birth to Jayson. But when looking at photos of all the different weddings, some of which he remembered and most of which he didn’t, Jayson always thought that she looked less blissly marital than simply caught off guard.
Whenever Jayson asked who his father was, or Willie’s father, Toni would simply point to whoever she was dating at the time and say: ‘For today, he’s your man.’
Of all the things in his life, Jayson was most grateful that his mother had inherited the fully paid off, split-level lake house from his grandparents, who died when Jayson was a baby. Toni was finishing her last year of high school as a teen mother when her parents got broadsided by a milk tanker as they were exiting the Catholic Church parking lot. It was the same church in which his grandparents were too embarrassed to have Jayson baptized.
‘Fuck Garth,’ Toni said. ‘I don’t need nobody’s support.’ Toni puffed on a newly lit Newport. ‘Except yours and Willie’s.’ She held out her arms again. This time Jayson assented to her hug.
‘Well, until I’m of legal age, you have my undivided, custodially obligated fealty,’ Jayson said.
‘Thank you, Butter Bean.’ She leaned over and picked up the brown paper Piggly Wiggly shopping bag she was using as a suitcase. ‘And don’t forget to drive the car around the block at night so the neighbors don’t think I’ve abandoned you.’
‘But you are abandoning us,’ Jayson countered playfully.
‘You know I’m only a phone call away.’
‘So I should just call the operator and ask for the number of an artist collective in Chicago, then?’
‘Don’t be a smart ass. I was being metaphorical.’
‘Then I’ll be sure to only have metaphorical emergencies.’
‘Perfect. Just make it look busy around here. I don’t need the ASPCA dropping by again.’ ‘You mean Protective Services.’
‘Yes. Those do-goodie-two-shoes.’ Toni balanced the overstuffed bag on her hip and pushed open the screen door to the garage. ‘I swear I’ll burn this goddamn house down with all of us in it the next time they decide you need protection from me.’
As he watched her back the Maverick out the driveway, Jayson picked up the lit cigarette she’d left smoldering next to a pile of three years’ worth of Penny Saver newspapers and tossed it in the sink with the other butts.
Watching over Willie wasn’t as easy as his mother thought it was. Jayson had been taking care of his younger brother ever since he realized he had one. It was Jayson who took notes about Willie’s care at the doctor’s office. It was Jayson who put locks on the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator to keep Willie from raiding them. It was Jayson who locked Willie in his room each night in order to be sure that Willie didn’t escape and forage for food in the neighbors’ garbage cans alongside the raccoons.
To escape the constant stress of keeping his household running, Jayson often lay in bed at night and imagined that he was the son of one of his favorite television mothers. His most soothing fantasy was to pretend that he was the seventh member of the Brady Bunch–the only biological child of Carol and Mike.
Willie came around the corner into the kitchen chewing on what looked like a dog toy.
‘Where’d you get that, pal?’ Jayson asked him.
Willie froze. He knew that he wasn’t supposed to be eating food that wasn’t portioned out to him. The problem was that he only remembered this rule when he got caught.
‘Hand it over, Silly Willie,’ Jayson said. He held out his hand. ‘And spit out whatever’s in your mouth. That isn’t food.’
Willie paused for a moment, his slow synapses debating whether there was a way to continue chewing on the marrow-flavored rawhide dog bone that he had found in the field out back. Concluding the inevitable, he spit out the one chunk he’d managed to soften and bite free.
‘That’s my boy,’ Jayson said, realizing the sad parallel of addressing his brother like a pet while simultaneously holding a hunk of chewed up rawhide in his hand. ‘We can have a snack later.’
Willie shuffled off into the mud room, already refocused on finding another morsel of something edible in the yard.
Jayson looked out the kitchen window at the twins’ house next door. A movement caught his eye from the upstairs left window. Trey’s window. A second later he saw Trey walk by the window again. He was shirtless in the late August heat.
Jayson tried not to think what he was already thinking. Trey was like a brother to him. But he’d found himself falling further and further into a crush throughout the summer. To clear his head, he went back up to his room to work on finishing the Dallasty! cliffhanger script.
That it contained J.B. and Amethyst Carrington’s steamiest kiss yet was pure coincidence.
As Jayson breezed through the twins’ kitchen later that afternoon, he called out to their mother, who was sewing daisy-patterned curtains in their dining room.
‘Hiya, Terri!’
‘Please call me Mrs. Wernermeier, Jayson,’ she called back sternly, ‘I’ve asked you a hundred times.’
‘No probs, Mrs. Wernermeier,’ Jayson responded. ‘And you can call me Mr. Blocher.’
Jayson didn’t even try being polite to the twins’ mother anymore. Terri’s main goal in life–second only to serving her LordGodJesusChristSaviorOfAllMankind–was making the Blocher family miserable. While most of the neighborhood had taken issue with one or another of the Blochers’ escapades, it was generally Terri who made the first phone call to Child Services Department; the Police Department; the Fire Department; the Animal Control Department; and, in one particularly memorable accidental fish hook injury, the Hunting and Fishing Department. Toni often swore that Terri must have the government services Yellow Page ripped out and stuck to their refrigerator.
Perhaps what bothered Terri the most was her children’s friendship with ‘an avowed eventual sinner’ like Jayson. However the twins’ father, Tom, had always been more than cordial toward Jayson and his family. Like Terri, Tom had also gone to high school with Toni. As Toni had once told Jayson, he’d fingered her at Homecoming.
Trey and Tara were downstairs, sharing a green and yellow beanbag chair imprinted with a Green Bay Packers logo.
‘Voila! The final script!’ Jayson said, bellyflopping on the couch behind them. ‘Here, I typed up two copies.’ He threw them into the twins’ laps. They were both engrossed in an afternoon rerun of theirs and Jayson’s favorite sitcom, Disorder in the Court, which TV Guide described as ‘the madcap adventures of a curmudgeonly family court judge and his six boisterously lovable inner-city foster children.’ It was a blatant rip-off of Diff’rent Strokes, but Jayson was willing to overlook the breach of copyright ethics because the show featured Devlin Williamson. Jayson knew everything about Devlin Williamson. He ripped out every magazine article he could find about him in the library or while waiting in line at the grocery checkout. Jayson knew Devlin’s favorite foods, his lucky number, his dog’s name, his birthday…which was only three months before Jayson’s. They were almost exactly the same age. Devlin was officially Jayson’s first crush. Or at least the first crush
