As I prayed, I heard a faint, muffled gasp through the floor vent and sat up. I heard it again. I got out of bed and made my way to the staircase, stopping when I heard the sound a third time. Slowly, carefully, I stepped down two steps and peered through the spoke railing with my un-swollen eye. I’d done this several times when I wanted to watch television after being sent to bed. But this time the television was not on. My mother sat on the couch, her back to me. She was rocking, as if fighting a stomach pain. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” I heard my mother pray in between her stifled sobs.
At some point the sound of the station wagon engine—a funny idle that caused it to tick and sputter—drew my attention. My father was home, and I thought of something I had not yet considered. My bike. I had told everyone that I crashed. What would my father say? I got up slowly, the sting in my knees making movement painful, and went as fast as my injuries allowed back to my room. I climbed onto my bed and knelt at the headboard to look out the shuttered window, watching as my father got out of the station wagon and dropped the laundry sack he brought home each Saturday filled with his white smocks. He stared at the wreckage of what, just that morning, had been a new and—I suspected from my mother’s comments—expensive bike. In one swift motion, he picked up the bike and hurled it over my mother’s flower bed onto the front lawn. Red in the face and teeth clenched, he shook his fists. I’d never seen him that angry, and I’d never been so scared.
As he started up the walk to our covered porch, I dropped from the window and slid beneath the covers, pulling the bedspread to my chin before remembering the melting remnants of ice cream in the bowl on the nightstand. The last thing my dad needed to see was that my mother had rewarded me for ruining the bike. I threw off the covers, briefly contemplated making a dash for the bathroom across the hall, then hid the bowl under my bed.
The front door slammed with such force it rattled the window over my bed. “Did you see his bike?” my father yelled.
“Of course I saw it.” My mother sounded calm.
“It’s ruined. Completely destroyed.”
“I called a bike shop. I’ll take it in to see how much it will cost to fix.”
“That’s not good enough, Madeline. Not this time. That was a new bike.”
“This isn’t about the bike.”
“You’re damn right it isn’t about the bike; it’s about responsibility.”
“Do not swear. Samuel will hear you.”
“Somebody is going to pay for this.”
I quickly tried to calculate how much money I had in my piggy bank—not my prayer piggy bank but the real one on my dresser—and deduced it would not be nearly enough.
“Is he upstairs? Have you checked on him?”
“I just brought him up some ice cream,” my mom said. I grimaced and retrieved the bowl, placing it on the nightstand. “The doctor said he’s going to be fine.”
“But the doctor said he has a concussion?”
“He said he might have a concussion. He wants us to monitor him throughout the night. Why don’t you go up and see him?”
No. That was a terrible idea. What was my mother thinking? My father should stay downstairs and have his Manhattan, read the paper, eat dinner—fried chicken, his favorite. By then I would be fast asleep.
Asleep. That was it. The last ruse of any child hoping to avoid getting in trouble.
As my father climbed the stairs, I shut my eyes and tried to control my breathing. I heard him stop outside my door, then sensed he’d entered and stood at the side of my bed. I kept my eyes shut tight.
“Sam? Sam!” He shook me, but I was determined and kept my eyelids closed. When I didn’t immediately open my eyes, my dad started shouting. “Maddy! Maddy! Something’s wrong!”