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And he’d laugh at that, but the sound was low and slow. Sad. Poor Pop. He was all alone. And now he was dead of a heart attack. I knew I’d miss him. I could feel it in the palms of my hands, as if they’d clutched something too hard and suddenly gone numb.

The day Pop died, my father came home, made more drinks, and ordered a pizza. Baby Teeth and I were sent upstairs as soon as we had eaten. We weren’t very hungry, so Lucky ate the most, except for the mushrooms, which he hated. Wadstain had left the house earlier when I was out walking Lucky, cursing his way down the driveway, rubbing the tears, like enemies, from his face.

“It’s Momma, not Pop, who deserved a massive coronary, don’t you think?” my mother said to Dad as Baby Teeth and I climbed the stairs to our room. It didn’t really sound like a question, and it was definitely not a joke. Whatever the meaning, my whole body shivered from the chill those words sent into the air. My grandmother had died before we were born.

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Upstairs, I was thinking about what my mother had said. Pop died of a heart attack, so that’s what a massive coronary was, I guessed.
Massive coronary
sounded even worse, I decided, than
massive attack.
It was like a war was going on—between life and death? Breathing and not breathing? Some people survived heart attacks, I knew. But who decided?

On her bed, Baby Teeth was reciting something in a singing little voice to the stuffed animals.

“Hey, what are you saying?” I asked.

“Poor little Cleo, he is with us no more, for what he thought was H
₂
O was H
₂
S0
₄
.”

“Baby Teeth!”

“What? You could sing with me; we could do like a ‘row row your boat’ . . .”

“That’s awful!”

“. . . gently down the stream . . . What? Why?”

But I didn’t know what to say. “Pop just
died
is why.”

“I know. That’s why I thought it. Mr. Anzalone told it to me.”

Mr. Anzalone, another neighbor, was a chemist. I guess my sister knew as much about death as she did about chemistry. And what did I know? What was I going to say? It’s like a war, and then it’s over. Sure, say that. Is that any description of life?

“Do you know what it means when someone dies?” I asked softly. She was only five.

“It means they’re
dead.”
She looked at me like I was the biggest idiot alive. “So Pop is dead now, right?”

“He’s dead.” I said the words on purpose. If I said them, maybe I would understand something. I waited.

“So when’s he coming back?”

I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t understand anything.

I missed Pop, and missing was such a hollow feeling.

“He can’t come back.” My voice was low, like it was coming from the ground.

“Why?” Her voice seemed to come from somewhere else too.

“Because his heart—stopped.”

“He won’t come back, ever?” She looked at my eyes as if expecting them to say something different from what my mouth said.

“He can’t.”

“He can’t,” she repeated. She grabbed one of the animals, a violet gorilla, tossed it to the floor, and stared at it.

“It’s true.”

That moment, unreal or not, was unbearable.

Change the subject, my mind said.

“So, Baby Teeth?”

“What?”

“If you want me to stop calling you that, just say so. I’ll make everyone stop.”

“You started it.”

“That’s what I mean. If you don’t like it . . .”

“I have
another
name, you know.”

“Well, I know; that’s why I’m saying this.”

“No, I like Baby Teeth—it’s only
my
name,” and she finally smiled, so that her teeth were visible. I loved those small, white rows. Mine had never looked as perfect as that, memory had decided. I couldn’t help smiling back, but my sister’s satisfaction quickly faded.

Try something else, my mind said. “So, Baby Teeth?”

“So what?” Her dimples always disappeared when she was about to cry.

“Did you hear the one about the cowbird?”

She loved this kind of stuff. Me, too. My dad had told us a lot of facts about nature that he had learned up on his grandparents’ Vermont farm, where he spent every summer as a kid. His grandmother, who plowed the fields alongside his grandfather, was a nature lover and a bird watcher. “Cowbird?” she said, sitting up. “Do they look like cows?” She leaned over and grabbed her gorilla.

“No. They just so happen to lay their eggs in other birds’ nests.”

“But that’s cheating. Cheating!” The dimples were back.

“It’s not that bad.”

“Yes it is; why isn’t it that bad?”

“Because the babies get to have foster parents.” I realized I was off to a bad start.

| | |

But she considered this. “Well, that’s good. So what about cows and their own nests?”

“The cowbirds never got a chance to make their own nests. Because they used to spend all their time following herds of bison.”

“Why’d they follow the bisons?”

“Bison. For food.”

“What kind?” She was lying with her head hanging upside down over the edge of the bed.

“What do birds eat?” I asked.

“I don’t know—what? What do you mean? Nobody told me anything about bison, so why do you say I heard them?”

“Let’s see,” I said, “seeds and worms,
bugs
are what birds eat. But wait—slow down. I said ‘herd’—a herd is a group—like
a family,
you know, like us, maybe, only if we were buffalo and we ate grass . . .”

“Oh, oh, I don’t eat grass!” Her hands went happily into the air, and she sat up. “I’m not a buffalo!”

“So who is? Me?” I blinked, laughing with relief. “Okay, so, the cowbirds eat the insects, get it?”

“But why? Because the bison make them? What kind of insects do bisons make? That’s not true.”

“Nobody said it was, nutshell. Bison. No. The bugs
live
on the bison. So when they’re buzzing around, that’s when the birds get them, okay?”

“Oh. I still want to know what kind of insects.”

“I don’t know—whatever birds like, I guess. So along the way, the cowbirds drop their eggs into other birds’ nests, get it?”

“I get it.” Baby Teeth finally yawned. “So what about the cows?”

Ha Ha

The cows come home eventually. This thought makes me laugh out loud as I reach my driveway. So what if it isn’t funny. Stuff that’s not necessarily “ha ha” can actually be hilarious.

Why else would somebody, say, Eileen, break into backbends of laughter when the person she’s walking with, namely, me, trips over nothing and falls directly onto my face?

Or should I say, when she was race-walking ahead of me just a little while ago, the stupidest-looking activity this planet has yet borne, I’d mention, if anyone asked me. My vision got all blurred because I was upset—because for some unknown reason my best friend turned into a sarcastic stranger with the heart of a
rock
—and I couldn’t see the lump of leftover blacktop tar at Sagamore so tripped over it, and that’s when she decided to turn around long enough to stop laughing and say, “Hey, you made my day, V, you really did.” So I had no alternative but to, even while my face was burning raw from blacktop, respond with “Anyone ever mention you sound like a cow when you laugh like that?”

And wasn’t it hilarious that Eileen decided that
she
was the one the damage had been done to as the smile left her face and was replaced with the don’t-stab-me-I’ll-stab-you look she had perfected long ago in grammar school when somebody she didn’t like would come along and try to sit on the empty half of the seesaw Eileen sat on like it was her property because she was waiting for me, before she turned right at Sagamore’s entrance and stormed away?

| | |

So I feel a little tilted. Just like my dog. No, that’s not funny at all. I stand at the edge of my driveway and look down the darkening road. The streetlights begin to glow beneath their steel black caps. The bus stop is lit across the street. In my mind I see a green VW. I hear it crunch my dog’s leg and race away at a hundred miles per hour. I don’t see any brake lights. I close my eyes.

Who hit my dog?

Maybe yesterday’s over, but that question isn’t. I don’t like days that end without answers. I’ll just keep my eyes open, and we’ll see what happens. I look up. One of the streetlights fades, disappearing as quick as it shone, the light sucked out of it. Life can be so hilarious sometimes I don’t have time to laugh.

I don’t want to think about yesterday. I don’t even want to remember it existed. Is today any better? My father goes to the hospital and Eileen is possessed. It’s dark out.

Maybe the cows do come home, but I bet nobody ever asks where they’ve been. I’m supposed to be home before dark. I’d better go inside. I walk up the driveway, another suddenly dangerous blacktop. All I hear are my own black boots trudging numbly over it. Even my feet don’t want to go inside.

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I open the back door. Everybody’s already at the kitchen table. My mother’s carrying a plate piled with hamburgers to the table. “Where’ve you been?” she says.

“Out.” I don’t want to look at her. I’m not afraid anymore, I tell myself, not after yesterday. Let her go kill somebody else’s dog.

“Just sit down and eat,” she says, not exactly slamming the plate on the table. She walks to the sink.

Good, I think. Stick your head down the drain.

“You’re late, but it’s okay,” Baby Teeth says as I sit down.

“How’s Lucky?” I say to her. I’m planning on ignoring my mother.

“He’s asleep again, and he wouldn’t eat any biscuits you left.” Baby Teeth is holding a fork loaded with snow peas, her most despised vegetable. Something about the lump the pea makes within the pod disturbs her. I grin as she slides the pile onto my plate with an index finger. She seems to have hit a phase in which everything must have its proper place. Poor kid, she’s in for a surprise around here. I hear the water running at the sink. I don’t look up.

“Want a burger?” Baby Teeth says.

“Gimme one of those.” So Wadbrain’s still talkative.

“Is Loretta Getz in any of your classes?”

I look up. My mother is standing with one aqua-slippered foot across the other, her hip leaning against the stove. So we’re having a conversation. My mouth is full of snow peas. I swallow. “English.”

“She’s not very smart.” My mother’s in one of her read-between-the-lines moods. Eureka, so am I.

“No, she’s not,” I say. I drink some water. “She never gets her reports done. Probably because she’s been reading the same book since fourth grade. Have you read
Misty of Chincoteague
yet?” I ask Baby Teeth. I smile at my mother, who grabs the newspaper from the counter. I am vicious.

Baby Teeth shakes her head no.

“Good book,” I say. “I’ll get you a copy if you want.”

“That’s not what I meant. You know what I mean,” my mother says.

Wadnod reaches for another hamburger. “Any cheese around?”

“Can you say ‘please’?” Baby Teeth asks him. “Misty who?”

“What are you talking about?” I say.

“She’s in the paper.” My mother pauses for dramatic effect. Then she says, “Drugs are for idiots.”

I can hear my brother swallow. Could that be guilt? I feel my mother looking at me, but I’m busy with my snow peas, a vegetable I like. She’s waiting for me to look at her so she can sparkle in motherhood superiority. Where are my sunglasses when I need them?

It’s obvious I’ve got enough trouble already without mistaking quarts of oil for beer because I’ve been taking what’s supposed to be LSD and end up getting my stomach pumped in some awful emergency room like Loretta Getz just did. I’d rather get my name in the paper another way.

Suddenly I see red. What is it?

The ambulance squad had hauled Loretta up the hill from the woods on a stretcher. The window in my English class, a room at the back of the building near the parking lot, was covered with the unbelieving eyes of my entire class.

Black crud dripped from the edges of Loretta’s mouth. She had cuts all over her arms. Where was her jacket? She was only wearing a T-shirt and jeans. April is the cruelest month, and it was freezing last week.

The stretcher stopped outside our window as the two EMTs shifted the weight of it between them. And there was Grant Sullivan—a figure from some of my ancient fantasies—walking behind the stretcher as they left. He was carrying Loretta’s red baseball jacket. That’s what’s red. My dinner is completely cold. Maybe Lucky will eat it.

Loretta sat up. Her eyes actually rolled, and her mouth opened, though obviously we couldn’t hear what she said through the window. But she was close enough so I could see the expression on her face, which clearly looked as if she didn’t know where she was. But when I saw it, something like oil replaced what pulsed through my veins. I recognized that look. My mother’s face after too many scotches.

I’m numb, everything gone cold on my plate. Isn’t alcohol a drug? And isn’t it your only friend? Don’t say it, my mind says. Don’t start a fight. “She’s in the paper?” I ask. “So did you see it?” I say to my brother, without question the person my mother should be bothering with this crap. Wadnod just rolls his bloodshot eyes. Maybe he and Loretta would make a good pair. “Read it,” my mother says, and drops the paper on the counter. She walks away, the open-toed slippers slapping the floor ridiculously, as if applauding her with each step she takes.

Swallow Before You Speak