Free Breaking and Entering by Joy Williams Page A

how’s your own life. How’s that Willie treating you?”
    “Fine,” Liberty said.
    “Never could get anything out of Liberty,” her mother said.
    “You’re getting to be old married folks yourselves,” her father said. “What is it now, going on almost seven years?”
    “That’s right,” Liberty said.
    “She’s a girl who keeps her own witness, that’s a fact,” her mother said.
    “I want you to be happy, dear,” her father said.
    “Thank you,” Liberty said.
    “But what is it you two do exactly all the time with no babies or jobs or whatever? I’m just curious, understand.”
    “They adore one another,” Liberty’s mother said. “ ‘Adore’ is not in Daddy’s vocabulary but what Daddy is trying to say is that a grandson might give meaning and significance to the fact that Daddy ever drew breath.”
    “That’s not what I’m trying to say at all,” her father said.
    “They’re keeping their options open,” Liberty’s mother said to her father. “They live in a more complex time.” Her mother began to sob. “Keep your options open, Liberty! Never give anything up!”
    “We’d better be signing off now,” her father said.
    Liberty replaced the phone in its cradle and it instantly rang.
    “Is that tree still outside your house?” Teddy asked. “Because I’m sure it was here last night. It was waving its arms outside my window, then it plodded away on its white roots. It goes anywhere it feels like going, I think, that tree.”
    “Trees aren’t like people,” Liberty said. “They can’t movearound.” Her reasonableness, she felt, bordered on the insincere.
    “I forgot to tell you. I’m taking a human sexuality course, and you know what I have to do all this week?”
    “Oh, honey, why are you taking a human sexuality course? Don’t do anything.”
    “I have to carry an egg around all week.”
    “An egg?”
    “I have to pretend it’s a baby and take care of it.”
    “Honey,” Liberty said, “what time is it?”
    “Nineteen minutes of six. My clock woke me up.”
    Janiella had bought Teddy a clock. It was wired to his bed sheets. When Teddy first began to wet his bed, shortly after her arrival months before, Janiella had long discussions with him about the need to accept responsibility for his own bladder. When Teddy continued to refuse responsibility, Janiella began smacking him with a Wiffle bat every time she had to change the sheets. Then she decided on an alarm that would awaken him every three hours throughout the night, as well as every time the bed pad grew damp.
    Janiella had standards. She was not without physical imperfection herself, her personal flaw being diabetes, but she did not allow her disability to get her down. She liked to party. Her preference was for a good time. Her preference was also that Teddy spend as much time as possible away from the house. When Teddy was not wired up in the darkness, he was out somewhere, taking instruction in something. Home at night, he wets the bed. All the alarm has managed to do so far is to increase the number of Teddy’s dreams. He is always dreaming when he wakes. Most recently, he dreams that he steals the single candy bar Janiella keeps in the house in the event she has an attack and has to have sugar. Hedreams of Janiella crawling through the house, not being able to find her Payday.
    “Janiella and Daddy are still asleep, but Janiella left the list for the day on my desk. I have woodworking, then I have a karate lesson, then I have a flute lesson. That’s at the other end of town. In the afternoon, I have sea scouts.”
    Teddy traveled many many miles when he was not in school, practically from one end of the county to the other, in an increasingly extended maze of renaissance pursuits of Janiella’s devising.
    “I have to change the sheets now, Liberty. I have to wash them and dry them and put them on the bed again. Bye-bye.”
    Liberty went back to bed. When she heard the phone ringing again, she