June looked around. "I just had some here, I swear," and turned around again.

"Kinda had a craving for bananas, that's all," Rusty said.

After a complete search of the kitchen, June came up with some Ritz crackers and cheese and a newly mixed batch of Tang.

"Do you mind if I ask if your parents know that you're out here?" June asked. Rusty could tell he was worried about Aunt Beverly. What a sissy! After seeing her that one time he was still probably having nightmares.

"They don't care where I am," Rusty said.

"Well, here," June said, and took a cherry bomb from his shirt pocket. "This is for your birthday. But you have to promise to use it in a safe place under adult supervision."

"Oh yes!" Rusty said. "Huzzah!" He took the cherry bomb but his pants were full of stolen items so he carefully set it on the counter it front of him. He felt bad for stealing from June, who was possibly, except for Mrs. Tollison at school and Aunt Trish, the least jerky person he'd ever met, and definitely the only person who had ever given him an exploding device for a birthday present. Luckily, the guilty feeling went away fast and he cut eight squares of cheese, carefully stacking them interspersed with nine crackers, and crammed the whole cracker-sandwich in his mouth at once. After he'd washed it down with a refreshing gla.s.s of Tang, he said, "That whole bomb shelter thing, is that just for you?"

"Well, for now, but I've got plans, this is for the future. This is only stage one."

"Is stage two to get, like, a girlfriend or a wife or something, I hope? Because seriously, June."

June shrugged, cleared his throat, sipped his Tang. "Eventually, yes. But a guy can only do so many things at once." He gave a little laugh and Rusty joined him and after a few seconds said, "Indeed."

Rusty took out his wallet and removed a four-by-six photo, folded twice, of a beautiful smiling woman wearing a festive scarf and holding a pumpkin. He handed it to June. "You want to see what my mom looks like?"

The woman was not his mom, but some stranger whose picture happened to be in the frame he had bought for his mother as a Christmas present. He'd taken the picture of the pumpkin woman out and put in his own picture, which depicted him at the county pool, wet and squinting into the camera. It was not the greatest picture, he admitted it, he was standing knock-kneed with his suit all bunched up in the crotch and his arms sticking out because he was wearing his water wings-but it was the only picture of himself he could find. When his mother opened it up on Christmas morning, Clinton said, "Ha ha! Look at his engorged nipples!" and everybody laughed, but his mother said she loved it, she would cherish it, and she put it on the nightstand next to her bed, behind the clock radio.

Looking at the picture of the pumpkin woman now, June said, "She's, yeah, she's very nice-looking."

She was even better than nice-looking, Rusty thought, she was beautiful, which was why he had kept the picture, because the pumpkin woman reminded him of his mother, who would be beautiful too, if only she had festive scarves to wear and nice clothes, if only she could hang around in pumpkin patches instead of having to change diapers and scrub bathtubs, if only Aunt Nola let her get a word in once in a while and Aunt Beverly didn't ignore her all the time and then suddenly ask her why she didn't have any opinions about anything important, if only his father paid her any attention at all.

"I think you'd like her," Rusty said. "She has a great personality. Plus she's American American."

June tried to hand the picture back but Rusty told him he could keep it. "I have more where that one came from," he said.

"So you know how to fix stuff, right?" Rusty said.

"Like what?" June said, putting the folded picture in his shirt pocket, taking it back out again and placing it carefully on the table.

"Like, you know, a leaking roof or a broken refrigerator or whatever."

"Are you kidding me?" June said, sitting up a little in his chair. "You give me the right tools, I can fix anything, I can build anything, I could build us a s.p.a.ceship that would take us to Mars. I could build the s.p.a.ce station once we got there. It's all about the money, and having the right tools."

"Well," Rusty said, "you think you could unclog a toilet?"

17.

SACRIFICE

IT WAS NOLA ON THE PHONE, HER VOICE BUFFED TO A HIGH SHINE of satisfaction, to see if Trish had seen Rusty. n.o.body had heard from the little son-of-a-bee since he got home from school. of satisfaction, to see if Trish had seen Rusty. n.o.body had heard from the little son-of-a-bee since he got home from school.

After a moment's hesitation, Trish let go a bald-faced lie: "Haven't seen him since two days ago, I think it was. Piano practice."

"Oh, this one's a goody," Nola said. "The second time in two weeks he's gone missing. Ol' Bev is so irate I could hear her panties wadding up over the phone. She thinks it's all part of a Big House conspiracy to make her look bad."

"People shouldn't get so worked up," Trish said. "I bet he'll be home in the next few minutes." Which wasn't merely an idle bit of hoping on her part; Rusty had, in fact, left her house just a few minutes ago. Earlier he had shown up with someone named June Haymaker, who, with nothing more than a bucket filled with water, had unclogged her toilet. June was a shy, sad-eyed young man in his mid-twenties, skinny as a greyhound, who smelled like recently applied aftershave. When Rusty had introduced him by saying, "This is June, which we all know is a girl's name," June had blushed so fiercely his ears looked like they might catch fire.

He'd carefully explained the physics of what he was doing-something having to do with suction and air pressure-and then dumped the bucket into the toilet bowl from shoulder height. The pipes rang inside the wall and the toilet drained with a satisfying sucking noise.

Faye, who never let herself go over anything, yelped and clapped her hands.

"Learned this in the army," June said. "Guns and ammo galore, but you couldn't find a plunger to save your life."

"June used to shoot guns," Rusty explained, gazing at June with bald admiration. "And blow things up up."

"Did you kill people?" Faye asked.

"Oh, not...not too many," June said, and gave Trish a quick grin.

"People who kill other people," Rusty advised Faye sternly, "don't like to talk about it. It's, like, bad manners, right, June?"

"If you say so," June said. "Though if I'd ever killed somebody, yeah, I'd probably want to brag a little."

Before she knew what she was doing, Trish had improvised dinner of leftover pork chops and instant mashed potatoes. It hadn't even occurred to her to ask if Rusty was expected home-maybe she'd a.s.sumed he checked in with Beverly, or maybe she just didn't care. It was so good to have company-someone to eat her food, to ask her about the messy watercolors she'd painted and framed on the dining room wall, to defeat the silence that had begun to overtake her house like a mold.

"I don't think being at Beverly's is doing that boy any good," Trish said now. "He belongs at home with his mother."

"Where do you think he's been the first eleven years of his life? In the state pen? With the circus? That boy's a piece of work and Rose and I have done the best we could. Look, Trishie, I know as well as you do that Beverly's not going to turn him around. He's just a couple of inches off center, our boy Rusty. But it's sure fun for the rest of us to see her try."

"And Rose is all right with this?"

"Rose might not be all that happy about it, but it's the best thing for her. You know she's been going downhill lately, it's worrying is what it is. With Rusty out of the house, daily hostilities-at least here in Big House-are down. A little extra peace and quiet while we watch Beverly bang her head against the wall. Ha! And the beauty of it is that Bev thinks she's pulling one over on us, going to show the world that she can do a job that we couldn't manage. Oh what a hoot."

Trish hadn't been off the phone twenty seconds when Beverly called. Unable to go back now, she produced the same lie she had pa.s.sed off on Nola. She looked up from her place at the table to find Faye in the doorway of her bedroom, condemning her with a chilly stare.

"I'm giving him ten minutes and I'm calling the police," Beverly said. "Who knows what he's up to?"

"I don't think that's a good-" She cut herself off, tried to remove the pleading from her voice. "He probably just lost track of time, out playing somewhere."

Beverly let her know what she thought of that observation with a long, reproachful silence-a Beverly specialty.

"It's nearly seven o'clock," she said finally. "n.o.body's seen him since he got home from school. He is being willfully defiant, and if he's not willing to abide by the rules everybody else does, some harsh measures are in order."

In the background Trish could hear voices, the slamming of a door. Beverly said, "Well. Here he is now. And look at that, wearing his brother's shirt."

There was a m.u.f.fled scratching, which was, Trish a.s.sumed, the sound of Beverly's hand covering the receiver while she ordered Rusty up to bed without his supper. Trish's chest tightened with a pang of genuine sympathy for the boy. It was not easy to face Beverly's wrath, and yet he'd risked exactly that on her behalf. Even though she herself now risked being discovered a liar and Rusty sympathizer, she was glad she'd fed him-and hoped he had the good sense not to confess where he'd been.

She sighed. "Well, thank goodness."

"We're going to have to find a new way to fight this." Beverly's tone had shifted from exasperated to something harder and more insistent. "This kind of a behavior is a symptom of a bigger disease. You know exactly what I'm talking about."

"He's just a boy," Trish said, "he's eleven-"

"I'm done talking about him, do you understand? Done worrying about him and fighting with him. I've got bigger worries. I'm talking about the way we're falling apart, giving up on each other. We're not taking responsibility for one another anymore. Things get difficult and we all retreat to our separate corners. Maybe it's harder for you to see from where you are, but this is a crisis, Patricia. It's not like I haven't been talking about this for months now. I believed that bringing you into the family would bring balance to things, but that obviously hasn't happened."

Trish took a breath. It didn't take Beverly to tell her that she'd failed at her calling of family savior, the one ordained by G.o.d to complete the broken circle. What Beverly would never admit was that she had arranged to bring Trish into the family not because her personality was a perfect complement to those of her sister-wives, or because G.o.d had led her to them because she was the last piece of the puzzle, the final, binding ingredient. No, what she would never say aloud was that she had brought Trish on as a political ally and nothing more. With Nola and Rose moving out of Old House to pursue their own domestic and spiritual agendas, Beverly had lost her near-universal influence and control. What she needed was simple: someone vulnerable and therefore pliant enough to do her bidding, to stand next to her on every issue. Though Trish did not have a full understanding of this at the beginning, it started to become clear to her when she made the decision to move out of Old House. Not only had she thought she wanted her independence, the commotion had terrified Faye and the odd and unpredictable smells of the house itself had made Trish, three months pregnant with Jack, a swooning, nauseous mess. Beverly was indignant, of course, did everything she could to persuade Trish to stay, and when Trish proved more stubborn than any of them could have predicted, Beverly made sure she ended up in this isolated duplex on the other side of the valley, like some exiled daughter of a Prussian czar.

Though she resented Beverly for using her in such a way, she had learned a few things from the woman, and now turned some of Beverly's own signature icy silence right back in her direction. Then, with a trembling hint of menace, she said, "If you want to blame me for something, maybe you better do it directly."

"I'm not blaming you." Beverly's voice softened into a whisper. "I know how you're still grieving, dear. I know, better than anyone, what you've been going through." And just like that, with the mere suggestion of her loss, she was able to bring tears to Trish's eyes. Though Beverly might not have known it, she still had Trish's loyalty and respect for all she had done for her in the first terrible days after Jack had gone. Still, she hated her sister-wife for knowing her so well.

She held the phone away from her mouth for a moment, swallowed back the little lump of sorrow that seemed to reside permanently at the base of her throat. Sooner or later, she was going to have to get a grip on herself.

"Then what is this about?"

Beverly began to talk, but was overtaken by a fit of coughing.

"Are you okay?" Trish said.

"It's nothing," Beverly said. Though she seemed to have been suffering from some kind of respiratory infection for a while now, she wouldn't admit to it. Beverly did not get sick, did not show weakness; her role was to point out the weakness in others.

Beverly continued, "I've been having some conversations with Uncle Chick, and I've been praying." Trish closed her eyes, considered hanging up. She knew that something bad was coming and that there would be nothing she could do to stop it.

"He knows how this family needs to grow, to evolve. We've become stagnant."

Trish didn't know if the "he" Beverly was referring to was Uncle Chick or the Almighty, but it didn't matter, it all came to the same thing. Everything she felt at that moment-the anger she'd worked up to a nice, jagged point, the familiar weight of sadness on her chest, the sting of shame brought by Beverly's suggestion that she had failed in her most basic obligation as a mother (to bring children into the family and thereby glorify G.o.d and His kingdom)-all of it dispersed in an instant, leaving behind only the light, trembling emptiness of fear.

"I have to go," Trish said. "I have a lot to do."

Beverly continued on as if she hadn't heard anything. "We're not thriving, and you know why? Because we're not living the Principle as it should be lived. We've become selfish."

"Please," Trish said, "either say what you're going to say or let's forget about it."

"You have to understand, it's just talk at this point, nothing more. No need to get worked up. Are you listening to me? We all have to pray about it, to see if she's the right one."

"She? You already have somebody picked out?"

"I didn't pick out anyone. The prophet, through Uncle Chick, is the one who brought all this up." didn't pick out anyone. The prophet, through Uncle Chick, is the one who brought all this up."

"Auberly Stills? Is that who it is?" Trish was trying hard to keep the hysteria out of her voice. "Tell me. Is it Sister Fendler's niece, the redhead?"

Beverly sighed. "It's Maureen. Maureen Sinkfoyle."

Trish laughed: a weird, three-octave cackle. "Maureen? But you can't But you can't stand stand Maureen." Maureen."

"I've my difficulties with her, but I'll have to get over them."

"And does Golden know about any of this?" She couldn't imagine, with the way he had been acting of late, that taking on a new wife could be anywhere on his list of priorities. Oh sure, Trish knew that by adding a new wife Golden would improve his spiritual standing and his power and influence in the church, and like most plural wives she had been schooled to be ready for the time when a new wife would join the family, because while it might sound nice in theory, it was always much more difficult in practice. The key to plural marriage, she'd been admonished more than once, was not to take any of it too personally. But Maureen Sinkfoyle Maureen Sinkfoyle? The same Maureen Sinkfoyle who sometimes sh.e.l.led and ate peanuts during sacrament meeting? The one with the juvenile delinquents? The one who used so much Aqua Net you could hear her hair crackle from across the room?

"Uncle Chick has talked to him about it, but remember, he's not alone here. We're a family, and we're going to have to make the decision together. I'm bringing it up to you now because you're new at this, and you're going to have to get used to the idea of sacrifice-"

All at once her anger returned in the form of a white-hot star expanding behind her eyes, and she slammed the receiver into its cradle. Sacrifice Sacrifice. As if Beverly had any right to lecture her on that subject. She turned to find Faye watching from her bedroom doorway and her anger doubled. She found herself screaming hoa.r.s.ely at the girl, and hating herself as she did, to get back into her room and not come out for the rest of the night.

The phone began to ring and she stepped onto the back porch to escape the sound of it. It was a cloudy night, the far-off lights of farmhouses suspended like drifting motes in the void. She went to the back fence and waited there. When the turkeys didn't appear she made a cooing sound to announce her presence, but there was nothing except the smell of wet earth, and a fitful breeze in the gra.s.s. Please come Please come, she thought, please please, and she was startled at how much she needed them, to be the object of their steadfast attention. They must have gone back to their pen to roost, she realized, and anyway she had nothing to offer them, but she waited a little longer, just in case.

When the phone stopped ringing, she went back inside to check on Faye, who had already fallen asleep on top of her bedcovers. When Trish lay down next to her, the girl woke up and said in a froggy voice, "I was having a nightmare about giant rats."

"There are no giant rats," Trish said. "Just me. Go back to sleep now."

And the girl did, instantly, as if she had never been awake at all.

For the better part of an hour Trish lay next to her daughter's hot, thrumming little form, remembering what she had almost forgotten: the shadow-men and devil's agents of her childhood, the tangled forests full of whispering crows, the rain and distant thunder of restless sleep, the dark weather now edging back into her own muddled dreams.

18.

THE BOY AT THE WINDOW

THE BOY WAITS AT THE WINDOW. FOR THE THIRD TIME IN AS MANY days he has been grounded, confined to his room except to eat his meals and go to school. Though he hates this house and everyone in it, he has come to enjoy sitting on the old radiator, no one but him, waiting and watching. days he has been grounded, confined to his room except to eat his meals and go to school. Though he hates this house and everyone in it, he has come to enjoy sitting on the old radiator, no one but him, waiting and watching.

His father was supposed to have been home for dinner, but dinner is over and he is nowhere to be seen. The house is in a state of antic.i.p.ation, the children monitoring the windows, checking and rechecking, wanting to be the first to spot the pickup coming up the drive. Up here, the boy has an advantage. He will be able to see the father before anyone else-if he wanted, he could be the first at the door to greet him.

Unlike the others, the boy doesn't usually get worked up over his father's infrequent homecomings, but today he has something to show. The children of the house always have something to show: a piano solo or a poem about clouds, crocheted mittens or a dolphin carved from soap. The boy never has anything except dumb art projects from school or his report card, which he generally prefers to keep to himself. But today, for once, he has something.

PRESIDENT'S COUNCIL ON FITNESS

HEREBY CERTIFIES THAT Rusty Richards Rusty Richards HAS ATTAINED THE PHYSICAL FITNESS AND PROFICIENCY STANDARDS OF THE 7TH GRADE AGE GROUP AND HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THE PHYSICAL WELL-BEING OF OUR NATION. HAS ATTAINED THE PHYSICAL FITNESS AND PROFICIENCY STANDARDS OF THE 7TH GRADE AGE GROUP AND HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THE PHYSICAL WELL-BEING OF OUR NATION.

To earn such a certificate, seventh-grade boys are required to run a mile in fewer than ten minutes, do fifteen push-ups and sit-ups and at least one pull-up. The boy cheated on the mile (ran three laps instead of four), only did push-ups while the coach was watching, and did thirty sit-ups just for the heck of it because even though he is a blubber-gut, the boy can do sit-ups all day long. It was the pull-up that was the problem. Because everyone in the gym made a point of coming to watch, you could not cheat the pull-up. Apparently there was something terribly entertaining about watching fat boys and weaklings nearly kill themselves to perform a single pull-up. And even worse, as far as the boy was concerned, Coach had declared that if you failed to earn your certificate you wouldn't pa.s.s gym, which meant you would fail the seventh grade and be forced to relive its miseries all over again.

The boy was third to last. The only two behind him in line were two extreme fatties who had hung back until the bitter end, hoping to be saved by the end-of-period bell or a miracle fire drill.