Minders

by Michele Jaffe

  Besides, Pete had called and apologized that morning—god, was it only that morning?—saying he was sorry, it was just that he was going to miss her so much. Everything between them was fine now.

  But everything was not fine between her and Ford. Sadie wanted to shake him and ask what kind of person acted the way he did. Couldn’t he see how much Cali cared about him? Why would he try to tear her down rather than be happy for her? Keep their fight going instead of ending it? Worse, there was something cool and calculated about it, as though he was pushing Cali away so she’d have to work even harder to stay with him.

  Humiliation, Sadie realized. That was what the sticky sensation was. He’d felt humiliated that he couldn’t pay for dinner, but instead of admitting it, he’d tried to humiliate Cali by making her new job sound tawdry. Like something she should be ashamed of. How immat—

  Stay objective, Sadie reminded herself. Record, don’t judge. She added humiliation—sticky, unpleasant, dirty—after anger—heavy, dark, suffocating, restless—in her mental notebook, and then in a separate section wrote bleach—?.

  So far, Ford Winter’s mind was living up to the darkness she’d seen in his eyes.

  • • •

  Sadie expected he’d go to his bedroom now—she imagined something decorated in dirty gym socks—but instead he went to the trunk that acted as a coffee table, pulled out a pillow and a blanket that had been shoved in there, and tossed them on the couch. He did it without triggering any change in his mind, making Sadie think this was where he regularly spent the night.

  So what’s behind the other door off the hallway? As though he’d heard her question, he went to it, took a deep breath, and pushed it open.

  The air in the room was so thick with smoke that the bedside light made a golden halo. It was Spartan, more like a cell than a room, with only a dresser, a mirror, a night table, a light, and a bed.

  A frail woman lay on the bed, above the covers. She wore a faded red housecoat that looked garish against her pale skin. There was a word jumble book on the bedspread next to her, an overflowing ashtray on the night table beside the lamp, and a picture in a silver frame resting in the hollow of her chest. A beige uniform dress with a white collar and a nametag that said VERA WINTER—WELCOME TO WAFFLE CITY lay draped haphazardly along the foot of the bed.

  His mother, Sadie thought.

  Ford stood looking at her for a moment before approaching. His mind was full of a busy emptiness, as though all his thoughts, emotions, and memories had hidden themselves like animals sheltering from a predator in tall grass.

  “James?” the woman whispered. Her arm hung off the bed, and a burnt-down cigarette dangled from between her first two fingers. They were red and blistered, and there were dark burn spots on the rug beneath her hand.

  Ford took the cigarette from her and balanced it on top of the pile in the ashtray. “No, Mom. It’s Ford.”

  “Where’s James?”

  Sadie expected a flood of heavy anger, but Ford’s voice was calm. He lifted the photo off her chest and put it on the nightstand without glancing at it. “James isn’t here.”

  “When will he be back?” the woman asked.

  Ford said, “He won’t. He’s gone.”

  His mother’s eyes came open. “I thought maybe that was a dream. That he was alive and you”—she paused—“were him.”

  The Ford Sadie had seen with Cali would have been ready with a scathing retort. Instead she had the sensation of someone leaning into a door, using their weight to keep it closed.

  Sadie realized this had been going on in the background of Ford’s mind all night, even when he was with Cali, the effort increasing incrementally until she only now became aware of it. As though whatever was behind the door was always hovering beneath the surface, trying to get out. Ford said evenly, “That would be nice.”

  His mother slid out of bed, went to the dresser, and began arranging the few objects on it—brush, comb, box, lipstick—moving them around one another nervously. “I tried to go to work today, but—” Her voice trailed off. Ford settled on the edge of her bed, but she remained standing, keeping her back to him as she said, “I was thinking tomorrow you could go see your father.”

  In Ford’s mind very faint blue and green and gray dots sifted themselves into a dozen grainy pictures of a man, one superimposed upon another, creating a monstrous tableau. They were all different, but they were all sneering, and as Sadie watched, a fist punched through all of them, scattering the images into a red spray of blood.

  Sadie felt the door in his mind jostle, and Ford leaning harder into it. “Why? Do you want me to end up in jail?”

  His mother ignored that. “He hasn’t sent a check in a few months, and with me missing work we need the money.”

  “I’ve been covering it,” Ford told her. “You said you were going to talk to the Roaches about Dad.”

  “Don’t call them that. It’s disrespectful.”

  “Fine. You said you were going to tell the Roque Community Health Evaluator about Dad not paying.”

  She lined up the box with the brush and comb. “I didn’t want to bother her.”

  Sadie felt the door starting to open and Ford struggling to push it back. “Mom, that’s what she’s for.”

  Mrs. Winter turned around, agitated eyes seeking his. “Don’t you see we can’t have them know? If they knew that we had no money, if they knew he was behind—”

  “If I get in trouble, if we miss our RCHE appointments, if we do anything to draw attention to ourselves, including ask for help we deserve, or request to see the file on James’s death, or ask why they’ve refused our requests to see the file, they could split the family apart,” Ford finished, as though reciting the end of a familiar fairy tale. “We all have to behave like good little boys and girls and not upset Father.”

  His mother’s hand whipped out, and she slapped him. “Stop it! This isn’t a joke. This is our family.”

  Sadie caught a whiff of bleach, but the pain barely registered in Ford’s mind. “You know James didn’t die the way they say he did. Don’t you want to learn the truth?”

  “The case is closed,” said Mrs. Winter, trembling. “It’s closed.” Her tone was a plea, and her eyes looked afraid, but whether she was afraid for Ford or afraid of him, Sadie couldn’t tell.

  They were less than a foot apart, mother and son, but loneliness yawned between them. Ford was completely still, as though all his energy was concentrated on keeping whatever was behind the door at bay. Only his eyes moved, sliding to the photo on the night table, allowing Sadie to see it.

  It had been taken at Ford’s high school graduation, him in a cap and gown, standing next to the same blond guy Sadie had seen before in his mind being kissed by the mysterious woman with the dark hair. James.

  In the photo Mrs. Winter stood between Ford and James in a pantsuit, thin but robust, nothing like the wisp of a woman in front of him now. Lulu held her hand and part of James’s sleeve and grinned adoringly up at her brothers. He and James were looking at one another, Ford making a goofy face, both laughing, as if they’d just shared a hilarious joke.

  They were hardly recognizable as the same family. With a shock she noted the date stamp on the bottom corner of the photo. It had been taken only a year earlier.

  “I miss him,” his mother said, following Ford’s eyes to the picture.

  Sadie felt hot flares starting to slip through the cracks in Ford’s mental door and realized the emotion it was holding back was anger. It was anger that hovered beneath everything in his mind, pressing forward, restless, eager. And his desire or ability to contain it was weakening.

  “Everyone loved James. He was such a good boy. So full of life,” Mrs. Winter went on.

  “He sure was.” Ford stood, his mind noisy with the effort of holding the door closed. “You fell asleep smoking again, Mom. If you keep it up you’ll set the house on fire and kill us all.”

  “You worry too much,” his mother answered.


  They spoke the words like actors delivering well-worn lines, and Sadie imagined them having this same conversation a dozen, two dozen times before. For a moment they stood still in their poses, each waiting to see if the other wanted to finish the scene.

  Then Ford pivoted and went back to the living room. He didn’t say good night or sleep well or any of the things Sadie always said to her parents, and his mother didn’t call them after him. It was as if they didn’t know how to talk to one another if they weren’t fighting. Was that why he’d purposely goaded Cali too, because conflict was more comfortable to him than affection?

  Unhooking his belt, he dropped his jeans and stepped out of them.

  You’re not really going to leave them on the floor like a pile of—

  He took two steps to the couch, stretched out, and turned off the light.

  You are, Sadie marveled. Well, that makes sense. Because operating drawers is such a challenge.

  His eyes closed, and the anger settled in like a lapdog finding its accustomed bed. His mind went quiet except for a regular, low thrumming. His heart, Sadie realized, feeling an unexpected flash of intimacy.

  I am still very displeased, she reminded herself.

  Sadie was prepared to be wide awake even after he fell asleep—they’d been told at orientation that the advanced stimulation of their brains might make sleep elusive the first few days even if they were tired—and had intended to use the time to go over her observations from the day. But her thoughts kept returning to the photo from Ford’s graduation of the Winter family, happy and full of hope. Losing James had shattered them in a way that seemed to go beyond mere grief.

  How did James die? she wondered. Who is Ford so angry at?

  As she drifted off to sleep, lulled by the sound of his heartbeat, she saw a faint image of a skein of golden rope curling slowly downward, and had the strangest idea that if she could just grab it she’d have her answer.

  CHAPTER 7

  Dude, your breath is foul. Get off!”

  Who said that?

  Sadie came awake in an instant. Her eyes and Ford’s snapped open simultaneously, giving them both a close-up view of Copernicus’s big wet nose and lolling tongue.

  Pushing it aside, Ford lurched to the bathroom, relieved himself, and started brushing his teeth without washing his hands in between.

  Good morning, Sadie said to him politely.

  He looked in the mirror and grunted. Still brushing his teeth, he turned left and right, inspecting his profile. Finally he smiled with a mouth full of toothpaste foam, and for a moment he resembled the guy in the graduation picture, goofy and carefree. He spit out the toothpaste, rinsed his mouth, wet his hair to slick it back, and stood up, and the boy with angry eyes was back.

  From purely scientific motives she was glad when he removed the T-shirt he’d slept in, providing her first glimpse of any part of him unclothed. In the mirror Sadie observed that his shoulders, arms, and chest looked like something from the ancient Greek wing of the Detroit Institute of Art, while the scars and cuts crisscrossing his knuckles and forearms told of a more recent history. Together they gave him the appearance of a kind of epic hero fighting against long odds.

  Which he’d adore, she thought, since as far as she had seen, Ford had done nothing but purposely create conflict with every person he came into contact with except his sister. The Me vs. Everyone Else paradigm apparently appealed to him, and she wondered if some of his more antisocial behaviors—

  At least put the seat down, Sadie called as he left the bathroom without showering.

  —could be attempts to deliberately antagonize people. That way he could always feel like others wronged him, and never have to take responsibility for his own actions.

  Subject in above average physical condition but emotionally stunted, Sadie recorded in her mental notebook, because “looks like a hot guy, behaves like a five-year-old” didn’t sound very scientific.

  He got dressed in the clothes he’d been wearing the previous day, had “breakfast”—cold water poured over a packet of instant coffee, which he drank down with the unmixed globs of powder still floating on the surface—and headed down two flights of stairs and out of the apartment building, the anger from the previous night banking around the surfaces of his mind like a trapped fly. Unlocking his bike from beside the DO NOT LOCK BIKES HERE EVER!! sign he pedaled the wrong way down his street toward the busy intersection at Bob’s Burger Boulevard.

  As he rode, his mind unfolded into an old-fashioned map, roads and buildings appearing like they’d been sketched out in front of him. His imagined streetscape had some of the same buildings as the one he was riding through but without most of the graffiti, and often with different signs, so that Cha Cha’s Liquor-n-Things and Time 4 Pawn were merged together on his mental map into one building marked SUPERMARKET. A church with broken glass in the windows and a sign in front proclaiming OUT OF SINESS appeared spruced up in Ford’s mind with a sign that said INDOOR SKATE PARK (LASER TAG TOURNAMENTS MONTHLY). There were other buildings on his “map” too, older looking, as though he was simultaneously picturing the streets as they had once been and as they could be.

  He rode like he was in a fantasy world of his own design, treating stop signs as optional and the rules of the road as something best avoided. As he jumped his bike onto the sidewalk to avoid the posted twelve-minute wait time at the intersection of Calm Colon Avenue and H3O Purified Water-Style Beverage Way, his phone buzzed with a text. In violation of the hands-free-only laws he pulled it from his pocket and read it without slowing down or braking. It was from Cali, and it said, “I’M SORRY. YOU WERE RIGHT. I SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU. FORGIVE?”

  Sure, babe, he thought. Later.

  Why later? Sadie demanded. What is this stupid game that boys play? You know you’re going to write back to her, why don’t you just—

  She interrupted herself. She’d heard “Sure, babe. Later.” Heard the words. In his head. For the first time, she’d been able to hear what he was thinking.

  Naturally, it had been something annoying. But she was still excited.

  Now that she was aware of it, she began to hear other thoughts. It wasn’t easy and primarily she got fragments, but it was clear that most of the sounds in his head weren’t just noises, they were actual words. Some looped in and out, like can’t be late, while others appeared only once. She heard him think something that sounded like burger for lunch, and then a series of blurred dots became his wallet with the two dollars in it and she caught a hint of the stickiness again before it was consumed in a flare of anger.

  It was like watching the gears on a clock. A thought triggered a memory, which triggered an emotion, which triggered—

  A dozen horns honked, brakes squealed, and a delivery van shuddered to a stop inches from Ford’s back tire as he went speeding across Chef’s Best Lasagna Avenue against traffic.

  —action.

  Idiots, he thought, as though the commotion were everyone’s fault but his, and Sadie was torn between laughter and dismay.

  At five minutes to eight he parked his bike in front of an enormous stone building with a sign that said, THE FORMER ST. CLAIRE APARTMENTS IS BECOMING CLAIRE FARMS! ANOTHER MASON BLIGH COMMUNITY ASSET. Distracted by the effort of holding back his anger, Ford didn’t see the tall, red-headed guy standing on the front steps of the building until he’d plowed into him, nearly knocking him to the ground.

  The guy regained his balance and turned to see what had happened. “Are you okay?” he asked Ford. He was skinny and gawky with pink cheeks, red hair, and big green eyes behind round tortoiseshell glasses. At least that was what Sadie noticed. What Ford saw was a guy with four inches on him in height but ten pounds lighter, built like a wimp, around twenty-three years old.

  Ford said, “You should watch where you’re standing.” Like it was the guy’s fault Ford had walked into him. Sadie realized he was itching for a fight.

  The man, looking a little dazed, blinked. “You�
��re right. Sorry.” He held out his hand. “I’m—”

  Ford walked right by it, into the black-and-white-checked marble hall. An older man wearing jeans and an ironed plaid shirt stood leaning against a fluted wood pillar with a clipboard in his hand.

  “Winter, you’re late,” he barked when he saw Ford.

  “According to my watch I’m exactly on time, Mr. Harding.” Ford held up his right wrist, pointing to Mickey’s two hands on the twelve and the eight.

  The foreman shook his head. “You’re all the way back, with Nix.” He poked a thumb to his right. “And no need to saunter—I want this floor picked clean as a turkey carcass by lunch.”

  Ford spotted a sign in the far back corner of the once-grand lobby that read LAUNDRY ROOM, and Sadie heard him think, Nice work, Nix. But when they reached it, she couldn’t see the appeal: There were long channels ripped through the baseboards and across the ceiling and strips of floral wallpaper rolled up from the middle of the walls like chocolate curls on a wedding cake.

  A compact dark-skinned kid, younger than the Chapsters Sadie had seen, leaned against one of the walls, two sledgehammers next to him. Seeing him, Ford’s mind struck a single, pleasant chord, and the feeling was apparently mutual, because when Ford walked up, the guy ground out the cigarette he’d been smoking and gave him a dazzling smile.

  “Did I or did I not hook us up?” he asked. “With all the wiring and pipes in here to harvest, the scabbies’ve already done most of the work for us.”

  A soft, warm sensation Sadie hadn’t felt before spread through Ford. Out of the corner of her eye she caught pinprick images of tomato soup and grilled cheese and soggy mittens as Ford started to laugh.

  Amusement, she thought. Amusement felt like tomato soup after a snowball fight.

  “Couldn’t have picked better myself, Nix,” Ford said, hoisting one of the sledgehammers. “Though the St. Claire was built as a hotel, so no way was this originally a laundry room. They wouldn’t have put it on the first floor off the lobby.”

  “Are we betting? I say dining room.”