Fat Man and Little Boy (26 page)

THE BIG KID

Maggie brings her picture to Cousin Matthew. It's a picture of them playing with a dog. She wants to have a dog of her own.

Maggie says to Cousin Matthew, “I drew it!”

He takes the picture. “Why thank you. It's just what I always wanted. Did you draw this?”

“I told you that,” says Maggie, rolling up her shirt in the front, showing her belly.

“It's very beautiful. What's this here?”

“A doggy,” says Maggie.

“Who's this?”

“That's you, Cousin Matthew.”

“I can tell by the hat. I look good. So who's this pretty little girl in the yellow triangle?”

“Me!” She puts a curl in her mouth to suck the end and chew it.

“I guess you want a dog pretty bad.” Matthew knocks his hat skewed. “I bet we can get you one if you're good.”

He touches her tummy. She pushes it against his finger the way it makes him laugh. He laughs for her the way she wants him to, squinting his eyes all squinty. She laughs back the way he likes her to. They go back and forth like that for a while, getting louder and louder, until she squats down and balls up the laugh in her tummy. Then she jumps straight up, rattling her knees, and laughs as big as a pirate.

“Jeez, you win, as always.”

“As always,” repeats Maggie. “As always, as always.”

“As always, as always,” she sings. “AS ALWAYS AS ALWAYS.”

As always there's somebody new coming down the road to stay at their hotel. As always, nobody told Maggie new guests were coming. As always, they assume she'll be okay to share the grass and the houses. There won't be any kids or if there are then she won't like them. If they have to fight it will be her fault, especially if she wins, AS ALWAYS.

The car stops close to the middle of the hotel grounds, near the kitchen. A big family piles out, which is not as always, but different. There's a mom and a dad, and four kids get out of the back. The kids run around all over the place like little hellions. The dad has to threaten them a lot to make them line up single file. It's not clear why they've got to line up that way. The dad takes a fifth kid out of the front seat. The fifth kid wiggles his legs a little like he wants to be let down. His dad holds him up though, rubbing his back, and the kid has his arms wrapped around the dad's neck like a tight scarf. The kid looks wrong. Maggie can't see why but she can tell she doesn't like that kid. The other four seem okay. They watch their dad march the fifth kid into the cabin, where the mom is waiting with the door open. It's like they're the fifth kid's audience. After the dad goes into the cabin the four kids in the line follow him, each getting a kiss from their mom as they go through the door. It all seems like a lot of work.

Maggie goes to the kitchen cabin. Her dad is making pancakes for lunch because she asked him to. She asks him if he knows what.

He says, “No, what?”

“There's a new family.”

“Did we leave the door unlocked for them?”

She says they did. She asks, “What's wrong with the fifth kid?”

“I don't know, Maggie. I'll find out if you promise not to be a rude little creature and ask.” He thinks a moment. “The fifth kid, did it look like he was the oldest?”

“Don't think so,” says Maggie. “His dad carried him in. He was kind of big though.”

Maggie's dad tells her to play outside until lunch time. She does. Cousin Matthew finds her and they play together; hide and seek. He always likes to be the hider, so, as always, she is the seeker, which is okay because she likes to seek. She is good at finding her cousin. He always leaves a clue for her. He'll hide everything except his hat and let it peek out over the well, or whatever he's hiding behind, like if he's inside the car he'll let his hat show through the car window, but it's not always his hat. Sometimes he'll cough or sneeze. It has to be a realistic clue—something that really might happen—or she'll refuse to find him and he'll have to stay hidden all day.

She finds him hiding in an outhouse. This time the clue is that he leaves his shoes hanging by their laces on the doorknob. “Found me. Just like a bloodhound.”

The lunch bell rings. Cousin Matthew says he'll eat them all if he gets there first. Maggie hits him and laughs when he pouts like she hurt his feelings. She pretends not to believe him about his feelings. One time she made him cry and her mom wouldn't let her have dinner. Her dad kept saying he was fine, he needed to toughen up, it wasn't her fault Cousin Matthew took everything so damn serious. Her mom said she had to learn sensitivity. So it makes her mad when Cousin Matthew acts hurt because she knows it could put her in trouble. Cousin Matthew says, “You shouldn't hit your cousin.” She wants to tell him not to take it so damn serious.

Everybody eats together.

Cousin Matthew says, “Magnolia has to sit with her mother today.”

Her mom asks was she mean to Cousin Matthew. Maggie says they played hide and seek. She says, “Cousin Matthew is tired, and sore I found him hiding in the outhouse.”

“Gross, Cousin Matthew,” says Rosie. She wrinkles up her face and sticks out her tongue. He fakes a smile the same way he fakes being upset. The only problem with Cousin Matthew is he's such a faker.

Rosie puts blueberries and strawberry circles and raspberries on Maggie's pancakes, with a little powdered sugar. The berry juices together make a kind of light syrup.

The new family's mom says it's nice to see Maggie's dad again, and her mom. She says, “This hotel has turned out very well. You would never know it used to be a prison.”

“Thank you Francine,” says Maggie's mom, who says she doesn't like to think about the prison anymore—“not since I had Maggie.”

The new dad says, “What a pretty little girl you've got, too.”

“Thank you,” says Maggie, the way that she's been taught. She does a big smile.

The grownups say about how pretty the hotel is and how the cabins don't seem like what they were, and they say about how hard it was to deal with the mud, and her mom recommends the museum her dad keeps. They ask what kind of museum. “In honor of the prisoners,” says Rosie.

Maggie's mother also says about the international library. She says about knowing four languages and how it can bring anyone peace, and the world. Her voice lights up the way it does when she says about these things.

“How many languages do you know?” asks her mom.

“Rather less than four,” says the new mom. “I know French and English. Albert only speaks the one.”

“People learn very quickly here. We can improve your English, Francine, and Albert can learn his first words. Unless you'd rather expand into German.”

“They might not want to at all,” says Maggie's dad. “Not everybody wants to.”

“I know French, English, German, Spanish, and Italian,” says Maggie.

Her dad says, “You know French and English, darling. You only know zoo animals and numbers in the other three.”

Her mom says, “Her generation will be the first to keep the peace.”

Her dad says, “I heard from our little scout here you had five children. Where's the fifth? Not that these four aren't cute enough.”

Maggie doesn't think they're very cute, but nobody asked her. She pulls something out of her nose. It's green, but with a little blood. She rolls it between her fingers until the stickiness dries up and what's left is hard, a duller green, sort of gray, like a rock.

“We have six, actually,” says Francine.

“Our two eldest like to eat alone,” says Albert. He shrugs as if to say, What can I do?

Francine tells the rest to introduce themselves. Rosie catches Maggie pinching her snot and stretching her fingers apart, making the little snot rock stretch to fill the gap. Her mom takes it roughly with a napkin. She balls up the napkin tight and slaps Maggie's hand. “None of your nonsense. Not tonight. I don't have the energy.”

Maggie says she never has the energy. She says to please let her eat her pancakes in peace for once. Her dad stares her down. She eats her pancakes in silence, which is like peace, but not as good.

After the meal Maggie is watching her dad and Cousin Matthew do the dishes. Albert, the new dad, comes up and murmurs, “Did those two police come to see you?”

“Years ago,” says her dad, after a long pause. “Did they come to you too?”

“A month back,” says Albert. “I thought they were done with us.”

“Mm,” says her dad. He wipes his forehead, leaving a puff of soap bubbles.

What if her dad's hair was all bubbles? That would be wild.

At night her dad likes to sit outside with Albert and drink beers once it gets late and the crickets are practicing choir. Cousin Matthew sits with them too, though he doesn't talk much and they don't seem to want him. He drinks milk, because it makes your bones strong and it makes a body grow. Sometimes he holds Maggie on his lap. Sometimes she sits on her dad's lap. They barely seem to notice when she climbs up. She plays with her dad's neck fat, slapping it so it wiggles while he talks, and his voice wiggles too, like a jump rope if you wave one end around but not the other.

One night her dad asks Albert what he's doing there if they've already got six kids. Albert leans back and pats his gut. “We're trying for a seventh. Seven dwarfs for my princess, or something like that.”

“Seven,” says Maggie's dad. “Wow. Just these two have kept me busy.”

Cousin Matthew laughs weird.

Albert says, “You know I couldn't stand the thought of kids. I did everything I could to avoid them. Once I got started, though, I couldn't stop. Francine kept popping them out. It was terrifying, but by the time she was starting to deflate from the last one I wanted another. It was like I was hungry. She wanted another one too. It's destroyed her body, of course. Mine too. I look awful with this beard, I know, but I feel obligated. It hides a little of the bloat. Have you ever grown one?”

“I'm not sure I can,” says Maggie's dad.

She slaps his neck fat. It wiggles.

“We're both worn out but she wants one more. To my horror, so do I. We know this place has a reputation. Something in the water, right?”

Another night, late, Maggie counts the beer bottles on the grass. Some are fallen over, some are standing up, it gets confusing. She thinks it has to be eleven or twenty. There's a caterpillar inching up the side of one, a little green guy. She wants to squish him but it makes her dad upset when she hurts a bug. She kicks over the bottle with her foot as if it was an accident.

“I still haven't met your oldest two,” says her dad. His talking is a little slurred, which, according to her mom, means he's had enough. “The twins.”

“They like to stay inside,” says Albert. His talking's slurred too. “They're shy.”

“I'm a nice boy,” says Maggie's dad. Cousin Matthew snorts. Her dad insists, “I am!”

“They've had it rough,” says Albert. “If I bring them out, you have to prepare yourself for it now. You can't laugh at them or get scared. They like meeting new people but they hate when they scare new people.”

“Why should I be scared?” says her dad. “Why should a couple kids scare me? Is there something wrong with them?”

“They're beautiful,” says Albert, and off he goes.

He comes back with the fifth kid in his arms, waving its legs, arms wrapped around his neck like a scarf.

Francine is following him. “Not now, Albert. Tomorrow. Please, Albert, tomorrow when you're sober and they're more awake.”

“If we refuse him we're denying them,” says Albert. “I will not deny my sons.”

He sets the fifth kid down on his seat. Maggie's dad squeezes her close and puts a hand over her mouth—not for the first time; it means he doesn't trust her not to say something unbelievably rude.

“This is Dorian,” says Albert, “and this is Pierrot.” He's pointing at the same kid.

Maggie crosses and un-crosses her eyes. The fifth kid blurs and comes clear, splits and recombines. He has two heads joined at their backs just behind their inward-facing ears. These ears look like clay. They are too smooth, only half formed. The heads are turned one quarter away from each other, the faces facing opposite directions. One head's jaw hangs open. The other head keeps its mouth closed. The necks beneath the heads arch away from each other and then back inward, nearly meeting in a long, wide clavicle with two parallel horseshoe-shaped indentations in two open collars—collars raised as if to make a wall between their necks, to keep them from joining as their heads have. There is an egg of open space between their necks, through which Maggie can see part of the moon.

Maggie understands she is looking at two kids.

Their shirt is wide, aqua-green, with uneven shapes hidden beneath it. Down the center of the trunk, a ridge like the leading end of a wedge. An arm comes out on each side. They wear shorts with three legs, their outward facing legs very far from each other. Their middle leg has a gap above its knee where two thinner legs seem to separate like a cleft in the roots of a tree. Further down the leg, a second, smaller shoe hangs off the ankle at an angle, a baby boot, like a white rosebud or a hanging bell, resting limply on the larger, leather shoe. The other feet kick a little, like Maggie when she tries to swim, though more slowly, in coordinated circles.

“They share a little bit of brain,” explains Francine, speaking in English, “and some other organs. The doctors wanted to separate them, though the odds weren't good they would live. They said it wasn't worth living like this. I told them all to go to hell.”

Maggie nips her father's hand because she wants to talk. He squeezes harder.

“These are the ones you were pregnant with when we left?” he says.

“They developed too quickly. They were born only a little after you left. The doctors were bewildered, though they said there had been a few cases that year. There haven't been any since. They think maybe the Germans,” she trails off. “I don't know. But we love them, don't we?” She repeats it in French.