Twice a Child by Ann Elia Stewart

Author:Ann Elia Stewart
Format: epub
Publisher: Sunbury Press, Inc.
Published: 2012-05-30T04:00:00+00:00

twenty three

“Yeah?”

There was crackling on the other end, then a bell—a gong-like bell—and a woman’s voice drifting over a distant loudspeaker.

“Who’s this?”

“You’re setting me up.”

Eddie shot up from the sofa, his head pounding. The empty bottle of sloe gin had rolled beneath the dining room table and a rise of sick began in the pit of his stomach. Storm clouds hovered over the ocean, thick and puffy, the sky Confederate blue. He walked to the sliding doors, the ocean a swirl of tea-stained water, algae sweeping beneath the water, changing the face of it as quickly as the opening or closing of a blind.

“What—setting you up?”

“There’s no bed here for me. I don’t know where they put it.” His father’s voice sounded wet.

“Pop, where are you . . .where are you calling from?” That’s all he needed right now, his confused father out on the street, tooling around L.A.—which could mean anywhere. Maybe he was standing at a pay phone with his hospital robe flapping in the breeze, his patootie exposed for anyone to see. The image made him chuckle.

“So this is funny to you?”

“No—”

“They’ve got me close to the windows. I’m a sitting duck.”

Eddie scratched his belly. “Pop, can you describe where you’re calling from? What’s around you?”

“Nothing, that’s just it. No bed, no—wait. There’s a dish here. And some little girl behind it.”

He was making some progress.

“Did that little girl hand you the phone?”

“What phone?”

“The one you’re using to talk to me right now.”

His father’s voice was replaced by a scuffle, a scratching. Eddie pictured him taking the phone away from his ear, examining it as if he were holding a foreign object in his hand.

“Hey!” He shouted, hoping he’d be heard. “Pop?”

“What?”

He sounded so far away. “Listen, I’m coming in later today. I’m going to try and get Tina there, too.”

There was a long pause on the other end, and then, as if he were surrounded by spies, his father said, “—get me out of here.”

“We’re trying—”

“You’re. Not. Trying.”

Eddie knew that snide tone.

“You and your mother are in cahoots,” Frank said. “You’re letting her run around all over town.”

“Who’s running around all over town?”

Agitation, disappointment, perhaps even a little grief punctuated the sigh on the other end. “Your mother. They’re making me stay here, no bed, putting me through terrible tortures—did you know what they’re calling this? Rehab.”

“Now, Pop—”

“No, you look here. They stand me up in a line and I’m in a goddamn cage and you know what they’re getting ready to do?”

“You’re in a cage?”

“They’re getting us all ready for the firing squad. Now you get your ass down here right now and spring me.”

By that point, Eddie knew he had to find a way to bring him home, but where the hell was that anymore?

“—and do something right for the first time in your life, boy.”

Eddie wiped his face with his hand, opened his eyes wide, and yawned.

“Yeah, right, okay. You go take a nap. Tina and I’ll be there later in the day.” He hung up.

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