"She loved dramas that got her pulse going.Sleeping With the Enemy. Misery. Primal Fear."
"Never seen them."
"You were too busy fixing the car with your dad, huh?"
"Whenever he was home, we'd try to have a project going. It gave us an excuse to hang out, but he didn't always have to talk. Some missions he'd come home and didn't have a lot to say."
"I can't imagine the horrors he saw over there."
"And all the shit he had to do to survive."
She rests her hand on mine and squeezes. The smallest sign of affection from this woman fills in all of my hollowed-out spaces. How do I confess to her she has this power over me?
"We better get back before the fireworks show," she suggests. "I don't want my dad wondering where we've been."
I want to argue that it's only 5:00 p.m. and we have plenty of time before it gets dark enough to let them off. But because I'm incapable of saying no to her, I turn the car around and head back.
WhenIparkinthe driveway, the drunk neighbor is in the same spot he was when we left: face down in the bushes. Amelia jogs to his side and puts her finger under his nose.
"He’s just passed out."
"Gerald! There you are, goddamn it." A woman dressed as Uncle Sam makes her way from the side entrance and approaches the man. "I can't take him anywhere. Wake up, damn it."
She nudges her husband with her toes, and he stirs in his drunken slumber.
"This isn't the worst thing he's done," Amelia speaks out of the corner of her mouth when I’m by her side.
"He's a damn fool," the lady confesses. She must have heard us. "Go on, tell him what he's done to ruin the parties."
"He's the one who fell in the pool and brought the food in with him."
"And?" the wife encourages.
"And he got second degree burns once because he didn't wear sunscreen."
"And?"
"Oh, one year he tripped on a pool noodle and cracked his head open."
I'm trying to keep a straight face, but when the woman tends to her blacked out husband, I turn to Amelia in horror.
"Honey, you forgot to mention when I found him passed out in your parent’s bed."
"Oh yeah, that, too."
"And you let him leave the house?" I pinch my lips together and expect her to lash out.
"His ass needs to go home. Darling, do you mind helping me?"
I'm able to get Gerald upright, and he's coherent enough that his wife can assist him on the walk across the street.
"We'll see ya for the fireworks!" she shouts as she and her husband stumble to their house.
"Wow," I say with a straight face. "I shouldn't have spiked the Kool-Aid."
Amelia gasps. "Theo, did you?"
"Well yeah, you did it first."
