to be so wild, what with me working there.”
Robin leaves the two women to their small talk. Larry follows him to the kitchen, maintaining his hands-in-pockets silence.
“Where’s Ruby?” he asks finally.
Robin looks around. “I don’t know. She was just here.”
Larry absorbs this information without a word. Robin goes back to the table to munch on some potato chips. The clock says 1:30. He’s already wondering how long they’ll stay.
“So you been to the hospital?”
“Last night, but I didn’t see Jackson.”
“He’s pretty messed up?”
“What do you think? He took a bad fall.”
Larry stares at him, his face set in a challenge. “I don’t know about you, but I think he jumped. I mean, he went over the bar.”
Robin studies Larry’s face to figure out how serious he’s being. “No way,” he says. “He got knocked off.”
“Bullcrap,” Larry says. “He was always doing that shit: jumping out of trees and running in front of cars and all. He’s crazy.”
Jackson does have that streak to him. Robin remembers the time they went to Howe Caverns in upstate New York and Jackson, who was about five at the time, sneaked off the trail and got lost somewhere deep inside the damp, unlit corners. When the guide found him he was high up on a ledge; he said he’d been playing Tom Sawyer. But something about this doesn’t seem right. “If he jumped, he wouldn’t have landed on his head,” he says. “Maybe he would’ve broke his leg or something.”
“Well, it’s not my fault,” Larry says, grabbing a fistful of chips from Robin’s plate, shoving half of them into his mouth.
“Yeah, that’s what my mother said,” Robin says, watching as the chips turn into golden mulch between Larry’s lips, remembering Stan devouring lasagna the night before. “She told me I’m supposed to tell you that it’s not your fault.” He sours his voice so that Larry understands that he’s repeating something he doesn’t believe.
Larry lowers his voice. “Listen to this: just say he jumped. Otherwise they’ll try to pin it on us. I’m telling you, we should stick together.”
“You’re mental,” Robin says, but he finds something powerful, self-protective, in Larry’s words.
Larry pulls a carton of milk from the fridge. “What’s this ‘two percent’ mean?” he asks. “Is it skim?”
“It’s for people on a diet,” Robin says. “Like my mother.”
Larry pours some in a glass. “I should give some to my mother. All she ever talks about is Weight Watchers.” He raises the pitch of his voice. “‘Myrna said I can eat anything I want as long as it’s in small portions.’ I said, ‘Yeah, Mom, except some of us around here are already skinny.’ ”
“You’re a growing boy,” Robin says, putting on his own fake-mother voice.
“That’s right,” Larry says and chugs the milk. He wipes his mouth on his jacket sleeve and then leans closer to Robin. “I’m growing hair near my dick,” he says, his voice lowered. “Wanna see?”
Robin looks away and then back. Larry’s holding out his jeans from the waist with his thumb. He raises his eyebrows twice. Robin shrugs, then leans forward. Larry takes a step toward him, then another, then unhooks his thumb and bops Robin’s nose with it.
“I bet you do!” He howls contemptuously.
“You reject!” Robin hisses. He grabs Larry’s shirt with one hand and tosses him aside, harder than he thought he could, into the countertop. Larry’s elbow sends the casserole skidding into Nana’s plate of sandwiches.
Corinne’s voice from the living room: “What’s going on in there?”
“Cool out, man,” Larry demands.
“I’m going up to my room,” Robin says.
“Hey, man,” Larry says. “Remember, we gotta stick together. And tell your sister, too!”
Corinne is suddenly there in the doorway. “Tell your sister what?” she asks.
“Nothing,” Larry says.
Robin looks from mother to son and back again. “Yeah, nothing. Just, you know, hope she’s doing OK.”
Corinne smiles. “Well, Robin, you can tell her that from me, too. We’ve got to get going now. Tell your mother I’ll call later. Maybe we’ll stop by tonight with Stan.”
“Sure.” Robin follows them back to the living room, where Nana Rena is holding out Corinne’s coat.
“Maybe there’ll be some good news, P.G.,” she says.
Larry gives Robin a punch on the shoulder as he heads toward the front door. “Later, man.” He adds a final nod—a reminder of the new game plan.
In his room with the door closed, Robin replays the scene with Larry over in his mind. He slams his fists into the bed—enraged at how Larry just gets to him every time. What if Larry’s right? What if there is trouble ahead for all of them and they really ought to blame it on Jackson? No one would question that Jackson gets himself into trouble over and over again. Why should this thing be any different? Still, the image that remains from the day before is of Larry turning Jackson over on the ground, the noise of Jackson’s bones cracking. Whose fault was that?
Jackson’s just got to get better, he’s just got to be all right and then none of this will be a problem. Robin hasn’t been able to think about this with any outcome except Jackson dying or Jackson being retarded, but maybe . . . maybe the doctors will figure something out. They’re doctors after all. That’s what they’re supposed to do. And why haven’t his parents called? He wishes now that they had woken him up this morning and taken him along. Then he wouldn’t have had to deal with any of this . . . Ruby being weird, and Larry being . . .
He lays on his back and pushes down his pants. He’s got hair growing around his dick, too—seems like more every day. Each one is curvy and long. They start in one direction, then twist around like question marks. Darker than on his head or legs, more like the few brownish hairs starting to poke out from his armpits. He wishes he did get a look at Larry’s, and Larry knew it, too. That’s the worst of it. He wishes he got to see Larry again like on Sunday night, naked and shaking it around. He wants to compare, and he wants to know if Larry knows how to jerk it off like he’s discovered. It feels perverted to think this way, but he starts getting hard, pushing his penis up toward his belly, tangling it up with his pubic hair. He lets the heat of his hand increase the stiffness. He does this until he can’t think of anything else, all the pressures of the world lining up behind this one pressure from the core of his body: shuddery, rough, soundless. He closes his eyes and concentrates on himself, just himself getting crazier and stronger at the same time, stronger than anyone, definitely stronger and tougher and bigger than Larry.
Nana Rena is sleeping on the couch in the living room, her feet, misshapen from years of serving meals to rich college girls, propped on a pillow. Ruby crouches on the carpet. A sketchbook she’s been drawing in rests open on the floor, a shock of black and red streaked across it. The TV glows blue-gray from the wall, the volume low, a soap opera sending out images of intrigue and heartache.
When the phone rings, both Ruby and Nana Rena stir, but Robin leaps to his feet first, dashing to the kitchen. “Hello?”
“Hey, champ.” A very deep man’s voice, almost no emotion.
“Dad?”
An attempt at an offended chuckle. “Who’d you think?”
“You sounded different.”
Ruby’s at his side, waiting.
“Well,