at this point, and young as he was Bobby would sense he was trying to lift his spirits, since he didn’t want to go back to Chicago either. But today his father didn’t even pretend, and when Bobby spied the enormous brewing vats of the Blatz beer company and tried to sing the jingle – ‘I’m from Milwaukee and I ought to know’ – his brother Mike elbowed him sharply to keep quiet.
On the Sky Bridge he held his breath as he always did, scared they would slide over the side into Calumet Harbor, and then they swooped down onto Stony Island Avenue and his father said ‘Bip your bips’ and everybody locked their car door – it was dangerous here, though he didn’t know why. ‘They don’t give a damn about your civil rights,’ Uncle Larry said bitterly, pointing to some men holding cans of beer in their hands on a corner.
And then they were on Blackstone Avenue, leafy and hot, the wet asphalt of a new patch in the middle of the street actually steaming, and he got out and took deep breaths until the nausea went away. There was no sign of the ambulance.
Upstairs Lily opened the door to the apartment while his father and uncle and Mike unloaded the bags from the back of the station wagon, and Bobby raced down the long dark hallway, almost slipping on the torn bit of carpet his mother always wanted to replace, and the bedroom door was closed, which seemed right since they’d told him over and over again that his mother wasn’t feeling well. He stopped long enough to knock very lightly on the door, and ignoring whatever Lily was calling to him from the hall he slowly twisted the copper-coloured door knob. The door budged grudgingly then suddenly cracked open. He started to put a big smile on his face until he saw his mother’s bed was neatly made up – and unoccupied.
‘I told you, she’s not here,’ Lily said, and went towards the kitchen without further explanation. Puzzled, he left the apartment and went downstairs, where he tried to help unload the car. But everything was too heavy and he had to make do with carrying his baseball glove upstairs to the apartment.
When they finally finished unloading, his father and Uncle Larry sat down in the kitchen, each with a cold beer from the icebox, not saying much and paying no attention to him – not deliberately, but almost dreamily; he realised for the first time that grown-ups could get tired, too. He went back to the bedroom he now shared with his brother, having been displaced the year before from his own room by his sister’s sudden demand for privacy, which to his fury his parents had encouraged, not just acceded to.
Mike was reading on his bed. He looked up from his book. ‘You wanna wrestle?’
‘Where’s Lily?’ His sister got upset if they wrestled in front of her, and then their father would get mad.
Mike gestured, like he was shooing a fly. ‘She’s in the sun porch. Shut the door.’ He came down off his bed and got on all fours. ‘Ready when you are.’
It was a standard ritual. Bobby ran and jumped onto his back and they were away. Within minutes, just as Mike was about to pin him for the second time, Bobby squirmed in desperation and bit his older brother on the shoulder. Mike howled, then hit Bobby right below the eye. His crying ended the fight. This was standard, too.
His father came in, drawn by Bobby’s wailing, but for once he wasn’t angry. He didn’t shout at Mike and he was too old to be spanked; he didn’t comfort Bobby; he just stood in the doorway with a pained expression on his face. ‘Come on, you guys,’ he said. His voice sounded unexpectedly sad. ‘Not today, okay?’
They had an early supper, which his father did his best to put together – pork chops, and some lettuce, and a scoop of Boston baked beans, which Bobby liked for their molasses. Then his grandparents appeared, and he played fish with his grandfather, a dapper man who combed his sleek greying hair straight back, and wore a tie pinned to his crisp ironed shirt with a gold clip. They sat at the dining-room table, until Gramps said it was time for bed and began to play gin rummy with Lily and Mike, which Bobby wasn’t old enough to play, or so his grandfather said.