False Witness
Page 29
She looked at the time.
Two thirty-eight p.m.
Callie logged out of the computer. She looked for her backpack, but then remembered she had left it locked in her room along with her stash. Callie had shoved everything into the pockets of the yellow satin jacket she’d found inside of her closet. The collar was frayed, but a glorious rainbow decal was sewn onto the back.
It was the first item of clothing she had ever bought for herself with Buddy’s money.
She used the automated system to check out A Compendium of North American Snails and Their Habitats. The paperback fit snugly into the jacket pocket, the edges sticking not unpleasantly into her ribs. Callie groaned as she walked toward the exit. Her back would not straighten out. She had to shuffle like an old woman, though she took it on faith that even at eighty-six years old, Himari Takahashi had maintained excellent posture.
The sun blinded Callie as soon as she pushed open the door. She reached into her jacket pocket and found the green tanning bed goggles. The sun dialed down several notches when she put them on. Callie could feel the heat beating against her back and neck as she trudged toward the bus stop. Eventually, she was able to force herself upright. The vertebrae clicked like chattering teeth. The numbness in her fingers flowed back up into her arm.
At the bus stop, a fellow traveler was already sitting on the bench. Houseless, mumbling to himself, counting off numbers on his fingers. Two overflowing paper sacks were at his feet. They were filled with clothes. She recognized the anxious look in his eyes, the way he kept scratching his arms.
He glanced at her, then took a closer look. “Cool shades.”
Callie removed the goggles and offered them to the man.
He snatched them away like a gerbil taking a treat.
Her eyes started to water again. She felt a pang of regret as the man put on the goggles, because they were really amazing. Even so, she fished Leigh’s last twenty-dollar bill out of her back pocket and handed it to the man. That left Callie with only fifteen bucks, because she’d spent $105 on a package from the tanning salon the day before. In retrospect the impulse buy seemed like a bad idea, but that was junkie budgeting for you. Why not spend the money today when you weren’t sure whether or not you’d be getting a free concert from Kurt Cobain tomorrow?
The man said, “The vaccine put microchips in my brain.”
Callie confided, “I’m worried my cat is saving up to buy a motorcycle.”
They both sat in companionable silence for the next ten minutes, when the bus flopped in front of the curb like a tubby echidna.
Callie climbed aboard and took a seat in the front. Her stop was only two away, and it was a kindness to make sure the driver could see her because the look he’d given Callie when she got onto the bus clearly said that the man thought she was going to be trouble.
She kept her hands on the rail to let him know she was not going to do something crazy. Though it did seem crazy to touch a rail with your bare hands in the middle of a pandemic.
She stared absently out the front window, letting the air conditioning freeze the sweat on her body. Her fingers went to her face. She had forgotten that she was wearing a mask. A quick look at the other riders showed masks in various stages of coverage: pulled down below the nose, ringing the chin, and, in one case, pulled up over a man’s eyes.
She pulled her own mask up to cover her eyebrows. She blinked at the filtered light. Her eyelashes brushed against the material. She quashed the desire to giggle. It wasn’t this morning’s maintenance dose that was making her feel high. She had shot up again before heading to the library. Then swallowed an Oxy on the long bus ride to Gwinnett. There was more Oxy in her back pocket. She would eventually take it, and then she would shoot up more methadone and, eventually, she would be back on heroin.
This was how it always happened. Callie was good until the goodness broke down.
She pulled the mask back into place over her mouth and nose. She stood up as the bus belched its way to her stop. Her knee started to ache as soon as she walked down the stairs. On the sidewalk, she patterned her breath after her steps, letting three pops of her knee go by before she inhaled, then slowly letting air hiss between her teeth during the next three.
The chain-link fence on her right ringed around a massive outdoor stadium. Callie let her fingers trail along the metal diamonds until they abruptly stopped at a tall pole. She found herself in a wide, open concrete space at the mouth of a soccer stadium. There was a sign outside with a bumble bee buzzing out BEE HAPPY—BEE SAFE—BEE WELL—WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.
Callie doubted that last part was meant to be taken literally. When she was a teenager, she had seen stadiums like this when her cheerleading team had competed against private schools. The Lake Point girls were muscled stallions with thick waists and bulging arms and thighs. By comparison, the Hollis Academy girls had been pale grasshoppers and stick-bugs.
Callie passed the closed concession stand on her way into the stadium. Thirty yards away, a security guard in a parked golf cart was tracking her progress. She didn’t want trouble. She entered through the first tunnel she could find. Then she put her back to the wall and waited in the cool shade for the sound of the battery whirring as the rent-a-cop came to eject her from the premises.
There was no whir, but paranoia soon flooded her brain. Had the security guard made a phone call? Was there someone inside the stadium waiting for her? Had she been followed from the bus stop? Had she been followed from home?
Back at the library, Callie had perused the website for Reginald Paltz and Associates. Reggie looked every inch the rapey-gone-to-seed fratboy that Leigh had described, but Callie couldn’t honestly say that he had been the same camera-strangling man who’d been disgorged from the boarded-up house. Nor could she say that all of the faces she kept scanning, all of the people in the cars on the road or inside the library, hadn’t been in league with him.
Callie pressed her hand to her chest as if she could knead away the anxiety. Her heart flicked against her ribs like a hungry lizard’s tongue. She hadn’t seen the glimmer or flash of a stalker in the last two days but, everywhere she went, she could not shake the feeling that she was being recorded. Even now, hidden in this damp, dark place, she felt like a lens was capturing her every move.
You can’t make a stink about the camera, dolly. I could go to prison.
She pushed away from the wall. She was halfway through the tunnel when she heard yelling and clapping from the stands. Again, the light blinded Callie as she walked out into the sun. She cupped her hands to her eyes and scanned the crowd. Parents were seated in clumps across the rows, mangy cheering sections for the girls on the field. Callie turned again, and she watched the team run practice drills. The high schoolers looked like gazelles, if gazelles wore soccer uniforms and didn’t bounce up and down like lunatics when they felt threatened.
Another turn, another look at the stands. Callie spotted Walter easily enough. He was one of two fathers watching soccer practice, even though she had it on good authority that Walter did not, in fact, enjoy soccer.
He clearly recognized Callie as she made the arduous climb up the stadium stairs. His eyes were unreadable, but she could guess what was going on in his mind. Still, he kept his own counsel as she made her way down his row. Callie gathered the school was adhering to Footloose Rules: no dancing, no singing, no hollering, no fun. She left three seats between her and Walter when she sat down.
He said, “Welcome, friend.”
Callie peeled off her mask so she could catch her breath. “It’s good to see you, Walter.”
His eyes were still guarded, which was fair. The last time Callie and Walter had been in the same room together was not their finest hour. They were outside Leigh’s condo in the little utility closet that contained the trash chute. For ten days, Walter had come by twice a day to inject heroin between Callie’s toes because the only way that she could take care of Leigh was if she had enough dope to keep h
erself from getting sick.
Her sister’s husband was tougher than he looked.
Walter said, “I like your jacket.”
“It’s from high school.” Callie turned around in her seat so he could see the rainbow on the back. “I can’t believe it still fits.”
“Nice,” he said, though she could tell he had bigger issues on his mind. “Your sister seems to be crying a lot lately.”
“She’s always been a big baby,” Callie said, though people often misunderstood Leigh’s tears. She cried when she was frightened or hurt, but she also cried when she took a piece of broken glass and hacked chunks of hair out of your scalp.
Walter said, “She thinks that Maddy doesn’t need her anymore.”
“Is that true?”
“You were sixteen once. Didn’t you need your mother?”
Callie thought about it. At sixteen, she had needed everything.
“I’m worried about my wife,” Walter said, and his tone implied he had been waiting a very long time to share this thought with someone. “I want to help her, but I know she won’t ask me to.”
Callie felt the weight of his confession. Men seldom got to share their feelings and, when they did, despondency wasn’t on the acceptable list.
She tried to cheer him up. “Don’t be worried, Walter. Harleigh’s expendable caretaker is back on the job.”
“No, Callie. You’re wrong about that.” Walter turned to look at her, and she gathered this next part had weighed on him, too. “When Leigh got sick, we had a plan of care already in place. My mother was going to drive up to take care of Maddy. Leigh was going to quarantine in the master bedroom. I was going to leave food outside her door and call an ambulance if she needed it. She lasted one night and then she broke down and started crying that she wanted her sister. So I went out and found her sister.”
Callie had never heard the story before, but she knew that Walter would not lie about something so consequential. He would do anything for Leigh. Even score heroin for her junkie sister.
She asked, “Haven’t you been to enough Al-Anon meetings to know you can’t save somebody who doesn’t want to be saved?”
“I don’t want to save her. I want to love her.” He turned back in his seat, eyes tracking the girls on the field. “Besides, Leigh can save herself.”
Callie debated whether or not this point was worth discussing. She studied Walter’s profile as he watched his amazing daughter sprint after a ball. Callie wanted to tell him consequential things, too. Like that Leigh loved him. That she was only fucked up because Callie had made her do terrible things. That she blamed herself for not somehow knowing that Buddy Waleski was a bad man. That she was crying because she was terrified that Andrew Tenant would bring them both back to that same dark place that his father had.
Should Callie tell Walter the truth? Should she throw open the doors to Leigh’s cage? There was a sense of inevitability to the disaster her sister had made of her life. It was as if, instead of leaving for Chicago, Leigh had stayed in stasis for twenty-three years, then woke up to the life Phil had raised her to live: broken family, broken marriage, broken heart.
The only thing holding her sister together right now was Maddy.
Callie turned away from Walter. She allowed herself the pleasure of watching the teenagers on the field. They were so nimble, so fleet. Their arms and legs moved in tandem as they kicked the ball. Their necks were long and graceful like origami swans who’d never been close to swampy spirals or steep waterfalls.
Walter asked, “Can you spot our beautiful girl?”
Callie had already found Leigh and Walter’s daughter the moment she’d walked into the stadium. Maddy Collier was one of the smallest girls, but she was also the fastest. Her ponytail barely had time to brush her shoulders as she ran after the defensive midfielder. The girl was playing attack, which Callie only knew because she had looked up soccer positions at the library.
This was after she had googled the soccer practice schedule for Hollis Academy’s girls’ team. Callie had not found herself here after a Scooby Doo level of deciphering. The school crest was on the back of Leigh’s phone. Established in 1964, around the time white parents across the south spontaneously decided to enroll their children in private schools.
“Crap,” Walter muttered.
Maddy had accidentally tripped the midfielder. The ball spun loose but, instead of chasing after it, Maddy stopped to help the other girl stand up. Leigh was right. Phil would’ve beaten the shit out of either of them for doing something so sportsmanlike. If you can’t go big, then don’t bother to go home.
Walter cleared his throat, the same way Leigh did when she was about to say something difficult. “Practice will be over soon. I would love for you to meet her.”
Callie pressed together her lips, the same way Leigh did when she was nervous. “Hello, I must be going.”
“Phil Collins,” Walter said. “Classic.”
The drummer/superstar had taken the line from Groucho Marx, but Callie had more important things on her mind. “When you tell Leigh about seeing me, don’t tell her I was high.”
Walter had an uncomfortable set to his mouth. “If she asks, I’ll have to tell her the truth.”
He was way too good for this family. “I commend you for your honesty.”
Callie stood up. She was wobbly around the knees. The methadone was lingering. Or the long-release coating on the Oxy was doing its job. This was the reward for tapering off. The more slowly you eased yourself back in, the longer the euphoria could linger.
Until the lingering wasn’t enough.
Callie gave him a tight salute. “Adios, friend.”
Her knee gave out when she started to turn. Walter stood to help, but Callie stopped him with a wave of her hand. She didn’t want Maddy to see her father struggling with a worthless junkie in the stands.
She picked her way down the row, but the stairs nearly did her in. There was no railing to hold on to. She stepped carefully down, down, down. Callie tucked her hands deep into her jacket pockets as she walked along the field. The snail paperback crowded out her fist. The sun was so intense that her eyes were wet with tears. Her nose was running. She should not have given away the goggles. She still had nine tanning sessions left on her membership card; $9.99 for new goggles was a lot of money to burn when you only had fifteen bucks to your name.
She used the back of her sleeve to wipe her nose. Stupid sunlight. Even in the shade of the tunnel, her eyes kept watering. She could feel heat coming off her face. She hoped like hell she didn’t run into the security guard on his golf cart. Her mind kept playing back the pity in Walter’s eyes when he had watched her walk away. Callie’s hair was knotted in the back because she hadn’t been able to lift her arms high enough to use the comb this morning. Her fingers had not been able to squeeze the tube of toothpaste to brush her teeth. Her jacket was stained and wrinkled. Her clothes were the same ones she’d slept in. The abscess in her leg was throbbing because she was so fucking pathetic that she couldn’t stop injecting poison into her veins.
“Hello, Callie.”
Without warning, the gorilla snorted his foul, hot breath onto the back of her neck.
Callie spun around expecting to see the flash of white fangs as he lunged at her throat.
There was only a man. Tall and slim with sandy blonde hair. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his navy trousers. The sleeves of his blue shirt were rolled up just below the elbows. An ankle monitor bulged above his left loafer. A giant gold watch was on his left wrist.
Buddy’s watch.
Before they had chopped off his arms, Callie had unstrapped the watch and placed it on the bar. She had wanted Trevor to have something to remember his father by.
And now, she saw that he did.
“Hey, Callie.” Andrew’s voice was soft, but it had a familiar deepness that brought Callie right back to the first time she had met Buddy. “I’m sorry it’s been such a long time.”
“You look—” He chuckled. “Well, you don’t look great, but I’m glad that I found you.”
She glanced back at the stadium, then toward the exit. They were completely alone. She had nowhere to go.
“You’re still so …” His eyes flickered across her body as he seemed to look for the word. “Tiny.”
You’re so fucking tiny but I’m almost there just try to relax okay just relax.
“Callie-ope.” Andrew sang her name like a tune. “You came a long way to watch a bunch of girls play soccer.”
Callie had to open her mouth to breathe. Her heart was jumping. Was he here for Walter? For Maddy? How had he known about the school? Was he following Callie? Had she missed something on the bus?
Andrew asked, “Are they really that good?”
Her eyes found his hands tucked deep into his pockets. The hair on the back of his arms was slightly darker than the hair on his head. Just like Buddy’s.
Andrew craned his neck, looking into the field. “Which one is Harleigh’s?”
Callie heard the small crowd cheering from the stands. Clapping. Shouting. Whistling. Then the cheering died down and what she heard, what she knew was inside the tunnel with them, was the gorilla.
“Callie.” Andrew stepped forward, close but not closing in. “I want you to listen to me very carefully. Can you do that?”
Her lips were still parted. She could feel the air sucking in, drying the back of her throat.
“You loved my father,” Andrew said. “I heard you telling him that so many times.”
Callie couldn’t move her feet. He was here for her. That was why he was standing so close. That was why he seemed so calm, so in control. She blindly reached behind her. She could hear the gorilla approaching, then his breath was in her ear, then warming her neck, then the taste of his sweaty musk was curling into her mouth.