IT WAS HOURS LATER when at last they hit the outskirts of San Francisco. Courtney finally seemed ready to talk. “True,” she said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Okay,” he said. “Shoot.”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Try me.”
“Suleeta thinks you need to break it off with Shauna.”
“She said that?”
“She did. That and more.”
“Shauna needs a man who wants to marry her and have kids. Right? And that guy is not me. Is that it?”
“Something like that.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s not just that you’re not right for Shauna, True.”
“What else?”
“Shauna is not right for you either.”
“Who says?”
“Suleeta.”
“Excuse me, Court, but maybe Shauna’s mother doesn’t really know what’s best for me.”
“I think she’s right, True.”
“You and Suleeta think you know what I need better than I do?”
“Maybe.”
“And how did the two of you come to this conclusion, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“You know how you’ve hardly heard from Shauna since everything happened.”
“What about it?”
“There is a reason why.”
“And that reason would be … ?”
“She is not alone over there, True.”
“No. Jerry is there with her.”
“And so is Pablo.”
“Pablo?”
“He’s been there all along. He flew over there with them.”
“Pablo?”
“Suleeta told me. She thinks Shauna is wrong not to tell you herself.”
“Pablo as in Pablo? Former fiancé, heartbreaker and all-around jerk?”
“One and the same.”
“Damn.”
“I’m so sorry, Truely.”
“Pablo?”
“I know.”
WHEN TRUELY WAS A YOUNGER MAN he might have turned to a bottle of Jack Daniel’s to help him face the truth. It had seemed to work back in high school when he was trying to deal with Mrs. Seacrest. He and Mose had drunk her into oblivion on more than one occasion. But liquor didn’t soothe him now like it had then. He couldn’t remember the last time he had gotten drunk.
He and Courtney had returned to his loft only to find the place cleaned, his furniture slightly rearranged, his rugs laid at angles, his closets and cabinets reorganized and six large trash bags of what Myra referred to as “stuff for the Goodwill.” He hadn’t even bothered to look and see what she was giving away. He simply trusted her on the matter. He wrote checks to Myra and Lola for their labor of love even if he considered it to be just as annoying as it was helpful. He kissed all the women good-bye, watched them leave and rejoiced in being home. Alone.
Truely’s response to losing Shauna surprised him — in its absence. He wanted to honor her with some degree of heartbreak and suffering, and so he waited for those feelings to present. Meanwhile, he went on with his life feeling oddly accepting of this inevitable turn of events.
Fifteen
WHEN ARNOLD’S PHONE CALL CAME Truely had forgotten who Arnold was. “Who?” he repeated.
“Remember man, at Suleeta’s. We was talking.”
“Suleeta’s?”
“She give me your number. Said call you when I get here. Maybe you can come down here and get me?”
“Get you? Where are you?”
“Down here at the bus station.”
“I don’t understand,” Truely said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m gon stay in Shauna’s place, you know, until she get back. She got me hooked up with a job at a furniture store. Delivery man.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“You the only dude I know up here, man. The only friend I got.”
The word friend, falsely used, echoed in Truely’s mind. He did not know Arnold. But he did know that he and Arnold were not friends. Either the kid was naive — or else he was playing Truely for a fool.
“You don’t remember me?” Arnold asked.
“Sure,” Truely said.
“Then you gon come get me?”
“Give me twenty minutes,” Truely said. “Meet me out front. Silver Escalade. I don’t want to have to try to park down there.”
“All right then.” Arnold hung up.
“Damn,” Truely mumbled. “What the hell?”
FROM A DISTANCE Truely saw Arnold standing in front of the bus station with a couple of red suitcases on wheels that he recognized as Shauna’s. Arnold looked smaller and younger than Truely remembered. He wasn’t wearing a jacket and it was cold.
They shook hands and loaded the suitcases in the car. Truely felt like a crotchety old uncle as he slung the luggage inside. “Hope you got a jacket packed in here. It gets cold.”
“Nice ride, man,” was all Arnold said.
ONCE THEY WERE on their way Truely said, “Okay, why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on.”
“Suleeta said she gon call you and explain.”
“Well, she didn’t.”
“You pissed, right?”
“Just tell me what you’re doing here.”
“Shauna got this unoccupied apartment, right? She paying rent on it and ain’t nobody staying in it, right? So Suleeta, she think I ought to get out on my own, come up here and stay in Shauna’s place. Shauna call this friend of hers and get me a job delivering office furniture. So then I’m set. Ain’t nothing to keep me from coming up here.”
“What about school?”
“I dropped out.”
“That’s stupid, man. You need to finish school. Suleeta shouldn’t encourage you to quit school. What is she thinking?”
“Ima take the GED, man. No problem.”
“Yeah, yeah. No problem.”
“What you so mad about?”
“You’re a kid. You need your education. You don’t need to be up here moving furniture when you haven’t even finished high school.”
“Ima work it out, man.”
“I bet.”
“So Suleeta don’t tell you nothing about me coming.”
“Not a damn thing.”
“You don’t want to be bothered, man, you just let me out right here.” Arnold reached for the door handle and tried to open the door in moving traffic, but Truely had the lock on.
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Truely said. “You’re just proving my point. You’re not ready to be up here on your own like this.”
“Sometimes you just got to go on and do things, man. Ready or not.”
DOUG HAD LEFT A KEY for Arnold under the front doormat. It was a wonder a vagrant hadn’t located it and made off with Shauna’s valuables. Truely should have just dropped Arnold off out front and let it go at that, but curiosity or some worse urge made him want to go inside and see the apartment again. He wasn’t sure why. It looked like Doug had gone in and made a half-hearted attempt to make Shauna’s bed. Otherwise things were the same. Messy, as if someone had left in a hurry, which Shauna had.
“So this Shauna’s place?” Arnold said.
“This is it,” Truely echoed.
“It’s all right.” Arnold dropped his suitcase and walked over to the window to look out. “Little bit small.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Truely said.
“You calling me a beggar, man?”
“Just a saying. That’s all.”
“I ain’t no beggar. I ain’t even all that crazy about coming up here. It’s Suleeta wanted me to come.”
“Well, you’re here now,” Truely said.
Arnold walked over and opened the refrigerator. It was empty. Doug must have come in and cleaned it out for Shauna too. Truely wondered if Arnold had any spending money. That was what his daddy used to call it — spending money. The kid was probably hungry. There he wa
s opening the kitchen cabinets probably looking for something to eat.
“Look man,” Truely said. “You unpack your stuff. I’ll go down the street to the store and get you some food. Not much on hand here.”
When Truely came back carrying a couple of sacks of groceries Arnold had made himself at home. He was sitting on Shauna’s white sofa, channel surfing. His suitcases remained where he’d left them, unopened just inside the door. Truely put the food away while Arnold paused to listen to Judge Judy scold a slump-shouldered defendant.
“Okay, man,” Truely said. “I’m going to take off. You got what you need?”
“Sure,” Arnold said. “Thanks for the food. You know.”
“When do you start work?”
“I’m supposed to call when I get in. Scheduled to start on Monday.”
“Okay then. Good luck.”
As Truely left the apartment, Arnold walked over and stood in the doorway, calling after him. “You think me and you could maybe hang out sometime? I don’t know. Get something to eat or something sometime?”
Truely looked back at him and shrugged. “Why not?”
On his ride home Truely resisted the urge to call Suleeta and ask her if she’d lost her mind. What the hell was she doing sending this kid up here like this? He had no business being out in the world on his own.
THE NEXT FEW DAYS Truely busied himself with work. Not your daddy’s desk. That was his concept. Jaxon objected to the word daddy. Not your father’s office furniture, he said. He was probably right. Funny how you downloaded a particular vocabulary in childhood — and it remained the preferred dialect of your interior life. To Truely father was another word for God, not for somebody’s daddy. He had never had much interest in being a father. But he had always dreamed of being somebody’s daddy. To this day it caught him by surprise when he realized that he had no children — no family. Besides, if you asked him, the Catholics had played havoc with the word father — all those perps and child-molesters parading around calling themselves fathers. Damn.
Most days after work Truely went to the gym. Sometimes he and Jaxon continued their brainstorming there. Other days Truely worked out alone, in silence. Sweat was his antidepressant. He had learned that back when he played football in high school. The coach had worked them hard. At first they complained and hated it, some guys even threatening to quit. Then next thing they knew, they were looking forward to it, pushing themselves as far as they could go. Sweating in the cruel Mississippi sun. Some days he had come to practice upset, his trigger finger poised on anger aimed at Mrs. Seacrest. But by the time he left practice he was less angry. Sometimes all that sweating convinced him that she was just a sad person, doing her best to find a little happiness and make herself an actual life against some heavy odds — and briefly, he took a time-out from actively hating her. Sweat was as good for the brain as for the body. Even now nothing cleared his mind like doing reps until he dropped.
Another thing. He had begun to look around him at the gym and notice a couple of the women there. He supposed they had always been there, doing their squats and stretches, but he had not actually paused to notice them before. With Shauna on the other side of the world with Pablo — what the hell? He guessed he could notice anything he felt like noticing.
COURTNEY CALLED to say that she was coming into the city on Friday and wanted to spend the weekend if it was okay with Truely. “I need to get out of the house,” she told him. “And I figure with Shauna gone, you know, you might not be too busy?”
What was he going to say? No, don’t come? I got things to do, people to see? Not likely she would believe that. Besides, to his surprise, Truely had come to half enjoy spending time with Courtney. She wasn’t as high-intensity as she had been when they were younger, when just breathing the air she breathed for any period of time, no matter how interesting, could wear him out completely.
“Wow. Looks like my dance card is empty,” he said. “So come on. What exactly are we trying to prove here? That misery loves company?” He was trying to tease her, although it came across as slightly bitter.
“True. I’m not coming so we can be miserable. I’m coming so we won’t be.”
She was right. He loved her sometimes when she said things like this and he knew that she meant it wholeheartedly. “Good plan,” he said.
“I’ve got an idea, True. You can say no if you want to.”
“Sounds like trouble to me.”
“You know how you used to love to fish? Well, what if Saturday we go someplace and do some fishing?”
“You’re coming into the city so we can go fishing?” He laughed.
“Why not?”
“Since when do you like to fish?”
“I can fish, Truely. Did I grow up in Mississippi or didn’t I? It’s like riding a bicycle. Besides, I think we need to do some things you like to do, so that when I call to say I’m coming up for the weekend you won’t start dreading to see me.”
“So, it’s sort of like a bribe then?”
“Sort of.”
“Well, I like it. Sure. Fishing is good. We can go down to Jaxon’s place. He’s right on the lake down there. I’ll call him.”
“Great then. I’ll bring the crickets and worms. You’ll bait my hooks for me, right?”
“Very funny.”
“And True, I’ve got a little news for you too. I’ve made a decision.”
“What is it?”
“You have to wait until I see you. I’ll explain everything.”
“Should I go ahead and start worrying now?”
IT TOOK TRUELY one whole afternoon digging through a storage unit he kept over in South San Francisco to gather up his fishing stuff. He and Jesse had rented the space originally to keep their Christmas decorations and camping equipment and her overflow of school materials and furniture she had changed her mind about and Lord knows what all. She had gotten what she wanted out of there after they split. Since then it had become mostly wasted space where he slung stuff he wasn’t sure he’d ever use again but wasn’t ready to get rid of. He was struck suddenly by the fact that this shambles of a storage unit sort of told the story of his life.
He had snow skis and water skis and life vests and plastic coolers and new and old tents in a variety of sizes and conditions. He had waders and worn-out boots and cowboy hats and an assortment of sweat-dried ball and ski caps. He had unloaded shotguns from Mississippi that had never been fired in California, since he’d never been hunting a single time since his daddy died. He had two sets of golf clubs; one a bag full of banged-up, nicked, hodgepodge clubs that he still played his best golf with and felt a sentimental attachment to, and two, a new bag of shiny high-end clubs he’d paid a small fortune for but never used since they seemed too nice to use.
Truely had accumulated quite an arsenal of fishing gear over the years. He grabbed all the newfangled rods and reels and tackle he thought they’d need, then on second thought went back for a couple of old cane poles that had belonged to his daddy. He’d never known Courtney to use anything but a cane pole. Fishing gear was one area, maybe the only area, in which she had resisted enlightenment.
By Thursday afternoon he had his Escalade packed and ready to go. He liked to plan ahead. Jesse had taught him that. A good teacher always had to plan ahead. “You cannot stand in front of the room facing thirty second-graders saying to yourself, ‘Okay, now what?’ ” she had told him.
WHEN HE CAME HOME from the gym on Friday afternoon, Truely found Arnold sitting on the stoop of his building, waiting. “Hey, man,” he called out as Truely jogged up the sidewalk. “How’s it going?”
It took a minute for it to register, who the guy was, his oversized pants and sideways ball cap. He was wearing a Raiders sweatshirt.
“Arnold? What’s going on?”
“I got off early today, walked over here. It ain’t that far. Suleeta give me your address. Thought maybe me and you could hang out.”
“How’s the new job?”
&nb
sp; “Makes you see why maybe going to school might not be so bad,” he said. “Lifting that stuff all day. But it’s okay. Like they say, beggars can’t be choosers. Right?”
Truely smiled. It occurred to him that if he invited Arnold inside he might be starting something he wouldn’t know how to stop. He didn’t want to encourage Arnold to just show up whenever he felt like it. He needed to learn to call first. But what was he going to do, go inside his place and leave the kid sitting out here like he was waiting to rob somebody?
“Come on up,” Truely said. “I got to change clothes.” He saw the look on Arnold’s face too, the pure relief.
TRUELY WAS IN THE SHOWER when Courtney showed up and found Arnold in the loft, lounging on one of the sofas listening to Truely’s iPod. She had tapped at the open door and called out, “Anybody home?” then proceeded inside to find Arnold, a total stranger, sprawled on the furniture, dressed for what she could only guess must be a drive-by shooting. She let out an involuntary shriek.
Arnold saw her then, snatched the headphones off his head, and jumped to his feet. He stood staring at her with what she would later describe to Truely as fear in his eyes. “He was as scared of me as I was of him,” she would say.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“You looking for Truely? He’s in the shower.”
“Who are you?” she repeated.
“Friend of Truely’s. Arnold. I’m just waiting for him to get out the shower. We going to get some food or something.”
“Arnold?” Courtney dropped the overnight bag she was carrying and set her purse down on a table. “From San Diego?”
“He told you about me?” He looked pleased, Courtney would say later.
“No. Suleeta told me.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s me. Arnold.”
“Well, hey there, Arnold.” Courtney walked over with her hand out, church-style, like when you shake hands with a preacher after a sermon because you appreciate his efforts to help you along toward salvation. “I’m Courtney. Truely’s big sister. I know I look a lot younger than he does … but, yes, I’m the firstborn.” She smiled.
Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi Page 19
