DeAnne stopped there and counted down five houses on the right. The Cowpers' was a one-story brick house with a station wagon in the driveway, with two kids climbing all over the top of it. DeAnne would never let her kids climb on the car. They could fall off. They could damage something. The hood of the wagon was up, and as she watched, she saw Jenny emerge from the hood, where apparently she had been fixing something in the car. Jenny stretched her back, looked around, and saw DeAnne. She waved the grey doughnut-shaped thing she was holding. DeAnne waved back.
Jenny yelled something, but DeAnne couldn't hear her, and it embarrassed her to have somebody yelling to her on the street. So she waved aga in, as if to say yes to whatever Jenny said-which was probably something like, See you at six, or, Nice weather we're having-and then turned and herded her little flock back toward home.
"Kitty!" shouted Elizabeth right in DeAnne's ear. "Kitty! Kitty!"
A jet-black kitten scurried across the road just as a car came speeding by. The cat dodged out of the way; the car made no effort to slow down or stop. DeAnne's fears about the dangers of the street in front of their house were all confirmed.
"Wow," said Robbie. "We almost had a kitty pizza."
Another Step- ism.
The cat headed straight for the storm drain and disappeared.
"Mom!" screamed Robbie. "The yucky hole got him!"
Robbie ran a few dozen steps toward the hole. Then he realized that he was not in the protection of his mother and started to run back. But he could not bring himself to leave the kitty, and so he stood there beating his fists against his hips, demanding that his mother hurry, hurry!
"Honey, the kitty probably goes down into that hole all the time and plays there."
But Robbie wasn't hearing anything she had to say. "The snake got him, Mom! You got to save him, you got to!"
Of course Robbie would imagine a snake down there. Step had taken them to a science museum and they had watched a snake eating a mouse. Robbie couldn't let go of the memory. Snakes had replaced the Motorman.
She knelt by him and put her arm around him to calm him. "Robbie, I promise you, there is no snake down there. Whenever it rains here, the water all rushes down into that drain, and if there were any snakes living down there they would have been washed out to the ocean years ago."
"The yucky hole hooks up to the ocean?" asked Robbie.
"Everything does," said DeAnne.
"Wow, cool."
Robbie took a wide berth around the drain, and as DeAnne stood at the front door, fumbling in her purse to find her keys, he stayed at the curb, looking back toward the yucky hole.
"What if it rains while the kitty's down there, Mom?" he asked.
"It isn't going to rain for days, and the cat will get hungry and go home long before then," said DeAnne.
She got the door open. "Come on inside, Robbie."
"Do you think the kitty's playing with my ball down there?" he asked as he came through the door.
"Kitty," said Elizabeth. "Yucky hole, all gone."
"That's the story," said DeAnne. "Looks like we can't keep anything from you, Elizabeth."
"Drink," said Elizabeth.
Robbie had already rushed ahead to the room he shared with Stevie, shouting out the story about the ball and the kitty and the yucky hole long before he got to the room. DeAnne smiled as she took Elizabeth into the kitchen to get a drink. If anybody could get Stevie out of his blue funk, it was Robbie.
A moment later, Robbie was in the kitchen, looking mournful. "Mommy," he said. "Stevie told me to shut up and die."
"What?" asked DeAnne.
"He doesn't want a little brother anymore, Mommy," said Robbie.
DeAnne set Elizabeth down on the kitchen floor. "Stay with your sister for a minute, would you?"
"Can I turn on the TV?"
"The cable isn't hooked up yet so there's hardly anything to watch," she said, "but suit yourself."
She found Stevie lying right. where she had left him before going on the walk. "Son," she said.
"Yeah?" he mumbled.
"Son, sit up and look at me please," she said.
He sat up and looked at her.
"Please don't ever say anything so terrible to your brother again."
"I'm sorry," said Stevie.
"Did you really tell him to shut up and die?"
Stevie shook his head. "Not exactly."
"What did you say, then?"
"I told him to shut up, and when he just kept yelling about a snake eating a kitty I just told him to drop dead."
"Where did you ever hear an expression like that?"
"Everybody said it back at my old school, Mom. It doesn't really mean that I want him to die."
"Well, Robbie doesn't understand that, Stevie. You can't say things like that, even joking. Not to your own brother."
"I'm sorry."
He looked so miserable. And DeAnne could understand how, after years of sharing a room with Robbie, the dedicated extravert, Stevie could have moments of complete exasperation, for once Robbie thought of something he wanted to say, he would say it, even if you begged him for silence. He simply could not leave a thought unspoken. The miracle was that Stevie was usually so patient with his brother.
"I'm sorry, too," said DeAnne. "I shouldn't have told you off like that." She sat down beside him on the edge of his bed and put her arm around him. "You've had a tough day, and here I am, no help at all."
"I'm fine, Mom."
"Can't you tell me what happened?"
"Nothing happened," said Stevie.
"Did you make any friends?"
"No!" he said, so vehemently that she knew there was far more to the story than he was telling.
"Were they mean to you?"
"No," he said.
"Is Mrs. Jones a nice teacher?"
He nodded, then shrugged.
"Did you have any homework?"
He shook his head.
"Do you just want me to leave you alone for a while longer?"
He nodded.
She felt so useless. "I love you, Stevie," she said.
He murmured something that might have been "love you too" and then, as she got up, he rolled back over, curled up on his bed.
She left his room, feeling deeply depressed. As she walked down the hall she could hear the television in the other room. Robbie was switching from channel to channel, so it alternated between loud hissing and very fuzzy reception on the local channels. For just a moment she couldn't bring herself to go into the same room with her children. She was supposed to know what they needed and provide it for them, and she was going to let them down because she didn't have a clue.
She went to the front door, opened it and stepped out onto the porch. Then, in spite of the scoffing of her rational mind, she had to leave the porch and walk across the lawn and stand at the curb and look at the storm drain up the street. The yucky hole. Just to see if the kitten had come out.
Of course it had probably come out while she was in the house and so it was absurd to stand here, watching. She would go back inside. Right now. This was foolish.
A movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She turned toward the house, and there in the side yard between the house and the neighbors' fence was a grey rabbit. Robbie had told her he had seen one, but she hadn't believed that a wild rabbi could really be living in their neighborhood. It looked at he steadily for a moment, then loped off into the back yard.
She followed it, hoping to see where it went. Rabbits might cute and furry, but they were rodents, like rats and mice, and the could carry diseases. She had to get some idea where it lived or least where it came from. But when she got to the back yard it was gone.
She walked the wood-slat fence, to see where it might have gone under, but she couldn't see any rabbit-sized gaps. She also examined the latticework skirting around the base of the house, though the thought that the rabbit might live under her own house made her shudder. She hated the way that southerners built their houses up off the ground instead of putting in a massive concrete basement the way houses were supposed to be built. Anything could get in under the house- it must be filled with spiderwebs and beetles and who knows what other disgusting creatures, right there where all the waterpipes and wiring and heating ducts were. It made her feel naked, to know that her house was completely exposed on its soft underbelly.