice said, “Hopefully you never will again.”
“He doesn’t look like his normal self, hooked up to all those things.”
“He will,” I said.
“He looks smaller,” she said.
We’d only been to see him once—he was pretty drugged up, and they were looking at X-rays of his collarbone, trying to see if the screws were in the right places—but she was right: He did look smaller, like someone had sent him through a machine, and he’d come out the other end reduced. Seeing him was like seeing him from far away. He’d said, “Should have taken evasive action.”
“Right,” I said.
“Those things don’t move so great. Terrible getaway cars.”
“Now you know for next time,” I said.
“I pissed everybody off,” he said.
“They’ll get over it.”
“Exactly,” he said, but the drugs had him not quite fully there, and he leaned back into his pillow. There was a tube in his nose to help him breathe, an IV in his arm to feed him. I wanted to tell him: I can’t find your ice machine. I don’t know where to look. Instead I held still while Carolyn asked the doctors questions. There was a bruise that ran out from under the bandages and up the side of his neck. I wanted to ask him if it hurt, but I knew the answer. What I really wanted to know was how much it hurt.
“We’re going to the go-carts tonight,” Delton was saying. “We’re taking Sophie and Jane.”
“You are?” I said.
“Mom said anything on the ground was fine.”
“Do you want us to go with you?” I asked.
“We’re good.” She picked at something up on the ceiling. “But I might not be home by ten,” she said, and you could tell she loved the idea. “Because we have to drop them off and everything.”
“Will you call us?” Alice said. “Call when you leave the park, and call when you drop them off?”
“No problem,” Delton said.
“We just want to know you’re OK,” I said.
“I get it,” Delton said.
“Are you?” I asked her. “OK?”
“You mean other than Dad?” She got down off the ladder, put the bowl of thumbtacks on the nightstand. “Yeah,” she said. “Sure I am. I always am.”
The name: Try to imagine it on a report card, on the back of a jersey, on a driver’s license. On the front of envelopes addressed to her, color-coded for major holidays and special occasions. Said over the radio, or blocked up in white letters underneath her on the TV screen while she delivers expert analysis on the news of the day. On an album cover. On a runoff ballot for council selectwoman. On a passbook for her own savings account. See her writing it inside the covers of her books, at the top corners of her papers, signing it to a marriage certificate, a mortgage, a contract. Try to hear it coming out of her cousins’ mouths. Her uncle’s. Her mother’s. Try to hear it coming out of your own.
The police were finished with the Camaro, and Hurley knew somebody who did auto glass, so we’d had his guy go get it, replace the windshield, drop it back off at the condo. Alice and I stood on the front balcony after I paid for the work and signed for the car. The only other vehicle in the parking lot was a golf cart.
Alice said, “That car keeps being the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“He likes it,” I said.
“But he can’t give it to Delton.”
I said, “Maybe not.”
No one had asked about the cash yet. Nobody seemed to know about it. We were letting it be. The lawyers were telling Mid not to say anything, so that’s what he was doing. He wasn’t even talking to Friendly and Helpful anymore. Our idea was to tell the truth to anybody who asked, but not volunteer anything. The whole thing belonged to Mid, was our feeling, and we were trying to keep it that way.
Alice looked out over the water. It was low tide, and the Intracoastal had pulled back from all the grass spits again, left rings of sand around them. “Carolyn told me he almost died,” she said.
“When did she say that?”
“This morning. On the phone. One of the pieces of metal lodged in his rib. She said if it had gone through, it would have cut his heart in half.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“Like what? What would you say after that?”
A rubber motorboat came around the back side of one of the bigger islands. There was a circle on the side, a seal with some lettering. Maybe one of the universities. Or the same agency as the turtle woman. One person was up front, driving, and two more were in the back, with nets. They were all wearing white hats, white shirts. One of the net people dipped in, came back out with nothing.
“What do you think they’re doing?” Alice asked.
“Fishing?”
“It looks like science,” she said.
“I want that job.”
“Me, too,” she said, but she wasn’t really paying attention anymore. She rubbed at her side.
“You alright?” I asked.
“She’s kicking me. Do you want to feel?”
“Sure,” I said, and she put my hand to her body.
“I like knowing she’s in there,” Alice said. “It’s just—” The people on the boat had gotten something out of the water, something dead. “Oh,” Alice said. “Is that a bird?”
“I think it’s a possum,” I said, even though it looked very much like a bird, like maybe a heron.
“What’s it doing in the water?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. One of the science people opened a clear trash bag, and they dropped the thing into it, put it down in the boat.
“That’s horrible,” Alice said.
“Maybe not to them.”
“I think it would be horrible for anybody.” She left me there, went inside the condo, came back out with her purse. “Let’s go for a ride,” she said. “The twins were telling me there’s a carnival up in Butler Beach. Let’s go see it.”
“What time is Delton supposed to be back?” I said.
“Later.” The scientists were back at it with their nets. “Let’s please get out of here. I don’t want to see them find anything else.”
We we
nt downstairs, got in the car. “It’s like a cave in here,” she said. “Or a cockpit.”
I said, “It’s like something.”
“Turn it down as cold as it’ll go,” she said, and I put the AC on MAX. Once we were out on the road, she said, “I want to be able to see my breath.”
“There’s no way it goes that cold,” I said, making sure the lever was pushed all the way to the end of the blue.
“Try,” she said.
“I’m trying.”
“I want to make it so cold we have to open the sunroof to save ourselves,” she said.
“OK,” I said. “Bundle up.”
The highway north took us through almost all of Mid’s known empire: Island Pizza, Devil’s Backbone, Me Kayak Sea Kayak. We went past Pomar’s. We went past the grocery. We went past where we’d turn for the castle. I got a quick flash of him hanging in the trees, belted into the parachute, bleeding and certain he was dying, knowing that even if they did get to him, even if they did cut him down, it wouldn’t make any difference.
“I don’t want to go to the doctor tomorrow,” Alice said. “I don’t ever want to go back.”
“I’ll call and cancel,” I said.
“We have to go.”
“We could go next week,” I said. “We could make something up.”
“I don’t want anybody looking at me anymore,” she said. “I just want to help her grow hair and fingernails.”
“Is that where we are?”
“You have to read the books,” she said.
“I’ll read the books.”
“I want them to tell us we’re safe,” she said, pulling her knees up under her chin. She looked a lot like Delton. “I can’t take it if they say something else.”
“They’ll say it,” I said. “We’re safe.”
“You always say that.”
“We always are.”
“Not always,” she said. “We haven’t been. You weren’t.”
“I am now.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m better,” I said.
“You’re lying.”
“Only sometimes,” I said. “The rest of the time, it’s almost true.”
“Tell me you’ll get it figured out,” she said.
“I will.”
“Tell me that’s the truth.”
“I want it to be.”
“I miss you,” she said. “I’ve been missing you.”
I shifted down, then back up again. The engine revved and released. I said, “I missed you, too,” only seeing in that moment how much. I eased the car into the empty oncoming lane to avoid a case of beer in the road. “I still like Olivia,” I said. “For a name.”
She pushed the lock button a few times. She said, “Do you really think he did it on purpose?”
“Which part?” I said.
“Any of it. Do you think he meant all that?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did he learn to fly one of those things?”
“I don’t think it’s that hard,” I said. “The sail does most of the work. You just hang on underneath, and whatever happens next is what happens.”
“My God, what if he did have it all planned?” she said.
I said, “Isn’t it worse if he didn’t?”
It was easy enough to find the carnival. As we came into Butler Beach, the police had a lane blocked fully off, were directing traffic into a parking lot at one of the public beach access points. As we got closer we could see it: a pirate ship, a Tilt-a-Whirl, a massive slingshot that launched people in a huge arc down along the ground and then thirty, forty, fifty feet up into the air. There were carts and trailers selling cotton candy, elephant ears, popcorn. “So there it is,” Alice said.
“Yeah,” I said, looking at it.
“Let’s go. I want to ride the rides.”
I said, “No small children, no pregnant mothers.”
“We’ll ride the kiddie rides,” she said. “We’ll eat corn dogs.”
“Are you sure?”
“Come on,” she said. “I really want to go.”
It was five dollars to park, two dollars a ticket. Some rides cost one ticket, others two or three. They rang a bell, like a schoolhouse bell, right before they shot the slingshot each time. The bell would go off, and everybody would turn to look, and the cables would go tenser and tenser, and then they’d ring the bell again, and that was it: The highschool kid—invariably it was someone Delton’s age, with her friends cheering her on from the ground—was let go along that tight curve, rushing down and then sailing back up toward the sky. Every time, I’d hold Alice’s hand a little tighter, sure this would be the moment the ride would fail and the kid would just keep going, out over the parking lot and the cars and the road and into the Intracoastal. Maybe she’d tuck into a dive when she hit the water, and maybe she’d live. Or maybe—maybe she’d never hit the ground at all. Maybe she’d be the first among us to figure out how it worked, swoop in low over the cheering crowd and then fly off, away, never to be heard from again.
We rode a kiddie Ferris wheel that was barely taller than a house. We had our pictures taken in a replica Model T. We rode a roller coaster made to look like a pig. The whole thing was pink. Alice and I got our own car near the back, watched the kids in front of us, watched their parents watch them from behind the plastic gating. The metal of the cars was nearly too hot to touch. This was a one-hill ride, and that hill took us just high enough to see over the dunes and out onto the beach, the ocean. It lasted five laps, five times around, and then it was done. When we got off the ride, Alice wanted a sno-cone. We bought red and blue. She ate them both.
The sun crushed down on us. Inside the tents it was hotter than out, so we stayed away from the skeet ball and the guess-your-weight-and-age guys, played the games on the perimeter. Alice won the ring bottles on the first try. The girl running the booth said she could choose a prize, and she picked a stuffed yellow gorilla as big as a dog. It had an expression on its face like it wasn’t sure what town it was in, like the carnival stopped in thirty towns in fifty days, and this must be one of them. “We can take him to Mid,” I said. “He could probably use somebody to talk to.”
“He’s mine,” she said. “What if I want him for the baby’s room?”
“We could loan him to Mid until she gets here,” I said.
“Let me think about it,” she said.
Alice had to go to the bathroom, so I found a piece of shade behind one of the bigger rides, waited. She left the gorilla with me. There were kids everywhere, knots and huddles of them, kids in bunches. Parents chased them, trying to make deals to keep them happy. One more hour. Two more rides. Either the funnel cake or the ice cream, but not both. We would have to have a second one, a second child. I knew that now. The bell rang, and they hoisted a shirtless boy into the air over at the slingshot. Because you had to give a kid an ally. It wouldn’t be fair to leave Kitchenette on her own. Or—or maybe we could get Maggie to be her big sister. Maybe we had that part already wired in, and we’d be alright. Maybe we’d at least be able to wait until we knew if we could do it. That would be the one miracle we might be owed. The second bell went off, and they let the kid go. He flew with his arms out from his sides. The wind pushed his hair off his face. Alice came out of the bathroom, looked around. She didn’t see me. I waited, just for a second, watching her stare out into the spinning crowd, before I lifted the gorilla up in the air, waved him back and forth until she saw. She smiled. The kid sailed back by again, turning a flip. He was a pro. Alice came right for me, right through all the people. Tomorrow we would go to the doctor, would go to the hospital to see Mid, then out to the castle to see Carolyn and the girls. After that, I did not know. After that, anything. Right now I still had paper tickets in my pocket. I got them out. I handed them to Alice. She had tears in her eyes. “What is it?” I said.
“Nothing,” she said. “I just really like the carnival. I’m glad we came.”
Behind her, a girl who couldn’t have been more than five years old was getting ready to test her strength, to play the hammer game. HY-STRYKER, it said on the tower. She’d picked up a hammer bigger than she was and was lining things up. She had long reddish hair pulled back in a braid, was wearing a plain brown dress. “Watch out now,” the barker was saying. “Folks, we got a natural on our hands. Better stand back.” From our angle, I could see the guy doing something with his feet, probably rigging the game—but the girl had already swung the hammer through the air and brought it down square on the metal plate, and the needle took off up the tower, all the way up, rang the bell. Her parents cheered. The little crowd that had gathered to watch her cheered. The girl didn’t even smile. She looked directly at Alice—I swear I saw her do this—and she put the hammer back down on the ground like it was nothing, like that was the result she’d expected all along.
Acknowledgments
Thanks so very much to Kathy Pories, who believed all along, who saw things I didn’t, and who just kept being right. Thanks one more time to Peter Steinberg for working such magic. Thank you to everyone at Algonquin for every moment of your hard work in bringing this up off the page and into the world; thank you, all of you, for making me feel so utterly at home.
Thanks to the Sustainable Arts Foundation for its generous support.
Thanks to my parents, Tom and Judy, and to my brothers, Neil and Josh.
To AMR, and to all those beasts beneath our roof: I’ve never been more delighted to be so, so wrong.
TITA RAMIREZ
DREW PERRY’s first book, This Is Just Exactly Like You, was a finalist for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, a SIBA Okra pick, and an Atlanta Journal-Constitution Best Book of 2010 pick. He has published fiction in Black Warrior Review, Atlanta Magazine, Alaskan Quarterly Review, and New Stories from the South. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, and teaches at Elon University.
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