Kids These Days (33 page)

“Maybe if you guys move, I can still use this as a place to hang out,” Delton said. This was days later. Mid was still in the hospital, though he was out of ICU. Shattered clavicle, shattered shoulder, broken arm, collapsed lung. Screws and pins. Carolyn and the kids were sleeping at home again. Delton was still with us. We were taking the foil back off her walls. Her idea.

“Why would we move?” Alice asked. The strips were coming down in smaller pieces than they'd gone up. We were balling everything together in the center of the floor. Delton was up on a ladder, pulling thumbtacks out and dropping them in a cereal bowl.

“After Dad goes to jail or whatever. Except there's no way he's going to jail.”

“Why not?” I said.

“Nic says he did it on purpose.”

“Did what on purpose?” Alice said. She sat down on the end of the bed. Delton uncovered a window, and light washed in.

“He says he has to be going for the whole insanity thing.” I wasn't in any way certain you could get out of drug possession and tax evasion and whatever else they'd have him on with an insanity plea, but I didn't say so. “Nic says it's brilliant,” she said, smiling at everything that came with that.

“Sweetie,” Alice said, “you know you can talk to us, right?”

“Sure,” Delton said. “Why?”

“We just want you to know that if you ever need somebody to listen, we're right here.”

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 went 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.