Three Years, Three Months Before

None of Your Concern

Just before sundown, a man showed up on the front porch of the duplex, hollering and banging. He appeared during summer evening twilight, front windows open to let some air in. Eager had just got his sisters into the tub. They’d laughed at his dumb joke about how you could grow tomatoes in the dirt caked on their fingers, something he’d heard some granny say in Fred Meyer. He left them splashing in the bubbles and was sitting in front of his mother’s TV flipping between Spongebob and Scrubs when heheard the voice boom through the house. “Charm! Hey! Open up!” Eager looked down the stairs and caught a glimpse of the man’s bulk in silhouette through the narrow window beside the front door.

“Who is that?” Eager tried to talk to his mother as she swept through the hallway from the kitchen.

“You’re supposed to be getting your sisters ready for bed.”

“They’re taking a bath.”

“Mmm.” Charm Gillespie forgot Eager in an instant, went to the door and flipped the porch light switch.

Eager crouched on the stairs. Charm had her chef’s knife in one hand, a cigarette in the other. She called through the front door. “Who’s there?”

“Hey, baby. How you doing?” The man’s voice echoed.

“Big Ed?” She opened the door as far as the chain would allow, peered through the gap. “For chrissakes, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Come on, baby. Open the door. I came to see you.”

The girls appeared at Eager’s back, their skin soapy and slick. He raised a finger to his lips, then started sliding down the stairs, butt cheeks bumping one step at a time. Gem and Jewel, wrapped in towels, pressed their faces between the uprights of the banister and dripped onto the worn carpet. Below, Charm had one foot jammed against the base of the door as if she expected the man to pop the chain. She was slapping the knife blade against her thigh, the gesture increasingly wayward. Eager hoped she didn’t slice through the shiny denim and open a vein. He’d have to clean the blood up.

“You got no business here. Get lost.”

“Don’t be that way, baby.”

She dragged deep on her cigarette. “Drop dead, and when you do, make sure it’s not on my fucking porch.”

“Jesus, Charm. You’re so dramatic. I happened to be in town and wanted to see you and the kids.”

“Ever think I don’t want to see you? As for the kids, I doubt you could pick ‘em out in a room full of monkeys.”

“They’re that wild, huh?” The big man’s laughter rattled the window frames.

“No, asshole, you’re that stupid.”

“Aww, come on. I thought we could spend some time together.” He reached through the opening, grappled her breast with his meaty hand.

She swung the knife up so quickly the big man barely yanked his hand clear in time. “You are out of your fucking mind if you think I’m letting you or your septic cock anywhere near me.” She brandished the blade. “Grab my tit one more time and you’ll wake up in a body bag.”

Eager reached the bottom of the stairs and slipped up behind his mother. “Who’s that?” He caught a glimpse of the man’s big face and crew cut through the open door.

“Nobody.” Charm spat smoke through the gap in the door. “Fuck off, asshole. I squared my debt with you and Hiram ages ago.” She pushed the door shut in his face, flipped the deadbolt as he shouted out on the porch.

“Charm, goddamn you! Open the door, you skanky bitch!”

She swept into the front room and closed the windows, muffling the shouts of the big man on the porch. Eager followed her through the dining room into the kitchen. The air in the house seemed to condense behind her.

“How come he wanted to see us kids?”

“Shut the hell up.” She grabbed the phone off the charger and punched the number pad like she was trying to poke out someone’s eyes. “Police, yes, goddammit.” She looked like she wanted to swallow the handset. “There’s a goddamn psycho screaming on my porch and I want to know what the hell you’re gonna do about it.”

The guy beat feet long before the cops arrived.

Next day, Eager asked his mother about him while she drank her coffee at the kitchen table. “Just some crazy asshole who overreacted to a misunderstanding a long time ago. None of your concern.”

“Why was he yelling like that?”

“What did I tell you? I’ll kick your balls up into your belly you don’t shut up about it.”

He shrugged and munched cereal. Charm was a big talker; he got worse from bullies at school. The girls came down, poured cereal and spilled orange juice on the kitchen table. They started flicking Cheerios at each other. Charm ignored them. She sat haloed in smoke and stared into her coffee cup until her cigarette burned down to the filter. Then she dropped the butt into her cup and got up.

“Eddie, Gem, Jewel, I expect you all to get this shit hole cleaned up while I’m at work. And don’t you dare leave this house.”

The girls stopped playing with their cereal and looked at Eager. He rolled his eyes. Charm didn’t seem to notice. She left her cup on the table. Ten minutes later, Eager was out the door and skating down to Hawthorne to scare up some spending money. Beg, borrow, or steal, only there’d be no borrowing and little enough begging. The girls were on their own, digging holes in the yard or setting fires or whatever it was they did all day.

The last thing he expected was to see the big man from the porch again, this time in the auto repair parking lot next to the coffee shop, with his hand clasped around some woman’s throat.