“Saint Joe—I mean, Mr. O’Connor—caught me drawin’ when it got slow so he asked to see my sketchbook . . .” he said, a patch of crimson spreading up his neck. “Next thing I know he’s at the frame shop. I tole him no one would wanna look at any of this stuff, that the only halfway nice pictures I ever did were hangin’ in Agnes’s room, but you know Mr. O’Connor when he gets excited about somethin’.”
“I sure do.” I smiled, walking the length of the store, studying the sketches one by one. “They really look great, Jools. Some of them are almost like collage.”
“Mixed media. That’s what the lady said last week—right before she asked how much I wanted for one.” He pointed at a blank spot on the wall. “Heck, I woulda give it to her for free. But before I could open my mouth, Mr. O’Connor come out from the back, yellin’, ‘Twenty-five dollars.’ And she forked it over right there. Can you believe it, Zaidie? Twenty-five bucks for a junk drawin’ by Jools—’scuse me, Julian Bousquet. Even asked me to sign it.”
It was the first time I’d ever heard him pronounce Bousquet correctly or use the name they called him in school. “Next time, Mr. O says, we’re askin’ for fifty.”
Jools had been the first one to tell me about Jimmy and Jane, too. Every day just before closing, he said the deli got an order from the Hideaway Lounge. Joe, who knew nothing about the girl who waitressed there, complained it took Jimmy an hour to make a delivery that was five minutes away—and wondered aloud why someone working in a damn restaurant needed takeout anyway. But once he figured it out, he stopped griping and told Nonna to throw an extra sandwich in the bag so the two lovebirds could eat together. “On me.”
“Lovebirds? Are you talking about my Jeemy?” The next day she brought in some of her homemade cookies and a chocolate heart in foil to pack with the sandwiches.
Since then, there had been days, sometimes whole weeks, when it was almost like the old Jimmy—the one before the drinking and the war had changed him—was back. It didn’t last—maybe it couldn’t—but we savored every minute.
That was the Jimmy who looked at me pointedly in the attic. “You think I don’t know why you really moved your stuff up here?”
I picked up the broom and started to sweep again. “I already told you. I wanted a quiet place to write.” With my eyes, I tried to pull his attention to the clock I’d hung on the wall the day before. “I’d really like to talk, Jimmy, but like I said, I’m meeting—”
“’Fraid you’re not gettin’ rid of me that easy,” he said from his crate. “Not after I wrecked my back dragging the beast up here.”
I swept faster, avoiding his face.
“It ain’t no accident you picked a college in California, is it, Z? Couldn’t put any more miles between yourself and us Moscatellis if you try.”
“That’s not fair, Jimmy, and you know it. I always wanted to go to Berkeley. And what do you mean us Moscatellis? Like I’m not one?”
“All’s I know is ever since Shad left, you been movin’ further and further away.
“Like you feel guilty for choosin’ us. Heck, you’ll be livin’ out on the roof next. And after you leave, well, sometimes I wonder . . .”
“Stop right there,” I began, but just then I bumped my shin against one of Ma’s old boxes. “Shit,” I howled. “Now see what you made me do?”
“That’s what you used to say when you were six,” he said, rubbing my shin the way he used to when I fell off my bike or roller-skated a little too fast. He looked up at me and the tenderness in his eyes almost broke me.
I jerked away. “So what are you—Sigmund Freud now? If I wanted someone to psychoanalyze me—”
“I don’t have to pscyho-nothin’ you, Z. I’m your damn brother, like it or not. You think you were the only one who felt it when Jonny left? He was my friggin’ Shadow, capital S.”
I sank onto my own crate and put my face in my hands, wondering how he knew so much. I’d never talked about my guilt over Jon to anyone.
“But I was supposed to take care of him. I promised, Jimmy,” I said, tears streaming down my cheeks. “And I let him go with . . . with the bastard.”
“The bastard’s your father. Shad’s, too.”
“You wanna know the worst part? I remember living with his moods—and I can never forget what he did to my mother.”
“You were what—three or four?”
“I might’ve been small, Jimmy; I might not recall a single detail, but I know what it felt like in that house. As soon as I heard the sound of him strumming his fingers on Ma’s armchair, it all came back. There was always this tension—even when he was being nice—because we didn’t know when it would turn. All we knew was that sooner or later it would. That’s where I let Jon go.”
“You were a kid, Z; you didn’t let nobody do nothin’. The court did—probably that son of a bitch, Judge Miller.”
“But if he had to go, I should have . . .”
“Woulda only made it worse. Jonny was a clean slate. He didn’t remember nothin’ about your mother and when the bastard looked at him, he didn’t remind him of no one but himself.”
“At first, I told myself I stayed cause of school and because I had my first boyfriend. Of course, I couldn’t imagine leaving Ma and Dad—or you. Then I thought it was just because I hated him, that being with him would destroy one of us—most likely me. And all of those things are true . . . But the real reason—the biggest reason—”
Jimmy nodded slowly. “Sky Bar.”
“Do you remember what she was like when she first came? How she used to follow me, cling to me, ask me a question every two and a half minutes? When Michael Finn showed up, she was still climbing into my bed almost every night. And sometimes I heard her crying out for the sister she hadn’t seen since she was five. What would happen if I left her, too?”
“And you been punishin’ yourself for it ever since. Takin’ it out on Sky Bar, too—though you might not know it. You think she doesn’t feel you pullin’ away? You didn’t even go to her big meet, Z. I know you gotta live your life, but have you seen her lately? She ain’t been herself ever since.”
“Whoa—wait a minute, Jimmy. You can blame me for a lot of things, but what’s bothering her since the meet has nothing to do with me. In fact, I’m the one who’s been trying to help. Did you ever wonder why she stopped walking home from practice alone?”
“That old buddy of yours—Henry Lee—picks her up. Seems like he don’t mind much, either. Ever hear the two of them gigglin’ in the driveway? Almost as goofy as you and the ultimate colleige.”
“So maybe he’s figured out how great Agnes is and he’s got a crush, but he’s only there cause I asked him to drive her. Mr. Dean had been hanging around at practice, sometimes on the street—”
At that, Jimmy was the one on his feet. “What the hell? That son of a bitch’s been at the pool and you go to someone else instead of me? What’s Henry gonna do about it? Kid like him wouldn’t wanna get his chinos dirty.”
What had I done? In my eagerness to change the subject, I had accidentally let slip the one thing I’d promised to keep from Jimmy. “He’s been doing so good,” Ma warned. “If there’s one thing that could send him over the deep end . . .” She didn’t have to finish the sentence.
I channeled Eleanor Roosevelt the way I did when I gave a speech in school so no one would know how flustered I felt. “I would have gone to you, of course. Heck, Agnes would have told you herself, but it turned out it wasn’t him after all. It was just someone who looked like the guy. But by then, I’d already called Henry. And like you said, he doesn’t seem to mind. Kathy Doherty says he even comes early to watch the practice.”
Jimmy’s eyes probed me, but I revealed nothing.
“Okay, well, if anything like that ever happens again, you come to me, you hear,” he said with only a little doubt in his voice. “False alarm or not.”
ONCE I HAD cleaned up the attic, I tried to write, but for the first time I couldn’t sit at my
desk for more than a few minutes. Everything—the cards, the boxes of broken lives—including my own, hard as I tried to prove I was different—pulled me up out of the seat. Was Jimmy right? After sacrificing my brother, had I abandoned Agnes anyway? I was drawn to the window. Whenever I looked through it, I saw the tiny one in Mr. Dean’s attic where Agnes had sat for over a year, listening for the sound of his feet coming up the stairs. And he was still coming.
“I don’t understand. Why does he care after all these years?” Charlie asked when I told him about it.
“Because he thought he destroyed her—and for some sick reason, that brought him satisfaction. Now every day, he gets older and weaker and Agnes grows stronger. The way he sees it, if she wins, he loses. He couldn’t even beat a poor little Indian girl.”
“She knows the truth about him, the part of himself he’s hidden from everyone else, and he can’t stand it.” As he spoke, I thought about Ma’s twisted connection to the Wood family, and my annual confrontation with Michael Finn and his check. I reached for Charlie’s hand.
“Remember when Mr. Deveney talked about the nature of evil in ninth-grade English? Best class I ever had. Well, that’s it.” I shivered in the heat.
Sometimes, pacing up and down the attic, I felt the hold Mr. Dean still had on her, and the same chill I felt that day passed over me.
THEN ONE SATURDAY afternoon when I came in from the library, I heard the sound of Ma and Jimmy arguing about something in the kitchen—probably another late night by the river. But the only thing on my mind was my history project. I climbed the stairs to the attic, determined to hear nothing until I got my work done. But halfway up the stairs, I stopped.
“Agnes. What are you—”
She was perched on the box where Jimmy had sat. Instead of answering, she cocked her head in the direction of my Royal. “If you moved up here to write, you haven’t done much.”
“I’ve written a lot, actually, and I was just gonna—” I felt my face flame like Jools’s had when I looked at his framed art on the wall.
“To be honest, I’ve changed my mind about becoming a writer,” I admitted, pulling up a box opposite hers. “Ma and Dad are right. If I’m going to spend all that money on college, I should study something more practical like—” Before I could finish, Agnes was shaking her head.
“What? I thought you’d be happy. You hated my writing so much you used to hide my notebooks, remember?”
“I didn’t understand until I started swimming. Or more like till I tried to quit. That’s when I found out there’s nothing more practical than being who you are. And if you have something you really, really love, it’s the only practical thing you can do.”
“Jeepers. Keep talking like that and Joe will have you working at the N. P. with the rest of them.” I laughed.
“Speaking of the market, I got you a couple of presents.” She moved aside, revealing the bags hidden behind her crate. I opened the small one from the N. P. and inhaled Nonna’s homemade chocolate cookies.
“Far as I know it’s not my birthday or anything. What’s up?” I passed her a cookie before I bit into the gooey sweetness.
“Nine years ago today Dad brought me home from the hospital to stay.”
“Really—you remember the date?”
“May first. I can still see that calendar you kept in your room. That night, before we went to sleep, the number was practically glowing.”
“Heck, you’re the one who should be getting a present, then.”
“Already got a couple.” Grinning, Agnes pulled the lucky shamrock barrette from her pocket and pinned it on the side of her head. “That and our moon.”
“I can’t believe you still have that thing.”
“And I can’t believe you lost yours.” She held out the second bag. “Don’t forget this one.”
Inside were a set of curtains, obviously handmade from an Indian bedspread I’d admired.
“Wow, Agnes,” I said, holding them up to the light. “These are beautiful. Did you make them yourself?”
“With the help of Mrs. Lee’s sewing machine . . . and Mrs. Lee, who did the actual sewing. Okay, since we’re being so honest here, all I did was buy the bedspread and picture it in your window. I figured you’d get more work done if you had a little color around you.”
“Mrs. Lee, huh? I never thought she liked me when Henry and I went out—or whatever it is kids that age do.”
Agnes seemed glad for a chance to turn away and hammer the curtain rod fixtures into the wall, even though that kind of thing was usually my job. “You wouldn’t think it was weird if I—not that I’m even sure . . . or he’s asked . . . or—”
“No,” I interrupted before she could say more. “Of course not. In fact, I’d be happy that it’s actually someone I like.”
“Dating, that kind of thing, you know, it’s never been for me.” She set down the hammer and faced me. “But Henry is—I don’t know—different . . . Is this how you felt when you met Charlie?”
“Probably something like it, and I’m pretty sure that kind of thing is for everyone,” I said, laughing as I threaded the curtain onto the rod. “You know, since the wrestling coach got him lifting weights . . . wow. Half the girls in the senior class have their eye on him.”
“That’s another thing; Ma will say he’s too old for me. And isn’t he going out with Caroline Rubin?”
“So that’s the reason you came up here today—not to give me cookies or hang curtains.” I laughed. “You want to milk me for information about Henry.”
“Part of the reason.” She sat back down on her box, helped herself to another cookie. “But mostly, I just wanted to spend some time with my sister before she . . . Sheesh, I can’t even say the words.”
I took both of her hands in mine the way Charlie sometimes did when I worried about leaving. “It’s going to be okay. Really.”
And when she still looked doubtful, I broke into the chorus of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” That, too, was borrowed from Charlie, and I knew he meant it when he cranked up the song on the radio or called it our song. But when I sang to Agnes, when she joined in, it had a different weight. After that, we pulled up the crates where I’d sat with Jimmy and talked until the cookies were gone, until the light outside the window turned a dusky lilac, and we forgot time.
It was an almost perfect afternoon, an hour when it felt like everything would be okay—no, better than that—fine. But whenever I look back on it or taste one of Nonna’s cookies or remember the great light that was in Agnes’s face that day, or hear our silly laughter mix with the sound of Ma and Jimmy, their quarrel obviously over, joking about something downstairs, it’s always colored with sorrow. Little could any of us know that when Agnes jumped up, suddenly remembering that she promised to meet Coach Lois for an extra practice, life was about to change for all of us.
And yet maybe somewhere inside me I did know. How else would I remember the sounds that followed so vividly? Her feet clattering down the stairs as she sang out, “Hey, Jimmy, think you can give me a ride to the pool? I forgot I was meeting Coach and I need to be there now.”
A few minutes later, the Falcon roared to life in the driveway.
Chapter Eight
Why I Stopped
JIMMY
THE WEEKS AFTER I WRECKED MY LIFE FOR GOOD, IT FELT LIKE the whole city of Claxton wanted to file in one by one, all askin’ the same dumb question. Why I done it. Man, anyone coulda figured that out. The only question worth askin’, the only halfway innerestin’ one was why I stopped. No one cared much about that, though.
Guys in the jail musta thought I was somebody big cause when they took me down for questionin’, it wasn’t with no ordinary detective. Nope, it was straight to Chief Wood for me.
Handsome bastard he was when you got up close, too; hair Brylcreemed just so, like I used to try to do mine in junior high when I was meetin’ Debbie D’Olympio. He sat tall in his chair, rosy color of someone who eats good, takes prim
o care of himself, while I slouched in my seat, head about to split like a pomegranate.
Still, if there was a imposter in the room, it was him, not me. Even sittin’ there feelin’ like I was about to puke all over the desk where he had everything lined up neat as his hair—I saw what he worked so hard to hide. It was somethin’ no amount of hair cream or fancy cologne could cover.
Worst thing was he knew I seen it. He sat up straighter before he asked the question.
“So, Mr.—” He stopped to look down at the paper, as if he didn’t know damn well who I was, as if he hadn’t had a eye on me for years—the weak link in the family. The one he could use to break Ma. Yup. Freakin’ imposter all the way. My head thumped like Bonham’s backbeat.
“Mr. Kovacs, would you like to explain why you initiated an unprovoked attack on a stranger last night?”
An unprovoked attack. Was that what they called it? I picked up his shiny name plate, looked at it real good, and set it down. Then I stared across the desk at him, leanin’ back in my seat. “You got any water around here?”
“Water?”
“You know that wet stuff comes out the faucet?” I clutched my throat so he’d get the idea. “I’m feelin’ a little dry.”
He narrowed his eyes, like he was decidin’ whether to call someone to rough me up or just do it himself. Then somethin’ made him reconsider. He picked up the phone and asked a secretary named Shirley to bring a glass of water.
“For Mr. Kovacs.” This time he said my name like I was the governor or somethin’. Shit, never seen anyone so polite in my life. If I weren’t sittin where I was, it woulda been downright fascinatin’ to watch the guy work.
After she brought it—nice-lookin’ chick, too, this Shirley—Wood watched me chug it down like a animal at the zoo. Shirley stood there, too, maybe waitin’ for him to tell her she could go. Or more like she was standin’ outside a cage herself, eatin’ popcorn, waiting for the ape to do something that would seal his fate.
All the Children Are Home Page 22
