Baron Dolce
I hit the accelerator and pull away from the Slaughterpen, fitting the evening’s events into sequence in the code of all I missed when I was gone. I drum my fingers on the wheel, consider turning right, following the winding road I did the night I left town. My thumb finds the scar on my thigh, absently stroking it through my jeans.
A lot has changed since that night, and not just for those I left behind.
I slow to a stop at a light. I could leave along that road, out of Faulkner going east, toward the Mississippi, where I picked up the hitchhiker.
Jane.
It was Duke’s cigarette that reminded me of the way she smelled when she got in the car, and later, when she flicked her fried hair behind her ear before leaning over, pulling the needle and thread through the cut on my thigh. She didn’t say anything. She was silent for a long time—in the car, in the motel room, in the darkness of the cellar, where the mildew and dirt covered her cigarette stink. But eventually I got my little bird to sing.
My cock stirs at the memory of that first night with her, and I shift in my seat, gripping the wheel and staring straight ahead. That road leads home—or to the house that was home for the past few years.
The light changes, and I continue on. Without Duke, the other road is a dead end. I made many observations in our time apart, not the least of which were the ones I made of myself. I now know Duke’s purpose in my life.
I pull up to the old house in the neighborhood where Dad moved us to rub it in the Darlings’ faces. Mabel’s old house. I always appreciated that touch.
The house next door is finally gone. Sometime in the last six months, the charred remains were razed to the ground and hauled away after sitting there for years, a burned-out shell that decreased the value of the neighborhood. A couple pieces of machinery have arrived to begin the new construction project. Once it’s finished, Devlin’s parents will move back. Devlin and Crystal will stay in our house. Royal and Harper will leave for college.
There’s nothing for us here either, except memories of Mabel.
Now that we’ve graduated, we don’t have to be satisfied with her memory anymore.
Inside the house, I pass the living room on my way to the stairs and stop. I let my gaze sweep over the room, taking in the scene, reading it like a cipher.
Ma has draped herself over the loveseat in a silk nightie, the golden lamplight glimmering off her bare legs. She sways her foot, pretending she’s doing it mindlessly and not trying to catch Devlin’s eye. He sits on the sofa, a sleeping baby tucked into the crook of his arm, staring resolutely at the TV. She wants to fuck him, and she wants him to want to fuck her. But she’s not sure if she’d go through with it once she seduced him into agreement. If she were sure, she’d be on the couch beside him, leaning over to see the baby, her tits dangerously close to tumbling out of the deep V of her garment. She’d be trying to convince him to go through with it.
“Back so soon?” she asks, sitting up from her spot. She picks up her drink and takes a sip, watching me over the rim with bleary eyes.
“It wasn’t really my scene,” I say, stepping into the room.
“Of course it wasn’t,” she says, standing and going to the liquor cart. She moves slowly, measuring her steps. That means she’s drunk, though she’d never want anyone else to know. “Watching people beat each other to a pulp without rules—it’s barbaric. But then, without rules we’d all be no different from animals, wouldn’t we? Have a seat, sweetheart. I’ll make us both something.”
“Agreed.” Working within the rules is what makes anything interesting. Knowing when you can bend those rules, when you can get away with breaking them. There’s no cleverness, no art to what they do at the Slaughterpen. It’s simple, senseless violence for simple, senseless people.
I sink into the loveseat Ma left. The familiar warmth of her body lingers in the leather, like a nest recently vacated by a mother bird, a promise to return. Family always returns to source. Dolce blood is thick and sticky. Even the people who try to leave find themselves pulled back, like my sister Crystal, who disappeared for years only to return from the dead like nothing happened.
“You’ve always been smarter than your brothers. Too smart to be entertained by that kind of display,” Ma says, returning with a drink in each hand. She sits sideways across my lap, handing me one of the glasses. “Why on earth does your brother have the help retiring so early? Making my own drinks here like some kind of bar maid.”
She laughs and takes a sip. I consider asking how many she’s had, but I won’t do it in front of Devlin. I can see him watching us from the corner of his eye. Ma totters on my knees, and I put an arm around her waist to keep her from falling. Devlin turns his gaze back to the TV, but I know he’s not watching it. He’s trying to understand us, to determine if her sitting in my lap is inappropriate or just Italian. He probably thinks I’m fucking my own mother. Coming from a family of perverts like his, that’s no surprise.
“I can’t believe your father’s not here to see you graduate,” Ma says with a sniff. “It’s just like him to leave the hardest parts for me.”
“Ma,” I say, giving her a warning look. “He’s dead. You don’t have to fight with him anymore.”
“I know,” she wails, her eyes filling with tears. “There’s nothing left for me without Tony.”
“That’s not true,” I murmur, stroking her hair. “You still have us.”
“I have burdens,” she cries. “All the responsibilities for all five of you. That’s what Tony left me. Work!” Her lip trembles as she lifts her glass, spilling a few drops down her chin.
I glance at Devlin, but he’s still pretending to watch TV.
“Come on, Ma. Let’s get you to bed.”
She takes another desperate swig when I reach for the glass, but at last she relents and lets me extract it gently from her hand and set it on the end table. I lift her off my knees, wrap a steadying arm around her, and lead her out of the room and into the bedroom that was Dad’s. The house is Royal’s now, but he and Harper don’t want to fuck in the room where Dad slept. Silly superstitions for silly people who think the dead are something more than worm food.
“I should throw up before I lay down,” Ma says when we’re inside the room. “Let me be sick.”
“You don’t need to throw up.”
“All those calories,” she insists.
I sigh. “Alright. Let me hold your hair.”
“Good idea,” she says, stumbling into the ensuite. She lowers herself gracefully, even in her inebriated state, and gathers her hair. I hold it and watch her bend over the bowl, slide a finger down her throat. When she’s emptied her stomach, I hand her a glass of water and a paper cup of mouthwash. After using them, she opens a drawer and takes out a bottle, twists the top, and tilts it over her palm. A cascade of pills spills into her hand, and my mind loops back. I jump up and steady her hand. I pick out a pill for her, then cradle her hand in mine, tipping it over the bottle to return the rest to their little orange tube.
“I’ll help you lay down,” I say, guiding her out of the bathroom.
I tuck her under the blankets, and she reaches for me. “Stay while I fall asleep?”
“Sure, Ma.” I take her hand and kneel beside the bed, resting my chin on the edge.
“You were always the best one,” she mumbles. “You understand me the way none of your brothers do.”
“I know.”
“You’re such a good listener,” she says, smiling at me with glassy eyes. “Smart too. My little squirrel, gathering nuts of information, storing them for later.”
“That’s me.”
She closes her eyes, tugs her hand from mine, and strokes my hair. “Just like your ma.”
“Just like you,” I lie.
She’s only ever gathered information to throw at Dad during their brawls, fights that would rock the house for hours before their fucking did. The brownstone was always loud growing up—five kids running around, two adults who were always fucking and fighting, screaming out their fury and frustration, their lust and hatred for one another. They were a whirlwind of passion, and I knew from a young age that it was a weakness.
I was never like her. Duke is like her. Crystal is like her. Royal too, more than he’d like to admit, more than I realized. King and I, we’re not ruled by our passions and instincts. We’re rational.
When Ma lets out a sigh and sinks into sleep, I tuck her hand under the blanket and return to the bathroom to tidy up. The maid could do it in the morning, but Ma would be embarrassed for them to know she drank herself sick. I wash my hands, staring down into the bottle of blue pills. I hold it up, tilting it over the tile until they almost spill. I can see them in my mind, the slow tumble of them through the air; can hear the ticking sound as they clatter across the marble. I cap the bottle tightly and return it to the drawer, but the memory lingers.
I was little, probably only or four, when I found the bottle on the counter in my parents’ bathroom. I didn’t know what they were, though I’d seen Ma swallow them. Their color drew me, though it wasn’t pretty like the pearls I make now. They were dull and oblong, a deeper blue. I watched them scatter over the tiles. I gathered them into a pile with my chubby hands, then crawled to get one I spotted over near the trash can. I knocked it over, the metal clanging against the surface. I looked up, waiting for the nanny to come, but no one did.
That’s when I saw the stick that had spilled out with the other trash, just a white strip of plastic, but it had a curved shape like it was made for fisting, and two pink lines that I liked. I picked it up and corralled the pills with it. I was still playing with them when Ma came in.
“What are you doing?” she shrieked, tearing the stick from my tiny hand. “That’s dirty!”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s—it’s—” She broke off with a sob, scooping me into her arms. She sat on the toilet lid and held me, crying into my hair.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, holding around her neck.
“It’s a pregnancy test,” she sniffled. “It means I’m having another baby.”
I wasn’t excited or scared or happy. I wasn’t anything. There were a lot of kids in our family. One more didn’t seem like much of a change. I didn’t understand, and I didn’t like that.
“Is that why you’re sad?” I asked. I knew tears meant sadness. I understood that.
“I can’t have another baby,” she wailed. “I can’t! I’ll kill myself before I have another one of you.”
I didn’t know what I’d done wrong then, but I knew there was something wrong with me. I hadn’t before that. I just was. I was me, the way I was. Too young to know I might be different. Maybe I wasn’t, before that. Or maybe it happened later, at Uncle Vinny’s.
“Do not tell your father,” Ma said, grabbing my chubby face between her hands, suddenly fierce. “Don’t tell anyone. Promise me!”
I nodded. “I promise, Mama.”
She kissed me hard and set me down. “Now look at the mess you made for your Ma to clean up,” she said. “Run along to the nanny. This will take a while. You didn’t eat any of these pills, did you?”
She was picking them up, so she didn’t see me nod my head. I had tried one, like she did. But she must not have needed an answer, because she didn’t ask again, and I was tired, so I went to my room and went to sleep. When I woke up, it was morning, and Duke was within reach, like he always was.
“Where’s Mama?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“She was crying last night.”
“Why?”
“She said she’s having another baby, and she’ll die if she does.”
“I don’t want Mama to die,” Duke wailed, and then he started crying too, and he climbed off the bed and ran out.
I heard him crying to Dad in the other room. After a while, Dad brought Duke back, and he was happy. We were playing when the yelling started. We were used to it, but we got quiet, listening as we drove our toy cars around. The nanny tried to talk over it, but she couldn’t.
After a while, the sounds that meant they were done being mad started. They were just as loud, but we weren’t allowed to go in their room when we heard those sounds either. The nanny got quiet then too. But soon she said we should go to the park, and when we came back, our parents had been to the doctor. Dad promised everything was okay and that Ma wasn’t going to die. She had a baby growing inside her that would be our brother one day, but right now it was as small as a bean, and how could something so tiny kill a strong woman like our mother? They talked about baby names while we watched cartoons.
Ma had friends over a lot after that. They talked about funny things like baby showers. They said we’d have to take our toys out of the playroom because it would be the baby’s room. One day I found Ma sitting on the floor in the playroom with a black cigarette and tears running down her cheeks. I curled up in her lap even though the smoke smelled bad.
A few weeks later I woke up in the night. I heard Ma screaming. Dad was yelling at her to calm down. I sat on the stairs while they went away in an ambulance. I crawled into their bed. It was warm and wet with her blood. The nanny came in and asked if I wanted to go back to bed, but I said no, I’d wait there. I asked if Ma was dying. She’d said she’d die if she had another baby. The nanny said no, and that I could stay there until my parents came home, and then I’d see that Ma was fine. I stuck my thumb in my mouth and rubbed my toes against the grimy, slimy sheets until I fell asleep.
When they came home from the hospital, Dad peeled back the blankets and found me in the bloody sheets. He yelled at the nanny and told her to give me a bath immediately.
I asked if I could have a baby shower, but the nanny said no, only baths. Ma came in while I was in the tub and told the nanny to go. She sat on the closed lid of the toilet, cracked the window, and lit one of her black cigarettes. “You know what happened, right?” she asked.
I shook my head and drove my boat through an iceberg of bubbles.
“There’s not going to be another baby,” she said. “It died.”
“Did you have to kill it?” I asked. “So you wouldn’t die?”
“ You killed it,” she said. “I told you not to tell. But you did, so the baby died. I hope you’re happy.”
She left the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. I knew by the tone of her voice I was supposed to be ashamed of myself, even though she hadn’t said the words this time, like she usually did.
Now that the bean baby was gone, I knew for sure Ma wouldn’t die though. Dad had told us, but I hadn’t been sure. Now there was no chance it would kill her. I felt good about that. I had saved my mother, and I was proud of myself. Even Dad hadn’t done that. Without the baby, Ma wouldn’t cry about the pink lines or go away in the ambulance. The family would stay the way it was, and we wouldn’t have to move our toys out of the playroom.
I climbed out of the tub and went to tell Duke the good news.