He stared at the headstone, wiped a tear from his eye. The engraving was so faded that if he had not already known what it said, he would never have been able to read it.
He took a deep breath, walked past a series of newer tombstones, and stopped in front of Jim Petrovin’s grave. He stared at it for a moment, then looked around. The milk was getting warm and he needed to get home, but he scanned the ridge for signs of anyone else.
There was no one here, and he hesitated only a second before unbuckling his belt, unbuttoning his Levi’s, taking out his pecker, and pissing on the minister’s grave.
Fourteen
1
Adam lay on his bed, listening to tunes while he read through the new Spiderman. His parents’ friends Paul and Deanna Mathews were over tonight, and after dinner he and Teo had been sent off to their rooms so the grown-ups could talk. Sasha, as usual, was out with her friends somewhere—
I like ’em long
—and she probably wouldn’t be back until… well, whenever.
Teo had tried to hang with him, but he’d kicked her out of his room, closed and locked the door, and put on his Walkman headphones so he couldn’t hear her whining.
He wished he had a television in here. Even a black-and-white one. They’d won the lottery, they were supposed to be rich, but his parents didn’t seem to be doing anything with the money except spending it on themselves. He still didn’t have a decent stereo or a computer… or a television.
The television was a necessity. Especially for nights like this. Hell, Scott had his own TV. Even Roberto had had one. But his mom had some bee up her butt about limiting the amount of time kids watched television. She’d made him read an article about some group that was sponsoring an “Unplugged” week, a week where everyone was supposed to turn off their TVs and do something else. The woman who was president of the organization said that since giving up television viewing, she’d had more time for knitting and reading and playing Scrabble.
He’d thought that meant that their TV viewing was going to be curtailed, but luckily for him and Teo, their dad had weighed in on their side, laughing at the woman in the article and saying that she could learn a lot more watching PBS than she could sitting in a silent house and knitting.
“Her ‘reading’ must consist of romance novels,” he said.
Their parents had gotten into an argument after that, and the upshot of it was that their father had granted them unlimited viewing privileges rather than the two hours a night they’d previously been allotted.
But, meanwhile, he still didn’t have a TV in his room.
He finished Spiderman, picked up a Hulk that Scott had lent him, but then he finished that comic book and the tape in his Walkman ended.
He was thirsty and bored, and he tossed the comics aside, took off his headphones, and walked over to the door, opening it slowly. He hadn’t exactly been exiled from downstairs or banned from going out to the kitchen, but it was more exciting to think he had, and so he planned a route that would enable him to sneak out and snag a can of Coke without his parents or their friends seeing him.
Adam looked up and down the hall, made sure there was no sign of Teo, then walked to the edge of the stairs. He could hear the mumbled buzz of adult conversation but could see no sign of anyone, and he crept down the steps. They were all in the living room—he could see the side of his mom’s head at the close end of the couch—and he considered trying to sneak into the kitchen that way, but he would have to pass through a corner of the living room and then through the dining room, and detection was almost certain. Even crouching down and scuttling behind furniture, there wasn’t enough cover.
So he settled for the easy route, going into the kitchen from the hall doorway.
He could tell from their voices that the adults had had a little too much to drink, and he made it successfully across the kitchen to the other side, moving past the open entryway of the dining room without being seen. A plate of leftover tortilla chips and an empty salsa bowl were on the breakfast table, and he popped a couple of chips into his mouth, sucking on them instead of biting so that they wouldn’t crunch, not wanting to give himself away.
He opened the refrigerator, took out a can of Coke, and started back the way he’d come, grabbing a few extra chips for the return trip. He paused for a moment at the edge of the dining room, listening to the conversation, hoping to hear something about himself or his sisters.
“Well,” his father was saying, “my first wife, Andrea, absolutely loved the idea of living in a small town. She wanted to move to Oregon or Washington—”
Adam felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach.
His father’s first wife?
His parents’ friends were talking now, but Adam had no idea what they were saying. The conversation had become background noise to his thoughts, which were coming fast and furious, tumbling over each other in his head. The overwhelming feeling was one of betrayal, and the idea that kept repeating in his brain was that this man, his father, was a stranger to him, was not the person he’d thought he was, was not the person he knew.
Adam practically jumped out of his skin when his mother passed by, walking into the kitchen.
She saw him before he had fully recognized her, and she smiled at him. “Thirsty, huh?” She motioned toward the table. “Want some chips?”
He shook his head dumbly, though he still had quite a few tortilla chips in his hand.
“Well, you’d better go back to your room and get ready for bed. It’s getting late and tomorrow’s a school day.”
He nodded, walked out the way he’d come in, but instead of going back upstairs, he made his way down the short hall to Teo’s room. Her door was closed, but it wasn’t locked, and he let himself in, shutting the door behind him. Teo frowned and was about to yell at him to get out, but he put a finger over his lips, indicating that she should be quiet, and her annoyance disappeared instantly, replaced by curiosity.
He crossed the room noiselessly, sitting down on the bed next to his sister. He looked at her, came straight to the point. “Dad was married before.”
“What?”
He held up his Coke can. “I came down to get something to drink, and I heard them talking. Dad said he was married before. To someone else.”
“Nuh-uh!”
“Uh-huh. Mom’s his second wife.”
There was silence as he let the revelation sink in. Teo looked like a ghost. All of the color had drained out of her face, and she blinked rapidly, her lids and lashes the only movement on her otherwise still features. She looked like she was about to cry. He felt a little like crying himself.
“He said her name was Andrea.”
“He was married to someone named Andrea before he married Mom?”
“I guess.”
Teo still looked like she was about to cry, and for the first time since she’d been a baby, Adam felt like reaching over and giving her a big hug.
“Does Sasha know?”
Adam shrugged. “Maybe. You think she’d tell us if she did?”
“But how come… ?” She looked up at him. “Does Mom know?”
“Of course. She was there too, and she wasn’t surprised about it or anything.”
“How come no one ever told us?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
He stayed in Teo’s room for over half an hour, the two of them talking, analyzing what had happened, going over and over the few sentences he’d heard, until their mother came in, intending to make sure Teo was in bed, and found him there. She was surprised to see him, but she did not overreact. She simply told him to go upstairs, it was time for both of them to go to sleep.