Today Will Be A Quiet Day

TODAY WILL BE A QUIET DAY / Amy Hempel i /T THINK IT'S the other way around," the boy said. "I think if the JL quake hit now the bridge would collapse and the ramps would be left." He looked at his sister with satisfaction. "You are just trying to scare your sister," the father said. "You know that is not true." "No, really," the boy insisted, "and I heard birds in the middle of the night. Isn't that a warning?" The girl gave her brother a toxic look and ate a handful of Raisinets. The three of them were stalled in traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. That morning, before waking his children, the father had canceled their music lessons and decided to make a day of it. He wanted to know how they were, is all. Just—how were they. He thought his kids were as self-contained as one of those dogs you sometimes see carrying home its own leash. But you could read things wrong. Could you ever. The boy had a friend who jumped from a floor of Langley Porter. The friend had been there for two weeks, mostly playing ping-pong. All the friend said the day the boy visited and lost every game was never play ping-pong with a mental patient because it's all we do and we'll kill you. That night the friend had cut the red belt he wore in two and left the other half on his bed. That was this time last year when the boy was twelve years old. You think you're safe, the father thought, but it's thinking you're invisible because you closed your eyes. This day they were headed for Petaluma—the chicken, egg, and arm-wrestling capítol of the nation—for lunch. The father had offered to take them to the men's arm-wrestling semi-finals. But it was said that arm-wrestling wasn't so interesting since the new safety precautions, that hardly anyone broke an arm or a wrist any more. The best anyone could hope to see would be dislocation, so they said they would rather go to Pete's. Pete's was a gas station turned into a place to eat. The hamburgers there were named after cars, and the gas pumps in front still pumped gas. "Can I have one?" the boy asked, meaning the Raisinets. "No," his sister said. "Can I have two?" "Neither of you should be eating candy before lunch," the father said. He said it with the good sport of a father who enjoys his kids and The Missouri Review · 25 gets a kick out of saying Dad things. "You mean dinner," said the girl. "It will be dinner before we get to Pete's." Only the northbound lanes were stopped. Southbound traffic flashed past at the normal speed. "Check it out," the boy said from the back seat. "Did you see the bumper sticker on that Porsche? 'If you don't like the way I drive, stay off the sidewalk.' " He spoke directly to his sister. "I've just solved my Christmas shopping." "I got the highest score in my class in Driver's Ed," she said. "I thought I would let your sister drive home today," the father said. From the back seat came sirens, screams for help, and then a dirge. The girl spoke to her father in a voice rich with complicity. "Don't people make you want to give up?" "Don't the two of you know any jokes? I haven't laughed all day," the father said. "Did I tell you the guillotine joke?" the girl said. "He hasn't laughed all day, so you must've," her brother said. The girl gave her brother a look you could iron clothes with. Then her gaze dropped down. "Oh-oh," she said, "Johnny's out of jail." Her brother zipped his pants back up. He said, "Tell the joke." "Two Frenchmen and a Belgian were about to be beheaded," the girl began. "The first Frenchman was led to the block and blindfolded. The executioner let the blade go. But it stopped a...