He sank down onto her sofa, opened the book again, and held it to his face. Boy, that scent took him back. It made him remember Lorraine, her hair thick and glossy, in tight jeans and a tighter T-shirt. Lorraine, checking her lipstick in the bathroom mirror before she set out to meet someone. Lorraine laughing as she raised a glass to her lips. Lorraine, standing unsteadily to uncork some more wine. Lorraine with her head in the toilet, puking. Lorraine passed out, spit caked on her cheek. Lorraine glassy-eyed. Lorraine enraged as she tore the apartment apart looking for a bottle, some pills, a needle. Lorraine spaced out, immobile. Lorraine shaking and scratching, needing something to make herself right. Lorraine screaming at whichever guy was at the apartment this week, whichever guy was slipping Dooley a ten and telling him to get lost, whichever guy was telling Dooley, stay in there—there being his room—or you’ll be sorry. Lorraine telling him, be a good boy, stay away from the apartment for a few days; you got someone you can crash with, right, pressing a couple of twenties into his hand, probably given to her by whatever guy was in the bedroom waiting for her. Lorraine prancing around in her bra and panties and some flimsy thing over top, trying to cook for some guy sitting at the dinette set, grilling a steak for the guy and sending Dooley to his room to watch TV with a couple of boiled hotdogs and a bag of chips.
She never said so, but Dooley was pretty sure he was an accident. Who wants to be pregnant at seventeen? And now he was supposed to believe that a twelve-step book, all marked up, had changed her? She had written comments in the margins, positive thoughts, encouragement—You can do it. You can get through just one day. You have the courage. You have the strength—exclamation points next to passages that, as far as Dooley could see, were platitudes written by some guy who had never been there. On one page, in the margin, a list of stuff she needed from the drugstore—that was more like Lorraine. A little further on, in an inside margin, written so small that he almost missed it, a phone number that she had drawn a heart around with a little lace pattern at the edges, like a valentine. He wondered if the cops had seen it and called the number and, if they had, what the voice on the other end of the line had told them about her. Not that he cared. He dropped the book into the same wastepaper basket as the framed photo and scanned the rest of the shelf. She had nothing that he wanted to read.
Someone knocked on the door. Before Dooley could get up to see who it was, the door opened. It was one of the women from the funeral—the rough-looking one. She came in full of purpose, looking like she was ready to open fire with a barrage of words. But she stopped in her tracks when she saw it was Dooley.
“I thought it was the cops,” she offered in a raspy voice.
Well, it wasn’t. He wished she would go away. But she didn’t, even though it was clear she’d been mistaken.
“Gloria lit a fire under them,” she said, “and they started asking questions. I wanted to see if they turned up anything.”
“What kind of questions?” Dooley said, interested now.
“Whether we’d seen her using lately.”
We? She must have meant some of the other women at the funeral.
“And?”
“And no,” the woman said, glaring at him. He wondered if she used the same attitude with the cops. He wondered, too, how reliable she was and what she really knew. People who tried to kick a habit could be pretty wily. They could hide things, at least for a while, until it got hard-core again.
“What else did they ask?” he said.
“Where she got her money, like that has anything to do with anything.”
“Her money?” Lorraine used to waitress sometimes, but mostly she collected welfare benefits. Sometimes guys gave her money. “What’d you tell them?”
“What do you think I told them? She had a job.”
“She did?” That was a surprise.
The woman looked at him as if he were crazy. “Thirty hours a week in a store. But they were looking for something else. They kept asking if I knew about the money she’d been depositing in the bank every month. They didn’t say how much it was, but I got the feeling it was enough to make them wonder.”
Wonder about what?
“Used to make me wonder, too,” the woman said. She eyed Dooley carefully, as if weighing his worth. “As long as I’ve known her, she always had cash—a lot of it—at the beginning of the month, even after she paid her rent and bought groceries. Even when she wasn’t working. She’d party.” Dooley imagined how Lorraine could come up with party money—she wasn’t bad-looking and, as far as he knew, she was ready and willing to do whatever it took to come up with party fixings. “Until she decided to straighten up,” the woman said. “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but about six months ago, she told me she’d opened up a savings account for the first time in her life.” She was looking around the place as she talked. Her eyes came to rest on the small TV and the DVD player next to it.
“You want them?” Dooley said.
The woman looked hungrily at him.
“They were hers. I’m sure you’re—”
“They’re yours now,” Dooley said. “Go ahead, take them.”
The woman wasted no time. She piled the DVD player on top of the TV, unplugged them both, and picked them up.
“Did they ask about anything else?” Dooley said. The woman was studying Lorraine’s tiny collection of DVDs. “The cops,” Dooley prompted.
“Just about family stuff,” the woman said, her eyes still on the DVDs. “Why she left home, what kind of relationship she had with her brother, whether she’d said anything about that or we’d heard any rumors about what went down between them when she was a kid.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“They didn’t say. But the way they said it, I got this weird vibe, you know?”
Weird. Jerry Panelli had used that word. He’d said the cops had been asking “weird shit” questions.
“And?” Dooley said.
“She never talked about her family—well, except you. She said she missed you.”
Right. That was a good one.
“Go ahead,” Dooley said. “Take the DVDs. Otherwise, I’ll just throw them out.”
The woman was already holding the TV and the DVD player, so Dooley got up and scooped up the DVDs and set them on top of the pile. He walked her across the hall and opened her apartment door for her. Then he went back to Lorraine’s to finish up.
He went into the kitchen. Pots, pans, rancid food in the fridge, canned and boxed foods in the cupboards. On the counter, a coffeemaker, canisters of tea and coffee. Dishes, cutlery, kitchen stuff. All ordinary.
He opened her closet—shoes, clothes, handbags. Not a lot of stuff, but enough. The super could burn it, give it to charity, give it to his wife, if he had one, give it to his girlfriend. Dooley didn’t care.
He crossed to her dresser, opened the top drawer, and immediately wished he hadn’t—Jesus, thongs and skimpy little see-through bras. Second drawer: T-shirts, sweaters, tank tops. Third drawer: jeans, slacks, shorts. A bikini.
Her bedside table. The drawer, where he found condoms, which he had expected, and a vibrator, which he hadn’t.
On to the bathroom, which contained toiletries, more condoms, birth control pills.
And that was it.
He paused on his way out and looked into the wastepaper basket where he had dropped the photograph and the twelve-step book. He stared into it, then bent and retrieved the book and the photo. He slid the photo out of the frame and between the pages of the book and then dropped the frame back into the garbage.
Dooley and his uncle, who, Dooley realized for the hundredth time, wasn’t really his uncle at all, sat across from each other over pork chops, rice, and green peppers in a tomato sauce, both with a glass of soda water, both, Dooley bet, wishing they had something stronger.
“So,” his uncle said, “you didn’t work today?” It was the first non-supper-preparation words he had said to Dooley since he’d come home from checking up
on his stores.
“No,” Dooley said.
“You got plans for tonight?”
“I thought I’d hook up with Beth,” Dooley said. If he could get hold of her. “You? Jeannie coming over?”
“Maybe,” his uncle said. “I don’t know.”
Dooley chewed a piece of pork chop and thought about Jeannie being gone so early that morning.
“Is everything okay between you two?” he said.
His uncle looked at him across the table. “What are you? Some kind of relationship counselor?”
Okay, so he was in that mood—again.
Dooley finished his supper.
“You want me to clean up?” he said.
“No,” his uncle said. “You go ahead.”
He left his uncle sitting at the kitchen table.
Dooley’s experience with girls could be summed up in one word: Beth. Sometimes, when he was with her or when he was just thinking about her, he couldn’t believe she was in his life. More than that, he couldn’t believe that she wanted him in her life. Even more than that—he couldn’t believe that she wanted him in her bed. Boy, and that was something else he could never believe, even when it was happening. It always went the same way—he’d go to see her when her mother was at work and they’d maybe do a little homework together or they’d start to watch a movie—just start; he didn’t think they’d ever actually watched a movie all the way through from start to finish when they were alone in the apartment. Then he’d look at her across the table or next to him on the couch and he wouldn’t be able to stop looking, she was that beautiful, with coffee-colored eyes and coffee-colored hair, creamy-white skin and lush pink lips that, the minute he looked at them, all he wanted to do was kiss them. And that’s what always ended up happening. At first, she’d been the one to start it, maybe because she saw how unsure he was. He had to be the only guy his age who had never really kissed a girl, not like that, anyway. The thing he liked about her—well, one of the maybe million things he liked about her—was that she seemed a little nervous about it at first, too. But she’d gone ahead and had come right up close to him and had looked up at him and smiled. She’d slipped her arms around him, so he had pulled her close, and he’d kissed her. Boy, he sure did like kissing her.
He liked touching her, too, and she seemed to enjoy it too. Her hands always slid under his shirt when he did. They worked their way down to his jeans. She’d been gentle and soft at first, and then not so gentle and soft. Then, one day, she took off all her clothes. Dooley couldn’t get over it.
It always started off great, and it always got better. But if you asked him what the absolute best part was, he’d have to say it was after, when he was feeling good and she was smiling and was lying there in his arms, her head on his chest or on his shoulder, and they were both naked and he could run his hand down over the curve of her hip. He couldn’t think of anything he liked to do more.
Right now, though, things weren’t so good. Right now he had the opposite feeling, the one he’d been dragging around with him practically his whole life. An empty feeling. An uncertain feeling. He hadn’t heard from her in three days. She hadn’t returned any of his calls. He pulled on his jacket and left the house. He dug his cell phone out of his pocket. As soon as he was on the sidewalk, he punched in her number.
“Hi, you’ve reached Beth …”
He headed for the bus stop and stood for a few moments, shifting from foot to foot, waiting for the bus. When it didn’t show up right away, he decided to walk. He looked up when he was finally across the street from her building and saw that someone was home. There were lights on in the living room, which had windows from floor to ceiling and a sliding door that opened onto a balcony. There was a light on a little farther down, too, in what he knew was Beth’s mother’s room. Shit.
A girl about Dooley’s age was coming out the security door when Dooley got there. She smiled at him and held the door for him. Dooley thanked her and headed for the elevators. A couple of minutes later, he was knocking on Beth’s apartment door.
Beth, not her mother, answered, but she didn’t invite him inside. She looked more tired than angry.
“I’m sorry,” Dooley said right away, before she could say anything.
She still didn’t ask him in. Instead, she stood in the doorway, her arms wrapped around herself like she was trying to keep warm, and said, “Mr. Puklicz down the hall told my mother that the police were here this morning. He said they wanted to know if he’d seen you around here a week ago Wednesday.”
Uh-oh. The cops had checked out what he’d told them. On the one hand, that could be good news: If the guy had seen him and remembered him, it would get the cops off his case. But it also looked like it could be bad news—exactly what he’d been trying to avoid when he’d kept Beth out of it the first time he’d spoken to the cops. He hadn’t wanted them talking to her, asking her if Dooley had been at her place that night, asking what she knew about his mother. But they’d been here. They’d talked to that man who, it turned out, knew her and her mother. What had the cops said to him? What had he said to Beth’s mother?
“About that—” he began.
“You know what he told her?”
He’d been wrong about her not being angry. The tightness of her lips told him that she was furious. And the way she was telling it, with that look on her face, gave him a pretty good idea what this Puklicz guy had said.
“He told her he was leaving the building just as you were going in. He said you caught the security door so you didn’t have to be buzzed in. He said he didn’t try to stop you because he knows you’re a friend of mine.” Her eyes were burning into him.
“Look, Beth—”
“He said you looked furtive.”
Furtive.
“He said you looked away from him, like maybe you were hoping he wouldn’t recognize you. What were you doing here, Dooley?”
“I—” Should he tell the truth or would it be easier on both of them if he fudged it a little? “I wanted to see you, but—” He made a choice. He went with the lie, a little white one. “I remembered you were with your history team.”
“You remembered? I told you when you called that night that that was what I was doing. Didn’t you believe me?”
“What? Of course I believed you!” This wasn’t going at all the way he had hoped. “But I thought maybe I could see you anyway, maybe meet some of your friends.” So far, she hadn’t introduced him to any of them. “Then I thought maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. I know how serious you are about school. So I didn’t come up. I went home.” That part was true. He’d been down there at the elevator, his hand out to push the button, determined to go up there, determined to check on her, to see if she was really doing what she told him she was going to be doing. And then something had happened: Common sense had kicked in. He’d imagined the look on her face when she opened the door and saw him there. He’d thought about what she would think of his explanation—Hey, I know you’re busy with your history team, but I—. And that had stopped him, that but, and the lame excuse he would have had to follow it with, and the possibility—the probability—that she would see through it. That and the thought that he could well and truly blow it with her.
“I bet your mom freaked out when she heard the police were asking about me, huh?” he said, trying to keep it light, like it was no big deal.
She wasn’t buying it.
“Why were the police even here?” she said. “Why were they asking about you?”
“I told you about that, Beth. I told you about how the cops are with me.”
“Right,” she said. “Right.” The sarcasm in her voice rattled him. “Because when we started going out, you told me all about yourself.”
Terrific. She was back to that again—back to Lorraine.
“That’s why I came over tonight,” he said. “To apologize.”
“You said you’d told me everything.”
He remembered that day. He’d
sat down with her, his belly clenched like it was now, his head bowed in shame like it was now, feeling certain that the more he said, the greater his chances were of losing her, just like he felt now, but talking anyway because he felt he owed her that much. He wanted her and she deserved to know what kind of person he was. So he had swallowed hard and started talking. He’d told her every ugly, dirty thing he had ever done, every ugly, dirty thing he wished he could forget. He’d told her all about himself. Himself, not Lorraine. He couldn’t remember if he’d even mentioned her.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “But she wasn’t like your mother—not even remotely. Why do you think I live with my uncle?”
“You lied to me,” she said.
“She’s gone, Beth. She wasn’t part of my life. She’s never going to be part of my life. So it doesn’t matter.” Why couldn’t she see that?
“I don’t mean when you told me she was dead,” she said. “I mean the other day, when I was at the store. You told me you hadn’t seen her in years. That’s what you said, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said, cautiously. Now what?
She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. She unfolded it and thrust it at him. It was something she’d cut out of a newspaper, from the obituary page—a picture and a little write-up about Lorraine. He skimmed it. There was no way his uncle was responsible for this. It must have been some of Lorraine’s friends, maybe the ones who had been at the funeral, the ones who had insisted that she had been doing so well.
“When I found out your mother had died, I looked in the paper to see if there was anything about it, and I found this. See, it even mentions you.” She pointed out his name. “And that’s your mother,” she said, jabbing the picture. “Right?”
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