The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [81]
“The little shit has shit himself. He was down here trying to rinse his underwear out in the laundry sink, but he left all his turds behind.” He grabs Go-Go by the shoulders, shaking him. “What’s wrong with you? What kind of ten-year-old boy craps himself? How were you going to get all that shit out of the sink?”
“I let him have a hamburger at the drugstore today,” Doris lies, pushing between them, letting Go-Go grab her hips, even though his hands have traces of his own feces. “That probably gave him diarrhea. And he was trying to do the right thing by cleaning up after himself. He just didn’t think about where . . . things would go if he used the laundry tub. It’s not like he ever rinsed out a diaper, or saw someone do it.”
“He’s stupid,” Tim rails. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
“No, he’s not. Stop saying that.”
Another mess to clean up, then herself to clean up. It is late when she finishes, but she stops by Go-Go’s room. He is lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling. He doesn’t sleep well, her baby boy. He never has, though.
“I did have diarrhea,” he says, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I mean, I didn’t have a drugstore hamburger, but I did have diarrhea.”
“Oh, Go-Go. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I thought it was going to be a fart. I didn’t know.”
“Has it happened before?”
His silence tells her everything.
“At school, Go-Go? Has it happened at school?”
He turns toward the wall.
Doris knows now why Father Andrew is coming to tea. Her son has crapped himself at school. And now at home, within feet of a toilet. She isn’t sure why this is so much more shameful than wetting the bed, yet it is. Something is terribly wrong with Go-Go. Is he crazy? Are all the little things that once made them laugh—the energy, the dancing—were those things they should have been worried about?
She sits on her son’s bed and places a hand on his back. He’s a strong boy, although short for his age, strength and energy almost pulsing through his body. He is, as always, warm to the touch, a furnace. She wants to remember the little boy that was put in her arms ten plus years ago, nine pounds, the biggest of her children, red-faced from his journey yet almost eerily calm. She wants to remember how sweet he was. She wants to believe he will be sweet again.
But all she can think is: Father Andrew is coming to tea tomorrow. And whatever else went wrong today, she has managed to save those perfect, perfect pound cakes for him.
Chapter Twenty-four
Winter 1980
The university starts its holidays by mid-December, and Clem is home, left to his own devices during the day as Gwen still has a week of school and Tally has her painting. Creativity doesn’t take a Christmas break, she informed Clem loftily when he began enumerating the things they might do together. Loftily and a little desperately. “I have to make use of what godforsaken light there is this time of year,” she said Sunday evening. She says that there are studies showing that some people need light, that she wasn’t made to live in this climate. Clem pointed out—gently, he thinks, even comically—that her mother’s people were Scandinavian. “And our furniture is Danish modern, so you should feel right at home. Perhaps you just need herring.”
Tally doesn’t find this funny. Tally finds very little funny as of late. She tells Clem that she hates their furniture, which she chose because it was the only style that worked in his house. His house. Clem isn’t sure about the lack of light being the cause of Tally’s moods, but the moods are undeniably real. She used to be more on an even keel, but now the happy—manic?—days are rare. For all the time she spends in her studio, she isn’t getting much done, and he thinks this might be the real source of her depression. The big canvas that she started a year ago ground to a halt this summer. Clem knows because he sneaks into her studio. He shouldn’t, of course. He should respect Tally’s desire to show her work to him when she’s ready. But he can’t stop himself. He wants to see her work because he wants to know that