Year After Henry by Cathie Pelletier

Author:Cathie Pelletier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2014-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

9

His mother was back. Larry heard the soft squeak, that same board beneath the carpet at the top of the stairs, the step that had been talking ever since he could remember. All those high school nights that he and Henry had crept into the house just ahead of dawn, they had been careful of that step, not wanting its painful sound to rouse their mother. But it was as if she and the step had an agreement: Wake me when the boys sneak in so I can scold them in the morning. Now the step had turned on her. For the past three mornings Larry had heard it, and then the soft movement of a body lurking just outside his door. Or maybe he felt her there, in his gut, she being his mother and all. Maybe nature gives humans that ability. But this was the third morning, and Larry couldn’t bear it anymore. He knew what she was doing, eavesdropping, her small white ear pressed like a seashell to his door, hoping to catch the ebb and flow of his life, to hear some clue as to what he was up to.

Larry rose from the chair at his desk where he had been writing a letter to Jonathan. Dear son, Aunt Jeanie got your letter and we’re all very happy that you’re coming home for Thanksgiving. He walked to his side of the door and stood there, waiting quietly, wondering if perhaps this was the morning she’d come up with a screwdriver in her hand, determined to flush him out. When she arrived like this, midmorning, the time of day that his father was just seeing the last mailman out of the post office, Larry knew she was alone. And that was a good thing. When the old man was with her, she seemed to draw some kind of energy from him, rising up higher on the heels of her feet, straightening her back, turning now and then to catch her husband’s eye, to see if he was listening to this. The old man was like some kind of ammunition truck that follows the tanks. But soon, Larry knew, they would come for the mail pouch, and when they did, his father would need to be at the vanguard, if for no other purpose than the symbolic. And they would come with a battering ram. But for now, his mother was alone again in the hallway. Larry could almost feel the warmth of her coming through the door, as if her pain were something liquid that could be poured out of her body if she let it. What could he do? What should he do? Larry remembered the skink Jonathan had tried to catch the summer before their lives went all to hell. Before Larry had a chance to warn him, the boy had grabbed the bright blue tail of the lizard, hoping to pick the thing up. Instead, he was left with the wiggling tail in his hand, the rest of the skink long gone.

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