Baby Please Don't Go: A Novel

by Frank Freudberg

  But he wasn’t thinking clearly—long before 6:30, the pills would have done their job.

  A couple of minutes later, in the middle of a block of shops, Lock arrived at the AA club house. He needed to get in but didn’t have the key. He hesitated a moment, then smashed his elbow through a small plane of glass in the door and reached through to release the dead bolt.

  The door opened.

  “Well,” Lock said to the imaginary Abby in the audience, “I told you you wouldn’t like hearing the truth, but that’s what happened, and that’s how I got here, half dead, and that’s why I’m dying now. I’m a child killer, among other things, and I don’t deserve to—”

  The illusory crowd disappeared upon Lock’s sudden awareness that real people had entered the room.

  Abby had arrived.

  He stood in the back, flanked by Ivan. Abby ambled forward slowly, his face blank. He eased himself into his regular seat, eyes steady on Lock.

  “Hello, Abby,” Lock said, not bothering with the microphone and sounding drunk. He spoke softly, his words barely audible.

  Lock straightened up as best he could and strained to put on a smile.

  “I was rehearsing what I need to tell you,” he said. “‘A searching and fearless moral inventory.’ Isn’t that what AA says? Full disclosure, kind of. And what I came up with is pure ugly. Pure evil.”

  Lock took another gulp of water. The effect of the pills was pronounced. He was losing his grip on the podium. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You’re breaking my heart, son,” Abby said. “I pray I’m home in bed having a terrible dream.”

  “I wish that’s what’s happening,” he said, his speech nearly beyond recognition. Lock took another sip of water. “But it’s not. Do me a favor.”

  “What, Lochlan?” Abby said.

  “Don’t call the police, at least not yet. Give me a few hours to be by myself.”

  “Too late,” Abner said. “An ambulance is on its way. And you want a few hours? You don’t have a few minutes. I need to know what you took.”

  Abby rose and took a step forward.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Lock said. “Everything will take its natural course, I need a little more time.”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “Let me go, please. This is the best idea I’ve had in a long time.”

  “Your best idea? Your best thinking got you right here, mixed up in a serious crime. Now it’s time to let me do your thinking for you.”

  “An hour then. One hour is all I need.”

  “I don’t think so,” Abby said.

  “You’re picking a hell of a time to get tough with me.”

  “It’s always a hell of a time.”

  Lock couldn’t stand any longer. He slid to the floor, losing his grip on the podium. He tried to rise.

  “Don’t get up, Lochlan. Just sit there,” Abby said. Lock watched him run his tongue over his teeth. He looked away from Lock. With a trembling hand, he took off his cap. His eyes welled up. “They’ll be here in a minute,” he said, moving to Lock and touching his face.

  Lock struggled to get himself upright. He managed, with tremendous effort, to get to his feet. Once up, he stumbled toward the rear exit, shoved the door open, and fell out into the brick-lined dark alley and the frigid air.

  Abby followed. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “Make a run for it?”

  “Try to stop me.”

  “Run down the alley and hide behind a trash bin so you can’t be found? Then curl up and die like a dog? Is that how your mother raised you?”

  “Karma, Abner. You can’t get away with anything.”

  “You have plenty coming to you, but this? Dying here? No.” Tears welled in Abby’s eyes.

  “Dying won’t get you out of this,” he said. “Mannheim’s been released and Natalie’s been arrested. And you. You’re going to get yourself patched up and face yourself and the charges against you. Then you’re going to stand trial or take a plea, and they’re going send you to prison for a little while. You’re going to take what’s coming to you. Can you hear me?”

  “A little while? I’ll go to prison forever. Forever. I killed a child.”

  Abby grimaced. “No, you didn’t kill her. That story was the D.A.’s invention. He made that up for you to hear. He thought it would unnerve you, and he was right. That trick could work only on a fundamentally decent man, mind you. The child is fine, home with her father. I heard about Jacoby’s ploy late tonight but couldn’t find you. Thank God for Ivan. He saw you, thought something wasn’t right, and called me. I figured you heard the phony story and would do something foolish. And here you are.”

  Lock slumped over, fading in and out of consciousness. He rolled onto his side.

  Abby removed his coat, knelt down, and tucked it under Lock’s head.

  “Hang on, boy. They’re almost here. Tell me what you took.”

  “To make it easier for them to save me?”

  “No. For me to save you,” said Abby.

  Lock’s eyes closed for a long moment. He opened them with an effort and tried to focus. Both men’s eyes met.

  “This was a tough case for you, Abby,” Lock slurred. “Not one of the easy ones.” He breathed heavily.

  “I was praying it was Freel,” said Abby. “I didn’t want to rule him out—because if he was out, then you were in. But there was nothing I could do. The evidence began burying you alive in the hole you dug for yourself.”

  Lock’s breath was slow, shallow and labored. “Got you wanting a drink, did it?” Lock asked, a weak smile on his face.

  “You thought you could cross the line of what’s right and what’s not, and then dash back,” said Abby. “But you found that you couldn’t. The act of crossing the line changes the whole nature of the game.”

  “Disappointed you again.”

  “There’s no time for this now.”

  Lock swallowed hard.

  “You have to tell me what you’ve taken. That’s an order.”

  “From my boss?”

  “From a man who loves you,” said Abby.

  Lock’s eyes closed for a beat, then opened. He was fighting to decide if he should answer Abby or try to get up again and run for it.

  “Same thing I used on Mannheim. Ambien. Only I took a month’s supply.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “Wash it down with a drink, did you?”

  “Yes,” said Lock. “Of water.”

  “How long ago?”

  Lock was barely able to speak.

  “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry I let you down.”

  Abby turned toward Ivan, who had followed them into the alley. “Where’s that damn ambulance?”

  “Let’s get him up and moving,” Ivan said. “Don’t let him fall asleep.”

  They got Lock to his feet and shuffled him back into the café and into the men’s room. He was unable to stand on his own.

  Lock leaned over the sink and looked into the mirror, cupping his hands and feebly trying to splash water on his face. Lock’s leather jacket was askew. Abby reached around and tugged it straight for him. Lock watched in the mirror, then took a long, hard look at himself.

  A siren approached.

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  29

  Chafing tires up against the curb, Abby stopped his car and put it in park a half block away from the main entrance of a long, imposing building—the dreary prison of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, with its red brick walls and shiny, razor-wire fencing. For a reason he couldn’t figure out, he didn’t want Lock to know he had come early.

  Any minute now, Lock would sign himself out of the prison’s administrative office and open the steel doors leading to a cracked sidewalk. Abby d
rummed his fingers on the steering wheel and tried to formulate what he was going to say to Lock, who was being released four weeks early from his six-month prison term. During that stretch, Abby hadn’t once visited him—but that had been Lock’s doing. Lock had begged Abby to stay away, pleading with him not to come see him in prison garb from behind the thick Plexiglas that would certainly separate them. Lock asked instead that Abby be the one to pick him up upon his release.

  Lock waited inside the prison office while a chubby guard took her time retrieving the personal articles—an all-but-empty wallet, a dead cell phone, and three or four keys on a ring—confiscated immediately upon his arrival twenty-one weeks earlier. He stood there, wearing the street clothes, now musty and wrinkled, that had been handed to him minutes earlier in exchange for his orange jumpsuit. He held a cardboard box filled with books and toiletries from his cell. He had no coat, since it had been late August when he was first imprisoned. It had taken the prosecutors and defense attorneys almost no time at all to work out a plea deal, and his sentence had started a few weeks later. Natalie had moved quickly through the system as well, working off a similar sentence that started just before Lock’s. Now it was almost February, and a cold day.

  After a routine handshake and a few tired words of advice from a prison functionary, Lock opened the door and walked out into the sunlight. The short-sleeved shirt he wore did very little to protect him from the bitter cold.

  If Dominque were alive, she’d come get me. And Hannah, she’d be about sixteen by now. Maybe she’d ride out with her mom to see me, too.

  He stood there and looked up at the sky, exhaling condensed breath. He was glad Abby was late. The more time that elapsed before he would have to face him, the better.

  He felt sick to his stomach and was overwhelmed by a deep sense of shame. Where was the intense elation he’d expected upon getting released? There was none of the primal excitement of being let out of a cage. As he waited for his friend and former boss, Lock contemplated what would come next in his life. He knew he could never work for CPS again, and there was nothing else that he could think of doing. Something would turn up, of course, but at that moment, he had no idea what it might be.

  Abby’s car glided up and stopped in front of Lock.

  They stood and sat, respectively, and looked at each other, neither one saying anything for a long beat. Lock put the cardboard box on the sidewalk and leaned down so he could see into the car.

  “Abby,” Lock said. Tears filled his eyes. The old man looked even older than he remembered.

  Abby turned off the engine and got out of the car, moving as fast as a seventy-six-year-old with a potbelly and an arthritic back and knees could. Lock knew by the stiff way he moved that the hour-and-a-half drive had been hard on him.

  Abby walked around the car to embrace Lock. Lock stepped back after a long hug and began to speak, but he could only stammer. Abby signaled him to be quiet.

  “Son,” Abby said, “it’s true we are nothing but our choices, and you made some terrible ones. And so have I. I’ve gotten better, and you can, too.”

  “But Abby—” Lock began. He felt utterly undeserving of Abby’s trust and his kindness.

  Abby ignored him. “There’s nothing I can do to reverse all the hurtful, destructive things I did—except to act like a man and do the best I can with the time I have left. I’ve spent the second half of my life trying to make up for the drunken, wasteful things I did the first half. I work hard to protect children from the seamier side of the world, and for them, I’ve done a pretty good job. I’m trying to give back a little.”

  The sun was setting, and Lock looked into Abby’s face and then looked away, up into the darkening sky. He thought, Even if I live as long as you, I’ll never make up for what I did. But I’m going to try, you’ll see.

  “Let’s get in the car and get the hell away from here,” said Lock.

  “Give me a few more minutes. I want to stretch. Sitting and driving too long gets to my back.”

  “Okay, but let’s not stay here much longer. I’m getting the creeps.”

  “A couple more minutes, then we can go,” Abby said. “And something else. I’m not embarrassed to say it now, no matter how you might take it. I love you, Lochlan. With all my heart. Every day you were locked up, I felt it in my gut.”

  Lock nodded and smiled. Abby leaned against the car.

  “It’s not all bad,” said Lock. “Prison was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It worked. I know it doesn’t work for most people, but it did for me. I sat there every day on a crappy cot and thought about what I did and why I did it and what life could have been like had I made other decisions. Now I have a second chance, too. I’m going to take advantage of it, as you did. It’s funny. Usually, people with alcohol problems go to jail, then find AA. For me, it was the other way around. I found AA, then needed jail to complete the course. Same lessons, just a different sequence. Today, I waffle between heavy depression because of what a fool I was, and powerful elation because I have a chance to start over, to take the lessons and apply them to my life.”

  Abby nodded and smiled.

  “Don’t worry about me, Abby. Yes, I have periods of regret, but most of the time, I’m excited. Not sure what my next move is, but I know I’m optimistic as hell. I’ve left a lot of negative things behind. I’m looking forward.”

  “Regret is a form of resentment,” said Abby, “and as you know from the program, resentment is a shortcut to your next drink.”

  “Yes, you’re right. I’m working on that.” Lock looked up at the sky and took in a slow, deep breath. “And I thought about you, too. I know I love you more than I ever loved my own father. After I nearly destroyed my life, you wound up saving it that morning in the Hang-About when I was overdosing.”

  “Keep marching, one foot in front of the other,” said Abby. “That’s your job now. Things will get better.”

  The two men hugged each other again, Lock’s head resting on Abby’s shoulder. Lock stooped down and picked up the cardboard box and put it in the backseat. Abby wasn’t so steady on his feet, so Lock gripped him by the elbow and helped him toward the passenger side of the car. He refused to get in.

  “I’ll drive,” Lock said.

  “No,” said Abby, pointing to the passenger seat. “You get in. I can still drive.”

  Lock wanted to object, but did as instructed.

  Abby got in the car, and as he shifted into drive, another car sped up and screeched to a stop in front of them, inches short of sideswiping Abby’s car. Abby jammed on his brakes.

  “Idiot!” Abby said, blasting his horn.

  The other car was a beat-up twenty-year-old Toyota. Its creaky door opened and out stepped Natalie. Other than her attire, she hadn’t changed at all.

  She walked toward the passenger side of the car where Lock sat. He lowered the window halfway and immediately regretted doing so.

  Natalie’s huge, pregnant belly stretched the material of a not-particularly-flattering waitress’s uniform. She must have been six or seven months pregnant. She wore a little makeup. Her nametag read “Nat.” She held a large envelope in one hand.

  “Congratulations, Lock,” she said, shifting the envelope from one hand to the other and back again. “You’re out.” She leaned down to get a closer view of him and then looked past Lock to Abby. “Hello, Mr. Schlamm.”

  “Greetings, Natalie,” Abby said.

  She gazed at Lock for a moment. “You look good,” she told him. “You don’t look like you spent six months in a…a small room with iron bars.” She thrust the envelope to Lock through the half-open window. He didn’t move a muscle to take it, and he turned his face away from her. She withdrew the envelope.

  “I almost missed you just now,” Natalie said to the back of his head. “I couldn’t get off work early. I drove for an hour and a half to get here.”<
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  Lock wasn’t impressed. He turned toward her. “What do you want, Natalie? Haven’t we had enough of each other?”

  She pointed to the envelope and reached through the window and dropped it on his lap. “I spent a long time writing to you,” she said. “A letter practically every day for all the months I was in prison. Never mailed them. I hoped for a day like today when I could hand them to you in person. I’ve thought deeply about what counts in life. You probably did the same, sitting in your cell. I’ve thought about what I’ve done wrong, all my wrong-headed thinking. It’s all in the letters. And if you don’t want to read them, better yet. I can tell you about it myself.”

  Abby turned off the engine.

  “Don’t do that,” Lock said. “Turn it back on. We’re out of here.”

  Abby ignored him.

  “I know writing all that doesn’t change a thing about what happened,” Natalie said, “but there it is, anyway. Almost one hundred pages of soul-searching.”

  “Isn’t it a condition of probation that we don’t interact with each other?”

  “No,” said Abby. “The D.A. never asked for that. Doesn’t apply to either of you. Jacoby could have gone much, much rougher on you two. Lucky for you both, he wants to be my friend, or something like that. He wasn’t going to take a plea deal. I begged him to take it easy on you and got him to change his mind.”

  “I don’t care what you have to say, Natalie,” said Lock.

  “You have to,” she said. “We had something real and then something ugly destroyed it.”

  “The ugliness was there first,” Lock said. He turned to Abby. “Let’s go. Turn it on. Get me away from here. Get me away from her.”

  “And now I’ve changed again,” Natalie said.

  Abby looked at Lock, but didn’t move a muscle.

  “While I was in prison,” Natalie said. “I got help from a great shrink and a wonderful support group. And after I got out, I went for more help. On my own. Paid for it out of my own pocket. Counseling. Another support group. I didn’t have to. It wasn’t a condition or anything. I wanted to. I’ve learned some unpleasant things about myself. I’ve faced them, accepted them. Now I’ve gotten better. And I want to live happily ever after with you and our son.”