Multiple Listings

by Tracy McMillan

A dinner I’d had with Beth at a revolving restaurant in a San Francisco hotel.

  The time I fired a gun at a man, missed, and vowed never to do it again. I didn’t.

  The face, during orgasm, of the last woman I had sex with.

  Then I died. I was taken away by the bailiff, put in a cell, and kept there until this very moment, when Reeves called me into this office and brought me back to life.

  “You’re supposed to be happy, Ronnie. Thank me. Say something.” Reeves is talking, and I shake the memories out of my head, returning to the present. All those years of meditation can’t keep me present for what’s happening now. “Ronnie?”

  “What? Oh. Thank you.”

  Reeves chuckles at me and keeps moving. “Since the early release program is new, who in hell knows what’s going to happen? Most likely you’ll be in the halfway house for thirty to sixty days. Then you get released to home detention for another thirty to sixty days. You got someone lined up you can do your home detention with?”

  “Sure,” I lie. I would say yes to anything Reeves asked me right now. “I got a daughter.”

  “If you don’t line something up, you’ll have to come back here. But I trust you’ll—”

  “No, no! She’ll be thrilled.”

  Eventually. I hope. She’ll be thrilled, right?

  “Good.” Reeves locates a folder with a short stack of documents inside and signs as he speaks. At one level, the prison system is an exercise in filling out forms. Dozens of them. For everything. “Okay, here’s the order remanding you to the halfway house in Portland. It’s a crappy place, and you’ll have an ankle bracelet on, but at least you can look out your window and see a real titty walk by every once in a while.” He looks at me and winks again. “So it’s not all bad.”

  I flash back again to the last lady I had sex with, wondering if I still have her phone number.

  “I’m sure they’re gonna miss you in the kitchen. You’re pretty much an A student down there. Wish everybody in this place did time like you.”

  “You’re right about that, I am good at doing time,” I say. “You know what they say. The way you do time is the way you do life.”

  “Is that what they say?” Reeves isn’t even listening. He’s putting his stapler right where he wants it and his pens back into the pen holder. “Um, um, um.”

  This is what people don’t understand about prison. It’s a life. It’s not the life anyone in here dreamed of, but it’s a life. If you can adapt, and I’m a world-class adapter, you will be okay. You’ll figure something out. Me, I made learning my thing. I’ve learned more in prison through correspondence courses and self-study courses and certification programs than most of the guys I grew up with who went to college. I got an education in here. People think prison is all bending over in the shower and gang rape. But it’s really just another version of the same thing human beings do everywhere they are: living.

  There are guys in the joint who have cell phones, and blenders, and drug problems, and cooktops. If it’s out there, it’s in here. I’ve followed the rules because my third time around, I figured out that your integrity is the only thing they can’t take away from you, so I was going to do the hell out of my integrity. It took time, but I finally understood that the ultimate responsibility for my being here was mine. Sure, I could blame the guy who turned state’s evidence on me, but he couldn’t have turned on me if I hadn’t already done something wrong. Since then, I’ve been the model prisoner. I’ve gotten fourteen different commendations while doing my time, all signed by the warden. Just trying to dismantle all that old karma by meeting each new moment as the person I aspired to be. Instead of the person who committed all those crimes.

  “Always the philosopher, aren’tcha, Daniels.” Reeves looks at me serious. “You think you can get a job with that? Let’s hope so.”

  He signs the last page with a flick of the wrist worthy of a concert pianist, or a hip-hop deejay. “There you go, Mr. Ronald Daniels. All set. A free man. Almost.”

  “Hard to believe this is really happening,” I say, thunderstruck. “I can’t believe it.”

  “You should see the look on your face.” Reeves looks at me and laughs—at me, not with me. This is the Reeves I know. A bully who’s found a job that’s a perfect fit. “You guys all react the same way. Like little kids.

  “I’ve been doing this a long time, Ronnie. And you know what I think?” Reeves lowers his voice, like he’s about to give up a state secret. “I think you’re terrified.” There’s something threatening about the way he leans toward me, resting on his forearms. “I think you’re just now realizing you weren’t in here because society had to get you away from us. You’re in here because you had to get away from society.” Reeves looks at me dead in the eye. “Because it scares you.”

  My face is burning red and my forehead is breaking out in a sweat. I hate Reeves for knowing this, and for saying it. Even more, I hate that it’s true. He probably says this to all the guys. It’s his way of grabbing power one last time before setting us free. Asshole.

  Reeves stands up and shouts, “Dacker!” Dacker comes in and throws the cuffs back on me. Reeves goes back to sounding all hearty, like he’s giving a graduation speech. “Time to move on to some new challenges, Ronnie. You still got some time left on the shot clock. Make it count.”

  You’re getting out of here. That’s what’s happening.

  “Some days, I really do love my job,” Reeves says to nobody.

  I’m getting out of here.

  I can’t believe it’s happening.

  3

  * * *

  NICKI

  I was afraid something like this was going to happen, and now it has. I’m sitting outside the principal’s office at Cody’s school staring at a poster with a bow and arrow on it that says Take Aim At Your Future! while Cody simultaneously picks at his cuticles and surfs the Web on his phone, his blond hair falling in his face. I’m not sure why I’m here yet, only that I was up to my statement necklace in Excel spreadsheets when I got a call from the vice principal telling me to come down to the high school immediately. I grabbed my stupidly huge purse, my seventy-five-dollar calfskin-­fringe key chain—the one I just had to have—and raced down here as fast as I could.

  “Can you please not look superworried about me?” he says in his customary monotone. “It makes me feel weird.”

  “I’ll try not to, honey,” I say evenly.

  Oh boy. How does he manage to sound so provocative and bored at the same time? I’m actually getting pretty good at not reacting to the teenagey tone—because, as one of my older mom friends says, you always gotta ask yourself, “Do I want to die on that hill?” And the answer is almost always no. But then it does seem like Cody is always upping the ante, coming back with some version of, Well, how about this hill? Or this one? Or this one? Then I have to decide I don’t want to die on those hills, either.

  The truth about me and my son is that he is, in some essential way, a mystery to me. He always has been. I hear people talk about how innocent and amazing and wonderful and magical childhood is. Their kids say cute things about the moon and choo-choo trains and peanut butter. They love puppet shows and building block towers and licking the spoon. My kid wasn’t like that. I never knew what he was thinking. And often, I still don’t.

  From the very beginning, Cody’s been this perplexing combination of totally easy and totally hard. I realized he wasn’t like other babies in the first week. Every time I tried to set him down in the bouncy chair, he would immediately start crying. If I picked him up, he would immediately stop. For two weeks, I attempted to train him to sit in that chair, but he wouldn’t do it. Finally, I gave up and strapped him into the BabyBjörn and wore him around all the time—just to get some peace. Once I did that, he was easy as pie.

  Eventually, I discovered that Cody was just easily bored. Even in infancy! I
had no idea an infant could be bored. While another baby might stare at his mobile or look out the window at the leaves on the trees, Cody wanted full-on engagement all the time. When he was a toddler, I used to park in front of construction sites so he could watch the drills and the backhoes. I’d get out my paperwork—this is when I was still doing my mortgage job—and jam through half a day’s work while he looked out the window. He had the concentration and attention span of a grown-up—he could sit there so quiet, so well behaved, for two hours!—as long as he was fully immersed in something he loved. If not, though—watch out. It was nonstop complaining, fidgeting, and whining.

  I’ll admit I overrelied on the video games, the computer, and the TV. As a single mom, I had to. When he was little and I would get home from work, the only way I could get dinner on the table was to plop him in front of Teletubbies or Rugrats. I didn’t feel the least bit guilty, either! I looked at my mom friends trying to do it by the book—no screens, no sugar, no MSG—with pity and, sometimes, judgment. Most of them were a lot older than me, with husbands, and all the ambition they used to put into their jobs they were now putting into their children. I swear they were doing more harm to their kids with their perfectionism than I was doing with the Happy Meals. At least I didn’t yell (very often). If I had to choose between being in constant conflict with my child and another hour of Game Boy, there was going to be no contest. Bring on the Game Boy.

  Things changed when Cody was eleven and my appraisal business took off. Within a few months I was making more money than I ever imagined—­not like fuck-you money, but nice upper-middle-class money—and could work my own hours. So if Cody had a school performance, or a doctor’s appointment, or the flu, suddenly being a good mom didn’t always have to go on the back burner to making ends meet. We didn’t have to deal with crappy apartments anymore, either, with their broken dishwashers and laundry room at the end of the hallway. When we went to Target, we could load up on large sizes of everything and backup toothpaste. When we lost something, we could easily replace it. And the car never broke down because we always had a new one. Life got a lot easier.

  After a year or two of this, I discovered most of the problems associated with being a single mom have nothing to do with not having a man and everything to do with not having a man’s earning power. Give a single mom a cardiologist’s money and all of a sudden she looks a lot less sad/pathetic and a lot more like someone who has figured out that traditional marriage is a bummer if you like freedom. Also, by then I had not only learned the ropes of motherhood, I’d figured out who I was the mother of. Okay, so my kid is a baffling combination of well-socialized and introvert, of easy and hard, of sweet and distant? Fine. I’m happy to be that guy’s mom. From there on out, I put all my energy into accepting Cody on his own terms. Not an easy task with anyone, maybe least of all your kid.

  And I thought I was doing great. Until now.

  I reach over toward his hand. To my surprise he lets me rest my hand on his for a full three seconds before shifting his weight in such a way that the connection is broken.

  “Whatever it is, honey,” I say, “we’ll get through it.”

  He looks at me for a half second, and I can see in his eyes that he’s sorry. “Thanks, Mom.”

  The thing is, Cody really is a good kid. I know everyone says that about their offspring, but in this case it’s true. He’s polite to teachers and other kids’ parents. (Is any teen polite to their own?) He doesn’t have crazy anger issues or smoke more than the normal amount of weed. His problem is this: he’s apathetic. If he had a motto, it would be non mihi curae est—Latin for “I don’t give a fuck.”

  About anything.

  Wait, I take that back. He cares a lot about one thing: Magic: The Gathering. Not the kind of magic where you saw a lady in half or pull a rabbit from a hat. This Magic (or MTG, for short) is a card game that you play at comic-book stores. As I understand it—and I don’t really understand it—Magic is sort of like Dungeons & Dragons meets poker meets chess. You make a deck out of all these little cards that cast spells and have drawings on them and cost a lot of money and end up all over the bedroom floor—then you go to a comic-book store where you battle your deck against the decks of other guys who will someday do great on the math part of the SAT. There’s a lot of strategy involved, and the whole shebang is way too complicated for most regular people to understand. Also, there are tournaments in every city in America, and even a world championship that Cody plans to win someday. Oh, and some people call it Cardboard Crack.

  That’s it. The only thing Cody seems to care about. Not school, clothes, sports, or girls. Okay, maybe girls—but so far they don’t care about him back. And yes, he has friends, but mostly of the backpack-and-comic-book-store persuasion.

  It wasn’t always like this. He used to care about video games and stuffed animals and iCarly and drama club. But the passageway from child to man has been really narrow for him, and he’s having a hard time moving through it. Something I chalk up to him not having a dad.

  I think back on my own sophomore year. I did some shoplifting, dabbled in drinking, smoked the occasional cigarette. But my house was so chaotic, so disorganized, I actually wanted to follow the rules. My big giant middle finger to my mother was to get Bs, have a nice but average boyfriend, and come home before midnight—all of which Beth found terribly amusing. (It’s probably an act of rebellion that in adulthood, I often refer to her by her first name.) She laughed out loud when I announced I was trying out for the school play—What would you want to hang out with those nerds for, anyway? And wear some stupid costume? Losers.—then took a long, last pull on her Menthol 100 and stubbed it out in the grimy ashtray she got at the Grand Canyon. I didn’t care what she thought of me, though. I mean, how upset can you get when a woman who wears curlers to the grocery store calls you a loser? Not very.

  Not that following the rules worked, necessarily. I’ve done everything right that my mom did wrong, and I’m still sitting outside the principal’s office. I’m not trying to feel sorry for myself, but is that fair? We had some tough times when Cody was little, but once I figured out how to make money, I gave him everything you could give a kid—not spoiling him or anything, but he got the new video game on the day it came out, and he’s always had clean hair and nice shoes on. We eat organic! We own a house! He’s totally vaccinated! I really thought if I was just the most together mom ever, I mean really, truly crushed the whole motherhood deal, I could make up for the fact that his dad bailed before he was born.

  I really did.

  I was only twenty years old and five quarters away from college graduation when I met Gio. I was so sure of myself then! My rotten childhood was over, and I was free for the first time in my life—or I thought I was. Within ten minutes of locking eyes, Gio convinced me to leave Peaches and the other girls in the nightclub and walk around the block with him. I definitely felt like I shouldn’t say yes, but the second I looked at him—I mean really looked at him—there was absolutely zero chance I was going to say no.

  His eyes were the craziest amber/yellow/blue. My first thought was: danger; my second thought was: this is the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen, ever; and my third thought was: danger. I took the walk.

  One block turned into another and another and another until we watched the sun rise while running across the Hawthorne Bridge, holding hands. Along the way we talked about things I never even knew I had words for: feelings, sensations, hopes, fears. Gio had seen and done so many things. He’d been to war! He’d seen a man’s leg get blown off! He’d been to Japan! He was like a character out of a fairy tale. Not the prince on a white horse, the other kind of prince, the wounded kind. Like the boy in my favorite Hans Christian Andersen story, who along with his ten brothers gets turned into a swan, and whose sister, in order to reverse the spell, has to knit them all sweaters from yarn made of stinging nettles. In the story, the sister isn’t able to finish all
eleven sweaters in time, which leaves the youngest brother with a beautiful swan wing in place of his left arm.

  Gio was sort of like that. A creature who belonged to this world and another world at the same time. I knew he would eventually fly away, and one night he did. It was almost as if he went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back, but in this case, the pack of cigarettes was a willowy Reed student named Rachel who ate avocados and adhered to Third Wave Feminism. But I’d kept a part of him. I had Cody, my beautiful boy.

  The lady from the office pokes her head out into the hallway.

  “Ms. Daniels? Cody?” she says. “You can go in now.”

  Maybe Cody is part swan, too.

  * * *

  “Mrs. Daniels, let me cut right to the chase.” So this is Principal Borman. He’s about forty-two, probably a little OCD, married. He doesn’t seem mean, just cold—more reptile than coyote. He seems like a teacher who moved into administrating for the power and the increase in pay. “Cody’s being suspended. For truancy.”

  I gasp, then cover my mouth, because I sort of promised not to overreact, and gasping probably falls into the category of “superworried.” I look over at Cody, but he’s got his head down, so I can’t see his eyes.

  The principal continues. “He skipped his first two hours again today, and missed a test in Life Sciences. Which makes”—he consults his computer screen—“twenty-six absences this term. At the moment, he’s in danger of failing all six of his classes.”

  I turn to Cody. “Is this true?”

  “Not Choir,” he says. “I’m not failing Choir.”

  Principal Borman looks again at his screen. “You’re right. I take that back. You’re getting a C-minus in Choir.”

  I’m in shock. Cody looks like he goes to school every morning, and he looks like he’s been at school every evening. He carries a backpack that looks full and he looks like he’s doing homework. To find out he’s just blowing off classes left and right, well, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Basically it means he’s been lying his ass off. Not only did I not know he was capable of that, he’s always been especially scrupulously honest. I mean, this is the same child who in third grade insisted we go back to the store when he realized he’d accidentally left carrying a small kaleidoscope without paying for it. So, yeah, this comes as a complete and utter shock.