The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (35 page)

—Honey, he probably had to … Embarrassed pause. —You know.

—Pee? That’s crap and you know it, he’s …

—Sarah, language!

I go on anyway. —down at the mall.

So she has to face the fact. —Not for long. I said, Howard!

He yawns. —Don’t worry honey, he’ll be back. Sleep tight.

—Howard! When she gets that tone it scares me shit.

—Mom, I was only kidding!
Billy, what have I done to you?

Dad lunges up in a plume of bedcovers like Moby Dick spouting. —
OK, OK
!

The minute it’s done I feel bad. It’s after Lights Out so we don’t see our father dress. We don’t see what he slides out of the drawer and snaps on his belt and we don’t really know what he’ll do when he catches Bill, we only know that it’s happened before and Bill comes back to bed shaken, but not changed. It happens and we never speak of it. We never speak of anything bad. It would wreck the show. Dad settles into his boots:
thump.

I jump out of bed. —Daddy, I’ll come with.
Save him somehow.

Mother hauls me back by the hair. —It’s a jungle out there.

—But I have to help!

—It isn’t safe.

—Mom! I want to hit or yell bullshit but we don’t hit or yell in our family. We aren’t allowed to whine. —All the other kids …

—Lie down. I’ll read you all another chapter as an extra treat.

Last month it was
Pilgrim’s Progress
and
Moby-Dick
, she has a great reading voice but the quizzes after are hard. Tonight it’s
Don Quixote
, after which she reprises the night-nights and kills the light, after which we are expected to lie still until sleep rescues us, at least for now.

Like a person could sleep with Bill gone and Daddy out there, armed with God knows what. Plus. Beth’s elbow is digging into my left boob and Dad’s toenail scraped my neck when he left. Mom changes the sheets every day so there are never cocoa stains, but there are still crumbs. Probably this bed thing was cute when we were babies, but, Mom! Plus you and Daddy hog the pillows with Baby Ronnie jammed between you; God only knows when you had sex.

For the sake of our mother, we sleep in the belly of the beast, and in exchange for our freedom? We’re famous on
TV
.

Tomorrow Vandella LeSpire is shooting the
Inside Everything
show from our very own bed. Mother’s face is creamed to East Judas in preparation, and
her hair is tweaked into cornrows on which, let me tell you, the beads and things look pretty lame. I mean, you can see the scalp and her hair is a scrunty, dyed blonde. Cornrows are supposed to show that what we are doing is very next, like: nothing retro about Family Bed. Mother wants people to see us on
TV
and go, “How wonderful.” What a good mother she is, to do this for her kids. See how safe and happy they are, bonding in the Family Bed.

Did I mention that’s what she calls it? Family Bed.

Also known as Sleep Sharing. Anything to euphemize this fluffy jail. And you are wondering how a tenth grader like me knows big long arcane words like arcane, and euphemize? Tomorrow you’ll hear Mother expatiating (another, and another!), earnestly facing the camera with her cornrows yanked back in a mini-lift that’s supposed to make her look young. —The Family Bed is a great vocabulary builder, she’ll say, count on it. —Plus the sense of security. My children never doubt that they are loved.

Then she’ll quote the Bible. I’ve stared at this St. Luke guy and I still don’t get it:

Then the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’

Sounds pretty mingy to me.

Mother will tell you we Dermotts owe our warm hearts and fantastic vocabularies to our execrable, life-changing private time in this paragon, my prison: the Family Bed.

Have I mentioned the farting and scratching, the nervosity that comes when you’re tucked in with your dad and your brothers and one disappears, where
is
Darryl, anyway? To say nothing of the crumbs. It may sound superficial to you but holy Cremora, when the earth’s last picture is painted, there are the crumbs.

Later. Dad heaves Bill onto the bed. I hear compressed sobs. I touch his shoulder and he flinches. Is that blood drying? I wait until they are asleep. Then I murmur, —Billy, I’m
sorry.

—Do you
know
what you did to me? His voice is a dry rasp.

—Oh God, Bill, I didn’t know he was going to …

Then he scares me. —You know, Darryl wasn’t the first.

—
What?

—You were too little to remember Howie, he says. —Howard Junior. Don’t go thinking he was the first.

—The first what, Billy. The first
what?

But Mother is stirring and he covers my mouth. —Tonight I got the ultimatum,
he says in normal tones because he is beyond caring what comes down. Then Dad clears his throat and instead of finishing, Bill rolls over with a little groan; his back is to me and that’s the end of that. But he says, like he wants them to hear him, —They’re just keeping me here for the
TV
show.

So weird, sitting here in my jammies, drinking cocoa in the middle of the day.

—It began, Mother is telling Vandella LeSpire, —when Billy here was eentsy. Isn’t Vandella surprised to find us all packed in bed in the middle of the day just to tape this show? Doesn’t the woman see the
weird
in Mother’s smile? —I love babies, they’re so little and helpless and I love having them near. Mother’s voice is soft and cozy, like it’s bedtime already. —Billy’s my oldest, you know.

Wait a minute. What about Darryl? On
TV
we kids are not allowed to speak. There’s stuff I haven’t told you about, like why they won’t let us go near the cellar, which to tell the truth I am not exactly clear on, or the welts I saw on Billy’s back when it got light.

—He’ll always be my baby, Mother says while next to me, Bill’s teeth grind until his molars crack. —Aren’t we all helpless babies in this world? My eentsy sweet Billy, all alone in a big, dark crib, of course he cried, wouldn’t you? Mother’s voice is full, fat and soft. —I brought him into the bed with us and it was beautiful. So you see, that was the beginning. Four lovely children, we all sleep together, and that’s what keeps us close.

I mutter, —What about Darryl, Mom, but—worse: Billy is growling, —
What about Howie and them?

Mother mashes us down. Then she gives Vandella that gooshy, luminous mother’s smile. —I love my babies, so much!

Vandella thinks to ask, —What happens when they grow up, Mrs. Dermott?

Mother is like a lighthouse, beaming radiant love. —They’ll always be my babies, no matter what. She tickles Bill’s cheek. It is obscene. —So little and helpless and sweet.

Shuttered in performance quality mascara, Vandella’s eyes mist over at the thought. All you poor women with babies are looking at my mother and feeling inadequate, and us? Don’t ask.

—This is our crucial bonding time, Mother tells Vandella in that sweet, level tone that means buy this or you die, —Bad mothers don’t care what happens to their children as long as they’re quiet. Good mommies keep their babies in the Family Bed.

Freaks. She has turned us into freaks.

At school the day after one of these shows there is the ritual shunning. For
Bethy and Ronnie (did I mention “baby” Ronnie is in first grade?) there is also ritual name-calling followed by the ritual sticking of gum into their hair. Moms may fall for this crap because motherhood makes women feel anxious and inadequate, but, kids … kids see the dark circles under our eyes and they know. They recognize the cowed look and the pallor of frustration from time served in Family Bed where there’s no argument and nobody gets a night off. —If Father and I have to be here every night, Mother says to us, and I feel the sharp edge of her resentment, —the least you can do is be here and be glad!

But none of this is conveyed to Vandella, who can’t see past the forced smiles on our shining faces, and none of this filters into the pink fog that occludes the minds of new moms who are so anxious to do everything right that they will do anything, even something this heinously wrong.

When I am old enough to have a psychiatrist I will have one thing to thank Mother for—enough words to express what she’s done to us. That is, if I live long enough to get a psychiatrist.

Then my brother Bill rises up on his elbows, grimacing to get Vandella’s attention. Dad already has an elbow yoked around his neck so only I hear what comes out: —Ask her about the others. And faster than I can tell you, Bill disappears. Pretending they are in a father-son bear hug, Dad yanks him back under the giant duvet that covers us all. Vandella is extremely gracious. She promises to edit it out of the tape before this airs but I have my suspicions. Don’t these people lie, sometimes, to get the story that they want? Vandella thanks us and says she will be back Thursday to finish up live on her early morning show, interviewing the happy Dermotts as they spill out of the house. Mother has already picked out our wardrobes for the show.

Billy is gone. When we woke up he wasn’t here. My sisters and I had to wear these hotwired e-bracelets to school today, with angora socks pulled up to hide the bulge: make one wrong step and the screech of pain will rend the ears of a stone lion. When we came to bed tonight nobody took them off. Billy is gone and Mother is pregnant again. Or she’s thinking about it. I heard them talking in the night. When I got up to pee I hit something sharp.

—Arghhh!

—Sarah, what’s the matter?

—I was only going to the bathroom! Razor wire rings the bed.

—Father will take you, Mother says. She uses her special voice, the one that rots stainless steel. —Howard!

—First Bill and now razor wire. Where is Billy anyway?

Mother gasps as if I’ve asked where are the space aliens. —Who?

I let Dad lead me through the gap in the wire and see me to the bathroom. I exchange extra night-nights to prove I have returned to the Family Bed but I am thinking. I am thinking hard.

Billy is in the house somewhere, I know it. I found one of his Hyperbolic space shoes under the bed this morning when I got up and I’m not so sure about Mother or Dad but I do know my one remaining big brother. Without his Hyperbolic space shoes, Billy doesn’t leave the house. A message for me, I think, when I find it. This is a message for me. Inside there is a scrap of paper. Block letters in Bill’s yellow highlighter.
DON’T DRINK IT
.

I am scared but I am excited. Billy may be gone from the Family Bed, but I know he’s somewhere in the house. They’ve put him in Solitary or something, and all I have to do is find out where. I’ll break him out and together he and I will run away.

As it turns out, this kid Tommy at school that I’m in love with? Tommy loves me back. Where I am in Arts he is on the Vocational track, which means he is an electronic genius. Disarms my e-bracelet via his
PDA
. I am still wearing it so when I check in at the Family Bed promptly tonight at 8:30, nobody knows it no longer works. I feint for the phone and then give Mother a gratifying squeal to prove she’s put me in my place. Finesse the cocoa and try not to fall asleep during
Don Quixote
. Snuggle with Beth and Ronnie, who’s been moved down to the foot of the bed to make room for the new baby to come.

—Night night. Mother is rosier than a grotto full of Madonnas: pregnant already? She is sweet, sweeter than ever. —Now sleep tight, I want you to look your best tomorrow. Remember, Vandella’s going to have us on her show.

She is going to interview the six—er, five of us happy Dermotts in bright sunshine, although I already know that we kids never get to talk, and Darryl? He is fighting for our country in Iran.

I love them best when they’re still babies
, Mother says,
so little and helpless and sweet.

It’s going to be a long night.

Before Dad falls asleep I make him lead me to the bathroom again. I’ve seen the gap in the razor wire by daylight but I need to know how to navigate it in the dark. I don’t really have to pee. Instead I stick my head under the basin. Ever so quietly, I tap the bathroom pipes. Clinkety
clink
. I hold my breath. Then I know. All I have to do is follow the plumbing down to the basement. That’s Bill answering from somewhere deep underneath the house: clinkety
clink.

I let Dad lead me back to bed. Then I wait. There is some shifting under the covers: Mother. There is some complaining: Dad. She must be hot to get herself that nice new baby.

Uggg. She wants him to Do It with her right here.

—Not tonight, Dad says. Then he uses his motivational voice. —You want to be pretty for the audience tomorrow, right? Just think:
Inside Everything
. Us, live, on global
TV
.

Ugly, what she says to him next. I stuff Kleenex in my ears and wait for the parents to drop off. It isn’t hard to get out of bed, really, once you set your mind to it, that isn’t the problem. What I have to do next is very hard.