After he and Dylan cleaned up and changed clothes, Mick locked both Dylan and Andy in the dog run with Hap’s beagles. There were nine of them—Hap was a rabbit hunter—and they loved company. Dylan loved it, too. Sometimes he’d lay his head on a dog’s belly and just rub his cheek back and forth over it, feeling that fur on his face.
That evening, as soon as Layne walked in the door from work Dylan told her, proudly, that he’d spent the afternoon locked in the dog pen. She handled the news fairly well until Mick explained to her exactly why he was in the dog pen.
She blanched, and sat down rather heavily at the dining room table. “He could have been killed. My baby could have died,” she whispered, bringing her fingers to her mouth.
Mick winced, shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t all that . . . Okay, it was pretty bad, but everything’s all right now. He’s fine. And believe me, it won’t happen again.” He sat down and took her hands across the corner of the table.
“I saw, today,” he said. “I don’t know all the big words for it or anything, but today I got a good look at what’s different about Dylan and what can happen because of it. I saw it in his eyes out there in that pond, and I want you to know I understand a lot better now, that’s all. I understand, now, that he doesn’t see the world the way everybody else does, and it can get him in trouble. I want you to know I’ll take care of him, Layne. I’ll protect him, even from himself.”
* * *
Over the next few weeks a lot of things began to sink in. Mick’s world had shrunk. He rarely left the property except to go over to Hap’s every day and work on the house, and while it wasn’t bad hanging out with Hap and Dylan and the dogs, he began to miss the rest of the world. He missed the guys—dogging each other out at lunch and talking about old times, other jobs and friends they had in common. He didn’t realize how bad he missed the guys until he ran into Gruber’s wife in the grocery store one afternoon. Gruber was an old ironworker buddy, and Mick recognized his wife from the company Christmas party. Word about him must have gotten around because Deb Gruber already knew he was staying home with the kids.
“It’s an experiment,” Mick told her. “Just temporary.”
She seemed happy about it at first, all smiling and nice. Deb Gruber was a terminally perky blonde with a lot of teeth, and she had on a red sweatshirt with a gold glitter Santa Claus on it. She always wore roughly a pound of diamonds, and earrings the size of hubcaps. Some of the guys called her Bangles behind her back. Dylan was sitting up in the cart with his legs hanging through. He was wearing pink fuzzy earmuffs.
“Those are mighty cute little earmuffs,” she said. She was grinning at Dylan, wrinkling her nose and talking squeaky. She pulled one side of the earmuffs out from his head, then let it go a little too hard. He clapped his hands over his ears and gave her his death stare.
“They’re Toad’s, but we found out he likes them,” Mick said. “He hears too much, and they help filter out some of the noise. He’s a lot calmer when he’s wearing them.”
She kept poking at Dylan, trying to get him to laugh. His chin jutted and he started breathing hard. She was lucky he didn’t have his light saber with him. Mick just knew any minute he was going to bite her finger off, but in the end it wasn’t Dylan who bit her.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” she asked. “Staying home with the kids.”
He thought about it for maybe a half-second and then, like an idiot, told her the truth.
“Nah. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Any reasonably intelligent adult ought to be able to stay on top of a couple kids. And when you been doing construction work all your life, housework is a piece of cake. There’s nothing to it.”
Right then, for Mick at least, it was true. He’d only been home for a few weeks—nowhere near long enough to understand where she was coming from.
She went kind of slit-eyed on him, and it was like a curtain dropping on a stage. All of a sudden she was in a big hurry to get the rest of her grocery shopping done. It took him a while to figure out that Bangles Gruber had actually been trying to sort of welcome him into the housewife club, and he had body-slammed her. After she huffed off he wanted to call her back. Not that he minded offending her—he’d been offending people all his life—but Mick genuinely wished that she could have just stood around and talked a little longer. A grownup. Any grownup.
They left the store that day with a ton of groceries dumped into those filmy, weightless little plastic bags by an obnoxious spiky-haired kid wearing five or six eyebrow rings. In Mick’s day groceries got bagged in good, stiff, useful paper sacks that would stand up under the sink and hold garbage. He hated the filmy plastic bags, but it never seemed all that important until they were flying down the back roads on the way home and he started hearing a weird noise. The afternoon had turned off warm, and Mick had rolled the window down and hung his arm out. That’s when he heard it.
Flup.
He listened hard, trying to tell whether the noise was coming from the engine or the rear end. He was still driving Hap’s old Datsun pickup, and he was always hearing new noises from it.
Flup.
Definitely the rear end, but this was a sound he’d never heard a truck make before. He knew he wasn’t imagining things because Dylan started imitating it.
“Flup,” Dylan said.
He finally looked in the rearview mirror at just the right instant to catch an empty bag at the peak of a graceful arc fifteen feet above the road, billowing out like a spinnaker and then collapsing, rolling, dancing on the backwash of the truck and swooping low to snag on the windshield wiper of the police car behind him, where it streamlined itself and buzzed like a rattlesnake.
When that red hair, stern face and aviator sunglasses appeared in his window with a clipboard, and the cop asked for his license in a no-nonsense drill-sergeant tone, Mick knew there was no point in arguing with him. The man clearly had no sense of humor. Littering. Not since Arlo Guthrie had anybody actually gotten a ticket for littering.
While Officer Bowers wrote the ticket, Dylan stood up in the seat with his palms pressed against the back glass marveling at the sight of a week’s worth of bagless groceries awash in the bed of the truck. Mick made a mental note: in the future, he would risk the loathing of the kid with the eyebrow rings by demanding paper bags.
Driving away from the scene Mick had some choice words for Officer Bowers, and some of them came back to haunt him the next Sunday afternoon. When Layne and the kids came home from church she seemed kind of tightlipped. Like an idiot, Mick asked her what was wrong.
“Strangest thing happened this morning in Sunday school,” she said. “The kids were all gathered around and I was reading them a story.”
She’d been teaching the four-year-old Sunday school class for years. Dylan was in her class this year.
“There was a picture of three men on an elevator, and when I read the part where it said ‘The elevator came to a stop with a jerk’ your son leaned over my shoulder and looked real close at the picture. Then he put his finger on the man in the middle, the one with red hair and sunglasses, and said, ‘That one right there. He’s the jerk.’”
9
* * *
Christmas.
MICK Brannigan had never been a big fan of Christmas. He wouldn’t have called it depression, but a kind of weight always settled on him around Thanksgiving and stayed with him until January. He couldn’t possibly have picked a worse time to quit his job. The holidays rolled over him like a truck, as usual, only it was worse this time because he was out of work.
Then Ben and Toad got out of school a week before Christmas. One of the things—one of many things—Mick didn’t understand about staying home with the kids was that there was no such thing as a vacation. No holidays. The definition of a holiday for a stay-at-home parent was “a day when all the kids are out of school and your workload triples.” He hadn’t counted on that. Three times as many cups of juice to pour and three times as many empty cups to round
up—constantly. Piddly stuff, but endless. He couldn’t believe how much juice three kids could drink in one day.
He didn’t know about the Rain Rule, either. He was completely unaware that there was a law of nature that said, “If the kids are out of school, it shall rain.” When the rain set in, he and Hap covered the unfinished house with blue plastic tarps and hunkered down to wait it out.
Stuck indoors, the kids were bored. They watched Disney movies, played video games, spilled juice, strewed toys and fought while Mick cleaned up after them and kept the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches flowing. He never realized how demanding kids could be until he got trapped in the house with three of them for two weeks. The kitchen alone ate up half his day. He told Hap he felt like a life support system for a brood of rug rats.
And they were territorial beasts. Cooped up together, the day would always turn into one long property-rights dispute, so Mick had to be a lawyer, too. The fighting was mostly between Ben and Toad. Because they were close to the same age, they liked the same stuff, and Dylan tended to argue with his light saber. In close quarters he could be a little short-tempered. There wasn’t much they could do about it—he was mean as a snake but he was too little for a fair fight.
Mick blamed his old man for his attitude about the holidays. He’d never had a lot of patience with whiners, and he knew very well that everybody blamed their parents for one thing or another, but he would have put his old man up against any of them, especially at Christmas. Mick’s daddy was bad to drink anyway, but when December rolled around he was always happy to embrace a legitmate excuse to celebrate.
The last year Mick’s father was home he took to hauling Mick and his brother around with him on his route the week before Christmas. He drove a truck for a uniform rental company, delivering clean uniforms and picking up dirty ones. It was an industrial route, and he always took second shift so he could be at work when the house was full of noisy kids. He’d sleep as late as he wanted and then leave right before they got home from school to go run his route. Sweatshop Row he called it—mechanic shops and assembly plants—places where the guys get pretty ripe. When they got out of school for Christmas break and he couldn’t avoid them, he took Mick and his brother with him on his route. Mick was twelve that year, his brother thirteen, but they learned the job well enough so that the old man didn’t even have to get out of the truck when they were with him.
They were quicker than he was, too, and the time they shaved off his route he naturally chose to spend sitting in a bar. He’d leave them locked in the truck, and it would get cold five minutes after he left. Sometimes he’d stay gone half the night and they’d have to crawl in the back and burrow down into those stinking uniforms just to stay warm. Most nights they’d fall asleep that way.
When he finally came back to the truck in the wee hours he’d be limping, always. He had a bum knee from a wreck when he was a kid. He didn’t favor it much when he was sober but he limped badly when he was drunk. Even without the limp they could always tell when he was hammered by the way he held his head tilted over against his shoulder as if he had a crick in his neck. Mick figured it helped him see a little better, brought the two images in line with each other somehow.
* * *
While Mick’s kids were out of school for Christmas, the rain never stopped. Sometimes it would ease up to a fine drizzle, but it never stopped. He did his best to entertain the kids without spending any money, but a couple days before Christmas he got cabin fever so bad he caved in and took them to a matinee.
The movie was okay, as far as Mick could tell. It was a kids’ movie. Robin Williams flaunted his patented schizophrenia, joy and pain fighting for control of his face. Coming out, Ben and Toad ran ahead, burning off the caffeine and sugar they got from a large Coke that cost him about five bucks. They were jumping and dancing, being silly, being kids, thudding down the broad promenade past posters of coming attractions spaced like presidents on the wall. Dylan flailed along behind trying to imitate them until he tripped over his own feet—boy and popcorn spilling across the carpet.
Mick stopped at the glass doors, hands in pockets, staring out at a wet, gray parking lot. Rain before the movie, rain after—a cold, steady, pitiless rain from an aluminum sky. Toad bounced up beside him, pressed her forehead to the cool glass, breathed a big fog spot, wrote her name in it with a fingertip. Dylan tugged at his sleeve and said what any four-year-old would say after two hours of drinking Coke:
“I dotta doe pee.”
The new theater complex was plush—even the bathrooms were state-of-the-art. Mick waited across from the sinks while the boys did what they had to do. Leaning his head back against the tile, he stared at his tired reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall and wondered if it was the monotonous rain, the loneliness, or the meaninglessness of what passed for Christmas that made him feel so drained and hopeless.
Dylan got done with his business before Ben and came out to wash his hands. His mama trained him well. Mick watched his son in the mirror as he stood on tiptoe peeking over the lip of the counter, looking for something on the long row of sinks.
Handles. The faucets didn’t have handles. He wanted to wash his hands but he couldn’t see how to turn on the water. Finally, he raised a shoulder and stuck out his little hand to feel around and see what he could find.
Mick watched his face.
When his hand swept past the motion sensor the water leaped out, warm and ample. One second it was off and the next, on.
He gasped. Those bright eyes widened and a smile shot across his face. There for just a second shined a pure childlike wonder, like a flash of light spilling out of a brand-new soul who sees every day as an adventure, a voyage of discovery. Every day is a present to be opened. Mick glanced up at his own reflection and was shocked to see the same smile—the exact same one—as if it had stowed away on the light reflected between them, as if that childlike wonder was as contagious as light itself.
There, he thought. Right there. That is Christmas.
He felt better after that. Something in that moment left its mark on him. Thinking about it on the drive home, replaying it in his mind, it occurred to him that maybe what a man saw was just a matter of where he looked.
There was a Christmas Eve service at Layne’s church and the whole family went to it. It was nice. Mick normally didn’t attend church with her and the kids but he always liked the candlelight service on Christmas Eve. It was simple and quiet, and with the candles and the music there was something sweet about it, although no self-respecting ironworker would have used that word out loud.
* * *
There was nothing in the world quite like the excitement of three little kids on Christmas morning. They still believed, and it was amazing. They could have lit a city off of the energy. Everybody had a grand time. Layne got down in the floor in her flannel pajamas right in among the kids, and before long the room was waist deep in wrapping paper and torn boxes. Santa had been there. He’d even eaten the cookies and left a letter for the kids:
Dear Ben, Toad, and Dylan,
Sorry about not leaving you one of those Galaxy 200 games like you wanted, Ben, but the truth is my elves refused to make the Galaxy 200 because it’s a piece of junk, so the only way I could get one was to order it myself from that cheesy advertisement on TV, which I wasn’t about to do because, well, I’m Santa, and I have a reputation. Besides, I can see you’ve already got a computer, so I brought you a couple games for that. There’s a nifty multi-tool in your stocking that has a folding knife blade in it. Treat it with care—a knife is not a toy. You’re growing up. Be responsible.
Toad, in case you’re wondering, the Barbie doll was your mother’s idea. Even Santa can’t win an argument with your mom. Be careful with the magnifying glass. I gave one of those to your dad when he was little and he tormented ants with it. Don’t do that. I think you’ll like the slot cars, but don’t do like your dad and his brother did. They figured out how to reverse one of the eng
ines so they could have head-on collisions. Never let grownups play with your toys.
Dylan, I know how you like to dig, so I brought you a folding shovel. When you get about halfway down to China, stop and wave. The North Pole will be on your left.
Apart from the toys in the rain gutters and the PB&J in the VCR, you were all pretty good this year.
Merry Christmas!
Santa Claus
P.S. Dylan, here’s the list of bad names you wanted. But you have to promise not to call your brother and sister any of these in front of anybody.
skankbelly
hornet-head
scuzzyteeth
catfish-breath
lawyer
tater-toes
skimbleshanks
bilgemonkey
hogface
mumblemouth
addle-brained marmaloot
engineer
chicken lips
bedpan-head
poodlepants
Santa was careful not to list any names that started with G.
Layne read the letter out loud and just about wet herself laughing. Nothing on earth was more beautiful than Layne when she was laughing. When she laughed the sun shined and all was right with the world—it was all Mick ever really wanted from her.
Afterward, she went to the kitchen to cook a huge breakfast with pancakes and sausage while Ben and Toad put together the slot car track. Mick went in the kitchen to help, and while he was cooking a pan of sausages Layne sidled up next to him, put her arm around him and said, “Have you thought any more about whether you’re going to keep staying home after Christmas?”
He shrugged. Didn’t look at her. He thought about his old man, and what he would have said in the same circumstances. He wanted to say no, he really did, but for whatever reason he kept seeing Dylan’s face—the light in his eyes that day in the bathroom mirror at the theater. The joy. As strange as it seemed, that was the thing that changed Mick’s mind. He’d gotten a glimpse of something real and worthwhile that he thought might just be lost if he didn’t let go of what Mick wanted for a while and do what was best for the kids.
Summer of Light Page 9
