Prologue
The boy’s father leaped from the recliner and rushed to the VCR.
He stooped and jammed his thumb repeatedly against the EJECT button, even though one time was more than sufficient.
The tape popped out. He snatched it, flipping the black plastic edge that covered the innards with his fingers so he could grasp a length of the tape.
Once he had it secured under his thumb and forefinger, he ripped the tape out of the cartridge, not stopping until there was a pile of brown cellophane piled up on their orange shag carpeting.
“Hon, we just bought that! That’s ten bucks down the drain!” The boy’s mother chastised her husband. “And I wanted to finish it.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass. That movie isn’t fit for us to watch.
It’s not fit for anyone to watch. Sick stuff.
And it’s especially not right for the kids.
” His father lit up a Winston and exhaled angrily through his nostrils, eyeing the boy and his sister, seated, unmoving, nearly paralyzed, on the living room floor.
The boy’s mom made a tsk sound and rose from the couch. “Sometimes I think I have three kids instead of two.” She headed toward the kitchen, but stopped in the archway and eyed the pile of videotape on the floor. “And I am not cleaning up your mess.”
The boy listened to her in their yellow and maple kitchen, banging a pot on the stove, pouring popcorn in. He guessed they’d still have a movie night, even if they didn’t watch this particular movie. His parents had bought the bootleg copy on the Southside at the Maxwell Street market last Sunday.
He didn’t turn but could hear his dad paging through the TV Guide, breathing hard.
He picked up the remote and, in a minute, the VCR turned off and their regular TV filled the screen.
Simon and Simon came on. It had just started.
The boy wasn’t a big fan but knew The Golden Girls would be aired soon—in an hour or so.
The boy loved The Golden Girls, even if his dad said, “That Blanche isn’t even funny. She’s just a filthy whore. What’s so humorous about that?”
The boy tried to get interested in Simon and Simon, but it was difficult.
His dad had hoisted himself up out of the recliner and followed their mom into the kitchen.
They started to argue first in small words and insults.
Then those changed to anger-filled proclamations and accusations, much like how a storm starts with a few drops and morphs quickly into a downpour.
It was hard to even hear the TV, yet the boy didn’t dare touch the volume.
His dad kept going off on his mom, volume rising, accusing her of liking the movie he’d yanked out of the VCR because the hero was a “lying cheat just like you are.”
The boy glanced over at Shondell, his little sister, dark brown pigtails and freckles, eyes wide and staring at the TV, but not—he was sure—seeing it.
“Are you okay?” The boy mouthed the words at her. He touched her arm and she pulled away as though startled. She was only six, two years younger than he, but she’d always be a baby, forever his ‘little’ sister.
His protectiveness caused him to scoot across the rug so he could draw her toward him, holding her against his chest and rocking a little.
As a pan in the kitchen slammed to the Linoleum floor, clanging, he put his hands over her ears.
“Shh, shh,” he whispered, even though Shondell was silent as a stone.
“It’s all gonna be all right,” he said, even though he knew he was lying.
A commercial started up for a room deodorizer and he tried to concentrate on the announcer’s voice over the screaming match in the kitchen. His head felt bigger, weirdly, than it actually was, as though it had swollen, a fleshy balloon ready to pop.
He’d been enjoying the movie before his father tore it out of the VCR. He hadn’t seen anything so terrible in it, just a couple in the big city, their little girl, their cute dog. The parents were heading out, for a night on the town. They seemed like a nice, wholesome family.
What was wrong with that? The boy wondered.
The movie was called Fatal Attraction.