Ricky

by J. Boyett

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 8.

  Chapter 9.

  Chapter 10.

  Chapter 11.

  Chapter 12.

  Chapter 13.

  Ricky

  J. Boyett

  Saltimbanque Books

  New York

  Copyright © 2014 by Jim Boyett

  Cover photo by Nick Rowan

  Book designed by Christopher Boynton

  All rights reserved under International and

  Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  For Pam Carter, Dawn Drinkwater, and Andy Shanks.

  Also for Ron Kolm, whether he likes it or not.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Brothel

  Poisoned (a play)

  1.

  There were cigarette butts in the parking lot and littering the pavement before her door. It pissed Ricky off that his little sister had to put up with this after she’d worked so hard and come so far, at least by their family’s standards. Elly shrugged and tried to shush him: “I don’t mind,” she said.

  “Well, I mind for you.”

  “There are so many more important problems.” She sounded weary, so Ricky shut up. He was trying not to get on her nerves.

  She showed him around the apartment. Since she could afford it he thought she should move out to pricier, more prestigious west Little Rock, but she explained that this area down by the river had more character; Ricky instantly submitted to her judgment. He gaped at the beige carpet, afraid to walk on it. The walls were clean. There was a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, which he stared at a while before he understood what it was doing there. He gingerly tested the sofa’s resistance with one hand: “Did you buy this new?”

  Elly seemed uneasy. She must have imagined this as a kind of homecoming for him, and it obviously didn’t feel like home if he was so shocked at having been allowed to come in the front door. “You want a beer?” she said as she disappeared into the kitchen. “I remember in your letters you always talked about how much you wished you could have beer in jail.”

  “Sure, thanks,” said Ricky, and then, “I said that? I don’t guess I was such a good role model.”

  Elly came back with two open Sam Adamses and handed him one, her head tilted back to look up at him. “I wasn’t exactly a little girl when you went in,” Elly said, and then took a swig off her own bottle.

  Ricky blushed. “No, I know that.”

  They stood there together a few seconds, facing each other, both trying not to look away. Finally, Elly said, “I think it’s fine that it’ll be awkward for the first couple of days. I don’t think that means anything bad.”

  “No, yeah, me too,” said Ricky hurriedly. Then he said, “I feel in one way like we should get caught back up, but then it’s like I already know everything from your letters.”

  Elly laughed and said, “God, I know, I’m sorry. All those years of babbling to you on and on about nothing.”

  “No. Those letters meant a lot to me, Elly.”

  “Yeah, right. Tall tales and gossip. It was nice of you to not tell me to quit bugging you. All my silly little dramas.”

  “I’m being for real, Elly. I loved your stories. I would have wished I was dead if I hadn’t been hearing from you like that.”

  “You want to watch TV?” she asked. Ricky nodded, desperate as he was to lay the weight of his gratitude before her. After all she’d done he had no business forcing her to take it if she didn’t want to. She went to get the remote from the end table: “You’re going to freak out when you see how many channels there are on digital cable. There’re hundreds, literally. It’s weird the things that’ve changed since you went away.”

  “They say the world’s changing really fast.”

  The TV came on noisily but for the first few seconds Ricky just kept looking at Elly. She seemed dressed-up to him: black slacks, jacket, white blouse, a plain silver bracelet, a pearl necklace (wowed as he was, Ricky knew they weren’t real pearls); he watched as she took off her jacket and carefully hung it up in the hall closet. She sat down on the sofa, noticed that he was still staring at her instead of the television, got uncomfortable again, and said, “You want to pick the channel? I’ll have to teach you how to work the remote. They’re more complicated now.”

  Ricky walked around to the front of the couch. Elly had sat on the far right cushion. Should he plant himself in the middle cushion so he’d be sitting close to her, or would it be more natural to sit on the far side, the way she’d done? After hesitating, he sat beside her, on the middle cushion. She didn’t seem to mind.

  She held the remote out towards him. “You want to choose the channel?” she said again.

  “Nah, that’s okay, you go ahead.”

  “You sure?” she pressed; it seemed important to her. “It’s been so long since you’ve gotten to do it, I bet.”

  That was true. There’d been TV in prison, of course, but he’d never been the one to pick the programming. Even if him taking the remote control was something that Elly truly wanted, he didn’t have it in him right now to try to figure the thing out: there were so many buttons on it. “No, it’s cool, I’d rather you do it,” he said, stopping himself from adding, “It’s your TV.”

  She flipped channels and showed him the menu functions. He made appreciative noises and didn’t tell her that they’d had digital cable in prison and none of this was as new to him as she thought. She found one of her favorite shows, explained its storyline. He listened dutifully. Then they settled in to watch.

  After a long time of not talking, Ricky mustered himself and turned to Elly’s profile. “Hey, Elly,” he said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Elly turned to him, not quickly, looking prepared but not thrilled; “Sure,” she said, “tell me anything you want.”

  “I always wanted to tell you. I always felt like I was lying to you. And I guess I was, and I’m sorry. But I couldn’t have told you in a letter.”

  There was half a second where everything was frozen. Elly said, “Go ahead. I love you, you can tell me anything.”

  “Elly. The truth is I wasn’t just the driver. I did shoot one of them. With the gun that Steve threw into the lake afterwards. I only shot one, but still.”

  Elly’s eyes teared up, but she smiled at him. “Yeah, I figured,” she said, “I just always kind of figured.”

  Ricky didn’t say anything.

  “I used to think to myself, Thank God the cops shot everyone else but Ricky. It scared me to think that—I mean, Steve was the only one of the guys I knew, but I always did like him. I even had sort of a crush on him I guess. And the other guys, I mean, I knew they were your friends. But even so, I used to always think, Thank God they all got shot. So that there’d be nobody to argue when the lawyers said that Ricky hadn’t done anything.”

  Ricky felt like now he should admit that he’d often thought the same thing himself, about his own friends, but he didn’t. He said, “Your letters always meant so much to me, I loved getting your letters and hearing all your stories. I can’t wait to meet all these people you’ve told me about, to meet Paul, and—”

  “Paul and I broke up. Four months ago.”

  “I know that—”

  “Now it’s Ted, the thug. . . .” Elly cut herself off at the word “thug,” grimaced, glanced from under her eyebrows at Ricky. “Sorry,” she said.

  Ricky was mortified that she thought he’d forgotten that she’d broken up with Paul. “I know all that. I just meant. . . .” He trailed off, unable to think of how to express the truth, which was that he’d gotten
accustomed to thinking of Paul and the rest of them as a cast of characters rather than as real people. He knew that Paul had dicked over his little sister, but he still had a certain detached curiosity about the guy. But if that ambiguity was ever going to be talked about (which was hard to imagine) it would be best if it happened some other time. So Ricky kept his mouth shut, since his constant apologizing was getting on his own nerves, and probably Elly’s too, and “Sorry” was the only thing he could think of to say.

  They watched TV. Suddenly Ricky was in a really foul mood. He fantasized about beating the shit out of Paul, a guy he’d never met, lovingly imagined kicking him until he turned into a jelly-bag: not just how it would look, but the tactile stuff, and the sounds, he tried to imagine what the smells would be, the way his shins would start to hurt, the way he’d be risking a twisted ankle. The weird thing was that, whereas in all these ways the fantasy was vivid and concrete, the fact that he’d never met Paul or even seen his picture meant that where the human should be there was only a vague phantom, an identity that didn’t quite consent to slip out from behind whatever it was ducked on the other side of. He could feel his breathing getting harder, and probably Elly could hear the change—he forced himself to calm down.

  Elly patted his knee. “I’m so happy you’re back,” she said again.

  “Me too,” said Ricky, and then sort of laughed, because of course he was.

  Then he realized that she was crying. When she saw that he knew, she leaned in to hide her snuffling face in his chest. He gripped her tight, cupping the back of her skull in his palm. “Shhh, shhh,” he said.

  She reached up her arms to hug him back. Her fingers gripped the nape of his neck. Ricky put his arms around her waist, rubbed her back.

  She raised her head, put her mouth on his without looking at his face. Ricky didn’t exactly kiss her back, but he didn’t stop her from nudging his lips apart with hers, from inserting the very tip of her tongue into his mouth, where it didn’t really do anything except tremble in uncertainty and hesitation.

  He pulled his head back. “Whoa,” he said, “whoa, whoa.”

  Elly pulled back, didn’t look straight at him, gazed into the distance dead-eyed and sullen.

  Ricky was breathing really hard, now. He caught his breath, cleared his throat, said, “We can’t do that anymore, Elly.”

  Elly was looking at the TV. “Yeah,” she said, “of course,” as if he’d brought the subject up out of the blue. She didn’t look away from the TV.

  They sat in silence for a while. “Well, I better take off,” Ricky said, at the same time that he got to his feet. The effort required to get out of this super-soft couch surprised him.

  Elly looked up at him, not getting to her feet during these first few seconds, her expression alarmed, guilty, scared. “You sure?” she said.

  “Yeah. It’s just going to take time for me to get used to it, I think. Being around people. Baby steps, you know.”

  “Yeah?” Then he could see her mentally shaking herself, trying not to be sentimental, to be a grown-up. “Of course,” she said, standing up. “It’s a big adjustment.”

  She walked him to the door, and patted him on the back encouragingly. Thinking of the way she’d kissed him, nuzzling his lips apart, he started to cry. Elly squeezed his upper arm with one hand, put her other arm around his shoulder. “Hey,” she encouraged. “That’s okay. Go ahead, if you need to.”

  Ricky was shaking his head. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “For what?” she said, but sounded nervous. But maybe that was only his imagination.

  He kept shaking his head. “I haven’t been a very good brother to you,” was the closest he could come up with.

  “No,” she said, firmly, rallying herself. “Hey now. No. You hear? I don’t want to hear that kind of stuff.”

  “It’s true,” said Ricky, trying to stop crying so that they could stop talking about why he was crying.

  “No it isn’t,” she insisted, then, to lighten things up, said, “You’re my favorite brother.”

  The joke being that he was her only brother, her only sibling. The polite thing would have been to acknowledge the gag with a wry smile and a headshake. He did shake his head, but he didn’t smile and all he said was, “It’s true.”

  “Hey.” Now, as a woman taking care of a man, Elly was in her element. She clenched both his shoulders in her hands, repositioning herself so that they faced each other. “Hey,” she said, “you listen to me, okay now? You just listen to me. Now, I want you to forgive yourself. You hear? That’s the only thing I want.”

  Ricky was still sniffling, but he was basically back under control now, which meant that soon he’d be free to go. He shook his head again and said, “You shouldn’t want that.”

  “But I do,” said Elly, now adopting the tone you’d use with a child to signal that though you sympathize with it, it nevertheless amuses you. “I do want it. You’re my brother and I love you. And whatever you think you’ve done wrong by me, or even whatever you really have done wrong by me, I just want you to forgive yourself for it.”

  Ricky had stopped crying. He looked at Elly and said, “Yeah, but you only want that because you’re fucked up.”

  Her face froze. “What?” she said.

  “You’re fucked up. That’s why you think I didn’t do anything wrong, is because you’re all fucked up. Because I fucked you up. Me.”

  Elly kept staring at him. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “Did I say that you didn’t do anything wrong?”

  They stood there for many seconds. Then Elly said, “I guess you’d better go, after all.”

  Ricky bowed his head, submissively, nodded it. “Yeah.”

  “No,” Elly said hurriedly, “I didn’t mean that. Or, I mean, I did, but. . . .” She floundered, then gave up. “I only meant it the literal way,” she finally settled for, giving him a tired smile that also felt like a request.

  He smiled back. “Okay,” he said. He tried to appear sure on his feet.

  At the front door they looked at each other again, waiting for something. “It’ll just take a while,” Ricky reassured her.

  “Yeah,” she quickly agreed. “I know. I don’t think it’s a big deal. I think it’s okay if we give ourselves permission to just, you know, screw up a little in the beginning.”

  “Totally,” he said, trying not to notice what a brave face she was putting on her disappointment. And it wasn’t just for the sake of her pride, or dignity, that he tried not to notice. They stood there another four or five seconds. Then Ricky shrugged and said, “Well.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Elly. They embraced each other again. She gave him a squeeze and said, “I’ve been looking forward to this day more than anything for years now.” As they stepped apart she gave an embarrassed laugh, and he knew that she’d said that only because she’d been rehearsing the line for so long, that having planned it for so many years had turned it into an obligation.

  “Me, too,” he said. They had to hug each other again once the door was opened. Then, as he walked to the car their mother had loaned him, he had to turn to look at her over his shoulder and wave. She waved back. Then once he was in the car and driving out of the parking lot he had to look again and they had to wave again to each other. It was a relief when he rounded the corner of the building and she was gone from view. But it wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her; in fact the sight was precious. What he wished was that he might be invisible, so that he could look at her, but without her seeing him do it, so that he would not have to worry about how to arrange his gaze, about the things she might see in it or think she saw in it, that might or might not really be there at all, so that it might be as if he and his gaze didn’t exist at all, but only her and the fact of the sight of her.

  2.

  He ought to have gone home to his mother, she deserved to see him too. But all the obligations were getting to him, and it seemed like since he’d gone away to jail she had gotten tough enough to stan
d his absence.

  Besides, he reminded himself, his state of mind could do with some looking-after, too. He had just been released this morning from prison after being there for nearly a decade. But when he tried to remind himself of this, to give himself permission to worry about his own psyche, he got hung up on the fact that he’d deserved all the bad things that had happened to him (he’d deserved worse).

  As for the awkwardness that he felt around his sister, that shouldn’t have been a surprise. Every time he’d seen her since going away, they’d had the ritual of the prison visitation process there, to structure and sustain them. And the enjoyment he had always gotten from the stories she regaled him with in her letters might not be the kind of thing that could be transmitted by mere everyday conversation.

  He might not want to go to his mom’s house, off shitty Baseline Road in south Little Rock, but that didn’t mean he had anywhere else to go. There were some places in town that stuck out in his memory. But he wasn’t ready to see the people who would be there. It hadn’t yet occurred to him that the old haunts would be mostly emptied of the buddies he’d known, replaced with a new generation; nor had it struck him yet that those guys, even if he did run into them again, would no longer be teenagers. All of them would have the beginnings of crows’ feet, some would be going bald. He was still imagining these reunions as super-emotional, it hadn’t occurred to him that they wouldn’t mainly involve exclamations and back-clapping embraces. No one else was going to be able to muster the fake emotion necessary, any more than he could.

  But he did have to go somewhere, he couldn’t just drive aimlessly all over Little Rock, although actually he did do that for a while. Finally he headed downtown, towards what in his time had been a seedy district and he supposed still was: crackhouses, homeless people, the Capitol building. Also Vino’s, the pizza place and punk venue. As he pulled off onto the freeway exit, it occurred to him that Vino’s might have closed down after all these years. He didn’t know what he would do if Vino’s was gone.