Mobile Library by David Whitehouse Page A

a bottle on a dusty top shelf. Rarely did he drink port, but it seemed to call to him in that moment, bottled promise.
    Bobby’s mother opened the back passenger side door, unbuckled his seat belt and carried him to a small children’s play area, where she pumped coins into a motorized car that suddenly began blinking light and making noise. Strapped in, Bobby went round and round while she watched. She bit divots into the hardened skin on her lips. She didn’t like to get upset in front of him, which was why he always went to his room when she asked, as quickly and as quietly as he could.
    When they got back to the car, his father was waiting. He hadn’t calmed, if anything he seemed angrier, rubbing the stump where his finger once was.
    â€œHurry up,” he said, in a low and bloated grumble. Gee lowered her son into the back of the car and kissed him.
    Lips, soft, a cherry freshly plucked.
    Bruce turned and stared. No matter how hard she fought the urge, she started to rush, as if he were in charge of how fast she moved. She clipped the seat belt in but it didn’t catch and quickly came undone. Flustered, she sat down in the passenger seat and removed her coat.
    Once they were moving again, Bobby’s father began drumming against the steering wheel. Five fingers and then four, a curious rhythm, always cut abruptly short. Softly at first, so that you could barely hear the tap of it on the plastic, but then louder, and louder still. His mother slipped her fingers free of her rings and her wrists free of her bracelets, then handed the whole trove over to Bobby.
    â€œHere,” she said, “count these.” So he did. One two three four five six seven. One two three four five six seven. One two three four five six seven. Every time he got to seven he had to start again as quickly as he could, without stopping for breath, so that he couldn’t hear his father’s voice through the space left, and he couldn’t hear his mother’s crying.
    He did hear the crash and the crumple of the metal, the smashing of his head through the windscreen, the landing of his body on the car stopped in front. He heard that perfectly.
    Afterward, their sandwiches lay strewn across the road. And their socks, forty-two, some balled together, some limp and alone. And their underwear. Twenty-one pairs, in different styles and sizes.
    He remembered being glad that they were not dirty. He remembered feeling absolutely fine, not hurt at all, bar a mild dizziness that quickly passed. And he remembered knowing that there would only be three of them now. No baby. Just them, as they were in the wreckage, on the road.
    â€œMum,” he said.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    Bobby’s bottom lip shook. Mrs. Pound shooed Mr. Oats from the room. Relieved, he shut the door behind him, scowling at Bobby through the glass.
    â€œWould you like me to call your father?” she asked.
    â€œWhy?” Bobby said.
    â€œYou can take the afternoon off if you wish. Come back tomorrow. Start afresh.”
    â€œCan you call someone else?”
    â€œA relative?”
    â€œA friend.”
    â€œThey would need authority from your father, Bobby.” He looked at her shoes. They were black and shiny, small, like a doll’s, but charmless, like a soldier’s.
    â€œIt’s okay,” he said. “I’d rather be here with you.”
    Mrs. Pound let Bobby work for the rest of the day in the nook outside her office. It was the perfect spying tower over the schoolyard. Bobby wished that he had brought his father’s binoculars, which his father had used only once, the wrong way round, to see how far away the television appeared through the lenses.
    The yard was a thin concrete corridor with tall walls on either side. Pupils clogged the artery of the thoroughfare that led to the school’s humongous heart, the hall where they convened for assembly.
    Bobby had prepared mental maps of the area.