“Are you sure it wasn’t Tuesday?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talkin’ about the movie we saw last Tuesday.”
“You’re not being cute, Ray. What’s the favor?”
“I was thinking—here’s the favor part—if someone was to ask you what night we saw the movie, do you think you could tell them—”
“Someone? Who is someone?”
“Joey, didn’t me and your mother go see the movies last Tuesday night?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a good answer, Joe. If you tell ’em nothin’, they ain’t got nothin’ on you.”
My mother cut him right off. “Joey, take your car and go upstairs. I’ll be right there to put you to bed. Catherine, go with him.”
I said, “Why?”
“Upstairs.” There was the tone we didn’t argue with. Catherine and I got halfway up the stairs when we heard our mom hiss at Ray. “Outside.”
The screen door shut. Catherine and I could still hear them.
“This is not fuckin’ funny, Ray. Who the hell is gonna ask me what? And why?”
“Look, look. Sorry I ever said anything about it. I didn’t think it would be such a big deal.”
“A big deal? You come in here, try to turn my four-year-old son into an accessory, and now—”
“I did not.”
“You asked my son to lie for you, and now all of a sudden I’ve got ‘someone’ who might ask me ‘something’ about where you were last week. Where are they gonna ask me this? Are they gonna show up at my job? Are they gonna come here? To my parents’ house? Where my children live, to ask me?”
“It’s probably nothin’.”
“It’s already somethin’ and I don’t want it. And another thing, these kids don’t need another guy to come and go.”
“That’s not me!”
“Oh, no?”
“No.”
“Then tell me the truth, Ray. Tell me the God’s honest truth, even if this thing is nothin’, and it’s probably not—”
“It is nothing.”
“Even so, even if that’s so, there’ll still be somethin’ else, won’t there? Won’t there, Ray? You’ll have to leave the country or go to jail—”
“I won’t.”
“You don’t know that. And what will happen to us? Tell me the truth right now. What will happen to us? Will anyone be able to protect us?”
“Whaddaya want me to say? That I’m sure about how the rest of my life is gonna work out? Nobody can say that. Nobody really knows what’ll happen to them. And forgive me for makin’ this example, but didn’t you think you were gonna be married to that guy forever?”
“Go on.”
“Maybe we don’t know nothin’ for sure about what’s gonna happen to us. All I can tell you is that I know how I feel and I know what I wanna do. Don’t you see what I can give you?”
“Raymond, look at me and tell me that if you made a mistake it wouldn’t come down on all of us. Tell me that right now.”
He took a long time to answer. “I can’t.”
“Then neither can I. I can’t do it.”
There was silence. Then the soles of Ray’s shoes moved against the slate stairs and my mother said, “Raymond, don’t.”
A little more silence.
“I love them so much, Ray. I love them so fucking much I can’t stand it sometimes.”
“I know the feeling.”
Last thing Catherine and I heard before we ran up the stairs was Ray’s car door slam.
THE NEXT DAY, Catherine and I were in our room with our mom, packing up clothes to bring to our father’s for the weekend. I just blurted it out: “Mom, are you and Ray gonna get married?”
Catherine looked at me as if I were going to get in trouble for asking that. Our mother sat on my bed and said, “Me and Ray are not getting married.” We were silent. We knew there was more. “Also, I don’t think Ray is gonna be comin’ over to the house anymore.”
Catherine said, “He’s not?”
“No, he’s not, Catherine.”
Then I asked the question that our mother was dreading. “Why?”
She couldn’t explain it to us. She couldn’t explain to us why Ray wasn’t coming back. She couldn’t explain to us why there had been a divorce. She couldn’t explain what brought people together, then led them apart. In that moment—sitting on a bed in her parents’ converted attic, at twenty-five years old, with her two children—she had no idea why. She grabbed my arm. “Oh, sweetie”—her eyes got still, she seemed to be looking inside herself for more words—“I didn’t want him to.” Then her head dropped and her face distorted into extreme sadness. It happened as fast as you could tilt a hologram and see a different picture. Her head landed in her hands. My sister and I had that stunned silence that kids get when they see their parents fall apart. We might as well have just watched a car crash. We stood there not even blinking, in awe of a crying mother. Then we heard the beep of a horn. She took a deep breath, wiped her nose on her forearm and said, “There’s your father. Don’t keep him waiting.” I climbed up on the bed and gave her a kiss goodbye, then Catherine did the same. Our mother picked up our bag and followed Catherine and me down the stairs. From behind the screen door she watched her children get into her ex-husband’s car and drive away.
THAT NIGHT WE slept at our father’s girlfriend’s house. I asked Catherine where she thought Ray was. She didn’t know. We were trying to figure out a few things: why we had come so close and now had nothing to show for it but two television sets, and what was going to happen now. Sometime during the conversation I started to cry. Catherine tried to get me to think of my Big Wheel, but I just cried harder. Our father heard me and came into the room. He was puzzled and looked at my sister.
“What’s the matter with your brother?”
“He can’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
Then he asked me, “Joey, what’s the matter?”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
My sister chimed in, “Tell him to think of his Big Wheel.” She was trying to help him help me. She was smart.
“Your Big Wheel? What about your Big Wheel?”
I didn’t answer.
My sister said, “He likes to think about his Big Wheel. It helps him sleep.”
Realizing Catherine knew more about this than he did, our father said, “You wanna think of your Big Wheel?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, how does your Big Wheel go? What does it sound like?”
I said, “It sounds like … I don’t know.”
My father started to make car sounds. Honking horns and everything. My sister rolled her eyes. She knew this wasn’t going very well.
“Come