Willy Lomund was a handsome, fine example of the oh so hopeful fifties, with strong blue eyes and a manly jaw that people, especially men, respected. He came to the warehouse he worked at every day with a bright smile on his face that told the world how happy he was to be alive. Willy stuck his head in at the girls in the office, gave them a wink, and they just loved it. He took the time to check in with anyone who was having problems at home - a sick kid, car trouble, whatever. When someone gave old Anson Murtaugh a greeting card, Anson would hold it out with his shaky hand for Willy to see, and Willy would read it to him. "That's so beautiful," Anson would say, with tears in his cataractous eyes. All of this made Willy a popular man, but not to his boss.

"You're late getting started again, Lomund!" shouted Nathan Klein from his manager's office. "You're always in the door on time, but it takes you fifteen minutes to get to your department."

"What should I do, boss, walk past these folks like they don't exist? I'm a people person. That's gotta count for something." Klein made a grrr sound like he was some kind of wild animal and went back in his office.

When he got off work, Willie liked to stop by Einhoffer's bakery and pick up something sweet for Margie and the kids. He pulled up into the driveway of his house and saw Charlie Jones across the street, pruning the bushes of his front yard. Of course, Willy had to walk over and say hello. Twenty minutes later, Margie, cigarette in one hand and the other heatedly on her hip, stomped down to the end of the driveway.

"Dinner is almost over, Wil!" Then she turned around and threw her arms up in the air. Willy came in and passed out chocolate eclairs to his kids and ate his cold meal.

The family then got together, as all families did in those days, and watched television. Willy had two boys in second and third grade, Jerry and Jimmy. They were blue streaks of energy from morning to night and they wore their mother out. There was also an older boy, aged ten, Eddie. He was not Willy's son, he was his half-brother. Willie's alcoholic mother May had gotten pregnant at age 43 and the father had ditched town. Derelict May couldn't be any kind of mother to Eddie, any more than she had been to Willie and his two brothers who had grown up in an orphanage. So Willie took his youngest brother in, remembering sadly what St. Joseph's had been like for him (not that the fathers hadn't been kind, but their care was spread sparsely among all the many parentless boys.) Eddie, an orphan by technicality, was a bit nervous and distant, but well-behaved. Nothing like the blue streaks.

The family watched Walt Disney and Jackie Gleason, then it was bedtime for the kids. Margie tucked her two boys in and gave them a kiss. She came back in the living room and sat across from Willy.

"I picked up some balloons, Margie," said Willy.

Silence.

"Did you hear me? You know what I mean when I say balloons."

"I heard you," said Margie, tamping her next cigarette. "The children are in bed, you don't have to use your kids code with me." They watched 77 Sunset Strip and the local news, then retired. The blue streaks were sound asleep, stripped of energy. Eddie, though, could not sleep. The nerves of a child unmeant for the house he occupied required extra time to unravel. He could hear Willy and Margie in bed.

"Please hurry," said Margie, several times. And then, "It's killing me, Willy. It's killing me." Finally, there was quiet and Eddie could get some sleep. He would be drowsy in class the next day, but it never stopped him from excelling as a student. At the age of three, he was reading from The World Book, and there had even been talk of advancing him a year in school.

One night, Willy came home with something better than chocolate eclairs. A dog! Jerry and Jimmy jumped up and down excitedly. The dog, a small, brown mutt, seemed overwhelmed by the two boys, curling its head away from their frenetic petting.

"I got him from a farmer over on route 29 for ten dollars," said Willy. "Whaddya think?"

"I wish we had talked about it first," said Margie, gesturing with her cigarette hand.

"Margie, you're never any fun. With anything," said Willie. "Boys, whaddya wanna call him? He's brown as brown can be, what say we call him Brownie?"

"Brownie! Brownie!" yelled Jimmy and Jerry.

"Is that okay with you, Eddie? Edward?"

"Guess so," said Eddie.

"Well, do you like him?" said Willy.

"Sure," said Eddie. Willy was always looking for the word thanks from his family, but he rarely heard it. Eddie was a troubled kid and he couldn't really blame him. But his own sons and his wife? He had given them everything, things he didn't have growing up. Surely they could do better, show some appreciation once in a while. Before Willy ended up in St. Joseph's Orphanage with his brothers, they all lived in an apartment just inside the city. There was nothing to eat in the house. Ma would leave in the early evening, swearing she'd come back with dinner. She'd finally return at two in the morning, drunk, with a bag of cold hamburgers. It wasn't that way every night, just enough to leave its mark on a boy.

The blue streaks, with all their energy, continued to make Brownie nervous. He peed on the kitchen linoleum.

"Get that mangy mutt out of here! Put him in the backyard," said Margie.

Brownie apparently missed the farm. After a week, he scrabbled over the fence and ran away. This happened three times in the first month. Animal Control charged eight dollars each time he was picked up. They tried tying him up in the back yard, but he barked nonstop and made the neighbors unhappy. The kids were at school all day, it was just Margie and Brownie inside the house. She didn't like the dog around her feet all the time, so she got in the habit of locking him in the bathroom. She'd let him out just before the kids came home. She could hear his paws scrape at the walls occasionally, but they never left a mark. The family couldn't afford this dog to keep running away, Margie reasoned. Willy never gave her enough money and she had to watch every penny.

Willy was always fixing up the house. He wallpapered the hallway. He poured concrete in back for a patio. He built a bar downstairs and covered the knotty pine walls with neon beer signs. He liked beer but didn't have a problem with it the way his mother did. He and Margie would have people over to play cards and have drinks. Willy liked every single soul on the face of the earth, but Margie always spouted her critiques the next day. This one swears too much, that one gets grabby. This couple stays too late, that couple won't shut up. Willy and Margie would argue. Once, she picked up an empty beer bottle by the neck and hit him over the head with it. It didn't hurt Willy, and he didn't complain, but it shocked the kids. It was about the only time that Jerry and Jimmy would get quiet, when their parents argued.

Like many men of his time, Willy whipped his kids with a belt when they got out of hand or misbehaved at school. He didn't like doing it, but he felt he would be a bad parent if he didn't. He whipped Jerry and Jimmy a lot. He never whipped Eddie. For one, Eddie was extremely well-behaved. But on the rare occasion that Eddie did something wrong, Willy would only yell at him. This would drive Margie nuts. She hated that her children were such monsters and that Eddie was practically perfect. Still, the boy was so ungrateful! He never said thank you. So, whenever it was just her and Eddie in the house, she'd casually cuff him in the back of the head when he wasn't looking. If they were in the kitchen, she used a metal spoon. Yes, the state gave them sixty-five dollars a month for his care, and free medical, but he was still an extra burden she didn't need.

One Saturday, Willy brought all the boys to the warehouse. He showed them how things worked in his department, how the machinery collected the boxes from atop the highest shelves. Anson Murtaugh took Eddie to the side. His hands were shaky. He put a small crystal radio with an earplug in Eddy's hand. The boy was rarely enthusiastic, but this brought a smile to his slender face. Eddy shook Anson's hand vigorously. There was a tear in the old man's eye.

That night, Eddie hid the radio under his pillow and ran the cord to his ear. He liked rock and roll. It helped drown out Willy and Margie. Everybody loved Willy, if only they knew what a monster he could be! Eddie had no affection for Margie, but no human being should have to suffer like that. It was very confusing for him. He knew a little about sex, he thought it was supposed to be pleasant, not painful. Fortunately, the nights of Margie pleading became fewer and fewer. Then it seemed like they weren't doing it at all. Eddie was glad for that. Maybe they were headed for divorce and he could be rid of her. He could only wish.

A social worker was waiting one day for Eddie when he returned home from school. She sweetly asked him a lot of questions.

"If you could live anywhere you wanted to, Eddie, where would you like to live?" Eddie hesitated. He mistrusted adults as a rule, felt like they were always trying to get something out of him, expose the inner brat in him, and put him in an orphanage. He answered obliquely.

"The Taj Mahal."

"The Taj Mahal? Why?"

"It's just really cool looking." The social worker smiled and gathered her huge notebooks together. She had plenty of troublesome cases, and hadn't the time to unravel the meaning of his curious answer. When she left, Margie rushed at Eddie angrily.

"You knew what she was talking about! Why did you answer her like that?" Eddie wasn't sure what Margie meant. The best he could figure was that she hoped he'd say that he would like to live with one of his other half-brothers. There had been talk of it. But neither of them had any kids, it wouldn't be any fun. And they were well known to go on benders. Jerry and Jimmy, though they were younger than Eddie and roughhoused endlessly, were a sense of security to him.

The arguing between Willy and Margie increased over the years. Usually they fought right after sending the kids to bed. Eddie couldn't always make out what they were arguing about. But one night, he clearly heard Willy say, "Can't get any booty at home. Gotta go out and get it." He sounded strange to Eddie as he said this, like a cartoon caveman. But Willy went on drinking his beer and fixing up his house, and Margie kept puffing away on her Salems.

One weekend, Willy decided to wallpaper the bathroom. He spent a long afternoon going over samples at Sears and he didn't finish until Sunday evening, in time to watch Ed Sullivan with the kids.

"Well, that's done! Don't anybody touch those walls for a few days. You kids be careful when you take your baths. That paper needs time to set. I'm serious, no wrestling in the bathroom."

On Monday, Willy went to work and the kids went to school as usual. And as usual, Margie locked Brownie in the bathroom. It was something she'd gotten used to doing without any thought. Then she went about her work. At first, she didn't pay any attention to the scratching noise. It had become part of her everyday environment. Finally, she realized the huge mistake she had made. She opened the bathroom door and saw the mess Brownie had made of the wall. The area the dog had shredded was no bigger than a sheet of notebook paper, but he had ruined it. Two rows of wallpaper would have to be redone, judging by where the seam ran through the damage.

Eddie came home and took a look at the wallpaper. He knew Willy was going to beat Brownie. He just knew it. And the truth was, he was on to Margie. He alone knew about her little trick of locking Brownie up - he had come home early one day from school and had seen it. Jimmy and Jerry were worried for Brownie, too, and they couldn't understand why Brownie would pick the bathroom out of all places in the house to do some scratching. Everyone was quiet when Willy got home and learned what had happened to his precious project.

"Dog's gotta learn, there's no two ways about it," said Willy. Everyone in the house could sense that he was seething. Willie dragged Brownie by the collar into the bathroom, and shoved his face into the damage. He smacked the dog in the snout with his open palm.

"Do you see this, Brownie? No! Smack! No! Smack! No! Smack! No! Smack..." With each 'No!' Brownie yelped. Finally the dog refused to take his punishment any longer. He growled as a warning, then when Willy did not let go, Brownie curled his neck around and bit him in the web between his thumb and index finger. Willy let out his own yelp and released the dog.

Surprisingly, Willy didn't make a big deal of the bite. He cleaned it up with some mercurochrome, bandaged it, and went on with the evening as if nothing unusual had happened. He didn't say anything about having to get rid of the dog. But Margie could no longer lock Brownie away, so she put him in the yard the next day and he escaped again. The kids were told that Animal Control was contacted several times, but Brownie was never recaptured. Eddie suspected they were lying. Big old adults with their big old lies.

The family had just come back from a late night at Spencer’s Drag*O*Way. Jerry and Jimmy were asleep on their feet, each swaying like a sprung jack-in-the-box. Margie complained that her back hurt. The kind of moaning she made seemed unnatural to Eddie. She went to the doctor and he told her to put a board under her mattress. Eddie sure as heck knew that wouldn't help. Something was very, very wrong with Margie. Her pain got much worse; it frightened Eddie. Finally, she went into the hospital and a month passed. It was a strange feeling for Eddie to have his nemesis gone from the house. He vacuumed, did laundry and cooked meals. Simple meals, but he knew how to fry burgers and boil hot dogs, and anybody could open cans and heat up vegetables. He liked not having Margie around and wished it could stay that way.

Another month passed, and Margie remained in the hospital. Then Willy, his face unshaven and seemingly ten years older, took the kids aside and told them that their mother was in heaven. Jimmy cried and cried; Jerry just seemed stunned. Margie's mother would come to live with them and take care of the kids. At the viewing, Eddie stood next to her casket. Her cheekbones were sunken; she looked like a ghoul in a monster movie, and the excess of rouge and powder applied to her face didn't help. She looked like her true inner self now, thought Eddie. He somehow felt, though, that if he didn't find some sympathy in himself for Margie, it would make him a bad person later in life. But try as he might, he couldn't summon up any grief for this woman who had died so young. Once, when nobody was around, she had said to Eddie, "You know, we may not give you any affection, but we do a lot for you by giving you a home." It came out of the blue, they weren't even having a conversation at the time. He would remain forever ungrateful to her, despite the fact that she had washed his clothes, fed him, took him to doctors, made sure he had Christmas presents. To this withered, smoke-riddled wretch of a cadaver, he couldn't express any parting sympathy. He wouldn't even say Thank You.