Family

As I walk up Patricia’s front path, I hear screaming.

Real screaming. High-pitched, frantic, layered over more screaming.

My pulse jumps. I take the porch steps two at a time, which my ribs strongly advise against, and reach for the knob before instinct makes me glance through the big bay window.

Twister.

Twelve people tangled together on a plastic mat while somebody shouts colors like they’re directing air traffic. A woman laughs so hard she can barely stand. Two kids roll across the carpet. Someone in the kitchen yells that the dip is disappearing.

I stand on the porch breathing hard like an idiot.

Through the window, Patricia spots me, lifts one eyebrow, and crooks a finger toward the door.

Her face says stop being weird and come inside.

Patricia’s house has one of those open floor plans people on television get emotional about. Living room bleeds into dining room, dining room into kitchen, kitchen into noise and laughter and bodies moving everywhere. You can stand anywhere downstairs and see the whole thing.

She once told me she loves that.

Spent too many years keeping parts of her life locked away. Wanted a house where nothing has to hide from anything else.

I understand that more than I like.

I slip inside and hug the wall like I’m raiding the place instead of attending game night.

A few people wave. I wave back with all the warmth of a man being processed.

I recognize Vanessa and Jesse from earlier. Jesse tries to spin the arrow for Twister while nobody’s looking. Vanessa laughs and swats his hand away.

They look lighter already.

Maybe safety works fast.

I drop onto the couch beside a little girl reading a Princess and Mr. Sullivan book.

Jenny.

She never looks up.

“Good book?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“You seem real passionate about it.”

“I already read it.”

“Then why read it again?”

“Because there aren’t any new ones.”

Fair answer.

From the kitchen, her mother calls her name. Jenny closes the book, tosses it into my lap, and hops off the couch.

“You can read it, Mr. Gene.”

She smiles at me with her one good eye and runs off.

That smile hits harder than it should.

I look down at the cover.

Princess and Mr. Sullivan Go to the Zoo.

Author: Bodhi Lewis.

Lewis.

I’ve spent the last half hour telling Henderson I don’t know Rachel Lewis, and now her last name is sitting in my lap wearing a zoo hat.

Could be nothing.

Lewis isn’t exactly Rockefeller.

Still feels like the universe showing off.

I set the book on the coffee table just as Patricia drops beside me and hands me a beer.

I take it awkwardly with my right hand. The aluminum splint on my left pinky catches against the bottle.

Stupid thing has been attached to me for less than an hour and already thinks it’s in charge.

“Heineken?” I ask.

“You look like a man who needs imported disappointment.”

I take a drink. “Tastes accurate.”

The doctor told me not to mix alcohol with a concussion.

Doctors worry too much.

Patricia looks at my finger.

“What happened to your hand?”

“Shrimp.”

She waits.

“Violent shrimp.”

She tucks herself carefully beneath my arm like we’ve been married badly for years.

“Ever think about kids, Gene?”

“Only if you finally agree to make an honest man out of me.”

“Honey, we’d kill each other in under a month.”

“That long?”

She smiles. “You’re not my type.”

“Ouch.”

“I love you,” she says. “You’re just not the one.”

Then she turns my chin toward the dining room.

Kristy Lee sits at the table talking with three women from the Village like she’s known them forever. Bottle of beer in hand. Laughing at something.

She notices me looking and raises the bottle in salute.

I raise mine back.

Without taking my eyes off her, I say, “Need to talk.”

Patricia’s smile fades.

Her gaze moves past me, through the bay window.

The Bus is sitting across the street in front of my house.

“You broke your promise.”

She doesn’t phrase it as a question.

Before I can answer, she stands and returns to the party.

For the next half hour, she somehow ends game night without letting the mood crash. Plates get stacked. Kids get rounded up. Leftovers get distributed. Hugs get exchanged. People file past me on their way out.

While she cleans, Patricia sends messages.

Vanessa stops in front of me.

“Safe here?” she asks quietly.

It takes me half a second to understand she means what I told her earlier.

I could lie.

She’s had enough men do that.

“We’re working on it.”

Her face changes.

Not much.

Enough.

Once the guests are gone, the people Patricia trusts most begin arriving through the back door.

Most are women.

Henry and Tobias are the exceptions—not because the Circle needs men, but because both of them learned how to listen before speaking.

Different ages. Different scars. Different ways of carrying themselves. The kind of people who learned how to survive before they learned how to rest.

These are the people Patricia calls the Circle.

Not elders.

That sounds like a church committee.

They take seats around the dining room table while I remain standing like a defendant.

Patricia nods once.

“Tell them.”

So I do.

Ted Polmey. His demand. His guests arriving next weekend. The men and women he expects Patricia to put in front of them. What happens if the Village refuses.

Nobody interrupts me.

That’s worse than shouting.

When I finish, Henry leans back and blows air through his nose.

“So let me understand this. You make mistakes with a mobster, and now everybody here pays for them?”

“Yes.”

At least honesty is cheap.

Tobias looks around the table. “What if we refuse?”

“Then Ted reminds people why no one refuses.”

That starts the room.

Some argue. Some curse. Some go silent in that dangerous way silence can become.

Patricia cuts through it with a whistle sharp enough to stop traffic.

She steps beside me and addresses them all.

“You know who Ted is. Don’t pretend you don’t.”

Simone crosses her arms. “Not all of us worked the same corners you did.”

Patricia nods. “No. But all of us met men who believed fear made them kings.”

No one has much to say after that.

She continues.

“We’ve all had moments when the rope pulled tight. Times when life came within an inch of ending us. We survived those. We survive this.”

Then she turns to me.

I expect fury.

Maybe I want it.

Instead, she places a hand on my forearm and squeezes.

“Don’t worry about it, Big Guy. I’ll think of something.”

Her voice lowers.

“This isn’t my first rodeo with men like Ted Polmey.”

That mercy nearly breaks me worse than anger would.

Plans form. Pairs get assigned. Warnings will be spread quietly. Childcare is arranged. Supplies will be moved.

The Circle does what frightened people rarely do.

They get practical.

I slip out before anyone has to comfort me.

Outside, night has settled over the subdivision. Streetlights glow along the sidewalks. Lawns sit freshly trimmed. Mailboxes stand at attention. Cul-de-sacs lie neat as pie charts.

A battlefield disguised as suburbia.

I head across the street toward my place and pull an old pack of cigarettes from my jacket.

The splint hooks the pocket lining and nearly takes it with me.

I yank my hand free.

Stupid thing.

“Can I have one?”

Kristy Lee stands behind me with a hand out.

“These are stale.”

“I’ve dated worse.”

I give her one, stick another between my lips, and try to work the lighter with my battered right hand.

Kristy takes it away from me.

She lights mine.

Then hers.

“You always this graceful?” she asks.

“Usually there’s music.”

She takes a drag.

“What are you doing here?”

“Patricia invited me.”

“Why?”

Kristy leans closer and lowers her voice in a rough Patricia imitation.

“Because you two looked cute together.”

I laugh despite myself.

From Patricia’s porch comes a voice.

“I heard that.”

Kristy Lee grins.

“Patricia call you this afternoon?” I ask.

“Yep.”

“You working tonight?”

“Nope.”

I nod toward Patricia’s house. “You big on board games?”

“Not really.”

“Good. Me neither. Come on. I’ve got some booze stashed at my place.”

We sit on my porch swing with two glasses and a bottle that has seen better labels.

The swing creaks like it objects to intimacy.

We talk.

Really talk.

Not the usual dodge-and-weave nonsense I specialize in.

I tell her about Texas. About my mother. About the men who came and went. About the ways a funny kid can change the temperature in a room before a dangerous man decides to make it worse.

I tell her about the Army.

About Ted.

About mistakes I wear like jewelry.

She tells me about Dayton. Radio. Calling off a wedding one week before it happened. Brief Army service. The gun range she still visits when she wants to clear her head.

I make a note to stay polite forever.

Hours pass easy.

At some point, she touches the bandage near my temple.

“At least explain this.”

I hold up the splinted finger.

“Package deal.”

“So explain the package.”

I do.

Portia’s. Ted. Ginger. The threat against the Village.

Kristy listens the way rare people listen—with no impatience, no need to fix, no hunger to judge.

When I finish, she studies me over the rim of her glass.

“You keep telling these stories like you’re the punch line.”

“Usually am.”

“Maybe. But you’re also the guy who keeps showing up after everybody else leaves.”

I take a drink.

“You don’t know me well enough to say nice things.”

“Then stop telling me things that make me say them.”

I don’t have an answer for that.

When dawn begins thinning the dark, we kiss.

It starts careful.

Then less careful.

Then it becomes the sort of thing lonely people do when they suddenly stop wanting to be lonely.

I lead her inside.

The rest belongs to us.

When I wake later, sunlight is already in the room.

Kristy Lee is gone.

A note sits on the nightstand.

Had things to do. Don’t become unbearable. —K

I smile in spite of myself.

Then I remember everything else.

Voices downstairs.

Movement.

Boxes scraping across hardwood.

I dress fast and head down.

Vanessa is in the foyer carrying a box. Jesse stands by the door with a backpack and a face too serious for his age.

“What’s going on?”

Vanessa keeps moving.

“A place opened up at Simone’s.”

“You’re moving?”

She finally looks at me.

“The whole Village knows what happened.”

I have no defense ready.

“They know some of them have to work for Ted next weekend because of you.”

Each word lands exactly where it means to.

“I’m trying to fix it.”

“You already tried.”

She brushes past me onto the porch.

Jesse lingers.

He looks at me with the kind of disappointment kids should never know how to make.

Then he follows his mother outside.

I stand in the doorway while their car pulls away.

No waving this time.

Inside, the house feels suddenly too small.

I go into the kitchen to make coffee because people always make coffee when their life is burning down.

I don’t know why.

My hand shakes.

The mug slips.

Ceramic explodes across the tile.

I stare at it.

Then I grab the refrigerator handle and yank.

The door flies open. The top hinge tears loose with a metal scream. The whole thing twists sideways and crashes into the counter.

Milk hits the floor. Condiments roll in every direction. Something glass shatters.

Silence follows.

I sink to the floor among the wreckage and put my face in my hands.

“Big, tough Gene,” I say to nobody. “Sitting on the floor crying where no one can see him.”

I laugh once.

“Pathetic.”