Spoonbenders

“What now?” Matty asked.

A voice said, “A bunch of those things burned up when the TV blew.” Malice had appeared in the doorway of the twins’ bedroom. She wore cutoff jeans and a white T-shirt that said BOWIE NOW in hand-painted letters. “It was a tragedy. Do you know when they burn they just bleed plastic? It’s not even stuffing.”

“Shut up, Mary Alice!” one of them yelled, and the other said at the same time, “Get out, Mary Alice!”

“They don’t like to speak of the Great Beanie Fire of Ninety-Four,” Malice said.

“We’re telling Mom!” one of them said, and the twins rushed out. Malice looked back at Matty and caught him looking at her legs—specifically at the white pocket flaps that peeked from the bottom of her shorts. Those flashes of white cloth were inexplicably, unbearably, sexy.

Commandment #1 (Don’t look down her shirt, it’s creepy) required an amendment:

Don’t look at her legs, either.

“So you’re staying the night,” Malice said.

“Yeah.” He got to his feet, sending little toy bodies tumbling.

“Why?” Malice asked.

“Why?” This was a question not even his mother had asked. And why hadn’t she? Matty had no good reason to spend the night at Uncle Frankie’s—none that he could talk about anyway. When Frankie asked her if he could sleep over, she’d let him go without an interrogation. Now that he thought about it, that was deeply weird.

“Your dad thought it would be fun,” Matty said finally.

“Fun,” she said skeptically. “To hang out with us.

”

“He said we’d order Chinese.”

“Ooh, I take it back, then. Ordering Chinese is a regular cocaine orgy.”

He laughed—too loud—and tried to blank the images flashing in his head. “Yeah, well. Have you spent a night watching TV with Uncle Buddy?”

“Good point,” she said. “See you round the chow mein.”

She walked away. In blatant violation of all rules and amendments, he watched her go.

—

Compared with Grandpa Teddy’s house, Frankie’s house was loud. Not so much in actual decibels (Uncle Buddy’s construction projects made plenty of racket), but in emotional volume. Aunt Loretta yelled at the twins; Uncle Frankie yelled at Malice; the twins yelled for the sake of yelling. Bottled up as they were in this two-bedroom ranch, there was nowhere for their shouts to dissipate and nowhere for him to hide. After years of living alone with Mom, and another six months of living in a house where hardly anyone spoke, Matty found the din to be nerve-wracking. He felt like the new recruit in a war movie, the one who jumped at every boom of the artillery.

Only Malice was quiet, though her scowl could blast everyone but the twins into silence. Before the rest of the family finished dinner, Malice disappeared into her basement lair. Everyone else decamped to the living room, where the TV was cranked up to a volume that turned the canned sitcom laughter menacing. Cassie and Polly, excited that Matty had been assigned their room, were building a blanket fort between the couch and Uncle Frankie’s recliner where they could spend the night.

Aunt Loretta left the room at regular intervals to have a smoke on the back porch. During one of these absences, Frankie looked over at him and said, “So. You think you’re ready?”

“I’m going to try,” Matty said.

At ten, after a laugh-injected episode of Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, Uncle Frankie clapped his hands and said, “Bedtime, ladies!” They protested, but Aunt Loretta herded the girls to the bathroom and back. Uncle Frankie walked Matty to the girls’ room. The beanbag menagerie had not been put away.

“Let’s get you some fresh air,” Uncle Frankie said. He undid the latch on the sole window in the room and tried to lift the sash, but it didn’t budge. “Usually we—ugh, little stiff—we keep ’em closed, because it’s the ground floor, and rapists.” He slammed the heel of his palm upward and the window shrieked up a few inches. “There we go. But you’ll be all right, right?”

“I guess so,” Matty said.

Uncle Frankie leaned in close. “I put a sign in the garage,” he said in a low voice. “I even left the light on.”

Matty nodded.

“A simple three-word phrase,” Uncle Frankie said.

“Don’t give me any clues,” Matty said.

“Right. Good thinking. Got to make this a real test.” Frankie looked him in the eye, said, “Good luck, Matty,” and closed the door.

“Matt,” he said quietly.

He opened his backpack and quickly changed into the gym shorts and T-shirt he’d brought—no way was he going to sleep in just his underwear. He turned out the lights and crawled under the pink covers of the lower bunk. His feet touched the footboard. The upper bunk was alarmingly close to his face.