But why must the boy sleep in his dead uncle’s bedroom? That’s what the boy would like to know, but cannot ask, not unless he’s willing to risk his mother’s anger, which he isn’t. Especially not now, what with her dropping him off for the night at his grandparents’ house while she drives to her boyfriend’s place across the state line, to “figure some things out,” as she says. But what’s to figure out? The mother’s boyfriend wears camouflage T-shirts and chomps toothpicks between his frightening teeth. Sundays, the mother’s boyfriend watches football with the volume off, his face close to the screen, studying the game as if it is an exam he is certain to fail.
The boy’s grandparents serve him hot dogs for dinner. The hot dogs boil in a pot that steams his grandmother’s bifocals the moment she tongs another onto his plate, which the boy didn’t remember asking for, but oh well. They never have hot dogs for dinner at home. Hot dogs are about the last thing in the world his mom would ever serve for dinner, a realization that suddenly pleases the boy, what a decadent treat these hot dogs truly are, until he remembers that tonight he will have to sleep in his dead uncle’s bedroom, and it’s like sometimes you just can’t win.
His mother has packed his travel duffel but forgotten his toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, nightlight, pajama bottoms and tops. No matter: his grandfather loans him his, preposterously large, but no one will see, his grandfather says, so they’ll be none the wiser. The boy has never heard this expression before, which accompanies him to the bathroom, where he must brush his teeth with a loaner toothbrush. The toothbrush has a large blue handle thorned with a red rubbery pick. In the mirror, the boy studies his reflection. What do people think of him?
His uncle’s bedroom: a twin bed flanked by two nightstands, a goosenecked lamp on one, a landline telephone on the other. The telephone is the color of a halved avocado. Across the room, a heavy dresser supports an ancient digital clock and a mirror the boy must not look into if he wants to find sleep tonight. The boy climbs into bed, which creaks beneath his weight. The pillow is so thin the boy can feel his hands beneath his unsleepy head. The clock marks time with numbers whose middles collapse into themselves, clicking like wingbeats. Infrequent cars send angled light through the window above the bed, a square that widens across the ceiling before vanishing into nothing.
The boy did not know his uncle. He died when the boy was two, during a time when his mother was estranged from her parents for reasons the boy will not understand until years later, when the boy will be able to assemble the story of his mother’s falling out with her parents, her years living in California, her first failed marriage—all that, but tonight he is just a boy left alone in the darkness, trying to give consciousness the slip in the bed where his uncle likely tossed and turned, passed gas, snored, and dreamed whatever dead uncles dream of.
The boy must have fallen asleep, for the telephone wakes him. A soft ring like keys pulled from a pocket. The boy, not wanting his grandparents to hear, answers. “Hello?”
“Frankie, is that you?” a man’s voice says.
“Um,” the boy says. His uncle’s name was not Frankie.
“Jesus, Frankie, I’m so damn glad I got a hold if you. I mean it.” The man’s speech is slurred and incorrect. In the background, the boy can hear music playing, people laughing, the unmistakable clink of glasses and bottles. “Listen, Frankie, I’m in a real situation here. I mean, it’s no good. It’s the pits, okay? I don’t even want to tell you, I really don’t.”
“But I—” the boy says, but the man has already cut him off.
“Aw listen, don’t be that way, Frankie. Don’t get all sore about it. I couldn’t take it if I thought you were sore at me again.” The man must have covered the receiver with his hand, the way the boy has seen in old movies, for he can hear the man saying something to someone but can’t hear the words. “Say you won’t get sore at me again, Frankie. Say you won’t and I swear I’ll never do anything to make you sore at me again.”
“Okay,” the boy says.
“Atta boy, that’s more like it,” the man says. “That’s swell. You know that? That’s really swell.”
“Yeah,” the boy says, barely a whisper.
“You’re aces, Frankie. You know that?”
But before the boy can answer, he hears the man drop the phone. A loud thunking followed by the sound of laughter, music, shouts, until someone picks up the phone and asks, “Hey, who the hell is this?”
The boy hangs up the phone. A moment later, it rings again. The boy lifts the receiver and places it on the nightstand. Falls asleep to the voice asking, “Frankie? Hey, Frankie. Say, what’s the big idea?”
