make some noise of disgust. I looked at them again, with a little more respect this time.
Coffee or no coffee, Chris had to crawl upstairs to sleep right after dinner. I took my steel balls and my tire-tread sandals into my room, and at first I was thinking I’d stay up there. It was nice to think of Chris in the next room, and I pictured him in his bed for the first time in what seemed like forever. His bed and mine had just the wall between them, and I pictured him lying in there, head near the wall, feet pointing toward the window that looked out onto the backyard. But pretty soon I heard him snoring through the wall, and I wondered if Mom and Dad were talking about the war and about Chris, and I wanted to be a part of that.
They were at the kitchen table, finishing their coffee. When they knew I was there, Dad stopped talking and they both looked at me. I grabbed a soda, flipped the top, and made myself comfortable, waiting for him to go on. Finally he shrugged and finished what he was saying when I came in.
“Anyway, forget that idea, Irene. There’s no way he isn’t going back to finish his tour. They expect him back, and back he’ll go.”
“But why?” Mom’s voice sounded almost whiny, and her plump face went into this little girl pout. “The war is ending! Henry Kissinger said so. Why can’t our son stay home, now that he’s here?”
The war was ending. At least, that’s what we’d been hearing. Just recently the news was all about how the Linebacker operation was over. Chris wasn’t directly involved in that, since it was air force and navy carrying it out, but it was this huge offensive, and it sure put a dent in the Vietcong’s battle capabilities. And it probably cinched the election for Nixon the week before, though people like my dad believe he would have beat McGovern, anyway. Dad’s a real Nixon supporter. But my friend Terry Cavanaugh’s dad had some other opinions, and I’d heard some of them.
I chimed in, “Mr. Cavanaugh says that was just an election ploy, saying the war was ending.”
Dad turned a hard stare on me. “President Nixon was in no need of falsehoods to win this election. It was no contest. Kissinger wouldn’t need to lie just to win the election for the president.”
I shrugged like it didn’t matter to me. And, really, as long as the war ended and Chris was okay, I didn’t give a shit who won the election. Or how.
Mom wasn’t done. “But it’s nearly Thanksgiving!” she almost wailed. “He should at least be allowed to stay with us for that!”
“Irene, stop it. The boy volunteered, very bravely”—here he turned back to me, as if to underscore silently what he thought of Terry’s brother, Ron, who’d gone to Canada to escape the draft—“and he will finish his work. He will not let his squad down. No son of mine backs out of his commitments.”
Mom got up in sort of a huff and started collecting dishes to wash. We have this portable—though that hardly seems like the right word—dishwasher that you can roll over to the sink and attach to the faucet while you run it. Mom nearly dented the counter in front of the sink, she hauled it over so fast and hard. She made as much noise with the dishes as she could without breaking them, but flatware is less fragile, and she had her way with it.
Dad tried once more to get her to see reason, as he would have put it. “Imagine, would you? Just for a second? What would he feel like, sitting here with us having turkey and gravy and potatoes and pumpkin pie, knowing his platoon was over there having rations? Imagine how he must feel every day he’s here, when one of the guys who may have saved his life at some point, maybe last week even, is in danger now.”
She didn’t even look at him. A fork hit the floor, I think by accident, and then another landed next to it and bounced and clattered with the force of her throw.
Dad got up and stomped unevenly out of the kitchen, leaving me there sucking on my soda can and feeling like some piece of luggage no one had enough hands to carry. Fine. So I headed back to my room.
I got as far as the foot of the stairs when Dad came up behind me. “And as for you,” he said in this angry tone, pointing a finger at me, “don’t you go listening to anything that dove Cavanaugh says. He should be ashamed of that boy of his, instead of making excuses.” He turned on his heel and headed for his recliner in the living room.
“What’d I do?” I called after him. Goddamn it, why does he always assume I’ve done something wrong? It’s like all the shit Chris hasn’t done, all the stuff a kid usually gets blamed for, is what I get accused of double. I’m no angel; wouldn’t want to be. But if they think they have trouble with me, they should think again.
I sat staring out the window in front of my desk, ignoring my homework, telling myself sourly that I’d even have Saturday night for schoolwork, though that was something else I was angry about, actually. My allowance was puny compared to most of my friends, so paying for dates was an extra challenge on top of just getting them. I’d asked for more money in September, but of course the answer was no. That had felt like a slap in the face, with the store doing as well as it was.
So parties were one place I could take a date that didn’t cost anything. Saturday there was gonna be this really great party at my friend Kevin’s house, and I had already asked Laura Holmes, just about the cutest girl in class. I’ve always thought I was okay looking—dark blond hair with just a little wave to it, gray-green eyes, decent build—but even so I would have thought Laura would be out of my league. It took guts, or arrogance, just to ask her. And she’d said yes! But when it came out that it was the weekend Chris would be home, my mom was all over me.
“Young man, you can’t possibly think anything in this world is more important than spending time with your brother! He’s been over there risking his life every day, and anything could happen to him at any time. He’ll be here only a few days, and you think you’re going out with your friends?” She stood there, dust rag dangling from the hand that wasn’t planted on her broad hip, glaring at me.
“Ma, it’s not just ‘going out with my friends.’ It’s taking this really”—I’d almost said hot—“sweet girl, someone every guy wants to go out with, to, like, the biggest party of the fall!”
She wagged her finger at me, the rag flopping around in the air. “Do you want me to pull your father’s weight into this? You’re not going, Paul. I don’t care how important it seems to you now. In the overall scheme of things, in retrospect, it will pale in comparison with how important spending time with your brother will be.”
We stood there, kind of facing off, a test of wills. Sometimes this works for me. She doesn’t always have what it takes to stare me down; she’s a softy, really. But not this time. She was ice. And the look on her face told me she would pull Dad into it if necessary. And there was no way I could win with him, once he set his mind on something. I’d need Chris for that. Chris was always the only one of all of us who could move my dad with reason or anything else, he’s that stubborn.
Go ahead, tell Dad. Let him do his worst. I’m going to that party! It was on the tip of my tongue. But my jaw clenched tight shut, almost against my will, my hands balled into fists at my sides, and I turned and stormed off. The worst of it was that I had to call Laura and tell her. When I did, I couldn’t really get a bead on her reaction. I mean, she didn’t pout or whine or anything, but it didn’t feel like sunshine and roses. What a freakin’ mess. Who could blame her if she never agreed to go out with me again?
And now, even though Chris was actually home, just thinking about missing that party this weekend made me steam. Lying there on the bed listening to Chris snore in the next room, this feeling of resentment started to bubble up. When you thought about it, I sort of had a lot to resent Chris for. He was the favorite son, no doubt there. And if he’d been some kind of monster, or at least if he’d been mean to me, I could have gotten angry with him and felt good about it.
But he never gave me a chance like that. He’d never done anything to get me into trouble, and in fact, he’d stood up for me so many times in one way or another, getting my folks to ease off on some punishment Dad was sure I deserved for whatever, getting both of them to see that something I’d