even Brady could tell that, because it was all croggled in the back, but he was still alive. He was breathing in little snorts. Blood was coming out of his nose. More was coming from the side of his head. His eyes moved back and forth, but nothing else did. Poor Frankie. Brady started to cry. His mother was crying, too.
“What should we do?” Brady asked. “What should we do, Mom?”
“Go upstairs and get me a pillow off the sofa.”
He did as she said. When he came back down, Sammy the Fire Truck was lying on Frankie’s chest. “I tried to get him to hold it, but he can’t,” Deborah Ann said.
Frankie looked up, first at his mother and then his brother. “Brady,” he said.
“It’ll be okay, Frankie,” Brady said, and held out the pillow.
Deborah Ann took it and put it over Frankie’s face. It didn’t take long. Then she sent Brady upstairs again to put the sofa pillow back and get a wet washcloth. “Turn off the stove while you’re up there,” she said. “The pancakes are burning. I can smell them.”
She washed Frankie’s face to get rid of the blood. Brady thought that was very sweet and motherly. Years later he realized she’d also been making sure there would be no threads or fibers from the pillow on Frankie’s face.
When Frankie was clean (although there was still blood in his hair), Brady and his mother sat on the basement steps, looking at him. Deborah Ann had her arm around Brady’s shoulders. “I better call nine-one-one,” she said.
“Okay.”
“He pushed Sammy too hard and Sammy fell downstairs. Then he tried to go after him and lost his balance. I was making the pancakes and you were putting toilet paper in the bathrooms upstairs. You didn’t see anything. When you got down to the basement, he was already dead.”
“Okay.”
“Say it back to me.”
Brady did. He was an A student in school, and good at remembering things.
“No matter what anybody asks you, never say more than that. Don’t add anything, and don’t change anything.”
“Okay, but can I say you were crying?”
She smiled. She kissed his forehead and cheek. Then she kissed him full on the lips. “Yes, honeyboy, you can say that.”
“Will we be all right now?”
“Yes.” There was no doubt in her voice. “We’ll be fine.”
She was right. There were only a few questions about the accident and no hard ones. They had a funeral. It was pretty nice. Frankie was in a Frankie-size coffin, wearing a suit. He didn’t look brain-damaged, just fast asleep. Before they closed the coffin, Brady kissed his brother’s cheek and tucked Sammy the Fire Truck in beside him. There was just enough room.
That night Brady had the first of his really bad headaches. He started thinking Frankie was under his bed, and that made the headache worse. He went down to his mom’s room and got in with her. He didn’t tell her he was scared of Frankie being under his bed, just that his head ached so bad he thought it was going to explode. She hugged him and kissed him and he wriggled against her tight-tight-tight. It felt good to wriggle. It made the headache less. They fell asleep together and the next day it was just the two of them and life was better. Deborah Ann got her old job back, but there were no more boyfriends. She said Brady was the only boyfriend she wanted now. They never talked about Frankie’s accident, but sometimes Brady dreamed about it. He didn’t know if his mother did or not, but she drank plenty of vodka, so much she eventually lost her job again. That was all right, though, because by then he was old enough to go to work. He didn’t miss going to college, either.
College was for people who didn’t know they were smart.
6
Brady comes out of these memories—a reverie so deep it’s like hypnosis—to discover he’s got a lapful of shredded plastic. At first he doesn’t know where it came from. Then he looks at the newspaper lying on his worktable and understands he tore apart the bag it was in with his fingernails while he was thinking about Frankie.
He deposits the shreds in the wastebasket, then picks up the paper and stares vacantly at the headlines. Oil is still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and British Petroleum executives are squalling that they’re doing the best they can and people are being mean