Joey looked at Craig from the corner of his eye. He was playing the video game, a very teenage kid thing to do. But at dinner he'd pick at his food and he'd get sleepy on the couch way too early and he'd startle when he'd wake him up to go to bed. That initial startle reflex, everything tensing, pulling away in the same motion. Joey couldn't get used to it even though he's seen it almost every day since Craig came to stay.
"Hungry?" Joey said, stirring noodles on the stove top. Craig glanced over.
"Yeah," he said, lying. Little lies every day. 'How are you?' 'Fine,' Lies. Joey swallowed and stirred the noodles beneath the bubbling water. Why couldn't he get through these lies?
Angela barreled into the room, crashed into Craig on the couch. He laughed. With Angela he was better. Happier. Joey thought she might be the only person he was comfortable around. Certainly not him, not with all his shades of parent and father and authority, dim as they were. It was enough to provoke Craig's unpleasant memories.
What were these unpleasant memories? Being hit, certainly. He knew that. Being beaten, most likely. Living in pain and fear and uncertainty. Never knowing when the next blow would come. But Joey was convinced it was more than this. What else had Albert done?
After dinner, everything neatly put away, Angela sleeping in feety pajamas under her Dora the Explorer blanket, Craig upstairs brushing his teeth. Joey could hear the stop and start of the water as he rinsed the toothbrush, heard his footsteps cross from the bathroom to the spare room he was using. Joey drank a beer in an oversized mug he got in Montreal one time, Julia laughing in the store as he held it up, told her he would get his initials on it in bronze letters. He closed his eyes and missed her again.
He went up the stairs, his mug of beer on the coffee table. He went up slowly, not sure of his purpose. He peeked into Angela's room and saw her sleeping, one arm around her stuffed bear with the missing button eye. He smiled softly, feeling the love for her barrel through him just like she had crashed into Craig on the couch earlier. He went on, down the hall to Craig's room. The door was closed. He was the only one in this house who closed doors. He stared at it, the blank wood giving him no answers.
He lifted his fist to knock, felt it suspended there in the air. He took a breath and his fist hit the wood. He heard the motion from the room, heard the rustle of blankets and feet hitting the floor and then Craig's voice, muffled behind the door.
"Yeah?"
He opened the door and saw Craig sitting on the edge of his bed dressed in flannel pajama pants and a soft cotton T-shirt. The T-shirt had a drawing of a penguin listening to oversized headphones.
"Hi," he said, coming over and sitting on the edge of the bed with him, but not too close. It was best to give Craig his space.
"Hi," he said, looking at him cautiously. Joey felt almost like he shouldn't be here, that he wasn't welcome. There was something oppressive in the atmosphere. Craig was looking down, pulling at the material of the bedspread.
"Listen, I'm kind of winging it here. But, I want you to know that you can, well, you can tell me things if you need to. Like things that are bothering you, anything," It was a weak speech, but it was all he had. Craig was looking at him with slight puzzlement, slight caution.
"Okay," he said, shrugging. Joey closed his eyes. He wasn't about to tell him anything.