The Almost Archer Sisters Read Free Page B

my dinners, not my house, not my marriage, not my education, not even the boys.
    We had stopped at the Starlite Variety, now open twenty-four hours to compete with the 7-Eleven and the all-night grocery. I poured myself some stale coffee, bought licorice for the boys and an extra box of Kleenex for me. Sam was still out cold under the decrepit slide, the same one Beth and I played on as children. A lurid smear of my blood started at his wrists and petered outat the tip of his thumb. I felt inside his pants again. Still dry, thank God. I’d grown immune to the mute stares a person would naturally attract when openly molesting a passed-out eight-year-old in a public park. I continued to ignore the morning joggers and dog walkers while I lit another cigarette. This used to be a small town. We used to know everyone. Then came the subdivisions and the monster homes and all these well-dressed strangers with their silver minivans and their skateboarding kids who never played in rivers or built forts like we did when we were kids. Instead, they hung out in menacing clusters in town, outside the doughnut shop or the diner, wherever they sold things kids could afford to buy.
    Usually, I’d usher Sam home so he could seize in familiar surroundings. Peeing his pants was a constant concern with his condition, and now that he was noticing girls, the potential for permanent mortification was becoming difficult to stave off. After his diagnosis, we were given pamphlets on antiseizure medications and an awful helmet, a horrible boxer-looking contraption that made our already odd boy look like an insulated freak. Since he rarely wore the helmet, I added full-time head catcher to my résumé. We were also given pep talks by teachers and neighbors about what an “old soul” Sam was and how his so-called wisdom, his seeming maturity, would pull him through. But I knew Sam’s soul was the same age as his body; that he still believed his parents were omnipotent and that bogeymen lived under the bed. He could occupy himself with a stick and some dirt for longer than it takes me to finish with the soaps. He was so supportive of Jake’s imaginary friends you’d think he saw them himself. He was no more an old soul than I was. Yes, he was the quieter of our two boys, but if told a time bomb was embedded in your brain, you’d keep activity to a minimum too. It didn’t mean he was thinking deeper thoughts than the other kids. In fact, quite the opposite. When asked, “What are you thinking, buddy?” during one of thosefaraway looks, he’d more likely have said chocolate cake or kittens than anything rueful, shocking, or sad.
    After our mother died, people used to whisper these things about Beth and me. They granted us the same lofty wisdoms cultivated by adults transformed by the terrific blows of random tragedy. (“The girls are strong. They’ll survive this. They have old souls.”) But it was Lou who had deepened and aged; Lou’s hair turned white in one year. And now Sam’s condition was something we experienced, we witnessed, we feared, not Sam.
    While Sam stirred in the grass, I tried to engage Jake.
    “Would you look at that sunrise. Beautiful, isn’t it, Jake?”
    “I hate the sun.”
    “Me too.”
    Sam opened and shut his hands, studying the blood on his fist, my blood.
    “Welcome back, buddy,” I said. Convertibles had always infuriated me, how they commit such cheery violence on a driver’s head. The ride had spun his hair into a cotton candy Afro. It reminded me of the way home perms used to make Beth and me look like masculine soccer moms until our hair would finally relax. My dad loved the chemical precision of administering perms, so we had had a lot of them as kids. Beth still flew home for the odd touch-up at Salon Chez Lou, because it cost the same, if not less, she said, to fly home on points and to rent a car at the airport, than for her to get her streaks done at a top Manhattan salon. Also Lou took his time,