The Whites: A Novel

by Richard Price

Marilys stopped eating, stared at her plate. “I got a better idea.”

  “What’s that.”

  “Can I say?”

  Milton waited.

  “My mother.”

  “Your mother.”

  “If she comes to live with us, she can help me with Sofia and the baby. And she loves to clean.”

  “Your mother . . .”

  “All I have to do is go back and get her.”

  “To Guatemala?”

  “She’s never been on a plane before.”

  Sofia quietly took a shrimp off Marilys’s plate, dipped it in the ketchup atop her father’s fries, neither of them reacting.

  “You don’t want her to?” Marilys said. “It’s your house.”

  “Our house.”

  “Well, you’re the man of it, so whatever you say goes.”

  Sofia took another shrimp, a handful of fries.

  “Excuse me for a minute,” Milton said, then rose from the table, Marilys tracking him with anxious eyes as he made his way to the front door.

  A wife and two kids, OK, Milton mulling it over as he paced the empty parking lot.

  But the mother-in-law . . .

  Then: Think of it like this: drop the “in-law” part and that leaves you with “mother.”

  Which, given that he had just lost his aunt Pauline, the closest thing he’d had to one, was not so bad.

  When he returned to the table, he found Marilys, apparently having lost her appetite, feeding the rest of her breaded dinner to Sofia piece by piece.

  “She’s good with kids?” Milton asked.

  “She raised me. Raised my sons too.”

  “How about otherwise.”

  “Not great.”

  “Pain in the ass?”

  “Kind of.”

  Sofia had become way too quiet, Milton wondering if it was ever possible to truly talk over a kid’s head.

  To repeat . . . New mother, new wife, new son, all in one swoop.

  Then, studying his already-child, working her way through the rest of his untouched fries: New grandmother, too.

  “All right,” he said, lightly slapping the table, “go get her.”

  Marilys put a hand to her heart, huffed in relief. “When should I go?”

  “How about tomorrow? I’ll cover the airfare.”

  “I swear to God”—touching his hand—“if you don’t like her she can go right back, it’s not like she doesn’t have family.”

  “Just go get her.”

  “I can save you money on the tickets,” she said excitedly, “my cousin’s a travel agent.”

  “Well, there you go,” wishing she’d gone and come back already.

  Marilys leaned across the table and kissed him on the mouth again, which this time made him tense up given that his daughter was right there.

  “Oh, Milton,” Marilys saying his name for the second time in his life.

  “Oh, Milton,” Sofia aped, her eyes as lightless as pebbles.

  Later that night it took him most of a bottle of Chartreuse to work up the resolve to quit drinking. He had never been anybody’s idea of a light drinker, but since the day he first saw the adult Carmen in St. Ann’s, he’d gone completely off the rails, each night worse than the last, waking up every morning on the couch wondering how the one a.m. sports recap had morphed into cartoons.

  Well, no excuse for that now, Milton pouring what remained of the bottle into the sink.

  Still drunk on the liquor that hadn’t gone down the drain, he took to wandering the house in order to start reassigning rooms: his first wife’s sewing nook now a nursery for his son, the sometime fuck-pad guest room—no need for that anymore—going to his mother-in-law, as well as the nearest of the three bathrooms, hers alone. What else. Divide the den and make a playroom. All the hallway closets going to all the ladies. Then, running out of steam, he finally headed off for his own bedroom, walking in and seeing it for the first time as the gray cell it had become.

  CHAPTER 11

  A five a.m. after-hours bar shooting in Inwood kept Billy on the job until ten in the morning, and when he finally made it home at eleven, still pondering his interview with Ramlear Castro, he was startled to see TARU techs everywhere. To cover the block from intersection to intersection, they were mounting Argus cameras on telephone poles, as well as on the house itself, the buzz and whine of all this work chasing away any hope he had of immediate sleep.

  Thirty minutes later, as he was standing at the kitchen counter flipping through the New York Post and sipping his morning Cape Codder, Pavlicek called. This time Billy picked up.

  “You’re screening my calls?”

  “What?” Billy too tired to come up with any coherent excuse.

  “Look, I was just trying to reach out to apologize for getting so crazed on you yesterday. It’s just that I have so much shit raining down on my head right now I might wind up moving in there with you.”

  “In where with me.” Looking out the kitchen window, Billy spotted Whelan and his sleepover date making out on the kids’ trampoline.

  “Are you serious?” Pavlicek said quietly.

  Christ, Billy recalling that barren, echo chamber of an apartment with the stadium view.

  “Speaking of which, I talked to my guys and I can have it ready for you day after tomorrow. All you’ll need are towels and sheets.”

  “‘My guys.’ You’re always talking about your guys,” Billy stalled. “The only guys I have are my kids.”

  “Yeah well, you have your squad, too.”

  Billy put the phone to his chest. Just say it.

  “Hey, John, I’m sorry to put you through all that trouble, but I talked it over with Carmen, and we’re going to make a home stand.”

  Silence on the other end, then: “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, yeah, Intel sent over a Threat Assessment Team, TARU’s out there right now putting up cameras, Yonkers PD is running directed patrols, it’s like the fortress of solitude over here. It’s nuts to pull up stakes.”

  Another bloated pause. “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “I mean, given the circumstances.”

  “Because you don’t sound like you.”

  “Yeah? Who do I sound like?” Then telling himself, Don’t strain for jokes.

  “You’re not ticked because I lost it over Sweetpea, are you?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Is that why you weren’t taking my calls?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Billy said.

  Whelan and his tenant, still in a kissing clinch, came into the kitchen through the rear door.

  “I mean, how hung up are you over that skell?”

  “John, I’m not hung up on him, I was just curious,” Billy said carefully. “And now I’m not. Listen, I got to go feed the kids, I’ll call you later.”

  “Just another Smirnoff morning,” Whelan announced, nodding to the bottle.

  “It’s either that or chloroform,” Billy said.

  The tenant went silently to the refrigerator, took out the milk, and poured some into a saucepan that was already sitting on a back burner.

  “Hung up on who,” Whelan asked.

  “What?” Billy stalling once again.

  “You said, ‘I’m not hung up on him.’”

  “Sweetpea Harris,” Billy said. “He’s gone AWOL, and I think he bought the farm.”

  “No shit,” Whelan pouring himself a coffee. “And John’s giving you grief over that? What for?”

  Billy took another sip of his drink.

  “Do me a favor and tell me something,” he said. “The other day, when I asked you why you were so hung up on Pavlicek . . .”

  “Me?” Whelan reared back.

  “You never answered my question.”

  “What question.”

  “Why you were all over me about Pavlicek.”

  “How was I all over you?”

  Billy stared at him. “Jimmy, do you know something
I don’t?”

  “Like what?”

  “Jesus Christ, look out that window,” Billy exploded, pointing to the TARUs crawling all over the front yard. “And that window, and that one,” Billy spinning like a bottle. “I’m getting shredded here, I’m juggling chain saws, so if I ask you for a straight answer on something and you start playing me like I’m some idiot?”

  Whelan held up a hand. “If I tell you this, you cannot tell anyone, you understand?”

  “Is it his health?”

  Whelan blinked at him. “What’s wrong with his health?”

  “Then just say.”

  Whelan took a long pull off his coffee. “He’s trying to buy my building from the owner. But it’s kind of very delicate right now, very touch and go, and I just thought maybe he said something to you about it.”

  Billy stared at him. “That’s it?”

  “What do you mean, ‘That’s it.’ Are you kidding me? He swings this deal, I go from super to building manager at twice the pay. And if that works out, he’s going to throw me more buildings. I mean, you know me, I don’t need much, but I would like a little more than I got.”

  One of the security cameras fell out of a tree, nearly braining a passing TARU before smashing against a lawn chair.

  “Anyways, this thing with Sweetpea going off the grid?” Whelan rinsed out his cup. “You should tell Redman when you see him today.”

  “Why am I seeing Redman today?”

  “The funeral.”

  “What funeral?”

  “For your kid.”

  Billy went white.

  “I would go,” Whelan said, reaching for his jacket, “but I have a guy coming for the boiler.”

  The tenant poured the heated milk into a glass and handed it to Billy. “Para dormir,” she said, laying her cheek on her palm and closing her eyes.

  Edna Worthy was the only mourner to show up for her granddaughter Martha’s funeral service that afternoon, so the folding chairs that lined Redman’s living room–chapel were populated by a handful of last-minute stand-ins: Redman, his father, his wife, Nola, holding their son, Rafer, four of the old men who hung out every day in the windowless reception area of the parlor like it was their old-man clubhouse, two dragooned cops from the Twenty-eighth Precinct Community Affairs Unit, and Billy, who was paying for the whole thing.

  “But Jesus said, ‘Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven,’” the four-hundred-pound minister intoned from the pulpit before pausing to take a hit of asthma spray.

  “Suffer, you see, in the, the parlance of those times, did not mean to endure pain, it did not mean to put up with mistreatment. What it meant was to permit, to allow,” pausing again, this time to reach for the diaper cloth draped over the shoulder of his three-piece box-plaid suit and swipe at his face. “You see, in those days children were not allowed to address adults directly, not allowed to speak up without the permission of another adult. Seen but not heard, I know you know that saying, and not just from olden times, I’m sure many of you heard it growing up—when Daddy is talking to Uncle at the dinner table, when Momma is talking to Auntie, you sat there, ate your peas, and maybe raised your hand for permission. But Jesus was saying, ‘I don’t want no middleman between me and these kids, I don’t stand on manners, I don’t need no hand raising, no permission slips, no velvet-rope doorman, just let them kids in, and today, today, Marrisa has come into the club direct . . .”

  “Martha,” her grandmother muttered, but loud enough.

  “She has come into the club direct, has gone, in fact, straight to the VIP room, where He is waiting for her with two chilled magnums of Holy Ghost love.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Billy whispered.

  “You said a hundred dollars for the celebrant,” Redman whispered back. “That’s what you get for a hundred dollars.”

  “So what’s going on,” Billy asked, as a prelude to bringing up Sweetpea.

  “Later,” Redman said.

  “‘Blessed are the gentle,’” the celebrant crooned, “‘they shall have the earth as their heritage. Blessed are those who mourn; they shall be comforted . . .’”

  “Her name is Martha,” the grandmother low-blared again, staring at the floor.

  Nola passed her son to Redman, got up, and took a seat next to the old woman, putting an arm around her shoulders and staring without expression at the casket.

  After a few minutes of fussing in his father’s lap, Rafer started to cry, and Redman, needing both hands to rise from his chair so he could leave the room, briefly passed him on to Billy. Trying to stabilize the boy, Billy advertently pressed the feeding tube protruding from the kid’s stomach, then jerked his hand away as if he had touched a snake. Embarrassed by his reaction, he reflexively looked to Redman, now waiting for them in the doorway, the grimly knowing look on his face burning Billy to the core.

  “So what’s going on?” Billy repeated, once they were settled in Redman’s cubicle.

  “There’s some big-foot kid going around the neighborhood,” Redman said, dropping Rafer into his activity walker, then locking the wheels. “Says he’s working for a charity, selling boxes of candy bars to the store owners, fifty dollars a box, the implication being that if they say no they’re gonna get their ass beat or something thrown through the window. Half the damn neighborhood’s got those things by the cash register.”

  “For real?”

  “Everybody say he’s all soft-spoken about it, but it’s like, Make no mistake.”

  “You want me to do something?”

  “I want to do something,” Redman said.

  “Did he try it on you?”

  “Hell no. People are too scared of this place. It’s like, muscle an undertaker? Who’s going to take on that kind of karma.”

  Enough.

  “Can I tell you something?”

  Redman waited.

  “I think Sweetpea Harris was murdered.”

  “Did somebody tell you it was my birthday? Because it is.”

  “Well, many happy returns.”

  “Who did the honors?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “Me?”

  “He was your guy.”

  “My guy, huh?” Redman said. “How’d you come to know about this.”

  Billy hesitated, then thinking, In for a penny, he began running down his interviews with Donna Barkley and Ramlear Castro, all the while bracing for another Pavlicek-style outburst about keeping his priorities straight.

  “So the window witness tells me that this guy gets out of his car, walks to the back, ducks some shots, and then empties a clip into the trunk. Which to me sounds like maybe, probably, there was someone in there with a gun, like maybe the driver forgot to pat him down before he stuffed his ass inside.”

  “Did he give a description of the shooter?”

  “Not really.” Then: “He said he had straight hair, like a white guy, maybe a Latino.”

  “He saw that from the sixth floor but nothing else?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Well then,” Redman rubbed what was left of his receding corkscrew crop, “include me out.”

  “Done.”

  “So I hear you’re moving into one of Pavlicek’s apartments,” Redman said.

  “Actually, we’re not.”

  “Just as well.”

  “Me and him, he and I, we’re not getting on right now,” Billy said, testing the waters to gauge how far he could take this. There would be no coming back from saying too much—that he knew for sure.

  From the chapel they could hear Redman’s father up on the podium singing “He’s Prepared a Place for Me” in a high and furry voice.

  How far . . .

  “He’s seeing a hematologist, did you know that?” Billy said.

  “Who is, John?”

  Billy didn’t answer.

  “Man, you’re all full of news today.”

  “I
’m just telling you.”

  “The hell he is,” Redman said, sounding annoyed.

  How far . . .

  “I hired someone to find out.”

  Redman’s stare could have stopped a train.

  “I know,” Billy said, “but I was worried about him. I am worried about him.”

  “I don’t understand why you couldn’t just straight out ask him yourself.”

  “I did,” Billy said. “He lied to me.”

  A dapperly dressed funeral cosmetics salesman, pulling a sample case on rollers, poked his head into the cubicle.

  “Let me ask you something,” Redman said, gesturing for the salesman to step off for a minute. “And I’m not even talking about any shit in the past, but do you have anything going on in your life right now that you don’t want anybody knowing about?”

  Billy didn’t answer.

  “Exactly. So whatever the hell is going on with Pavlicek these days?” Redman reached down to lift his crying son out of the walker. “If he wants to tell people, he’ll tell people. Meanwhile, why don’t you just respect the man’s privacy and leave him be.”

  Too far.

  Coming home at two in the afternoon, Billy walked in on Carmen and her brother weeping up a storm on the living room couch.

  “What happened,” Billy said.

  “Nothing,” Victor said, wiping his eyes. “It’s all good.”

  “He’s freaking out about being a parent,” Carmen announced with unnerving happiness. “And he didn’t know where else to come.”

  “I feel like an ass,” Victor said.

  “You and Richard are going to be the best parents,” she gushed.

  “I kill aspidistras,” Victor trying to laugh at himself.

  “Hey, you have that dog, right?” Billy just wanting to keep this good thing going.

  “It’s Richard’s dog.”

  “I was just telling him,” Carmen said, “no one was more freaked about having children than me. The dreams I had before Dec was born?”

  Billy nodded, thinking, You still have them.

  “I swear, Victor, I’m going to help you every step of the way,” Carmen tearing up again. “Those babies are going to love you.”

  “Thank you,” Victor whispered huskily, holding her close.

  “Think of it like this,” Billy said to his brother-in-law out in the driveway. “Cavemen had kids, so can you.”