“Did what?”
“Cleaned up her act.”
“No. She said she wanted to see you. That’s all.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Turns out I didn’t have to,” his uncle said. “You had her address and her number.”
Dooley dropped his voice a little. “What about the money?”
His uncle’s eyes narrowed.
“You know what I mean, right?” Dooley said.
His uncle didn’t answer. Dooley knew what it felt like to be in his position, so he didn’t push it. But, boy, he had a million questions about all that cash and about what Randall had told him—and about why Randall had told him. Did he feel sorry for Dooley? Or had he agreed to the meeting and told him what he had for some other reason? Dooley ached to get into it with his uncle, but there were some things he couldn’t ask, not here. Still, he couldn’t help wondering, as he watched his uncle, do I look anything like him? Is it true what Randall had insinuated? Is that why his uncle had had Lorraine cremated, why he had never even suggested that she be put to rest in the family plot? Is that why, after all those years …
“You remember that first time you came to see me?” he said.
“Yeah,” his uncle said. “I’d be amazed if you remembered it, though. You were in bad shape.”
But Dooley did remember.
“I was surprised,” he said. “You remember that? I was surprised because I didn’t even know I had an uncle.”
“I didn’t think you were able to concentrate enough to be surprised about anything. I thought you were still focused on how you were going to score in there.”
“Yeah, well, that, too. But I was also surprised. Lorraine never mentioned you. Why do you think that was?”
“How the hell would I know?” his uncle said, irritable now. Well, why not? He was in here, wasn’t he?
“My whole life I never knew about you, and then you showed up out of the blue. You said something like, you didn’t know about me. Something like that.”
“I believe what I said,” his uncle said, his eyes hard on Dooley’s, “was that if I’d known, maybe I could have done something sooner.”
Dooley nodded. Yeah, that was it. That was what he’d said—If I’d known, which, of course, Dooley had taken to mean, if I’d known about you. He looked at his uncle now. Since he’d gone to live with him, Dooley had never had to guess what his uncle was thinking. If he was angry with Dooley, if he was worried, if, God forbid, he was proud of something Dooley had done, he put it all right out there for Dooley to read. But for the past couple of weeks, it had been different. For the past couple of weeks, he hadn’t been able to read his uncle. It had taken a while for him to get it. His uncle had been a cop most of his adult life. Cops, in Dooley’s experience, were good at hiding what they were thinking. They were good at bluffing when they knew you’d done something but they couldn’t prove it and when, therefore, they were trying to trip you up so you would hang yourself and save them the trouble. They were good at telling you that they understood exactly how it could have happened: The guy pissed you off, right, Ryan, and you got mad, right, and so you swung at him; you didn’t mean to, and you wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t acted like such a jerk, right, Ryan? Telling you they understood when the truth was that they were probably disgusted with you for being such a lowlife; they were stringing you along so you’d finally come clean and say, yeah, I did it and here’s why, and then, there you were, hanging yourself again. Dooley couldn’t see why his uncle would have been any different when he was a cop, which meant that, if he wanted to, he could probably hide what was really going on in his head just the same as every other cop Dooley had ever known.
“What exactly did you mean when you said that?” Dooley said.
“What do you think I meant?”
“I thought you meant that you didn’t know about me. I thought you meant that you’d just found out about me.” Dooley had been pretty messed up at the time. Maybe his uncle was right. Maybe he hadn’t been thinking straight. “But that’s not it, is it?”
No answer.
“Is it?” Dooley said. He heard Lorraine’s voice in his head: You never came around.
His uncle didn’t answer.
“You knew she had a kid, didn’t you?” Dooley said. There was no other way to explain what Lorraine had said. “You knew about me. You knew I existed.” That had to be it. “You just didn’t know what things were like.” Say it. Ask him: Are you my father? That’s where Randall had been going with his questions. But, Jesus, did he really want to know? “Am I right?”
“I thought it would be easier if you and I started out with a clean slate,” his uncle said. “Without any baggage.”
“You mean, if we started out without me wondering where you’d been my whole life?”
It took a few moments before his uncle said, “Something like that.”
“So, what, you just didn’t care?” Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to face it. Maybe he couldn’t face it. Maybe that’s what all those cash payments were about. It sure as hell was what Randall had been hinting.
“I told you, Ryan. Lorraine and I didn’t get along.”
“But you knew she had a kid.”
“Yes.”
“And you never came to see me?”
He searched his uncle’s face but saw no emotion.
“No,” his uncle said.
“Why not?”
“What difference does it make?”
“It makes a difference,” Dooley said.
Nothing.
“The past couple of years,” Dooley said, “what’s that been all about?”
His uncle just sat there. Jesus, what a hard-ass.
“I know about the money,” Dooley said. “I know you were paying her regularly for at least the last couple of years.”
There it was, out in the open and hanging between them now, the complicated thing his uncle didn’t want to talk about. And what did his uncle do? He stood up and hammered on the door, summoning a guard, that’s what.
Shit.
That night: Customers looking to fry their brains with the latest in mindless entertainment. The busiest night of the week, and Dooley was stepping outside every time Kevin turned his back to try Beth’s cell number again.
Thinking about Beth.
Thinking about Lorraine, too, and about the regular cash payments that she regularly transformed into a good time—until six months ago when the partying had stopped and she’d opened up a savings account. His uncle had still been giving her money then. He’d seen the spreadsheets. Had she started saving all that money? She’d cleaned up her act, too. Were the two things related—saving instead of partying and getting herself together? And that day outside his school, she had looked good. She’d looked almost like a regular mom, not some cheap slut party girl. Why had she all of a sudden changed? Had she got religion? He couldn’t see that happening. But it had to be something. If there was one thing Dooley knew, it was that someone who was that long and that far gone didn’t just wake up one morning and think, hmm, why don’t I try the straight life for a while? No, there had to be a reason. Everyone he’d ever met who’d made the change had come face to face with a reason—a hard-core one. Was she sick? Sometimes that happened. People with lung cancer finally stopped smoking. People who were HIV-positive gave up the needle. Some people quit because they’d had a life-altering experience; maybe they’d climbed behind the wheel while under the influence and ended up killing or maiming or paralyzing someone. When that happens, what do you do, assuming they don’t lock you up for it? You either change or you get yourself more fucked up. Or maybe your doctor says, unless you make some serious lifestyle changes, you’ll be dead in six months. Maybe you don’t care. But if you do, if you’re not ready to check out, you make some changes. You start eating right, you exercise a little, you butt out. It’s always something. There’s always a reason.
Something had put Lorraine straight. But what?
Who would know? Who could tell him?
A hand fell on Dooley’s shoulder. He spun around.
Linelle. She said, “Kevin says to tell you if you don’t get back into the store right now and do your job, he’s going to write you up. He’s such an asshole.”
Dooley glanced through the store window and saw Kevin’s pinched face looking out at him.
“Tell him I’ll be there in a minute,” Dooley said.
“He’s an asshole, but he’s a pissed-off asshole, Dooley. This could get you fired. And if that happens, I’ll pretty much have to kill myself. You’re the only thing that makes this job tolerable.”
He looked at her. “Yeah?”
“Definitely,” she said. “I would have bled out a long time ago if it wasn’t for you.”
Good old Linelle. She always said the right thing.
“Two minutes, I promise,” he said. He punched in another number, talked fast, made an appointment, and then went inside and did something he’d never done before. He apologized to Kevin. Kevin was so stunned that all he could do was flap his gums; no words came out.
Dooley’s cell phone rang at one in the morning, just as he was getting into bed. It was Beth.
“I’ve been calling you,” Dooley said.
“My mother confiscated my phone,” she said, confirming one of Dooley’s theories and dispelling all the Beth-dumps-Dooley scenarios that had been plaguing him ever since her mother had marched out of his uncle’s house. “She totally freaked out, Dooley.” She was talking softly, as if she were afraid she might be overheard. “She told me she wants to send me down east to live with my uncle and aunt.”
Anything, Dooley thought, to keep her away from me.
“I told her if she did, I’d run away. She forbids me to see you anymore.”
“Beth, I—”
“I told her she can’t forbid me to do anything. I told her if she tries to stop me from seeing you, I’ll move out, get a job, and get my own place, and there’s nothing she can do about it. She’s trying to lay this trip on me, Dooley, how I’m all she has left and it’s her responsibility to make sure I get the very best—the best education, the best start in life, meet the best people, stuff like that. I know you probably don’t like her, but she’s not really the way she comes across. It’s just been hard, you know—first my father, then Mark. She worries all the time. She keeps thinking that something’s going to happen to me and then she won’t have anyone. She thinks we should go for counseling—her and me. I told her I would—she’s my mother. I don’t want to be fighting with her all the time. But I told her if I did it, she had to stop giving me a hard time about you. She finally said she would be prepared to do that.”
Dooley let out a sigh of relief.
“When can I see you?” he said.
“We’re up north,” Beth said. “We left right after school yesterday.”
“Up north where?”
“At a place in the country,” Beth said. She said something else, but her voice faded out.
“I can hardly hear you,” Dooley said.
“That’s because everyone’s asleep. I found my mother’s cell phone and snuck out of the house. I can see stars, Dooley. You can’t believe how many there are. I wish you were here.” Dooley wished he was, too. “My mom wanted us to spend the weekend connecting, you know? She says she feels like she doesn’t know me anymore. We went for a hike this morning and then we spent the afternoon at a spa. I won’t be back until late tomorrow night. But I wanted to talk to you. I didn’t want you to worry.”
“I’m glad you called,” Dooley said.
“So I’ll see you when I get back?”
“I can’t wait.”
Eighteen
Gloria Thomas was working on a bowl of latte when Dooley arrived at the coffee shop the next morning. Dooley grabbed a coffee and sat down opposite her. She studied him for a moment, searching his eyes. What was she looking for? Did she see some of Lorraine in him? Or had Lorraine spilled her guts about him and was Gloria wondering what he was doing to get through the day?
“How can I help you, Dooley?” she said.
Yeah, that was probably what she was thinking.
“I want to know why she did it—why she joined a group, why she was trying to get clean.”
“We really didn’t talk about that.”
“But you were her sponsor.”
“She called me when she felt tempted or when she felt she couldn’t hang on anymore. We’d get together for a coffee—just like this—and she’d talk.”
“She must have said something,” Dooley said.
“She said a lot. She talked a lot about you. She said she felt that she never really knew you.”
Dooley shook his head. How could you know someone you never paid any attention to?
“She said she was sorry about that,” Gloria Thomas said.
“She had a funny way of showing it,” Dooley said, with more acid than he’d intended.
“She said she knew she wasn’t a good mother. She regretted that. She had a lot of regrets. She talked about them all the time—people she’d known, relationships she’d been in, some of the things she’d done or hadn’t done.”
“Did she talk about my uncle?”
“No.”
“Her parents—her adopted parents, I mean?”
“No.”
Dooley sighed. He’d been hoping.
“I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I felt that she was getting to a place where she felt she could move out of the past and take some steps forward—make amends, if that’s what she felt she had to do, re-establish relationships, plan for the future.”
“But why? Something must have made her clean up her act,” he said. “Was she sick?”
“No sicker than anyone else in her situation.”
“Was she in trouble with the law?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
Dooley didn’t get it.
Gloria Thomas sipped her latte. “She didn’t come right out and say so,” she said slowly, “but I always had the feeling that she was doing it for someone besides herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“She never said. But I think it involved a man.”
There you go. A man. Not Dooley. Not her son. Of course not. Some things never changed.
“Did she say who it was?”
Gloria Thomas shook her head.
“She said she wanted to change her life. She said she had her reasons but that she didn’t want to talk about it because she didn’t want to jinx it. I don’t know, there was just something about the look on her face that made me think it was a man. I could be wrong. That’s all I know. I’m sorry.”
“When did she start?”
Gloria Thomas frowned.
“I mean, when did she get her act together?” Dooley said.
“Six or seven months ago. Why?”
Six, seven months ago—about the time she started saving instead of spending.
Dooley stopped by Teresa’s place to ask her if she needed anything. He buzzed and buzzed. No answer. He put his mouth up to the letterbox and called her name.
“It’s me,” he said. “It’s Dooley.”
He stepped back on the sidewalk, almost to the curb, and looked up. A curtain fluttered. He went back to the door and peered in again. This time he was buzzed through and saw Teresa standing at the top of the stairs, a frying pan in her hand.
“I just wanted to see how you’re doing,” he said.
She nodded, a signal for him to come up.
She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and Dooley saw that the bruises on her arms had darkened to black and purple. She was still holding the frying pan. It was one of those heavy cast-iron ones, the kind that could inflict serious brain or spinal cord damage if you hit the right spot with the right amount of force. Her knuckles were white around its black handle.
“You expecting someone besides me?” Dooley said.
She lowered the frying pan onto the stove top.
“I’ve been thinking—what if those guys come back?”
“Why would they?” Dooley said. “You already told them you don’t have the money, right?”
She nodded. “But maybe they’ll want to take some of my stuff instead.”
Dooley looked around. Besides the big-screen TV, he didn’t see anything worth taking, nor could he picture anyone wrestling that TV down those stairs. Besides, it wasn’t even new.
“Those guys who were here,” he said. “You said they wanted money that Jeffie owed them, right?”
She nodded.
“The thing is, Teresa, Jeffie borrowed money from me to pay off someone else he owed. He said he needed it right away because the guy wouldn’t wait. Then, the day before he died, he came by the store where I work. He said he needed another day before he could pay me back, which I figure means he’d already used my money to pay whoever he owed and he was having a little problem getting the money together to pay me.” This had been bothering him. “So the thing is, if he took my money and paid the guy he owed, who were the guys who were here giving you a hard time?”
Teresa’s eyes filled with tears.
“I don’t know,” she said. “They didn’t tell me their names. I thought they were friends of yours, you know, because you told me Jeffie owed you money.”
“Yeah, but they weren’t. You don’t have any idea who they were?”
She looked down at the floor. “I guess maybe it could have something to do with the gambling.”
“Gambling?” Dooley shook his head. “He got back into that?”
“When he won, he said it was the biggest rush. But he didn’t always win.” She looked at him again. “He told me he was going to stop. He said if he could get it together, maybe we could go down east, you know, where he was from. He said it was nice and quiet down there; maybe he could get a job in a garage, maybe get a little place on the ocean. Jeffie was crazy about the ocean.”
Jeffie was just plain crazy, if you asked Dooley, gambling with owed money. Boy, now Dooley could see it. Jeffie had promised to pay him back. Maybe he’d even made that money he’d been hoping to from that downtown party guy he’d told Dooley about the first time, the one he’d said reminded him of Dooley. But then he’d pissed it away gambling on … well, whatever he gambled on. It looked like maybe he had lost more than he could afford so that he didn’t just owe Dooley, he owed someone else, too. Maybe that’s how he ended up dead.
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