The Great Jeff

by Tony Abbott

  Mom’s shoulders shook and shook and wouldn’t stop.

  “There are services,” the marshal said. “Rapid rehousing programs, you know. Shelters. In a pinch, the rescue mission downtown is where I’d go—”

  “I don’t want services. We don’t need services!” she said. “I’m not… a bum.”

  “Except it happens a thousand times,” he said. “What do you think I mostly do? I mostly do this. I see it. It’s happening. Five, six streets up, Calder Lane? It’s happening there, too. I can’t say who, but heck, you might even know them—”

  “I don’t know them,” she said.

  “The point is,” he said, “take what you need for a few days and put the rest in storage. You have storage? We have a van here, compliments of Mr. Andrade. It’s not cheap, you know. And on a Sunday. You have storage? You said you would.”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Good. Because Mr. Andrade went and hired this moving van just for you.”

  “You just said that,” I said.

  “On his dime,” the marshal continued, ignoring me. “You don’t have to pay for it, he did. You just tell his men where to take your things. You have enough storage? Did you rent enough space…?”

  “She told you she did!” I said.

  “All right. Just saying—”

  “Can we have some privacy, please?” Mom said, grabbing at the door and stepping back in.

  Mr. Andrade shot an angry look at the marshal, chewed his lips for some very long seconds, then shrugged. “Half hour. We wait right here for you.”

  “One hour,” said the marshal. “And yes, we’ll wait.”

  Mom pulled me back in and closed the door on them, not bothering to flip the bolt, which I guess we both knew meant nothing anymore.

  “Get your stuff. Just enough for a few days. Only what you absolutely need. We’ll store the rest and get it back soon. I can’t stay here anymore. People traipsing through. His stinking furnace. This isn’t our home. It’s just a cold house. Just rooms…”

  “Grandpa’s room.”

  “Never mind, honey. I… I’ll figure something out. This is too horrible now. Don’t worry, Jeff. Go on. Go on.”

  I should have realized it was coming, but I didn’t. When I stumbled into my room I felt I was someone else, somebody I didn’t know. My blood was ice. Like I’d just been killed but didn’t know it yet. My body was still working, but it didn’t have any life. I looked around at my stuff. Blurry. Meaningless. I wondered whose it was. We’d been selling things off, but I actually never thought about grabbing the stuff I’d need—need—to take with me. I hated that Mom hadn’t done anything, or enough, to stop this, but there she was, cursing like crazy from the kitchen, and that brought me out of it.

  My stuff, my things.

  If you’ve ever been in a fire, I guess you’d know. Your mind sputters when you have to run and grab and save stuff and mine was sputtering now.

  Starving all of a sudden, I went to the kitchen. Mom had moved to her room. There was a black banana in a bowl. Glasses in the sink. Cloth shopping bags bulged on the counter under half-empty open cabinets. Grandpa put those cabinets up. His invisible fingerprints on them. The cabinets weren’t ours anymore. The rooms weren’t ours.

  Sorry, Jeffie.

  His voice moved in my mind and I could almost smell the pee in his little old room. His shrunken body, his single leg propped like a bone on the pillow. A stack of cartons now stood where his bed used to be, along with a couple sticks of furniture she hadn’t sold.

  I remembered the week after Grandpa died, Mom and me rolling up his old shirts and jackets and pants into garbage bags and putting them in her trunk for Goodwill. I don’t know where my father was at the time. He didn’t help us. He was out. I guess that was the start of it. Dad said Mom got bad for the first time after Grandpa died.

  All downhill from there.

  I was swimming, I couldn’t focus.

  Mom dragged suitcases noisily across the floor of her room, while I forced myself to grab idiotic junk. I was blind with the buzzing in my ears. I couldn’t see or hear. When I opened my rolling bag it was still half full with what I didn’t use on our stunted weekend in New Hampshire. Now I added what I really needed.

  Black T-shirts, right? No matter how filthy you get, dirt doesn’t show up on black. I tossed those in. Underwear, all I had. I scooped a handful of old comics from the floor next to my bed. My nightstand had gone last week.

  Opening my dresser, I grabbed two pairs of chunky socks from my drawer. I usually wear the same pair for two weeks before my mother steals them for washing and forces me to break in a new pair. With two fresh pairs, I was good for a month. A month where? I had no idea. I spotted a tube of toothpaste and threw it in.

  What else? The posters? My pillow? What a joke.

  I may as well have put a bathmat in there, or a stapler, or a Christmas ornament, or the purple glove rolled up on the floor under my bed. Where was the other one? I didn’t know what I was doing, wandering around my ex-house looking for what I used to be. I was this far from cracking the toilet bowl as a message, but I figured the marshal wouldn’t like it and we’d have to pay for it with money we obviously didn’t have.

  “I’m all set,” I said, rolling my dumb bag into Mom’s room.

  She was frozen at the edge of her bed, her cheeks shaking as she looked up at me. “I’m forty-three years old. How is it possible that this can happen to us?”

  I looked around at the piles she’d started to make. Sweaters, shoes, underwear. It turned my stomach.

  “Mom, we’re running out of time.…”

  “I’ll tell you how this happens,” she said. “You marry a creep and he gives you a kid and he leaves and you think you were never good enough in the first place, but now you have a kid to take care of, and they throw you out of work and out of your house because of… because of what? Who did this to us?”

  “Mom, we don’t have time.”

  When I pushed her shoes off the bed into an open carton, she wailed and kicked the box over. The shoes tumbled out. The doorbell rang and the front door opened.

  “Wake up, Mom,” I said, and rolled my bag out.

  Mr. Andrade stood in the doorway not speaking, his face not purple anymore. I could tell from the way his shoulders slumped that he was miserable and sorry he had to do this. Mom was out of her room now, her hands over her mouth, sobbing. Before I could do anything, she dropped to her knees in front of him.

  “Mom!” I tried to pick her up, but she blubbered that we needed more time, more time, just a little more time.

  The landlord bit his lip and let his cheeks go loose. Was he thinking about it? Considering it? Would he decide at the last minute that we could stay?

  No.

  “I’m showing the house tomorrow. Three appointments. Sorry. It has to be empty. I need your key. And the furnace isn’t working. And maybe something else needs to be fixed.…”

  I wanted to punch something, scream and punch and punch, but I had to answer for my mom, because all she was doing was crying. “We know,” I said. “We’re nearly ready.”

  The door opened again, no bell this time, no knock. The marshal’s big shape hovered in the door frame like in every bad movie.

  “Sorry, but it’s time to wrap this up,” he said, checking his watch, then sliding aside like he was in the room of a dying person he barely knew. I wondered how many times he really had played this part. The policewoman stood behind him now, the same one as before. She put on a tight smile, came in, and helped my mom up from the floor. She then handed Mom a big envelope.

  “There are offices in downtown Bridgeport that will help if you need help finding a place to stay tonight,” she said. “Really, the people are great there. Call two-one-one, Emergency Services, they’ll get you started and tell you where to get assistance. And it’s getting colder, so you should check them out.”

  “Colder?” I said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
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  My mother took the envelope and whispered, “Downtown Bridgeport,” but I didn’t know what she meant. What about downtown Bridgeport?

  “Would you like me to call a shelter for you now?” the policewoman offered. “I can do that for tonight. There are lawyers, too. Twenty-four hour hotlines, if you want.”

  “No, th-thanks, thank you.” Mom pushed out the front door for probably the last time. “Not tonight. We have a place tonight. We’re fine tonight.”

  Which was the second scariest thing she could have said.

  What about tomorrow night? And the night after that?

  I thought of my month’s worth of socks. My mind spun and spun.

  Like they were frozen where they stood, everyone watched me drag our boxes out and lift them into the trunk of our car. Then I stuffed our rolling bags and groceries into the backseat.

  The worst part came after Mom gave the movers the address of the storage facility and the two of us were huddled on the sidewalk together. As we watched them take stuff, wrap it, and stow it deep in the van, Mom all at once ran back, gave Mr. Andrade the single house key, then took his hand and held it tight between hers.

  “Please, my mail. I beg you. Leave it in the box for me, yes? If anybody asks, we’re still here, okay? We’re still here for I don’t know how long, but a couple of weeks at least? Okay? I need that. I need an address to tell people. Please.”

  She was out of control and shaking like a sick person.

  “I’m not hearing this,” the marshal said, turning away. “Your decision, sir.”

  The landlord nodded slowly and said, “Sure, sure. Whatever you need. As long as I can. I’m sorry, but five months no rent, damage, you understand. I have no choice. My wife had surgery.”

  Which shook Mom. She didn’t know. Maybe she didn’t care. There were more words from him and the policewoman, about things that might help. Even the marshal pitched in some ideas, but that was all I heard. The noise in my head was deafening.

  We got in the car and drove around the streets until she saw a CVS. She pulled into the parking lot and searched her phone for hotels and motels and called five or six before one said they had a room at a good price. “Finally,” she said with a snort. “And it’s not far.”

  “Does it have a pool?” I asked. “Indoor. Mom. Pool. Need. Me.”

  “Jeff! You… don’t joke, honey, don’t.”

  “At least a Jacuzzi, then. Or am I thinking of Zamboni? Or is Zamboni a kind of pasta? I get confused, don’t you?”

  She turned her red face to me. “You’re a Zamboni.” She wiped her cheeks. “You make everything better. Come on. The Sidespot Inn. Sounds cozy, huh? You and me?”

  My head screamed. I swallowed my words and couldn’t speak until she started the car and pulled back into traffic.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it does.”

  CHAPTER 25

  THE SIDESPOT INN

  The Sidespot Inn wasn’t.

  It was the Sidespot Motor Inn, which is a different deal altogether, and it was practically on the exit ramp right off the interstate in the middle of Bridgeport. We missed it the first time, because the sign was so bad it only said DESPO in big letters and OTOR I in little ones, so we had to take the turnpike back an exit and try again.

  “Yay, we made it,” I said when we pulled into the lot.

  “This isn’t what I had in mind,” Mom said. “The website sounded better.”

  “That’s why they invented websites. To fool people.”

  Which I thought was smart and a little funny, but she didn’t.

  We idled for a few minutes in the shadows and since shadows were pretty much everywhere under the highway, it was hard not to be in them. My brain was shooting sparks while Mom was deciding whether to stay or go. We needed a joke, so I said, “Maybe they meant to call it Sidestop, because you stop on the side of the highway. And Motor Inn because you just motor in right from the ramp. Am I right?”

  She was silent as death and far from laughing. Groaning what sounded like her last breath, she puttered the car over to the entrance and parked outside the lobby, where tall glass windows spilled yellow light from inside.

  “Looks okay. For a night. Or two.” I threw that out there to see what she’d say.

  She puffed out a single word. “Until…”

  But she didn’t go anywhere with it, so I had to finish for her.

  “Until we get this sorted out?”

  “That.”

  Honestly, I didn’t know how she’d sort it out. We were out of our house, it was getting colder by the minute, Mom was a wreck, we had only the barest stuff—the craziest junk, those socks!—and it was a school day tomorrow. I felt my stomach drain into my legs.

  A buzzer rang when we entered the office, dragging our bags over a rug where someone had died. The stain was the shape of a body dropped from high overhead. Unmatched floor lamps stood on either side of a short couch across from a counter paneled with brown paneling and that had a green-shaded lamp and a blotter on top. A man came out from a room behind the counter and didn’t smile. Gray hair. Stubble. Wrinkles under his eyes like one of those wrinkly dogs. Smoke whirled in with him as if from the gate of hell. I’m pretty sure it was cigarette smoke.

  “Mmm?” he grumbled, which seemed a big deal from him.

  Mom gave him a flat smile. “I called. Earlier. Forty-nine dollars a night, you said.”

  “Mmm,” he said again, then nodded his chin at me. “Just so you know, it’s five extra for a cot. You want a cot?”

  Mom searched my face. I don’t know what she was hoping to get from me. Did she want me to sleep on the floor? Was she going to give me the bed and sleep on the floor herself? For five lousy dollars?

  “Yes, a cot,” I said, and he bent his eyes below the counter where his hands were rustling. He came up with a card the exact size of a large index card, because it was a large index card.

  “Name and address here, phone number, make and model of car. No parties after school, just so you know.” He was half looking at me when he said this.

  I felt like saying, Who would have a party here? Instead, I said, “I’m not a party person, really.”

  “Just so you know.” Which, along with “Mmm,” was his favorite phrase.

  She wrote on the card. With a single finger, he spun it around on the counter and frowned. “So, why you staying here if you live right there?”

  She said “Remodeling” and I said “Fumigating” at the same time.

  He snorted a wet laugh. “Whatever. Two keys?”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He totaled up the amount and she counted out cash, when I suddenly thought of something. “Is there any discount by the week?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Mmm?”

  Mom frowned but said nothing, which made me think a week was possible. At least it would take the pressure off, right? The man tugged a calculator from the mess under the counter and tapped in numbers. “If we do night by night, a week comes to three-ninety-seven, including tax. I can let you have it for three-fifty, the week. I’ll upgrade you to a suite and knock off part of the cot, too. Three-twenty. Half in advance. How’s that? Includes tax. Mmm?”

  He was being more open now, not so grumpy. It must have been the thought of all those possible dollars at once. Mom eyed me, again looking for I don’t know what, then put away her cash and took out a credit card. “Will this work…?”

  “Let’s find out,” he said.

  I knew she wasn’t sure if the card would go through, but he ran it and it did. She signed the receipt, and he gave us two keycards for the room.

  Suite 214 was on the upstairs level. A girl passed us going down while we climbed the stairs. It wasn’t Hannah, of course, but I thought about her. I thought about Hannah a lot, I don’t know why. The railing overlooked the parking lot. Our car was nearly alone down there. There were six others spread around the lot. When we opened the room door Mom arched back from the smell that came out, w
hich was like bowling shoes. The suite was a single room and it was small and the carpet was thin and worn and stained from liquids spilled on it, but a light by the bed was on, and the room was warm.

  “Big bed,” I said.

  “It’s a queen. Queen size.”

  “Of course,” I said. “They knew you were coming.”

  I thought: I really am funny. But I guess the words came out snippy because she bit her lips tight, didn’t look at me.

  “I’ll call a few friends in the morning,” she said.

  “Hey, no parties,” I said, so nervous I couldn’t stop myself.

  “For ideas about where to stay. There has to be something better. Maybe we’ll only stay the half week we paid for. We’ll see.”

  To fill up the sad air, I said, “Sounds good,” and wheeled my bag in. She pulled hers to the dresser. She didn’t open it, but sat on the edge of the bed.

  “It’s okay, right?” I said. “I mean, it’s not that bad.”

  “It’s a place. But then what, Jeff? Tell me that. A week here, then what?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “For crying out loud, Mom—how should I know? I’m not the genius around here. I mean, I am, but still—”

  “All right, all right, never mind. Bolt the door, will you, honey?”

  Before I could do that the manager appeared, wheeling a squeaky cot along the landing. He rolled it past me into the room, when I saw not-Hannah leaning against a car in the lot below our room, smoking.

  Mom didn’t get up from the bed.

  “Where?” he said.

  “Here.” I helped him steer the cot into the only available place, which was outside the bathroom and in front of the TV. “Thanks.”

  “It’s already made up. Don’t scratch the walls with it, just so you know.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  “Night, then.” He turned and left the room, closing the door softly behind him.

  I bolted the door. Mom was still sitting on the edge of the bed, which had sunk down under her weight. I unlocked the cot and tried to hold the two halves of the frame upright, but the head slipped, hit the wall, and ran down it before I could pull it away. There was a neat line through the paint.