The God of War by Marisa Silver

Author:Marisa Silver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2008-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

MRS. POOLE KEPT THE WINDOWS open during the drive home, and a hot wind blew into the car. She drove with both hands on the wheel, leaning forward in her seat as if she thought it would get her home faster.

“It’s a pretty good place for a prison,” I said.

She looked at me in alarm. “Prison? What are you talking about? He’s not in prison.”

“I just thought…The kids at school said…”

“The kids at school,” she said unkindly. “It’s not a prison. It’s a residential treatment center. He’s receiving help there.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s had a different kind of life from you, Ares,” she said. “It’s too hard for you to understand.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not a prison,” she said again.

When she pulled into her driveway, she didn’t leave the car or indicate that she wanted me to get out, so I stayed. The front door opened, and Mr. Poole walked toward us. He wore a tie knotted loosely and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up revealing tanned and ropy forearms. He wore hiking boots, and despite his shirt and tie, he looked like someone more at home camping out than in an office. He shook his glasses open and put them on.

“Why doesn’t Kevin call him ‘Dad’?” I said.

“Kevin is our foster child.”

Mr. Poole leaned into the driver’s side window. “Long drive?” he said.

She nodded in a way that included a whole complicated answer to that question.

“How’s he doing?” he said.

“You should visit him and find out,” she said sharply.

“I had a meeting.”

She pressed her lips together as if to stop from saying the wrong thing. “His therapists gave him a good report. He’ll be able to come home soon.”

“Let’s not jump the gun.”

“He would be better off at home, not at an institution. We are not giving up on him.”

Mr. Poole glanced at me, then back to his wife. “We’ll talk about this later,” he said.

Riding home on my bike, I thought about the photograph albums in Mrs. Poole’s house and about how there were no pictures of Kevin as a baby or a little boy. Laurel kept all her photographs in shoeboxes, which I pawed through on occasion, mystified by the acts of banality and outright humiliation (me at a year, peeing an exuberant arc into the air) she had chosen to cement in time. In most of Mrs. Poole’s photographs, Kevin squinted into the sun, one hand shielding his brow as if Mr. or Mrs. Poole had forced him to take off his hat so that they could see his face. In those pictures, Kevin looked like he was reacting to a splinter.

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