Free Love All: A Novel by Callie Wright

counter. I started to turn on the lights, then changed my mind. Teddy had the right idea. I left the dirty plates in the sink and headed for the front door.
    Outside a cloud had swaddled the moon and the streetlamps barely lit the sidewalk. I walked down Susquehanna to Chestnut and over to Leatherstocking Street, where I entered Carl’s house through the backyard.
    “Hey,” said Carl. “I thought you weren’t coming over.”
    I eyed his plate. His mom went to a widows’ support group three nights a week and tonight she’d left him a feast to go with his TV.
    “What is all that?” I asked.
    “Steak, fries, Dr Pepper. We’re celebrating my return from Myrtle Beach. There’s more of everything in the kitchen. Bring the ketchup,” he called after me.
    I served myself two steak strips and a handful of fries, but I wasn’t hungry.
    “Where’s the ketchup?” I called, pawing through the refrigerator.
    “Cabinet,” said Carl.
    “Right.” In my house, ketchup was in the refrigerator but maybe it was like peanut butter and could go either way. I shut the fridge and opened the first cabinet next to the stove: spices, a pepper grinder, and a large orange pill bottle.
    I turned the bottle and read the label:
    Mary Matthieson
    Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen 5mg/500mg
    Generic for Vicodin
    Take 1 tablet by mouth every 4–6 hours as needed for pain
    Quant: 20
    Refills: 0
    Carl’s mom had been depressed since Carl’s dad died, but last spring things had gotten much worse. Carl had moved in with his uncle in Richfield Springs for two weeks, right in the middle of the school year, and he probably wouldn’t have told us why except that Richfield Springs was fifteen miles from Cooperstown. Sam didn’t have his license yet, and we wouldn’t stop hounding Carl about how we were going to hang out after school when he was living two towns away.
    “Why can’t you just stay at Sam’s dad’s house?” I’d asked.
    “I can’t,” said Carl, for about the fifth time.
    “He won’t care,” said Sam. “We can take over the basement.”
    “Where’s your mom even going?” I asked. She worked at a bank on Main Street, and I’d never known her to take a single day off, much less two weeks.
    Carl didn’t answer.
    “Did she actually say you can’t stay at Sam’s dad’s?”
    “I’m supposed to stay with family,” said Carl. He looked deeply uncomfortable, refusing even to make eye contact, fidgeting helplessly in his seat.
    “Why?” asked Sam, and finally Carl leaned forward, hands palming the table, and told us that his mom had OD’d on Vicodin, okay, then he pushed away from the table and disappeared, leaving us with his bowl of tomato soup and Otis Spunkmeyer cookie, untouched.
    I shook the bottle. Full. The name at the bottom of the label was M ICHAEL T REMONT, DDS—a dentist in Utica whom lots of people in Cooperstown went to. Maybe Carl’s mom had broken a tooth while Carl was in Myrtle Beach. Maybe she’d lost a cap or undergone a root canal, but I wondered if Dr. Tremont knew about last spring.
    Two cabinets over I found the ketchup. Back in the den, I handed Carl the squeeze bottle and he squirted it directly onto his fries.
    “You’re not supposed to do that,” I told him.
    “Do what?”
    “Squirt ketchup onto your fries.”
    “Why not?” he asked.
    Because if you were ill mannered enough to smother your French fries in ketchup, Anne Obermeyer liked to say, you should at least have the decency to use a fork—but I didn’t repeat this to Carl. I wondered what it would’ve been like if Carl’s dad were still alive. He’d died when we were in the first grade, long before Carl and I had become friends. On the nightstand in Carl’s bedroom was a framed photograph of the two of them at one of his T-ball games, taken ages ago. In the picture, Carl’s dad was leaning over him at home plate, his hands covering Carl’s on the handle of the bat. I’d once asked Carl if he remembered that day and