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 what then?” Arthur said in a hoarse whisper. “What does she want to do?”
“Tattoos maybe.”
Arthur asked was I any good and Willett said I could be.
Arthur said, “What about . . .” and lifted his hand off the remote and pointed at Willett.
Willett looked at his own pink hands and said, “I like being with Nicolette. Watching out for her.”
“That’s important,” Arthur said. “Kids.”
Willett said, “I reckon I’m going to work at the plant. Driving a forklift. In the pellet building.”
Arthur asked what shift and Willett said, “Screech’s, right now.”
Willett’s father nodded.
There was a commotion in the living room and Nicolette let out a squeal. Willett turned his head to the door and then back to his father.
Arthur said, “Go on.”
Getting a job at the plant. That was Willett’s guess-what.
* * *
MOMMA SAID, “Come on, little airplane girl,” and took Nicolette’s hands and started to spin. Nicolette laughed and her feet lifted into the air. Momma coughed and let go of one of her hands. Nicolette squealed as her other hand slipped free. She crashed into a big cupboard thing of old toys and antiques Willett’s mother had set up. Old, old Santa Clauses went flying everywhere. Corner of the cupboard caught Nicolette above the eye, and blood ran in her brow. Nicolette stood herself up and ran straight back to Momma.
I said, “Nicolette, come over here.”
Willett put his arm around Momma. Momma put her head on Willett’s shoulder, fake shocked. Willett’s mom went to Nicolette, pushed her hair back, took her and put a Band-Aid on her brow. Momma went behind her, asking Mrs. Bilson did she have some kind of ointment nobody ever heard of.
Momma’s carrying on scared us like when a truck goes too close by you walking at night. No time for fear till it was over. We were so shook when Momma asked to come with us back to the trailer, we didn’t have the wits to make up a reason to