like pizza?”
“I do.”
“Then come on up. We got pepperoni!” Barry pushes himself off the door frame and excitedly hurries away. I hope for his sake he slows down before reaching the stairs, as it’s well known people his size are destined for early heart attacks.
In the dining room, Nathan is siting at one head of the table and staring groggily at a glass of lemonade. When he notices me, he pulls out the seat closest to himself and pats the cushion. I sit next to him and ask, “How was your nap?”
“I had the most wonderful dream,” he replies, inspecting his wrinkled hands. “I won’t bore you with the details, but I haven’t felt that young in years.” When I motion to ask what he means, Barry carries in two pizza boxes from the kitchen. Lori follows with a stack of plates and napkins. When she catches me looking at her, her lips stretch into an artificial smile and her eyes dart away.
Barry sets the boxes down, opens the top one, and starts digging out a slice with his bare fingers. My stomach sours. Sister Alice always uses a spatula, even after she washes her hands. Barry drops the slice onto a plate and slides it down to me. I guide it to Nathan, since the patriarch deserves to eat first. Nathan leans in toward me and says, “Should the doctor ask, this never happened.” He pays me a wink, so I pay him one back.
Barry passes another plate to me, licks sauce off two of his fingers, and pries out a slice for Lori. Her curled upper lip suggests she has no intentions of eating anything violated by her own husband’s spit. After piling up three slices on his plate, Barry sits next to me with his legs so far apart his left knee presses against my right thigh. “Mangia!” he says.
Before anyone can take their first bite, I couple my hands in prayer, bow my head, and say aloud, “Bless us O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
I look up to six bewildered eyes. Nobody says anything, which makes me wonder if I’ve offended them by speaking of things Nathan referred to as purposeless. In the midst of their overlong silence, Nathan finally says, “Eat up,” which eases some discomfort.
Barry folds his slice down the middle and bites off half. He chews like the Brahman bull I once saw eating hay at the Bald Hill Fair. I pick up my slice and nibble on the tip. I have a knack for getting sauce on my shirts, and don’t want to look like a slob during our first gathering. Luckily, Barry starts talking to me, which takes away the pressure from having to eat. “The nun mentioned you two are baseball fans,” he says.
“We sure are,” I reply.
“If you play your cards right, I’ll let you watch the game with me after dinner.”
“That sounds great. They’re playing the Marlins and their ace is starting.”
Barry laughs so hard he has to spit out a soggy wad of dough to catch his breath. Lori looks away in disgust. “Why in the world would I want to watch those losers? Around here, young lady, we follow the Yankees.”
I swallow hard to keep the pizza bite from running back up my throat. Sister Alice and I have spent the bulk of the past three summers watching baseball, but our favorite team is the Mets. She made it perfectly clear that the Yankees organization is in league with Lucifer to have been permitted so much steroid and salary abuse throughout the past few decades. “Actually, I’m feeling a bit run down. I’d like to call Sister Alice, and then see about going to bed.”
Lori snickers. Barry turns red while his head descends into his chins. I’ve obviously hurt his feelings for refusing his invitation in front of others, but I feel worse realizing the Mets pregame show is about to begin. Sister Alice and I would be putting the kids in their pajamas and reading them their bedtime stories. Afterward, we’d make popcorn and chocolate milk and settle in just in time for the first pitch.
When dinner comes to a close, I excuse myself into the kitchen and call the group home from a wall phone near the fridge. It’s been too long since I’ve heard Sister Alice’s voice, but I’ll have to wait longer as I’m met with our answering machine. I’d like to think she’s watching the Mets with the volume too high, but I’m afraid she’s sitting by herself after another joyless day, wondering what she did wrong, and how all this could have happened when her pieties should have kept the devil out of our sanctuary. To hopefully lessen her pains, I leave a quick message letting her know I’m doing okay and I’m thinking about her.
I head downstairs with the intention of sleeping out the rest of the day, even though it’s barely nine o’clock, but I haven’t been alone in darkness since the children were taken. Sister Alice let us bunk in her room at night, and visiting patrons from our church community were always around during the day. With nobody here to distract me from the pain, I cry harder than I have since the first child was claimed. When a gentle knock sounds on my door, I wipe away tears and tell whomever it is to come in. The door opens a crack, letting in a beam of hallway light. “Were you sleeping?” Dennis asks.
“Not even close,” I reply.
“Do you like horror movies?”
“Does Casper count?”
“If you’re in Huggies. I’m putting one on for you if you’re up for it.” In need of a diversion, and eager to make friends of strangers, I swing my feet off the bed, hop up, and follow Dennis to his room. I abruptly stop in his doorway when noticing his decorations with quiet repulsion. The walls are cloaked with posters and magazine pages of horror movie villains and victims. Toys of madmen and monsters stand on anything with a flat surface. Five shelving units hold dozens of movies, all of which have titles that insinuate death and torment. Plus, there’s no place for me to sit. Jeremy has the bed, Dennis claims a soft computer chair, and the floor is covered with dirty clothes.
Jeremy, outstretching his arms and legs to take up every inch of the mattress, says to me, “Take your holy ass to the carpet!” Dennis moves aside a pile of clothes with his foot, revealing a circular patch of carpeting.
I sit on my knees and say, “What are we watching?”
“Considering what you’ve been through,” Dennis replies, “I’ll start you off with something tame.” He hands me the DVD box for Child’s Play 2, where a living doll is holding a gigantic pair of scissors over the spring neck of a frightened jack-in-the-box. Though I’m in no mood to view anything immoral, I don’t want to turn him down and appear as though I don’t appreciate his offer, so I prepare myself for another new experience and sit Indian style against the foot of the bed.
At the beginning of Child’s Play 2, a boy named Andy is taken in by a couple that cares for foster kids. Not long in, Chucky, a three-foot doll possessed by the spirit of a serial killer, hunts Andy down for whatever they squabbled over in the first film. Unfortunately, nobody believes that a doll could cause so many problems, so Andy is left to fend for himself. I feel relief that my first day in a new home is going better than Andy’s.
Though I’m not accustomed to R-rated movies, Child’s Play 2 does offer warnings of violent mayhem, mainly through changes in music, which allow me to cover my eyes. Between the slits in my fingers I catch glimpses of an electrocution, a suffocation, and Chucky beating a school teacher to death with a yardstick. I make a sign of the cross after each murder, even though I can easily tell each death is staged. People don’t get blown through windows because of small doses of electricity, a doll could never muster enough strength to suffocate anyone with a plastic bag, and no yardstick I ever held could pulverize a human without breaking.
Dennis
