The Body

30

The back door was locked so I fished the spare key out from under the mat and let myself in. The kitchen was empty, silent, suicidally clean. I could hear the hum the fluorescent bars over the sink made when I turned on the switch. It had been literally years since I had been up before my mother; I couldn’t even remember the last time such a thing had happened.

I took off my shirt and put it in the plastic clothesbasket behind the washing machine. I got a clean rag from under the sink and sponged off with it—face, neck, pits, belly. Then I unzipped my pants and scrubbed my crotch—my testicles in particular—until my skin began to hurt. It seemed I couldn’t get clean enough down there, although the red weal left by the bloodsucker was rapidly fading. I still have a tiny crescent-shaped scar there. My wife once asked about it and I told her a lie before I was even aware I meant to do so.

When I was done with the rag, I threw it away. It was filthy.

I got out a dozen eggs and scrambled six of them together. When they were semi-solid in the pan, I added a side dish of crushed pineapple and half a quart of milk. I was just sitting down to eat when my mother came in, her gray hair tied in a knot behind her head. She was wearing a faded pink bathrobe and smoking a Camel.

“Gordon, where have you been?”

“Camping,” I said, and began to eat. “We started off in Vern’s field and then went up the Brickyard Hill. Vern’s mom said she would call you. Didn’t she?”

“She probably talked to your father,” she said, and glided past me to the sink. She looked like a pink ghost. The fluorescent bars were less than kind to her face; they made her complexion look almost yellow. She sighed… almost sobbed. “I miss Dennis most in the mornings,” she said. “I always look in his room and it’s always empty, Gordon. Always.”

“Yeah, that’s a bitch,” I said.

“He always slept with his window open and the blankets… Gordon? Did you say something?”

“Nothing important, Mom.”

“…and the blankets pulled up to his chin,” she finished. Then she just stared out the window, her back to me. I went on eating. I was trembling all over.