by Jo Barney
“Starkey says that the time has come to truly test our loyalty to the family. The next task will tell the tale. ‘Two of you,’ and he’s looking at me and Peter, ‘will go down to the town and come back with proof that you have gotten rid of one demented street person. Worthless detritus,’ he says, ‘of no value to anyone. This will be a true test of your intestinal fortitude. You will bring back a trophy. A finger.’
“I don’t breathe under his pirate stare. ‘Two nights from now, we’ll draw straws to determine who will be chosen for this great honor.’”
“A finger,” I repeat. “That’s when I know I have to leave. I don’t tell Peter I am going. I don’t want him in trouble when Starkey finds out I am gone. I just left.”
I start crying, and I take Ellie’s hand in mine, whether she likes it or not.
Chapter Sixteen
Matt
2003-2006
The woman turns, kisses Matt lightly on the cheek. A twitch of her lips means I’m sorry, but she says, “Thanks for having me over. We should do it again sometime.” She turns away, steps down the stairs of his porch as her last words float up to him. He won’t see her again, he knows. An evening with his son is usually enough to convince most women they should move on.
Matt closes the door, glances at the twelve-year-old whose thumbs are moving at the speed of sound over the box in his hand. The boy does not look up. He probably does not know that his father’s friend has left. Nor does it seem he cares. Only Modern Warfare 2 matters. Three stars, best he’s ever done, he says when he finally raises his eyes.
“Time for bed.”
Collin doesn’t respond.
“You have a choice. Bed in ten minutes or no games tomorrow. It’s up to you.”
The boy’s thumbs slow, then pick up speed. “Ten,” he says, not looking up.
Matt breathes, goes to the kitchen to clean up the kitchen. No fight tonight, maybe. He’s never sure, but he’s learning to manage the mercurial nature of his son, to avoid the confrontations that sometimes still lead to meltdowns, to enjoy the accomplishments of this child who struggles daily to find himself. In electronic games, mostly. Collin is very good at them. His focus is phenomenal, his delight contagious.
As Matt closes the dishwasher door, he hears the toilet flush. Collin is getting ready for bed. In the morning he’ll go to school, stay there until he is picked up. Grandma Grace, living in her own apartment again, is backup now that life is calmer. She is getting pretty good at Nintendo. And she knows how to get her grandson to bed on those nights Matt works late, usually with cookies and a story. Grace has a lover, a nice old guy who smiles a lot as he walks hand-in-hand with her. She smiles a lot, too, and Matt is envious. He’s certain he’ll not be walking close to someone for a long time. Not after tonight, another replay of a scene he’s had a part in more than once, Collin the main character.
A hand touches him. “Goodnight, Papa,” his son says. Then the boy swirls away, before Matt can hug him. Collin still doesn’t like hugs much.
* * *
Over the next three years, they work out a system, he and Grace. An email a day outlines each of their schedules. Texting allows for deviations. Grace moves in with Ben, Grandpa Ben to Collin. The disparate parents fill in the spaces in Collin’s day like cotton balls, benign but supportive. Collin spends most of his time in his sophomore special-ed classes and with Leslie, his therapist, who continues to work with him on his “people skills,” as she calls them.
Matt has tried to help Collin practice these skills by encouraging him to invite someone from school to play his games. When one boy finally accepts Collin’s invitation, Matt watches from the kitchen. The boys sit at the coffee table, their hands working the controls. The excited laughter and a “shit” or two is music to Matt’s ears, until he interrupts their concentration with Cokes and he sees that his son is talking too much and not listening, and watches the other boy yawn and roll his eyes, turn away, finger the box in his lap, waiting to get back to the action and away from Collin.
Each time Collin manages to get someone to come over, probably bribed by his collection of games, the would-be friend invariably walks away, seemingly relieved.
Matt stops trying to influence his son’s social life. Collin, he finally understands, doesn’t do intimacy, either in words or in the exchange of nonverbal communication that is the habit of teenagers. Sometimes, though, the boy doesn’t cringe when Matt hugs him. And lately, Collin, besides displaying a gift for electronic devices, is showing an impatience with parental direction. A typical fifteen-year-old, almost.
* * *
“Hey, Collin!” Matt opens the front door, his stomach growling with the aroma of the pepperoni pizza he’s carrying. Usually when he comes home, his son is sitting in the lounger in the living room involved in a game, a soda by his side. This evening Collin hasn’t texted Grace to say he’s arrived home, but sometimes he forgets. But he’s not in his room either. The house is quiet, empty.
Matt calls Grace. She hasn’t heard from her grandson. Perhaps he’s gone to the store for something. Or to a friend’s house; she’s forgotten that Collin doesn’t have friends he would visit, but perhaps his teacher would know? Matt calls the school, gets a register of numbers, calls Collin’s teacher, Barbara Edgerton. Collin had been in school, through his last class, had walked out as usual, his teacher checking to make sure he had his backpack, and assignments. She hadn’t noticed anything unusual as he walked through the school’s doors toward the bus waiting for him at the curb, as it always did.
Matt forces himself not to panic. A kid could go out for a while to get a DVD, to pick up a pizza to back up what his father will come up with for dinner. He waits fifteen minutes, then goes out the door and wanders the stores in the neighborhood. When he comes back, the apartment is as empty as it was when he left it. He dials the school, gets the bus company’s phone number.
“My son hasn’t come home,” he says, hoping not to sound too anxious. “I need to know if he got on the bus at the school. And if he got off it at the usual corner.” He’s put on hold for five minutes before he’s told that as far as the driver remembers, Collin did not get on the bus. In fact, the driver waited a minute or two before he gave in to the demands from the back of the bus to get moving, it was hot. He figured maybe Collin’s parents or somebody had picked him up.
Grace and Matt drive to the school, fan out over the blocks around it. Ben will stay at home by the phone. They can’t imagine he’s gone far. He’s still leery about using public transportation although his therapist has worked with him using the ticket machines, reading the maps, and has gone on a trip or two with him. Matt looks through the window of the 7-Eleven where Collin has shopped by himself. It is empty of customers. He asks. The counterman has not seen him. He goes by the other closed shops in the small mall and walks behind the building where the Dumpsters are kept. Except for a slinking cat, nothing moves. He walks to the edge of the park three blocks from the school.
This two-acre green space is well lit, a requirement when the city proposed it. The neighborhood also had input on the design. “We need a dog run and we need good lighting at night to keep the druggies out. Swings and climbing structures, of course, but no water feature. Attracts too many kids from outside our neighborhood; we don’t need a circus around here.”
Matt follows a winding path edged by benches and tall lights with a terrible sense of dread. He’s done this sort of walk once before. Not looking for his son, of course, but looking for someone else’s son, a raving kid with a gun in his hands. Thirteen years ago, another father looked for a damaged kid, fear padding his steps.
Voices off to the side make him stop, listen. A girl, a boy. And a blanket, he sees as he makes his way past a rhododendron. Two pairs of annoyed eyes glare at him from the shadows. “Sorry,” he says. He wishes it were his son with his hand on the girl’s breast.
He can hear traffic at the far edge of the park. Car lights flash through the shrubs a
nd trees. Empty benches line up along the path. He stops because he’s not sure where to go next. When his cell phone rings, he knows Grace has found Collin. Except she hasn’t.
“Now what?” she asks.
He tells her to go home. He’ll do the same, and he’ll report Collin missing even though it has been only a few hours. Perhaps his rank will get a search started before the required twenty-four hours have passed. His team will understand. They are very aware of the silent boy who has visited the precinct with his father over the past ten years. Each of the officers, all family people, has an inkling of what the detective’s life must be like.
Matt sits for a minute on the last bench before the entrance to the path. Five breaths. Through his nose. Sometimes it still works.
A rustling in the leaves means an animal is moving somewhere behind him. A cat, probably, or a rabbit. People drop rabbits in this park all the time, pet rabbits left to mow down the grass and make baby rabbits. It was in the paper recently. He turns.
No rabbit under that bush. A huddle of a body, moving ever so slowly, its breaths silent sobs, a familiar tapping of fingers, a son.
“Collin.”
This time Collin lets his father hold him.
When he’s calmer, he says he wants to go home.
* * *
It is Grace who gets the story out of her grandson, once the soda and pizza have done their job and Collin is sitting on the sofa, his fingers busy as usual. She sits next to him, asks, “What?”
“I can’t stand it,” he says in his halting way. “They call me names. They are mean. They bump into me in the hall. They laugh when I get mad and hit back. Today they grabbed my backpack, threw it in the garbage. I feel like a nothing.” He doesn’t cry, but his voice grates with despair. “I want to be invisible.” He sinks lower into the cushions, and he doesn’t look at Grace or his father. “You don’t understand,” he says.
Grace does not touch him but leans toward his closed eyes. “We hear you, Collin. We will fix this.” Grace looks at Matt, gives him her mother-look. Tonight, it says. We will fix this.
Matt is still working on breathing. What if Collin had lain in the bushes until morning, had gotten up confused, had gone into one of his now seldom meltdowns, had raged and screamed at whoever found him, had had a person with a gun come toward him…What if? His chest rises, falls. He can’t stand what he is imagining.
As if she could read his thoughts, Grace takes his hand, squeezes his fingers, and says, “Matt, it’s over. We’re going to be okay.”
Damn, he thinks. My mother.
Grace and Matt get Collin to bed. The boy will not return to the local high school in the morning. They will find a place that fits his needs, a school where he can be himself, whatever that is.
Chapter Seventeen
Jeff
2002
And Danny and Jeff are the best of friends for the next year or so. Both the escorting business and the drug business are successful enough for them to rent a place with a small kitchen and room enough for Jeff to bring regular clients over, once he’s bought new sheets and they’ve painted the living room. The apartment looks out over a quiet street, and on a clear day they can see a snow-touched mountain range against the sky, hear the sounds of the city shimmering in the foreground.
At first Danny goes down to the park to re-up his drug supply, and he spends time at a couple of well-known corners selling it, but once he gets a cell phone, he is freed up to have customers all over the riverfront area and in some of the neighborhoods. The only hitch in the arrangement is the nights Jeff needs the apartment and Danny has to find somewhere else to spend time. Jeff shrugs, impatient with his roommate when he complains about having to sit at a bar three blocks away, drinking cheap well drinks and waiting for Jeff’s phone call to let him know that the way is clear to come home. “Without a little inconvenience once in a while, we’d be sleeping under a bush. Fred and the others pay very well, as you know.”
And Jeff is dressing well, designer jeans, silk shirts, and a clinging Mario leather jacket, a gift from a client, as he has taken to calling his johns. His precise haircut requires weekly stops at the Bob Bar. The look attracts the sort of men who drive through the neighborhood in luxury sedans. Jeff invites these men into his apartment, once he knows they want to go steady, that is, see him on a regular schedule. The parking lot in back of the building is behind a fence, discreet, usually safe from teenager prowlers if the cars are empty of tempting cargo.
It seems only right that the bedroom is Jeff’s because it is his business office. Danny’s bed is the sofa in the living room, and he folds his blankets each morning and stores them in the closet. Jeff does most of whatever cooking they do, usually pizza or tacos and always a salad. Danny takes the laundry to the basement machines. Other chores—cleaning the toilet, sweeping the floors—are divided up without talking much about them. However, Danny’s habit of leaving his newspapers scattered all over the living room and his inability to put his dishes into the washer really annoys Jeff. After a scene that involves the smell of sour milk and a labyrinth of magazines and paper as he and a client open the apartment door, Jeff blows.
“It’s embarrassing leading someone into a rat’s nest.” Jeff isn’t yelling, but he notices his next words make Danny’s eyes widen. “You’re a slob. Start picking up before you leave.”
Danny glances at the table still piled with the morning paper, encrusted cereal bowls, and a couple of beer bottles from the night before. “Some of this mess is yours, Jeff. Or have I been promoted to cleaning lady also?” When Jeff ignores the question, he adds, “As far as your business goes, cooling my heels waiting for you to fuck some pervert is beyond the call of duty for a roommate. I’m sick of closing the Iron Horse every other night.”
Jeff doesn’t like the anger shaking Danny’s voice, and he understands he has to do some compromising to keep things on track. Over a pizza and a couple of IPAs, they agree that Danny will clean up before he leaves in the mornings, and Jeff will schedule his appointments earlier. After all, they both want to live the good life they have begun. They have a trip to Mexico planned, a car picked out. All they need is a little more time, a few more steady customers. Their separate ways of making money don’t conflict, really. Jeff doesn’t do drugs much anymore, and Danny definitely doesn’t do men. For a few months, things seem to be working out.
At Christmas time, on a whim, they buy a tree and decorations. Danny brings home a couple of bottles and some dope and invites a few people he knows to a spur-of-the-moment party. Jeff, who has good memories of the groups that used to gather in their apartment in McLaughlin, tells several guys he’s met to come, too. It seems like a good idea until Jeff notices that the druggies are circling around the hustlers. He can see that goodwill to all good men isn’t going to happen soon, no matter what anyone is swallowing or smoking.
Jeff squirms as voices get loud, and malevolent looks (a useful Grandpa Jack word at the moment) fly across the room, and when a mascaraed young man in spandex tights slaps a black kid whose eyes radiate disdain from under a hoodie, all hell breaks loose. Jeff ducks a couple of flying chairs as a mirror goes down along with several bodies before Danny and he are able to shove everyone out.
“Shit. What happened?” Danny asks, panting as he shuts the door and kicks at the debris at his feet. He fumbles a doobie out of his shirt pocket and manages to get it lit.
Jeff stops dumping pieces of mirror and chairs into a large plastic garbage bag, stands up. “This isn’t working.” This time he means it.
“What?”
“This.” He points at the destroyed living room and then at Danny. “Fuck our big plans.” Giving up those plans doesn’t mean he can’t have plans of his own, does it? To be free, to make his way alone, no Danny to complain, to hold him back. Exhilaration propels his words. “I want my own place. I don’t need zoned-out jerks disrupting my life.” He pushes an accusing finger against his roommate’s shoulder, and Danny falls ag
ainst the sofa to steady himself. “Including you. You’ve become a detriment. Not just tonight. Every night this week.”
This feels so right, this letting loose of angry thoughts that have been festering for weeks. “I don’t like living with a concoction of chemicals for a roommate.” Although he is a little drunk, he knows that what he is saying is the truth. “You are an addicted loser, my friend.”
Danny straightens. His eyes are steady, almost sober, as he stares at Jeff. “Okay.” A tight grimace captures his lips. Then he speaks, slowly, a rhythmic cadence, as if he’s reading from a familiar script. “For your information, I’m having trouble living with a poontang, a guy who gets paid to be fucked by fat old men. No problem. And good riddance, asshole.”
When he lurches by to get to his closet, his elbow catches Jeff on the nose. Jeff reacts to the pain without thinking, sends a fist into a soft crotch. They roll around on the floor until Danny lays a broken chair leg across Jeff’s forehead. Jeff feels himself twitch in the midst of shards of mirror as he watches Danny pack his backpack, his drugs, and the few books he has collected.
Their friendship is as shattered as the mirror he’s lying on, an apt metaphor, his grandfather would have said. Jeff moves his head and hears the glass crunch behind his neck. He needs to say something to acknowledge this moment. Something memorable. Nothing. As the door slams, he hears himself yell, “Your mom’s a ho.” Grandpa Jack’s words are apparently lost in a swirl of pot and a cracked forehead and the emptiness of a room. He rolls over, raises himself up, and picks his way through the broken glass to the broom closet. He has time, while he sweeps, to wish he hadn’t told Danny his grandfather’s nickname for him.
