Early Warning by Jane Smiley Page A

doesn’t it blow the car up?” said Tim.
    Steve said, “Just doesn’t. A blockbuster might. We got a couple of those, but we just use cherry bombs for this, because they roll.”
    When he sneaked back in the house later, his dad was in the kitchen. He spun around when Tim came in from the back, and said, “What are you doing? I thought you were in your room!”
    Tim said, “I was getting a Coke in the garage,” and Dad said, “So where is it?” and Tim realized that he should actually have a Coke in his hand if that was his excuse, but he said, “I changed my mind.”
    Dad stared at him, but let it pass.
    Then Debbie came into the kitchen and said, “He was out on his bike. He’s been out on his bike for an hour.”
    Dad said, “Were you lying to me?”
    And Tim said, “No, because you didn’t ask me if I was out on my bike, you asked me what I was doing.”
    And then Dad did the thing he always did, which was to laugh, and Debbie said, “He goes out on his bike at night a lot.”
    And Dad said, “Maybe that’s my business rather than yours, young lady.”
    Debbie set her bowl, which had greasy unpopped popcorn kernels in the bottom, in the kitchen sink, then turned on the water, elaborately washed and dried it, and wiped down the sink. Tim knew she was doing this to him, showing off. She often informed Mom that things were out of control, and Mom always said, “Goodness, you are just like your grandmother, right down to the ground.”
    Tim said, “Hey, Dad. Did you hear the one about the two morons who were building a house?”
    His dad smiled.
    Tim said, “So—the one moron, he would take a nail out of his pocket and look at it, then sometimes he would nail it to the house, and sometimes he would throw it away. So the other moron says, ‘Hey, you moron! Why are you throwing away all those nails?’
    “ ‘Because, you moron, they point the wrong direction!’
    “And the second moron starts laughing and laughing, and says, ‘What a moron you are! The ones that point the wrong direction go on the other side of the house!’ ”
    His dad laughed and ruffled his hair. They walked toward the TV room, and his dad said, “Stay in at night, Tim, okay?”
    But Tim knew that he didn’t really mean it.
    —
    LILLIAN FELT THAT she had the place pretty well organized. What had it taken, two months? The living room, which was off limits for the kids, had beige wall-to-wall, pale-green armchairs, a pinkish sofa, and their Chinese prints from the old house. The family room had sturdy rattan furniture, and sort of an oceanic air—it faced right onto the swimming pool; since it was May and hot, the sliding glass door was always open, and towels and face masks and snorkels dribbled in, along with trails of pool water. Tina had spent three months—from the first day they knew they would be moving here—learning to swim at the Y. Lillian had been so nervous that she checked the gates to the pool area twenty times a day, but now Tina was swimming—well, dog-paddling—all the way across the width of the pool, and Lillian was no longer waking up nightly (in their own pale-gold bedroom with pale-olive drapes) listening for tiny splashes.
    The new kitchen was big; Lillian bought a range and a new refrigerator. There were two windows in the kitchen that looked out onto the pool, so she could cook, talk on the phone, wash up, and still see everything. She had given up on supervising Timmy—he was out of the house and gone before breakfast. Debbie had a sixth sense of what trouble he was into and always reported, so she let herself rely on that. Deanie, for all his size and hockey ability, was just as happy reading a book (so like Arthur!)—she didn’t worry about him. And Tina was a cautious child; the kindergarten teacher reported that she watched the other children and did what they did, which was not surprising in a fourth-born.
    If there was someone to be worried about, Lillian knew that it wasn’t