On the day after I learned L.L. meant Logan Loy, it got up to one hundred and two degrees by lunchtime. This always meant more accident victims over at the hospital. According to Dr. Drose, people had a tendency to go loony with the heat because it broiled their brains. During the winter, a tense situation might stay tense—say, for example, an out-of-work husband cooped up at night with his overworked wife—but during a hot summer spell, this same situation would pop—the pop in this case coming from the same husband’s fist making contact with his wife’s nose, or from the skillet of a work-frazzled wife on the husband’s skull. What it meant in my day-to-day life was that there were twice as many patients to attend to and Mom hardly ever came home, and when she did she’d be in some weird zone like she was now, sitting in front of the TV and spooning nacho cheese dip straight out of the jar while drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette—all at the same time. I’m not kidding. I saw her take a drag while she chewed.
“Lynn, honey,” she said, as I opened the refrigerator. Her voice had a tight sound to it. I thought she might of noticed the missing beer.
“Yeah?”
“If Hayes comes by—” She jabbed out her half-smoked cigarette and gulped down the rest of her coffee.
“Uh-huh.”
“Do me a favor and don’t let him in the house.”
I stopped rummaging in the crisper and turned to look at her.
“You all break up?”
“Jesus, Lynn.”
“Well, then, how come?”
“I’d just prefer him to stay out of the house when I’m not around.”
“What? He steal something?”
Mom ignored this.
“You sure you all ain’t breaking up?” I couldn’t help but smile.
She pushed herself off the couch with a groan, picked up her purse, and stretched both arms above her head. “He’s just going through a spell.” She inspected her reflection in one of the glass doors of the china hutch, making a face like she was intent on scaring something inside there. The gravy boat, maybe. She wiped away a smudge of stray lipstick from a front tooth with her thumb.
“I think he’s taking them dog pills himself,” I said. “Cross my heart, I could of sworn I saw fresh fur growing on the back of his neck the other day.”
She gave me a look and picked up her quilted cigarette bag. “Just don’t let him in, alright? You think you can handle that?”
“When are you going to be home again?”
She opened the kitchen door and stepped out. “I have no idea, honey. Delia had to go to Brunswick for her uncle’s funeral and I’m covering her shift.”
“There’s nothing to eat here.”
“In the coffee can on top of the fridge, there’s some money. Use that to buy a frozen burrito or something at the Texaco station.”
I pulled it down and popped the plastic top off. “There’s only a handful of change in here.”
“Lynn, please.” She made her bad teenager, heel expression. Then she shut the door and was off.