“Or,” said Trey, waiting for his brother to look in his direction, “we got mac and cheese?”
Years fell away and the two brothers smiled at each other. It would drive their mother to distraction that, whatever she cooked – and the woman could cook – Pocket was always happiest with mac and cheese.
Pocket clapped his hands softly together. “Ha, you know me so well, bro.”
“Mac and cheese coming up. Juice too?”
Pocket nodded.
Trey threw the dish into the microwave, turned it on and filled two glasses with juice.
“Hey,” said Pocket, “you catch the Knicks result?”
“Yeah,” replied Trey, “nothing good.”
“Damn.”
“They’re taking a run at the record for worst losing streak in team history.”
The two boys had been Knicks fans since before Trey could walk – literally. There was a picture on the wall of a toddler Trey wearing his older brother’s Knicks cap, far too big for him.
“Hey though,” said Trey, rushing into the room with excitement. “Did you…?”
Pocket, thinking his brother was busy, was sniffing something from a tiny silver spoon. Trey knew enough to know what it was, but he turned around, trying to not be seen seeing. “Did you hear? They’re saying we might sign Kevin Durant?”
Pocket wiped a finger under his nose and shoved something quickly into the pocket of his jacket. “For real? Man, that’d be something.”
“Right?” agreed Trey. “Maybe we could go catch a game soon? See how bad they suck.”
“Yeah,” said Pocket. “Totally.”
“They’re at home this weekend.”
“Oh, yeah, just – now ain’t a great time for me.”
“Sure,” said Trey, brushing it off. “Whatever.”
“Soon though. We definitely gonna do that.”
“Cool.”
Pocket drummed his fingers on his knees, looking oddly out of place in his own home. “So, how’s school?”
“Yeah, y’know, OK. Mostly.”
Pocket raised an eyebrow. “Mostly?”
Trey waved it away. “Don’t worry about it. Some of these rich kids are a little much.”
“Don’t let them give you no shit, little brother. You want, I can roll up and…”
“No, no,” interjected Trey. “Honestly, it’s fine. Are you kidding? I can handle that with my eyes closed. It’s just funny is all. I’m from Coopersville – no Brad from the Hamptons is gonna bother me.”
Pocket nodded. “Represent. OK, then. Hey, you seen any more of that Marlon fool?”
“Yeah, we cool.”
Marlon had found him the day before and issued a grovelling apology for his behaviour. Trey hadn’t failed to notice that three fingers of his left hand were held in place by a bandage wrapped around a splint. There had been an alarming desperation in his tone.
The microwave pinged and Trey placed the plate of mac and cheese on a tray with some cutlery and a napkin.
Pocket threw his coat off and retook his seat, MTV now playing low on the TV in the background. Trey placed the tray on his knee and sat down beside him.
“Oh yeah. Mac and cheese!”
“Line up, ladies, because we aim to please!” finished Trey with a giggle.
“Mac and Cheese” had been their name when the two brothers, all of nine and twelve at the time, had decided they were what the rap world was waiting for. Pocket laughed uproariously and threw an arm around his baby brother. “I forgot all about that! We were something.”
“Mom thought we were good.”
Pocket shovelled macaroni into his mouth. “Bless her, the woman was a saint, but she didn’t know music!”
“Oh, come on now,” said Trey, laughing, “those moves we had were tight!”
They both did their head nod routine in perfect unison, two to the left, two to the right, followed by a shoulder roll left and a slide right.
Then they both fell into fits of laughter again, and Pocket grabbed his plate to stop it crashing to the floor.
“I still don’t know why our routine was all upper body.”
“Sure you do,” said Trey. “Mom wouldn’t let us move the table, so we couldn’t do any fancy footwork.”
Pocket chuckled away to himself again as he returned to his meal. “That’s right. It was just after we decided we were gonna be wrestlers and you broke her chair.”
“Me?” said Trey. “You were the one who told me to go up top and drop the elbow on you.”
“Well, I had to find some way to make it believable that you could take me.”
Trey slapped his brother’s shoulder. “I could take you easy. You’re big and slow.”
“That right?”
There was a moment’s pause before the brothers launched into each other, the plate going flying for real this time. Trey managed to get on top and wrap an arm around Pocket’s neck. His big brother picked him up and play-slammed him back into the couch, but Trey maintained his grip. “Yeah. Can you smell what the Mac is cooking!”
Pocket waved his arms around, making a show of it but letting his little brother win, same as he always did. “I was Mac; you were Cheese!”
“Never,” said Trey. “I’m not having the whack name.”
A couple of bars of a song Trey didn’t recognise issued from Pocket’s jacket. “Let me up.”
“Never,” said Trey with a giggle. “Not until you admit I’m Mac!”
Pocket’s voice dropped. “I ain’t playing.” He put his hands up and broke Trey’s hold effortlessly, before hustling to the coat stand and pulling his phone out. “Yeah?”
Trey watched him from the couch. Watched his body language change.
“I’ll be right there.”
Trey must have done a bad job of hiding his reaction, as Pocket grimaced when he looked at him. “I gotta go.”
“Sure.”
“It’s… important.”
“Cool.”
Pocket put his coat back on.
Trey hesitated, and then… “Are you going to be back Saturday?”
“I don’t know. Things are a little… intense right now.”
“OK, only—”
Annoyance flashed in Pocket’s eyes. “I’ll try. You a big boy now, Trey, don’t be relying on me.”
“Alright,” said Trey. “Whatever.”
Pocket moved towards the door. “You good for money?” He turned when Trey said nothing. “Are you?”
“Yes!” said Trey, picking the plate up off the carpet. The cheese was going to leave a stain.
“Alright then.”
Pocket opened the door.
“It’s her anniversary.”
Pocket froze.
“Saturday. It’s three years.”
Pocket lowered his head and stood there for a long moment. “January 11th, of course it is.”
Trey stood there, the plate in his hand. “I thought we could go down to the graveyard.”
Pocket nodded.
“You still haven’t been, have you?”
“Ain’t my thing.”
“OK.”
Pocket looked back over his shoulder. “We could do something else though?”
“That’d be cool.”
“Alright. I’ll holler at you.”
Pocket took a step out and was about to close the door when he stopped. He didn’t look back as he spoke. “You know… anything happens to me, you’re taken care of. I made sure.”
Trey didn’t know what to say to that. His mouth felt suddenly dry. “Something gonna happen to you?”
“Nah, man – I just… You’ll be OK.”
“I’ll have nobody. Money can’t buy that back.”
Pocket stood there for so long that Trey wondered if he would speak at all. When he did, his voice came out soft and low. “Life ain’t easy, ain’t fair. You got the golden ticket though. You take your smarts and go out there and do your thing. You leave Coopersville and you never
look back.”
“I like it here.”
Pocket turned now, anger in his eyes. “No, you don’t – you just don’t know anything else. Soon as school is done, you get out and never look back. Ain’t nothing here for you but pain. Find something better.”
“Maybe there isn’t somewhere better.”
Pocket grabbed the door. “That better not be true.”
He closed the door and Trey stood there, the plate in his hand, looking at the space where his brother had been.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Father Gabriel felt his eyelids sag and then jerked himself awake, experiencing an awful moment of social awkwardness as he wondered just how noticeable it had been. They were sitting in the curtained-off area on the balcony of the church, which served as a meeting room due to the lack of any other usable space that could fit more than two people.
Mr Grassam, who worked for the diocese, was rambling on and appeared unaware of Father Gabriel’s momentary dip. In Father Gabriel’s defence, the man was a terrible droner. He was every unfair cliché of accountants wrapped up into one dandruff-coated stereotype. Gabriel had noticed that if you listened to the first two sentences of what he said, regardless of how long he spoke, you got all the relevant information. What’s more, if you somehow missed that, he would helpfully recap in the last two sentences before he finally stopped speaking. The headline here was that the church didn’t have enough money. They had nothing saved and little coming in. None of this was news to Father Gabriel. While he feigned concern and tried to nod in all the right places, his attitude was that there were things that needed to be done – in Coopersville the list was pretty much infinite – and what money there was should be spent immediately and then more found.
Sitting next to Mr Grassam was Lorraine Wynns, the poor woman who was primarily concerned with the “finding more” part of the equation. Father Gabriel had all the time in the world for her, and she was, happily, the case that disproved every accountancy stereotype. She was a volunteer who had moved across from a Manhattan parish when Coopersville had nobody with any financial expertise to help them. She had met Father Gabriel at a diocese meeting two years ago. He had summoned up all his courage and recruited her over a slice of apple pie and a cup of near undrinkable coffee the following week. The poor woman had probably said yes just to stop the garbled fifteen-minute speech he had launched into. She had been giving one night a week to a well-to-do area, until his desperate pleas had convinced her of how much someone with her skill set would mean to St Theresa’s parish. Now, she worked part-time, and had her husband, her neighbour and two people she played tennis with trying to help out too. Father Gabriel had made sure to invite the Wynns family to Bianca’s fight, and he had sought them out afterwards. They got so few victories and he wanted them to taste that one. It had been a wonderful, if small, moment.
Lorraine, showing greater resolve than he, stayed focused on Mr Grassam as he spoke and was even taking copious notes, which meant she hadn’t noticed Father Gabriel’s “long blink” either. Rosario, despite also taking notes, clearly had noticed Father Gabriel’s dip. She was looking directly at him. Despite having known her for so long, he couldn’t say with any certainty how much her expression was sincere admonishment and how much was playful mockery. The woman still scared him a little, which, given his life up until this point, was really quite something.
Gabriel tried to tune back into Mr Grassam, who he hoped might be coming in for a landing soon.
“… having already exceeded this year’s budget, and given the overrun incurred last year, we cannot allow this fiscally irresponsible trend to continue. While we no doubt all appreciate the good work done, we must also appreciate sound financial planning—”
Mr Grassam was interrupted by a roar of approval which was not in support of the concept of sound financial planning. Four heads turned toward the window, which faced onto the gym.
“What is that?”
Father Gabriel felt himself redden as he turned back. “Apologies, Roger, it appears that the evening training session is a little more lively than normal.”
He and Rosario shared a look. The session was under the control of Brother McGarry – or Bunny, as now everyone but Gabriel referred to him. It had been eight days since Gabriel had introduced him into the running of the church, and it had been disruptive, although not in the way Gabriel had expected. Bunny was everything that Gabriel was not. While Gabriel was all about quiet asides and preaching self-control and discipline, Bunny was the fun uncle who came in and shook the place up. He had won over the kids in less time than Gabriel would have believed possible. They couldn’t understand half of what he said, but they responded to his energy. He’d done in a matter of days what it had taken Gabriel years to achieve. Even Rosario – who had reacted firstly with disbelief upon learning that the smelly drunk on the steps was apparently a visiting Franciscan brother, and secondly with horror when Gabriel had explained that he would be staying for a while – had been won over. Bunny had managed to charm the fearsome woman. She feigned outrage at his line in flirtatious banter – Bunny regularly told her that she was in danger of stealing him away from his vocation with her “fiery Latin loveliness” – but Gabriel noticed that she regularly sought out the Irishman’s company. So did everyone, to be fair. Bunny was undeniably popular and, Gabriel had to admit, he had proven himself invaluable. He had boxed in his youth and had helped a lot with training. He had even managed to get Darrell Wilkes to understand that his feet were for more than standing on. Bunny had refereed the light sparring rounds they held between boxers of similar stature on Wednesdays and Saturdays and he had, in all honesty, done a better job than Gabriel of making it fun. And his running commentaries had been enjoyable enough that kids had hung around to watch.
“To your point, Roger,” said Lorraine Wynns, getting the meeting back on track, “rest assured we are fully aware that we need to secure additional funding, both for the operational budget and for the longer-term desire to build facilities here that are fit for purpose.”
Gabriel wasn’t jealous of Bunny. He was… It was just that… Well, OK, maybe he was a little jealous. He had started to feel like the warm-up man who had thought he was doing OK until the star turned up. Gabriel, with the help of people like Rosario and Lorraine, had built this place up into something special. He had worked his fingers to the bone and begged and borrowed to make a run-down house into, well, a run-down gym. One that hummed with activity most of the day. Still, with the arrival of Brother Bunny, it had more energy flowing through it. He was probably being oversensitive. He had slept even less than normal since last week, waiting for the next move, which was surely coming. Abraham was not the kind of man to make one attempt at something and leave it at that. He was being toyed with. All Gabriel could do was wait.
He noticed that nobody in the room was talking and that, worse yet, everyone was looking at him. This felt like that recurring dream where he was giving a sermon only to discover he was doing so naked. He gave an awkward smile. “Absolutely.” It seemed as safe a statement as possible in the circumstances. He caught a hint of an eye roll from Rosario.
“What the father means to say,” she began, “is that thanks to our recent media coverage” – Rosario said it with obvious delight at having been proven right – “we have a gentleman from The Regency, a Wall Street charitable fund, coming in to meet with him this evening. They are looking for New York projects to offer significant long-term backing to, and they have been very impressed by what they have heard about our work here.”
“Yes,” said Gabriel, picking up the baton he had dropped. “Rosario has spoken to the gentleman, and God willing, this might be exactly the kind of support we were hoping for.” Rosario and Lorraine had been positively giddy with excitement. Even Gabriel had allowed himself to hope. Whatever was coming, maybe he could leave here knowing that all he had worked for could be carried on. That truly would be something.
All four heads turn
ed as there was another loud roar from the direction of the gym.
Gabriel stood up. “Excuse me for a moment, please. I’m just going to check on that. Make sure nobody is getting carried away.”
Before Rosario could protest, Gabriel was through the curtain and hopping quickly down the stairs. Mrs Wu gave him a disapproving look as he walked through the church, towards the cheering which had now been supplemented with rhythmic clapping.
Trey was sitting up on the ropes in the corner of the ring, cupping his hands around his mouth to be heard over the clamour of the crowd.
“In the red corner, the punching pride of Coopersville, the lay-me-out lady, the knockdown queen, the one and only Bianca, the New York state champ-ee-on!”
This was met with a roar from the crowd.
“And in the blue corner, from Ireland in the United Kingdom…”
Bunny, still wearing his brown robes, turned around from the comically OTT stretching exercises he was engaged in, looking genuinely outraged. “What in da feck are you talking ’bout? Ireland is not part of the UK! What do they teach you at that fancy-arsed school?”
Trey gave Bunny a grin, having correctly guessed exactly how to irritate him.
“Why I oughta…” Bunny backed into Darrell Wilkes, who was acting as his corner man, and pretended that he was holding him back while the crowd laughed.
“Seconds out,” hollered Trey. “Round one! Ding ding!”
Bianca moved to the centre of the ring, laughing as Bunny – hamming it up like a two-bit wrestling heel – ran forward and bounced off one set of ropes and then the other. She stood in her perfect defensive stance as Bunny clambered up on the second turnbuckle in his corner and hollered, “I must be the greatest!” This was met with a good-natured mix of cheers and boos from the crowd.
Bunny hopped back down onto the canvas and moved towards Bianca, arms extended and crooked at the elbow, his fists rolling in front of him like the technique seen in black-and-white photos when boxing appeared to solely be the pursuit of bald men with handlebar moustaches. “Put ’em up, put ’em up!” he lisped, before lowering his gloves and sticking his chin out in an Ali-like taunt, pulling his head back in just in time to avoid a lightning jab from Bianca.
I Have Sinned Page 16
