Convincing Jamey

by Pappano, Marilyn

  The woman laughed scornfully. “You say that as if it means. something. Do you know how many people have died on our public streets and sidewalks in the middle of the day?”

  “Too many. But you won’t be in any danger from me, and I’m the only one out this morning. It’s just me and my dog.” She gestured toward the cart, where Jethro was curled up asleep on the blade of the shovel.

  After a long hesitation, the woman nodded once, drew back and closed the window. Karen scooped up a pile of glass-laden dirt with the dustpan and dumped it in the trash bag, then began sweeping again. A moment later J.T.’s mother appeared at the edge of the fence. Dressed in a nurse’s uniform, with a sweater folded over one arm and an umbrella in hand, she looked wary, distrusting and ready to flee at a moment’s notice. “My name is Shawntae Williams.”

  Withdrawing one glove, Karen approached her, then shook hands through the iron bars. “I met a number of the families on the street yesterday, but we missed your building. I guess it doesn’t matter since you don’t open your door to strangers—although maybe you would have. I was with Jamey O’Shea. Do you know him?”

  “Everybody knows Jamey. Are you a friend of his?”

  Karen’s laughter was automatic. “Not exactly. More a thorn in his side, I think. He thinks my being here is a very bad idea, but he can’t avoid me. He can’t even look out from the bar without seeing my house and me.”

  “So why are you here?”

  She gave her spiel on Kathy’s House. Shawntae didn’t look impressed. Karen sighed. “I just need to be someplace where I can make some sort of difference, where I can do something that counts. I need to stay busy. I need to believe that what I do matters.”

  “One person—one woman—can’t make a difference.”

  Karen shook her head adamantly. “You’re wrong. One person can influence one other person, who can influence still one more. This morning I’m out here cleaning alone, but tomorrow maybe you’ll come out, too, and next week maybe one of your neighbors will come.”

  “I have to get to work in the mornings,” Shawntae said, apparently taking her words literally, missing her point. Her next statement, though, proved that thought wrong. “I’ll tell you what—Friday’s my day off. If you haven’t given up by then, maybe I’ll help. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Karen’s smile made her face ache. “I’ll see you Friday.”

  Rising from the bed, Jamey felt every year his age and then some. He hadn’t slept well last night, and he had a headache and stiff neck to show for it. Wandering into the living room and out into the hall, he made his way to the bathroom, where he washed down a couple of aspirin tablets with tepid water before returning to the living room and the windows that overlooked Serenity Street.

  Raindrops streaked the glass and were trapped in the tiny squares of the screen, but they didn’t obscure the fact that there were no lights on across the street. He wondered if Karen was sleeping in. Dark, rainy weather like this was perfect for it. If it weren’t for this damned headache, he would still be in bed himself. He would stay there until five minutes until ten, then throw on some clothes, brush his teeth and open the bar. It wasn’t likely he would be busy. Rain often kept his daytime customers at home. Nothing would keep them away at night, though, with the possible exception of a hurricane. The bar had been pretty full the last time New Orleans had been threatened. If that was going to be their last night on God’s earth, they’d wanted the comfort of their Scotch, their bourbon, whiskey and beer to accompany them on their way.

  Jamey could think of a hell of a lot better ways to spend his last night of life than in a bar. Like with a beautiful woman whose passion was more than a match for his own, whose capacity for giving was equally strong, whose fiery hair could trap a man in a fragile web, whose sweet smile could hold him there... A scowl hardened his features as he realized that his intended description of a nameless, faceless beauty had somehow become an all-too-accurate description of his neighbor across the street.

  He was about to turn away from the window when he saw her, strolling down the street as if she didn’t notice it was raining. She was pulling a plastic cart behind her, filled with tools, two fat trash bags and that scrawny mutt, raising his face to the rain with the same pleasure his owner displayed. She turned into her gate, pulled the cart up on the veranda, then set Jethro on the floor. He immediately shook himself, spraying raindrops all around. She damned near did the same thing, pulling her cap off, shaking her hair free, giving her bare arms a swing or two to remove the excess water.

  She’d been at the park, he realized, and his scowl intensified. Leaving the window, he returned to his room, where he dressed in jeans and a T-shirt to the accompaniment of long, low rumbles of thunder. For crossing the street where water had already started collecting, he chose his oldest, rattiest sneakers, then grabbed his keys from the dresser and left the apartment.

  She was still on the veranda, seated in the rocker, her shoes and socks off, and Jethro was wrapped in a towel in her arms. “Can you believe this silly dog is afraid of thunder?” she asked as Jamey took the steps three at a time to the shelter of the porch roof.

  He ran his fingers through his hair, slicking it back from his face, dislodging raindrops, then looked at the dog. All that was visible was a fluff of black fur and the tip of a tail. The mutt’s head was tucked between her arm and her body, and the rest was wrapped in the towel. Maybe the dog wasn’t so silly. Cradled in her arms, with his head on her breast, wasn’t a bad place to be. “It’s easy to be afraid of something you don’t understand.”

  “Yeah, but it’s just as easy and a lot more satisfying to learn from new experiences.”

  She was a new experience, but he’d already learned just about all the lessons he wanted. He knew, as Reid had pointed out, that she wasn’t his type, knew without anyone pointing it out that he wasn’t her type. He knew that she wouldn’t last long, no matter how determined she was. He knew it wouldn’t be long until she, like everyone else on Serenity, left the neighborhood in one way or another.

  Since his visit Sunday morning, she’d uncovered a bench somewhere, long enough and broad enough for a person to stretch out, and hauled it to the veranda. It was a scuffed pale blue now but showed through the scrapes and peeling where it had once been yellow, purple and, originally, white. He sat down, kicked his shoes off and got comfortable. With a pointed glance at the cart, he asked, “Make much headway?”

  “I picked up the trash and enough broken glass to make a dozen windows, and I talked to Reid, a little boy named J.T. and his mother, Shawntae.”

  Jamey resisted the urge to warn her yet again to stay away from Reid. She hadn’t listened to him any of the other times, and there was no reason to believe she would listen now. “Shawntae’s a nice kid. Her father used to be a regular customer of mine.”

  “What happened?”

  “He took off. He’d had enough of life on Serenity. One day he just packed his bags and left. She must have been about fourteen or so. She started running a little wild and had J.T. the next year. His father took off, too.” His smile was sour. “Maybe it’s something in the water. Maybe the men on this street are incapable of being decent fathers.” After a moment he gave in to the question that was waiting to be asked. “What was Reid doing out that early?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe he’s an early riser. He fixed my gate before dawn, and he was already at the park when I got there at six-forty-five.”

  “Maybe he was up all night doing—” Abruptly, tasting the bitter guilt that too often accompanied talk of his son, he broke off, grimaced and looked away. That simple action, though, didn’t stop him from feeling the weight of Karen’s steady gaze.

  “Doing what?” she asked at last.

  God knows what. Breaking into someone’s house. Stealing someone’s car. Fencing property previously stolen from someone else. Meeting with the Morgans and Jimmy Falcone. Delivering warnings, threats or more ominous “messages” for the bastard. Murder
and mayhem, raping, robbing, pillaging and plundering—Morgan’s gang did it all.

  But did Reid?

  She gave up waiting for an answer. “He says you told him he was a worthless bastard.”

  Jamey’s face burned hot with shame. He and Reid had shared eleven years of hostility, but he knew immediately the incident she was referring to. It had happened the day of Meghan’s mother’s funeral. It had been July and so miserably hot that the flowers over the casket had wilted, their fragrance turning sour with decay. There weren’t many people there to complain, though—just a priest, a neighbor and Jamey. Her daughter, who had run away from home, from a husband and eventually from her son, hadn’t shown up. Neither had Reid. The old woman had taken him in when Meghan abandoned him. She hadn’t had much love for him, but she’d made a place for him, had kept him in food and clothing, and she hadn’t mistreated him, but he couldn’t bother with attending her funeral. He couldn’t show her that one small bit of respect.

  Jamey had returned from the cemetery to find Reid and his buddies having a party in the street right in front of O’Shea’s. They were drinking, harassing anyone who walked by, indulging in indecent displays with their girlfriends and generally behaving like the snotty, obnoxious little bastards they were. He had lost his temper and said some pretty harsh things. Reid had offered a few sharp-edged insults of his own, and then he had avoided all contact with Jamey for weeks.

  “Yeah,” he said grimly. “I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “You shouldn’t have thought it.”

  “What else did he have to say?” He expected some curse, some expression of derision. He was surprised.

  “That you were right. That he was a worthless bastard.”

  Maybe the kid felt guilty about skipping out on his grandmother’s funeral. Jamey couldn’t even make a guess, because he didn’t really know his own son. He knew the obvious—that Reid hung out with a bad crowd, that he was one angry young man, that he’d been in trouble with the law since he was ten—but he didn’t know much else. He didn’t know just how involved Reid was in Morgan’s shady activities—although, until recently, he’d thought he had. He didn’t know how the kid felt about anyone or anything, other than his animosity for the father who had failed him. He didn’t know if Reid had any decent friends or a special woman, if he’d ever had any goals for his life, if there had ever been anything he’d wanted to do someday.

  “I told him you weren’t,” Karen said, rocking slowly and making a board underneath the,chair squeak. “I told him that you’re not nearly as right as you think you are.”

  He didn’t say anything to that. He just sat and listened to the rain, falling harder now, and the thunder. Every booming clap made the puppy shudder, made his tail wag a little harder.

  “Have you ever considered trying to mend your relationship with him?”

  “He’s twenty-six years old. He doesn’t need a father.”

  “I’m thirty-seven, and I still need my dad. Age has nothing to do with it, Jamey. No matter how old he is, no matter how badly you neglect the relationship, it’s still there. He’ll always be your son, and you’ll always be his father. It’s up to you guys what you make of it, whether you hate each other or learn to speak politely to one another or even someday come to love each other.”

  He wouldn’t know how to begin such an effort. How could they possibly fix what was broken when they couldn’t exchange a civil word? How could they right what had gone wrong from the beginning when there was no trust, no love and precious little tolerance between them?

  He stared out at the street as two figures hidden underneath a shared umbrella hurried along the sidewalk toward Decatur. Few of the Serenity residents who held jobs—definitely a minority in the neighborhood—owned cars. They made a quick exodus in the morning to the bus stop down on Decatur, then just as quickly returned to their homes when their workday was over. There were no leisurely strolls, no friends or co-workers offering rides. It was a minor difficulty in lives filled with major ones.

  “I don’t hate Reid,” he said at last, his voice flat.

  “Maybe not, but you talk about him with the same derision you reserve for Ryan Morgan and the others. You call him the same names. You show the same lack of forgiveness.”

  He didn’t need to look for the truth in her statements. It was there. From the very beginning, there had been so much negative emotion between them. Reid had been hostile; Jamey had been defensive. Reid had been angry, bitter and resentful; Jamey had been drowning in guilt and regret. Reid had treated him with scorn and contempt; Jamey had reciprocated with the same. But Reid had been a kid, and Jamey had been an adult. Reid had been the child, Jamey the father.

  He had never acted like a father—or an adult. Only like an idiot.

  Weary of the conversation, the guilt and the shame, he deliberately changed the subject. “What have you got planned for today?”

  She stretched her arms over her head. “I don’t know. A day like this is made for staying in bed, if you can spare the time.”

  So they agreed on that much—although he made a conscious effort not to focus on it. Not to imagine her bedroom somewhere at the back of the house, with tall ceilings and open windows, spotlessly clean, hopelessly feminine, an oasis of comfort in this big, run-down house. Not to imagine her in the bedroom, her wild curls unrestrained, her passion also unrestrained. She would sleep bare in the bedroom of his imagination—it was too hot for clothes and too muggy for covers—and she would stay that way when she was awake, too. She would—

  “But I can’t spare the time,” she went on, her voice even, her tone matter-of-fact. It wasn’t the voice he imagined in the bedroom—throaty, husky with invitation—and it introduced reality into his fantasy before he’d had a chance to really enjoy it. “I guess I’ll start with some cleaning and, later, make some phone calls. I called the city last Wednesday about the burned-out street lamps, but the woman I spoke to didn’t seem particularly interested once she understood what neighborhood I was talking about.”

  “And you were surprised?” he asked drily. “There aren’t fifty law-abiding adults in the neighborhood. I doubt a single one of us is registered to vote. We don’t contribute money to political campaigns, and our incomes are so low that our taxes don’t amount to anything. We don’t write letters to the newspaper. We don’t file complaints with the city. We don’t understand our rights, and we certainly don’t stand up for them.” His voice turned cynical. “Welcome to Serenity.”

  She smiled the sort of smile that could make it hard for a man to breathe. “You see? You need me. I do vote, I write letters, and I’m great with complaints. I know the resources available to help with the kind of problems we have here. What rights I don’t understand, I can learn about, and I can certainly stand up for them.”

  “You’re a dreamer if you think you can change things.”

  The smile came back. “Maybe...but there’s nothing wrong with being a dreamer. It beats being a cold-hearted pessimist.”

  “I prefer ‘realist.’ I face facts.”

  “So do I,” she retorted. “But I don’t let them interfere with my dreams. I don’t let them stand in the way of what could be. Come on, Jamey. With a name like O’Shea, you must have had the ability to dream at one time in your life.”

  “Not since I was a child—and that was too long ago to remember.”

  “One dream,” she coaxed. “If you could have one dream, what would it be?”

  He gazed down the street where he’d spent the better part of his life. For better or worse, this place was home. It was where he wanted to be, where he belonged. He owed it a lot—but not the one dream Karen had allotted him. He wouldn’t unselfishly wish for salvation for Serenity, not when he was convinced that Serenity couldn’t be saved.

  He had long ago quit wanting things for himself. The bar was never going to be profitable. He’d proven beyond all doubt that he was lousy husband material and even worse father material. He didn
’t want a woman of the permanent, till-death-do-us-part type in his life—didn’t want any more people, any more responsibilities, any more troubles, than were already there.

  He certainly didn’t want a pretty, foolishly optimistic, redheaded do-gooder who was still mourning her perfect hero husband in his life.

  Not even if some small part of him thought he did.

  No, if he were fanciful enough to dream, it would probably be for Reid—a wish that the first twenty-six years of his life hadn’t been so tough and a hope that the years remaining were great in both number and satisfaction. He would hope that somehow the kid could overcome the odds stacked against him and make a life for himself with a family to love him the way his parents had failed. He would look for some little bit of absolution in making things right, even at this late date.

  But he wasn’t fanciful. He was a realist. A cold-hearted pessimist. “There aren’t any dreams on Serenity Street, darlin’,” he said as he got to his feet. “Only nightmares.”

  Chapter 5

  Thursday brought Karen a visitor at lunchtime bearing a gift of food. The smell, drifting in through the locked screen door, reached her long before she reached the door. Redolent of spices, it was enough to make her mouth water—and to bring back more than a few bittersweet memories. She’d learned to make every Cajun dish she knew from Evan’s Aunt Sirena, who had lived for years across the lake in Slidell before returning to Landry, who had also taught Evan’s partner the same dishes. They had spent countless hours gathered around crowded tables—just her and the guys, enjoying the food a lot and the company even more.

  “Michael.” She unlatched the screen door and pushed it open, then, careful of the pot he held, wrapped her arms around his neck for a long, tight hug. Of them all, he had been Evan’s best friend. They had both come from small towns, from medium-sized, stable, loving families. They’d shared the same upbringing, the same values, the same way of looking at the world, the same method of working. They had been so close that Evan’s death had hurt Michael almost as much as it had hurt her. Blaming himself, he had begun drinking, and he almost hadn’t stopped. Thank God he had. Losing him, too, would have made a great tragedy even more so.