by Alex Flinn
“Michael-Michael Bo-Bichael!” a voice sang behind me.
“Yeah?” I stopped him before he could go into the Banana-fana part.
“Going back tonight?”
“Where?” I walked faster, not wanting to talk about it.
“Where?” Karpe imitated. “The fair, the scene of the crime.” Karpe leaned toward me. “You’ll get lucky tonight. I can feel it.”
I could feel it too. Or feel something anyway. And I could hear Kirstie’s words, I never felt that way before. I could almost see them, as if they were burned on the air by a skywriter.
But I kept walking toward the cafeteria. Problem with Karpe was he didn’t take a hint. Most people—most normal people—if you ignored them, answered their questions with single words, sped up when they tried to walk with you, they bought a clue. Not Karpe. He just sped up his own Frankenstein walk. Only thing that worked with guys like that was brutal honesty.
“Why don’t you go?” I said. As in, leave.
But Karpe didn’t get it. “Wish I could. That girl was finer than frog hair—but you’re the one she’s hot for.”
Sometimes even that didn’t work. We reached the cafeteria door. Though I’d hoped not to walk in with Karpe, that was obviously wishful thinking. So I held the door for him, let him get a head start. I lagged behind.
“Where we sitting, Mikey-boy?”
I took a single empty seat, away from where we’d sat before. “I’m sitting here.”
“Great.” Karpe leaned toward the freshmen sitting in the seats across. “I’m sure these guys won’t mind shoving over so we can brainstorm your next move.” The freshmen, perceptively realizing the danger of arguing with a madman, shoved over. Karpe said, “I’ll go buy my lunch.” Then he was gone.
It was raining out, so the caf was more crowded than usual. My sandwiches were peanut butter and banana. I never used to bring that because they grossed people out. Now I didn’t care. I wanted to repulse people.
A tray slid onto the table across from me.
“Back already?” I was almost looking forward to abusing Karpe some more.
But it wasn’t Karpe. It was Tristan.
He wrinkled his nose. “Whatcha eating, Mike?”
I put down the sandwich. “Someone’s sitting there.”
“Since when is Julian Karpe someone?”
Since he didn’t sit there with Tedder making Loser Ls at me.
“What do you want, Tris?”
Tristan fumbled with his spork, even though he’d gotten a hoagie. Tris was one of those hyper guys who always had to be doing something with his hands. Finally, he looked up.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I know. I mean … what’s up with you, man? You quit the team. You stop talking to everyone. You’re picking fights, and then you’re hanging with…” He kept struggling with the spork wrapper. “With Karpe, for God’s sake. The guy is a Black & Decker power tool. And I heard about English class, you babbling about death and shit. What’s with that?”
He poked the spork tines through the plastic, trying to rip it. I grabbed it and pulled away the wrapper. I held it out of his reach.
“What’s your point?” I said.
“My point is, you used to be this perfectly normal person. I mean, someone you could have a conversation with. Now…” He reached for the spork. I played keep-away with it until he gave up. “Now you walk around here like some kind of terrorist. I hear the guidance counselors started a file on you in case you go postal and shoot up the school.”
“Are you done?”
“No. I know you’ve decided I’m scum, but we’ve been tight since middle school. I had to … what’s the deal, Mike?”
For a second I thought I should tell him. Like talking to Tris would make things All Better.
“Look,” Tris said, “Alex Ramos is having another party Thursday. You should go.”
“That’s what this is about? A party?”
“Not just a party—the party. At his dad’s place out in Horse Country. He hired a band, The Irritants, and they’ve got a pool, a hot tub, and—most important—no neighbors to complain.”
“A party,” I repeated.
Tristan sighed and reached for the spork. I gave it to him. “It’s not about partying, Mike. It’s about being normal again. I want you to come. Can you please come?”
What a joke. What did I think—if I told my football buddy, he’d swoop in like Spiderman and fix everything?
“Okay. You asked. You did everything you had to. Now leave me alone.”
“Mike…”
“Get out of here!”
He left, and I went back to my peanut butter and bananas.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Karpe announced his return. He sat, taking a monster bite of his sloppy joe, then talked with food still hanging from his mouth. “So, what are we going to do with you, Mikey Mouse?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m going to the fair.”
Before I could go, I had to talk to Mom.
When I got home, she was pulling into her spotless garage in the red Porsche, Walker’s extra car that he let her drive the rare times he allowed her to go out. “Where were you?” I asked.
“Out.” Breezy, staying in the car. “Walker made me an appointment at the Mandarin.”
“The Mandarin?”
“The spa.”
“Well, yeah. I know that, but…”
“We’re going out tonight. Walker has an important dinner. The Bar Association chose him as Man of the Year.”
She looked at me from the car’s low seat. Her skin—fresh from a facial, I realized—looked smooth, bright as glass. Then a shadow crossed her face.
“Man of the year, huh?” I said. “They don’t know him real well.”
“Michael, I know he’s not perfect. I know he gets a little crazy with work, a little—”
“I think you’re the one who’s crazy!” I slammed my hand on the car’s window. “How can you just … sit here like nothing’s wrong when he treats you like this? Treats us like this!”
“Please, Michael, I can’t…” She looked at the window, at the handprint I’d left there, and I knew she wanted to wipe it off. She was waiting for me to leave, so she could. “Walker gave you money to go out tonight, he told me. Why don’t you go have some fun for once?”
“Fun? Why don’t I just go and let him strangle you?”
I didn’t know why I kept going over and over this, when her answer was always the exact same no. But I kept giving myself hope that this day would be different, that she would realize. She wouldn’t. We both stared at the handprint some more.
Finally, I looked away. My eyes locked on a hammer hanging on the garage wall.
I grabbed it.
“Should I smash it?” I yelled.
“What?”
I held the hammer a few inches away from the window, from my handprint. “Should I smash it? Is that what makes you stay with him? The clothes? The car? The trips to the spa?”
“No!” She was flying against my arm, her glass face broken now. “No!”
“If I smashed it, you’d have to leave. Wouldn’t you?”
With my arm, I made a motion toward the window. She screamed.
I kept going. “You would, wouldn’t you? He’d kill you if I broke it.”
I felt something in my throat. I thought it was a sob, but I realized it was laughter. I tried another swing, and again, she pushed against me, her will stronger than I’d seen in months.
“Is that what you want?” she yelled. “To break things? To be like him?”
She stopped pushing against my arm. I could have smashed the window right then if I’d wanted. But I didn’t. I wasn’t like him. I couldn’t be like him.
“Do you know what it’s like,” I said, “to go out, not knowing what I’ll find when I come back? If you’ll be gone, or…?”
“I’m fine,” she said, still keeping her eyes on my arm. “You should go tonight, Michael. Be a teenager
. When I was your age, I didn’t think of anything but cheerleading and getting away from Grandma Mavis to go to the beach. You shouldn’t have to worry about me.”
“Yeah, I shouldn’t, but … how can I not?”
She reached into her purse and took out her beeper. “Take it. I won’t need it. We’ll be together, so he won’t call. You keep it. Have fun. And if there’s any problem, I’ll page you.”
“Right. Have fun.”
She kept holding out the beeper. I realized I still had the hammer inches from the glass.
I dropped it and took the beeper.
THIS YEAR
“Why are you representing me?” I ask Angela when she gets back.
“Excuse me?”
“Why are you representing me? Why waste your time talking to me?” And then the question I’ve been turning over in my mind since the last time I saw her. “What’s in it for you?”
She uncaps the pen she’s holding and draws a circle on her legal pad.
“Julian asked me to see you,” she says. “I wanted to make him happy.”
I put up my hand. “Not good enough. I know Karpe, and he can be bought cheap. A nice birthday gift, a home-cooked meal, maybe a stick of gum or something—he’s good to go. You don’t need to spend hours with me to impress him. Next reason.”
She sort of smiles at that. “I guess, it’s an interesting case.”
“Right. You’re taking time away from your real clients, from Mr. Pereira and whoever else, and working for me for no pay because I’m interesting?”
“Yes, actually. I worked for the public defender’s office when I first started practicing. Now I mostly do corporate stuff—safe, but boring. This is something different.”
“Then why’d you quit the public defender’s?”
“I got tired of representing guilty people. I hated using my very expensive legal training to think up an angle to get a suspended sentence for some guy who was caught selling smack in front of an elementary school. I understood why those guys were entitled to legal representation. I just didn’t want to be the one doing it.”
“So why do it for me?”
“Ah, that’s an easier question. You’re innocent.”
I look at her a second and think about what she said the state attorney would ask me. I think: Am I innocent? Am I really?
I give up on my quiz. “I think what I need is to see my mother. Can I see her?”
She looks uncertain for the first time. “Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Will that be a problem?”
“Just… I guess I’m feeling protective of you. You say you can’t handle the idea of her in jail. What about seeing her there? I’m sure she’s changed a lot in a year. It could be quite a shock for you.”
I sort of smile at that. “Angela… Ms. Guerra. It is really sweet of you to want to protect me from the awful truth. But, you see, I undid the ropes once when he tied her to the bed before he went to work.” Angela sort of flinches, and I add, “And you want to know the really screwed-up part of it? After I untied her, she still made excuses for him, still gave me her b.s. about the sanctity of marriage and how if we didn’t do stuff to upset him, he wouldn’t get so mad. So when I got home from school that day, I had to tie her back up so he wouldn’t find out.”
“What was he so angry about?”
“He’d lost his keys and he was convinced she’d taken them. To leave him.”
Angela nods. “I’m sorry, Michael. I know how hard it must have been.”
“You don’t understand. You don’t if you think seeing her in jail would be too much for me. It’s a lot better than seeing her dead.”
She puts the cap back on her pen. “I do understand, Michael. I guess that’s the other part of the reason I want to help you. I grew up in a home like yours. My parents used to fight so much, and I remember lying in bed, hoping the neighbors wouldn’t hear because that was all that was left to hope for. That, and that I’d never end up like my mother.”
I glance out the window now, at a boat going by. But really I’m picturing little Angela, cowering in her bed.
“So what you asked me just now—all that stuff about how I did nothing?”
“I knew you couldn’t have done anything. I knew how crummy you must feel.”
“But you kept asking me anyway?”
“You needed to know what you’ll be up against in court.”
I glance out the window. “What did you do?” I say.
“Do?” She seems surprised by the question. “I didn’t do anything. I was six years old. And seven, and eight, and nine—and after the first hundred times it happens, you sort of know she’ll never leave. This was my real father, so it had gone on all my life. I’m not sure I even realized leaving was an option. So I’d just lie in bed, waiting for it to be over until next time.”
“No,” I say. “I mean, what did you do, eventually, to get away?” I’m thinking about my friends at the carnival. There, stories like Angela’s are common. So many carnies are running away from one thing or another.
But Angela smiles. “That’s the good part. I grew up. I went to law school and lived my life and tried to forget. The day I graduated, I looked out into the audience and saw my parents sitting there, and I knew I’d gotten my wish—I’d never be like her. That’s how I got away.”
I say, “I want to see my mother, Angela. I need to talk to her. I think I have to find out what she wants me to do. And…”
“What?”
“I miss her.”
Angela nods. “I’ll take care of it.”
LAST YEAR
“You look like my kid.”
The guy running the hamburger stand was missing teeth, but that didn’t keep him from grinning. I was at the fair again, minus Karpe, getting a burger for Kirstie, who was working. When she saw me, she’d smiled, but said, “You can’t hang here while I’m working—hurts my business.”
“How?”
She shrugged. “Gotta work the crowd.”
“You mean come on to guys?”
“Something like that.”
“Is that what you were doing with me last night? Working the crowd?”
“Don’t be a child.” Which seemed strange to say, considering she was, maybe, three or four years older. She brushed my hand with hers. “What do you think I was doing?”
And while I was thinking, she sent me off to get the burger. “Tell Hank it’s for me.”
“You’re sure you’re not my kid?” the burger guy—Hank—asked.
“What?” Not sure I’d heard him right over the music from the Tilt-a-Whirl.
“I got fourteen kids. Gets so’s you can’t remember who’s who. You just say, ‘Hey, kid,’ and see who shows up.”
He looked at me, seeming to expect a response and not finishing the burger. So finally I said, “My name’s Michael.”
“I might have a Michael.” He gestured at the onions—did I want any? I shook my head.
“Fourteen kids.” Thinking about what Walker would say about that, about this man’s contribution to the gene pool. “Do you see them all?”
“Every chance I get. They live in Mobile with their ma.” He looked around. “But this ain’t Mobile, is it?”
“No.” Then, dimly remembering that Mobile was in Alabama, I added, “But it’s the next state over. Maybe next week?”
“Nope.” He added ketchup without asking. “Not going to Mobile next. Don’t rightly know where I’m going, but it ain’t Mobile.”
He looked suddenly sad. I felt Mom’s beeper in my pocket. It hadn’t gone off yet. Maybe it was like when you took an umbrella, how it never rained then. I hoped so. I realized she hadn’t given me her cell phone because Walker would have noticed. God, I hated Walker.
I said, “Why not get a job where you’d see them more, not travel?”
He shrugged. “Sawdust in the blood. I been doing this since I was sixteen. Money’s good. Just wouldn’t seem right, staying in one place, la
ying brick or selling sneakers. No, this is the only life for me.” He squinted at me. “You’re sure you’re not my kid?”
And for a moment I wanted to say, Yeah, Dad. Yeah, it’s me. Michael. And join him in the family business. I wanted to be someone else.
But I said, “No.”
Another gap-toothed smile. “Didn’t think so.”
I headed back toward the games, past the sign for racing pigs, past the fountain where a group of African acrobats performed contortions. I didn’t remember much about my dad, but I think he had all his teeth. After that, it got pretty foggy. Mom said it was better not remembering. “I’d block him out too, if I could. But I’m too old.”
I always laughed at that. Mom wasn’t old. She was beautiful. And there were plenty of men around to notice. Men who took us to the beach, the movies, or the fair. One guy had even won me the big prize. But then there was the guy who’d locked me in the closet so I wouldn’t bother him and Mom while they … and, come to think about it, it might have been the same guy.
I walked back and offered Kirstie the burger.
“I’ve hunted and gathered,” I said, grinning. “Didn’t know if you wanted onions.”
“Oh, it’s not for me.” She leaned to take a dollar from an older guy—who got a long look down her tank top in exchange. “I can’t eat from those grab joints all the time. It’s for you.”
“But…” The guy was still looking.
“You looked hungry.”
I realized I was. I’d meant to eat before leaving home, but after talking to Mom, I just left. I glanced at my watch. After seven. Walker was home now. I touched the beeper in my pocket.
“Yeah,” I said to Kirstie. “Thanks.” It was weird, her wanting to take care of me like that. I realized I wanted to take care of her. I wanted to stop old pervs from drooling over her body, for one thing. Maybe I just wanted to take care of something.
Then, “Oops.” She ran over to help a man on the other side.
When she came back several minutes later, she said, “Why don’t you walk around a little, see the livestock or something? I’m busy tonight.”
I glared at her, walking away, but only when I was sure she didn’t see me. It was bullshit, her asking me to come back only to blow me off. I shouldn’t stay. She was just a piece of ass among hundreds of other pieces of ass. I should go home.
