The Lonely Polygamist Part 9

His father was silent for a few moments, which Golden was grateful for. Then he said, "Well come on, you big f.u.c.king crybaby, Jesus, stop feeling sorry for yourself why don't you, you're on your way up."

Golden only nodded at this rebuke, though he felt something pulse through him, an urge to take his cramping hands off the wheel and give his father a violent shake. For some reason, this made him think of something his father had said a few minutes earlier.

"What's plural marriage?"

"Now there's a good question," Royal said. "Don't be afraid to ask more when you feel like it. It means marrying more than one wife. That's what men in the church are expected to do. And by the way, sorry for the cursing. That's one of the hooks the devil's still got in me."

"You have other wives?" Golden said, his focus diverted from his oversized right foot, allowing it to weigh on the accelerator. "Besides Mama?"

Royal laughed. "No, not till the church thinks I'm ready, and your mama has to give a divorce, which she's not being altogether cooperative about. I haven't told her about all this church business, so this is between you and me, understand."

The engine was revving again, pulling the car forward with an almost animal impatience.

Royal pointed to the house coming up on the left. "This'll be our stop. Might want to slow her down a little."

Distracted, and still a little fuzzy on the finer points of turning, Golden yanked the wheel hard without so much as touching the brake pedal. The Thunderbird skidded sideways across the gravel driveway and Golden overcorrected, sending the car over a shallow berm and into the lilac hedge. There was the painful shrieking of branches against the car's windows and new paint job, and a throng of sparrows lifted off in a single chittering cloud. The engine died and Golden looked blankly at the windshield, which showed a tangle of flattened leaves, while Royal gently investigated his nose with both hands.

"Well," Royal said, "that'll have to be the end of that."

"Why do they want you to marry more than one wife?" Golden said, still gripping the steering wheel as if the car might decide on its own to start up and take off again at any second. A cloud of dust from the driveway had rolled in through the open windows and stung his eyes. "Why would G.o.d want somebody to do that?"

"Ah son," Royal said, eyeing the spot of blood he had wiped from his nostril, "it's complicated complicated. Most folks think it's about s.e.x, but that ain't it at all. If a man wants s.e.x, well, I don't have to be the one to tell you there's easier ways to do it than marrying marrying someone. G.o.d wants us to live the Principle, mostly because it's a hard thing to do and it makes us better for it. And one other thing. This world is full of righteous women, good-hearted women, am I right? But how many good men? Righteous men? Just about none. Couple here and there, maybe. The numbers are outta whack, and that shouldn't mean all the good women out there should have to settle for a bad man. It's basic arithmetic is all it is." someone. G.o.d wants us to live the Principle, mostly because it's a hard thing to do and it makes us better for it. And one other thing. This world is full of righteous women, good-hearted women, am I right? But how many good men? Righteous men? Just about none. Couple here and there, maybe. The numbers are outta whack, and that shouldn't mean all the good women out there should have to settle for a bad man. It's basic arithmetic is all it is."

Golden thought again of his mother, saw in his mind the image of her that defined his childhood: tucked between the wall and kitchen table, gray-faced in her faded housedress, staring into s.p.a.ce, paralyzed with bitterness and loss. Was she simply a good woman who settled for a bad man? Was she nothing more than a victim of arithmetic?

He looked at his father, who stared meaningfully back, his scorching violet eyes lit with a mysterious voltage.

"So..." Golden hesitated. "You're one of the good good men?" men?"

A smile spread across his daddy's face. He said, "I am now."

ALL IS WELL The Virgin Valley: two crumbling volcanic ridges between which a series of small, no-account towns hugged the river, each with its single Mormon chapel and scattering of pioneer homes and failing businesses surrounded by alfalfa fields and orchards of peach and apricot, the entire valley crisscrossed with barbed wire separating neighbor from neighbor, herd from herd, irrigated farmland from giant dusty squares of unwatered ground. To the west the Pine Mountains floating blue and cold in the distance, and to the east the fanged and scalloped horizon of the Vermillion Peaks, shifting color and shape with the motion of sun and clouds.

Golden, drinking water by the gallon and rubbing his sun-stung eyes, worked up and down the valley, framing, rough masonry, ditch work, you name it-anything that required a strong back and no skill. He lived in his daddy's house, worked for his daddy's construction company, but saw very little of him; Royal was a busy man. Having burned through most of his uranium profits during his Las Vegas years, he used what was left to buy real estate all over the valley and to start up Big Indian Construction, named after his first uranium claim. He worked all day negotiating contracts and submitting bids, and in the evenings would attend something called School of the Prophets, where the male hierarchy of the church would meet to discuss doctrine, read scripture and debate vital matters such as the exact date of the Second Coming and whose responsibility it was to pump out the church house's outdoor toilet. Even though Royal had been baptized only a year, he had been ordained a member of the Melchizedek priesthood and, once he began taking wives, would be called to the Council of the Twelve, an order of apostles of which there were currently a grand total of nine.

The only thing Royal and Golden did together, besides an occasional meal and attending church, was bomb-watching. Every few weeks before dawn they would drive up to Royal's favorite overlook on Egyptian b.u.t.te and wait for the great white-green flash to expose in an instant the whole broken desert plain, horizon to horizon. Once the mushroom cloud had gone up, lit from within by extraterrestrial fires, Royal would give his head a slow shake, overcome. "Oh look at her," he'd say, his voice moist with reverence, as if looking into the sweet face of a long-awaited newborn. "Isn't she a beaut beaut."

At his own expense, Royal had gutted and renovated the sixty-year-old sandstone church where the group's meetings were held, and his t.i.thing amounted to more than that of all the other members put together. Unlike the valley's Mormons who peopled the towns along the river, the members of the Living Church of G.o.d, who mostly lived on farms and compounds at the eastern edge of the valley, did not hold positions of power, sat on no boards or councils, had nothing but their little church on the hill and each other. They were generally poor, hardscrabble, and suspicious of outsiders of any stripe-so suspicious there was wide consensus among them that Royal was a spy from the government, somebody sent by Hoover to take notes, write names, and call down an FBI raid that would send the men to prison and the women and children into the care of Social Services. But with Uncle Chick's a.s.surances, and Royal's easy southern manners and open wallet, the people came to believe he was exactly what Uncle Chick said he was: an angel, of sorts, sent from on high. There even began a whispering that this strange little man with the bright eyes might be the One Mighty and Strong, come to redeem them all.

Which left Golden at a loss to explain his own presence. Who was the giant with the sunburn, and what did he want? He was obviously no government agent-too big to blend in, with the openmouthed expression of an idiot-and nothing about him suggested he had been sent by a higher power; truly, there was something more disturbing than suspicious about a six-foot-six man whose pants were too short. Shoulders hunched apologetically, strangled by the checkerboard polyester tie his father knotted for him, he would sit in the back of the chapel those first few Sundays with the latecomers and crying babies, and do his best to make sense of Uncle Chick's sermons, which seemed to be dedicated to a single central theme: that this world, and most of the people in it, were all going to h.e.l.l in a very large handbasket.

In late July, Golden helped his father and some of the other men erect an old canvas circus tent on the gra.s.s field next to the church. Uncle Chick had bought it from a bankrupt Hungarian circus that had washed up in St. George, and while it wasn't exactly the holy tabernacle of Old Testament times, it served well enough as the main meetinghouse for a few months while the renovations were under way. Now, on Pioneer Day, which celebrated the arrival of the first Mormon pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley, it would serve to shelter a congregation of double the usual 150: family and friends come from afar to help celebrate, and some of the independent polygamists who lived in the surrounding country: families who lived by their own theologies and rules, but who liked to escape their desert compounds and socialize once in a while.

The circus tent was not an ideal venue for a spiritual meeting; it was almost unbearably stuffy and smelled of moldy hay and ancient elephant farts. The canvas walls, which bore the ink-stamped name of the manufacturer-Sarasota Tent and Sail-every ten feet, were mildewed and stained, the fiber ropes frayed and untrustworthy, and in the smallest breeze the whole thing flapped and creaked like a sailboat gone to seed. But on this particular summer Sat.u.r.day evening, filled to bursting with freshly scrubbed worshipers and lit up with the low sun like a giant Chinese lantern, it seemed almost too exotic and far-fetched a place for the dour fundamentalist proceedings about to take place under its roof.

A low plywood dais had been built, upon which sat the solemn elders of the church and rat-faced Sister Pectol, who played her portable organ with a funereal air. Golden could see the top of his father's head just behind the row of apostles; he was there to attend to the Prophet, who sat in the place of honor just to the right of the pulpit in his old-fashioned oak and leather wheelchair. The Prophet, an old man made mostly of thin skin and sharp bones, was recovering from what would be the first of many strokes. By grumbling out one side of his mouth he communicated the will of G.o.d through his son, Uncle Chick, who had reluctantly taken over leadership of the church, even though the keys of priesthood authority and mantle of true leadership would not be pa.s.sed down until the Prophet's death.

When the Prophet drooled, Golden's father was on the job to tidy up his chin with a white handkerchief folded into a square.

Uncle Chick gave the signal and the organ fell silent. A prayer was offered and Uncle Chick stood, not behind the pulpit as was his normal practice, but next to it, as if to show he had nothing to hide. He cleared his throat violently, "Hargh-arrhmgh!" and in his gruff way welcomed all present and began reciting scripture in a gravelly monotone that sent Golden's mind immediately to wandering. He looked at his hands, pleasantly callused and nicked from the shingling work he'd been doing all month, and at his tanned arms and the new aluminum Timex watch he'd bought with his earnings, and his thoughts turned to Sylvia Anderson, the chubby seventeen-year-old with braided blond hair and a wet, red mouth who was the talk of the church for her open refusal to marry Brother Billet, a grease monkey and part-owner of Virgin Tire and Automotive.

Sylvia Anderson had walked up to Golden after church last Sunday and asked him if he'd give her a ride in his new car. Thinking she had a destination in mind-maybe her family had left for home without her-he asked where she wanted to go. She shrugged and licked her lips in a way that commanded Golden's full attention.

"How about San Diego?" she said. "You get some of your dad's money and we'll drive all the way to California, maybe go to the beach."

Golden sneezed and nodded agreeably, but found himself unable to form words or even sounds; he just nodded and smiled with his lips pursed-Don't let her see your overbite!-until Sylvia finally turned to leave. Only after she'd gone out the back door of the church was he able to call out after her, "Well, I guess I'd have to get my license first!"

The humiliation of that moment did not stop him from fantasizing all week about the road trip to San Diego and the possibilities it presented, the potential sleeping arrangements in motel rooms, maybe a little motel-pool skinny-dipping, who could say? He liked to imagine Sylvia in the motel shower innocently asking Golden if he might bring her a towel, and the curving form of her body readily apparent behind the semitransparent curtain..."Argh-argh-harrghk...ahgrrrrrhk!" Uncle Chick fell into an apocalyptic coughing fit only to surface suddenly and rap the pulpit in a way that dislodged Golden from his reverie. "Who do you think you are?" he called in a near-shout, and at first Golden thought Uncle Chick was speaking directly to him, had divined not only that Golden was an interloper, a faithless imposter who had no business in this place, but also that he had been entertaining questionable thoughts about innocent girls taking showers while all around the Lord's servants worshiped and prayed. "Have you looked into your own heart? Have you asked yourself: Am I worthy? Am I worthy? Have you asked yourself: Have you asked yourself: Am I blameless before G.o.d? Am I blameless before G.o.d?"

Maybe Golden had missed something, because this seemed like an altogether different Uncle Chick than the one who started the meeting. Uncle Chick, an old doghole miner and part-time scrubland rancher who'd spent some wild years in the navy before coming back into the fold, had never been much of an orator, but tonight he was actually rocking the pulpit, speaking in cadences vaguely Shakespearean, looking down into the audience as if measuring the faith and conviction of each member in turn, including Golden, who tried to hide behind the bobbing gray-haired head of Sister Comruddy. Uncle Chick declared what all in the audience already knew: that these were the last days, that the Second Coming of the Lord was fast upon us, and when it happened, would we be ready?

Then Uncle Chick paused, shifting gears a little, and in a hushed voice began to tell of those they had gathered to celebrate: the pioneers who had sacrificed everything to leave their comfortable lives in Albany and Liverpool and Oslo, who sold all their belongings to cross the vast plains in wagons and handcarts in search of a place where they could practice their religion without fear of torment or persecution; men, women and children who had suffered and died, who had had given their lives for the gospel that we, today, took for granted. He told of thirst and disease and women dying in childbirth in the back of jouncing wagons; he told of shallow graves dug next to rutted trails and of starving handcart companies forced to boil and eat their own shoe leather; he told the story of his own great-grandmother, whose youngest boy-nicknamed Penny for his bright brown eyes-died of pneumonia one blizzarding January day in eastern Wyoming, and the terrible howling and snarling, late that night, as wolves dug up the small body and tore it to pieces, the grieved mother in the meager protection of her covered wagon tearing batting out of a quilt and stuffing it in her ears to ward off the sound. given their lives for the gospel that we, today, took for granted. He told of thirst and disease and women dying in childbirth in the back of jouncing wagons; he told of shallow graves dug next to rutted trails and of starving handcart companies forced to boil and eat their own shoe leather; he told the story of his own great-grandmother, whose youngest boy-nicknamed Penny for his bright brown eyes-died of pneumonia one blizzarding January day in eastern Wyoming, and the terrible howling and snarling, late that night, as wolves dug up the small body and tore it to pieces, the grieved mother in the meager protection of her covered wagon tearing batting out of a quilt and stuffing it in her ears to ward off the sound.

Uncle Chick went still, and in the sudden quiet there were a few sniffles, a stifled sob.

"And what about us?" he demanded, so loudly and suddenly that a child in the front whimpered. "What have we we sacrificed? What have sacrificed? What have we we given? Nothing, that's what. We complain about our lot. We gripe. Ah, it's so darn hard, we say, to live this gospel, to bear the burden of the Principle. Well, when you begin to feel sorry for yourself, remember those good saints, hundreds, thousands of them died for you. Died for me. Died for us all. Gave up their lives, just like Christ in Gethsemane, blood coming from His every pore with the agony of the sins of this world, my sins, your sins, each and every one, the agony of a million sins worse than any death could ever be." given? Nothing, that's what. We complain about our lot. We gripe. Ah, it's so darn hard, we say, to live this gospel, to bear the burden of the Principle. Well, when you begin to feel sorry for yourself, remember those good saints, hundreds, thousands of them died for you. Died for me. Died for us all. Gave up their lives, just like Christ in Gethsemane, blood coming from His every pore with the agony of the sins of this world, my sins, your sins, each and every one, the agony of a million sins worse than any death could ever be."

Uncle Chick glanced at Sister Pectol, who began to play "My Saviour's Love." And the congregation sang uncertainly, with quavering voices, He took my sins and sorrows,He made them His very own;He bore the burden to Calvary,And suffered and died alone.

There is something wrong with him; Golden tries to sing, but his throat has gone dry and his chest hurts, he can hardly breathe. His head throbs and a strange p.r.i.c.kling sensation runs up his legs and hovers at the back of his neck.

Nearly every Sunday of his childhood he had spent hunkered down next to his mother at meetings like this one, with this same talk of h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation, of the sin and sorrow of this life, and even though he'd occasionally felt the urge to stand up and wave his arms over his head like a nutcase and offer his soul up to Jesus, somehow he'd managed to resist what Reverend Peete had called the promptings of the Spirit; he'd decided church was just another opportunity for his mother to flaunt her misery before the world. He realizes that since coming here she has crossed his mind less and less; he has left her behind with barely a pa.s.sing thought. But tonight, sitting among this throng of strangers in their starched homemade dresses and ostentatious neckties, some of them dabbing furtively at their eyes, some tearing up outright, Golden feels a portion of his mother's misery, feels her shoulder shaking next to his as she weeps for her own barren life, hears her singing this very hymn as she has a hundred times, and suddenly, his eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with his own tears, he has a vision of her death, lonely and desperate in some empty room, and though he can't know it at the time, he is at least partly prescient: five and a half years from now in the middle of a hard January freeze, Dr. Darkly will call with the news that his mother, having suffered lately from some vague medical maladies, has pa.s.sed away, quietly, in her sleep. There will be no funeral, no service of any kind, according to his mother's wishes. But he will fly back to Louisiana to do his filial duty, which will entail little more than paying his last respects at the crematorium in Lafayette and hauling his mother's meager possessions to the local Goodwill. He will spend the next two days comforting a bereft Dr. Darkly and wandering around Bernice in a misty winter rain, trying to connect to something, to some meaningful sorrow, to translate his own history in a way that will make it possible for him to cry for his mother's pa.s.sing, but he won't find what he is looking for and will board the plane feeling nothing but relief.

No, he will not cry after his mother's death, but he does now, he is a confused boy shamed at his recent betrayal, so sorry for the happiness he could not give her, for the worthless bits and sc.r.a.ps that make up his pitiful existence, his every weakness and sin, and by the time the hymn is over, he knows too-don't ask him how-that his father will die soon, will leave him again for good, and now he begins to weep in earnest.

Golden cannot hear Uncle Chick speaking anymore. The sun has gone down behind the distant mountains and left behind only shadow, everything cast in shades of charcoal, and Uncle Chick goes on with his tales of death and sadness until a few children begin to whimper and even some of the apostles, men who'd rather run naked down Main Street than cry in public, sniffle and rub their eyes.

Though Golden's weeping is contained, it seems to him there are gusts of fouled air escaping his mouth and nose, sludge water leaking from his eyes, and only when it is all gone, when he is spent and emptied out enough to be allowed a single thought, does he understand that he is a changed person; his old self, that tattered, s.h.i.tty thing he never knew he so much despised, has been tossed aside. Now Uncle Chick is finishing his testimony, affirming his faith in the gospel, in the saving Principle they hold so dear, and just before he finishes he smiles, as if apologizing for all the dramatics, and says, "Remember, brothers and sisters, G.o.d loves you," and Golden knows it is true.

Uncle Chick lets go one last series of hacking coughs and, without missing a beat, comes up for air to remind everyone of the Pioneer Day Dance and Family Social to be held directly after the meeting. "Sister Maxine's made her famous brownies, the kind with walnuts in 'em. And we'll brew us up a kettle of homemade root beer."

Sister Pectol hits the opening chords to "Come, Come, Ye Saints," the official church anthem, a hymn sung at every funeral, sacrament meeting, and family gathering, and in showers and gardens all over the Virgin Valley. Though Golden has already heard it enough to last a lifetime, he has never really listened to the words, sung as if by the pioneers themselves trudging their way through the ordeal of their cross-continental trek and keeping hope alive with nothing but their faith and this song.

The congregation stands, relieved that their own ordeal is over, and sings: And should we die, before our journey's through;Happy day! All is well!We then are free, from toil and sorrow too;With the just we shall dwell!But if our lives are spared againTo see the saints their rest obtain;Oh, how we'll make this chorus swell-All is well! All is well!

Afterward, they stand together in the dry gra.s.s under a fully colored sky, a few bright planets showing themselves overhead, shaking hands and chatting quietly, the mothers calling for the children to stay close. At the refreshment table Golden steps aside to let the ones behind him pa.s.s, filled with affection for all of them, for the smelly old farmers and their red-cheeked sons and daughters and hard-faced women, and for his grinning father, who hams it up a little as he wheels the prophet between rocks and gopher holes, and for the G.o.d who has touched him tonight, who has given him new life.

13.

THE DUPLEX

In this house there is silence: dust on the curtains, the smell of stale sunshine, a hush in the rooms like a suspension of breath. Mother #4 gets up from the dining room table and goes into the kitchen for no reason she can think of, maybe to hear the chatter of her shoes on the pine floor. She turns on the tap, shuts it off, pulls out a chair, and sits. She checks the rooster clock on the wall-but this room and its objects refuse to acknowledge her, to bring her comfort or offer the feeling of home. She pulls the toaster off the counter and looks for her reflection in its polished chrome, knowing she will not like what she sees.

What does she see? A neglected woman, a woman scorned. A woman with crazy eyes and ridiculous hair.

You would never know it by the mundane quality of the light in the windows, the stifled, sterile air, but today is a special day: the eighteen-month anniversary of Son X's birth and death. Though he arrived fully formed, so beautiful and pink-cheeked, because he died before birth (a mere technicality!) he is not included in the family's tally of children, and therefore does not merit a number. When someone asks, as someone always does, How many children are there? How many children are there? the answer comes, the answer comes, Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight! at which point Mother #4's brain cannot help but sing out a correction: Twenty-nine! Twenty-nine! at which point Mother #4's brain cannot help but sing out a correction: Twenty-nine! Twenty-nine!

Though there is a child here, a living one, she makes almost no noise, only the occasional murmur or cough, the small house h.o.a.rding the sound like a just-rung bell.

When Mother #4 looks at the clock again she is startled to see more than an hour has pa.s.sed. She calls down the hall to Daughter #10 (lucky enough to be numbered on the family list) that it's time to go to the cemetery, and Daughter #10 pokes her head out of her bedroom and shouts, Hooray! Hooray!

Given the gravity of the occasion, the Mother thinks, she should be bereft and solemn, filled with the dark wine of grief, but all she feels is a buzzing irritation and the beginnings of a headache, maybe a migraine, like a thumbtack pressed into the back of her eye.

At the cemetery, a soft wind rattles the withered flowers, the dried stalks of baby's breath. It's spring, though only the weeds have started to grow in earnest. The Mother comes here once a week, sometimes twice, to tend her son's grave. Every time, as a matter of principle, she invites the Father to come along and every time, as a matter of principle, he refuses. After Son X's burial he has expressed his intention more than once never to return to this place again.

Once, when Mother #4 was a small girl, she asked her own mother what heaven was like. She described a house, a mansion, s.p.a.cious and ornate beyond imagination. For someone who had been born and raised in a boxcar there could not have been a more compelling description of the place. Even now, when she pictures heaven she sees a house at dusk, a big white midwestern house with deep porches and elaborate gables, wheat fields in the distance pulsing green. The shapes of bodies move across the bright windows and she knows that these shadows are her lost children, watching, waiting for her to come home to them.

Now she is sad again-it hits her just like that-and she allows herself a short, messy cry. She tries to tell herself it is nothing but a fantasy, this heaven, this house of dreams, but she can't deny it is more real to her than the small, quiet duplex in which she eats her meals and lies down to sleep every night.

Sniffling, she pulls up morning glory that has begun to web itself over the grave while Daughter #10 wanders through the stones and monuments like a cruise ship hostess, chatting up the dead. Mother #4 is not comfortable admitting it to anyone, especially herself, but coming out here is, without a doubt, the highlight of the girl's week.

Mother #4 removes from her bag a clean cloth and a bottle of Windex and gives the black granite stone a good polish, taking special care to swab out the red dust from the letters of her son's name and the dates of birth and death, which are the same. She takes great pride in this grave and this marker, beyond the fact that her child is buried here. The day after Son X's death, Mothers #13 sat with Mother #4 on her bed and explained, with great kindness and sisterly forbearance, that there should be no funeral for the boy, no marker or grave. Among the three of them, they said, they had suffered a total of seven miscarriages and two stillbirths and none of those babies were given a name or laid to rest in a cemetery; they were angels, these children, spirit beings too pure for the ugliness and iniquities of this world. They belonged to G.o.d and G.o.d only, and He would name and consecrate them as He saw fit.

With nothing remotely close to kindness or sisterly forbearance Mother #4 let Mothers #13 know exactly what she thought about such nonsense. In fact, Mother #4 threw something of a tantrum. Tossing her blankets aside and burying a fist in a pillow, wild in her white nightgown, she said she didn't give a good G.o.dd.a.m.n what the other Mothers had done or what G.o.d thought about the whole thing, she would name her son, just as she had her other two lost ones, and he would be buried with dignity in a place where she could go to visit, to make sure he knew he was remembered and loved.

If Mothers #13 thought this might be some kind of postpartum, trauma-induced dementia, they were mistaken. Driven by a mother's protective instinct and a hot, gusting grief she could hardly contain, she shrieked, she raved, she made a fool of herself. In the face of the other Mothers' mild protests and the wary counsel of the Father and the church elders, Mother #4 would not back down. And so, two days later in a quiet ceremony with only the immediate family in attendance, Son X was laid to rest in the oversized family plot in the Virgin City Munic.i.p.al Cemetery.

Which goes to show that occasionally, if she throws a big enough fit, even the fourth of four wives can get what she wants.

It is getting dark now, the spring light thickening into a weak broth. Mother #4 calls out to Daughter #10 that it's time to go. She stands up, knocks the dust from her knees, and gives the grave one last, proprietary glance. Daughter #10 protests, as she always does, shouting from the far corner of the cemetery, Ten more minutes, just ten more, okay, five, five more!

On the way back across the valley Daughter #10 sets her chin and pouts bitterly, asks where they're going. Mothers #2 and #3 might need help with the desserts for the church social, Mother #4 explains, so they're going to make a stop at Big House. Daughter #10 whines: she's hungry, she's tired, and besides, she hates going to Big House. Daughters #6 and #8 tell lies about her, Son #11 likes to pinch her arms and behind, and Daughter #8 calls her Casper the Not-So-Friendly Ghost. They are bad, bad kids, Daughter #10 concludes, and they are all going to h.e.l.l.

Mother #4 isn't listening, doesn't hear a word of her daughter's litany. She is thinking of the Duplex, dark and anonymous as a cell, and how she can't face the idea of going back there, not right now.

She pulls up into Big House's driveway and is comforted by the signs of life: most of the windows lit, shouting from the backyard, two bicycles abandoned at the edge of the lawn-no, it isn't her house of dreams, but for now it will do. To get her daughter to release her grip on the handle of the glove box and exit the car, she has to promise a root beer float afterward at the TommyHawk Drive-in. They step onto the porch together, hand in hand. As she reaches for the k.n.o.b the door swings open to a swell of voices, and with a sigh she lets herself fall forward into the light.

14.

THE FAMILY TERRORIST

BECAUSE SHE LIKED THE COMPANY, BECAUSE SHE WANTED TO BE OF use, on Monday and Wednesday afternoons Trish gave piano lessons. That she barely knew how to play the instrument herself seemed to bother no one. use, on Monday and Wednesday afternoons Trish gave piano lessons. That she barely knew how to play the instrument herself seemed to bother no one.

Today was her first day with Rusty, who plinked out "The Volga Boatman," sweating and blinking, as if someone were holding a gun to his head. He was a wide-faced boy who had inherited his father's heft and his mother's dark hair. He had a reputation in the family as a problem child, a troublemaker-Nola had even taken to calling him the "family terrorist" (which to Trish seemed more than a little severe, but Rose, his mother, freely admitted he could be "something of a handful"). Really, though, he hardly seemed remarkable; like some of the other kids in the family he'd decided that negative attention was better than no attention at all. But there was was something different about him, she was noticing now. Maybe it had to do with the way he sat so close to her, allowing his thigh to touch hers, or the way he lost interest in the notes on the page and began to play his own sour little song with something like confidence, his fingers producing a series of remorseless sounds. A stranger walking by outside might have heard the noise and imagined a cat stalking a wounded housefly across the keys. something different about him, she was noticing now. Maybe it had to do with the way he sat so close to her, allowing his thigh to touch hers, or the way he lost interest in the notes on the page and began to play his own sour little song with something like confidence, his fingers producing a series of remorseless sounds. A stranger walking by outside might have heard the noise and imagined a cat stalking a wounded housefly across the keys.

With a slight bow of his head he launched one last haunted-house chord of his own invention. He looked up at her. "Can we be done n-" Before he could finish the question she was already saying, "Okay then, why don't we call it quits for today."

The boy gave a contented sniff, slapped his lesson book shut, and leaned back a little so he could get a good look around the room. He took in the bookcase on the far wall, the small desk with its small typewriter, the water stain on the ceiling a series of yellow, nearly perfect concentric circles. He wasn't interested in this stupid house, he just liked sitting here next to Aunt Trish, easily the prettiest of the mothers, who smelled nice, whose leg was touching his in a way that was making some things happen in his pants. He was eleven years old and full of a need so large and overwhelming that he wasn't sure exactly what it was he needed.

"I like this house," he concluded. "It's quiet."

Trish said, "That's one way to describe it."

Together they listened to the house: the groan of the old refrigerator, the kitchen faucet dripping with a dull tap-tap tap-tap into the sink, Faye murmuring in her prayer cave around the corner. Out the side window the tall red cedar, which had started its existence as a potted plant next to the front porch steps, gently swiped at the window. Rusty sighed. Compared to this, Big House sounded like the prison cafeteria in into the sink, Faye murmuring in her prayer cave around the corner. Out the side window the tall red cedar, which had started its existence as a potted plant next to the front porch steps, gently swiped at the window. Rusty sighed. Compared to this, Big House sounded like the prison cafeteria in Escape from Alcatraz, Escape from Alcatraz, which he had never seen, but had heard about in great detail from the bad kids at school. which he had never seen, but had heard about in great detail from the bad kids at school.

She asked the boy if he liked Kool-Aid, and in what might have been an attempt at a British accent, he said, "I don't see why not."

In the kitchen she was taking the sugar from a cupboard when she turned to see he had followed her, and was now standing in the doorway, staring at her intently with both hands positioned over his groin. His eyes were a cool green, his skin touched with tiny freckles, and he regarded her openly, his face wide and beseeching. He wanted something-that was clear-but what? Did he need to use the bathroom? Was he hungry? Maybe, after being separated from his own mother these last weeks, all he wanted was a kind word, maybe a hug?

Rusty didn't need to go to the bathroom, though he was hungry and would have accepted a hug, no questions asked. What was on his mind was something else entirely: t.i.ts t.i.ts. Aunt Trish was framed by the window over the sink, a window full of late afternoon radiance that penetrated her old-fashioned loose-knit sweater so that he could make out, just barely, the silhouetted profile of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s suspended in a nimbus of light. This almost holy image released a profane stream of t.i.t-related phrases in his brain: Keep Your t.i.ts On Keep Your t.i.ts On and and t.i.t for Tat t.i.t for Tat and and Tough t.i.tties Tough t.i.tties and and Texas t.i.tty Twister Texas t.i.tty Twister and and t.i.tty-t.i.tty Bang-Bang t.i.tty-t.i.tty Bang-Bang.

"How about some cookies with your Kool-Aid?" she asked.

"Keep your t.i.ts on," he murmured under his breath, to relieve some of the pressure. "What's that?"

"Yes ma'am," Rusty said, almost out of breath. "I would like some"-he almost said t.i.tties t.i.tties but corrected himself in time-" but corrected himself in time-"cookies with my Kool-Aid." with my Kool-Aid."

Aunt Trish dragged Faye away from her prayer cave so she could sit in the backyard with them for lemonade and macaroons. The day was bright and cool, with a breeze that stirred the gra.s.s. Faye, who had a ghostly complexion and hair the color of apple juice, sat in her lawn chair and regarded Rusty with open suspicion. When Rusty tried to take a sip of his Kool-Aid, the girl piped up, "We need to say grace."

Rusty, feeling uncharacteristically confident, wondered aloud why they had to say a lousy prayer every time they ate or drank something, why couldn't they just have some danged lemonade once in a while without making a big deal out of it? Aunt Trish, who was quickly becoming Rusty's favorite person in the world, gave him a sympathetic smile and started to say something but was interrupted by Faye, who shushed them both and launched into a prayer that lasted a solid minute and a half and touched on a range of topics, including the lonely old people of the world, the starving orphans of Peru and the fern in the bathroom whose leaves were turning yellow. She forgot to bless the Kool-Aid and cookies, but remembered to include a special request that Rusty get home as safely and as soon as possible.

Technically, Aunt Trish was one of his mothers, but Rusty didn't know her very well, which made it a little easier to think about her without feeling weird about it. When she first came into the family she lived in Old House, and then she had the dead baby, who totally ruined the annual family camping trip, and now she spent most of her time here at the duplex taking care of creepy Faye and being sad.

After he had single-handedly dispatched half the macaroons, which he didn't really care for, Trish went into the house for more. For a minute, Faye stared at him, which was like being stared at by a curly-haired doll possessed by a demon.

The other kids were scared of creepy Faye, but not Rusty. He stared right back.

"It's time for you to go home," she said.

"Says who?"

"Heavenly Father and His only begotten son Jesus Christ."

"You're talking to them right now? And that's what they're telling you, that it's time for me to go home?"

"Yes."

"What else are they telling you?" Rusty had to admit it, he was curious.

"That you're a weak and bad person who is full of sin."

Rusty blinked. Maybe she really did did talk to them. "Well, you can tell Heavenly Father and his only begotten son Jesus Christ they can go suck eggs, for all I care." talk to them. "Well, you can tell Heavenly Father and his only begotten son Jesus Christ they can go suck eggs, for all I care."