The Runaway

by Jo Barney

  “Rick. I’m Rick.”

  I don’t want to give him my name. You have to be careful. Made that mistake with the old lady, who seemed okay until she went through my bag, looking for who knows what. She knew I didn’t have any money—maybe my address or something that could identify me. None of her business. Or anybody’s. “I’ll be going,” I say, and before I can stand up, I throw up again, between my legs, splashing Rick’s dusty shoe. “Guess not.”

  “Come on,” he says, taking hold of my arm. “I’ll bring you to the nurse. She can give you something.” He picks up my bag and pulls me up. “Only a block or so.”

  A big white bus is parked in a lot next to a church. People are lined up at the door, but Rick goes right past them and says, “This little lady needs a doctor right now,” as he pushes me up the stairs. “Upchucking,” he explains, and I must look like I’m about to do it again because a woman watching us finds a bag before she leads me to a chair.

  “Eating all right?” she asks as she sticks a plastic tape in my mouth. “Under your tongue. Or something else?” In a moment she takes the tape out of my mouth and says, “Oh, oh. Something else.” Her fingers hold my wrist as she looks at her watch, and then she says, “Oh, oh” again when she sees the goose bumps on my arm. “Chilly?” she asks.

  I nod and sink back into the chair. “I don’t feel good. My chest hurts so much I can hardly breathe.”

  “Tired, too, I bet.”

  I close my eyes for a minute.

  “You probably have the flu,” she says, as she waves a wooden stick in front of my mouth and signals for me to open up. “We’ll take a culture to make sure. In the meantime, you need to go to bed.”

  I’d tell her that I don’t have a bed, but I begin to cough so hard I almost vomit again.

  “Lots of liquids, clear soup, Tylenol, and here’s a sample of cough syrup that may help.” She takes a paper from her desk. “For our records, for when you come back, your name, address, age?” Then she asks, “Might you be pregnant? That might change things.”

  I get up and make my way to the door. “No name, no address,” I croak. I wave her away and step carefully down the steps. “I’m just glad it isn’t something serious.” Then I faint into Rick’s body and wake up lying on a cot in the back of the bus, the woman leaning over me. “We’ll get you to the teen shelter. They can give you a bed.”

  I manage to raise my head and say, “No.” I wonder if I can sit up.

  I won’t go back to that place with its losers bellyaching about how hot it is sitting on sidewalks with their dogs, how people say shitty things to them, how all they need was a fuckin’ hand up, while their own hands are busy rolling smokes, hiding bottles, popping pills. No, anything will be better than that, even the old lady’s brown apartment. I sit up, tell the woman that I have a place just down the block, my grandma’s, and drag my bag down the steps before someone tries to stop me.

  If anyone asks, I can’t remember my grandma’s name.

  * * *

  Ellie, it’s Ellie. That’s the only buzzer that seems to make sense, on the third floor. I push it. Again. A voice, familiar, says, “If you’re selling something, go away.”

  “It’s me. Sarah. I need help. I’m sick.” As if to prove the truth in my claim, I lean over the porch’s iron railing and throw up into a rhododendron. The lock clicks. I wipe my mouth on my sleeve, open the door, and head toward the elevator. When I get out on the third floor, Ellie is standing, hands on hips, in the middle of the hallway.

  “So you’ve decided to come back,” she says, but whatever else she means to say is interrupted when I fall onto her body, my arms around her neck.

  “I’m really sick,” I mumble into her shoulder, and I feel myself being dragged into the apartment and laid out on the davenport.

  Ellie yanks off my stockings and boots, spreads a quilt across my legs. Cool cloths wrap my forehead. A bucket waits on the floor if I should need to throw up again—just the way a grandma would do it. Then I go to sleep, and when I wake up the room is gray with morning. Ellie is sleeping in the big chair across the room, her fuzzy white hair glowing a little in the morning light, her mouth open, soft sounds wheezing out, her wrinkled hands, like soft armor, spread across her breasts.

  I have been here before, I realize, not here, but in this same moment, a sleeping woman keeping watch as I wake up, terrified, but safe. I am five, maybe, and breathing fast from a nightmare, the kind that has fractured my sleep ever since my father left us. The woman is my mother, the mother I remember with love, the mother who doesn’t kill herself for another three years. I close my eyes.

  Chapter Seven

  Jeff

  1993-1996

  The afternoon Jeff and Danny skip a sixth grade science test and go boarding at the skate park under the freeway, they end up resting against a pillar, drinking the beer that Danny has taken from his mother’s fridge. Trucks and cars roar above their heads, thunder across the spacers, the sounds vibrating all through Jeff’s body. Moving his arms to the rhythm of the traffic overhead, he spills some beer on Danny’s pants. He leans over and uses his jacket sleeve to wipe it off.

  “Hey, fag, cut it out.” Danny pushes his arm away.

  “I’m not a fag, fag. What’s your problem?” Jeff pretends to be mad, but the way Danny grins and turns the can up to his mouth again gives Jeff a jolt of courage. “Have you ever done it? You know.” He thrusts his hips forward and back to demonstrate what he means.

  Danny shrugs. “Almost, with Ginny.” He is lying, Jeff can tell by the way his friend is looking down into his beer.

  “I mean…” Jeff reaches his hand out, his palm hovers over Danny’s zipper, his fingers forming a circle, and he makes Grandpa Jack’s night sounds.

  Danny jerks away from him. “What the fuck?”

  Jeff laughs like he’s been joking.

  “I gotta go,” Danny says as he stands up and tosses the can into the gutter. A moment later he is pushing up the street, popping over curbs, sending a see ya wave over his shoulder to Jeff, who leans back against the concrete and finishes his beer.

  A scroungy cat sidles up to him, mewing at his empty can, and he plays with it for a few minutes, dragging the pulltab across its paws. Then, bored or maybe sad—Jeff doesn’t have a name for the feeling that wanders through him pretty much most of the time—he flips his Bic and holds the flame to the tip of the cat’s tail. It bolts off down the street, trailing smoke and peals of screams behind it, and Jeff, smiling despite his bad mood, wonders what Danny is doing. Not lighting cats on fire, that’s for sure. Danny likes animals.

  * * *

  By the time they get to high school, Danny’s mother is supplying their booze, the fridge always stocked with Pabst, the cupboard above it with her whiskey of choice, Southern Comfort usually. Jeff has made connections in the drug world, deals a little, and during their junior year, they spend half their days on Ellie’s davenport, trying to focus on her rolling TV screen. “This is child abuse,” Jeff complains more than once. “She’s got to get a new TV if she thinks we’re going to stick around.”

  Danny laughs, pulls out another beer. “At least the fridge works.”

  For the past eight years, Jeff’s grandfather has taken his parenting responsibilities seriously, lecturing his grandson regularly on the value of study and excellent English and good manners. He sticks notes, vocabulary words neatly printed on them, on the cupboards and mirrors. “To nudge the subconscious,” he tells his grandson. “Another way to attain knowledge.” Jeff is pretty sure the stickies don’t work, and he is sick of the lectures, the words, and his grandfather. He begins, at sixteen, to turn him off, muttering “fuck it,” often leaving the old man in midsentence in front of a slammed front door.

  And much of the time, Jeff also manages to avoid Grandpa Jack’s bedtime visits by staying over at Danny’s or by passing out as soon as he hits the pillow.

  After a while, his grandfather seems to avoid him in return. Some day
s he doesn’t do more than glance at Jeff over his morning coffee, the one time of day they cross paths. When he thinks about it, Jeff realizes this coldness started the night Jeff laughed at the old man’s lifeless penis and rolled away, pulling the blankets after him. Grandpa Jack gasped, pretended he had a cough, and said, “Good night.” The mattress creaked as he stood up. Still grinning, Jeff whispered, “Good-bye, old man,” into his pillow.

  One Saturday morning, having just opened the front door feeling like road kill, he finds his grandfather’s pointed, shaking finger greeting him.

  “Déjà vu, Jeff. This is your father all over again. After all I’ve done for you.”

  Jeff pushes into the room. He hates the way his grandfather’s jowls tremble when his mouth moves. “Yeah, whatever.”

  “Even the way you’ve reverted to sloppy low-class language. What happened to our one-new-word-a-day plan? And to the idea that speaking well is the key to success in life?”

  Jeff pours himself a glass of orange juice to calm his stomach. He chugs it, reaches for more. “I remember innocuous. It’s kind of the way you’re acting now.” He pours, drinks, puts the glass down, and faces his grandfather. “Insipid, right? God, nobody I know uses fucking words like that. So I’m recalcitrant?”

  During their first years of sitting at the breakfast table together, Grandpa Jack fed him words like that, and Jeff swallowed them like the cereal in the bowl in front of him. He even used a few of them until the other kids started laughing at him.

  “Even so, Jeff, later you’ll need a good vocabulary, just as I have.”

  His grandfather’s hair is thin now, oiled streaks threaded across his scalp, his eyebrows white, one always sprouting a long hair that flutters over the metal frame of his glasses. His belt rides low under a belly, his trousers wrinkled and empty.

  “Old man, you and I are living on the foster care check you get every month for taking me in. And I’ve never understood the workman’s comp checks that keep coming for no good reason. What success are you talking about?”

  “I’m thinking of you. Of you as a man of the world.”

  Jeff swallows against the suddenly bitter liquid clogging his throat. “You have never thought of me as a man.” As the words squeeze out, Jeff also understands a truth about himself. Neither has he. The edges of his eyelids burn. He resists rubbing them.

  His grandfather’s freckled hand reaches toward him. “We have something special, Jeff.”

  Jeff’s fist swings at the hand, grazes it. “Special? You used me.” He hasn’t cried in years, but tears blur his grandfather’s face. He steps closer, tall enough now to look down at the old man, the words breaking through, a flood. “I don’t know what the hell I am, not a man of the world, for God’s sake. I’m a collection of body parts, a useful ass, a talented tongue, a solipsist—isn’t that the word? —for your special needs.”

  Jeff understands something else at this moment. He wipes his cheek on his collar, tears extinguished in a cry of disgust. “Shit. My father, Bucky, too, right?” He turns, looks for his jacket. “I’m following him right out of here. I don’t need you anymore.”

  “Solecism, Jeff. But you mean solace. You should be careful with words. They do make a difference.” His grandfather stops talking, removes his glasses, squints at the lens. “You are referring to drug money, I assume.”

  “And other money. You taught me well, Grandpa Jack. I suppose I should thank you.”

  As Jeff heads to his room for the last time, Grandpa Jack is waving a hand in front of his left eye. Something appears to be annoying him.

  Chapter Eight

  Matt

  2000

  Grace answers the phone with her usual hesitancy. Her “hello” is followed by a question mark. When she hears his voice, another question: “Matt?” It has been weeks since she’s heard from him, the last conversation ending abruptly when a call came in on his radio. Then, “What’s wrong?”

  Something often has been wrong in the past when he’s called his mother, like the time he informed her that he had gotten married to Marge over the weekend because she was pregnant—not that that was wrong, but it wasn’t the way he knew Grace had wanted it to happen. Or the call from the clinic to let her know he wouldn’t be around for a month or three until he got through the rehab. Or, perhaps the worst call of all, the one telling her of the doctor’s diagnosis of her grandson’s strange behavior. And later, the call in which she learned of her son’s divorce. Matt can’t remember when he’s called to tell her good news.

  His mother has always taken bad news with a stoicism that he used to believe made her a compliant sponge, especially when it came to his father, especially the times her cheek had been reddened by his hand, and she had turned away from the drunk-angry man to stir whatever was on the stove. When her husband died, killed in an automobile crash, Grace shed fifteen minutes of tears and then, chin raised, took over the raising of her two children, Matt and his sister, Patty.

  Their life as a family continued as it had been before his father’s death, except that they were poorer and Grace worked long hours. He and his sister followed their usual separate paths, he continuing to be the good child and Patty enjoying the role of the wild child early on. By high school, she was doing things Matt hadn’t even thought of, even though he was two years older. “God, Patty, be careful,” he’d say, and she’d laugh, pull a condom out of her purse or a baggie of marijuana or some other souvenir of the weekend, and call him a pussy. Then she’d hug him, say something like, “It’s okay, bro. I know what I’m doing.” He wanted to believe her.

  One night a policeman knocked on the door. He told them that a girl, believed to be Patty Trommald, had died from an overdose in a park on the other side of town. Could a family member come with him, perhaps identify her? Grace sent Matt to make sure the dead girl was some druggie from somewhere else, not his sister. “It couldn’t be Patty. God wouldn’t let this happen to our sweet girl, would she?” she asked, heart-stoppingly hopeful.

  Matt found Patty lying in a grassy field, surrounded by cops and onlookers. Blue-lipped and staring, in death his sister was still beautiful. As he held her cold hand, he understood that if he had been a better brother he could have stopped her from using. He should have listened harder, maybe told his mother, asked someone at school for advice. But he hadn’t.

  When he reported back to Grace, his mother wept, clung to him as he held her, himself in tears, both of them taking blame for Patty’s death. In the months that followed, Matt buried his feelings in schoolwork and Grace continued to weep when she looked into photo albums. Patty, a scrunch-face newborn in the first book; Patty, her dark eyes bright and expectant, on the arm of her first prom date, just months ago.

  One day Grace closed the album in her lap and said, “It’s up to you, Matt, from now on.” Matt wasn’t sure what the “it” was. Grow up, probably. He could do that. He went to community college for a couple of years, worked as a security guard to bring money home. He was accepted to the police academy and a little later, got married like a responsible adult. He hoped that’s what his mother meant about “it,” living a normal life, having a family, calling her once in a while with his news.

  * * *

  “Please don’t call unless it’s good news, Matt,” his mother asked after the divorce. “I’m getting too old for this.”

  And so he did as she asked, until now.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I need your help, Grace. Marge has given Collin to me.” His throat closes. “For good.” He wonders if he can get any more words out.

  “I see.” His mother hesitates no longer than a breath. “I’ll be there tomorrow morning.”

  * * *

  The radio message comes in a few minutes before he is due to take the squad car back to the pound and retrieve his own car to pick up Collin from his school. He phones his mother to say they’ll be a little late, not to worry.

  “Spaghetti tonight,” she answers. “I’ll pi
ck him up if I need to.”

  She’s probably relieved that she can see the end of Dr. Phil. Collin doesn’t like Dr. Phil. Other than that, it’s worked out pretty well these past months. Collin, almost eight, has words now, a few. Just enough to calm the frustration he shows when no one understands what he needs or wants. He likes to be read to. He plays a kind of game only he understands, a repetitive placing of checkers on a board, while Grandma Grace watches and cheers him on. She has a gentle, mostly silent relationship with him, reading his gestures almost as well as his occasional words. She knows when to touch him, when not to.

  “You were born to be Collin’s grandmother,” Matt tells her one afternoon when he comes home to find them sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room floor, seriously building towers of dominoes.

  And perhaps he was born to be Collin’s father, he thinks a day or so later, when Collin reaches for his hand for the first time as they walk to the ice cream shop a few blocks away.

  * * *

  Matt stops in front of the low-income apartment house the call has come from. Fourth floor, 416; a female says her son is the mugger the newspaper wrote about that day, the one where the victim died from a heart attack an hour after he was robbed. No elevator. He’s breathing hard by the time he knocks on the door, which opens quickly, a woman clutching the frame, drops of blood on her blouse. She smells of whiskey.

  “Sergeant Trommald. May I come in?”

  The door opens a bit more; the woman steps back. Her left arm is wrapped around her ribs, and she stumbles as she steps back. “We don’t need you anymore. It’s all settled.”

  Matt can imagine how the problem, whatever it is, has been settled. He checks his note. “Mrs. Miller. You called about your son. Is he here?” A head pokes out from behind an open door.