five hundred, all of it beaming. One day she’ll make you proud, but right now all she wants to do is blow your mind. And maybe Smike’s little thingy.”
“Fern! Please!”
“His little mind, too.”
Nobody enjoys her jokes better than Fern herself and that gets her laughing until she can barely breathe. After a while, after we’ve both enjoyed a few moments of silent communion, she goes, “So, you got a battle plan?”
“Grounding doesn’t seem to mean much.”
“Means nothing. Not unless you can lock ‘em up and throw away the key. What you gotta do, you gotta scare some sense into her.”
“And how do I do that?”
“With Jess I used to grab my chest, make my face go all white. Make her think my heart was about to stop.”
“You can do that, make your face go white?”
“Years of practice scaring my own mother.”
“I can’t fake a heart attack, Fern.”
“A seizure then. That’s easier. All you gotta do is drool.”
I’m crying now, but tears of laughter.
“It’ll be okay,” Fern says, shifting to serious. “You’ll see. Kelly’s a good soul. She’ll know what to do, even if you don’t.”
“You really think so?”
“I really do. But just in case, can you fake a nosebleed?”
I’m still smiling ten minutes later when I enter Kelly’s room. My intention is to rummage around, see if she left acontact number for Seth. No doubt it’s right there on her computer somewhere, but her computer is forbidden to me. The personal computer, Kelly has explained, is like a diary. Therefore no peeking, on pain of death. To which I agreed. Not the death part, of course, but the general idea. So in my mind her computer is off-limits until one second past noon. Until then I’ll stick to her address book, the handy little purse-size one I gave, assuming she hasn’t taken it with her.
Can’t find the address book. What I do find, nestled way back in the drawer, very nearly gives me that seizure Fern was suggesting. A photo album I’ve never seen before. Quite new, very slick.
Pictures of my daughter doing something really awful. Something worse than sex. Far, far worse.
7. When Sleepy Voices Make It Snow
Once when Roy Whittle was a boy—just the one time—Pap took the whole family to a carnival in Belle Glade. Some kind of harvest jubilee thing, where they blessed the dirt and prayed for the sugarcane, or anyhow that’s how Pappy explained it, in the brief interval when he was sober and smiling.
The thing about it was, the memory Roy savors, he and Dug got to pretty much run wild because Pappy was off doing whatever he did, and their momma went to the bingo, and the Whittle boys were left to their own devices. They didn’t have money for rides or cotton candy, so they took to sneaking into the sideshow tents. Crawling under the heavy canvas, flat on their bellies, the smell of wet grass in their faces. Saw Howard Huge, the blubbery fat man, big as a whale and sitting on a scale that proved he weighed a thousand pounds. Saw a boy using a hammer to drive bigspikes up his nose, which Dug thought was funny—it was a rare thing, hearing his brother laugh out loud—and a skinny old woman with really disgusting scaly skin calling herself the Real Fiji Mermaid.
What Roy remembers best though, is getting hypnotized. This man in a shiny black suit and western string tie, the Amazing Mizmar, had the ability to control minds not his own. Picking folks out of the little audience for his famous experiment in mass hypnosis, he’d pointed out Dug to his pretty assistant, but Dug wouldn’t have none of it. He wasn’t one for talking to strangers, or drawing attention. So Roy took his place up on the stage with the other victims, all of them looking pretty sheepish, and then the Amazing Mizmar produced this truly amazing device, a glittery little ball on the end of a wand. He clicked the wand and the glittery ball shot pulses of light. Alluring, rhythmic pulses that blended in with the Amazing
“Fern! Please!”
“His little mind, too.”
Nobody enjoys her jokes better than Fern herself and that gets her laughing until she can barely breathe. After a while, after we’ve both enjoyed a few moments of silent communion, she goes, “So, you got a battle plan?”
“Grounding doesn’t seem to mean much.”
“Means nothing. Not unless you can lock ‘em up and throw away the key. What you gotta do, you gotta scare some sense into her.”
“And how do I do that?”
“With Jess I used to grab my chest, make my face go all white. Make her think my heart was about to stop.”
“You can do that, make your face go white?”
“Years of practice scaring my own mother.”
“I can’t fake a heart attack, Fern.”
“A seizure then. That’s easier. All you gotta do is drool.”
I’m crying now, but tears of laughter.
“It’ll be okay,” Fern says, shifting to serious. “You’ll see. Kelly’s a good soul. She’ll know what to do, even if you don’t.”
“You really think so?”
“I really do. But just in case, can you fake a nosebleed?”
I’m still smiling ten minutes later when I enter Kelly’s room. My intention is to rummage around, see if she left acontact number for Seth. No doubt it’s right there on her computer somewhere, but her computer is forbidden to me. The personal computer, Kelly has explained, is like a diary. Therefore no peeking, on pain of death. To which I agreed. Not the death part, of course, but the general idea. So in my mind her computer is off-limits until one second past noon. Until then I’ll stick to her address book, the handy little purse-size one I gave, assuming she hasn’t taken it with her.
Can’t find the address book. What I do find, nestled way back in the drawer, very nearly gives me that seizure Fern was suggesting. A photo album I’ve never seen before. Quite new, very slick.
Pictures of my daughter doing something really awful. Something worse than sex. Far, far worse.
7. When Sleepy Voices Make It Snow
Once when Roy Whittle was a boy—just the one time—Pap took the whole family to a carnival in Belle Glade. Some kind of harvest jubilee thing, where they blessed the dirt and prayed for the sugarcane, or anyhow that’s how Pappy explained it, in the brief interval when he was sober and smiling.
The thing about it was, the memory Roy savors, he and Dug got to pretty much run wild because Pappy was off doing whatever he did, and their momma went to the bingo, and the Whittle boys were left to their own devices. They didn’t have money for rides or cotton candy, so they took to sneaking into the sideshow tents. Crawling under the heavy canvas, flat on their bellies, the smell of wet grass in their faces. Saw Howard Huge, the blubbery fat man, big as a whale and sitting on a scale that proved he weighed a thousand pounds. Saw a boy using a hammer to drive bigspikes up his nose, which Dug thought was funny—it was a rare thing, hearing his brother laugh out loud—and a skinny old woman with really disgusting scaly skin calling herself the Real Fiji Mermaid.
What Roy remembers best though, is getting hypnotized. This man in a shiny black suit and western string tie, the Amazing Mizmar, had the ability to control minds not his own. Picking folks out of the little audience for his famous experiment in mass hypnosis, he’d pointed out Dug to his pretty assistant, but Dug wouldn’t have none of it. He wasn’t one for talking to strangers, or drawing attention. So Roy took his place up on the stage with the other victims, all of them looking pretty sheepish, and then the Amazing Mizmar produced this truly amazing device, a glittery little ball on the end of a wand. He clicked the wand and the glittery ball shot pulses of light. Alluring, rhythmic pulses that blended in with the Amazing
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