Sons of Liberty (13 page)

“Who’s winning?” Rock asked her now, walking into the kitchen. “I bet red wins.”

“You lose,” Brontie answered without looking at him. “You lost and lost and lost.”

Rock felt his stomach tighten. “Where’d Dad go?” he asked.

“He was angry with you for missing dinner,” his mother answered. “And you forgot to put your bike away. I didn’t have any way to tell him where you went.”

“So did he go to Maguire’s? Did he say when he’d be back?” Rock was confused. Usually when his father was angry, he stuck around long enough to explain why and to enforce the punishment. Something wasn’t right.

He turned and ran, tearing across the living room and up the stairs to his room.

“Rock?” He heard his mother call his name. He didn’t answer.

At first it looked like newspaper. Rock couldn’t figure out why all the paper was on his bed, and he opened his mouth to shout his brother’s name, to make him come and clean up his mess. But even as he yelled, “Cliff, come here!” he knew that he wasn’t looking at anything his brother had done. He knew what it was. He knew the punishment. “Cliff!” he shouted. Why did you? Why. Did. You. Whywhywhy? …

He bent closer and caught a sour taste in his mouth, an acidic memory of the lamb and mint jelly that he’d eaten at the Robars’. It didn’t look like newspaper up close, more like the loose packing of a gift that had been hastily opened, or like confetti—a celebration that had run a bit too wild. A pack of index cards, now shredded, clumped, and scattered over his bedspread—who would think that a rampage could look like the mischievous remains of a party?

“He’s at Maguire’s, of course.” Cliff’s voice sounded in the doorway. Rock could not turn around, did not want to show his brother the heat that boiled in his face. “He was really pissed.”

“ ’Cause I didn’t show for dinner,” Rock said quietly. His hand brushed over the bedspread. Scraps drifted to the floor. He picked up a ripped edge of card and studied it intently, waiting for his brother to speak.

“Yeah, because of dinner, and ’cause he was just generally in one of those moods. He put your bike in the basement on top all that fiberglass junk that’s been there forever. Just so you know.”

“Cliff.”

“Yeah?”

“What’m I gonna do?”

“Mom was really fighting for you tonight, Rock. She tried real hard. Dad, Brontie, me—we were all kind of in shock from how she was acting. You’d have been amazed.”

“She didn’t save me, though. She couldn’t do anything in the end.”

“Get some sleep,” Cliff said quietly, so that it wasn’t an order. “Let me do some thinking.”

“Yeah.”

“Rock, man. I’m real sorry. He’s always been a jerk about your paper, the way you talk about Ms. Manzuli and how smart she is and everything. He likes to be the only one who can teach us a single thought, you know?”

“Uh-huh.” Rock nodded. He didn’t trust himself to look up until Cliff had turned and left the room. Then he kicked off his boots and yanked the bedspread down, so that the scraps scattered over the floor. It was true, what Cliff had said. Their father hated to hear about Ms. Manzuli or about Rock’s paper. Rock knew it, too, and had kept right on talking. So in a way it was his own fault, getting his dad all upset. Bragging about what Ms. Manzuli had said to him, about how she might organize a field trip for him and maybe a couple other kids to visit Philadelphia, to see Betsy Ross’s house and the Declaration of Independence. Why’d he keep telling his dad that stuff, when he knew it made him so angry? Why’d he keep pushing like that? He’d talk to his father the next morning, see what he could do to patch things up. He’d start recopying tomorrow, too; and, most importantly, he’d remember to shut up about stupid stuff like school.

“Threw it away?” Ms. Manzuli’s smile didn’t fit the rest of her face. Her eyes were confused and two little red blotches burned in the usually pale skin of her cheeks.

“It was my own fault,” Rock said stoutly. “Last night I put all my books and papers on the chair by the back door, on top of some old newspapers, and my dad was cleaning up, and he chucked everything.”

“But when … how?” Ms. Manzuli shook her head. “I’m confused. You worked on it last night, then put your work downstairs on top of some old papers. Then your father threw everything away, and the trashman picked up the bags before you left for school this morning?”

“I guess that’s the way it must’ve happened.” Rock tried to look puzzled, too. “I was wicked mad, this morning, when I realized.”

“Your father must feel absolutely devastated. He must have known how hard you’d been researching.”

“Yeah, he was totally sorry.”

“And you didn’t just misplace it, you don’t think?”

Rock shook his head. He knew from the way she was staring at him that Ms. Manzuli wanted to ask more questions, and so he made his face into a wall that she couldn’t see past.

“I’ll talk to your teacher, Rock, if that’s what you want me to do. Maybe we can all work out an extension.”

“That’d be cool.” Rock nodded. “A lot of it’s in my head, you know. My dad and I both have a photographic memory. It’s pretty awesome.” As soon as he’d said it, Rock wished that he hadn’t, because it sounded so stupid and untrue. But Ms. Manzuli didn’t make him feel dumb. She nodded as if she believed him, and then opened a drawer at her desk and pulled out a small brown paper bag.

“I got this when my husband and I were in Delaware the other week. I kept meaning to give it to you and I’m sure glad I brought it in today. Maybe it’ll be inspirational or something.” Rock took the bag and pulled out the lightweight, narrow package before he had time to make a mental guess at what she could have brought him. He stared at the large, gray-tipped feather that lay encased between a plastic cover and blue felt mounting.

“What’s that?” he asked awkwardly. His voice sounded rude.

“See, it’s …” Ms. Manzuli plucked off the bits of Scotch tape holding the clear plastic cover to the fabric support. Rock watched as she picked up the feather and then in upward-climbing script wrote her name, Marianne D’Amato Manzuli, on the paper bag. “It’s a real ink pen, see, but it’s also a wild-goose feather, and I thought … but you don’t have to have it, of course. I just thought it would be … fun, I guess. Stupid, maybe, but—”

“I’ll take it,” Rock interrupted. He had already grabbed it out of her hand. “I got it,” he said. He knew he should say something else, like “Thanks” or “Are you sure you want me to have this?” but he didn’t want to say those things to Ms. Manzuli. He didn’t want to put on a grateful face like his mom did when someone went shopping for her. He didn’t need that pen, he didn’t need to make that face. “I got it,” he repeated, his other hand sliding the felt case off her desk and into his book bag.

“It’s yours,” Ms. Manzuli said, folding up the paper bag with her name on it. “To sign all your important documents.” She smiled, a real smile, with all her pale teeth showing, and pointed to the wall clock. “But you better get going so Mrs. Lewin isn’t worried.”

He’d started rewriting already: before school, on the bus, curled up against the brick wall at recess, and then after school, late into the evening. Sometimes he went over to the Mobleys’ house. Arlene welcomed him with cider and gingerbread squares. They almost never spoke of Liza, and yet Liza was everywhere—in the frown in Arlene’s face, in the way Arlene darted around the house like a restless phantom, peering out windows and jumping whenever the phone rang. It unnerved Rock, but the Mobleys’ house had a wood stove, so it was warmer than his own house. And he felt closer to Liza, closer to the news of her that never came. She’s tough, Rock would remind himself. Tougher than most guys. She’s lying low awhile, so Timmy or the cops don’t squeeze her out.

Arlene made his own attempts at calm more difficult. “She’s most probably been kidnapped,” Arlene said once. “She’s dead, most likely. By now.” Her voice bellowed over her vacuuming. Rock ducked his head lower, wrote faster, pretended not to hear.

Later that week, walking back from the Mobleys’ house, Rock caught a glimpse of Cliff and their mother walking across the front lawn. Cliff’s hand cupped her elbow, and her face glowed as she waved briskly at Rock. No one wants to be in that house, he realized. Not even Mom. Later that night, Cliff told him that they’d been walking every day since last Sunday. At first they walked around the front lawn, Cliff explained excitedly, but today they’d been down by the mailboxes. The next afternoon, Rock himself saw them ambling back from the pond. By the middle of the next week, Cliff and their mother were making short trips to the end of Linwood Drive.

Sometimes Rock could hear their voices as they came inside, and he strained to make sense of the conversations. They spoke in low voices without pauses and spaces.

“What do you guys talk about?” Rock asked. “What’s wrong with Mom? No one tells me anything and I got a right to know. I’m in this family, too, in case you forgot.”

“Mom’s just scared,” Cliff answered simply. “She’s scared of open spaces and doing stuff on her own.”

“Why?” It made Rock angry, thinking of their mother as a big scaredy-cat, too frightened of the outdoors to take a little walk by herself. “What’s she got to be scared of? And how come it takes you parading around like you guys are in the circus or something, especially if she doesn’t want to?”

Cliff stared at Rock for a moment, his chin tilted and lifted as if he were trying to make up his mind about something. He finally drew a patient breath and said evenly, “Because sometimes when you don’t feel good about yourself, like you feel sick or whatever, you figure out a way to put your brain to sleep. You click off from feelings about being happy or interested in what’s going on around you. And sometimes it takes another person to wake you up. So it’s like, Mom’s been in that kind of a doze for a while, but she knows she has to get better. She’s working real hard now.”

“That’s dumb,” Rock said. “I know if I wasn’t happy or if I was feeling sick, I’d get help right away.”

“Would you?” Cliff gave Rock a searching look. “If every day you felt one millionth of a degree worse than the day before, which day would you know you were sick?”

“I don’t know,” Rock answered stubbornly. “Since I can take just about anything.”

“Well, Mom and I aren’t as lucky as you that way,” Cliff said.

That night Brontie wet the bed again. Rock hadn’t even been sleeping; he’d been under the covers finishing up an American Revolution book,
Johnny Tremain.
It had mysteriously appeared in his desk that morning, but he knew it was a gift from Ms. Manzuli.

It was an excellent story, about a silversmith’s apprentice who wanted to fight in the Revolution, only he couldn’t because his hand was deformed, so he went to work for the
Boston Observer
instead.

Rock had just gotten to the part where Johnny was about to meet General Gage, so his heart was pounding already, when he heard the noises from below. He held his breath to better catch the distant sounds of his father talking and stomping and flipping on light switches downstairs. Cliff must have been listening, too, since Rock heard him jump out of his bed. Rock slid the book under his pillow, breathing slow.

“This is the absolute last time. Do you hear me?”

Rock could barely make out his father’s words. He crept from his bed and out to the landing where Cliff stood shivering in his doorway. Cliff’s hands rested on his hips and his head was bowed and tilted, straining to hear. There was no sound from Brontie, and their mother’s voice was thin as the chime of a music box.

“Stop it, George. George, please.”

“I’m going down,” Cliff said, and he cautiously dipped a foot over the first stair as though he were testing the water temperature in a swimming pool. He looked at Rock. “Listen to him.”

All Rock could hear were threads of speech too soft to understand.

“I’ll come with you,” Rock said. But he followed his brother down the stairs with the sound of his own blood beating in his ears. Rock knew that their father would become even more enraged when he caught sight of the two of them.

Every downstairs light had been turned on. Their mother and Brontie stood hunched in the cold hallway, squinting at their father, who looked like he’d been awake and lecturing for hours. Spying the boys, he raised a hand from his Mr. Clean pose to a traffic-cop stance.

“Get back upstairs, boys. Same old story. Brontie doesn’t know how to sleep in a big-girl bed, and we’re just trying to do some damage control.”

Rock looked down at Brontie, who was gripping Wynona in front of her body like a plate of armor to protect herself. He looked at his mother, who shrugged helplessly, then took a balled tissue from her bathrobe pocket and blew her nose.

“Let me just clean her up, George,” she ventured. Her nose was bright red with cold. “We can talk about this tomorrow. We’re all very tired. Boys, you go on up to bed. Isn’t everyone tired? I am. Go on, guys.”

But then their father suddenly twisted Wynona out of Brontie’s arms, dangling the doll high in his fingers.

“See how sad Wynona is, Brontie? You know why she’s so sad? Because you don’t take good care of her. You’re a bad girl, and Wynona doesn’t love you anymore.”

“She does so love me.” Brontie’s face drained to white as she watched her doll swinging from her father’s hand.

“No she doesn’t.”

“Dad, you’re gonna make her—”

“Excuse me, Cliff, but I don’t think I asked for your advice. Brontie, I’m going to have to find a new home for Wynona, until you learn how to be a big, grown-up girl. So from now on, Wynona is going to live in the mudroom.”

“No thank you, Dad,” Brontie said. Her eyes challenged him, but she spoke without confidence. “I don’t think Wynona wants to live there. It’s too cold.”

“Well, maybe she can come back when you know how to behave.” Their father shook the doll in her face. “Do you want to kiss her good night?” he asked. “No? All right then.” He strode into the kitchen, opened the mudroom door, and tossed Wynona facedown on the woodpile. The rest of them watched as he locked the door and brushed his hands together.

“Brontie, I hope you turn into a big girl soon. Katherine, you’ve got a handle on the cleanup? Because I’m going to bed. I’ve got a long day ahead. And no moving that doll.” He wagged a finger at Cliff. “Upstairs, ship out, show’s over.”