Spoonbenders

“We’re not playing now, we’re making dinner,” her mother said.

“Marcie’s waiting for me,” ten-year-old Irene said. “You make dinner.”

“Just put the ground beef in the pan,” her mother said, exhausted.

“First, brown the meat,” Buddy said. He was standing beside her chair, arms draped over her shoulders.

“That’s right,” their mother said.

“This isn’t fair,” Irene said.

“First brown the meat!” Buddy yelled. He didn’t like it when anyone argued with Mom.

As the summer wore on, her mother sometimes wouldn’t stay in the kitchen as she cooked. Mom would hand Irene a recipe card and then go up to her bedroom to rest. Irene liked it better that way.

One morning in late July or early August, her mother was still in the bathroom when Destin Smalls pulled up in his shiny huge car. Irene watched him from the living room, his big rectangle face swimming up to the windshield like a pale fish, peering up at the house. After a few minutes, he stepped out of the car. Irene jumped back from the window. His silhouette glided across the curtains. And then he rang the doorbell.

Irene ran up the stairs and knocked at the bathroom door. “Mom?”

There was no answer.

“Mom? Mr. Smalls is here.”

“Tell him I’ll be down in a minute,” Mom said. Her voice was brittle with false cheer.

When Irene returned to the living room, Buddy was opening the door.

“Hi there, Buddy.” Smalls reached out to rub the boy’s head. Buddy ran into the next room. He hated anyone touching him.

“She’s not ready yet.” Irene pointed at her mother’s chair, even though her father’s was closer. “You can sit there.”

Mr. Smalls sat on her father’s ottoman, facing the stairs that led up to the bathroom—and the stairs that led down to the basement, where her father was sleeping.

“So how’s school, Irene?” Mr. Smalls asked.

“It’s summer,” she said.

“Right, right.” He glanced toward the stairs leading to the second floor.

“She’ll be down in a minute,” Irene said.

“I thought I heard voices,” her father said. Teddy stepped into the room. He wore pajama bottoms and an undershirt, and his cheeks were shadowed. “How are you doing, Destin? Business good at the spook shop?”

“Good to see you, Teddy.” Destin stood and extended a hand. Her father hesitated, then shook. He’d taken off the bandages a few months earlier.

“I was just talking to Irene here,” Mr. Smalls said. “She’s turning into a lovely girl.” He looked down at Irene and smiled a false smile.

“Are you in love with my mother?” Irene asked.

“What?” Smalls said.

“I said, are you—”

“Of course not!”

Her father was staring at her. He knew exactly what she was doing.

From upstairs came the sound of water running in the sink, and then the door opening. Each sound seemed unusually loud. “Sorry I’m running late,” her mother said, and stopped on the stairs. She frowned. Looked at Dad, then at Destin Smalls.

“Mr. Smalls is a liar,” Irene said, and walked out of the room.

Later in the week she came home from Aldi’s to find Teddy pacing the living room. “Where have you been? We’ve got to be there by six!”

Oh, right. Wednesday dinner at Palmer’s to meet his “sweetie.” Somehow, somewhen, Teddy had started dating. She thought she knew why Teddy wanted Irene to meet the woman, and hoped she was wrong.

“Give me a minute, Dad. It’s been a long day.”

“Just get into the best dress you got. No—second best. She’s the star, not you.”

Teddy, of course, was already wearing his most expensive suit, a gunmetal-blue number with navy pinstripes, and one of his more diamond-encrusted watches. Teddy Telemachus never took second billing. “Now hurry up!” he said. “I don’t want her waiting for us.”

Her being the “sweetie.” He still hadn’t explained why he wanted Irene to come out to a restaurant with them.

“Jesus, all right already. Could you at least put in a Tombstone pizza for Matty?”

“I can’t cook,” Teddy said. “Not in this!”

“I’m pretty sure I can put a pizza in the oven,” Matty said.

“Good man,” Teddy said. “Just don’t eat the whole thing, okay?”

“Damn it, Dad!” Irene said.

Irene went upstairs, but all she could think about was going into the basement and turning on the computer. For the past two days she’d kept edging up to it, warily, as if peeking over the lip of a cliff, only to back away before she lost her footing. But a half hour later she’d approach it again, as if to remind herself that the fall could kill her.

She imagined an inbox filled with confused messages from Joshua. Or worse, an inbox with no messages from Joshua. Logging into the chat room was out of the question. If she did, she’d immediately start talking to him, which would lead to her promising to meet him at the airport on Thursday, and once she was face-to-face with him, the whole process would repeat, from first touch to hormonal tsunami to the sudden apprehension that their relationship was doomed. The only sane thing to do was nip that Wagnerian cycle in the bud. Kill the wabbit.