Raleigh Review 5.2 (Fall 2015)

mood I’m in so she knows what she’s got to do to get a rise out of me this time.”

Kevin puts his hands around the railing and shakes it.

He does it while leaning his back against it, daring the structure to let him drop. He wonders if the metal always shook like this. Then he remembers the time he was in fourth grade and some kid pushed him against it as hard as he could. The boy was trying to look tough in front of two Colombian girls from Sunnyside who had been walking home with them from the park. It may even have been Kevin’s own weight that day that turned the railing loose.

“If I look happy, like I got a good night’s sleep, she starts talking about the ads in the paper, like ‘Well look at this new refrigerator they’ve got out now,’ or ‘Why don’t you think about going to college for business?’ She says things hoping they will make me tired, you know, like the sound of her voice is going to make me tired, like maybe if she talks enough with that voice of hers I’ll turn right around and go back to bed.”

“You shouldn’t let it get to you like that,” Kevin says, realizing that there is no way a nine-year-old who was small for his age could have done that kind of damage to the railing. “And anyway, sometimes you do crawl back into bed, so I guess she gets what she wants out of you.”

“I’d rather be in bed than in the kitchen or living room listening to her talk about lampshades,” Sean says.

“Why do you put up with it then?”

“Put up with it? I just threw her beloved dishware out the kitchen window.”

“Yeah, and she didn’t like it,” Kevin says, starting to laugh. Sean’s breaking the window like that has got him thinking about the day he was pushed against the Byrnes’ railing. The look on the kid’s face when Kevin sprang up, all agile and ready to fight, the look on the kid’s face when Kevin pushed him so far across the sidewalk he got slammed against Mrs. Byrne’s car. “Your mother’s face just now. I love it when she gets mad like that.” He remembers the kid’s name.

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