No one said a word about what my brother had done. At the Dairy Queen, my mother revealed nothing about what she knew, if in fact she knew anything. It was very possible my father hadn’t shared what Rick Manheim had said with her. You didn’t talk about the bad things, and the worse a thing was, the quieter you kept it. It was a practice everyone in Barnard seemed to ascribe to. At school the next day and the day after that, I noticed no changes in the way my schoolmates behaved around me, no whispers of scandal, no sidelong glances of pity or disgust. If Duke Manheim had said anything to his buddies at Beall’s High, it had yet to filter down to McNeil Middle School. Whatever had occurred between my brother and Duke was terrible enough that neither they nor their fathers would let the information escape.
As a kid, I wasn’t equipped to think in broad terms, so my speculations were laughable. I imagined Toby had called Duke a bad name or maybe he’d stolen one of his friend’s toys or record albums.
Again I nudged the stack of mail. A bill lay on top of the pile; it was from Willow House, where Toby lived, had lived for the past eight years. I found it comforting such institutions no longer called themselves asylums.
The beefsteak is tough and the potatoes have been boiled too long and decompose into mush beneath my fork and nothing has flavor no matter how much salt I add. My father sits on my right and smokes a cigarette. His eyes are like Toby’s — red and dull. He looks as if he’s been awake since Sunday afternoon, since Mr. Manheim’s phone call. My mother chats throughout the meal, talking about Mrs. Burlingson’s crop of squash and raspberries, and Mrs. Turred’s lousy washing machine flooding her basement again, and how Mr. Evans at the grocery told her that he’d caught the Perry boy trying to pilfer candies from the rack by the register. She babbles on and on. It seems she speaks about every family in Barnard except ours. As she clears the dishes, my father stubs out his cigarette and immediately lights another.
“I’m driving on up to Dallas,” he says through a cloud of blue-gray smoke.
My mother halts as if someone has put a gun to her back. “The dealership sending you?” she asks.
“I’ll be heading out here shortly,” he says, not answering her question. “I’ll try to be back by supper tomorrow, but no need to wait on me. I’ll call if things take longer than expected.”
Mama continues on to the sink and gently places the dinner plates in it.
“That’s fine,” she says. “We’re having hot dogs and beans. They’ll keep well enough.”
I finished my beer, rinsed the bottle, and placed it in the recycling bin. With my ass propped against the counter, I listened to Toby’s messages again with the same ache and constriction in my chest. Though very late, after two in the morning, I decided to call him back, but he didn’t answer. I left a message so thick with false enthusiasm at hearing from him, I felt ashamed. The performance was as pitifully overblown as my childhood death scenes.
Granted, at that point my brother was no longer able to detect such variances in vocal patterns. He heard what he wanted to hear and inferred the emotions he expected. Oddly enough, in many other ways, his condition had improved. His paranoia and the violent outbursts it caused had lessened considerably, and I was grateful for that. Still, they shouldn’t have let him out of the home, not without supervision. A guy like my brother couldn’t care for himself, not for long, not for days and nights at a time.
After Daddy leaves for Dallas, I ask Mama why Toby has to stay outside, and she tells me that Daddy thinks it is best. I persist, because as always, I’m told nothing.
“Don’t worry so much about this. Your brother is going to be fine, Petey, just fine. Your father is taking care of him.”
I note the oddity of her comment. She speaks as if Toby is sick or injured, rather than being punished for whatever had caused his fight with Duke Manheim. My confusion grows and feeds my frustration, but my mother deflects my questions, tuts them away, smiles at me as if humoring a feeb. After a time, I become convinced she doesn’t know what’s wrong with Toby. I can tell by the confusion in her eyes and the way she smoothes her hair and the way she smiles, which isn’t really a smile at all, and I know that asking her questions is pointless.
My mother accepted my father’s silences with the same gravity she’d accepted every word he’d ever spoken. As a boy, I’d thought she had as many answers as my father, an equal on the plain of adulthood with her husband, but that wasn’t the case at all. She wasn’t a partner quite so much as an appendage, a utensil, an appliance with a good nature and a pleasant face. It wasn’t until my father died that I understood the depth of her dependence on the man. Without my father, she turned to me for answers, looked to me to make her decisions. Should I sell the house, Petey? Should I move in with your Aunt Ruby and Uncle Lou? Isn’t it better if I don’t go to the hospital? My visits always upset Toby so. If you think I should, I will but…
I called Willow House’s emergency number, but went directly to voice mail. Once the tone sounded, I let them know that Toby had slipped out again. I asked that they not involve the authorities, though I know they are bound by law to do so. Leaving my number, I hung up and dig in my pocket for the keys I’d taken from the hook in the garage.
Then I leave the house. In my car, I consider leaving Toby to the professionals at Willow House. All I had to do was call them back and give them the address. There was only one place he could be.
“The machine still works, Petey. It still works.”
It’s Friday, and I’m walking up the dirt drive to my house. The dust is thick and joins the pollen and both fill the air creating a golden filter for the afternoon sun, which hangs, glaring over the roof. The door to my father’s workshop is open, and I see Toby inside. He is holding a small bucket and a brush, and he’s covering the window in the door with black paint. He is concentrating on the task, lining up his brush carefully before touching it to the pane and sweeping it across the glass. He is so absorbed in the task that my arrival at the door surprises him.
He flinches and steps back and then his posture relaxes. “Hey, squirt,” he says, and the familiarity, the normality of the greeting refreshes like a gulp of sweet tea.
“Hey,” I reply. “Whatcha doing?”
“Painting,” he says.
“Painting windows?”
“That’s what it looks like,” he says.
I notice something is missing from my brother’s eyes. They are red and the lids are heavy and a dull cast covers them.
“Why?”
“It’s a project I’m working on with Daddy,” he says. He seems unsure of the words, and he gazes at the concrete floor of the workshop and then back at the black band he has painted on the glass. “It’s a secret.”
“Are you gonna come back inside?” I ask.
“Not for a while,” Toby says. He dips the brush into the bucket and stirs the black paint gravely.
“Why not?” I’m desperate for information, and even though I see my brother pulling into his thoughts, moving away from me as surely as if he were being dragged behind a speeding truck, I persist. “What happened? What did you do?”
“You better go on inside, now,” he says.
I look past him into my father’s shop. The space was always off limits to us unless we had permission from our father to enter it for a tool or a can of oil. It is large, a converted two-car garage. The floor is clean and cleared except for the army cot, which Toby has made up neatly with sheets and a blanket. The workbenches form a large L in the far corner, and they are similarly devoid of clutter. Neatly organized shelves run floor to ceiling on the right just beyond the cot.