The Enemy at Home

Tying the sash of her robe, Nora stopped in the doorway of the master bathroom. She’d been soaking in the tub for the last forty-five minutes—during the last ten of which she could hear someone yelling in the backyard. With the bathroom door closed, Nora hadn’t been able to make out the words, but she’d recognized Earl McAllister’s loud voice. She’d tried to ignore the shouting from Chris’s friend. After a humiliating day working under Larry, Nora had just wanted to take refuge in a warm bath. She’d been so damn tired, depressed and achy. Pete had cautioned her in a recent letter that the first day of a new job was always the longest and worst. Nora figured she could pat herself on the back for having survived it. And she might have also made a couple of new friends in Fran and Connie.

Nora couldn’t help wondering what Earl had been shouting about. Now she heard him all too clearly. She lingered in the bathroom doorway for another minute, listening.

“Butterfingers! I passed it right to you, stupid! You’re goddamn hopeless!”

Chris said something in response that Nora couldn’t quite make out.

In her bare feet, she padded out of the bedroom and down to the window at the end of the hallway. The blackout curtain was open. Nora glanced down at the backyard, where Chris and Earl tossed a football back and forth.

She couldn’t believe Earl had the guts to show his face around here today. Hadn’t Chris told him that she’d found out about their secret excursion in the middle of the night? Chris certainly had to know he was pushing his luck to invite his partner in crime over to the house so soon after he’d been busted.

“God, Kinney, you’re pitiful!” Earl shouted—after Chris fumbled a catch.

A few inches shorter than Chris, the handsome, fair-skinned boy had a more solid build. Earl wore a tan jacket, a pressed shirt, and spotless trousers. The McAllisters had a live-in maid, so Earl was always immaculately dressed. In contrast, Chris had thrown an old sweater over his school clothes. As usual, he had his back to the ravine—so every time Earl tossed him a high one, Chris would have to scurry down into the wooded gully to shag the lost football. Hadn’t Chris figured out by now that he was getting the short end of the stick?

After Arlene’s suicide, Nora had hoped Chris would recover and get to know someone nice—or maybe get involved in some after-school activity. But Chris would come home alone at 3:20 every day and head directly up to the second-floor bathroom. Then he’d shut himself in his bedroom until dinnertime. That was when Nora first noticed the bruises on his face. When she asked him about the marks, Chris claimed he’d banged himself up in gym class.

“I don’t believe him, of course,” she told Pete long distance. At the time, Pete was stationed at Camp Barkeley near Abilene, Texas, and calling every weekend. Nora had taken the phone into the broom closet for this particular call because the kids were home. “Every few days, there’s a new bruise,” she whispered, “and those are just the bruises I can see. I’m sure someone’s picking on him at school, but I can’t get him to admit it.”

“Sounds like it,” Pete replied glumly. “If he heads right to the bathroom the minute he comes home, he’s probably been holding it in all day. I’ll bet he’s afraid to use the bathroom at school. That’s where bullies tend to do their bullying. At least, that’s how it was back in my high school days.” He sighed. “God, poor Chris . . .”

“What do you think I should do?” she asked.

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Pete? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what to tell you, honey. If he hasn’t said anything to you or me about it, then obviously he doesn’t want us to know. I didn’t tell anyone when it happened to me back in high school. I just avoided the bullies the best I could, and when that didn’t work, I tried reasoning with them. Finally, I ended up slugging it out with one of them. I got the crap kicked out of me, but they left me alone after that. It’s a rite of passage for a lot of teenage boys. Damn, I hate that Chris is going through it.”

Nora never got Chris to admit that he was being bullied, but she kept furtively checking for new bruises on his face when he came home from school.

Then, on a Friday afternoon in January, Chris was accompanied home by a nicely dressed, blue-eyed, blond-haired boy, who politely introduced himself to her as Earl McAllister. Later that afternoon, the boys went to see Cat People at a downtown movie theater.

Chris said that Earl was his lab partner in biology class. He lived four blocks away. He was an only child, and his mother had died from tuberculosis a few years ago. As far as Nora was concerned, the boy was a godsend. At last, Chris had a friend—and her son was actually getting out of the house. They went ice skating at the Civic Ice Arena, bowled at D&L Alleys, and trekked to a movie theater downtown to see the Technicolor swashbuckler epic, The Black Swan.

On week three of their budding friendship, the boys went to see Alfred Hitchcock’s latest, Shadow of a Doubt. Nora remembered that one in particular because the theater owner called her at 1:45 on a Thursday afternoon. An usher had caught Chris trying to sneak Earl in a side door during the early afternoon matinee—when the boys should have been in school.

This, after Chris had just recently promised to buckle down and do better in his studies. Since Arlene’s suicide, his grades had gone from nearly all As to Cs and Ds.

Nora grounded Chris for two weeks. Once he’d served his fourteen days, he immediately got together with Earl again. Nora warned him that he was on probation.

As far as she could tell, the boys didn’t get into any trouble for a while. But then, last month, after the winter thaw, Chris and Earl took to tossing around the football in the backyard, and Nora heard a sampling of Earl’s foul mouth. But even more offensive than the obscenities was the way he derided Chris for every missed catch or bad throw. His favorite nickname for Chris was dummkopf. Sometimes, it sounded like he might have been kidding, but mostly, he just seemed cruel. Nora told herself not to interfere.

Still, that was when she changed her mind about Earl McAllister being such a godsend. And when she decided the handsome towhead looked like a member of the Hitler Youth—and he sounded like a little Nazi, too, the way he barked at Chris. Nora kicked herself for initially being taken in by him with his phony polite routine. She couldn’t help cringing inside whenever Chris stepped out with the kid. She became very strict about when Chris had to be home: 10:30 on weekends, and no weekday after-dinner outings at all.

At one o’clock on a Sunday morning three weeks ago, Nora had been awakened by the phone ringing. She staggered out of bed, threw on her robe and hurried downstairs. All she could think was that Pete had been killed in North Africa, where the U.S. was experiencing heavy casualties at the time.

But the call was from the Seattle Police. Chris was being held at the downtown station. Nora felt like an idiot. She’d thought Chris was upstairs in bed asleep. But no, he’d slipped out of the house after she’d gone to bed. Somehow, he’d gotten himself down to the waterfront, where he’d snuck into a bar and tried to order a drink—within earshot of a plainclothes detective.

The police took pity on him and only issued him a warning. Nora had to get dressed and go pick him up at the police station.

Chris insisted he’d snuck out and gone to the bar on his own. Nora knew he was protecting his friend. And forbidding him to see Earl might only compel him to sneak out at night to meet him in secret. The war had caused an epidemic of juvenile delinquency—especially among boys approaching draft age. But Chris had never before shown any interest in drinking or carousing. And he’d never been in trouble with the police before. Nora couldn’t prove that Earl had anything to do with the incident. All she could do was ground Chris once more—for another two-week stint.

She remembered promising to ground him for a whole month if he ever snuck out of the house in the middle of the night again.

As she spied on Chris and Earl tossing around the football outside, Nora decided that, after the stunt they’d pulled last night, she should follow through with her threat. Chris was better off on his own—away from this little creep who kept getting him into trouble. Why did he let himself be manipulated and abused like this?

She watched Earl step back and heave a wild, wobbly pass that was too high and about ten feet to Chris’s left. But Chris still made a run for it and jumped up with his arms extended.

“C’mon, you got it,” Nora whispered.

The football deflected off Chris’s fingertips. It hit the ground and rolled along the lawn. Chris grimaced and rubbed the fingers on his right hand.

“What—did you hurt yourself?” Earl called. “Sissy!”

“I’m fine!” Chris called, retrieving the football. He tossed it at Earl, who didn’t bother moving an inch as the ball bounced on the ground a couple of feet in front of him.

“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?” he barked. “Try throwing it at me, dummkopf!”

“You’re one to talk, you little creep,” Nora said under her breath. “Your last pass almost wound up in the ravine . . .”

“So like I was saying earlier,” Earl went on. “I dragged this sack of bricks to the footbridge over Lake Washington Boulevard by the arboretum. And it was heavy as shit . . .” He hurled a pass at Chris, who actually caught the ball. “So I went to the middle of the bridge and waited for a car to come. This DeSoto was driving down the boulevard real slow, and I saw this stupid-looking old lady behind the wheel . . .”

He paused to catch the football, which Chris had thrown directly to him. “Just as she drove under the bridge, I dropped the sack, and—wham—it hit the old lady’s windshield! You should have heard the glass smash. The old lady slammed on her brakes, and another car crashed into her rear end. God, you should have seen it! It was hysterical! You’d have shit. I could hear the old bag screaming and crying. She didn’t know what hit her . . .” Earl let out a grunt as he passed the football to Chris.

Nora watched Chris fumble the catch, but she was too disturbed and distracted by Earl’s story to care. She studied her son’s face to see if he was chuckling or even slightly amused by the tale. But she couldn’t read his expression. He retrieved the ball. “Earl, let me ask you something,” he said, holding on to the football for a few moments. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll end up in hell for some of the stuff you do?”

Earl laughed.

Chris lobbed the football at him, and it bounced off the ground a few feet in front of his friend.

“God, you stink, Kinney!” Earl complained. Shaking his head, he fetched the football.

“I don’t think it really happened,” Chris said.

“What?”

“Your story about almost killing that old lady,” Chris said. “I think it’s a crock. I mean, I can’t see you lugging a sack of bricks down that long path to the footbridge. Maybe one or two bricks, but not a whole sack of them. That’s just too much work. And how could you tell from way up on the footbridge that an old lady was driving?”

“Oh, fuck you,” Earl grumbled.

“C’mon, give me a break. Like you could really see inside the car from up there . . .”

“Fuck you!” Earl yelled this time. He hauled off and hurled the football at Chris—obviously aiming below the belt.

Chris dodged the ball, which skidded across the lawn behind him. He laughed. “I’m sorry! I know you like to think of yourself as a regular Dillinger. But I just don’t believe you . . .”

“FUCK YOU!” Earl shouted—even louder. He reached down, grabbed a rock from Miko’s old garden and flung it at Chris. This time he seemed to aim at Chris’s head.

Chris ducked just in time.

Incensed, Nora pulled back from the window. She bolted for the stairs, raced down to the first floor and headed into the kitchen. She was barefoot and still in her robe, but she didn’t care. Breathless, she threw open the door—just as Earl was about to hurl another rock at Chris.

“Earl!” she barked. “That’s enough! If you throw that, you’ll be sorry!”

Hesitating, he defiantly stared back at her. For a moment, Nora thought he might actually pitch the rock at her. But then he frowned and tossed the rock aside.

“I could hear you in my bedroom on the other side of the house,” she said. It wasn’t quite a lie because she’d heard him from the bedroom earlier. “I’m sure half the neighborhood got an earful of that language, too. It’s time for you to go home, Earl.” She shook her head. “Quite frankly, I don’t know how you even have the nerve to show up here today after the prank you two pulled last night.”

Earl squinted at her as if she were crazy. Then he turned to Chris. “What prank last night? What’s she talking about?”

“Just go, Earl,” Chris hissed. “Amscray.”

The boy grabbed his football off the ground. He turned back to glare at Nora, muttered something under his breath and then stomped toward the driveway.

Catching her breath, Nora waited until he disappeared around the other side of the house. She opened the kitchen door wider for Chris. “Get in here . . .”

With a sigh, Chris came up the steps to the kitchen door.

“Just now,” Nora said, “when I mentioned your little excursion to the Navy Depot last night, Earl acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about.”

Chris nodded and brushed past her. “Yeah, you’re right, Mom. He acted like he didn’t know . . .”

She closed the door, then turned and took hold of his arm. “Honestly, why you’re even friends with him is a total mystery to me. He’s more trouble than he’s worth. He treats you like dirt. And I heard part of that story he was telling you . . .”

Chris faced her, but he wouldn’t look her in the eye. “That was a crock, Mom. He was just grandstanding.”

“Well, I don’t understand why he’d think a story like that would impress you.”

“It didn’t.”

“Why do you keep inviting him over?”

Chris finally looked her in the eye. “I didn’t invite Earl over. He always invites himself. I know you’re still sore about last night, and I’m sorry.” He sighed and gently wiggled his arm from her grasp. “If you want to punish me, go ahead. You’re off to a great start. Talk about embarrassing. Tomorrow, it’ll be all over school how I needed my mommy to come to my rescue. Earl already thinks I’m a mama’s boy. This just seals the deal. And you’re in your bathrobe, too. Thanks a lot, Mom.”

“What?” Nora asked, incredulous.

“Never mind, you wouldn’t understand,” he muttered. “I’m sorry . . .” Shaking his head, he turned and hurried out of the kitchen.

Nora listened to him stomp up the stairs.

“Seriously?” she said to no one.

Nora looked down at her terrycloth bathrobe and fingered the lapel. Then she defeatedly plopped down on the kitchen chair. She understood now. She’d humiliated him in front of his friend—worse, in front of a mean, malicious friend.

What was this strange power Earl had over her son? It was obvious that Earl was practically forcing Chris to pal around with him. What else was he forcing Chris to do? Nora was pretty certain the two of them hadn’t been watching battleships in Elliott Bay last night. Why had Chris lied to her about that? What was he covering up?

Nora thought about that note he’d left in her lunchbox today. She told herself that, despite his problems, Chris was still a sweet kid with a good heart. He mowed the lawn for Mrs. Landauer down at the end of the block. After dismissing her Japanese-American nurse-housekeeper, the old woman had hired a Swedish woman who barely spoke English. So Mrs. Landauer often depended on Chris to run errands for her. She trusted him with her car, an old Duesenberg. In fact, Chris was the only one who ever drove it.

Mrs. Landauer was childless and treated Chris like a grandson. She also paid him well. Since the Kinneys were now on a budget, Chris voluntarily gave Nora half his earnings: usually ten dollars a week. Mrs. Landauer often sent him home with an apple strudel she’d baked herself. The old lady sometimes included a note for Nora, scrawled in her shaky handwriting, saying how polite and kind her handsome son was, and how proud she must be of him.

She could hear him shuffling around upstairs in his bedroom.

Maybe she would ground him for only a couple of weeks.

Nora glanced down at her bathrobe again. She needed to get dressed and start thinking about dinner.