Family Law

by Gin Phillips

  “So Luther will be doing the men’s bathrooms. You’ll do the women’s. There are three sets of bathrooms at the park, and Luther can show you where they are. You’ll empty out the trash cans every two hours, plus wipe down the toilets and the sinks with the cleaner—you tell her about that.” He jerked his head at Luther, and I was pretty sure he’d forgotten his name again. “You’ll mop the floors once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Wipe off the tables in the pavilions. There’s eight pavilions, and don’t miss any. Pick up any litter. Don’t just stand around. Look like you’re working.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I wondered if he’d told me his name and I’d missed it.

  Luther nodded.

  “I’ll be in the guard shack,” the man said, pointing vaguely behind him. “You come get me if any issues come up.”

  He walked off, and I was left with Luther, who was about my height and probably about my weight. I was sure his waist was smaller than mine, and I thought of how girls at my school liked to say, If he can fit in my pants, he can’t get in my pants, although I could see several reasons why this man would never get in my pants. He’d kept his head turned while the security guard was standing there, but now he faced me, smiling, and he was missing a tooth. His skin was all leather.

  We said hello, and he pointed me toward a broom propped against one of the wooden pavilion posts. The bristles of it curled to each side like an old-fashioned mustache, and it didn’t seem to make any difference to the pollen and dust on the concrete, but I felt better with something in my hands. I swept my way across the floor as Luther wiped the benches, dirty water trickling on the concrete from his wet rag.

  “How much time you got here?” he asked me.

  “Sixteen hours,” I said. It occurred to me for the first time that maybe he wasn’t an employee.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  I told him about my speeding.

  “I got three-hundred and twenty hours,” he said.

  That made me lose my rhythm. “What did you do?”

  “Littered,” he said, and he made a clicking sound like he was encouraging a horse.

  I kept sweeping, he kept wiping, and nothing seemed any cleaner when we finished. Eventually we carried the bucket and broom to the closest set of bathrooms, where Luther unlocked a closet full of mops and spray bottles and toilet paper. He stepped inside and pushed himself against the wooden shelves so I could fit in, too, and my arm brushed against his arm. It was all shadows in the closet, with only the sunlight coming through the trees for light. It smelled like the old lawn mower shed at Molly’s. Luther held up the glass cleaner for the mirrors and the multipurpose disinfectant for the toilets, and his fingers brushed against my thigh as he reached down for the toilet paper.

  He didn’t seem to notice.

  He talked me through the list of chores, and then I was inside the women’s bathroom, starting with the mirrors. The sinks were rusted around the drains, one of them clogged with wet paper. None of that was too bad. The toilets, though. You don’t normally look too close at a toilet—not at the creases where the metal bolts fasten to the concrete, not at the curve of the bowl, inside and out. No matter how I tried to keep my eyes unfocused, I couldn’t help but see the spattered stains. Dark blotches. Hairs, swirled and dried. A bloody tampon tossed on the cement. My hand was only a wad of paper towels away from all of it. My hair, even in a ponytail, kept falling forward. I had a sense that this was not me. I wasn’t someone who cleaned public toilets. I wasn’t someone who needed to wash my hands three times to make sure I wasn’t contaminated with a stranger’s diarrhea.

  I stepped back outside the bathroom, nose full of chemicals, and Luther was waiting there, wiping his hands on his jeans like he hadn’t bothered with a paper towel. I was almost glad to see him. He could give me instructions, and I could follow them, and that didn’t require any thinking, and we’d go along like that and then the day would be over.

  “How old do you think I am?” he asked.

  I did not want to be offensive.

  “Go on,” he said. “You won’t hurt my feelings.”

  “Forty-five,” I said, thinking surely he was nearly sixty.

  “Shit,” he said. “Excuse me. I’m thirty-six.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Ain’t your fault,” he said. “I know how I am. You see this?”

  He yanked up his T-shirt sleeve and pointed to a white jagged line of a scar on his bicep. I nodded.

  “Bullet,” he said. He held out his hand, and I handed him my cleaning bottles. His sleeve stayed hitched up, showing the bottom inch of his scar. He set the bottles, one at a time, back into the open closet, and then he closed and locked the door.

  “I’ve been through it,” he said, turning back to me. “I’ve been shot, stabbed, cut with a bottle, run over, and pushed off a building.”

  Even though I wished he would keep his distance so that his elbow wouldn’t keep touching mine, I couldn’t help being curious as we walked back into the open air, trees spreading over us. The day was warming up, and I felt the first sheen of sweat on my face.

  “Nearly died from a car wreck, too,” he said.

  “The one where you got run over?”

  “No, that was being run over. The wreck was when I ran my car into a telephone pole. That was before they took my license. And then they give you community service eight or nine miles from your place, and they know you have to walk, so what does that tell you?”

  “You walked here?”

  “No choice.”

  We cut through a wide field, bordered by oaks, as much dirt as grass. Old acorns covered the ground, and they disintegrated with every step. Eventually we reached another pavilion, this one in view of the playground. A few kids were swinging, and a mom was sitting on a bench, reading a People magazine. The sight of them settled me. As we scrubbed the tables, Luther kept up a steady patter, telling me about dogs he’d owned and how he liked his hamburgers cooked and how good the fishing was at Lake Martin. He asked me questions about where I went to school and if I had brothers and sisters and if I had a boyfriend. I kept my answers short.

  “You like camping?” he asked.

  “I guess,” I said. “My dad took me once.”

  “He doesn’t take you anymore?”

  “He travels a lot,” I said.

  He nodded. “My dad didn’t do much neither.”

  Even though I had my eyes on my broom, I could hear the sympathy or pity or whatever it was in Luther’s voice. I didn’t bother correcting him. I didn’t see my dad often, but when I did, we talked books and movies, and he told me about his job and I told him about school and he listened. He always listened. It wasn’t a bad thing that he had a life outside of Montgomery: it was a gift. Dad didn’t require a single thing from me. I never had to worry about him. He enjoyed me, but he didn’t need me, and that was what I loved most about him.

  “I know this place up on Smith Lake,” Luther was saying. “Perfect place. I could take you. Your dad, too. Nothing untoward. We’d have a nice time.”

  He’d stepped closer to me, and I stopped sweeping.

  I could smell him. I could see a fleck of maybe pepper wedged in his gums as he smiled.

  I thought of a conversation between Mom and Aunt Molly after Aunt Molly had let the yardman—a white yardman, granted—come in and use the restroom, and both of them were wondering whether that had been smart, whether it was all right to let that kind of man into your house, even when that same man had cut your grass for seven years, because you never knew, did you? I could picture Mom pressing her lips together at Luther, even though he had done nothing more than lose a tooth—and a driver’s license—and try to make conversation.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You’ll tell him I asked?”

  “Sure,” I said.

&nbs
p; Two more hours, steadily working. A little past noon we each got a pack of crackers from the vending machine and sat on a bench—a solid two feet between us—eating them. I drained a Fanta. The breeze turned the day from hot to pleasant.

  “So what did you do to get all this community service?” I asked. “I know it wasn’t littering.”

  He folded up his empty cracker wrapper, creasing it carefully. Lance Toast Chee Peanut Butter, it read, and I’d never noticed that the cracker people didn’t use the word “cheese.”

  “It wasn’t what I did,” he said. “It was what they said I did.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What did they say you did?”

  “They said I raped my sixteen-year-old niece. Or sexually assaulted her or some bullcrap.”

  He kept folding that piece of plastic. Chee Chee Chee.

  “But you didn’t?” I said.

  “Nah. She just told them she’d said no.”

  He stood, taking three slow steps to the trash can. He said more, but I faded in and out. He and his brother didn’t get along, and his brother was always looking for an excuse to get back at him. And the girl, well, he wasn’t nearly the first—

  When he finally faced me, he held a hand over his eyes, blocking the sun.

  “You scared of me now?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “’Cause you’re easing away from me,” he said. “I ain’t gonna do nothing to you. I don’t do that sort of thing. You hear me?”

  “I know,” I said. “I know you’re not.”

  I made myself walk to the trash can and stand next to him as I threw my wrapper away. I watched it fall into a paper cup full of soft drink and rainwater and dead gnats.

  I smiled at Luther, reassuring him. I wondered how to find the security guard’s shack. I’d gotten turned around, not paying attention, and now, obviously, I needed to get out. I needed to tell the guard that I was squeezing into closets with a rapist, and someone needed to drive me home.

  “Ready?” said Luther.

  “Ready,” I said, and we walked on to the next bathroom. When we got there, I pulled one paper towel after another from the dispenser, and they filled my fist until they looked like a dead flower, brown petals blooming.

  It was another hour before we passed the security guard’s office, a small wooden building with a single window. I needed to make up an excuse to talk to him privately, I thought. It wasn’t that I was afraid that Luther would stop me—I could scream at any point, I’d told myself several times. He had not threatened me or propositioned me, and he had been very subdued since he told his story. Now that I had pushed through the first wave of panic, now that the words—rape, rape, niece, niece—had stopped playing through my head, I wondered if I might be overreacting.

  But I wanted to explain everything to the security guard. I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t feel like I was myself.

  I told Luther that I needed to fix my hair, and I made a big show of leaning over and rearranging my ponytail, and he said he’d meet me at the bathrooms. When he’d trudged out of sight, I knocked on the guard’s door. The old man opened it quickly and—miracle of miracles—smiled at me.

  “Hot day, huh?” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “You can call me Maxwell,” he said. “You want to come in and have a coke and cool off?”

  It was as if he had just remembered that I was a teenager who drove a little too fast, not some hardened criminal. Or maybe he’d been trying to scare me in the beginning. Maybe that was the way it worked—try to scare the teenagers enough so they’d never speed again, and if you threw in a rapist, well, all the better.

  I told him that I would like a drink. His office was air-conditioned, icy, and the sweat on my face evaporated as I stepped through the doorway. The room held a desk, two chairs, and a small refrigerator. The walls were empty except for a cheap plastic clock and a shellacked fish on a plaque. Maxwell opened the refrigerator, and it had drinks stuffed from top to bottom, including a few beers. I asked for a Dr Pepper, and when he handed it to me, I noticed that instead of a wedding ring, he wore a class ring, dark gold and ruby-stoned.

  He waved me toward the chair that wasn’t behind the desk. I’d taken my second sip when someone banged on the door.

  “Hello,” called Luther. “Hello, sir?”

  Maxwell went to the door, opening it only a crack. “Yeah?”

  “She in there?” said Luther, clearly not remembering my name. “I was wondering where she went.”

  “She’s in here,” said Maxwell, his voice not warm. Like a different man than the one who had offered me a soft drink, and this park was a different world entirely, some Twilight Zone kind of set. No one seemed real.

  “Can I come in?” Luther asked. He peered around the door, half his head appearing over Maxwell’s shoulder.

  I smiled at him and wondered why I did it.

  “No,” said Maxwell, a hand on his thick brown belt. “She’ll be on in a minute.”

  He closed the door.

  I held the Dr Pepper can against my forehead, and it felt beautiful. I had an immense affection for Maxwell all of a sudden, who finally seemed like what I expected from an old man.

  “He okay?” Maxwell asked, easing himself into the chair behind his desk. “He bothering you at all?”

  “He’s fine,” I said, trying to think through the question. Was it possible that Maxwell knew about the niece? Had I been right earlier—did they—whoever “they” were—like to use rapists as a deterrent to speeding?

  “You don’t sound so sure,” he said.

  “He says he’s here for raping his sixteen-year-old niece,” I said.

  Maxwell pushed back in his reclining chair, staring down at the floor with his chin tucked against his throat. “He said that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He told you that? That exact thing?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well.” He pushed a drawer closed with his knee. “But he hasn’t done anything to you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well. You come on in here anytime you get too hot, okay? It’s hard work for a young thing out there on a day like today, and you don’t want to overdo. I got plenty of Coca-Colas.”

  He stood.

  I stood, too.

  “Thank you,” I said, and I opened the door and walked back into the heat, and, no, none of it was real. Luther was waiting. I let him lead me to the next bathroom and the next and the next, and he asked me if my mother could give him a ride when she came to pick me up, and I said that ever since she’d been made manager at the ballet store, she was bone tired at the end of the day and surely would want to go straight home.

  When Mom got there, I slid in the car fast, my thighs slick on the seat. I slammed the door and locked it. I was not entirely sure that Luther wouldn’t come ask her for a ride himself.

  “So how was it?” she asked, cheerful. “Are you exhausted? Were there other kids there? Did you plant flowers?”

  Yes, I said, to all of it. I wanted to keep her smiling. I always wanted to keep her smiling.

  “You want to stop by Kmart on the way home?” she asked. “They’ve got blue raspberry Icees today.”

  No, thank you, I said.

  While Mom was taking her shower that night, I called Lucia. She didn’t like to talk on the phone, so I tried to be brief.

  “I have something to ask you,” I said.

  I could hear music in the background. Evan said something, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  “You still there?” she said to me.

  She was always so efficient.

  “I got a speeding ticket,” I said, “and so instead of paying a fine, I got community service at Oak Park. There’s a guy there with me—he cleans the men’s bathrooms and I clean the w
omen’s—but he’s there for raping his sixteen-year-old niece, and I wondered if you could come to the park next Saturday?”

  I heard a small sound, like she set something down. A glass? A book?

  “Raping his sixteen-year-old niece?” she said slowly.

  I was calming a little. Her voice—her voice alone—made everything seem fixable. It had the opposite effect of my mother’s voice. Mom could ask a question and my shoulders would hunch, but with Lucia, a question would let me breathe out all the things I wanted to get rid of.

  “He hasn’t done anything to me,” I clarified. “He asked me to go camping, and he’s been shot and stabbed and run over, but he hasn’t been, like, inappropriate.”

  She was quiet.

  “Let’s back up,” she said. “When did your community service start?”

  She did not seem concerned about efficiency. I talked a long time. When I hung up, I did it slowly, because the phone line was another way of pressing my face to her window, and when the receiver settled into the cradle, I was jerked away from her puffy sofa and the lamp with dangly crystals. I was back inside my house and nowhere else. I wondered if I had been silly to call her and I wondered if really I only wanted to see if she was mine enough to sacrifice a Saturday and I wondered if she would bring bread so we could feed the ducks.

  II.

  It was nearly ninety degrees the next Saturday, an unusually hot and humid October day. Even the birds were lethargic. As Lucia and Evan circled around the pond toward me, two ducks tipped upside down, heads disappearing into the algae. They didn’t seem to have the energy to right themselves.

  Lucia and Evan both gave me a hug as they said their hellos, our damp arms brushing. Evan was in shorts, which I’d never seen him wear.

  “I need to get back to the bathrooms,” I said. “I was hoping you could head in the same direction, and, you know, just be around and—”

  “Which way?” asked Lucia.

  “Popcorn?” asked Evan.

  “Yes,” said Lucia. I loved that about her. How she liked food. How she ate it, unafraid. She looked from Evan to me. “But let’s wait. Will he be there at the bathrooms, Rachel?”