Page 65 of Bobby Green
Bobby smiled faintly. “My mom is always trying to make gourmet stuff,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t mind, really. She… you know, it’s a way she tries.”
“Tries to be what?”
“A good mom.”
Reg threw some cookies in his cart and tried not to cringe. He gave V two cookies every night after dinner, because everybody deserved dessert.
“I think my mom was sick like V,” he said after a moment. “Sometimes she tried really hard, and we were washed and dressed and everything had to be perfect and she’d scream if it wasn’t. And then we’d get home from school and the house would smell like weed and she’d be asleep and we’d have to get dinner.” He saw another kind of cookie V liked and added that. “V was in high school by then, you know? So she’d get me dinner, and then she’d walk down to the liquor store and buy us cookies. So it’s like a tradition. A couple of cookies at bedtime.”
Bobby grunted and added his own box—his were Nutter Butters, and Reg liked those too. “When’d your mom go?”
Reg didn’t like talking about this. He was usually pretty good about goofing off so girls didn’t ask. But this was Bobby, and it felt serious, so he didn’t have it in him to start juggling cookie packages or grabbing bags of M&Ms or something just to change the subject.
“I was in high school. We have an older sister, Queenie, but she got pregnant twice and moved out when I was in, like, eighth grade. She sends us Christmas cards but never visits. There’s always a new kid. I can’t even remember their names.”
“Oh God.” Bobby half laughed. “But after she moved out, it was you, V, and your mom.”
“Yeah. High school was when V started getting sick—started yelling at people on the bus, slapped a lady at the store where she worked. Mom took her to the doctors once or twice, and then….” He shrugged apologetically. This story—not his favorite. “They had this fight that made shoving pills down her throat look like story time at the fluffy-bunny factory. It was…. They took apart the house. Took me a week to clean everything up. Every glass and plate got broke—that’s why all we got is plastic shit now.” Reg saw some crackers he liked with tinned soup and threw them in the cart dispiritedly. “Mom left, like… before the dust settled, and it was just me and V. And one day—I remember this, ’cause I was cleaning out Mom’s room, and there was doctor’s pills and ashtrays and syringes and shit—it was bad—V comes to me and tells me she’ll finish the cleaning but she needs me to do some homework.”
“Homework?” Bobby said the word like he was tiptoeing. Like he was afraid to put too much weight on the word, or something would break.
“Yeah—I’ve got to do it every year. It’s, like, conservation papers.”
“What?” Bobby was looking at him oddly. “What are you conserving?”
“My sister. See, I promised her. First I filled out the papers and put Mom’s name on ’em—Willa. But then when I turned eighteen, I signed them for myself. And then someone from the state came over and looked at the house and looked at V and asked me about her meds—and I was better at getting her to take them then.” He grimaced. “She’s gotten wilier aboutnottaking them. Anyway, they’re the papers that say I’m in charge.”
Bobby ran his cart into an endcap of rice cakes, and they both spent a few minutes picking stuff up and stacking it right.
“You’re in charge of her,” he said, like this was a big deal. “Legally?”
Reg nodded, solemn, like he was in front of the social worker. “Yeah. It was real important—if I wasn’t in charge of her, she’d go into a state place. And she, I guess she stayed there a couple of times, before the big fight. I didn’t know—they told me she was with friends, but she wasn’t. She was in the loony bin, and it was awful.” Reg lowered his voice. “They don’t feed you real good there—and I remember this, ’cause when she came back from ‘visiting with friends’ she’d be starving. And she’d smell like cigarettes. And she’d scream at night—it’s bad there, Bobby. I don’t want my sister there. So I signed the papers when I turned eighteen. She’s my sister. I’m in charge.”
“But, Reg….” Bobby shoved a rice cake package on the cardboard display. The damned thing fell back down, and Bobby threw it in his cart. “Reg,” he said again, standing up straight. “You’ve been in charge of your sister for ten—”
“Twelve,” Reg said proudly.
“Twelveyears! Without help?”
“Well,” Reg said, not sure what the deal was. “I had Johnnies.”
Bobby nodded, but he still looked upset. “But… but I can see you not wanting her to go to the state place, Reg. Maybe… I don’t know. We’ve got benefits at Johnnies.”
“She’s got social security,” Reg said, nodding. V had walked him through that too. It was a good thing she was so smart when she wasn’t crazy, or the two of them would have been lost.
“Yeah, but maybe there’s a better place through the Johnnies insurance,” Bobby said, like he was thinking things through. “Like, a place that would make her take her meds, and they’d be nice to her, but they could maybe keep her off the internet so much.”
“But I promised her.” Of all the things in his life that got hazy and confused, Reg was crystal clear on what a promise was and damned proud of this one. “You don’t understand. When we were kids, she kept me safe. Mom would be breaking up the house and screaming weird shit and having knife fights with some guy, and V, Queenie, and I would be in the closet. She’d wake me up and keep us safe. She loves me. Why would I want to send her somewhere else?”
Bobby stopped and closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He opened his eyes and looked at Reg with determination.
“Because she stabbed you in September, Reg. Can you promise that’s not going to happen again?”
Reg shrugged and scowled. He scratched the back of his ear and studied the freezer food behind Bobby and wondered if Bobby knew how to cook steak, because Reg loved steak but couldn’t ever seem to make it without it being tough.
Bobby watched him impassively for a few moments and finally sighed.
“I’m going to take that as a no,” he said quietly. He ruffled Reg’s hair then, like they were friends, and shook his head. “But I’m also going to take that as the discussion is tabled for the moment.”
