Free The Detective's Garden by Janyce Stefan-Cole Page A

Maine,” Dominick said.
    “Will your wife be coming to stay?”
    “No,” he said. The kids inched toward their truck.
    “Why not?” she said.
    “You always ask questions like this?” The collar of Domi nick’s dark red vest was zipped tight to his neck.
    “I guess so,” she said. “The kids are missing school, aren’t they?”
    “Is your husband inside?” Dominick said.
    “He passed away four years ago,” she said.
    “Sorry to hear it, Roseanne.” He turned toward his children, gestured toward the Ford with his thumb and index finger.
    “What are you doing up this way?” she said.
    “The kids wanted to see the ocean.” He did not turn back to ward her. He pulled the handle of the door and began to usher the kids inside.
    “You might have picked a warmer month,” Roseanne said.
    “Sure,” he said. “You might have picked a friendlier mouth.”
    In the afternoon when they got back from the grocery store, Dominick had his children do exercises on the back lawn while Clarisse Parish watched. She brought them a tray of sandwich es. “Anyone for salami and avocado?” She perched a pitcher of water on the patio and filled blue-lipped glasses.
    His kids stood side by side. Syrupy light lit one-half of each of them. Dominick positioned their feet by pushing them with his own. He taught them to tighten their stomachs and roll in their hips. He pushed on their shoulders, quickly, knocking them over. “Again,” he said, “again,” until the kids’ palms and knees were green, and their muscles shook, and they were two child-shaped pools of molasses sucking off the ground.
    “Now it’s your turn, Clarke,” Dominick said. “Use my strength against me. Come at me and get me on the ground. On the ground, we’re closer to equal. Learn to take me down.” Dominick spread his legs to shoulder width and tightened his stomach and rolled his hips inward so that his spine straight ened. “Go on,” he said, “come after me.”
    Clarke felt the twinned impulses, the impossibility of hit ting his father and the desire to shove him hard enough to hurt. Clarke thought about his sister in the room at night, asleep and shaking under the influence of some dream. He reached out hard. Hard enough that his father ought to have gone over, but he was like a rock beneath Clarke’s hands. Then Clarke struck again, harder, but when his hands reached his father, Dominick folded backward, pulling Clarke with him. Clarke’s toes ripped the grass out by the roots, but he had gotten strong, and he dug his shoes in and steeled his arms and held out, pulling back. He watched his father’s brow wrinkle in surprise but before he could begin to feel any sense of pride or triumph he was lifted up and slammed back into the ground and his father had some how swiveled around on top of him, his forearm pushed against the back of Clarke’s neck. Then King launched herself at her father like a rag doll and draped herself over his chest and neck and wormed her thin white arms into her father’s armpits and tickled. When Dominick smiled, King began to laugh.
    Dominick took hold of his daughter and positioned her el bow around Clarke’s neck in a blood hold. He prodded Clarke in the side. “Doesn’t matter that you’re big,” he said. “If King squeezed you’d be unconscious in seconds.” He took Clarke’s elbow and wrapped it around his own neck. Clarke squeezed and Dominick’s face reddened. “It doesn’t matter how big I am, either,” Dominick said.
    He lined them up and had his kids strike out at him, their slow fists caught and twisted until a whole child lofted forward and over his outstretched leg and into the air. Dominick caught them and lowered them to the flat grass where they stood rub bing their arms. He did not stop until his children’s bodies began to shake violently.
    “Sit down,” Dominick said.
    Clarke said, “I’m gonna keep going.”
    “I don’t want you to keep going.”
    “How else am I going to