“What do you make of that?” I ask Matt, lobbing him the ball.
“It’s fucked,” Matt says, his tone indicating that I’ll get no more from him. He leans back and tosses Pete a high fly.
“Jeter’s under it,” Pete announces, exaggeratedly squatting to catch the ball. “And . . . he’s got it, and that will retire the side.” Pete has adjusted instantly to Norm’s return, like it’s been days, not years, since he saw him last.
Lela steps out into the front yard while Norm uses the bathroom. “I don’t trust him,” she says to me.
“You two seemed pretty chummy in there.”
“I was being civil, Zack, that’s all,” she says wearily. “When you have children in common, there’s really no choice in the matter.”
“If you say so.”
“He looks awful,” she says.
“He could lose a few pounds,” I say. “What do you mean you don’t trust him?”
“There’s something ragged about him, a desperate look in his eyes. He’s up to something.”
I shrug. “He wants us to forgive him.”
She shakes her head, watching as Matt playfully tackles Pete to the ground, Pete’s ungoverned laughter ringing loudly across the yard. “It can’t be that simple. He’s got something up his sleeve. He wants something else.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because with Norm, there’s always something else,” she sighs. “Peter!”
“Yes, Mom.”
“You’re wagging your tongue again.”
“Sorry, Mom.”
“You’re a boy, not a dog.”
“I’m not a boy—I’m a man.”
She nods, a fond smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I stand corrected.”
Pete laughs and tosses me the ball, drawing me back into his and Matt’s game of catch. “Throw a pop fly,” he says.
Norm steps out onto the porch, surveying the scene with unconcealed glee. “So,” he says. “Let’s go see a man about a car.” He’s so goddamn proud of himself, so transparent in his glee and determined to view this quotidian tableau as a personal triumph, and only a great measure of restraint stops me from trying to split his face open with a well-aimed hardball.
Satch’s family owns the hardware store, and one would have hoped that a local merchant would have a greater sense of civic responsibility than to sell a car to Pete. In my memory, Satch is tall and beefy, with unruly dark hair and a threatening frown. In reality, the man finishing his cigarette underneath the store’s green awning is balding and dull faced and a good heel shy of six feet, but the hairy arms protruding from the rolled sleeves of his flannel shirt are corded with a telling topography of vein and sinew, and his Semper Fi tattoo pretty much nullifies whatever threat we may have imagined Matt’s scrawny, overly inked arms suggested. His remaining hair is crew-cut close, emphasizing his anvil of a head, his roughly hewn cheekbones suggesting that it would hurt just as much to hit him as to be hit by him.
“Hey, Satch,” I say.
“Zack, how are you,” he says, shaking my hand. “Long time.” His tone seems to indicate he’s been expecting me. “Listen,” he says, eyeing Matt and Norm leaning against the car in question, which Norm has parked illegally at the bus stop in front of the store. “Pete’s a good kid. Not for nothing, I even make a point to buy my shoes from him. I had the ‘for sale’ sign in that car for two weeks, and every day he would walk by and ask me to sell it to him, and I would laugh him off. But one day he comes in here with a check already made out to me, and he’s dead serious. Tells me he’s going to get his driver’s license. I mean, the kid can work in the shoe store, so why not a driver’s license, right? What do I know? Not for nothing, but I made sure he understood there would be no refunds.”
I hate people who start sentences with “not for nothing.” What does that actually mean, anyway?
“I hear you,” I say agreeably. “That’s why I made a point of coming up in person to speak with you. Pete speaks very highly of you. He’s very bright, in his own way, and I understand that he might have convinced you that a driver’s license was a possibility for him. But it isn’t, and he has absolutely no use for the car, so what we’d like to do is just give it back and chalk it up to a friendly misunderstanding.”
Satch appears to be lost in thought for a moment, mulling over the situation. “If you want me to try to sell it for him, I guess I could help him out like that,” he says.
“We didn’t come here to ask you to sell it,” I say. “We came here to return a car that should never have been sold to him in the first place.”
“I’m sorry,” he says with a frown. “I made the terms very clear to Pete, and I can’t just take it back.”
“Not for nothing, Satch,” Matt chimes in sarcastically. “But we’re not here to ask. The car is already back. Now we want Pete’s money.”
“Shut up, Matt,” I say, spinning quickly on him. “We’re going to work this out.” I turn back to Satch with a conciliatory grin. This is all a negotiation, and if there’s one thing I can do, it’s negotiate from the middle. “Now, Satch, I understand that the car has been off the market for two days, and that it’s possible you’ve missed some other selling opportunities. So how about we knock fifty bucks off the top for your trouble. I think that’s a pretty fair compromise, no?”
A small grin appears and then fades on Satch’s face. He sees the game I’ve started and is ready to play. “I’ll take it back for five hundred,” he says, nodding.
“Fuck that,” Matt says.
“Nine hundred,” I say.
“Five-fifty.”
“You had no business selling that car to him in the first place,” I say. “Eight-fifty, and that’s my final offer.”
“Six hundred,” Satch says. “Who the hell gives a retard a checking account anyway?”
“That’s it!” Norm yells, stepping forward, eyeballing Satch with disgust. “I can’t listen to this anymore. It’s bad enough that you took advantage of a mentally impaired man. But I’m not going to sit here and let you disparage him on top of that. You not only owe us a thousand bucks, you owe us an apology. Now, I’ll live without the apology, considering the source, but you damn well better believe that I’m not leaving here without that money. So we can do this quick, or we can drag it out. I’ve got nowhere I need to be.”
Satch makes a show of walking right up to Norm to stand in his face. “And who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Pete’s father,” Norm says. “And I know your father, George. I helped him board up that window right there when the store was vandalized in the seventies. I’m sure he would agree with me that this is something that needs to be undone.”
“Well, Pete’s father,” Satch says. “George is my grandfather, not my father, and you could go visit him in the nursing home to discuss it with him, except that he might not have time, what with his busy schedule of shitting his pants and asking what his name is.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Norm says respectfully. Then he steps right into Satch’s face, his belly brushing up against the younger man’s belt, and stares unwaveringly into his eyes. “Now, I’m through talking about this, so please, would you just give me my son’s money.”
“Jesus Christ,” Satch says, taking a step back. “What are you, getting hard on my leg?” And sure enough, there it is, the unmistakable protuberance in Norm’s pants. “You crazy faggot!”
“That’s right,” Norm shouts, eyes suddenly bulging, teeth bared. “I’m a crazy faggot. I get off on this shit. And there’s nothing I like better than ass-fucking jarheads, so you’d better get me that goddamn money now.”
“You sick fuck!” Satch says, roughly shoving Norm, who loses his balance and falls on his ass.
“Don’t you touch him!” Matt howls, and launches himself onto Satch’s back, throwing his arms around his neck, and the situation has officially gone to hell. Matt gets off two or three glancing blows to the side of Satch’s head b
efore the larger man lurches back sharply, ramming Matt’s head into the brick face of the storefront. Then he grabs behind him for Matt’s head, but comes away grasping only the Elton John wig as Matt falls to the floor. “What the fuck?” Satch says, staring in abject horror at the wig and then at Matt’s bald head. The distraction provides me with a momentary opening for a football kick, which, though poorly executed, nevertheless connects solidly with the underside of Satch’s crotch. Satch spins around to face me, but then sinks to his knees in pain, and a second kick to the chest puts him on the ground. And then I’m on top of him, holding his shirt with one hand and pounding his face with the other. And the thing of it is, I can’t seem to stop, even after I feel his nose break on the third or fourth punch, even as I taste the copper salt of his blood flying into my mouth, which is open in an endless, primitive scream, even as the bones in my hand feel like they’re being shattered against his skull and his arms stop coming up in defense. Because somewhere beneath the pain and horror of it all, it feels good, a golden release, the first, greedy lungful of air after emerging desperately from dark, watery depths, and it doesn’t stop feeling like that, even after Matt and Norm pull me off, even as I’m vomiting onto the sidewalk, even as the police show up, sirens blaring, and lead us all, cuffed and panting, to the backseats of the waiting squad cars.
Chapter 24
Mom and Pete come to pick us up from the precinct in her Honda Civic, and I don’t know if it’s coincidence or the ghost of an old habit, but Norm gets into the front seat, while Matt and I join Pete in the back. And there we are, the family King, on a typical outing, except that the ice packs aren’t for a picnic of luncheon meats and potato salad, but for my throbbing, swollen fist and the purple lump on the side of Matt’s head. A few hours earlier I watched transfixed as a paramedic excavated a fragment of tooth that was buried in the flesh between two of my bloody knuckles, before closing the wound with three stitches and a Band-Aid. Matt’s having a hell of a time keeping on the Elton John wig while icing a contusion the size of a golf ball under it, but the good news is, all charges have been dropped.
Norm, in typical fashion, jocularly introduced himself to our arresting officer, Jim Sheehan, from the backseat of the squad car as if they were sharing a cab, and in doing so learned that he used to carpool with the officer’s father years ago when he still lived in Riverdale. It turned out that Mr. Sheehan senior had passed away in the last year, and Norm’s fond memories of the man seemed to move his son. After hearing Norm’s version of the events in question, Sheehan left us in an interrogation room and went to have a word with Satch, who was being treated at a nearby emergency room. Two hours later, Sheehan returned, having successfully brokered a compromise wherein Satch would agree not to press charges if we would agree to keep the Mustang and be done with him. I got the feeling, from the way Officer Sheehan explained it, that he’d leaned a bit on Satch in pressing our case. “Not for nothing,” he said to Norm as we left the station, “but he was a real son of a bitch to sell your son that car. He deserves more of a beating than he got.”
So there we sit, a fractured family temporarily fused in the confines of Lela’s Honda with no idea how to be mended, what shape it is we’re supposed to take, or whether we even want to try. An awkward silence envelops us, so Lela turns on the radio and Pete sings along to Dave Matthews with reckless abandon. I direct my mother back to Johnson Avenue, where I parked Jed’s car. We all stand around for a moment, unsure of who will go with whom and who belongs to whom. Finally, Norm suggests we all go out to dinner, but that’s more than I can bear right now; my innards are still trembling as my mind replays my earlier violence in a continuous, unedited loop. I say I have to get back to the city, and Matt’s got a gig, so Norm decides he’ll follow Lela and Pete home in the Mustang and have dinner with them. First, though, he thanks Matt and me for “having my back” in the altercation with Satch. “What a team!” he declares, swelling with macho pride. “The Fighting Kings!”
That’s us. The Fighting Kings. What we lack in brawn we make up for in bizarre diversion, the strategically placed erection here, the surprise bald head there, and while your focus is shattered by the freak show that we are, we’ll use the opportunity to bash your head in. Norm revels in our superficial wounds, somehow forgetting the fact that we were fighting for Pete and not for him and that we altogether failed in our mission to get our brother’s money back. As always, Norm is judging success solely on the level of drama generated, rather than the actual result. I guess I really shouldn’t expect anything more from someone for whom the traveling has always been famously better than the arrival.
Matt and I stand on the curb, licking our wounds as we watch our parents drive away, a view that would have been inconceivable as recently as this morning, even. Norm showed up only a few days ago with plans for instant rapprochement that bordered on delusional, and yet here he is, effortlessly enmeshed in the family dynamic as if he’s never left. Can it really be that simple? I wonder. Can you just blow past the hurts and defenses of people, the transgressions of your past, and just steamroll your way into a new situation, one that works better for you? There’s something appealing in the idea, something that makes me stop and consider my own pathetic situation. Maybe a little delusional bullheadedness is what’s called for here. Yesterday I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of it, but today feels different. Today I’m a guy who fights in the streets, who rides cuffed in police cars, who has to have teeth removed from his knuckles by paramedics.
For now, though, I can’t stop shaking.
“Listen,” I say to Matt, who has pulled off the Elton John wig and is gingerly rubbing his bruised temple. “Why don’t you take the car back to the city? There’s something I need to do.”
“Here?” Matt says incredulously.
“I want to look in on Tamara and Sophie.”
He takes the car keys from me and presses a button. Lights flash and locks click as the Lexus snaps to attention. “How’s she doing?” he says.
“Who?”
“Who are we talking about?”
“She’s doing fine,” I say.
He gives me a funny look imbued with understanding. “And how are you doing?”
“I’ll live,” I say, shaking my sore fist.
“That’s not what I meant.”
I meet his gaze, allowing with my eyes what I can’t seem to say out loud. “I know,” I say.
“When’s Hope due back?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
“Oh.” His eyes are open and sympathetic, inviting me to bare my soul, and it would be so good to say something out loud, to make everything a little more real, a little more possible, but it’s just not happening.
“Can I get a lift?” I say instead.
He holds my look for a moment and then shrugs. “Sure thing.”
Matt drives the Lexus much too fast for my taste, accelerating on the straightaways, taking the corners at high speed. “Some day, huh?” I say, to fill the vacuum of my unspoken confession as we pull up to Tamara’s house. He looks curiously up the walk as I step out of the car, then nods, offering me a rare full-blown little-brother smile as he throws the car into drive. “It’s not over yet,” he says before tearing away from the curb and disappearing into the gathering twilight.
Chapter 25
“I have the same dream at least once a week,” Tamara says. “I walk into the bathroom in the middle of the night and realize that I forgot to take Sophie out of the bath. When I turn on the light, there she is, lying faceup under the water. She’s been there for hours, and I yank her out and try to wake her up, but the whole time I’m shaking her and giving her mouth-to-mouth, she’s cold and much too heavy, like she’s waterlogged, and I already know she’s dead, and that it’s my fault.”
We’re sitting on the blue tiled floor of the bathroom while Sophie splashes around in the tub. Tamara has my wrecked hand on her lap and is holding a Ziploc sandwich bag of ice on it. Next to us, So
phie splashes happily in the bathtub, her light hair so much darker plastered to her wet scalp, her chubby cheeks glistening as she sings to herself. “Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, willy nilly silly ole bear.”
“And the thing of it is,” Tamara continues, “no matter how many times I have the dream, I’m always shocked and horrified, and this little part of me, the part that’s conscious of the dream, wonders how the hell I could have let it happen again, when I already know the dream.” She looks at me with a self-deprecating smile even as her eyes grow misty at the thought. “Even in my dreams I’m a bad mother.”
“Those dreams represent your fear of being a bad mother,” I say. “And bad mothers aren’t afraid of being bad mothers. So you see, it actually proves that you’re a good mother.”
Tamara smiles warmly at me. “Where would I be without you, Zack?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I say, but I’m thinking, Happily married to a living husband? Because without me, maybe Rael never would have gone to Atlantic City, or maybe if I’d said no he would have prevailed upon Jed, who would have driven the Lexus, or a million other ever-so-slightly divergent scenarios that would have had nothing in common other than they didn’t end in a fatal car wreck. Tamara seems to read my thoughts, and looks away sadly for a moment to leave me with them.
There’s nothing cleaner than a two-year-old in the bathtub. Sophie sits up on her knees, pulling herself up to peer over the edge of the tub at my hand and, in doing so, sends a mild spray of water cascading onto the floor, getting Tamara’s shorts wet. “Zap have a boo-boo?” she says.
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