“Is it on fire or is it bleeding?” said Elizabeth.
“No,“ said Jack.
“Then it can wait.”
Elizabeth sighed. Why did he always need her when she was in the tub? Jack was a boy; so different than his sister Annie. Knew all the answers to tests at school, didn’t see the point of doing the homework since he already figured out the answers. Teachers were either exasperated or angry; she’d go to the parent-teacher conferences already braced for their disapproval. Joe was always better at this. She would ask what was wrong with Jack; he would ask what was wrong with the way they were teaching him. Jack took up all the air in the room but he always made others feel good about themselves.
Sam slipped under the teachers’ radar. He dedicated himself to being Not Jack. Only at home did he show the fire of which he was capable. Once time when she was at her evening college course and Tom was at a sales conference, Jack bothered Sam once too often and Sam’s temper exploded. Jack realized he had gone too far and fled to his room and locked the door. Sam broke the doorframe. Suddenly cooperation was all they thought about: “I’ll get the glue, you get the clamp!” said Jack. It almost looked like it had never splintered at all.
And when she got home, Jack took her aside. “Mom. I have to show you something. Please, please – don’t tell Dad.” Elizabeth said “If he notices it, I won’t lie to him. But if he doesn’t notice – I’m not going to point it out.”
She wished cooperation didn’t involve breaking things. Tom was just as bad. She came home another night from class. Jack and Tom sat in the living room, suspiciously quiet. Hmm.
Sam came up the stairs, holding his maroon robe with one hand and a book in the other. “I just want you to know I had nothing to do with it,” he said, then went silently downstairs.
Suspicious, she walked down the hallway. Just outside the bedroom door two pieces of typing paper hung from the wall.
What the hell? She pulled them off. There was a perfect double-round imprint of a butt. Back to the living room, holding up the pieces of paper. Jack, of course, was the confessor. “We were just wrestling! And the hallway was too narrow! And it’s my butt, but Dad was the one that put it there!” She was deeply entertained they thought taping paper over the hole would stop her from noticing.
Boys, old and young.
Jack and Sam did follow her rules: Use your seat belt. Don’t litter. And return your shopping cart to the cart corral. So maybe she wasn’t such a bad mother after all.
She got out of the tub and toweled off. Time to resume motherhood.
And there, on the table, is a note:
“Mom: I’ve taken the gun and the dog and gone down to the creek. Something there is on fire!”
Since it was a BB gun, blood wouldn’t be involved, but he really should have told her about the fire.
