After This by Alice McDermott Read Free Book Online Page A

born, merely imagination or hope or plan—
the man Jacob would become, and Michael, the woman
(commiserating with her mother while the men were turned away)
who would be Annie. What was moving under her hands, pressing
and turning under the taut skin, was the future itself, already formed,
pressing an ear to the wall of her flesh.
     
With a cry, Michael leaped down the dune above his brother,
charged, fell, rolled, collided with Jacob’s back and Jacob’s carefully
arranged soldiers, kicking up sand. He leaped up again and with his
machine gun drawn mowed down sister—who was already crying, her
fists to her eyes—brother, green army men, mother, father, and then
whatever other advancing hordes came at him from the sea.
     
John Keane was off the blanket in an instant, crying, “Michael!”
Jacob was stretched out on the sand, his legs straight before him,
crying, plaintively, “Michael!” Annie was heading toward her mother,
wailing, her fists—one of them still clutching Steve Stevens—to her
eyes. There was sand across her nose and in her hair. John Keane took
Michael by the arm and shook him. The boy looked up at his father as
if he were an utter stranger, materialized out of the salt air. Mary
untied her scarf and, pulling her daughter’s fists from her eyes, gently
brushed it over her face. Jacob, resignedly, perhaps, was lifting his
flattened men, smoothing an area of sand to his left, setting them
upright again.
     
“What is wrong with you?” their father was saying. “Why can’t
you behave?”
     
Michael—it was not fear on his face, only a kind of disbelief, as if
this tall, red-faced, shouting man had materialized out of the wind—
looked up to say, “Just playing. I was just playing.” But his father
shook his arm with the litany of his transgressions: “Hurt your
brother, hurt your sister, ruined the day.” He finally tossed aside the
boy’s arm as if it were something to be thrown away. “Why don’t you
use your head?” he asked him. “Why can’t you behave?” And felt the
pain of his own anger, in his chest, in his shoulder. He moved his hand
to his neck, moved his shoulder. It was the arm he’d used to throw the
football. He looked to his wife. Annie was now collapsed on the
blanket beside her, pressed into her side because she could not sit on
her lap, the bright scarf, now spotted
     
with her tears, wrapped in her fingers. Mary Keane was fumbling in
the pocket of her car coat for a tissue. She found one, held it to the
girl’s nose. Leaned a little to say something into her ear. The girl
nodded. Mary reached for the stuffed bear that still leaned against her
hip, lifted it, and placed it in her daughter’s arms.

A
    s
SUDDENLY AS THE PEACE of the morning had turned to bedlam,
peace returned. John Keane looked around, his hand on his neck,
his love for these children three heavy stones against his thumping
heart. Jacob was once more bent over his men. Michael, his machine
gun hung over his back, was sitting Indian-style just a few feet away,
pulling apart a stalk of sea grass, watching the ocean, not crying, his
    father was relieved to see, but, he suspected, not chastened either. He
rubbed his neck. Swung his arm out, shaking it a little. It was the arm
he had given to Catherine, his niece, his brother Frank’s only child, at
the door of the church on the day she was married. “Maybe we should
eat,” he said. And then, raising his voice only enough to be heard over
the wind, “Boys. Come over and eat.”
    But the wind had indeed changed and as the
five of them gathered
on the blanket they could feel it prick their faces and their arms. Mary
Keane, with Annie still leaning heavily against her and the baby like an
iron beach ball in her lap, leaned toward the quilted hamper, unzipped
it, and then paused, a single wax-paper-wrapped sandwich in her
hand. “Our food will be full of sand,” she said, “with this wind.” And
her husband