What was there to think?
Five boys and scrambled thoughts, and a show of teeth from Rosy.
Yes, the dog knew instinctively to despise him as well, and it was she who broke the silence; she snarled and edged toward him.
I pointed, calm and mean. “Rosy.”
She stopped.
The Murderer’s mouth soon opened.
But nothing at all came out.
The light was aspirin-white.
* * *
—
The kitchen began to open then, or at least it did for Clay. The rest of the house broke off, and the backyard dropped, into nothingness. The city and suburbs and all the forgotten fields were razed and chopped away, in one apocalyptic sweep—black. For Clay there was only here, the kitchen, which in one evening had grown from climate to continent, and now this:
A world with table-and-toaster.
Of brothers and sweat by the sink.
The oppressive weather remained; its atmosphere hot and grainy, like the air before a hurricane.
As if pondering that, the Murderer’s face seemed far away, but soon he hauled it in. Now, he thought, you have to do it now, and he did, he made a colossal effort. He stood, and there was something terrifying about his sadness. He’d imagined this moment countless times, but he’d arrived here hollowed out. A shell of all he was. He might as well have tumbled from the wardrobe, or appeared from under the bed:
A meek and mixed-up monster.
A nightmare, suddenly fresh.
* * *
—
But then—abruptly, it was enough.
A silent declaration was made, and years of stable suffering was intolerable for another second; the chain was cracked, then broken. The kitchen had seen all it could that day, and ground to a halt at here: five bodies facing him. Five boys were joined, but now one was alone, standing, exposed—for he wasn’t touching a brother anymore—and he liked it and he loathed it. He welcomed it, he mourned it. There was nothing else but to take that step, to the only black hole of the kitchen:
He reached inside his pocket again, and when he pulled it back up, there were pieces; he held them out in his hand. They were warm and red and plastic—the shards of a shattered clothes peg.
And what, after that, was left?
Clay called over, his voice in the quiet, from the dark toward the light:
“Hi, Dad.”
Once, in the tide of Dunbar past, there was a many-named woman, and what a woman she was.
First, the name she was born with: Penelope Lesciuszko.
Then the one christened at her piano: the Mistake Maker.
In transit they called her the Birthday Girl.
Her self-proclaimed nickname was the Broken-Nosed Bride.