The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,50
she was watching TV. The morning after the funeral, Maxine had gotten up and put on her apron. She’d cooked up some eggs and swept the front porch. Ron had shown up for breakfast in a police uniform. She hadn’t cried. What did it matter? It would be better if Ron died quickly, so that they could buy the plot next to Ernesto and Daniel and bury him there. Everything was out of her hands and in God’s.
That same day, a police officer had brought over the box of things from Ernesto’s desk. She didn’t care enough to throw the box out. Melissa had sat on the living-room floor and gone through it. Whoever had emptied out his desk had tossed everything into the box—paper clips, a half-eaten Milky Way bar, a few pens. All Maxine had been able to think about was that it was getting her living-room carpet dirty. She’d had Melissa put the box on the shelf in the garage and hadn’t thought about it for seven years.
But there was something in the box that she wanted now. Something she had just remembered was in it. Ernesto’s police revolver. Maxine got slowly out of her car, wondering if she could reach the box without getting out a stepladder.
Gil sat at the head of the dinner table, taking a helping of mashed potatoes. Susan sat at the other end, with their two daughters between.
“Joy, how did the Bandelier trip go yesterday?” he asked.
“Boring and stupid,” she said sullenly.
Gil pretended that he hadn’t heard her. “Remember when we used to go there when you were little?”
She glared at him and said to Susan, “Can I be excused?”
They had been sitting down for only a few minutes, but Susan nodded. Joy went running to her room.
Susan, who was acting as if nothing had happened, said to Gil, “When you bury St. Joseph, make sure and put a garbage bag over him. I don’t want him to get dirty….”
“But, Mommy,” Therese interrupted. “If you put one of the black bags over St. Joseph he won’t be able to see.”
“That’s true,” Gil said. “How about I put a clear bag over him?” Therese nodded her approval.
She and Susan talked for the rest of the dinner about her classroom’s newt and a friend named Zookie, whom Gil had never heard of.
He was in the kitchen, rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher, when Susan came up behind him.
“Don’t take it personally, she just doesn’t like any man right now,” she said as she rubbed his shoulder. “The Bandelier trip didn’t go well.”
“Why not?” He turned to look at her, softly brushing the hair out of her eyes.
“The boy she likes completely ignored her and instead talked to Jennifer Vigil the whole time.”
“What boy?” This was the first he had heard of a boy.
“I promised I wouldn’t tell,” was all she would say before shooing him out of the kitchen.
He changed into his sweatpants and went out into the freezing garage.
He did three sets of twenty jumping jacks to warm up. The only sound was the slapping of his tennis shoes against the concrete floor. He opened the garage door and started out at a brisk run. He jogged every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday right after dinner. He started slowly, waiting for his muscles to warm up, then took it up a notch. He checked his watch as he rounded a corner, then took it up some more.
His basketball coach had made him start running when he was fifteen. He was at St. Michael’s High School and just starting to reach his eventual six feet two inches. By his senior year he’d been an all-state point guard. He’d been good enough to get a basketball scholarship to the University of New Mexico to play for the Lobos.
As he rounded a corner he slipped a little on some ice he hadn’t noticed in the dark. He kept going, picking up the pace, mostly to fight off the cold.
He had never played a game for the Lobos. He had torn his rotator cuff during a practice the second week of school, when his shoulder hit the head of another player. His shoulder had never completely healed: that was why he couldn’t wear a shoulder holster and had to wear a gun belt.
He’d started dating Susan his junior year. Two weeks after graduation they were married. He’d gone to UNM law school while she supported them with an accounting job at a doctor’s office. Two