My father laughed at me, called me names, lurching the car all over the road while cheap vodka and Orange Julius lurched out of me. He didn’t say shit about the car. He’d probably been half loaded himself. If I hadn’t locked myself in the bathroom when we got home, he’d have probably knocked me around for breaking my mother’s rule about drinking at parties.
Now, perched on the edge of the couch, I could hear him mocking me again, calling me a lightweight, a momma’s boy, a faggot, and a fool. No wonder Molly had thrown me over for a college boy, he said.
I decided I’d puke in my lap before I’d lock myself in the bathroom. I told myself I had nothing to hide from anymore. I gagged, tasting vodka though there was only whiskey and beer in my belly. God, how old are you now? I asked myself. Get over it. Just refuse it. Beat it back. I started sweating, realized I hadn’t eaten a thing all day. I told myself I wouldn’t feel as bad tomorrow if I let it go tonight. But I didn’t get up. At least I figured I hadn’t when I woke up in the morning on the floor beside the couch.
FOUR
JULIA COVERED HER MOUTH, TRYING NOT TO LAUGH, WHEN I bumped my head on the coffee table. I just glared at her and rubbed my head. She wore pressed jeans and a snug sweater, her face and hair already done up for the day. She sat on the coffee table. I hauled my wounded self up onto the couch.
“Good morning, sunshine,” she said.
I nodded. It hurt.
“I made coffee for you,” she said. “It’s still hot.”
She’d made coffee. I loved her so much at that moment I thought I’d cry.
She stood. “But you gotta get it yourself.” She walked into the kitchen.
I didn’t know if I could stand. I willed myself to forget everything I felt, to focus on only the thirty seconds it would take me to swallow that first sip. If I could just block everything out for half a minute, the railroad spike through my head, the molten iron in my stomach, the Brillo pad I’d been chewing in my sleep, if I could forget those things for only a few moments, I could make it. I thought of those people who walk on hot coals, who lift cars off their children. If they could do that, I could get to the coffeepot. I almost collapsed against the kitchen counter, but I made it. When the first mouthful of coffee hit me, I felt like the leper who’d touched Jesus’ robe. Halfway through my first cup, I thought I might enjoy a cigarette. I told my sister such.
“Chemically dependent much?” she asked. “Jimmy McGrath called again this morning. You should call him back.” She started whisking pancake batter in a big glass bowl.
I decided I wasn’t ready to watch that just yet. I waddled into the living room and found my cigarettes. I returned to the kitchen table and lit up. My chest burned and I coughed. I felt light-headed. I took another drag and then I felt perfectly normal.
“So Saint Jimmy’s coming down from on high for little ol’ John Jr.,” I said.
“Don’t be like that,” Julia said. “You have his number?”
“Back at the apartment,” I said.
She handed me a Post-it note with a phone number on it. “I thought that might be your excuse. He really wants you to call him. Have you talked to him since you and Virginia broke up?”
I slapped the note back on the wall beside the phone and held up my hand. “Later. He’s at work now anyway.”
Julia set the mixing bowl down, turning to continue the lecture. Something in her eyes went soft when she looked at me. “God, you look like death.” Her mouth tightened when she realized what she’d said.
I waved away the faux pas. “Thanks for taking the message. I’ve felt better. I went out last night.” I waited for her to ask where. She didn’t. “Down to Joyce’s.”
She turned away to pour the batter into a frying pan. “I went to the store this morning,” she said. “The fridge is stocked for the week.” She refilled my coffee cup while the pancakes sizzled in the pan. My stomach kicked but my mouth watered at the smell of them. “I didn’t get a paper. For obvious reasons.”
“Joyce extends his condolences,” I said. “He and I talked for a while last night.”
For the second time, she didn’t rise to the bait. She just stood at the stove, flipping the pancakes.
“So you were there with Purvis,” I said. “You two discuss anything I should know about?”
She set a plate of half a dozen enormous pancakes in front of me, put butter and syrup on the table. “Eat.” She sat across the table, half an apple in her hand. “I ate my share before you got up.”
I polished off half the stack before I spoke again. “Joyce told me some things. About the shooting. About the man, the car.”
“And?”
“And nothing,” I said. “It is what it is. I just wanted you to know that I know.” I swallowed the last of my coffee, got up for some more. “Not much for Waters and Dickhead to go on.”
Julia was quiet for a long time. “I wanted to see it. The corner.”
I crossed my arms, resting the warm coffee mug in the crook of my elbow. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She wouldn’t look at me. “I just wanted to. It was so . . .” She picked the seeds from the apple core, dropping them one by one on the kitchen table. “It was so ordinary.” She pressed each apple seed under her thumb, turning her hand until it cracked. “Where were you all night? Looking for a man in a car?”
She’d heard me banging the door open. I leaned back against the counter. “Maybe I should’ve been, but no, I wasn’t.”
She leaned back in her seat, crossed her arms over her chest. “Joyce stays open till after four now?”
“I took my time coming home.”
“Promise me,” she said, “promise me you won’t do anything stupid over this.” She spread her hands on the table, stared down at her fingers. “Waters is convinced you’re going to make a mess.” She grinned. “I don’t think he likes you much.” The grin disappeared. “I know he doesn’t trust you.”
“Fuck Waters,” I said. “He doesn’t know the first thing about me. I’m no fan of his, or his moron partner, either. The only reason I’m around at all is because of you.”
“I know that,” Julia said. “So promise me.”
“Anything stupid is a real broad category,” I said, returning to my seat.
She crossed her arms again, waiting.
“Okay, okay,” I said. It wasn’t an easy promise to make. Her asking for it annoyed me. Why was everybody so worried about me? All I wanted was to get the week over with. I noticed she was staring at me again. What? She wanted more?
“Messing with Purvis qualifies,” she said. “Forget about your history with him for the week.”
“He’s the one with the history problem. I’m over it; I’ve been over it. Remember? I won.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “I’m talking about me, not Molly.”
I pointed my fork at her. “Messing with you qualifies him for an attitude adjustment, cop or not. Just like last time. He’s already gotten his first warning.”
Julia stood to clear the table. First thing she did was take my fork away. “That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. Leave him alone.” She leaned over me, kissed my cheek. “I can handle Purvison my own.” She laughed as she loaded the dishwasher. “Is he really still pissed at you over Molly?”
“It’s more like again,” I said. I couldn’t help it. Maybe I wasn’t as over it as I thought. I couldn’t pass any chance to one-up him.
Julia swung around to look at me, dirty frying pan in her hand. “You’re not. Tell me you’re not. You told me she was practically married.”
Oops. Not somewhere I wanted to go right then. I glanced at my bare wrist. “Hey, look at the time. I thought you wanted to go to the Mall.”
The Mall was someplace else I didn’t want to go, but even that was better than sitting through my sister’s cross-examination. “I’ll go get ready,” I said, pushing up out of my seat. “Be back in a flash.”
I left Julia in the
kitchen, still frozen with shock. I grabbed some fresh jeans from my bag and headed upstairs to shower.
“WHEN I GET TO THE White House and get my finger on the button,” I told my sister as I pulled a clean T-shirt over my head, “the first thing I do is nuke the Mall.”
She stared at the TV, flipping channels with the remote.
“Day after Thanksgiving, crack of dawn,” I said. “Maybe earlier. I’m not looking to hurt anyone.” I sat next to her on the couch, pulled on my boots. “Let them impeach me, I’ll be smiling Tricky Dick-style all the way to the chopper. I wouldn’t serve a day in jail, either. The neo-hippies and trustafarians would flood in from Boulder and Seattle, spring me and make me the granola king. Dave Matthews would play the coronation and I’d get laid like crazy.”
Julia clicked off the tube. “So now you’re gonna be president?”
“Why not? Why let the rich boys have all the fun?” I tightened my belt. I was down to the last notch. “A couple more election cycles and I’ll be old enough. I’d be an awesome president. I don’t like anybody and I don’t owe anybody. We’d have a truly independent man in the Oval Office for a change.” I looked around the den. “Growing up in this house, I understand oppression and tyranny. I could operate with only the best interests of the little people at heart.”
She turned to me. “But the little people like their malls. Your sister likes her malls.”
“Ah,” I said, wagging a finger, “but is that in their best interests?”
Julia tossed my car keys in my lap. “I don’t think your past would hold up under scrutiny. And I don’t think Molly’d appreciate Dateline camped outside her door.”
“Molly needs a little more excitement in her life,” I said, standing, putting on my jacket. “We going or not? I want to get this over with.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m excited about,” she said, throwing her arm over my shoulder as we walked down the hall. “Spending some quality time with you.”
“Quality time?” I said. “At the Mall?”
She smiled at me as I locked the front door behind us, letting me know I was free to talk but she was going to ignore what I said. She looked at my car. “I can’t believe this old beast is still running,” she said. “It’s older than you.”
I studied my car, a gold Galaxie I’d bought for a couple grand half a dozen years ago. I’d earned the money washing dishes. She looked rough, dings and dents here and there from Staten Island potholes and drunken kisses at guardrails. Under the hood, though, all her parts were in order. Never stalled, always started on the first turn, even in cold weather. I’d never learned shit about cars and she’d cost me a fortune over the years. It was worth it though. When I was a kid, I’d wanted a convertible, something long and sleek, but when I went looking, long and sleek was way out of my price range.
Then I’d seen the Galaxie, parked on a North Shore side street, “For Sale” written in soap across the cracked windshield. It charmed me. I hadn’t seen an awful lot of them around Staten Island, for one, where the IROC and the Monte Carlo reigned as princes to the mighty King Cadillac. A week later I was paying for it, the retiring firefighter who was parting with it looking askance at the paper-clipped piles of twenties I dropped on his kitchen table. “Dishwashing,” I’d said. He’d nodded. “Tip-outs,” I’d said. “Uh-huh,” he’d said, still not looking at me, pulling the clips off and counting each stack to five hundred. I was about to tell him to keep his goddamn car if he didn’t like where the money came from, but then he handed me the keys.
Now, looking at her six years later, I realized that except for my leather jacket, I’d hung on to that car longer than anything else I’d ever had.
“She’s a beauty,” I said. “Never lets me down. Though the gas mileage stinks. It’d cost me a fortune if I ever drove it anywhere.”
“You love the old gal so much,” Julia said, “do her a favor and give her a bath.”
I pointed down the block and a half to Richmond Avenue. “Bus stops right there. Runs to the Mall all day, every day. I’ll be here waiting for you.”
“And miss my quality mall time with my brother?” she said. “Never.”
“That’s a cute expression, by the way,” I said. “‘Quality time.’ Back in therapy? What are we going to talk about next? ‘Closure’? Maybe we’ll ‘make amends’ and ‘turn it over’ while we’re at it.”
“Careful, big brother, your twelve steps are showing,” Julia teased. “That was your gig, remember?”
I walked around the car and unlocked the passenger-side door. I’d taken a shot at AA after I dropped out of college. I told my sister, and no one else. The way she reacted, you’d have thought I was Christ back from the dead. But I’d had all the Jesus I could handle in high school and had heard enough about what a loser I was at home. It didn’t take. Julia took it hard when I dropped out. I felt bad about it, but not bad enough, I realized, to go back to the meetings.
“Yeah, I remember,” I said. “Get in.”
Julia slid past me into her seat. I closed her door too hard. She jumped. Great. Great start to your quality time, I thought.
The night’s rain had cleared and the bright sunshine in my eyes revived my headache. The royal treatment at breakfast and the long hot shower had done wonders for my mood. Now, I could feel it turning black again. I slipped on my shades as I climbed behind the wheel. Julia had a pile of paperbacks on her lap, retrieved from the floor of the car. She read the authors’ names to me.
“Dennis Lehane, James Ellroy, Dashiell Hammett. Oh, a classic, Edgar Allan Poe. I remember him from what? When you were in the eighth grade?”
I said nothing. Just started the car and backed out of the driveway.
She opened the cover of the Poe. “Aww, look. Look what it says. John Sanders, Junior. Homeroom 8-203.”
“This is quality time?” I asked. “Breaking my balls?”
Her smile vanished; she turned away to look out the window. For the second time in three minutes, I felt like a complete dick. I fought my mood. I wanted Julia to have at least one afternoon of peace before the real shit started.
“Sorry,” I said. “Tim, from work, wanted to borrow those. The Poe is for his kid. He’s gotta do a paper on him for school.”
“That’s sweet of you,” she said.
“Tim’s covered a lot of shifts for me,” I said, “and he’s got a smart kid.”
She looked at the books one more time then tossed them into the backseat. “I thought maybe you were writing again. Remember those cop stories you wrote in high school?”
“Unfortunately. God, they were awful. Too much time watching Hill Street Blues.”
I’d spent hours locked in my room writing those stories. I thought they were brilliant. They were terrible, and all were minor variations on the same theme: the handsome rogue cop forced by a damsel in distress into bucking the captain’s orders one more time, his badge, his heart, and his life on the line. There was much kicking in of doors, much tumbling down staircases in cheap motels. Corny one-liners flew faster than bullets. Just the memory pained me.
“I can’t believe I ever showed those to anybody,” I said.
“They weren’t so bad,” Julia said. “I mean, you were fifteen, sixteen? They were good for your age. They were exciting. Lots of action. You should’ve stuck with it. Every time I watch reruns of NYPD Blue or CSI, I think of you and those stories. All that tough-guy talk, always a pretty girl in there somewhere.” She smiled. “Mom liked them, except for the curse words.”
Fresh Kills Page 7
