“Glad to see it, man,” Truely said. “I mean it.”
“Like a freakin’ kid with his first bike,” Gordo said.
Truely held the door open while Gordo rolled the chair back into his room and stopped in front of the high mechanical bed. “Sit down, why don’t you, man.” He motioned to a couple of chairs against the wall. “Let’s get real here, Truely, okay? I got some things to say.” Gordo was badly winded.
Truely took a seat in a plastic chair.
Gordo wiped his glistening face with the tail of his T-shirt. “First of all,” he said, “before all this shit happened, you know — I want you to know something. I was a damn good soldier. I know I was a kitchen guy — but I was still a good soldier. You can ask anybody in my unit. I didn’t get messed up, my attitude screwed up, not with drugs or anything else, until after the blast — the bomb. I want you to know that — because it matters.”
“I never doubted it,” Truely said.
“Look, man. I’m not sure I like you much. That’s no news flash. I think you did my sister wrong and she didn’t deserve it. She spent a lot of years thinking she was going to marry you. I always knew that wasn’t going to happen. And you knew it too, but you just let her keep on hoping like that.”
“That’s not how it was.”
“That’s how I see it. So when I come back here in this kind of shape” — he motioned down his body —“and I realize there is probably no woman on earth who’ll ever have me, that I may never have any kids or a family of my own … I mean — it was damn scary. I never knew I wanted that — a wife and kids — until I saw how unlikely it was. And then you come around — you, like some cowardly son of a bitch — who could have it all if you weren’t too damn afraid to make a commitment. I hated you for that, man. Yeah, I know Shauna has got Pablo now — and Pablo is a good guy. But he wasn’t the one she expected to end up with. He is second prize and he knows it too.”
“I’m telling you, man. It’s not like that.”
Gordo waved his hand, as if to say he didn’t want to listen to any excuses. “Don’t matter,” he said. “Here’s the thing. My psychiatrist — Dr. Romelli — she’s a woman. She got me thinking about some things, you know. Do I want to spend the rest of my life being mad about something I can’t change? The past is the past, but you know, you can get stuck there, just simmer the rest of your life in the events of the past — which was what I was set on doing before she started working with me. She said, ‘I’m not as interested, Gordo, in who you used to be before you were changed by that bomb’ — that’s her word, changed.” Gordo was imitating her female voice. “ ‘The guy you used to be before all this happened is gone. What I want to know is — who do you want to be now? Who do you want to be in the future? How are you going to reinvent yourself?’
“I tell you what, man. If she’d been a man I would have been pissed off. I would have smacked her with my shot-up hand — missing digits and everything.” Gordo lifted his nubbed hand. “But she was a woman, so I just sat there and listened to her — not saying nothing. She asked me those same questions every day, over and over. ‘Who do you want to be, Gordo?’ It was like she was waiting for me to come up with a decent answer. At first I thought I’d prove my point by just keeping quiet — you know, refusing to talk to her. Truth was, I just wanted to be the same guy I used to be before everything. I didn’t want to be anybody new. ‘That’s not one of your choices,’ she’d tell me. You know how shrinks talk. ‘Make another choice, Gordo.’ After a while, I guess she wore me down. I started talking — whether I wanted to or not. Because damn if she didn’t start to make some sense.”
“Good.” Truely was nervous and he wasn’t sure why.
“It probably wouldn’t hurt you to listen to what my psychiatrist got to say, man. My sister says you need a psychiatrist as bad as anybody does. According to Shauna you’re stuck in the past yourself. She says you’re dedicated to being miserable forever because your wife left you — what — five years ago?”
“Four,” Truely corrected.
“She says you don’t have no plans to ever get over it. Is that right?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure what my plans are.” Truely didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking.
“You know what the key to happiness is, man?” Gordo massaged his stump as he spoke. “This is what Dr. Romelli says.”
“What?”
“You tell me, man. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Truely said. “What? Be true to yourself or something?”
“Hell no, man. That’s most definitely not it. Far from it.”
“You tell me then,” Truely said. “What?”
“It’s easy, man. Too simple, really. That’s why so many people can’t figure it out. This is it — Help somebody.”
“Help somebody. That’s it?”
“Doc says when you can’t help yourself — then help somebody else. See? It’s supposed to boomerang back to you, I guess.”
“Not a bad theory,” Truely said without enthusiasm.
“Look man, maybe it works like this. If you need help — then you help somebody. If you need forgiveness — then you forgive somebody. If you need love — then you love somebody. See? Maybe it’s that simple.”
“Maybe.”
“Dr. Romelli swears it works, man. That’s all I know.”
“So you’re going to try that approach. Is that what you’re saying?”
“What have I got to lose? That’s how I look at it.”
“Good point.”
“Beats shooting myself in the head, don’t it?” Gordo tried to laugh.
“No question,” Truely agreed.
“Right now, I need help. So maybe I get it by helping somebody else out there who needs help too.”
“Like Arnold maybe?” Truely sounded more hopeful than he meant to.
“Yeah, Arnold. Can you hand me a glass of that water over there?” Gordo nodded toward a tray on a table by his bed. Truely saw that the exertion earlier had caused Gordo to break out into a full sweat. He walked over and poured Gordo a glass of water and handed it to him.
“Arnold claims you’re not the ass I think you are.”
“I’d say maybe you ought to listen to Arnold.”
“My old man is set on Arnold doing jail time. He’s hard-core. Everybody knows that. He wants somebody to suffer like he suffers. Every time he looks at me he has to turn his face away because he can’t stand to see what he sees. He needs somebody to blame. Not just President Bush. Man, he doesn’t even know the president. What does President Bush care what he thinks anyway? What can he do to President Bush? ‘If you want to blame somebody, Daddy,’ I tell him, ‘why don’t you blame that suicide bomber?’ I ask him that all the time. But hell no, he wants to blame somebody in the here and now, somebody he can watch suffer. So he’s set on blaming Arnold.”
“Jerry’s hurting bad,” Truely said.
“Arnold has always been Daddy’s scapegoat — since we were kids. Back then I let Arnold deal with Daddy’s bullshit — because that way I didn’t have to.”
“You were a kid then.”
“And now I’m not a kid,” Gordo said. “So who do I want to be now? See? That’s Dr. Romelli’s question again — right there. ‘You don’t have to let your father decide who you are, Gordo,’ she tells me. ‘You can decide for yourself.’ ”
“She’s right,” Truely said.
“Daddy ain’t buying Dr. Romelli’s theory help somebody.” He laughed. “No way. He believes in hurt somebody — bad. He thinks if you can’t find relief at the bottom of a bottle, then there’s nothing else to do but get even. I watch Daddy, the way he’s handled this mess — or not handled it — made it worse — and I see how I was dealing with things the same damn way. Runs in the family, I guess. I get scared I could end up the same as him if I’m not careful. Man — then I would need to shoot myself,” Gordo joked.
“My wife used to say, ‘True, you’re
your father’s son — you’re not your father.’ ”
“Yeah,” Gordo said. “Sounds like Dr. Romelli. ‘This is not about your father, Gordo,’ she says. ‘This is about you.’ ”
“And Arnold too,” Truely reminded him.
Gordo looked down at his damaged hand, tried to stretch the two remaining fingers. He began to pick at the stitches or maybe it was a scab that had crusted there. “Me and Arnold been through more shit than anybody will ever know,” Gordo said. “Arnold is my man. Been my man since he was a little kid running wild in the street. He had that mess of a family — him and Vonnie. Everybody’s got a mess of a family — but Arnold and them, they kicked it up a notch, you know? When things got too bad, Arnold used to come to our house and Mama’d take him in, let him sleep in my room in the other bed. He liked that. Next thing you know he was acting like that was his bed. He kept some clothes under the bed in a grocery sack. Lord, you ever try to go to sleep with Arnold in your room?” Gordo laughed and looked up from where he was picking at his hand. “That boy could talk now. He’d ask a million questions. ‘Gordo, you think God really see what everybody do down here? You think God all the time watching folks like they say?’ Oh, man.”
This was easy for Truely to imagine.
“When I didn’t think I could trust anybody else I knew I could trust Arnold.” Gordo paused and went at a stitch with his teeth, pulling it loose. He was not self-conscious. “The war changed me in a lot of ways — but I can’t let it change that.”
“What are you saying?” Truely asked.
“Arnold risked a lot to save me from my own stupid self. Now I need to return the favor.”
“What are you saying?” Truely asked again.
“I won’t testify against Arnold.”
Truely lowered his head into his hands.
“There is no case without my testimony,” Gordo continued. “I told my old man I want the charges dropped. I’m telling you — and I want you to tell that Wineberg guy, Arnold’s lawyer.”
Truely found himself unable to speak. He nodded instead.
IT WOULD BE HARD to say how long the two of them sat there in silence, Gordo seeming to concentrate on his mangled hand, biting some of his stitches loose, spitting them out. Truely sat with his head in his hands, almost afraid to lift his face and look Gordo in the eye — for fear he had somehow misunderstood him.
When Truely finally looked up, Gordo said, “Aren’t you going to ask me what’s the catch?”
Truely’s heart sank. “The catch?”
“Arnold’s got some ideas. Right? First he was saying he wants to be my caretaker — bring me my food, get me in and out of the bath, run errands, whatever I need. See? But, God knows, I don’t want any situation like that. I told him so.”
Truely was practically holding his breath. He wasn’t sure why.
“So then Arnold tells me you’re friends with Mose Jones. That right?”
“That’s right.”
“He says Mose is rehabbing some vets down in Mississippi.”
“Yes.”
“Arnold made me some promises that I might like to pursue.”
“What kind of promises exactly?”
“They involve you.”
“Me? It’s done then, man. Whatever it is.”
“I don’t want you to agree to anything when you don’t know what it is.”
“Okay. Maybe you can lay it out for me then.”
“That’s part of the reason why I called you over here,” Gordo said. “I want your word on a couple of things.”
“I’m listening.”
WHEN TRUELY LEFT the VA Hospital he was hopeful for the first time in a long while. He’d forgotten how it felt to be hopeful. He realized he was holding his breath still. Breathe, he reminded himself. He called Courtney like he’d promised. She was waiting by the phone. She begged for details, which Truely promised to deliver when he got back to the hotel. Next he called Mike Wineberg. Mike promised to contact Gordo himself, get the ball rolling uphill, so to speak.
What surprised Truely was what he did next. He did it fast, before he could think too much about it. He called Lanie’s cell phone. When she answered Truely felt as nervous as an untested teenager. “Lanie, this is Truely Noonan.”
“Hi.” She sounded surprised.
“It’s looking like maybe we’ve got the break we’ve needed,” he said. “I wanted you to know.”
“That’s wonderful.” Her voice was formal.
“Have you got a minute?” Truely sensed her uneasiness.
“Actually,” she said, “I have a friend here. We were just on our way to dinner.”
“Of course,” Truely said. “Bad timing.”
“We have a reservation. We’re already late.”
“I understand.”
“I’m happy to hear there’s good news, Truely. I hope everything works out.”
“Thanks.”
“I wish I had time to talk. Maybe we’ll talk later?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Thanks for calling.”
“Enjoy your dinner,” he said.
Truely hung up. Disappointment swept over him. It registered in a way it often failed to, as happens when a man has long lived with minor disappointment and become essentially immune to it. But he wasn’t going to let anything dampen his spirits on this occasion. Arnold would be a free man. That was what mattered.
WORD SPREAD QUICKLY that charges against Arnold would be dropped. But the legal process was painfully slow. According to Mike Wineberg it would be the end of January before the paperwork was in place and the charges were officially dismissed. There was nothing to do but wait.
Thirty
CHRISTMAS WAS COMPLETELY DWARFED by the anticipation of Arnold’s release. The holidays came and went in a relative blur. Truely agreed to have Christmas Eve dinner with Jaxon and Melissa and their kids and friends at their Woodside place. They had warned him in advance, of course, that Lanie would be coming. He’d been happy to hear it. Then they had also warned him that she would be bringing her new boyfriend — a doctor she had met in her fund-raising efforts.
As it turned out he was an all right guy, nice enough, considerably older than Lanie. Truely was appropriately pleasant. He found himself watching Lanie on and off all evening. Melissa had seated him at the opposite end of the dinner table from Lanie, which was a letdown. But it gave him a good vantage point to observe her with her new man. He was ashamed to be so interested. As for Lanie — she was cordial but cool toward Truely. It bothered him.
What no one could predict was that the following day Lanie and her new man would fly together to Phoenix, to Lanie’s parents’ house, and the new man, the doctor, would produce a sizable diamond on bended knee and ask her to marry him — and she would cry and say yes. How could anyone have known? Truely felt the slightest twinge at the sudden loss of possibilities when he heard the news. Jaxon was the one to call and tell him. Evidently Lanie had called Melissa from Arizona to share the great excitement.
“Good news, buddy,” Jaxon told Truely. “You escaped another close call. Another clean getaway for Truely Noonan.” They had an awkward chuckle over it.
“Moving kind of fast, aren’t they?” Truely said. “What’s the big hurry?”
“Spoken like a true romantic,” Jaxon said. “Look, Lanie is nearly a forty-year-old woman. The way she sees it, this has been a long damn time in coming. Things can’t move too fast to suit her. She’s past ready.”
“I never got that impression,” Truely said.
“Of course you didn’t.” Jaxon laughed. “How many times did you see the woman? Three?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if she thinks this over and has a change of heart.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Women change their minds all the time, Jax.”
“What planet are you on, man? Lanie is not changing her mind. She’s waited too long.”
“Maybe,” Truely said.
“Not maybe,” Jaxon insisted.
“Give Lanie my best wishes then,” Truely said. “I wish her all the happiness in the world.”
“Of course you do,” Jaxon had said sarcastically.
“You’ll tell her for me?”
“Tell her yourself.”
TRUELY SPENT CHRISTMAS DAY at Courtney’s house in Saratoga. Myra and Lola were there as always, and Bobby Gavin and his daughters and their husbands and kids and the usual culprits among Courtney’s longtime California friends. It was very nice, of course. The food was perfect. The house was beautiful. The people were all pleasant. But oddly, Truely felt Hastings’ absence acutely and could only imagine how strongly Courtney felt it.
Bob Gavin stepped forward in his mild, good-natured way to fill the gap, along with the added energy and enthusiasm of his lively, attractive, well-mannered family. It helped. Bobby carved the turkey with the polish of a practiced host, made the first round of gracious toasts, hosted the dinner every bit as well as Hastings ever had — only he wasn’t Hastings and that was the glaring thing.
At one point, after dinner, when Truely had wandered into the den, still his favorite room in Courtney’s house, with all the now obsolete family photos on the shelves — Bobby Gavin followed him, bringing him a glass of eggnog. “Here you go,” he said. “ ’Tis the season.”
Truely took the drink and sipped it, not mentioning that he didn’t really like eggnog. “I tried to talk Courtney out of doing Christmas dinner this year,” Bobby said. “I wanted to take everybody to the club instead. But she insisted. Your sister is a force to be reckoned with when she makes up her mind.”
“That she is,” Truely said.
“You know she was a great friend to my late wife, Lillian.”
“I remember that,” Truely said.
Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi Page 38
