bloodshot and sunken. He’d overhear the things she’d mutter to photographs of his father— I never should have asked. I shouldn’t have worn those shoes. Forgive me. How can you forgive me?
Then a whole bunch of folks from up north came down asking questions about what happened, and Eddie spent even more time than previously in the confusing world of people talking over his head, primarily about politics. As he grew, reluctantly, to accept his father’s absence, the path of his grief and his mother’s reached a fork and then the two diverged. Once the house quieted down again, she began to neglect everyday life and allow a tide of chaos to rush into the house: a cascade of filthy dresses, wire hangers, pizza boxes, cigarette butts, and eventually vermin. She left their new television on at all times, usually playing to an empty couch, so that it seemed the advertisements begged no one to buy their products and evangelists prayed with nobody.
Toward the end of their days in Ovis, Darlene started to run with a different crowd—no more politics people anymore. These were men Eddie might see only once, men who smoked unpleasant cigars, who drove rust-caked Lincoln Continentals, who had filled the graying white leather interiors of their cars with discarded newspapers, who left their toenail clippings on the coffee table. Her moods became unpredictable. Once he brought a half-inflated basketball into the house, and she hurled it at his face for no reason he could figure out. He turned so that the rough ball hit him in the flank, leaving a cloudy bruise. The impact stunned her into regret, as if it had hit her instead of him, and she kissed the space below his arm over the next few days as it took on the color of an eggplant. Their trust throbbed and disappeared as the border of the injury grew sharper.
A year after his father died, Eddie’s mother hadn’t moved his father’s clothes out of the bedroom. She stopped speaking to a friend who’d tried to set her up with a man. She hadn’t gotten a job. Mommy’s running low on savings, Mommy’s having trouble finding work, she’d tell him, and he’d have to move a pile of half-finished cover letters from the kitchen counter when he ate breakfast. But he would leap off the school bus and return home in the afternoon to find her in the same tattered bathrobe, spooning thick brown liquid from a bucket-shaped container of ice cream in the kitchen, her eyes glazed and underlined, transfixed by daytime-TV shows where staged fights would break out. Mom Stole My Boyfriend! Empty beer cans studded the coffee table, corkless bottles of discount wine lolled on their sides, sometimes falling to the carpet. She stopped going to the courthouse and locked herself in her room, often weeping, sometimes for an entire day. During that time, Eddie taught himself how to hard-boil an egg and follow directions on the back of a frozen-food box. She started to ration his breakfast bars, she stopped buying him new clothes, the pencils she bought him for school all snapped or were lost within two or three weeks.
Six months after all the northerners left, Darlene finally found a job at a convenience store, and Eddie assumed that her new job would open up a new life: Her mood would brighten, she would stop biting her nails, she would finally make it to Parents’ Day. But none of that happened. Somehow, things got worse.
When he found the pipe that summer, he did not know what it was at first, but it made a cool toy spaceship, since it looked a little like the starship Enterprise , round at one end and skinny at the other, and he flew it through the apartment between his fingers. He flew it across the universe of the living room repeatedly, trying to reach warp speed. The first time Darlene saw him playing with the pipe, she plucked it out of his hand without explanation, only curses—curses he’d rarely heard her speak before, and that change felt more ominous to him than the pipe.
One
Then a whole bunch of folks from up north came down asking questions about what happened, and Eddie spent even more time than previously in the confusing world of people talking over his head, primarily about politics. As he grew, reluctantly, to accept his father’s absence, the path of his grief and his mother’s reached a fork and then the two diverged. Once the house quieted down again, she began to neglect everyday life and allow a tide of chaos to rush into the house: a cascade of filthy dresses, wire hangers, pizza boxes, cigarette butts, and eventually vermin. She left their new television on at all times, usually playing to an empty couch, so that it seemed the advertisements begged no one to buy their products and evangelists prayed with nobody.
Toward the end of their days in Ovis, Darlene started to run with a different crowd—no more politics people anymore. These were men Eddie might see only once, men who smoked unpleasant cigars, who drove rust-caked Lincoln Continentals, who had filled the graying white leather interiors of their cars with discarded newspapers, who left their toenail clippings on the coffee table. Her moods became unpredictable. Once he brought a half-inflated basketball into the house, and she hurled it at his face for no reason he could figure out. He turned so that the rough ball hit him in the flank, leaving a cloudy bruise. The impact stunned her into regret, as if it had hit her instead of him, and she kissed the space below his arm over the next few days as it took on the color of an eggplant. Their trust throbbed and disappeared as the border of the injury grew sharper.
A year after his father died, Eddie’s mother hadn’t moved his father’s clothes out of the bedroom. She stopped speaking to a friend who’d tried to set her up with a man. She hadn’t gotten a job. Mommy’s running low on savings, Mommy’s having trouble finding work, she’d tell him, and he’d have to move a pile of half-finished cover letters from the kitchen counter when he ate breakfast. But he would leap off the school bus and return home in the afternoon to find her in the same tattered bathrobe, spooning thick brown liquid from a bucket-shaped container of ice cream in the kitchen, her eyes glazed and underlined, transfixed by daytime-TV shows where staged fights would break out. Mom Stole My Boyfriend! Empty beer cans studded the coffee table, corkless bottles of discount wine lolled on their sides, sometimes falling to the carpet. She stopped going to the courthouse and locked herself in her room, often weeping, sometimes for an entire day. During that time, Eddie taught himself how to hard-boil an egg and follow directions on the back of a frozen-food box. She started to ration his breakfast bars, she stopped buying him new clothes, the pencils she bought him for school all snapped or were lost within two or three weeks.
Six months after all the northerners left, Darlene finally found a job at a convenience store, and Eddie assumed that her new job would open up a new life: Her mood would brighten, she would stop biting her nails, she would finally make it to Parents’ Day. But none of that happened. Somehow, things got worse.
When he found the pipe that summer, he did not know what it was at first, but it made a cool toy spaceship, since it looked a little like the starship Enterprise , round at one end and skinny at the other, and he flew it through the apartment between his fingers. He flew it across the universe of the living room repeatedly, trying to reach warp speed. The first time Darlene saw him playing with the pipe, she plucked it out of his hand without explanation, only curses—curses he’d rarely heard her speak before, and that change felt more ominous to him than the pipe.
One
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