The Risk Pool

I was wide awake now. A dog down the block barked sharply twice and shook his chain. I got up and looked out the window, but it was too dark to see much. In the quarter moonlight only dark outlines—of garages, fences, trees, and houses—were visible against the night. The maple I had been climbing the last time my father was in Mohawk had grown too; fully mature, its highest branches now far above the peak of our house. He had stood there, silently, on the porch below and watched me. I had been too afraid to jumpeven so short a distance, and it had seemed to me that no one understood me so completely as my father must have at that moment. And when I heard a soft footfall on the porch below, followed by the creaking hinge on the screen door, I knew he had come for me. Again the dog shook his chain, but this time he did not bark.
    Positioning myself at the bedroom door, I listened. My mother always kept the downstairs doors locked, not that that would keep my father out. Down the hall I saw a thin crease of light below her door, enough to make the top of the stair gray instead of black. A stair creaked before I could decide whether or not to warn her.
    It was all happening too fast, as if he had somehow walked right
through
the locked door below, as if inserting, turning, withdrawing a key were mere formalities to be dispensed with since no one was present to witness them. The footfalls on the stair were not anxious, though. They came, softly and heavily, stopping on the landing, as if to listen for my breathing. I counted the stairs and before he reached the top, scrambled back into bed. Sleep, I thought. If I could just get to sleep, it would not be happening. If he thought I was asleep, maybe he would not take me. I waited.
    Surprisingly, there were no more footfalls, and the dog outside was quiet. I thought I heard low voices, and listened intently until I heard them again. Had they come from the street outside? I waited for the dog to bark again.
    When he didn’t, I crept to the door and opened it a crack. The pale ribbon of light was still visible beneath my mother’s bedroom door, and I heard her voice, soft and low, before the light went out.
    Then I went back to bed, my heart pounding. He had not come to steal me. My father had simply come home.
    I woke up early, still excited, to the sound of voices in the kitchen below. The sun was shining brilliantly and I stopped dressing long enough to locate my friend the dog, who was vigorously shaking his chain, three backyards away. Good dog, I thought.
    I took the stairs three to a stride, pulling my t-shirt over my head at the same time. I stopped at the landing. My mother was at the table, sitting in my chair, her back to the stairs. She turned when she heard me coming and smiled. Father Michaels was at the table too. He was not wearing his collar.
    “Look who’s come for breakfast,” my mother said.
    My friend, who had been studying his hands, smiled at me weakly.
    “So what’s the matter?” she said. “Are you going to just stand there?”
    When I did precisely that, she broke into song:
    ’Cause when you’re up, you’re up.
    And when you’re down you’re down.
    And when you’re only halfway up,
    You’re neither up nor down.
    “Can I go outside and play ball?” I said.
    “Okay,” she agreed. It was an unheard-of privilege before breakfast, but she was in about the best mood ever. “Don’t wander off though. I’m going to fix us all a
stunning
breakfast.”
    Outside, I checked the street for any car that might conceivably belong to my father, but there wasn’t a convertible in sight. And nothing with bullet holes. Inside, they were talking, but their voices were low. I heard my mother say, “Don’t worry.” Then she resumed humming, “When you’re up, you’re up.”
    I fielded hard, angry grounders, and when I was called for breakfast, I said I wasn’t hungry.
    “Be that way, sourpuss,” my mother said, and went back inside. Then Father Michaels said something, and she told him again not to worry. Horrid Patrick Donovan just had me all worked up over my father.
    “I’ll go talk to him,” he said.
    “No,” she said. “You’ll talk to me.”
    It was nearly lunch time when I heard him leave. My mother came out onto the back porch and called, but I was out of sight around back of the small storage shed and I didn’t answer. I heard her say, “I don’t know where he’s disappeared to.”
    Our house was next to the corner,