Reunion at Red Paint Bay - By George Harrar Page 0,5
of Davey’s shirt, white on black, small skeletons floating in the air. He reached out and grabbed a bit of the cloth.
Davey jumped back. “What are you doing?”
Simon pulled the bottom taut, exposing the words—DEAD BABIES. “Where’d you get this?”
The boy looked down at his chest. “I don’t know. I’ve had it for like forever.”
“Mom didn’t buy it for you?”
Davey shook his head. “I buy my own stuff.”
“With our money.”
“What am I supposed to do, get a job to pay for clothes?”
The tone was combative, as so often lately, but Simon wouldn’t take the bait. “A paper route wouldn’t hurt,” he said. “You could earn your spending money.”
“Sorry, Dad, but the only paper in town pays kids three bucks an hour.”
“Plus tips.” Simon stared at the odd expression on the dead babies, as if they were in a blissful state of nonexistence. It wasn’t a gory depiction at all. Still, not appropriate. “I don’t want you wearing that to school.”
The boy kicked the toe of his sneaker into the ground, sending up a clump of grass. “The teachers don’t care. They can’t stop you anyway. It’s like my freedom to wear what I want.”
“Sorry, kiddo, but my responsibility as a parent trumps your freedom of expression. Dead babies aren’t a suitable thing to be wearing on a shirt anywhere, let alone at school. And don’t kick up the grass.”
Davey stopped his foot in midair and set it down again. Then he put his hands on his hips, a provocative little pose. “Can I go now?”
“Sure,” Simon said, and he really was happy at that moment for his son to get out of his sight.
When Amy came through the front door, he was already pouring wine in the kitchen. “You’re late,” he called into her, “so I started without you.”
She stepped out of her shoes, leaving them in the hallway. “I had to go to an antiviolence workshop in Portland. It ran over.”
He poured the Merlot to the brim, red filling her glass. It was a challenge for him, how high he could go without spilling. “Change anybody’s mind from proviolence to antiviolence?”
She took the glass in two hands and sipped, as if from a chalice. “You should realize by now your sarcasm is useless on me. It just doesn’t stick.”
“That’s why I can be as sarcastic as I want. You don’t take it personally.”
Amy opened the refrigerator and pulled out a celery stalk. She swirled it in her wine, then bit off the end. “Davey upstairs?”
Simon nodded. “You know he’s wearing a T-shirt with dead babies on it?”
She did seem to know. “I think it’s an undead, vampire kind of thing the kids are into. I don’t like it either. Maybe I’ll make it disappear the next time he puts it in the wash.” She turned onto the side porch and flopped on the wicker sofa. It was detox time.
“So,” Simon said, sitting on the window ledge across from her. That was all he ever needed to say.
“The climax of my day was the tarantula lady. She lives in one of those new monstrosities in Bay Estates. Three thousand square feet just for herself and a dozen tarantulas.”
“She keeps tarantulas?”
“She rescues ones that are injured or deformed. She’s actually quite famous in spider circles. She’s written books on baboon spiders, mouse spiders, bird-eating spiders.”
Simon dipped the tip of his finger in the wine and ran it around the rim of the glass. It was a strangely pleasant sensation. “So why’s she seeing you—a troublesome tarantula?”
“She’s obsessed with observing every little event in her life like it’s deeply meaningful. She’s all wrapped up in memory.”
“That doesn’t sound so serious.”
“It is for her. She never sees the big picture. She thinks her life is an accumulation of minutely analyzed experiences, and she feels compelled to relate every one of them to me.”
Simon yawned at the thought of it. “I don’t know how you can listen to that stuff all day. It’s basically people saying, ‘Aren’t I a fascinating human being with all of these weird thoughts for you to interpret?’ ”
Amy bit off another piece of wine-soaked celery. “And you know this from what, your nonexistent first-hand experience with treatment yourself?”
“All I know about therapy I learned from you.”
She wiped her lips with her hand. “At the end of the session I stood up, her cue to leave, and she says, ‘I feel like I’m just getting started. I want to go for another hour.’ I said, ‘Let’s keep to our regular