page_52 < previous page page_52 next page > Page 52 and her boyfriend had stopped tickling and started kissing. Seeing Petrie disappear as the white shirt folded around her, seeing Petrie's mouth grinding against the sweaty face beneath the blue cap, had driven a sickening knot of disgust into Joel's chest, and he had run away. Joel does not want to know more about the boyfriend. He cannot even imagine how Petrie met the boy, and does not want to know that, either. On the stoop, Petrie's cat stitches a frantic pattern about Joel's legs. Joel kicks the cat free. The cat stumbles off the stoop, then jumps back to wind its body along Joel's calves. Its fur is short and matted with hitchhiker and chicken dung. Joel cannot understand the belief that cats clean themselves. He has never seen Petrie's cat do anything but chew ticks. Joel thinks the cat has a dog's soul. When Joel opens the back door, the cat races in ahead of him. "Joel?" It is Lelia's voice, coming from the kitchen. Joel squints his eyes. He is in the pantry, and although he could make his way into the hall and to the kitchen with his eyes closed, he waits until his vision focuses before moving. "It's me, Mama," Joel says. He stands still. The pantry smells heavily of Clorox and onions and dust. A jar of pickled crabapples has cracked; the odor is at once dull and sour. Joel breathes deeply, and as the smells fill his head, his tongue curls and waters. "Joel, get in here to supper!" Joel blinks. There are ceiling-high shelves to either side of him, fined precariously with Masonliars and cartons. A plastic bin of cleaning rags sits beside the door. A stack of rusted buckets forms an irregular, lopsided column as high as Joel's shoulder. When he turns his head, he can  < previous page page_52 next page >