with his mouth open, made me want to throw a little fish in it, like they do dolphins in them aquarium shows.
I said, “Hidy.” I didn’t have any reason to be sore at my husband.
But for whatever reason, I was sore at him anyway. Willett hugged me and I let him. It felt OK. He kept it up till I got annoyed. I pushed him off with the hand not holding Nicolette. I set Nicolette down.
Nicolette stood there with her eyes closed. When her father hugged her, she said, “Did you get fireworks?”
Willett looked at me, said, “We got some sparklers.”
Nicolette wobbled, eyes still shut, said, “Light them all at once. Be like your hand on fire.”
Willett shook Nicolette by her shoulders.
I said, “Don’t wake her up, dumbass.”
Willett said, “Guess what,” his eyebrows bobbing up and down.
I said, “I don’t know, Willett. You found a quarter in the sofa?”
“Good guess,” Willett said, “but no.”
“I’m putting her to bed,” I said. “I can’t fool with you both at once.”
Willett’s mother had Nicolette a pallet on the floor in the room where we slept. I flopped her on the bed, and she lay on her belly, claiming as much bed as her stubby arms could.
I found Willett in the kitchen on a hard chair amongst his mother’s catalogs and gadgets, sucked into a hippy movie with men on motorcycles and giant moustaches and women with bikinis and flower necklaces on the television set next to her dish drainer.
He said, “Here, look at this,” and before I could say, “Here, look at me,” Willett’s mother come in, honeyed up. She said I looked tired and asked if I was getting enough rest.
I said, “I think so.”
The phone rang and she answered it “hel-looo,” and began telling the person about Willett’s father’s bowel movements and vomiting, the smoking habits of the nurses at the hospital, how long she spent on the phone with the insurance company. I told Willett I was going to bed.
He said, “You sure you don’t want to watch this with me?,” his face like a dog in a cage on an animal shelter ad.
I left him there, aggravated at my own meanness. Nicolette was dead asleep. I set on the far edge of the bed and waited for the world to fall. When it didn’t, I got in bed and turned to the wall.
I woke to Willett and Nicolette both in the bed with me, to morning light and the sound of Willett’s mother coming to get them to go to the 4th of July parade.
Willett’s mother asked him did I want to go. I said I didn’t and went back to sleep. And so it was me eating the Cocoa Puffs Willett’s mother got for Nicolette, me who heard my mother’s slurry voice on the answering machine saying she was coming over to spend the afternoon with us.
* * *
SATURDAY AFTERNOON, me and Willett stood looking out his mother’s front room picture window. Willett put his dry hand in mine. Out the picture window, Momma got out of a Jeep with Evie and two guys I didn’t know. One was muscle-huge, wore black leather, oily Fu Manchu, faded Def Leppard T-shirt with the sleeves cut out. The other was fat-huge, balding with stringy brown hair trailing off his shoulders, a man-sized pillhead groundhog. Willett turned from the window.
I said, “Where are you going?”
He said, “To check on the fire.”
When I opened the door Momma was smiling, gray in the teeth and dark red around the eyes. The other three stood behind her looking at Willett’s mother’s fancy flowers and yard ornaments. Nicolette came to the door. Momma crouched and wrapped Nicolette in her broomstick arms.
Momma said, “Yall look,” over her shoulder. “Beautifuler than I said, aint she?”
Fu Manchu nodded.
“No such a word,” Groundhog said, “as ‘beautifuler.’”
She climbed back in the Jeep. Her knee bobbed.
Willett’s mother came down the hall. “Hello,” she said. “Welcome. I’m Dorothy, Willett’s mother.”
No one said anything.
Willett said, “You ready to start cooking?,” putting his hands on my shoulders. I shrugged him off.
Fu Manchu said, “We got to go,” and got in the Jeep.
Groundhog waddled to the Jeep, started it. Off they went. Willett’s mother gave Momma a big hug. Momma hugged her back and come in the house looking high and low at all the old furniture and silver stuff Willett’s mother had.
Willett and his mother grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. We ate them on a glassed-in porch in heavy metal lawn furniture painted black with bamboo-printed seat cushions. When we got done, Willett’s mom said, “Let’s sit and talk,” which is what we’d been doing, but she took us in another room to do it some more.
Momma sat on a flying carpet–looking rug on the floor and played with Nicolette with toy soldiers and cars that Mrs. Bilson saved from when Willett was a little boy. Willett come in the kitchen with me. He said things would be all right, but he couldn’t know that.
Willett’s mom’s questions were popcorn popping with nobody watching the microwave. She asked about Hubert and my grandparents and other different ones that had been at the wedding. She asked if anything new was going on in Canard County. Momma didn’t answer much, and nothing bad happened, but it was all jangly nerves and dead air.
Willett’s mother told him to see if his daddy would eat a hamburger. Willett slipped down the hall, took his daddy a plate in his room. I followed him, but at a distance, watched from around the corner where they couldn’t see me. Arthur, Willett’s father, turned his head on the pillow, said, “There he is” when he seen Willett.
Willett walked to the bedside and put his hand on the pillow above his father’s head. He said, “You want anything to eat?”
Arthur said no. Willett sat down on the edge of his father’s bed with the tray on his lap. The window blinds were closed. The light from the reading lamp clipped to the headboard made Willett’s dad look turtle-headed. His upper lip came to a point beneath his nose. The remote control for the television lay beneath his hand on the layers of cotton blankets.
Willett asked did he want him to straighten his covers.
Willett’s dad said “No, they’re OK,” and squinted and swallowed slow, like he was hurting. “Maybe when Dawn gets her nursing degree,” he said and then stopped, wincing.
“Yeah,” Willett said, his voice trailing. “I don’t think her heart is in that.”
“So
