The Second Trial (8 page)

“We're going to have to move,” Mom said.

“When?” asked Grandma.

“They said it'd have to be soon. Before he's out.”

Move? Why did they have to move? And who were “they”?

Danny turned on the tap. The voices stopped. They couldn't know how long he'd been listening or what he'd heard. He grasped the hose and filled Buddy's dish. The dog lapped eagerly, before stretching full-length under the weeping birch. Unwilling to return to the tap, Danny threw the hose into the rose bushes and let it run. He sat in the shade beside Buddy and scratched his ears until the dog's eyes closed and his tail came to rest.

The thought of having to move had never occurred to Danny. He'd lived his whole life in the same house. He knew every corner by heart. He'd always had his own room crammed with everything he needed: toys, creased comic books, board games in boxes with split corners, his baseball and catcher's mitt, swimming goggles, the science kits from his grandparents, the familiar wallpaper with hockey stars, soccer players, and his own blue ribbons and gold medals. His room was his space. It was as comfortable as his own skin.

Anger and resentment started growing. He squinted. There was no way he'd move. No one could make him.

Grandpa appeared at the screen door. “Time for supper,” he said, and disappeared back into the house.

Danny didn't move. He set his teeth and continued stroking the sleeping dog.

A few minutes later, Grandpa reappeared. He hesitated and then came out to stand beside him. He looked at the boy but Danny refused to look up. Grandpa stood silently a moment and then said kindly, “You've got to be hungry. Come on inside and get something to eat.”

Danny followed, but at the last second he veered away from the dining room. He went downstairs to where he and his sister kept some extra clothes. He shed his good clothes and pulled on shorts and a favorite T-shirt.

The others were already seated at the dining room table. Danny slouched into his empty chair. Grandma and Grandpa started some idle chitchat about weeds and the weather, and whether they should water the grass that night. Dishes were passed around the table, and Danny's sullenness gradually dissolved into a full stomach. By the time Grandma served apple pie with vanilla ice cream, he was able to look up and take note of the others. The adults had kept up the fiction of an ordinary family dinner, but no one would look Danny in the eye. Like him, Jennifer remained quiet.
Take a picture and put it in the family
album
, Danny thought.
A picture is worth a thousand words.

Grandpa started clearing the table. Grandma turned to Jennifer and said, “Why don't you go downstairs and pack up your things to go home. You probably want to sleep in your own bed tonight. You too, Danny. There are some clothes down there you should take with you.”

Danny had never been particularly close to his sister. There were pictures in the photo albums showing them playing together when Jennifer was young, and of course the whole family on vacations, but once he started kindergarten neither of them had had much time for the other. Jennifer was what he and his friends called a girly-girl – she seemed happy to play with dolls in front of a TV tuned to her favorite shows. She said she wanted to play on soccer and baseball teams, but she never joined. She stuck to Mom. He spent more time with Dad. Their lives didn't often intersect.

Jen sat on the far side of the bed and started twirling her hair around and around her index finger. Danny knew her nervous habit. He had no idea where to start or what to say.

“So. What happened?” she asked.

“Didn't they tell you?”

“I heard Mom crying, so I stayed in the TV room.”

Her answer didn't much surprise him. She was good at avoiding unpleasant things – like Dad losing his temper at her or Mom.

“They say Dad'll be out of jail next week.”

She paused. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“I don't know,” he shrugged. “I guess it depends.”

There was a long silence as they both considered what it might mean for each of them.

“Soooo…are they still getting divorced?”

“Yeah.”

“So they'll be divorced and I won't have to live with Dad? Maybe I won't have to see him much.”

He stared at his sister.
No
, he thought,
they'll be divorced but I'll
still get to see lots of Dad
. “We're going to have to move,” he said.

She started. “I don't want to move,” she replied.

“Neither do I,” he said. “Neither do I.”

Chapter 12

Monday

His mom gripped the steering wheel tightly. Danny heard her take a steadying breath as she drove away from Grandma and Grandpa's. He rolled down his window and gestured at Jennifer to do the same. Cool evening air swept through the car, and Buddy jumped from side to side, sticking his head out the windows, black ears flapping and nose twitching. Danny pretended to scold him. Busying himself with the dog meant he didn't have to look at his mom.

Although it was almost 8:30, the sun still promised two hours of light when Mom pulled into the garage. She parked beside Dad's black SUV. She'd driven it only a couple of times since Dad went to jail, mainly in the winter when the roads were bad with snow and ice. It still had Danny's hockey gear in it. A couple of times she'd asked him to put it away, but he hadn't. Mom stopped asking. When Dad's secretary had called about the insurance renewal on the SUV, his mother had let it lapse and removed the license plates.

Danny glanced at his equipment. He guessed Dad would keep the SUV and Mom would get the car. And he'd be using his hockey gear again by Christmas.

Mom punched in the security code and opened the door. He and Jennifer dropped their overnight bags in the laundry room, while Mom retreated to the kitchen to make coffee. The red light on the answering machine blinked for attention. She deleted the message without listening to it and dropped onto a kitchen chair.

The kids hurried to their rooms and shut their doors. Danny fell onto his bed and rubbed his eyes until brilliant starbursts shot across his eyelids. Eventually, the heaviness of sleep slowed his heart.

The sun crept westward and the sky eased from crimson to orange. The heatless rays roused him from his fitful sleep. He realized it was bedtime. He tugged his boxers from under the pillow and stood to change. Before shutting the curtain, he opened the sliding window and gazed down.

Wood smoke drifted by and curled in the air. There was Mom, bending over the stone fire pit, fanning the young flames with a rolled newspaper. He'd helped his dad build the fire pit a couple of summers ago and Danny loved it. It was a great way to dodge Mom's rule against playing with matches, and he couldn't believe his luck when Dad once let him use up a whole box to light a single fire. Two years ago, after a winning game, Dad had invited the entire soccer team to roast wieners and marshmallows. After the team had left, the two of them sat staring at the smoldering coals, but by morning it was as if the fire had never existed.

Danny surveyed his room. Although it was just as he'd left it this morning, it seemed different, like an echo of the real thing. He gazed around the room at all the framed photos hanging on his walls. There he was two summers ago, his arms sagging under a huge pink-striped rainbow trout. There was a snapshot of the whole family riding the Horseshoe Bay ferry. They squinted into the sun, and their hair streamed behind them like sails in the wind. Danny opened the top dresser drawer and brushed his fingers across the picture of his soccer team posing with their gold medals, the year Dad had coached them to victory. There was Dad, wearing the red golf shirt the team had bought, with the word
Coach
embroidered above the breast pocket. Danny had put away the picture when his dad went to jail, but sometimes at night, he pulled it out and wished he could be back on the winning team.

There was a ton of stuff in his room. Each object was a piece of his past. He thought more about moving. He realized a lot of it could be picked up and taken with him – memories intact. He'd sweep everything into a big box and move it all to his new house. He'd miss this bedroom, this house, but he could see it was too big for the three of them. He knew, when money had to stretch to cover two households, divorced families often moved to smaller homes. Smaller places were less work, too, and he wouldn't mind not having to cut the lawn or trim lilacs anymore.

Mom had said they'd have to move soon, before Dad got out. Probably she'd make sure they wouldn't have to move too far, so he and Jen could still go to the same schools and have the same friends. They'd have time to settle into the new place before school started. He felt his shoulders relax. Even though his friends had carried on their lives without him, maybe when Dad got out and things were normal again, he'd be able to build some bridges. He'd faked indifference, but he missed his friends.

A sound from outside distracted him – a periodic
fha
– like something heavy but soft landing on the patio. He looked out. A narrow balcony overlooked the yard from his parents' bedroom, and Mom seemed to be throwing something from the balcony onto the patio. Buddy sniffed around the stuffed, black garbage bags.
Mom's probably getting rid of some things she doesn't want to
take with her when we move. But I'm not going to throw anything
out,
he thought.
This stuff is me. I'm taking it all.

Buddy barked. His mom had placed a full bottle of red wine and a tall-stemmed wine glass on the patio table. The lively bonfire crackled as the yellow-orange flames licked over the top of the stones and Venus made its first appearance low in the darkening sky. Mom was dragging those bulging garbage bags toward the fire pit, lining them up beside her chair. Buddy stalked the bags, giving them an occasional bark, as if to force them to open and spill their secrets.

Danny watched his mother drag the last bags over. Then she sat and poured herself a glass of wine, took a long drink, grasped the first bag, and opened it. She pulled out something shapeless and dark and threw it on the fire.

It took Danny a moment to figure out what his mom was throwing on the fire.

Dad's clothes!

One by one she pulled out jackets, pants, shirts, socks, ties, even shoes, and threw them on. The smoke darkened to a greasy black and billowed upwards. Crimson flames whipped up inside boiling clouds that swirled higher and higher, obscuring the night sky. Acrid smoke seeped into his room, filling his nose and mouth with bitterness.

She didn't stop until they were all gone.

Chapter 13

Tuesday

The ringing phone edged Danny awake. The answering machine kicked in, and a flat, mechanical voice recited the standard instructions to leave a message after the tone.

Before the assault, it had been Dad's voice on the machine.

A man, maybe Grandpa, left an unintelligible message. The machine shut off. Except for Buddy whiffing and snuffling at the foot of his bed, the house was quiet. Where was Mom? Danny wondered. Then he remembered last night.

He got out of bed and walked to her bedroom. The door was ajar, so he pushed it open.

The air smelled of smoke, but as he walked closer to the bed, the smell soured, and was more like rotten fruit. A wine bottle lay tipped on its side, a red stain on the carpet at its mouth. Danny's mother was sprawled on top of the covers, passed out.

Dead drunk.

He backed out of the bedroom and retreated to the kitchen.

The phone rang again. Then the mechanical voice:
Leave-a-
message-after-the-tone
. “Catherine? Are you there?” It was Grandpa. “Pick up if you're there.” He paused. “Well, call me back when you get this –”

Danny lifted the receiver.

“Catherine?”

“It's me.”

“Good morning, Danny-boy,” Grandpa replied, the cheerful greeting sounding as artificial as the answering machine. “Where's your mother?”

“In her room.”

“Can I talk to her?”

“She's asleep.”

“Still asleep?”

“Yeah. Asleep. Drunk. Hung over. Whatever.”

“Oh…. Well, why don't we come and pick up the two of you?”

“Whatever.”

“Okay. Is Jennifer up yet?”

“No.”

“Then give her a nudge. We'll be there right away.”

Danny hung up without saying good-bye. He stomped up the stairs and made a point of calling loudly to Buddy. He paused in front of his mother's bedroom but couldn't hear anything inside. He elbowed open Jennifer's door. Her blind was pulled down tightly against the morning sun. “Jen…get up,” he said roughly.

She groaned.

“Buddy, wake her up,” he instructed. He turned away, knowing the dog would obey, and he returned to his own dark room. Rather than open the curtain and risk seeing the fire pit, Danny switched on the overhead light, stuck a CD into his player, and turned up the volume as high as it would go. The music blasted while he tossed his drawers to find the right T-shirt and shorts. He went into the bathroom to wash up.

He made the mistake of looking in the mirror. Puffy eyelids, dull eyes, and hair flattened on one side, standing up like a feather in the back. He knew he needed a shower, but instead he just dragged a dry comb a couple of times across his scalp.
I feel like
crap and I might as well look like crap.

Jennifer appeared and Danny stretched his leg to kick the door shut.

“Wait,” she said. “Where's Mom?”

He pointed at her bedroom.

“Still asleep?” Jen asked, cocking her head slightly.

“Drunk,” he said, as he shut the door in his sister's face.

He left the bathroom and stood in his sister's doorway. She sat slumped on the bed, staring at the carpet, her left hand twiddling, twiddling, twiddling a strand of hair.