He didn’t exactly want to eavesdrop on the arkie-barkies, but the house was small and it was practically impossible not to overhear … unless he left, that is, a strategic retreat he made more and more frequently this winter. And he sometimes felt that, as the older kid, he had a responsibility to listen. Mr Jacoby liked to say in history class that knowledge was power, and Pete supposed that was why he felt compelled to monitor his parents’ escalating war of words. Because each arkie-barkie stretched the fabric of the marriage thinner, and one of these days it would tear wide open. Best to be prepared.
Only prepared for what? Divorce? That seemed the most likely outcome. In some ways things might be better if they did split up – Pete felt this more and more strongly, although he had not yet articulated it as a conscious thought – but what exactly would a divorce mean in (another of Mr Jacoby’s faves) real world terms? Who would stay and who would go? If his dad went, how would he get along without a car when he could hardly walk? For that matter, how could either of them afford to go? They were broke already.
At least Tina wasn’t here for today’s spirited exchange of parental views; she was still in school, and probably wouldn’t be home directly after. Maybe not until dinner. She had finally made a friend, a bucktoothed girl named Ellen Briggs, who lived on the corner of Sycamore and Elm. Pete thought Ellen had the brains of a hamster, but at least Tina wasn’t always moping around the house, missing her friends in the old neighborhood, and sometimes crying. Pete hated it when Tina cried.
Meanwhile, silence your cell phones and turn off your pagers, folks. The lights are going down and this afternoon’s installment of We’re in Deep Shit is about to begin.
TOM: ‘Hey, you’re home early.’
LINDA (wearily): ‘Tom, it’s—’
TOM: ‘Wednesday, right. Early day at the library.’
LINDA: ‘You’ve been smoking in the house again. I can smell it.’
TOM (getting his sulk on): ‘Just one. In the kitchen. With the window open. There’s ice on the back steps, and I didn’t want to risk a tumble. Pete forgot to salt them again.’
PETE (aside to the audience): ‘As he should know, since he made the schedule of chores, it’s actually Tina’s week to salt. Those OxyContins he takes aren’t just pain pills, they’re stupid pills.’
LINDA: ‘I can still smell it, and you know the lease specifically prohibits—’
TOM: ‘All right, okay, I get it. Next time I’ll go outside and risk falling off my crutches.’
LINDA: ‘It’s not just the lease, Tommy. The secondary smoke is bad for the kids. We’ve discussed that.’
TOM: ‘And discussed it, and discussed it …’
LINDA (now wading into even deeper water): ‘Also, how much does a pack of cigarettes cost these days? Four-fifty? Five dollars?’
TOM: ‘I smoke a pack a week, for Christ’s sake!’
LINDA (overrunning his defenses with an arithmetic Panzer assault): ‘At five a pack, that’s over twenty dollars a month. And it all comes out of my salary, because it’s the only one—’
TOM: ‘Oh, here we go—’
LINDA: ‘—we’ve got now.’
TOM: ‘You never get tired of rubbing that in, do you? Probably think I got run over on purpose. So I could laze around the house.’
LINDA (after a long pause): ‘Is there any wine left? Because I could use half a glass.’
PETE (aside): ‘Say there is, Dad. Say there is.’
TOM: ‘It’s gone. Maybe you’d like me to crutch my way down to the Zoney’s and get another bottle. Of course you’d have to give me an advance on my allowance.’
LINDA (not crying, but sounding on the verge): ‘You act as though what happened to you is my fault.’
TOM (shouting): ‘It’s nobody’s fault, and that’s what drives me crazy! Don’t you get that? They never even caught the guy who did it!’
At this point Pete decided he’d had enough. It was a stupid play. Maybe they didn’t see that, but he did. He closed his lit book. He would read the assigned story – something by a guy named John Rothstein – that night. Right now he had to get out and breathe some uncontentious air.
LINDA (quiet): ‘At least you didn’t die.’
TOM (going totally soap opera now): ‘Sometimes I think it would be better if I had. Look at me – hooked through the bag on Oxy, and still in pain because it doesn’t work for shit anymore unless I take enough to half-kill me. Living on my wife’s salary – which is a thousand less than it used to be, thanks to the fucking Tea-Partiers—’
LINDA: ‘Watch your lang—’
TOM: ‘House? Gone. Motorized wheelchair? Gone. Savings? Almost used up. And now I can’t even have a fucking cigarette!’
LINDA: ‘If you think whining will solve anything, be my guest, but—’
TOM (roaring): ‘Is whining what you call it? I call it reality. You want me to drop my pants so you can get a good look at what’s left of my legs?’