Midnight Bowling. Quinn Dalton

my dad’s cronies stuck around in the backyard. When they moved to the shed, I hung back. Someone pulled the string on the bulb, and it glowed like a hot piece of metal. I headed for the house. I figured they were going to pass some whiskey and my father’s tools around and mutter back and forth, like a bunch of nuns working their rosaries.

      Inside, my mother, Louise, and the wives of the men out in the shed were cleaning up. One wife was at the sink, washing dishes, one was loading the refrigerator, and one was picking up everywhere else. My mother and Louise were drying dishes. It was hot as hell in there, and they all looked exhausted. I stood against the wall to keep out of the way.

      My mother asked me what I needed.

      “Here, take a beer, make some room in here,” Mrs. Loden said, pulling one out of the fridge. She church-keyed it before I had a chance to answer and passed it to me across the kitchen table. She was short and curly-haired like her husband. I thought that was pretty funny, how married couples got to looking so much alike. I wondered what Louise would look like years from now. I watched her reaching up to put away some heavy bowls, the lift in her ribs, the way her dress hung on her hips. Sweat dark under her arms. She and Walt certainly didn’t look anything alike, with his bulk and the red hair he’d gotten from our mother. I was short and dark like my father. And Walt’s the one who got her, I thought. I shouldered the wall. I didn’t need any more beer but I drank it. I figured I’d turn out like my father after all, an old drunk.

      “Sit down, honey,” my mother said. I looked at her and she pointed to a chair. Mrs. Schlemmer had put the chairs back at the table right under my nose and I hadn’t noticed. Louise smiled at me, but the smile was one she might give to clerks and delivery boys. I nodded to her and sat down at the table, jamming myself in close. I could see myself in that same spot as a kid eating cereal, metal edge at my chest. I could see Walt letting me help build a plane with him. He might have been twelve or thirteen then, and still willing to tolerate me. I could see my father heaving buckets of cement we hand-mixed for the foundation of the shed out back, how good it felt to come in and be fed and watered, as my mother had put it, farm girl that she was.

      I said, to no one in particular, “I’m not the one ought to be sitting.”

      “Well, you’re no use in here,” Mrs. Schlemmer said. She didn’t mean anything by it except to say I wouldn’t be allowed to help, which was fine by me.

      “That’s about all of it, then,” Mrs. Neidermeyer said, shaking water off her hands at the sink. She picked up a towel to finish the silverware.

      “You all go,” my mother said. “You’ve done enough.”

      Louise looked at the ceiling. I thought she was rolling her eyes. I thought there might be some snap in her yet. She reached for the wall behind her, like she meant to lean against it, but then her knees buckled and she sat down hard on the floor. My mother went to her but Mrs. Schlemmer and Mrs. Neidermeyer were faster. Mrs. Schlemmer wedged herself between Louise and the counter, each of them taking her under the arm.

      “You sit down before it happens to you, too,” Mrs. Loden said to my mother. “Both of you,” she said to me. I was on my feet again and hadn’t realized it.

      I kept standing and my mother did, too, but with her back to me so she could face Louise. She said her name with a question in her voice.

      Louise turned her head from side to side a couple of times as the women hoisted her to a chair. Her face was white, greenish at the tops of her cheeks.

      “Now, put your head between your knees and I’ll put on some water,” Mrs. Schlemmer said. She slammed the teapot on the burner. “It’ll settle you.”

      Louise leaned forward. She was at the other end of the table from me. Mrs. Neidermeyer stayed behind her, spotting her so she wouldn’t fall to one side or another. All I could see was the narrow hump of her back. Mrs. Loden pulled tea cups from the cabinet but didn’t offer me one. I got a couple of looks from the women. It was clear they wanted me out. Even my mother wanted rid of me. “Your father all right?”

      “He’s fine.” I took another sip of my beer. I’d been trying all night to get away from him. “Can I help with anything?” I asked.

      This was ignored. Mother asked, “Louise, do you feel sick?”

      “No,” the answer came, muffled, from her knees. “Just tired, really.”

      I caught the women trading looks. Then I got it. They thought she was pregnant, and they wanted me gone so they could ask her about it. I watched the ridge of her spine rise and fall.

      “Would you like some help into bed?” Mrs. Neidermeyer asked Louise loudly.

      I stood up. I could see her nodding into her lap. I looked down at her back and damp hair, and she seemed too small to be a mother, folded over like that.

      “I hope you feel better,” I said.

      She lifted her head. Her face had started to get back its color. “Thank you,” she said, and the women hauled her out of the room.

      After that, the women left one by one, bustling out the back door to collect their drunk husbands. My parents went to bed and the house finally went silent, but I couldn’t sleep, even after all the beer. It was all I could do to keep from sneaking the few steps from where I was camped on the couch down the hall to peek in the door of my old room, like as if maybe I could tell what was in her just by watching her sleep. I could feel the idea of taking care of her settling in my bones and joints. It made sense to me, down to the root of myself, and I knew I would try to do it.