Читать книгу The Brothers Bishop - Bart Yates - Страница 9

Tommy is telling a story when I join everybody on the back porch

“…and he had this thing about snakes. If he saw one while he was mowing he’d freak out and run away. He’d leave the mower on and come get either Nathan or me to finish the lawn while he cowered inside, peeking through the curtains.”

He’s talking about Dad. Dad pretended to be a bad-ass, but he was the biggest wienie in the world when it came to snakes and rats and spiders.

Tommy puts his bare foot on his boyfriend Philip’s leg, and Philip (I don’t remember his last name—Ellington? Edgerton?) wraps a hand around it. Tommy smiles at him and resumes his monologue. “So anyway, one morning we all came walking into the kitchen and there’s this big fucking garden snake coiled up by the stove. It was at least two feet long, and it’s swinging its head around and doing the snake thing with its tongue. Dad ran upstairs, screaming like a bad actress in a slasher movie.”

I look around the table. We’re sitting in a circle on green plastic lawn chairs, drinking Chardonnay and eating pepper crackers smeared with Brie and hot mustard. Tommy is between Philip and me, and Camille and Kyle—their last name is Colman—are across from us. Philip’s a makeup “artist” for some fledgling theater company (which pays next to nothing, so he makes ends meet by working at Blockbuster Video), Camille’s a sales rep for Apple Computers, and Kyle’s a grunt in an advertising firm. Tommy gave me a brief biographical sketch of each of them when he introduced us, but not much of it besides their jobs stuck in my head—except that the first time Tommy and Kyle met, Tommy tried to get Kyle to go to bed with him.

What a surprise.

Tommy shifts his foot as conspicuously as possible right onto Philip’s crotch, and Philip giggles and blushes. I doubt he’d be quite as pleased if I told him how many times I’ve seen Tommy do the same thing with other guys. The poor bastards—all pretty, all brainless—last about two months.

I’m not impressed with Tommy’s latest plaything. Philip hasn’t said more than two complete sentences since he got here. (One of those was to complain about his cell phone not working anywhere on my property, and the other was to express his outrage about the absence of a television.) To be fair, it’s difficult to make conversation with someone else’s tongue in your mouth, but he could at least try.

He is handsome, though. I’ll give him that. He’s got long brown hair, pulled back in a ponytail, and his skin is flawless, and his smile is genuine and open. He’s got one of those faces that doesn’t look real, though, because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. When you look at most people, you can say “so-and-so’s nose is his best feature,” or “look at those great eyes.” But Philip doesn’t have a best feature. Even his nostrils are attractive.

Camille is a striking redhead in her mid-twenties, with long legs and perfect, baseball-sized breasts, and Kyle is a skinny, hairy guy with vague green eyes and prominent cheekbones. Camille’s wearing the same thing she had on when they got here—a white cotton skirt and a red blouse tied up at the bottom to show off her flat, pale stomach—but Kyle’s replaced the pants and a button-down shirt he had on earlier with black soccer shorts and a plain white V-neck T-shirt. A tuft of dark chest hair sticks out at the bottom of the V.

Incidentally, if he’s heterosexual, I’m a dachshund.

Ordinarily, I don’t even try to figure out what somebody else’s sexual thing is, because I’ve been dead wrong so many times in the past it’s embarrassing. But Kyle is a classic closet queer. He’s not especially effeminate, but ever since he got here he’s been following Tommy and Philip around like a horny puppy, and whenever they touch he gets this hungry expression on his face that’s so transparent it’s hard to watch. I can’t believe Camille married him. She’s either the stupidest or the blindest woman in New York. She’s obviously in love with him, staring at him every few seconds and falling silent whenever he says something, but he basically ignores her in favor of whatever else is going on.

Tommy takes a swig of his wine and glances around at his audience, making sure he’s still got everyone’s attention. “The snake isn’t really the good part of the story, though, because Nathan and I just got a shovel and tossed the thing out of the house. What was funny is that Nathan wouldn’t let me tell Dad we’d gotten rid of it.”

All three of them are watching Tommy like he’s the most fascinating human being on the planet. Some things never change. Tommy doesn’t really have friends. He has groupies.

He reaches over and massages my shoulder while he’s talking. “Remember? You went over to the bottom of the staircase and yelled that it had gotten away and we had no idea where it was.” He bursts out laughing. “Dad kept calling down to ask if we’d found it yet, and you just sat on the couch saying things like ‘Not yet, Dad. Better stay in your room until it turns up.’”

“I’d forgotten all about that.” I pour myself another glass of wine. “He stayed upstairs for eleven hours. He wouldn’t even come down to use the bathroom.”

Tommy’s always done a killer imitation of Dad and he does it now. His voice drops about a fifth and he talks really fast and loud. “‘You boys better find that damn snake soon, or I’ll come down there and wring your scrawny little necks. I mean it. Nathan? Tommy? I’m not messing around.’”

All of a sudden I’m laughing, too. “He ended up peeing out a window, remember? We were cooking dinner in the kitchen when I looked up and saw this stream of water shooting out onto the lawn from the second story. It was sunset and the light caught it just right and I remember thinking, ‘Gee, that’s kind of pretty.’”

Tommy’s taking a drink when I say this and he has to spit it back in his glass because he’s laughing so hard. “Oh, God, that’s right. He heard us laughing then and finally figured out we were fucking with him. He came flying down the stairs and we took off before he could get to us. We left the stove on and everything.”

Everybody laughs but when Camille asks what happened next Tommy shrugs, smile quickly fading, and changes the subject. She’s tactful enough to let it go, but she looks curious. I zone out on the conversation.

I haven’t thought about that night in years but now it all comes back: Dad tearing through the kitchen and Tommy and I desperate to get away from him, plunging through the screen door so fast we nearly ripped it off its hinges. He chased us down the path to the lighthouse for at least a hundred yards screaming, “You’d better run, you little sons of bitches!” Tommy wasn’t wearing a shirt and neither of us had shoes on. We sprinted all the way to the ocean and stayed there until close to midnight, and even though it was late summer it was a cold night.

I remember sitting next to each other on the beach, pressed together for warmth, laughing about the snake and worrying what Dad was going to do to us. I gave Tommy my shirt because he was quite a bit smaller than I was at the time and he didn’t have any body fat to protect him from the wind. I think I was fifteen and he was thirteen. We could have gone to a friend’s house, but for some reason we didn’t want to. I think the beach was the only place we ever felt safe. Walls and roofs may keep you warm and dry, but they don’t give you much room to run if you need it.

Anyway, when we got home Dad had locked the door and refused to let us in. We knocked at the kitchen door for quite a while, and then we went around back to try the sliding doors, and we could see him sitting in his chair in the living room, sipping whiskey and reading. We yelled through the glass and rapped on it for fifteen minutes but he never looked up. We spent the night in a hammock near the cornfield, holding each other and shivering. It was light in the sky by the time I finally fell asleep, and the first thing I saw when I woke up was Dad standing over us with an expression of disgust on his face.

“What a couple of little faggots,” he said. “Let go of each other and come inside before the fucking neighbors see you.”

Neither of us had the balls to remind him that we didn’t have any fucking neighbors.

I don’t remember what Dad eventually did to us. Locking us out for the night apparently took the edge off his rage (even though he’d sworn off the physical violence thing years before, I have no doubt he would have killed us if we’d stayed in the house that night) and whatever he came up with to punish us the next day completely escapes me now. His usual method was to make us quit doing something we loved to do—he made Tommy drop out of tennis one year and he made me give up band, for instance. But it must not have been too bad, because I have no memory of it.

And whatever it was, pissing off Dad like that was definitely worth it.

“Nathan?” Tommy’s shaking my shoulder again. “Camille just asked you a question.”

“Sorry, Camille.” I reach for a cracker and smear it with a big glob of Brie. “Whenever Tommy’s talking I fall into a coma.”

Tommy ignores me and slides his chair closer to Philip.

Camille pushes her hair off her forehead with an elegant finger. She has big blue eyes. “I was just asking if you ever get down to New York.”

Tommy snorts. “Nathan barely leaves the yard, let alone the state.”

I feel a flash of irritation. “I haven’t been there in quite a while. New York is a little overwhelming for me.”

“So’s downtown Walcott,” mutters Tommy.

Jesus, he pisses me off. I keep my eyes on Camille. “I’ve got quite a few friends there but I’m still working up the courage to go back. The last time I visited I hated every minute of it.”

She gives me a pitying smile. “You just need to give it more of a chance. It grows on you.” She looks around the table. “I’m always dumbfounded when I meet someone who doesn’t care for New York, aren’t you? It’s as if they’re from Mars or something. Why on earth would anyone feel that way?”

I smile back at her. “Because it’s hot and dirty and loud, and it smells like urine and stale garlic, and it’s full of people who think anyone from a small town is a rube with hay in his teeth who enjoys being spoken to in a condescending fashion.”

She recoils and Tommy glares at me. “Stop being so sensitive, Nathan. She was just asking.” He turns to Camille. “I should have warned you about Nathan’s temper, Camille. I keep hoping he’ll mellow out as he gets older but so far there’s no sign of that.”

She bites her lip. “It’s my fault. I didn’t mean to sound condescending. I’m sorry, Nathan.”

I mutter an apology too, and everybody falls silent for a minute. Tommy returns to his perusal of Philip’s earlobe and I stare into my drink.

When I raise my head, Camille’s running her fingers through Kyle’s hair, but she’s doing it mindlessly, as if she’s petting a cat. Kyle lets her do it but he doesn’t lean in to her touch, either. (He’s one of those people whose eyes are never still. They dart from my face to my hands and then around the porch like a bat in an old movie theater.) Camille and he are both watching me now, because Tommy and Philip are whispering to each other and seem to have forgotten us.

Camille leans forward, studying me. “I thought you’d be blond like Tommy.” Her voice is pleasant; she seems to have forgiven me for my outburst.

I shake my head. “Tommy’s adopted. We found him in the rushes down by the river, singing ‘Kum ba yah’ and turning water into wine.”

Tommy breaks off baby-talking to Philip long enough to look over his shoulder at me. “Nathan’s the one who’s adopted. He’s the bastard love child of Ernest Borgnine and Cher.”

I sigh. We could go on like this indefinitely, but I don’t want to. It’s just our old shtick, and suddenly I’m tired of it. I point at Camille’s wedding ring. “So how long have you two been married?”

She holds her hand out to me so I can see it better. It’s a delicate gold band with a single small diamond. “One hundred and sixty-three days. But we’ve been living together for over a year.” She gazes at Kyle and her face softens. “I finally talked him into making an honest woman of me.”

Kyle grins at her absently and scratches his jaw with his fingernails. He needs a shave. He turns back to me. “How long have you been living in this place?”

Camille frowns.

I sip my wine. “All but ten years of my life. I moved out when I went to college and back in when Dad died.”

Tommy grunts. “And now it will take the Connecticut National Guard to get him out of here.”

I scowl at him. “Tommy doesn’t approve of Walcott. There aren’t enough sex clubs and porno shops to keep him amused.”

Tommy narrows his eyes but Camille cuts in before he can respond. “It must be strange to still be in the same place you lived as a kid. Doesn’t the isolation get to you?”

I shrug. “Sometimes. But it’s really not all that isolated. The trees just make it seem like that.”

I can see that nobody believes me. They start chatting about the cottage and the weather, and I stand up to go inside and get the vegetables I’m roasting for supper out of the oven.

“What’s going on in the cornfield?” Tommy asks.

I look where he’s pointing. There’s a big patch of freshly dug dirt at the far end of the field, surrounded by broken and uprooted cornstalks. Christ. Dale Cromwell is not going to be happy. “Cheri Tipton was digging around out there today when I went to the beach. She was supposed to leave the corn alone, though.”

Camille gets up and walks a few feet toward the field. “What was she looking for?”

“She thinks there might be some relics from an old Indian village out there.”

Tommy makes a face. “A what? She’s nuts. There’s nothing there but crow shit and corn.”

“That’s what I told her, but she found an old letter that talks about this mysterious tribe who used to live around here.”

Camille leans down to pull a deer tick off her ankle. “Really? That’s very exciting.” She inspects the tick for a second, then calmly pulls it apart with her perfectly manicured purple fingernails, ignoring the chorus of “gross” and “eeugh, yuck,” from the rest of us. Kyle’s voice is the loudest.

She shakes her head. “What a bunch of sissies.”

No one gets why I love Walcott as much as I do. (Except Tommy, of course, who’d never admit, even under torture, that he feels the same way.) To be honest, I’m not even sure myself. My job is just a job, and the people who live here are no different than people everywhere, and there are thousands of small towns up and down the coast that are cheaper or prettier or less infested with tourists, where I could presumably be just as happy. It’s not challenging, it’s not cultural, and it’s certainly not the center of anything that matters.

But Walcott has everything I need or want. I know every square inch of my cottage and my land, and every weed and rock on the path to the beach. I love waking once a week to the “whoosh” of a hot air balloon venting over my roof (sightseers pay Kelly Green fifty dollars per person to take them up for an hour in his balloon, and every Saturday he floats them over my property on his way to the coast), and I love listening to a local pack of coyotes when they come out at night from an abandoned corncrib on the property abutting mine and call to each other across my field, the pups yipping like excited second-graders on a field trip. I love the woods around my house, where I cut down dead trees every October and November and chop them up for firewood, and I love the clean, straight roads that run along the ocean for miles, where (on the rare mornings when I can get my fat ass out of bed to do it) I ride my bike in the quiet before dawn.

But most of all I love the nights. The stillness, the stars, and the slow rise and fall of the moon: these are all I know of God. In this place, in that darkness, nothing of who I am or what I’ve done matters, and all the demons in my head, cowed in the presence of something sacred, temporarily shut their rabid, carping little mouths, and let me rest. I can’t imagine finding that kind of peace anywhere else, even though you’d think I’d be more comfortable far away from here, like Tommy, in an anonymous city where there isn’t a bad memory hiding under every rock and behind every tree, waiting to ambush me every time I go for a walk or stop to take a leak.

But what can I say? This is my home. Walcott may be loaded with pitfalls, but after all these years I’ve finally learned where it’s safe to step. And I’m not about to risk moving someplace where I don’t know the terrain, or what those who hunt me look like.

Everybody’s still in bed when I get up in the morning. Tommy is sleeping on his stomach on the hide-a-bed in the living room with one arm hanging off the mattress, and Philip is curled up on his side next to him. The sheet is down by their feet and they’re both naked, the dark tan on their torsos and limbs contrasting starkly with the whiteness of their asses. I try not to stare at the only part of Philip that’s awake. They were at it half the night—not being in the least bit quiet about it—and he’s apparently ready for more.

I tiptoe past them and when I step into the kitchen I listen for noises from Kyle and Camille in the guest room, but they’re not awake yet, either. I take a long time showering and shaving, and by the time I head back upstairs to get dressed, Tommy is sitting up in bed, blinking at the sun.

“Hey,” he whispers. “What time is it?” Philip stirs next to him.

“About seven thirty,” I whisper back. “I just put on some coffee.”

“Seven thirty? Why are you up so early?”

“I teach, remember?”

“I thought you didn’t have to be there until nine.”

“I don’t. I just like to have time to wake up.”

He yawns and nods. “Same old Nathan.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I think it’s cool you take your job so seriously.”

He doesn’t have a clue how little I care about my job. I watch him put his hand on Philip’s hip and run his brown fingers over the pale skin. Philip rolls over on his back, still mostly asleep but awake enough to give Tommy better access.

I shake my head. “Same old Tommy.”

He grins. “Take your time getting dressed, will you?”

One of Dad’s favorite jokes was “Know what AIDS means? Adios Infected Dick Sucker.”

Har har har. What a knee-slapper. He had dozens of similar, venomous one-liners; antigay comments flew out his mouth like pissed-off bees, and most of them were said when he was sure his sons could hear him.

I’m sure he knew we were gay, and no doubt that’s one of the main reasons he treated us the way he did, but Tommy and I never spoke of it with him. It’s not that we thought he’d disown us or not love us anymore—that’s a given, and we could have handled that and not cared much at all. But the God’s honest truth is we were afraid he’d kill us if we ever had the balls to actually say the words out loud. We were absolutely sure he’d cut off our heads—and our dicks—with Grandpa’s old World War II bayonet he kept in his bedroom. He could live with suspicion, but not with truth.

Anyway, the first time I got a blow job, Dad was in the next room, reading the newspaper. I was fourteen, and it was after school, and he thought I was reading in Tommy’s and my room. I remember lying on my bed with my legs open, the blond head of another boy bobbing up and down between my thighs, and I knew if Dad caught us he’d tear us apart. But as you can probably imagine, by that time I didn’t much care.

It all started innocently enough. The other boy and I were sitting on the bed together, talking about what had happened at school that day, and I happened to mention seeing Lee Koslowski’s dick in the showers after gym class. (Koslowski’s dick was a local legend. I swear to God it was at least eight inches long, flaccid.) He noticed me getting hard talking about it, but when I got embarrassed and tried to cross my legs to cover it up he wouldn’t let me. He put a hand on each knee and pushed my legs flat, and he stared at the bulge in my crotch for a while before finally reaching up to touch it. I remember my mouth going dry and my heart pounding; I remember his fingers opening my belt and unzipping my pants; I remember shifting my hips so he could pull my shorts down past my knees.

He played with my penis for a while, pulling at it experimentally and laughing at the expressions on my face, then he said, “I saw a picture in a magazine of a girl doing this to a guy,” and he opened his mouth, wet his lips and went to work. I remember my hands in his hair, and how he surfaced for air every once in a while, and how he whispered, “Better be quiet, Nathan,” when I started to whimper right before I came. I remember convulsing on the bed, and the sound of him swallowing several times, and the smell of my semen and sweat in the room. I remember staring up at the ceiling, knowing I should feel guilty about what had just happened, but feeling so fucking good I couldn’t quite manage anything remotely resembling guilt.

So I waited until my heart slowed, then I told Tommy to lie on his back for his turn.

Simon comes in late to class with a bad case of bed-hair and red, swollen eyes. Vernette asks him what rock he climbed out from under and he shows her his middle finger before plopping down in his seat. The rest of the class laughs and looks at me expectantly. Why do kids like to see other kids get in trouble?

Vernette gets impatient when I don’t say anything. “Did you see that, Mr. Bishop? Simon just flipped me off.”

I sigh. “Don’t flip off Vernette, Simon.”

He stares at his desk, ignoring me.

Vernette glares at the back of his head. “I want an apology.” She plays with a dangling earring and starts chewing her gum faster. “I want an apology right now.”

The other kids watch avidly, heads swiveling back and forth as if they’re trying to keep up with a tennis match. I fight the urge to sigh again. “Apologize to her, Simon, so we can get back to work.”

He slowly lifts his head and turns to face her. “I’m sorry you’re such a bitch, Vernette.”

Vernette slams her book shut. “What is your problem? Why are you being such a faggot?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” I say in my best no-nonsense teacher’s voice. “Simon, why don’t you get out of here for today?”

He gets up quickly. “Fine by me.”

I call after him before he gets out the door. “Come back after class to get tomorrow’s assignment.”

He doesn’t answer.

Vernette is nearly yelling. “Aren’t you going to make him go to the principal? He should be suspended for acting like that.”

I tell her to drop it but she isn’t through. “That’s not right, Mr. Bishop. He called me a bitch in front of the whole class and you, I don’t know, you just rewarded him or something by letting him go early.”

“Relax, Vernette. I’ll cut his tongue out later if that will make you happy, but can we get back to work now?”

She snatches up her purse and her textbook and stalks to the door. “I’m going to talk to Mr. Baker.”

Ted Baker is the principal and he and I don’t much like each other. No doubt he’ll lecture me later on the need to maintain proper discipline in my classroom.

Vernette waits for me to say something else, probably hoping I’ll call her back. I shake my head. “Tell him I said hello.”

She spins on her heels and flounces down the hall.

The first time I tried to kill myself was November 23, 1988. I got up on a stump and threw a rope over a tree branch in the woods, then I put a noose around my neck and tied my hands behind my back with some phone cord and stepped off the stump.

It hurt like hell. The rope bit into my neck and I tried to scream but I couldn’t. I kicked my legs around and was starting to black out when I felt the stump under my toes and pulled myself to where I could stand up again. But I couldn’t get untied so I started yelling for somebody to come help me. My legs were going numb and I was beginning to panic when Tommy finally came looking for me. I’d yelled myself hoarse and pissed my pants, and I bawled like a baby calf when I saw him. He bawled, too, after he got me down.

Dad was still at work when we got back to the cottage, thank God, so at least I didn’t have to deal with him, but after I took a shower Tommy yelled at me for almost an hour and kept asking me why I’d do something so stupid. I’d never seen him so mad. I couldn’t tell him the truth, though, because it would have hurt him too much to hear it. Besides, he wouldn’t have understood.

To people like Tommy, suicide is never an option. The idea of killing himself has never crossed his mind. He believes that no matter how shitty today is, tomorrow will be better, and if tomorrow is shitty, too, then next week or next month everything will sort itself out. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to listen to him spout obnoxious, cloying bromides like “Just wait: the pendulum will swing from bad to good again,” or “You’ll see, the wheel will turn full circle,” or—the one I hate the most—“You just have to hold on till dawn.” In his reality, guilt and pain can be dealt with by simply flipping a switch. And what’s especially irritating is that he really, truly has faith that the world works like that for everybody, and all people like me need to do to fix ourselves is to “Turn that frown upside down.”

God. I should have hung him instead of myself.

The reason he got so pissed at me that day was because he thought I’d made a conscious choice to commit suicide. He probably still thinks that. I’m sure if you asked him he’d tell you that I had a plan about where to tie the rope, and what stump I should stand on, and what time of the afternoon I wanted to try it—as if I had an outline in my head for the whole thing. Something like:

 (1) Get home from school.(a) Have snack.(b) Brush teeth.

 (2) Dangle from tree by neck until dead.(a) Loll tongue, turn purple.(b) Severely inconvenience Tommy.

But it wasn’t like that.

There was no premeditation, no schedule, no design. Blackness just came down in my head, like a curtain at the end of a play. That’s all. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s as if my mind hung up a sign in the window that said “Out to lunch,” and my hands and feet did the rest for me. Instinct took over, and sometimes instinct isn’t about survival. Sometimes it’s only about stopping the pain, however you have to do it.

I had a bad rope burn around my neck and I had to wear a turtleneck for three days to cover it. Tommy watched me like a hawk for more than a month, and he made me promise not to do anything like that again.

But I had my fingers crossed when I promised, so of course it didn’t count.

Simon doesn’t come back after class, but Ted Baker is standing in the door when I dismiss the kids. He comes in while I’m erasing the blackboard and perches his fat left ass-cheek on my desk and his fat right foot on my floor. He’s wearing bright blue tennis shorts and a polo shirt, and he’s got black dress socks on under his sandals.

I can’t stand this guy. We’ve known each other for decades, because we’re the same age and we both grew up in Walcott. He was an asshole when we were in school and he’s even more of an asshole now. He was the kind of kid who did one stupid thing after another—poured sugar in gas tanks, pulled the fire alarm during basketball games, set fires in trash cans—and he never once got caught. I could have ignored all that, though, because none of it affected me directly, but one time he decided it would be funny to pee on Tommy’s clothes in the locker room while Tommy was in the shower. I remember catching him doing it and I remember moving toward him, but I don’t remember anything else about the fight until I heard Tommy’s voice in my ear whispering, “Please let go of him, Nathan. He can’t breathe.” Tommy’s arms were wrapped around me from behind, and I remember looking down at Baker and seeing that I was kneeling on him and his face was purple and his eyes were frantic and his hands were trying to pry my fingers off his throat. My forearms were scratched and bloody and the right side of my face felt numb. I let go and stood up, and I remember wondering why all the other boys in the locker room backed away from me when I went to my locker to give Tommy my clothes to wear.

Anyway, Baker never did anything to Tommy or me again, but he hates us both, and I know it pisses him off to no end that I work here and he hasn’t been able to get rid of me. I was here before he was, and the superintendent, Madeline Huber, won’t let him fire me, but he’s been a thorn in my side for years, burying me with paperwork and making frequent classroom “visits” to evaluate my teaching. (It’s his doing, by the way, that I no longer have a summer vacation to speak of. He somehow managed to convince the school board—over my strident protests—that I should be permanently drafted into the summer school’s remedial teaching program.) I have yet to receive a positive evaluation from him, but for some reason Huber doesn’t care.

He clears his throat and rubs his hands together. “How’s it going, Nathan?”

“It’s going fine, Ted. I take it Vernette came to talk to you.”

“She did. She said the new kid—what’s his name?”

“Simon Hart.”

“She said this Hart kid flipped her off and called her a bitch and you didn’t do anything about it.”

“That’s not true. I kicked him out of class. And he only flipped her off because she was rude to him when he walked in the room.”

He gestures for me to sit down at one of the kid’s desks. “That doesn’t justify him giving her the finger.”

I stay standing. “No, it doesn’t. That’s why I kicked him out.”

“Why didn’t you send him to me? That’s why I’m here.”

“And what would you have done? Suspended him?”

“Probably. The school has a no-tolerance policy for sexual harassment.”

“What are you talking about? He wasn’t hitting on her, Ted, he was just flipping her off.” I wander over to the window. There’s a hot breeze blowing through and I can feel sweat on my back and in my armpits. I turn to face him. “She kind of deserved it. Did she happen to mention that she called Simon a faggot after he called her a bitch?”

He rolls his eyes. “That’s hardly the same thing. Kids say ‘faggot’ more often than they say ‘hello.’ No one takes it seriously.”

Why do I bother? If I admit to him why I take it seriously he’ll just try harder than ever to find a reason to fire me. “I’m just saying Vernette was as much to blame as Simon. Look, I’ll talk to the kid, okay? I’ll make sure he shapes up and apologizes to Vernette, and if he doesn’t I’ll send him to you and you can castrate him. How’s that?”

Ever since he was a kid he’s had this weird habit of sucking his acne-scarred cheeks in and blowing them out again. He’s doing that now. “There’s no need to be defensive. I’m just doing my job.”

“Let me handle it, okay?”

He sighs heavily, as if I’ve asked him for one of his kidneys. “All right, Nathan. But after you’ve talked to him I want you to write up a report about what happened. I need a paper trail in my files in case this blows up in our faces.”

“I don’t get why you’re making such a big deal out of this. Two kids got pissed at each other, that’s all. End of story.”

“It’s not like when you and I were kids anymore. You can’t even believe how fast something like this can turn into an ugly lawsuit.”

Whatever. “Okay. I’ll write you a report after I talk to Simon.”

More cheek-sucking. “Good.” I can tell he wants to say more but he finally stands up and saunters toward the hall. I start gathering my things but he turns abruptly in the doorway. “So I heard that Tom’s back for a visit.”

There are no secrets in Walcott. Tommy could have snuck into town in the middle of a moonless night with his headlights off, dressed in black with charcoal smeared on his face, and somebody still would have seen him. “That’s right. Who told you that?”

He shrugs. “I heard it through the grapevine. Somebody saw him pull into town yesterday. Tell him I said hello.”

What a hypocrite. “I will. I’ll tell him to stop over and see you.”

A sickly smile. “That’s all right. I’m sure he’s got plenty to do without hunting me up.”

He says good-bye and scuttles back to the safety of his office.

Camille’s sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading John Irving’s A Widow for One Year when I get home. She looks up and smiles. “Hi, Nathan. I’ve been abandoned. The boys all wanted to go for a swim in the ocean before they had breakfast.”

How nice of Tommy to leave me with this stranger in my house. “And you didn’t?”

She puts the book down and stretches her arms above her head. She’s wearing a light blue, sleeveless summer dress; her armpits are shaved. “Not on your life. The water’s too cold up here.”

“It’s not that cold. It feels great once you’re in.”

She drops her arms and shakes her head. “I grew up in Fort Lauderdale. Swimming in the ocean there was like taking a warm bath. That’s what it’s supposed to feel like.” She gets up and refills her mug from the pot. “How was teaching?”

“Marvelous.” I put my briefcase in the corner and tell her about Simon and Vernette and Ted Baker.

She makes a sympathetic face, which may or may not be genuine. “Is it always like that?”

“Is what always like that?”

“Teaching.”

I snort. “No. Most of the time it’s worse.”

She sips at her coffee and plays with the cover of her book. “So why do it?”

I shrug. “It pays the bills.” I turn around and hunt for a mug in the dish rack. “I’m a teacher by default. Both of my degrees are in English, and there’s nothing else for me to do in Walcott but teach.” I pour myself coffee and keep talking with my back to her. “Besides, it’s not unbearable, and I can retire when I’m fifty-five.”

When I turn to face her again she’s studying me. “And how old are you now?”

“Thirty-one.”

She frowns. “So you’ve only got twenty-four more years of doing something on a daily basis that you don’t enjoy.”

I grimace. “Are you trying to get me to kill myself this morning or what?”

She grins. “Sorry. I just don’t understand how you can keep doing a job you don’t like, day after day. Especially when you live alone and don’t have kids to support. You could go anyplace and do anything you want.”

She’s starting to piss me off. She’s known me for all of twelve hours and already she’s trying to fix me.

“Yeah, the world is my oyster.” I take a swig of stale coffee and dump the rest in the sink. “But I don’t want to live anywhere else, Camille.”

She hears the irritation in my voice and bites her lip. “I see.”

She stays quiet while I rinse my mug. I take my time doing it, and when I finish and look at her again, she’s apparently decided to give up her interrogation, because she changes the subject.

“Is there a basement under the floor in here?” She gestures behind her. “I tripped over the rug this morning coming out of the bathroom, and while I was straightening it I noticed there was a trap door there or something.”

She probably rooted around in my underwear drawer, too, while she was at it. I untuck my shirt and kick off my shoes. “It’s a wine cellar. Nothing too fancy, but my dad had pretty good taste in red wine. He’d buy a case now and then and toss it down there. I probably still have more than a hundred bottles left.”

“Really? I love red wine. Can I look?”

Why are people so fucking nosy? She should get together with Cheri Tipton; the two of them could have all sorts of fun prying into other people’s lives.

I shrug. “Sure, if you want to.” I kick the rug back and lift the door. It’s kind of heavy, but my great-grandfather rigged it with some kind of ingenious weight system that does most of the work once you get it an inch or two off the floor. I prop it in place and grab a flashlight and lead her down the stairs. There’s just enough room for both of us down here, but I have to bend my head a little to keep from banging it on the ceiling. The cellar smells like earth and old wood, and it’s about twenty degrees cooler than the kitchen. It’s basically just a six-by-eight-foot room with a rack of wine on each wall, and each rack is about half full. I’ve never liked this cellar. It’s dank and claustrophobic and there are cobwebs everywhere.

I shine the light on one rack and Camille pulls out and dusts off several bottles to look at the labels. She gasps at one of them. “My God, this is a two-hundred-dollar bottle of wine.”

“You’re kidding.” I move forward and she hands it to me. It’s a nineteen seventy-two Chambertin. Dad always went gaga over French wine. I like the stuff but I don’t know much about it. “I think I have four or five of these.”

She blinks in the beam of the flashlight and checks out another row of bottles. “I’m not exactly an expert, but it looks to me like you have a small fortune down here.”

I laugh. “I doubt that.”

“No, I’m serious. I haven’t seen a single bottle so far that isn’t worth at least fifty or sixty dollars, and you said you have more than a hundred bottles. So that’s what? A few thousand dollars?”

It’s my turn to blink. A few thousand dollars is hardly a fortune, but it’s nothing to sneeze at either, since I make less than thirty thousand a year even with my summer teaching. “You’ve got to be shitting me. Think I should sell it?”

“God, no. Drink it. Enjoy it.” She steps to the stairwell and stands in the light from the kitchen, and I can see dust floating around her head. She smiles coyly. “Share it with your friends.”

I feel the corners of my mouth turn up against my will. “Now? It’s not even noon.”

“And your point is?” She pulls cobwebs out of her hair. “It’s the only sane way to deal with unwanted houseguests.”

I look at the floor and lie. “You’re not unwanted.”

“Bullshit. Even if Tommy hadn’t told us on the way up here that you weren’t exactly excited about having us visit, I’d know it. It’s all over your face.”

Goddamn Tommy and his big mouth. I look up again and she’s still smiling at me. She holds out her hand.

Great. She wants to bond. I put the neck of the Chambertin in her outstretched fingers. “What the hell.”

She laughs and leads me upstairs.

We’re eating fried egg sandwiches and potato chips, and we’re well into our second bottle of wine. We’ve been gossiping about Tommy’s former boyfriends for most of the last two hours (Camille thinks, as I do, that Philip is only another anonymous bedmate in a long line of anonymous bedmates) and I’ve actually been enjoying her company. She just told me that since she and Kyle got married, Tommy’s had at least thirteen of these so-called “relationships.”

“I’m surprised it’s not more. Thirteen in six months is way under par for him.”

She fiddles with her wedding ring. “Some of them were actually very sweet men. Let’s see…” she holds up a hand and begins to count on her fingers, “the first one I met was Vinnie the carpenter, then came Pablo the fireman, then Brad the vacuum salesman, then after Brad was George, the big stupid policeman.” She pauses. “Or was his name Greg? Whatever, he had bad teeth and he smelled like lobster bisque. Anyway, you get the picture, I’m sure.”

She wets the tip of her index finger and runs it around the rim of her crystal glass, making it hum. “My favorite was this gorgeous Italian guy named Harold. Harold was a charmer. He taught kickboxing at the Y and was always showing up late to everything with bruises and cuts all over him.” She grimaces. “I thought he was a good match for Tommy but you know Tommy. He gets bored fast.”

I refill her glass. “Maybe he just needs some Ritalin.”

She makes a face. “What he needs is a bucket of saltpeter on his cereal every morning for breakfast.” She sighs. “I was really angry with Tommy when he dumped Harold, especially because the guy he replaced him with was a revolting pig named Willie who once told me that just talking to women made him sick to his stomach. Willie thought that cologne was something you should bathe in. Sitting in a car with him made me want to gag. I can’t believe Tommy brought him to our wedding.”

“Tommy was at your wedding?”

She takes a big gulp and nods. “He was Kyle’s best man. I wanted him to be my maid of honor instead, but I lost the coin toss.” She giggles. “He scandalized the crowd at our reception. He got up on stage with the band and sang a semipornographic version of the theme from Gilligan’s Island.”

“We made that up when we were kids.” (“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a grateful dick.”) “I can’t believe he sang that in public.”

“He sure did. Kyle’s family is pretty uptight and they were all horrified. Kyle tried to get him to shut up but Tommy just dragged him up on the stage to sing along. Kyle was drunk and got laughing so hard he fell down and knocked over a microphone stand. It almost disemboweled the drummer.”

I shake my head. “That’s my little brother.”

She laughs. “That wasn’t even the worst of it. At the end of the night Tommy dropped his pants and took a garter off his thigh and threw it at the priest. My poor mother still hasn’t recovered.”

I laugh, too, and spill a little wine on my shirt. “It’s a wonder no one’s shot him yet. He always gets away with murder.”

She covers her mouth and burps. “I love that about him.” She stands up to get a cloth napkin from the cabinet by the sink and she tosses me one, too, before sitting down again. Her coordination is a little impaired, but she still moves gracefully, like a dancer. “He could care less about what’s appropriate, and he’s so good-natured no one can stay mad at him for long.”

I nibble at a chip. “It’ll catch up to him one day, though. He’ll lose his looks and no one will think the outrageous shit he pulls is cute anymore.”

She stares at me curiously. “Does he make you mad sometimes?”

I hesitate. “No. Not really.”

She studies me for a second and looks as if she’s going to say something else, but then she takes a lock of her hair and holds it over her upper lip to form a mustache. “Do you think I could pass for a man? My husband might like that. In fact, I’m sure he’d prefer it.” She giggles some more. “I think I’m a little tipsy, Nathan.”

“Really?” I grin at her. “You seem perfectly sober.”

We both start laughing again, then I take a big swallow of my drink and it goes down the wrong tube and I start coughing.

She reaches over to pat my back. “Easy. Don’t waste such good wine by pouring it in your lungs.”

I laugh some more and wipe my eyes. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

She settles back in her chair and I rest my chin on my fist and sigh. She raises her eyebrows. “What?”

“Nothing.” I look at the table. “I was just thinking about the time when Tommy tried to steal some condoms from the drugstore. Lydia Cruise caught him red-handed with two boxes of French ticklers in his pockets.”

She chortles. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me? So what happened?”

“Absolutely nothing, of course. Tommy gave her a song and dance about how some bullies threatened to beat him up if he didn’t do it, and he’d never dream of doing anything illegal otherwise, and he didn’t even know what the condoms were for, and please, please don’t tell my dad or he’ll kill me.”

I set my glass down and lace my fingers together behind my head. “Lydia Cruise was the biggest bitch in town. She routinely tossed kids out of the store just for looking at her funny. If it had been me she’d caught, she would have beaten me senseless, then called the cops, and my dad, and fucking Dan Rather and everybody else she could think of. But Tommy just batted his pretty blue eyes at her, and Lydia did everything but roll over and play dead.”

I pause to wipe my lips on my sleeve. “I couldn’t believe it when Tommy told me about it later. He said that before she let him go she even patted his head and gave him a free Snickers bar. Jesus.” Bitterness seeps into my voice. “Even Lydia couldn’t resist him. Precious little Tommy is everybody’s golden boy.”

She winces at my tone. “I thought you said he didn’t make you mad.”

I sniff. “Yeah, well, I guess I was lying.”

The screen door bangs open and Tommy, Kyle and Philip finally come trooping in, talking about something or other. They stop to stare at us.

Tommy looks at his watch and raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Wow. Not even one o’clock yet. I guess the sun passes over the yardarm earlier here than it does in New York.”

I grew up on the beach and I’m used to seeing beautiful young people (and quite possibly the wine has lowered my standards or something), but Tommy and Philip look like matching bronze gods, all long limbs and toned muscle and smooth chests—I know Tommy shaves his and I’d bet Philip does, too—and even though Kyle is too skinny and too hairy, he’s strong and healthy, with a nice firm ass and a perky set of nipples. His eyes flit over me momentarily, but he’s mostly watching Tommy, of course, and doesn’t even notice at first that Camille has put out her hand for him to take. He finally sees it and lets her pull him over, but when she tilts her head back for a kiss he pretends not to notice and releases her fingers so he can rejoin Tommy and Philip by the sink.

Camille looks hurt at first and then pissed, but she tries to mask it. She takes another sip of wine. “So how was the beach?” she asks no one in particular. Her voice is too bright.

“Awesome.” Philip throws his arms around Tommy and nuzzles his neck. “Tommy and I made a sand castle.”

Tommy gives him a perfunctory hug, then lets go and gets a wineglass out of the dish rack. “It was a good one, too, but for some reason all the towers ended up looking like gigantic penises.”

I pour for him. “Imagine that.” I turn to Kyle. “And what were you doing while these two juveniles played in the sand?”

Camille snorts and pops another potato chip in her mouth. She’s glaring at Kyle. “Yes, I can’t imagine you not wanting to participate while something phallic was happening.”

There’s sudden acid in her voice. The transformation is jarring. When it was just the two of us here she was relaxed and cheerful. Now suddenly she’s breathing hard and trying not to cry.

Silence. Kyle gets a glass out of the rack, too. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, dear.” She slugs down the rest of her wine and holds her glass out for more. “Nothing at all.”

Tommy plops down in the chair next to me and picks up my sandwich for a bite. He smells like salt and sweat. “So what’s up, big brother? It’s not like you to hit the booze so early.”

I take my sandwich back before he can eat the whole damn thing. “Camille made me.”

She smiles but there’s no humor in her eyes. She shifts in her chair. “That’s right. I didn’t want to drink alone and since my husband left me to go prancing about at the ocean, I twisted Nathan’s arm and forced him to join me.”

Kyle fills his glass, glaring at her. “I hate it when you get like this, Camille. What’s your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem.” She stands up. “It would just be nice to get a fucking kiss from my fucking husband every once in a while without having to beg for one.”

Five minutes ago she was goofy but completely in control. Now her face is bright red and she’s weaving a little. Philip’s staring at the floor and even Tommy is looking embarrassed. He reaches for the sandwich again. “Hey, Camille. Chill out, okay? Let’s have a good time.”

She doesn’t even look at him. “Hey, Tommy. Fuck you, okay?”

There’s a knock at the screen door and everybody but Camille turns to find out who it is. She’s standing in my way with her eyes fixed on Kyle, so I have to lean around her to see.

It’s Simon. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

I push my chair back and step around Camille. “Simon? What are you doing here?”

And who was the idiot who told you where I live?

I open the screen door.

“Hey, Mr. Bishop.” He smiles sheepishly. He obviously heard Camille’s last comment. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Tommy comes up next to me. “Who’s this?” He sticks out his hand and puts on his most charming smile. “I’m Tom. Nathan’s brother.”

Simon takes his fingers. “I’m Simon.”

“Hi, Simon. You must be new. I know everybody in Walcott and I haven’t seen you before.”

Philip comes up behind Tommy and sticks his tongue in Tommy’s ear. Simon’s eyes get big and he drops Tommy’s hand like it’s burning him. Tommy just grins and drapes an arm over Philip’s shoulders.

Goddammit. Now every kid in school is going to know I’ve got a house full of fags.

“I just moved here a few weeks ago,” Simon mumbles, trying not to look at anybody.

Tommy motions for him to come in. “Want a glass of wine?”

I put my hand on Simon’s shoulder and move him back so I can step outside. “Simon is one of my students, Tommy.” I shut the screen door behind me. “Let’s talk out here.”

We move away from the front steps. Tommy is watching from the doorway and when Simon can’t see him he shapes his mouth in an O and bobs his head up and down, miming a blow job. I flip him off behind my back and lead Simon around the corner of the house, out of sight.

It’s another brutally hot day. I’m still wearing the shirt and shorts I had on at the school, but my shirt is unbuttoned and I’m barefoot. Simon is dressed in his habitual cutoffs and T-shirt; there are sweat stains on his chest and under his arms.

I lead him into the shade of a red maple. “Don’t mind my brother and his friend. They’re both retarded. So what’s up?”

He looks up at me then drops his eyes. “I wanted to say I’m sorry about how I acted in class today.”

“Yeah, I needed to talk to you about that. What’s going on?”

He shrugs and still won’t look at me. His chin is quivering. “Nothing, really. I’m just having a bad day, that’s all.”

Why is it you have to browbeat people into talking about what they obviously want to talk about? “That’s not good enough, Simon. You were being a jerk today, and besides that, you got me into trouble. What’s up?”

“You got in trouble?” He glances at me, surprised, from under his hair. “Who with?”

“Mr. Baker. He came to see me after class because Vernette complained about you. I got a lecture because I didn’t send you to him.”

“Shit.” His chin quivers some more. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean….” A tear runs down his cheek.

A kid blubbering on my lawn is all I need. “Don’t worry about it.” I touch his shoulder awkwardly. “It’s not a big deal.”

He sniffs and wipes his nose on his sleeve. “My dad’s being a dick.” He blurts the words out. “He found a joint in my room this morning and he flipped out and started pushing me around and shit. Mom tried to stop him but he just yelled at her to get out of the room and let him deal with it.”

He pauses and I have to prod to get him talking again. “What happened then?”

He lifts up his shirt and shows me an ugly, fist-sized bruise on his side. The skin around it is angry and red.

“Jesus.” On impulse I reach out to touch it but I stop myself before my fingers connect. “Does it hurt to breathe?” My hand falls to my side.

“Not really. I’m just kind of sore.” He drops his shirt and he looks up at me wordlessly, his eyes full.

I feel myself getting pissed. Why are fathers such fucked-up human beings? “You should get it checked out anyway and make sure you’re okay. You might have a cracked rib or something.”

“I’m okay. I cracked a rib once and it doesn’t feel like this.”

“Is this the first time he’s hit you?”

He nods. “He’s slapped me once or twice but never very hard. I don’t think he meant to…”

“It doesn’t matter if he meant to or not. No one has the right to hit a kid.”

Tommy pokes his head around the side of the house. “You guys doing all right out here? Need anything?” He comes closer, smiling at Simon.

For Christ’s sake. His boyfriend’s in the house and he’s out here lusting after a fifteen-year-old. “We’re fine. We’re just having a private conversation.”

“Okay, but you might want to come inside soon. Camille’s getting a little out of hand.”

What does he expect me to do about it? I wave him away. He makes a pouty face and turns around.

Simon’s eyes follow him as he disappears around the corner. “You guys look a lot alike.”

I snort. “Now I know you need to see a doctor. Your eyesight is definitely messed up.”

He looks at me curiously. “No it’s not. His hair’s a different color and you’re a little taller but you’re obviously brothers.”

Whatever. “Look, Simon. We need to call somebody and tell them what your dad did to you.”

He looks horrified. “No! Please don’t tell anybody, Mr. Bishop. I don’t want to get him in trouble.”

“I have to tell, Simon. As a teacher I’m required by law to report stuff like this. If it ever comes out that I didn’t say anything I could get in deep shit.”

“I’d never tell anybody that you knew.” He grabs my arm. His fingers are damp. “Please? I only told you because I wanted to explain why I was such an asshole this morning. I didn’t want you thinking I was like that all the time.”

Why does he care what I think about him? I pull away from him gently. “I know you’re not like that. That’s why I was worried about you.” A mosquito lands on my elbow and I flick it off. “Did your mom see your dad hit you?”

“Yeah. She’s really pissed at him. They were still screaming at each other when I left the house this morning.”

“Have you been home since? Is it safe for you there?”

He nods. “It’s fine. Dad’s usually a lot cooler. But it’s his job. He’s an assistant DA and he gets really weirded out about drugs and shit.”

I think I knew the new DA’s last name was Hart but I hadn’t made the connection between him and Simon yet. “It still doesn’t give him the right to hit you.”

“Yeah, I know, but I guess he can’t help it. He kept yelling stuff like ‘I could get fired if people knew I had this in my house.’” His eyes well up again. “Please don’t tell anybody, Mr. Bishop. Okay? I’m sure he’s calmed down by now.”

He looks pathetic. I chew on my lip. “Simon…I can’t…”

He’s crying soundlessly, one tear after another leaking from his eyes and running down his face. Goddammit.

I sigh. What am I going to write in my report to Baker about this conversation? “Okay, okay. I won’t say anything.”

“Promise?”

For some reason I get a lump in my throat. I don’t know why. Maybe the wine is making me sentimental or maybe it’s just because this poor dumb kid is still stupid enough to believe in adult promises. “I promise. But if he does anything like this again I want you to come to me right away.”

“Okay.”

I am such a sap but I can’t help myself. “Promise?”

He smiles through his tears. It’s a sweet smile, relaxed and trusting. “I promise.”

We don’t say anything for a minute and in the silence I can hear crickets and birds and the sound of the wind blowing through the tall grass. He looks around for the first time since we came out here. “You sure have a lot of privacy. You can’t even see any other houses.”

I start to say something but just as I open my mouth Camille starts screaming inside. I can’t make out the words but she sounds like she’s gone postal. Simon and I gawk at each other but before he can ask any questions I tell him I’ll see him in class tomorrow.

He nods and starts walking toward the driveway. “Thanks a lot, Mr. Bishop.”

I almost tell him to call me Nathan but decide at the last second not to. It’s dangerous as a teacher to let kids get too close. I watch him disappear into the woods before I head back inside.

Camille is standing with her face in the bookshelves on the closed door of the guest room (where Kyle has apparently barricaded himself), and she’s yelling nonstop. Her voice sounds ragged and the only clear words are “fucking little chickenshit” but she shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. It’s hard to believe this is the same woman I was having lunch with just a short while ago. Tommy and Philip are nowhere in sight. I let the screen door slam behind me, hoping she’ll quiet down if she knows I’m in the room with her, but she doesn’t even bother to turn her head. There’s a broken plate on the kitchen counter and books all over the floor.

She grabs a dictionary and steps back to hurl it against the door.

Where the fuck is Tommy? All of a sudden I’m mad as hell. “Camille!”

It’s scary how much I sound like my dad when I’m angry.

She jumps and swivels clumsily to face me. Her hair is going every direction and her cheeks are streaked with tears. She points at the guest room door. “That son of a bitch called me a bitch. And he said I was drunk. I am not drunk.”

I step forward and take the book away from her. “You need to calm down right now, Camille, or you need to get out of my house.”

Her face falls and she crumples to the floor as if I’ve kicked her in the stomach. She starts to wail. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Nathan.”

I squat down next to her and try to quiet her. She’s sobbing uncontrollably, and when I put my hand on her back she lurches forward and wraps her arms around me and cries on my shirt.

Tommy reappears in the doorway to the living room and Philip is behind him. I look over Camille’s head and Tommy mouths, “Good job.”

“Eat shit,” I mouth back.

He looks confused and whispers, “What’s your problem?”

He brings a lunatic into my house and leaves me to deal with her and he wonders why I’m pissed.

The four of us don’t move for quite a while. Kyle finally pokes his head out of the guest room and gapes at us; we must look like a tableau in a wax museum.

Camille lifts her head off my chest. Sweat is beaded on her forehead and under her eyes, and her nostrils are wet and runny. “I don’t feel so good.” She tries to get her legs under her but before she can her eyes get huge and panicky.

“Uh-oh,” she says, and leans forward to vomit on my lap.