Park

‘How long am I grounded?’ Park asked his father.

‘That’s not up to me, that’s up to your mother.’

His dad was sitting on the couch, reading Soldier of Fortune.

‘She says forever,’ Park said.

‘I guess it’s forever then.’

It was almost Christmas break. If Park was grounded during Christmas break, he’d have to go three weeks without seeing Eleanor.

‘Dad …’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ his dad said, setting down the magazine. ‘You can be ungrounded as soon as you learn to drive a stick. Then you can drive your girlfriend around …’

‘What girlfriend?’ his mother said. She came in the front door, carrying groceries. Park got up to help her. His dad got up to give her a welcome-home tongue kiss.

‘I told Park I’d unground him if he learned how to drive.’

‘I know how to drive,’ Park shouted from the kitchen.

‘Learning how to drive an automatic is like learning how to do a girl pushup,’ his dad said.

‘No girl,’ his mother said. ‘Grounded.’

‘But for how long?’ Park asked, walking back into the living room. His parents were sitting on the couch. ‘You can’t ground me forever.’

‘Sure we can,’ his dad said.

‘Why?’ Park asked.

His mother looked agitated. ‘You’re grounded until you stop thinking about that trouble girl.’

Park and his dad both broke character to look at her.

‘What trouble girl?’ Park asked.

‘Big Red?’ his dad asked.

‘I don’t like her,’ his mother said, adamantly.

‘She comes to my house and cries, very weird girl, and then next thing I know, you’re kicking friends and school is calling, face broken … And everybody, everybody, tell me that family is trouble. Just trouble. I don’t want it.’

Park took a breath and held it. Everything inside of him felt too hot to let out.

‘Mindy …’ his dad said, holding a wait-a-minute hand up to Park.

‘No,’ she said, ‘ no. No weird white girl in my house.’

‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but weird white girls are my only option,’ Park said as loudly as he could. Even this angry, he couldn’t yell at his mother.

‘There are other girls,’ his mother said.

‘Good girls.’

‘She is a good girl,’ Park said. ‘You don’t even know her.’

His dad was standing, pushing Park toward the door. ‘Go,’ he said sternly. ‘Go play basketball or something.’

‘Good girls don’t dress like boys,’ his mother said.

‘Go,’ his dad said.

Park didn’t feel like playing basketball, and it was too cold outside without his coat. He stood in front of his house for a few minutes, then stomped over to his grandparents’ house. He knocked, then opened the door; they never locked it.

They were both in the kitchen, watching Family Feud. His grandmother was making Polish sausage.

‘Park!’ she said. ‘I must have known you were coming. I made way too many Tater Tots.’

‘I thought you were grounded,’ his grandpa said.

‘Hush, Harold, you can’t be grounded from your own grandparents … Are you feeling okay, honey? You look flushed.’

‘I’m just cold,’ Park said.

‘Are you staying for dinner?’

‘Yeah,’ he said.

After dinner, they watched Matlock. His grandmother crocheted. She was working on a blanket for somebody’s baby shower. Park stared at the TV, but didn’t take anything in.

His grandmother had filled the wall behind the TV with framed eight-by-ten photographs.

There were pictures of his dad and his dad’s older brother who died in Vietnam, and pictures of Park and Josh from every school year. There was a smaller photo of his parents, on their wedding day. His dad was in his dress uniform, and his mom was wearing a pink miniskirt. Somebody had written ‘Seoul, 1970’ in the corner. His dad was twenty-three. His mom was eighteen, only two years older than Park.

Everybody had thought she must be pregnant, his dad had told him. But she wasn’t. ‘Practically pregnant,’ his dad said, ‘but that’s a different thing … We were just in love.’

Park hadn’t expected his mom to like Eleanor, not right away – but he hadn’t expected her to reject her, either. His mom was so nice to everybody. ‘Your mother’s an angel,’ his grandma always said. It’s what everyone always said.

His grandparents sent him home after Hill Street Blues.

His mom had gone to bed, but his dad was sitting on the couch, waiting for him. Park tried to walk past.

‘Sit down,’ his dad said.

Park sat down.

‘You’re not grounded anymore.’

‘Why not?’

‘It doesn’t matter why not. You’re not grounded, and your mother is sorry, you know, for everything she said.’

‘You’re just saying that,’ Park said.

His dad sighed. ‘Well, maybe I am. But that doesn’t matter either. Your mother wants what’s best for you, right? Hasn’t she always wanted what’s best for you?’

‘I guess …’

‘So she’s just worried about you. She thinks she can help you pick out a girlfriend the same way she helps you pick out your classes and your clothes …’

‘She doesn’t pick out my clothes.’

‘Jesus, Park, could you just shut up and listen?’

Park sat quietly in the blue easy chair.

‘This is new to us, you know? Your mother’s sorry. She’s sorry that she hurt your feelings, and she wants you to invite your girlfriend over to dinner.’

‘So that she can make her feel bad and weird?’

‘Well, she is kind of weird, isn’t she?’

Park didn’t have the energy to be angry. He sighed and let his head fall back on the chair. His dad kept talking.

‘Isn’t that why you like her?’

Park knew he should still be mad.

He knew there were big chunks of this situation that were completely uncool and out of order.

But he wasn’t grounded anymore, he was going to get to spend more time with Eleanor …

Maybe they’d even find a way to be alone. Park couldn’t wait to tell her. He couldn’t wait for morning.

CHAPTER 24

Eleanor

It was a terrible thing to admit. But sometimes Eleanor slept right through the yelling.

Especially after she’d been back a couple months. If she were to wake up every time Richie got angry … If she got scared every time she heard him yelling in the back room …

Sometimes Maisie would wake her up, crawling into the top bunk. Maisie wouldn’t let Eleanor see her cry during the day, but she shook like a little baby and sucked her thumb at night. All five of them had learned to cry without making any noise. ‘It’s okay,’ Eleanor would say, hugging her. ‘It’s okay.’

Tonight, when Eleanor woke up, she knew something was different.

She heard the back door slam open. And she realized that, before she’d been quite awake, she’d heard men’s voices outside. Men cursing.

There was more slamming in the kitchen –

and then gunshots. Eleanor knew they were gunshots, even though she’d never heard any before.

Gang members, she thought. Drug dealers.

Rapists. Gang members who were also drug-dealing rapists. She could imagine a thousand heinous people who might have some bone to pick out of Richie’s skull – even his friends were scary.

She must have started to get out of bed as soon as she heard the gunshots. She was already on the bottom bunk, crawling over Maisie.

‘Don’t move,’ she whispered, not sure whether Maisie was awake.

Eleanor opened the window just enough to fit through. There wasn’t any screen. She climbed out and ran as lightly as she could off the porch.

She stopped at the house next door – an old guy named Gill lived there. He wore suspenders with T-shirts and gave them dirty looks when he was sweeping his sidewalk.

Gill took forever to answer the door, and when he did, Eleanor realized she’d used up all her adrenaline knocking.

‘Hi,’ she said weakly.

He looked mean and mad as spit. Gill could dirty-look Tina right under the table, and then he’d probably kick her.

‘Can I use your phone?’ she asked. ‘I need to call the police.’

‘What?’ Gill barked. His hair was oiled down, and he even wore suspenders with his pajamas.

‘I need to call 911,’ she said. She sounded like she was trying to borrow a cup of sugar. ‘Or maybe you could call 911 for me? There are men in my house with … guns. Please.’

Gill didn’t seem impressed, but he let her in.

His house was really nice inside. She wondered if he used to have a wife – or if he just really liked ruffles. The phone was in the kitchen. ‘I think there are men in my house,’ Eleanor told the 911

operator. ‘I heard gunshots.’

Gill didn’t tell her to leave, so she waited for the police in his kitchen. He had a whole pan of brownies on the counter, but he didn’t offer her any. His refrigerator was covered with magnets shaped like states, and he had an egg timer that looked like a chicken. He sat at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette. He didn’t offer her one of those either.

When the police pulled up, Eleanor walked out of the house, feeling silly suddenly about her bare feet. Gill shut the door behind her.

The cops didn’t get out of their car. ‘You called 911?’ one of them asked.

‘I think there’s somebody in my house,’ she said shakily. ‘I heard people yelling and gunshots.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Hang on a minute, and we’ll go in with you.’

With me, Eleanor thought. She wasn’t going back in there at all. What was she going to say to the Hells Angels in her living room?

The police officers – two big guys in tall black boots – parked and followed her up onto the porch.

‘Go ahead,’ one said, ‘open the door.’

‘I can’t. It’s locked.’

‘How’d you get out?’

‘The window.’

‘Then go back through the window.’

The next time Eleanor called 911, she was going to request cops who wouldn’t send her alone into an occupied building. Did firemen do this, too? Hey, kid, you go in first and unlock the door.

She climbed in the window, climbed over Maisie (still sleeping), ran into the living room, opened the front door, then ran back to her room and sat on the bottom bunk.

‘This is the police,’ she heard.

Then she heard Richie cussing, ‘What the fuck?’

Her mom: ‘What’s going on?’

‘ This is the police.’

Her brothers and sisters were waking up and crawling to each other frantically. Someone stepped on the baby and he started to cry.

Eleanor heard the police tramping through the house. She heard Richie shouting. The bedroom door flew open, and their mom came in like Mr Rochester’s wife, in a long, torn, white nightgown.

‘Did you call them?’ she asked Eleanor.

Eleanor nodded. ‘I heard gunshots,’ she said.

‘Shhhh,’ her mother said, rushing to the bed and pressing her hand too hard over Eleanor’s mouth. ‘Don’t say anything more,’ she hissed. ‘If they ask, say it was a mistake. This was all a mistake.’

The door opened, and her mother moved her hand away. Two flashlights shot around the room. Her siblings were all awake and crying.

Their eyes flashed like cats’.

‘They’re just scared,’ her mother said. ‘They don’t know what’s happening.’

‘There’s nobody here,’ the cop said to Eleanor, shining his light in her direction. ‘We checked the yard and the basement.’

It was more of an accusation than an assurance.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought I heard something …’

The lights went out, and Eleanor heard all three men talking in the living room. She heard the police officers on the porch, with their heavy boots, and she heard them drive away. The window was still open.

Richie came into the room then – he never came into their room. Eleanor felt a new flood of adrenaline.

‘What were you thinking?’ he asked softly.

She didn’t say anything. Her mother held her hand, and Eleanor locked her jaw shut.

‘Richie, she didn’t know,’ her mom said.

‘She just heard the gun.’

‘What the fuck,’ he said, slamming his fist in-to the door. The veneer splintered.

‘She thought she was protecting us, it was a mistake.’

‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’ he shouted.

‘Did you think you could get rid of me?’

Eleanor hid her face in her mother’s shoulder.

It wasn’t a protection. It was like hiding behind the thing in the room he was most likely to hit.

‘It was a mistake,’ her mother said gently.

‘She was trying to help.’

‘You never call them here,’ he said to Eleanor, his voice dying, his eyes wild. ‘Never again.’

And then, shouting, ‘I can get rid of all of you.’ He slammed the door behind him.

‘Back to bed,’ her mother said. ‘Everybody