Family Pictures by Sue Miller

Author:Sue Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

March 1966

When David opened the door, they all looked up, frozen, and he saw at once that Lainey was all right. She sat on the second stair, her face lifted toward him. The lines of blood on her forehead and one cheek looked like thicker, redder hair, hair drawn on by a child’s bright crayon.

“David,” she said. “You came.”

And abruptly everything came to life again: Sarah, who’d evidently gone to get a wet cloth for Lainey, stepped into the front hall, saw David, and burst into loud crying. Nina moved toward him, starting to apologize; and as David shut the front door, he saw Randall huddled in the corner behind it, he was aware suddenly of the rhythmic mooing that had charged the scene with meaning from the moment he’d stepped in.

“How long has he been like this?” he said to Nina, who was standing close to him in her white nightgown.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Just Mom was trying to get him to go upstairs, and he pushed her, I guess.” Her face was white too, and her eyes looked black and bottomless in her fear. “We didn’t know right away. We were in my room.”

“Get his blanket,” David said. She spun back from him, ran up the stairs, her bare feet thudding on the wood.

Randall was squatting, hugging his knees and rocking a little. His eyes were nearly shut. When David touched him, they snapped open unseeingly and his fisted arm shot out at nearly the same moment. Then he hugged himself again and hunched over, and the low moans started once more.

Nina came running down the stairs and over to David. She was panting, a loud, ragged sound. He took the worn blanket she held up. He crouched and offered it to Randall, but Randall didn’t seem to see it at all, his eyes didn’t focus on it. They moved wildly in their sockets, and his noises grew louder. He’d had a haircut recently, David could see, and the wide bare strip of flesh above his ears and his long exposed neck made him look more vulnerable, more crazy. “Randall,” David said gently. “Randall, here’s your blanket.”

“Sing,” Lainey said. They’d fallen silent behind him, watching. He looked over at her. She was holding the towel against her head. It was smeared a brilliant red.

“Press down,” David replied. “Press on the cut. Sarah, help your mother.” He turned back to Randall. His mind was blank; and then from nowhere came the silly lyrics: “We are poor little lambs who have gone astray, baa, baa, baa . . .”

Lainey and the girls huddled on the stairs and listened as David sang. He moved gradually from a light whispered tone, which Randall barely seemed to hear, to full voice. When Randall finally reached for his blanket, David could see Lainey in his peripheral vision turn and bury her face in her arms.

David led Randall slowly past her and the girls, up the stairs, singing loudly now: “Gentlemen songsters off on a spree, damned from here to eternity .

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