by Jodi Compton
“Yeah, a murder rap. That was your doing, right? What’d you give the Shadow Man in trade?”
“Nothing I can’t afford. I’ll be fine.”
I’d known that Serena had served time, but I’d never seen her that way before, in loose county blues, makeup-less, eyes shadowed from lack of sleep. She’d laughed and slipped back into the speech patterns of the adolescent chola she’d once been, something she did when she was nervous or upset.
I understood why. The most frightening thing ahead of her wasn’t the cold weather of Chicago, or loneliness, or going legit. It was the memory of the man she’d shot and killed. No matter how bad a guy he’d been, he’d been a person, and she’d pointed her gun at him and pulled the trigger and taken away his everything. He was going to visit her in her dreams. Trey Marsellus still sometimes visited me, and his death had been solely accidental.
I wanted to ask her if he’d drawn on her first and if the shooting had at least been self-defense. But either it had been or it hadn’t, and Serena already knew. It wouldn’t change anything for me to have that information.
Then I’d asked if there were messages she wanted me to carry back to the people she knew, and she nodded and beckoned me closer to the bars, telling me her succession plan for the sucias, and I’d promised her that I’d fight Diana and make sure the other girls knew that it was Serena’s will that she be the new leader. Then we’d said our good-byes, as Magnus Ford waited, out of earshot, by the gate at the end of the cell block.
2
Back at my apartment building, after Diana’s initiation, I was slowing the Aprilia to park when I saw him across the street: a tall, lanky young man with curling reddish blond hair, leaning against a late-model Porsche, his eyes hidden behind aviator shades despite the fading light. My heart skipped a beat with anticipation.
But as I was pulling off my helmet, I realized that something was off. CJ seemed out of proportion to his car. It was as if he were too short.
Then he took off his sunglasses, and I understood.
“Virgil?” I said.
It was really the midnight blue Porsche that had thrown me off. It was nothing that Virgil Mooney should have been able to afford. Beyond that, CJ and Virgil had always looked very much alike, and if Virgil’s West L.A. style was very like his older brother’s … well, it wasn’t like a lot of the guys under thirty in Southern California weren’t wearing the same thing.
But Virgil, at five-eleven, was well shy of CJ’s height, and beyond that, there was a kind of spark that was missing in him. I’d always felt that the gods had touched CJ in a way they hadn’t his older and younger brothers. But Virgil had a sunny simplicity that made him straightforwardly easy to love, compared to his sometimes maddening older brother.
I loped across the street to him. “Virgil?” I said, as if still not sure of his identity. I hadn’t seen him in years.
“Hi, Cousin Hailey,” he said.
“Hi,” I said. “How did you find me?”
“You mailed your address to CJ,” he said. “I have his house key, so I can check in once in a while, and I saw the postcard.”
He smiled at me, but I didn’t miss the serious cast of his eyes.
“Is everything okay?” I said, meaning, Is CJ okay?
“It’s Dad,” he said, and brushed a stray hank of hair away from his face. “He had a little heart attack, then a bigger one in the hospital, and then they think he’s got blood clots in his carotid. It’s a lot at once. He’s going to have surgery, early tomorrow. They said they could put it off a little while, for his kids to get into town.” He swallowed. “You know what that means.”
I did know. Porter’s doctors wanted him to have a chance to say his good-byes. Just in case.
Virgil went on, “He asked to see you. He considers you one of his kids, he and Mom both.”
How long had it been since I’d spoken to either of them, Porter or Angeline? Virgil was absolutely right: They’d treated me as one of their own children, given me the kind of nonjudgmental guidance and approval my mother had been by nature incapable of and my father had not lived to provide.
“I should’ve kept in touch with them better,” I told Virgil.
And though I would have a hard time explaining it to Virgil, there was going to be a problem in rectifying that now, if it meant going to Nevada, across state lines. Ford had been very clear on that point. He didn’t even want me to leave Los Angeles. He’d also been clear on having powerful friends, from his time in “government work.” I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that my name was on some kind of list: if not the actual Homeland Security no-fly list, then something that would assure that Ford would be contacted as soon as my name turned up on a passenger manifest.
I sighed. “This is hard to explain, but I don’t think I can fly.”
Virgil didn’t do the obvious, which would have been to ask why not. Instead he smiled slyly and held up his car keys. “Oh, we can fly,” he said.
The car, it turned out, was a repair job Virgil was doing. “I called the owner and said there was an emergency in the family and I’d be delayed in getting it back to him,” Virgil told me. “I didn’t promise that the car was going to be locked in my garage that whole time.”
“Is this thing going to break down somewhere in the desert?”
Virgil shook his head. “It’s minor stuff. The heater/AC fan is broken, and the passenger-door gasket is warped so that it leaks in the rain. Nothing that’ll keep us from getting up to Nevada in time.”
So I’d napped in the passenger seat while Virgil, as he’d promised, flew us across black and empty highway, unpatrolled secondary roads where he could drive as fast as he liked, under a blanket of night sky broken by icy stars.
Porter was at the main hospital in Reno, and it was there that I greeted my family, each in turn. Angeline wore her hair shorter now than she had most of her life, but still long enough to wrap in a short knot on her neck, and her face was only gently lined—laugh lines around the eyes and such. Then Moira, with whom I had briefly shared a room during my first days in California. By an accident of genetics, she looked more like my mother than I did, with Julianne McNair’s dark hair and good bones. She was quieter than her brothers, but underneath it kind and nonjudgmental like her parents, and I leaned in for a feminine wishbone hug, shoulders and chest touching but hips separate.
Constantine was nearly as tall as CJ but kept his red-gold hair short, and his nails were clipped but still stained faintly with grease from his mechanic’s job; he thumped me on the back like he might have a guy.
“Is CJ on his way?” I asked when the greetings were finished.
Moira said, “We’ve left him two messages, but we’re not sure exactly where he is right now,” and Angeline added, “I never knew his job required him to travel so much. It didn’t used to. Seemed like he was always in L.A. when his daddy or I needed to talk to him.”
I didn’t see a need to add anything to that, though I could have enlightened them on CJ’s desire not to be in Los Angeles.
Angeline said, “Why don’t you go on in and see your uncle? We’ve all already been, and he was asking specifically if you were coming.”
Porter looked frail and wan, but who didn’t, in pajamas and a hospital bed? His eyes were bright and sharp, though, as I came in. “There’s my youngest daughter,” he said, and a smile creased his work-worn face.
“Hi, Uncle Porter.” I kissed his forehead. “How are you feeling? Didn’t you tell them you’re a Mooney, that there’s never anything wrong with you a Goody’s Headache Powder won’t fix?”
He lifted a hand from the bedsheet and waved it. “I used to think that. It’s all vanity, like the man says. Sit down, kid.”
I did as he said.
“I’d ask if you were keeping out of trouble, like I used to, but … well, I’ve seen the news.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Things got a little crazy for a while.”
“But now they know”—he
gestured at the TV, indicating the mass media and the police beyond—“that you didn’t hurt anybody.”
“Yes,” I reassured him. “They do.”
“That’s good,” he said. “We need you, you know.”
“Me?” I gave him a “that’s crazy” look. “You guys don’t need me.”
“I do,” he said. “Listen, this is a good hospital, and I’m getting good care, but … Hailey, promise me you’ll watch out for your cousin.” He didn’t have to specify which one.
“CJ doesn’t need looking after,” I said. “Are you worried that he’ll get addicted to something?”
It was the only thing I could imagine Porter or Angeline lying awake at night about; they’d known about his marijuana use in high school, and they were smart enough to know that anything else he wanted was readily available to him now, in the circles he moved in.
I said, “Trust me, I’ve never seen any sign that he’s using anything to excess. He doesn’t even drink very much.”
“I know,” Porter said. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“Then what? CJ’s smart, you know that, and he’s got more money than most of us will earn in five lifetimes. He’s handling success fine.”
“He is right now,” Porter said. “You make sure it stays that way. Don’t let him find a guru and move to an ashram.”
I laughed in spite of myself.
Porter didn’t. “You may not think so, Hailey, but of all my kids, Cletus has the hardest row to hoe as he gets older, and I think you’re the only one tough enough to put a boot up his ass if the day comes that he really needs it. If I’m not around then, you tell him I told you to do it.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and was surprised to find my vision blurring with tears.
“Don’t do that, kid,” he said gently.
“He’s on his way here,” I said, knowing it’d be true soon enough; CJ never neglected his voice mail very long. “I’ll do what you’re asking, but when he gets here, give him the guru-and-ashram speech yourself. It’ll have more weight coming from you.”
“Are you kidding me?” he said. “That boy adores you.”
Those words almost prickled on my skin, like an unexpected caress. “I love you, Uncle Porter,” I said, standing up, “and I don’t think he’ll need it, but I’ll look out for CJ.”
The afternoon wore on; Moira and I went to the hotel down the street where the rest of the family was staying and found they had no more rooms left, but Moira told me I could stay in her room, which had two beds. I left my overnight bag in the room, and we went out looking for food. When we returned to the hospital with containers of Chinese takeout, Constantine told us that CJ had called.
“He was in Haiti,” he said. “Now he’s in Atlanta, but there’s severe thunderstorms in the area and they’ve grounded the planes. He’s trying to get onto a standby list for the first flight out here, because of the family emergency. But you know how that goes. Cletus didn’t say as much, but half the people in that airport are probably claiming that Western civilization will fall if they don’t get to their destination on time.”
“He’ll get through,” I said. It wouldn’t be because of his semifamous name, either. It would be partly because of the medical emergency in the family and partly because CJ would use his good Southern manners and give the ticketing agent the look that made women from all walks of life lose their train of thought, and somehow he’d get on that plane ahead of all the blustering petty tyrants who had crucial business waiting.
“Well, he sounded bent out of shape about being stuck there,” Constantine said. He took off his ball cap and ran a hand through his hair.
“Bent out of shape” probably didn’t do justice to how CJ felt right now, I knew. The Mooneys were a close-knit clan. But I didn’t worry about it. I had always said that CJ had a blessed life. The universe seemed to repay his essential decency with favors large and small, and I felt certain that a hole would open in the storm system and CJ would get here well before Porter’s scheduled nine A.M. surgery.
Except that around ten-thirty that evening, maybe two hours after CJ texted us to say he was in Denver trying to get a connecting flight, some kind of alarm went off on Porter’s monitoring equipment. The doctor on call came into the room, and then Porter’s doctor was paged to come in from home. She came out and said something about a clot shifting, being dangerously unstable, and by half past eleven Porter was in surgery.
Fuck, I thought, and took Virgil’s hand.
“Hailey. Hey, Hailey.”
I woke with the hard plastic of waiting-room chairs pressing into my flesh. For a minute, I was disoriented, thinking of Serena saying, They’re still getting the baby out, and that Nidia Hernandez was dead.
No, that wasn’t right. I realized it was Virgil sitting on his heels in front of me. He was smiling.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“Dad’s out of surgery. He’s fine,” Virgil said. “He’s in recovery.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” I said.
“Mom went to the hotel to get a couple hours of sleep before he comes around,” Virgil said. “But us kids are having a kind of family reunion up on the roof. You’re invited, of course.”
“The roof?” I said.
“We stole a couple blankets to spread out. And it’s really warm out. Nearly a full moon, too. Oh, and there’s a bottle.”
“You’re too young to drink, you delinquent,” I said.
“There’s no such thing.”
I knew I should leave. The sooner I went back to L.A., the less likelihood that Magnus Ford would even know I was gone. Besides, when CJ got in, he probably wouldn’t care about seeing me. He’d want to see his dad; that was the important thing.
Then I said, “Okay, let me just wash my face and brush my teeth, and I’ll be right up.”
I did those things, then climbed the stairwell to the roof access, as Virgil had directed.
He’d been right. It was a beautiful night out, the American flag snapping in the warm wind, the lights of central Reno in the distance. My cousins were sitting in a rough circle on two blankets that eased the bite of the pebbly rooftop.
Then I realized that we were not a reunion of four. We were five.
As if it were a formal event, like a treaty signing, CJ got to his feet while his siblings remained seated, and he crossed the rooftop alone to meet me. I stayed where I was, near the door. When he reached me, we did not touch. He was wearing a white dress shirt, dark trousers, good shoes; obviously he’d dressed for the possibility that the only open seating on flights west would be in first class.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
“I’m glad your father’s all right.”
“Me, too.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then he said, “On the phone I didn’t ask if you’d come up to the hospital. On the plane I kept wishing I had asked. I kept thinking that if something went wrong in surgery and Dad didn’t make it out, above all people I would want you with me.”
To take care of him. Like Porter had said.
I wanted to say, You know I’ll always be there, but it wasn’t a promise I could keep. Instead I raised myself on my toes and put my arms around him.
“I’m here.”
“I missed you,” he said.
“I did, too,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
He lowered his face into my hair, and I sighed. But then, by some unspoken agreement, we both stood back, both feeling the eyes on us and our display of affection.
“Come on,” CJ said, and led me to the rest of our family.
“… so okay, it’s Christmas morning, and suddenly Mom’s got this idea to hunt up the home video of their first Christmas with Constantine,” CJ was saying. “So Dad goes to the closet where they keep all that stuff, and before he can find that tape, there’s a video just labeled ‘Ball Game.’ Nothing else. Dad perks up, pulls it out, and says, ‘Hey, want to watch the ball game?’ No i
dea what ball game or anything. So that’s what we do. Watch the Braves play the Giants in a regular-season game from 1996. On Christmas Day 2001.”
“That’s so Dad,” Moira said.
They were telling stories about their father. It was like a wake. Better, though: one with no bereavement, and a very fine scotch whisky.
“Where did you get this?” Virgil demanded, holding the bottle of Laphroaig.
“Duty-free shop in Atlanta,” CJ said.
“How could you buy something in a duty-free shop? You were taking a domestic flight.” That was Constantine.
“I was extremely nice to the clerk.”
General laughter. Virgil said, “How nice, exactly? Did you have to get your hand wet? Did she—”
“Virgil!” Moira said. “That’s enough.”
Unperturbed, CJ said, “How do you know the clerk was a she?”
The laughter that followed was both scandalized and delighted. We were all pretty well lit up. CJ was stretched out, resting his head in my lap in the casually entitled way I remembered. He didn’t have a sexist bone in his body, but he’d grown up being loved on by a mother and an older sister, and as a result he was like a Labrador who feels it’s always a good time for you to scratch his ears. For my part, I was resisting the urge to stroke his hair.
“Well,” Moira said with one of those sighs that’s half a farewell, “it’s getting late.”
“Getting early,” CJ corrected. It had to be nearly four in the morning.
“I’m glad none of us has to drive. Particularly this kid.” Constantine rubbed Virgil’s head with his knuckles. “Virg, you hold your liquor worse than any Mooney I know. Hailey here could drink you under the table, and she’s two-thirds your weight and not even a Mooney.”
“Yes she is,” CJ corrected.
“By DNA. You know what I mean.”
They began getting up, stretching, Constantine picking up the empty bottle of Laphroaig. Only CJ stayed where he was.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you getting up?”
“No.”
