“He’s fine, actually. His fever broke last night.”
“H— he should be h— here!” he said. “R— r— resting!”
“Frank,” she said, calmly. “Please.”
Out in the yard, Simon climbed up and into the back seat of the pickup truck and scooted to its far side. He pulled a seatbelt across his lap and buckled it at his right hip. Connor hoisted himself up on the truck step, squealed as he fell forward into the cab, and took the seat next to the near window. May leaned in and drew Connor’s seat belt from its sheath.
“I don’t need the seat belt, mommy,” Connor said.
“Everyone needs a seat belt,” May said.
“Not me, mommy. I can hold on. See?”
“I see,” she said, and clicked the tongue of the buckle into its clasp. May looked up at her older son and found that he was already strapped in safely. “Oh!” she said. “Thank you for buckling yourself, Simon.”
Simon did not reply.
“Next time I’ll buckle myself, mommy,” Connor said.
“Okay,” May said.
Frank covered the three-and-a-half miles to St. Paul’s, the only Catholic parish in Leyton, in less than five minutes, delivering himself and his family to church ten minutes before mass would start. Having unbuckled himself and announced his achievement, Connor was lifted out of the back seat by his mother.
“Whoa!” Connor said. “You’re strong, mommy!”
May laughed. “Well, thank you!”
She extended a hand to Simon, but he ignored it and jumped down to the asphalt. Cloaked in the solitude of his newly adopted silence, Simon felt rugged and brave. No one could make him say how his father had failed him. No one could make Simon say a word.
As they neared the church doors, Frank said, “I— I— I’m having a cigarette.”
“Okay,” May said. “We’ll see you inside.”
“See you inside, daddy,” Connor said, turning his head to smile at his unsmiling father.
On another day, Simon would have gladly followed his father to the patch of grass beside the church doors and pulled needles off the evergreen shrubs while Frank smoked. But today, Simon followed his mother into the flowers-and-old-people smell of the church, hoping that his father felt very much alone.
•••
FEVER AND SORE throat had kept Simon out of second grade the previous Friday and put him in bed early Friday night. Before sunrise on Saturday morning, he walked into the dark living room to find an empty pizza box on the folding tray next to his father’s recliner and, on the couch, a plate with the crusts—Connor never ate the crusts—of three pieces of pizza. Standing with one bare foot on top of the other, Simon fretted that he had missed out on some fun with his father, fun that could neither be recreated nor recouped. Later that morning, Simon heard his mother telling his father that Connor woke up with a throat so sore he wouldn’t talk, and that she’d be taking Connor to see the doctor. Simon was not happy that his brother’s throat was sore, but he was not sad, either. Simon had been sick; now, it was Connor’s turn to be.
When his father went out to rake the leaves in the yard, Simon returned to his bedroom, sat on the bed with his radio in his lap, and listened to the voices. They spoke of football and test drives and lawn tractors. Simon repeated after the voices, the way that Connor repeated after the television characters, and counted how many words he could speak before his stutter caught one in his throat and clutched it tight. Simon’s all-time record was six consecutive, cleanly repeated words. That Saturday morning, his best was three in a row.
When Frank opened Simon’s bedroom door, Simon’s first thought was that he was in trouble.
Frank’s flannel shirtsleeves were cuffed to the elbow and he smelled of wet leaves.
“W— we’re going into t— town,” Frank said.
The moment his father finished speaking, Simon turned off the radio and returned it to the top of his wooden bedside table. Then he hopped down off of his bed and followed Frank out of the house. The leaves from the two big oaks were gone from the front lawn but still littered the larger sideyard, covering most of the orange and yellow blooms of the marigolds in his mother’s garden. A black mound of leaves smoldered, sending wisps of gray smoke into the wind. It seemed strange to Simon that his father was leaving a chore half done, but he didn’t mention it.
Most of the four-mile drive between the Davies residence and Leyton town square was two-lane highway. Simon sat in the front seat, fighting the urge to smile as his mind made a flipbook of the rows of tall, dying corn stalks on either side of the road. It’s not that a trip into town was a rare event. Frank would bring Simon and Connor into town whenever their mother spent the better part of a Saturday at a baby or bridal shower. What made today different was that Connor was not along for the ride, which meant that Simon now had what Connor had enjoyed the night before while Simon lay in bed breaking a fever: their father all to himself.
At the western boundary of incorporated Leyton, Frank slowed at a stop sign and rolled through an empty intersection. To Simon, whose closest neighbor lived an eighth of a mile away, the modest one-story homes that lined both sides of the street seemed to be just inches away from each other. Simon wondered if any of his classmates lived in these houses. He had never been invited to a classmate’s home, and Simon’s own home was, as he’d heard his mother say before, seldom presentable, even if the visitors were just kids.
“Kids have parents,” May would say.
The streets surrounding Leyton’s town square were paved in red brick. As the truck’s worn tires rumbled over the masonry, Simon stared out the windshield, and then his father’s window, at the obelisk at the center of the square. The pointed column reminded Simon of the big monument in Washington, D.C., a picture of which hung above the blackboard in his classroom. Simon figured the smaller version commemorated something, but what was a mystery to him. The idea that he and his father might solve that mystery together made Simon want to smile again.
Frank parked the pickup two storefronts down from the confectioner’s. Simon unlatched the passenger-side door and kicked it open with his right foot. He shoved the door closed, then ran around the front of the truck to the window of the candy store, pressing his nose to the glass and cupping his hands at the side of his head to better see the jars and boxes filled with sweets.
“T— t—”
Take your face off the glass.
Simon knew what his father was trying to say, but he knew better than to do what his father said before he had finished saying it. He kept his face and hands where they were.
“T— take your f— face off that glass.”
Simon stepped back as soon as his father had finished speaking. He eyed the smudges he’d left on the window and felt bad, but figured that trying to wipe them off with the sleeve of his shirt would only make his father angry.
Frank pulled open the candy store’s door, ringing the rusty bells that hung down its interior side. Simon rushed in ahead of him and stood over the central display: clear plastic boxes, four across and six rows high, tiered up and back like stadium seating, each box protecting a different treat from the open air. Simon ogled loose chocolate-covered raisins, chocolate-covered almonds, and malted-milk balls as densely packed and plentiful as the multi-colored plastic balls in the nets at the Chuck E. Cheese in Peoria. There were also individually wrapped hard candies: root-beer barrels, peppermint swirls and butterscotch disks. Beneath one of the scratched plastic box lids were several pounds of cashews, a favorite of Simon’s father.
“C— candy,” Simon remembered his father telling him, “is k— kids’ s— stuff.”
Sensing that