Ike’s Bittersweet Life a novel

The world is blue and gray at five in the morning, and I like it that way.

I hoist my paper bag over my shoulder and push out the front door before anyone else is awake. The street is empty, and the air off the Atlantic carries that particular kind of cold that wakes you up faster than any alarm. Duxbury belongs to me at this hour. There are no opinions out here, no adults talking over each other, no one deciding anything about anyone. Just the slap of my sneakers on the pavement and the thump of newspapers landing on porches.

I finished the route just before seven, and the smell of bacon hit me before I even got the front door open.

Ma was at the stove, her auburn hair pulled back loose, and Mom was pouring orange juice and somehow managing to also read the back of a cereal box at the same time. Farland and Pherson were already at each other over a baseball glove, both of them gripping the same worn leather mitt like neither one was ever going to let go.

"I had it first," Pherson said.

"You left it on the porch," Farland shot back. "Anything left on the porch is community property."

"That is not a rule."

"It should be."

Ma didn't even look up from the skillet. "Put the glove down and eat your eggs."

They both put the glove down.

Rusty was at the kitchen island with a crayon and a piece of notebook paper, drawing what looked like a baseball stadium. The lines went in every direction. Jill sat next to him with a ruler she had apparently pulled from somewhere, leaning over his drawing with the focused expression she gets when something is structurally wrong with the world.

"Your outfield wall is taller than your press box," she said.

"It's called artistic license," Rusty said without looking up.

"It's called a building code violation."

I sat down next to Mom and ate my eggs and bacon and let the noise wash over me. This is what mornings are like in our house. Loud and warm and a little bit ridiculous, and I wouldn't change any of it.

Ike came over at four in the afternoon.

I heard the back door open and knew it was him before I even saw him. There's a particular way he moves through our house, quiet but familiar, like someone who has memorized exactly where the creaky floorboards are. He came through the kitchen and nodded at Mom, and she told him there were cookies on the counter and he was welcome to them. He took one without really looking at it.

That was the first thing I noticed. Ike always notices the cookies.

He looked tired. His dark brown eyes had that flat, faraway quality that I had started to recognize over the past few months, the look that meant he had been somewhere hard before he got here. He was wearing a long-sleeve shirt even though it wasn't that cold out, which wasn't unusual for Ike, but I noticed it anyway.

He went straight for the piano in the living room. He always does.

His fingers found the keys for Kanon in D Minor, and within a few bars the whole house seemed to settle. Farland stopped arguing. Rusty put down his crayon. Even Jill set her ruler on the counter and just listened. Ike plays like he's having a conversation with something none of the rest of us can hear, and whatever it says back to him, you can feel it in the room.

Jill drifted in after a minute and sat beside him on the bench. They didn't say anything at first. She watched his hands move across the keys, and he made a small mistake near the end of a phrase and laughed, just a quick quiet laugh, the kind that meant he was surprised at himself. Jill smiled. Those two have their own language when it comes to anything that can be drawn or played or built, and the rest of us mostly just get to stand at the edge of it and appreciate the view.

I was leaning in the doorway watching them when I saw it.

Ike reached up to adjust the fallboard on the piano, and his sleeve slid back just a little. There was a bruise on his wrist. Yellowish, the kind that was a few days old, ringed in that faded purple-green that means it had been darker before. He pulled his sleeve back down in one smooth motion, like it was a reflex, like he had done it a hundred times without thinking about it.

He kept playing.

Jill hadn't seen it. She was looking at the sheet music she'd pulled from the bench. I stood there in the doorway with the music filling the room and something cold settling in my stomach that the warmth of the house couldn't touch.

Ike's grandpa Paddy lives right next door to us. His grandma Eileen makes cookies that are better than anyone else's on this street and she always has room at her table. And still, Ike goes back to Kingston at the end of the day. He goes back to his mom Kristy and his little brother Leo and to Stanley, and he always looks a little more tired the next time I see him.

I know what a safe house feels like. I'm standing in one. Our house is loud and full and it is absolutely, completely safe. I have never once questioned that.

I thought about that bruise all through dinner. I thought about the way Ike pulled his sleeve down without missing a single note, like protecting himself was just something built into the rhythm of the song.

After everyone went to bed I sat by the window for a while. Outside, Duxbury was quiet again. The same quiet as the early morning, except this time it didn't feel like it belonged to me. It just felt like something was being kept very still on purpose, holding its breath, waiting to see what came next.