Read The Bright Forever for Free Online Page B

mess.”
    No, he wouldn’t make a mess, he said. He’d be just fine. He’d be scrumdiddlyumptious.
    She’d never heard him use a silly word like that or speak with that sort of giggle leaping into his voice, the way it must have when he was a child.
    No, Papa, he said. Not a mess. He’d be careful. He’d be a good boy.
    “Ray,” she said. “What’s wrong? You’re talking out of your head.”
    He was drinking now. She heard him gulping down the milk. She felt along the wall for the light switch, and when she turned it on and the harsh glare filled the kitchen, Ray set the glass on the counter and turned to look at her. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t focusing on anything. She could tell that. He was asleep.
    She didn’t want to startle him. “Was it good?” She kept her voice even. “The milky-wilky?” It made her feel silly to say the word, but close to Ray, too, as if they shared a private language. “Did you like it?”
    Yes, he told her. It was good.
    “Are you ready to go back to bed?”
    He shook his head. No, he was afraid.
    “You don’t have to be afraid. I’m here. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
    Mom? he said.
    “No, hon. I’m Clare. Here, give me your hand.”
    She tried to take his hand, but he wouldn’t let her. He tossed his arms about as if he were trying to fight his way out of something. Goddamn it, he said. Goddamn.
    “Shh, Ray. Shh.”
    She moved closer. His flailing arm knocked against her face. His knuckles caught her mouth. She felt blood come to her lip, heard herself whimper.
    Ray went down on his knees. He went down, and he pulled his fists in close to his chest. He bowed his head, and his torso rocked back and forth. Clare knew he hadn’t meant to hurt her. He had come up from a dream and carried it with him. He was caught in some twilight, part of him awake and part of him asleep. She got down on her knees and covered his fists with her hands. When he finally raised his head, his eyes opened wide, and she could tell that he saw her, understood who she was. She felt overwhelmed with love because he was back now. He was Ray, her Ray.
    “Darlin’.” He lifted up the hem of his T-shirt and gently dabbed at the bloody corner of her lip. “Clare?” he said, and she started to explain.
             
    WELL, JESUS. Good Christ. He didn’t know what to say. “You ought to shoot me,” he told her. They were in the bathroom, where she was washing blood from her face. “Jesus Christ in a basket.”
    “You were asleep, Ray.” She leaned over the sink, looking at her face in the medicine cabinet mirror. Her upper lip was red and puffy. “You didn’t mean to hit me. I know that. You must have been having a bad dream.”
    In the mirror, she could see him behind her, sitting on the edge of the tub. He was looking down at the floor, and he shook his head. “I don’t remember,” he said. “Honest to God, Clare. I don’t remember a thing.”
    They went back to bed, and he held her. “Go to sleep, hon,” she told him. Soon the martins would start singing, the sky would light up, and then it would be time for them both to get ready for work. “You need your rest.”
    “I’m going to be better, Clare.” She could feel him trembling. “I’m going to stop.”
    She was nodding off to sleep, and she didn’t have the energy to ask him what he meant. She figured he was talking about the beer. Sometimes he drank more than he should, but that was one of the other things that she knew about men: from time to time, the world got too big for them, and they had to find a way to try to match it. Besides, he wasn’t a mean drunk. He got sad instead, and sometimes he told her stories about hurtful things he’d carried with him since he was a boy in Minnesota.
    The story she always remembered was the one about how his parents couldn’t afford for him to buy a hot lunch at school, so his mother packed him a sack lunch each day, always a fried-egg sandwich, nothing