by J. Boyett
The second cop whistled, and the first one said, “Pretty impressive.”
“I guess I just got inspired once my boy got taken away.”
Ricky smiled tightly at his mother, proud of her but not wanting to look like he was taking credit for anything. All those childhood memories of her glaring for hours at the TV, only rousing herself to occasionally bark at him and Elly, they all seemed so far removed from reality that their vividness only made them more surreal.
They got back on track. The cop wanted to hear more about Ted, and Shoshona told the tales in a professional tone. Ted had hit Elly a few times, once bad enough to leave marks on her face so that she’d called in sick till they’d mostly faded.
Ricky was shocked. “She never told me that.”
Ted had been known to stick a knife to her neck and threaten to slit her throat. Ricky had known that Elly’d called him “the thug,” but all this was news. Shoshona finished by saying, “Why on earth don’t you go and arrest him?”
The cops didn’t look at each other. “Well,” said the first one, “the truth is we’re not sure where he is.”
For a few seconds Shoshona said nothing, then: “Well, that proves he did it, right?”
“Not necessarily.”
“What in the world else could it mean?”
“Not at liberty to speculate about that right now.”
“Yeah, well, you have to say that shit.”
“We’re interested in talking to him,” said the second cop. “Any idea where we might be able to find him?”
Shoshona drew her head back, a gesture with sort of an ironic threat. “Now why the hell would you ask me that?”
“We have to ask this stuff, ma’am.”
“That fucker stabbed my little baby, in the face. You think I’m hiding him?”
“Nobody’s suggesting that.”
“Because let me tell you what, if I did know where that little piece of shit was, there wouldn’t be nothing but a stain left of him. . . .”
Ricky cut in with, “Hey, don’t say that, Mom,” because it had occurred to him that having Ted pop up with his brains blown out might be doable, and if that happened he didn’t want his mom on record as having said she’d kill him.
But she stared at him aghast. “Do you think I give a fuck?” she demanded. “Do you honestly think that I give a fuck?” Ricky froze, with no idea how to answer.
Shoshona turned back to the cops. “All I know about Ted is that he’s a piece of shit and that’s it. I wish I knew more. I told her I didn’t want to hear it, and that was the biggest mistake of my life, I guess. After he beat up her face I told her I didn’t want to hear any more about that son of a bitch, unless it was ‘Mom, I’m leaving him.’ I thought I was being tough. But instead, maybe if she’d been able to tell me about what was going on, I could’ve, I don’t know, I could’ve. . . .”
Shoshona started crying. All the men squirmed and tried not to look at her; Lenora rubbed her back.
She stopped crying again pretty quick. The first cop said, “I know you’re upset, and I wish I could leave you alone right now, but we have to keep asking you stuff.” Shoshona shrugged. The cop went on: “If Ted was so abusive, how come Elly stayed with him?”
Shoshona stared at him, her head tilted to the side, like she really didn’t understand the question: “What? But I already told you—she wasn’t good with men.” Then she started to sob harder than before.
The cops waited in embarrassment. Lenora put her arm around Shoshona again and this time drew her all the way down and into her bulk, laying her heavy arm around her shoulder. Ricky reached out and touched his mother on the side, and felt her flinch away from him. Probably he’d startled her. He waited for her to apologize to him, so he could assure her that it was no big deal, but the seconds passed and she made no move to do so, she just lay there with her flesh clenched away from him.
They sat there waiting. It was unbearable. And Ricky figured that he was useless anyway, because there was nothing he was likely to know about Ted, because he’d been in jail for years. Elly hadn’t even written much about him in her letters—not like with Paul. If it had been Paul, he could have told them stuff. Ricky’d seen a photo of the guy the other day at her apartment, but that was it. Elly hadn’t even told him that Ted beat her up.
Reality had gotten dense, time and space had transformed from an ether into something like a clear molasses. You could see through it, from one point to another, but its consistency was too thick and viscous for the magic spirit of life to move freely between those points. Instead, it went like air wheezing through a throat in which food was lodged. Ricky was choking with his whole being. They were all here in this room together, and these moments and seconds and minutes were all collected in the one place, but the clear gunk held them suspended. Ricky stood up and marched into the kitchen as if he were going to get himself a glass of water.
He stood in there for a little bit. He already had his keys in his pocket, and he calculated his trajectory from here to the front door. He would have to go through the living room where everyone was gathered, but he figured he could get through there and out to the car in the front yard before they stopped him. He wasn’t doing any good here. Plus he had that date with Jesse that he needed to get to.
He made a break for it, walking first through the living room and looking at its occupants only out the corners of his eyes. He made it through the front door and didn’t bother locking it behind him, and got into the car and pulled out of the driveway. As soon as he was on the road his breath came easier. It was still too early to go meet Jesse, but he could drive around some.
Maybe it hadn’t been smart to make it look like he was running out—he was on parole for a murder case, after all—it wouldn’t be hard to provoke the cops into poking around about him. But he was safe in the knowledge that he’d had nothing to do with Elly getting killed. So let them ask whatever they wanted. It wouldn’t hurt him to be involved in the investigation. That would be just fine.
7.
He’d forgotten the cell phone his mom had given him, so Ricky had to find a payphone to call Jesse on—before he’d gone to jail there had been three times as many around, seemed like. Finally he found one in an Exxon parking lot. Jesse told him her address. Ricky didn’t recognize the street name and he kept screwing up the directions when repeating them back. He remembered how easily he’d memorized her phone number, and decided he was good with numbers but bad with directions.
He managed to make his way to her house. It was weird, this homecoming, the way bursts of recognition alternated with revelations of cavernous mystery around the ordinary corners.
She lived in a very big house with a tiny scabby front yard of dirt and weeds. From the four cars in the front yard he could tell that she had roommates. The once-white paint on the house’s weathered boards was chipped and in places completely worn away, in a way that it might not have been if the same people who’d lived there had also owned the place.
Ricky went to the front door and rang the doorbell. Nobody came at first, but he knew people were home because he could hear the TV inside.
Finally Jesse opened the door, looking frazzled. “Um. Hey,” she said. “I have to finish just a couple things before I go. You can come inside, or. . . .” She trailed off, and there was a pause during which it felt like she’d prefer him to wait outside. She wound up saying, “Come on in,” though.
Ricky went inside. One of Jesse’s roommates was sitting in front of the TV smoking a cigarette, ashing into a hubcap already overflowing with butts and cinders. Another was snoring in his bedroom, a chubby guy in his boxers and a too-tight T-shirt—he had left his door halfway open. Jesse bustled around. She’d cooked lunch for everyone, though she assured Ricky that she hadn’t eaten any herself, so as to stay hungry for him; she’d meant to have the dishes done before Ricky arrived, but she’d gotten caught up in other chores. Ricky stood in the living room and waited for her to finish.
>
It was weird, just standing there without saying anything to the roommate who was sitting right there, staring at the television. To make conversation, Ricky asked if he could bum a cigarette.
The roommate considered a long time, then said, “Nah, man. They’re expensive, and everyone’s always bumming them.”
Ricky blushed, but stayed cheerful as he said, “That’s cool. I shouldn’t have one, anyway. I actually quit years ago, back when I was in prison.”
The roommate made a face. “You were in prison?”
“Oh, yeah, you know.” Then Ricky waited for the roommate to ask him how long, for what, stuff like that, but he didn’t.
Jesse finished doing the dishes and they left and got in the car. Ricky started to drive off, then saw that she was still putting on her seatbelt. He slammed on the brakes to give her a chance to buckle up before they got started, nearly sending her right into the windshield. She got her seatbelt on. Ricky was glad that he’d also remembered to wear his.
He backtracked through the unfamiliar, ordinary neighborhood the way he’d come, heading for someplace where he could regain his bearings. “So,” he said. “How was your day so far?”
Jesse shrugged. “Oh, it’s good.” Then, after a moment, she said, “Uh. It’s been pretty stressful, actually. What with everything. Earlier I went over to take care of Paul.”
“Is he okay?”
“Oh, you know. He’s pretty upset. . . . I mean, I’m sorry, I know you’re, you know, even more upset. . . .”
“You guys dated after he and Elly broke up?”
“Yeah, for like six months. We just broke up.”
“But y’all’re still good friends, I guess.”
“Not really,” said Jesse, and laughed. “I mean, I don’t hate him or anything. But I guess hanging out with him every day would probably not be my first choice, no. But what with what happened. . . . Elly really meant a lot to him.”
“He seems like a good guy, I guess. I know he wasn’t always the best guy for Elly, but. . . .” He let the thought trail off.
Jesse nodded. “It’s not like it matters now.” She looked quickly at Ricky and said, “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said. Jesse nodded again and turned to look out her window. It seemed to Ricky that the thoughts and remarks were passing between them with remarkable ease, considering the circumstances.
She asked where they were going and he told her Ruby Tuesday. It was the closest thing to a nice restaurant that he could remember the directions to. He’d been strongly tempted to take her to a movie—a pretty conventional datey thing to do, he thought, enough so that no one could find fault with it, and it would be such a relief, a balm, to be able to sit in the dark and know that she was with him, had chosen to be so, and yet that he didn’t have to think of things to say. But his gut warned him that a movie wouldn’t be right. He did want to duck the strain of having to put things into words, but in a movie theater there would be the even greater strain of an unaccomplished duty hanging over him, all the words he was supposed to be thinking of and saying but had proved too dumb and too pussy to be able to, all the words and gestures and almost invisible movements of soul that he was supposed to be drawing out from Jesse and absorbing and trying to understand, all those dangerous but necessary opportunities.
So after he’d grabbed his space in the parking deck of the Park Plaza Mall, he led Jesse to Ruby Tuesday instead of the multiplex. He debated for a sweaty moment on whether or not to try to hold her hand, then decided to hold off for now.
At Ruby Tuesday they ordered the salad bar and went to fill their plates while the waitress was getting their drinks. It was weird being at the salad bar together, in front of all the other people grazing. What were they supposed to talk about? His dead sister? Paul? They stuck to attempted witticisms about the food.
At the table Jesse munched on the taco salad she’d fixed herself and said, “Thanks, this is good.”
The fact that she’d thanked him meant that he was paying, so Ricky figured this was definitely a date. “Yeah, it is,” he said. “I can’t get used to how good food is in restaurants. Like that pizza the other day at Vino’s. . . . Anyway, all I’m saying is that this sure is a lot better than what we got in jail.” Then he felt dumb because, duh, of course it was better than what he’d had in jail.
But Jesse wasn’t looking at him like he was dumb. Head bent over her plate as she shoveled food into her mouth, her eyes stayed fixed on his face, and she asked, “Was it as awful there as it seems like it would be?”
“I guess so. Probably.”
“What was the worst thing that happened to you?”
Ricky dropped his eyes, pushed himself back in his seat, and shook his head. “No. I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Oh Jesus. I’m sorry. I’m such an asshole.”
“No, it’s cool, I’m sorry, for being weird about it.”
“Oh my God, are you kidding? It was an idiot question to ask you.”
“No. It makes total sense that you would want to ask. I just, you know. . . .”
“Okay. Well. Anyway. Let’s change the subject away from my bonehead goof.”
“Okay.” He might even have gone ahead and told her about the worst thing that had happened to him in prison, except that the worst thing hadn’t actually happened, so it would have been hard to explain. “It wasn’t all bad.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. The guards would let us all out of our cells all at once, one day a week. Aryan Brotherhood, the Crips, the Bloods, the whole gang. And all those hundreds of us would do a big musical number, like from Jailhouse Rock. The guards would play the instruments.”
“Really?”
“No. I’m kidding.”
Jesse laughed hard enough to spit out her Coke. Ricky was expecting a quick, polite chuckle, but she kept laughing, her eyes squeezed together above her big chipmunk cheeks, yet still locked on his with honest, whole delight. Finally Ricky accepted that her reaction did indeed seem genuine, and let his own mouth spread in pleasure.
Still grinning, Jesse wiped up the Coke that she’d spat onto the table. “So, okay,” she said, “jail totally sucks. Duly noted.”
“Actually, there were . . . I mean, it did suck. But there were some good effects.”
“Like?”
“Like Elly. Before I went away, she and I . . . well, I wasn’t a very good big brother. I saw her a lot. Maybe more than most big brothers see their little sisters, even. And it was . . . well. Anyway, when I went away, I was afraid we would, you know, whatever. But while I was in jail, we stayed close.”
“How’d y’all manage that? Did she come visit all the time?”
“No. I mean, she came to visit. But not super-often. I wasn’t crazy about having her come into that place. Or having her see me, you know, like that. But the main way wasn’t seeing her in person at all, it was mainly from reading her letters.”
“Oh, yeah? She wrote you a lot of letters?”
“Yeah. She wrote me every few days. But it wasn’t just the amount. It was, I don’t know. They were, uh, special.”
“That’s really nice, that she was a good letter-writer. It’s, like, a vanishing thing.” Jesse took another sip of her Coke and moved food around her plate with the fork, then said, “So tell me about her letters.” Then, hastily, she added, “If you want to, I mean.”
“Sure. It was, um. I don’t really know how to explain them. They were really chatty and jokey, she was funny. I hadn’t known how funny she was. Like, that she was funny enough to be able to show off about it. And she would tell stories. About her life, her friends, then later on her boyfriends. Like Paul. I read so much about Paul for years, this whole big saga about their relationship, that I felt like I knew him. I wanted to get the next letter and find out what was going to happen next with Paul. It was, I don’t know, just ordinary stuff she told me about, ordinary high-school girl stuff, and then ordinary college-girl stuff. At least, I gue
ss it was ordinary college stuff, I wouldn’t really know. And then about that job she had, and the people there and the stuff she did.”
“Did you write letters back to her?”
“No. Or, I mean, yeah. But just stuff like, How are you, Thank you for your letters, Everything here is fine, Sincerely, Ricky. It wasn’t like the way she did it. She created this whole world. Not out of the things that happened, they were all pretty boring, if you thought about them. But out of the voice she wrote with. The things she saw about people and the way she put stuff together. She made it so that it meant something. And I just, I liked that world better than the one I was in. I wanted to be in hers. It was just sort of like, there was something about it that meant something.”
Jesse looked at him, absently stirring her salad. “Yeah, I bet. Especially considering, I mean, the world you were in must have sucked, to put it mildly.”
“Yeah. But, plus, isn’t that what everybody wants when they start trying to hook up with a new person? Is to be taken out of the world they’re in? Like, it isn’t so much that the one we’re already in is awful, even though usually it is. It’s just more like you want the other person to help you break out. You want more space.”
Jesse was looking at him more intently now, had started excitedly and compulsively sticking food in her mouth. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, you get to feeling so cooped up. Like you’re going to go crazy. Or, no, I guess it would be a relief to go crazy. Everything seems so fake and pointless.”