you needed her. She was the nicest person Joey knew, the nicest he
ever expected to know, and he was glad that he had her for a sister
instead of that crabby, nasty Veronica Culp, who his best friend, Tommy
Culp, had to share a house with.
Later, after the Monopoly game, when he was in his pajamas, teeth
brushed, and ready for bed, he said his prayers with Amy, which was
much better than saying them with Mama. Amy said them faster than Mama
did, and she sometimes changed a word here and there to make the
prayers a little bit funny.
Like, instead of saying, “Mary, Mother of God, hear my plea,” she might
say, “Mary, Mother of God, hear my flea.” She always made Joey giggle,
but he had to be careful not to laugh too loud because Mama would
wonder what was so funny about prayers, and then everyone would be in
trouble.
Amy tucked him in and kissed him and finally left him alone in the
moonglow of his night-light. He snuggled down in the covers and fell
asleep almost instantly.
Sunday had been a fine day indeed.
But Monday began badly.
Not long after midnight, in the first few minutes of the new day, Joey
was awakened by the spooky, mush-mouthed sound of his mother’s
whispered conversation. As on other occasions, he kept his eyes closed
and pretended to be sleeping.
“My little angel . . . maybe not an angel at all . . . inside . .
.”
She was really sloshed, pickled. According to Tommy Culp, when
somebody was falling-down drunk, you said they were “pissed.” Mama was
sure pissed tonight.
She rambled on about how she couldn’t decide whether he was good or
bad, pure or evil, about how there might be something ugly hidden
inside of him and waiting to break out, about how she didn’t want to
bring devils into the world, about how it was God’s work to rid the
world of such evil any way you could, and she talked about how she harl
killed somebody named Victor and hoped she would never have to do the
same thing to her precious angel.
Joey started to shiver and was deathly afraid that she would discover
he was awake. He didn’t know what she might do if she knew he had
heard her weird mumblings.
When he felt on the brink of telling her to shut up and go away, Joey
tried desperately to tune her out. He forced himself to think of
something else. He concentrated on putting together a detailed mental
picture of the big, vicious alien creature in The Thing, which he had
seen just that afternoon at the Rialto. The thing in the picture was
like a man, only much bigger. With gigantic hands that could tear you
to pieces in a minute. And sunken eyes full of fire. And yet it was a
plant. An alien plant that was almost indestructible and lived on
blood. He could vividly recall the scene in which the scientists were
looking for the alien behind a series of doors, they didn’t find it,
and they finally gave up, and then the very next door they opened, when
they weren’t expecting anything, the monster jumped out at them,
growling and spitting and eager to eat somebody. Remembering the
unexpected fury of the monster’s attack, Joey felt his blood turn to
ice as it had in the theater.
That scene was so spine-chilling, so tingly-icky-awful that it made his
mother’s drunken rambling seem harmless by comparison. The things that
happen to people in horror movies were so terrible that they made the
scary things in life seem tame. Suddenly Joey wondered if that was why
he liked those spooky stories so much.
MAMA WAS ALWAYS the first up in the morning. She went to Mass every
day of the week, even when she was sick, even when she had a really bad
hangover. During the summer, when school was out, she would expect Amy
and Joey to attend services and take Holy Communion nearly as often as
she did.
On this Monday morning in May, however, Amy still lay in bed, listening