“Hey, Dooley,” someone said behind him.
He turned to look at Warren’s moon-shaped face and his nervous eyes blinking behind black-rimmed glasses that made him look like the picked-on brainiac that he was.
“Hey, Warren,” Dooley said, even managing a smile so that maybe Warren would relax a little. Dooley wasn’t sure why, but Warren approached him every time as if he wasn’t quite sure if Dooley was going to shake his hand or rip off his head, and this after Dooley had saved his ass that one time and Warren had repaid the favor. “How you doing?”
“Good … I guess,” Warren said. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and glanced down to the end of the hall, like he was wishing he could be there instead of here at Dooley’s locker.
“Everything okay?”
He looked miserable as he squared his shoulders and drew in a deep breath, looking to Dooley like a guy who was being forced at gunpoint to walk barefoot through a nest of rattlesnakes and was now thinking that a quick bullet in the head would be preferable to the sure but slower and more painful death by venom that lay in store.
“What’s going on, Warren?”
Warren dug something out of the binder he was carrying—an envelope—and stared at it for a moment before thrusting it at Dooley.
“Alicia’s birthday is coming up,” he said. Alicia was Warren’s sister. She had Down’s syndrome. She came by the video store at least once a week. For a few months, she’d been renting the penguin movie. Now she was into the one with the little girl and the talking bear, the one in full-body armor. She could have bought a library of DVDs with the money she spent renting the same movie over and over again, always when Dooley was on shift, always coming to Dooley’s cash or, if he was on the floor instead, waiting up at the counter until Linelle or whoever else was up there called him and stepped aside so that he could scan Alicia’s choice and take her money. “She wants you to come,” Warren mumbled, his eyes focused on his shoes. “You know, if you’re not working or whatever.”
Dooley opened the envelope and pulled out an invitation.
“I’ll check my schedule,” he said.
“Right,” Warren said, as if this were exactly the answer—the dodge—he’d been expecting.
“What I mean is, it’s two weeks from now,” Dooley said. “If I am scheduled to work, I’ll have plenty of time to switch my shift. Tell Alicia I’ll be there.”
Warren perked up. “Really?” One thing you could say about him: He never took anything for granted.
“Yeah,” Dooley said.
“You’re going to come?” Warren said, leaning in to Dooley to make sure he heard the answer clearly this time.
“Yeah, I’m going to come.”
Warren nodded slowly, as if he still wasn’t sure he had it right. “She said to tell you she’s having an ice-cream cake. Chocolate.”
“All the more reason,” Dooley said. And, bingo, Warren smiled. For the first time since Dooley had heard about Lorraine, he felt good. The feeling lasted until homeroom bell rang. He hated school.
At five that afternoon, he was fresh out of the shower and standing at the ironing board in the kitchen wearing nothing but a towel when his uncle walked through the door, surprising him. Fridays were busy dry-cleaning days. His uncle hardly ever came home this early on Fridays. He looked at what Dooley was doing and said, “You’re not working tonight?”
Dooley shook his head.
His uncle zeroed in on the shirt Dooley was ironing. “Beth?”
“Yeah.” Dooley finished the shirt and put the ironing board back into the kitchen closet where his uncle kept it along with all his cleaning supplies.
He picked up his shirt and was headed out of the kitchen when his uncle said, “We should talk about the arrangements. But if you’re in a hurry, it can wait until tomorrow.”
“No,” Dooley said. “We might as well get it over with.” The words came out with a hardness that surprised him. Well, why shouldn’t they? Lorraine had never come to see him when they had him locked up. She’d never showed much concern before that, either. “What do you think we should do?” Dooley had never thought about funeral arrangements before.
For a moment his uncle looked lost, and Dooley thought he was waiting for Dooley to come up with a plan. Then he got that don’t-even-think-about-giving-me-any-crap, copturned-dry-cleaner look of his on his face and sounded as hard as Dooley when he said, “I put a notice in the paper, in case she had any friends. I thought there should be a service of some kind. I was also thinking cremation.”
“Cremation?”
“Unless you want her someplace where you can go and visit her.”
Dooley thought about that for maybe two seconds. Lorraine had never visited him and all of a sudden he was going to—what?—make a pilgrimage once a week to some cemetery to talk to her headstone? Hell, past the age of twelve, he had hardly ever talked to her.
“I’m okay with cremation,” he said. He’d be okay with just about anything if he could get the hell out of the kitchen, get dressed, and get over to Beth’s.
That reminded him. He glanced at his uncle. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to bring it up, but he couldn’t think of any time that would be better.
“About Beth,” he said slowly. “I don’t want you to think she doesn’t care or anything.”
“Why would I think that?”
“You know, if she doesn’t come to the funeral.”
“She comes, she doesn’t come; it’s her choice. She didn’t know Lorraine.”
“Yeah,” Dooley said. He could have left it at that, but it wouldn’t have been fair to Beth. “The thing is, she sort of thinks Lorraine died a long time ago.”
His uncle looked wordlessly at him, his eyes hard and disapproving.
“Come on,” Dooley said. “It’s not like I committed a crime.” He wasn’t proud of lying to Beth. He hadn’t planned to do it. He hadn’t planned to mention Lorraine to her at all. But she’d asked about his mother and he hadn’t had the heart—the courage—to get into it. He was even more reluctant now, when a guy like Nevin was hanging around. Besides, at the time, he didn’t think he’d ever see Lorraine again. He’d thought she was out of his life for good. And now, for sure, she was.
His uncle stared at Dooley’s freshly ironed shirt for a few moments. “So, you taking her out somewhere?” he said at last. “Maybe to celebrate?”
Jesus. What kind of thing was that to say?
“Okay, look, I probably shouldn’t have said Lorraine was dead,” Dooley said.
“Probably?”
“It’s complicated.”
“No, it isn’t,” his uncle said. “You were ashamed of her so you lied about her. Is that about the size of it?”
“I like Beth.”
“Oh, well then. All the more reason to tell her a whopper.”
Dooley regretted that he’d broached the subject.
“I’m sorry,” he said, even though he wasn’t, not even remotely. He just wanted to go upstairs, get changed, and get over to Beth’s. He would have done just that, too, except for one thing: Beth came over sometimes, and sometimes she talked to his uncle on the phone.
“What?” his uncle said, seeing how Dooley was eyeing him.
“I was wondering if you could maybe not mention it to her.”
“Not mention that my sister, your mother, just died, you mean?” Like Dooley had asked him to cover for Jeffrey Dahmer or Paul Bernardo.
“It’s bad enough I had to tell her about me,” Dooley said. “And there’s this other guy.” He hadn’t meant to say that, but if his uncle mentioned Lorraine to Beth now, when Nevin was sniffing around … “He drives a Jag.”
“Yeah,” his uncle said. “I could see how a mother dying of a drug overdose would handicap you in that race.” He went to the fridge, pulled out a can of beer, popped it, and took a long, long, long swallow right in front of Dooley. “So what do you two have planned for tonight?”
Dooley did
n’t want to answer, not when his uncle was looking at him like that, ready to keep digging at him if he didn’t answer. So okay, fine.
“She’s making dinner.”
His uncle considered this. Dooley knew that he liked Beth. He probably thought she was a good influence. He sounded less pissed off when he said, “Is she a good cook?”
“I dunno.” She had never cooked for him before. “I gotta go. I don’t want to be late.”
He was almost through the door when his uncle said, “They did the post-mortem today.”
“And?” Dooley said. “Was it an overdose?”
“She had pulmonary edema, so probably. But they won’t be able to say until they’ve done toxicology. Even then they may not know. It’s not like TV.”
Dooley knew that from his own experience.
“If it was an overdose,” he said, “will they be able to tell if it was accidental or, you know … whatever?”
“They’ll look into it.”
“And they’ll let you know?”
“Yeah.” His uncle pulled out a chair and sat down. He looked exhausted. “Have a good time with Beth.”
Dooley nodded and turned to go.
“You know about safe sex, right?” his uncle said.
“Yeah.”
“You got rubbers? Because if you don’t—”
Dooley felt the heat rise in his cheeks.
“I’m covered,” he said. If there was one thing he did not want to discuss with his uncle, it was sex. He had a hard enough time some nights trying not to picture his uncle and Jeannie going at it, and now that his uncle had brought the subject up, he couldn’t help picturing his uncle picturing him and Beth going at it. “I really gotta go.”
He was halfway to Beth’s place before he thought, I should bring her something. If Nevin were going to her place for supper, he’d bring something.
But what?
Beth didn’t drink—thank God, because that would have complicated everything. Dooley thought maybe dessert, maybe pastries, except that what if she had already bought something or made something—would she be offended? Then he thought, flowers. Girls like flowers, right?
He stopped at a small Italian supermarket and bought a colorful bouquet. The lady at the cash smiled approvingly at him as she wrapped the flowers in a paper cone.
Beth smiled, too, when he held them out to her. She went on tiptoes to kiss his cheek, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should have brought something else. Something nicer. Something more personal. Trouble was, he didn’t know what.
She had music on soft, like audio wallpaper. She’d set candles on the table, which she lit when he came into the apartment. She had made chicken in some kind of sauce with mushrooms, and rice, and salad. For dessert she’d made a pie—apple—which she served with ice cream. If his uncle asked again, he’d say, “Yeah, she’s a terrific cook.”
After they ate, he helped her clear the table because if there was one thing he’d learned from his uncle, it was that you don’t just sit there while someone else does all the work, especially if the work involves putting food in your belly. He’d been planning to help her wash whatever wouldn’t go in the dishwasher but, as soon as everything was off the table, she smiled and took his hand and led him down to the end of a hall that ran off the living room and into her bedroom, which was so white it was like stepping into a cloud. The walls were painted white and so was the floor. The curtains on her windows were white, the blinds were white, the furniture was all white. The sheets and the bedspread were white. When he’d asked her about it that first time he’d seen it, she had said, “It’s clean, you know?” For sure it was that; it was clean.
She pulled him inside and wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his, and, for the first time in almost a week, for the very first time, he didn’t think about Nevin. He didn’t think about Lorraine, either.
For once, Dooley’s uncle wasn’t waiting up for him. His bedroom door was open, a sure sign he was alone. Dooley peeked in. His uncle was asleep—passed out?—on the bed. He was fully clothed and he was snoring.
The weekend. Dooley went to work, where he emptied the drop box and scanned and re-shelved all the incoming items before heading up to the cash to start checking them out again, Saturday being the video store’s busiest day. He wished he was working all weekend. It would pass the time. Beth had left with her mother first thing in the morning to visit some of her mother’s friends at their cottage up north somewhere. They wouldn’t be driving back until late Sunday night.
His uncle was cleaning up the kitchen when Dooley got home.
“Did you eat?” he said.
Dooley shook his head. His uncle began taking things out of the fridge—lemon chicken, rice, broccoli with some kind of sauce on it.
“A couple of detectives came by the store,” he said as he slid a plate of food into the microwave.
“Cop detectives?”
His uncle nodded.
“What did they want?”
“They were asking about Lorraine.”
“Asking what?”
“What she’d been up to.”
“What do you mean?”
“Apparently someone told them she’d been clean for a while,” his uncle said. “They asked me about that.”
“Why?”
“They’re taking a closer look at what happened. They may want to talk to you, Ryan.”
“Me? What could I tell them?”
“You’re her son.” As if that answered his question. “You know your rights?”
“My rights? ” What did his rights have to do with Lorraine?
“You’re still a juvenile. You don’t have to talk to them if you don’t want to and, for sure, you don’t have to talk to them alone.”
Dooley stared at his uncle. “You told me they said it was a drug overdose.”
“It was.”
“So what are they looking at?”
“They’re looking at why.”
“Why what? Why an overdose?” They had to be kidding.
“Apparently there were some bruises.”
“Bruises?”
“Apparently. Could be nothing related. Or could be that someone was holding her, maybe forcing her.”
“Forcing her to what?”
“There were needle marks, but only one was recent.”
“So?” Dooley said. When a person quit trying to stay straight, all it took was one.
“I don’t read minds. I’m just telling you what they said.”
The microwave beeped. Dooley’s uncle opened it, took out the plate of food, and set it down in front of Dooley.
Dooley didn’t get out of bed the next day until noon. What was the point? He didn’t have to work, and Beth wasn’t around. He had homework to do, but he couldn’t get himself even remotely excited about it. He thought about Lorraine.
She was dead. That should have meant something to him. She was his mother, after all. But the only feeling he could identify was anger. She had never come to see him, even though it turned out she had been living just across town the whole time he’d been locked up. What kind of mother behaved like that? What business did she have even being a mother? The best thing he could do was forget about her. Move on. Move forward. Do what he’d been doing ever since they’d let him out—be something different. Be nothing at all like her. Not only did he think he could do it but he actually wanted to do it. He wanted something different. Something worthwhile.
So, yeah, forget about her.
His uncle was quiet all day. He spent most of his time up in his office, working on whatever it was he worked on when he was up there. His business, mostly. He reviewed his accounts. He fiddled with spreadsheets. He read dry-cleaning newsletters. He devoured the financial pages of the newspaper. He made plans. He’d been talking about a third store, if he could find the right location, maybe somewhere near a police station where he could offer specials to cops.
Supper was Chinese ta
ke-out. They ate in front of the TV, his uncle acting like he was riveted by 60 Minutes before he finally went back upstairs. Dooley stayed down in the living room and surfed the channels. He got a real jolt when he saw Lorraine’s picture on the eleven o’clock news—a thirty-second clip about “yet another drug death” that mentioned, but did not go into, an “ongoing police investigation”—and was glad Beth was in a car somewhere, driving back from wherever she’d been. He wondered who else might be watching the news and might be as surprised as he was by that picture. But the truth was that none of the people he knew now had met Lorraine. He never talked about her. She had a different last name than his. Most of the people he used to know had never met her, either. He’d never taken any of his friends back to his place. The whole deal back then had been to get away from wherever home happened to be and to stay away as long as possible.
The service for Lorraine was held on Monday morning. Dooley put on the suit he had worn only once, also to a funeral. When he went downstairs, his uncle, also in a suit, a black one that had cost him more than Dooley made in three or four months at the video store, was adjusting his tie. His eyes met Dooley’s in the hall mirror.
“You still didn’t tell her?” he said. He meant Beth.
Dooley shook his head. He thought his uncle might have something more to say on the subject, but he didn’t. Instead, he studied his reflection, frowned, and adjusted his tie again. When he was finally satisfied, he said, “We might as well get this done.”
Dooley was surprised to find maybe twenty people in the room at the funeral home. He knew his uncle was surprised, too, because he went back out and checked the name in the slot beside the door to make sure he hadn’t stumbled in on the wrong service.
“I guess putting a notice in the newspaper worked, huh?” Dooley said.
His uncle didn’t answer. He didn’t circulate, either. But a couple of people—women—went up to him and introduced themselves. Dooley decided that they must have known Lorraine pretty well because they had no trouble picking him out as her brother.
“I can’t believe she’s really gone,” one of them said.
Homicide Related Page 5
