by J. L. Abramo
***
When the end came, it came quickly. Just three days after his father smashed the silver music box against the wall, he punched James Richard's mother, knocking her against the same wall. The next day, while he was away at work, Sheila McNulty had all the locks in the house changed and contacted an attorney. Instead of being outraged as Sheila and James Richard predicted, Simon McNulty seemed amused. He said he'd be happy to give Sheila a divorce. He even smiled when he said it—the first time James Richard could remember seeing his father smile. He agreed to pay the alimony and child support that Sheila requested and to an equal division of their property. He even agreed to give his wife and son his share of the heavily mortgaged 13-room house they owned in the suburbs. Because of his cooperation, the divorce was settled within a month. Less than a week later, Sheila and James Richard discovered why Simon McNulty had been so generous—he had stolen most of their savings and fled the state. There would be no alimony payments. No child support. As far as Simon McNulty was concerned, his wife and son ceased to exist.
"To hell with him," James Richard said at the time.
His mother smiled weakly and stroked his cheek and said, "Don't curse, dear."
James Richard didn't miss his father. What was there to miss? The shouting? The insults? Simon McNulty had never been kind to him, even when he was a baby. He never played with him, never took him to baseball games or to the park—he was always too busy, even when busy meant doing nothing more than sitting in front of the TV. He never showed any interest in James Richard's grades, which were usually spectacular. In fact, it was because he and his son didn't get along that James Richard's grades were so good; the boy spent most of his time studying in his room or at the library so he could avoid his father.
Now, just six months after his father left, James Richard couldn't recall a single conversation they had together that lasted more than a minute. In most of those his father merely listed his expectations: "I expect you to cut the grass, I expect you to clean the garage, I expect you to take out the recyclables."
No, James Richard did not miss his father. But he sorely missed his mother whom he hardly saw now.
Sheila McNulty had told James Richard that everything would be fine following the divorce and he believed her; he was nearly giddy with joy when it was finally over. Only the pleasure he felt was soon replaced with a feeling of desperation. The problem was money.
Mrs. McNulty worked as an accountant for a company that owned a chain of restaurants. She made a good income, but not good enough to pay for their huge house in the suburbs all by herself. Or the new car she drove. Or expensive clothes. Or tickets to the opera and the ballet. Or the hefty tuition for St. Rose of Lima, the private elementary school James Richard attended. But Mrs. McNulty insisted that her son was going to have all the advantages he enjoyed before the divorce—when they were living on two incomes. To pay for it she took a second job. She became the night manager for one of the restaurants her company owned. As a result, James Richard never saw his mother accept on weekday mornings while she prepared for her daytime job and he readied himself for school. She was home on weekends, but most of that time was devoted to washing clothes, cleaning the house, shopping for groceries, or other household chores.
At first it had actually been fun; James Richard had never enjoyed such freedom. He came and went as he pleased, without telling anyone where he was going or when he'd be back. If he wanted a snack before dinner, he had a snack before dinner. If he wanted a snack for dinner, who was there to say no? He'd crank the volume on his music until the windows rattled and no one nagged that it was too loud. Bedtime was when his spirit moved him, which was usually late.
All that changed as the days turned to weeks and the weeks turned to months. James Richard became increasingly bored with his freedom. Because he could now do whatever he felt like, James Richard suddenly didn't feel like doing anything.
In the beginning, he spent a lot of time with Lacey Mauer, especially in the summer, walking or riding his bike four blocks down and three blocks over to her large brick house across from the nature preserve. Only she always wanted to play in the preserve or shoot baskets or access the new computer program she was into or talk about school or a book she had read and he didn't want to do any of those things. Nothing seemed to hold his interest for more than a few minutes at a time now. Certainly not his homework, which he did on the school bus or not at all.
More and more James Richard found himself home alone, sitting in the dark each night in his father's old chair, watching TV programs he was too young to see. Instead of becoming excited by it, the nightly phone call from his mother annoyed him. He no longer filled his mother's entire dinner hour with highlights from his day. Now when she asked, he was just "okay" and he was always doing "nothin'."
Now this.
James Richard knew that at St. Rose, the penalty for cheating was automatic and immediate expulsion and he had mixed feelings about that. On one hand, he was horrified. Leaving the school where he had done so well in the past, leaving his friends, leaving Lacey—the thought hit him so hard he nearly lost his breath. Plus, he worried what people would think of him. James Richard McNulty was not a cheat!
On the other hand, he would probably be forced to transfer to the public school. The free public school. Which meant his mother wouldn't need to work so hard to pay for his tuition, uniforms, books, computer fees. She could quit her night job and stay home with him!
At least, that was as far as James Richard's thinking took him before the door to the classroom clicked open and his mother stepped out.
***
"Thank you again," she said to Mrs. Spanier.
James Richard looked up from his chair as his mother closed the classroom door. She had always been a pretty woman, tall and slim, with corn-blonde hair and eyes the color of chocolate. Yet he didn't appreciate how pretty until one day last year following basketball practice when the college kid who coached the team stared at her in awe and gushed, "Wow, mothers sure have changed since I was a kid." Only lately she was looking old. Even her bright yellow hair seemed to have lost its shine. She seldom smiled.
Sheila McNulty knelt next to her son and with one hand, brushed the hair off his forehead. James Richard's eyes burned with tears, but he refused to let them fall.
"Mrs. Spanier is giving you an F on the test, but she's not reporting you for cheating," Mrs. McNulty told her son softly.
James Richard nodded. He didn't know what to say.
"If it happens again, they'll expel you."
He nodded again.
"Promise me…"
"I promise, Mom," James Richard said.
"I realize this is my fault…"
"No," Richard said abruptly.
"I need to spend more time…"
"No," Richard said again. "It's my fault. I've been lazy, I've been goofing off, I've been…"
Mrs. McNulty pressed two fingers against James Richard's lips and shook her head slowly.
"We'll both try to do better," she said.
"Yes," James Richard said. "Yes."
"Give me a hug," Mrs. McNulty told him.
"Why?" James Richard asked.
"Because we both need one," she told him.
James Richard wrapped his arms around his mother and squeezed tight. The tears finally fell, hot and wet, against his cheeks.
Back to TOC
Here is a preview of Terry Holland’s second Harry Pines adventure Chicago Shiver…
One
Saturday, December 6
Kailua, Oahu, Hawaii
I was coming downstairs buck naked, drying my hair from the shower, when Muhammad called from Chicago to say we had work to do.
I didn't hear the phone ringing. I saw its button blinking. I'd have heard it ring if Dickey Betts and Gregg Allman hadn't been so cranked up on the stereo that all my fuses were blowing. Lately I'd been going through my big stack of albums of the old dirt bands, trying to decide if the Al
lman Brothers Band was anywhere near as good as I thought when I was a stupid kid wired on cheap weed and warm beer. It was. They were the best cracker band ever.
I picked up the receiver, said, "Hold on," into the mouthpiece and laid it down on the end table. Across the room at the turntable, I waited for Chuck Leavell to finish his pounding piano solo and then toggled the lever that raised the arm and the needle and went back to the phone.
"Hello and excuse me," I said in the sudden silence to whomever was there.
Muhammad's deep voice said, "Allman Brothers."
"Their band. Duane was dead on this one. But their band."
"What was that? Jessica?"
"Yeah. From Brothers and Sisters. Surprised a man of your…uh…complexion would be so hip to redneck culture."
"And the horse you rode in on. Had a brother on drums, those boys did. Name of Jaimoe."
"That's right, they did. Had two drummers and a black guy named Jaimoe was one of them. Muhammad, was there a honkie in your woodpile?"
***
I was just in from two hours on Kailua Bay in the Boston Whaler with a crew of my three neighbors. Crew overstates it. It's a seventeen-footer with a 90-horsepower outboard Mercury, so there's neither need nor space for deck hands. Actually, they were fishing. For our dinner.
The Whaler's controls are in a center console that makes it perfect for walking the perimeter and playing a fish from anywhere. On the downside, there's no tower, so in a rolling sea it's hard to spot the bird clusters that hover above the schools. It's not deep sea fishing either; we work only the upper layer of the ocean. I ran the boat and Richie Cosopolous, Cindy Rendell, and Leanne Fitch, who live in three of my five apartments, cast lines of live bait. When Cindy boated a smallish Yellowfin Tuna—an Ahi, here in the islands—that looked no more than thirty pounds, we spent the rest of the excursion in catch and release. We don't fish for inventory, not with bounty so close at hand. With an Ahi this size, we'd have enough for our dinner and extra for our neighbors on either side.
We beached the Whaler, winched the trailer down from the tree it's cabled to, backed the boat out into the surf to float it to its rigging, and cranked and pushed the boat fifty yards up the beach and secured it to the tree. Richie and I did the Whaler work while the girls gutted and cleaned the tuna and packed it in the ice chest.
Richie said, "Harry, if we stay here 'til we get old and feeble, how'll we get the boat up the beach?"
"You'll figure out how to rig a motor to the winch."
Sam Dodson and Teresa Hanifan and their new baby Estelle were our guests for the evening. Sam and Teresa had lived here before and after their wedding, until they moved into a house with a nursery to prepare for Estelle. It was a reunion dinner and Estelle's first night out. Richie and Leanne had dates coming over, but Cindy and I didn't.
I don't know why Cindy was flying solo. All she had to do was whistle and they'd be lined up and slobbering. I, on the other hand, was in an odd spot.
Valerie was in New York working with her father, peering into each of his investments to make sure he doesn't own something that owns something that owns something that could embarrass him. That accounts for my spending so much time with old rock albums and a lot of yard work and reading. Not that the terms of our separation stipulated convents and monasteries. We'd agreed to lead unrestricted lives. We're not nuts. Or dead. And we had committed to get together in one interesting place or another for a few days every month or so. We've been doing that and it is unfailingly fabulous. Broadening even. To say nothing of the salubrious effect that getting next to Valerie Sabatino has on my sanity.
When she first left, back in April, I thought of her as just away for a while. I knew she'd settle into a nice place, not live out of her suitcase in a hotel, but I kept thinking of her not so much as living there but sort of hanging out. Passing through. Whatever that meant. But that was then. By now, it was clear. Valerie was living in New York. She had even bought a house in the Village.
I don't want to replace her. She's irreplaceable. Still, I do have an occasional urge to get laid in a meaningless sort of way. But I don't know where to find it. The meaningless part, that is. Casual sex has become the prime oxymoron. More's the pity.
So, there'd be eight for dinner. Plus Estelle.
***
Muhammad said, "Remember Jack Netherland?"
"Sportswriter for the Sun-Times."
"Yeah. He's in trouble. Real big trouble. A charge of capital murder. About a month ago he was found in bed with a dead woman. He'd been shot by her and somehow got off a 9-1-1 call before passing out. Cops had to break in. The door was dead bolted from the inside. Jack was lying on top of her and she was strangled. He's recovered from the gunshot, was real lucky with that, and now he's in the county lockup. Bail was denied. Rita, his wife, called me today and asked if I could help. I said I thought I could get you to come back and look into it."
"Who's his lawyer?"
"Guy named Ben Brill. Good reputation. Problem is he says, according to Rita, the case is a loser. He wants to plead it. Otherwise, Rita says, Brill thinks Jack's going to be looking at the death penalty. Jack insists he's innocent, refuses to plead it."
"I thought Illinois threw out capital punishment."
"Recent governor released a bunch of death row prisoners, but he couldn't rewrite the law all by himself. The threat of it's still there."
"And it's beside the point if you know you're innocent. What do you think? Is he innocent?"
"Jack and Rita are good friends. I find it pretty hard to believe he's a murderer. Serena thinks it's ridiculous. Of course, there's the wild card here. They were having sex. That changes things some. And he had a blood alcohol of point one seven, more than a little drunk."
"Polygraph?"
"Yes, and he passed it with flying colors. But…Guilty people do pass lie detectors on occasion. He's still inside."
"Is he indicted?"
"Not yet. There was a probable cause hearing."
"He have a history of running around on Rita?"
"No. She says she wouldn't swear he hadn't fooled around once or twice in fifteen years, but she says he's been a good husband and a good father and she's solid with him now."
"What do you know about the dead woman?"
"Not a lot. Thirty-three. Very attractive. Former model. Unmarried. Rita says Jack says this was their first time together. He blacked out, he says. Woke up with a knot on his head and a bullet in his chest."
"And the door locked from the inside."
"Yes. Deadbolts. Both doors and all the windows. Can you get away?"
"Is it cold there?"
"It's December. What do you think?"
"It's not cold here."
He was quiet. I thought about telling him what a nice time we'd had on the bay today. Then I thought better of it.
"I'll leave tomorrow. There's a United non-stop that gets to O'Hare about ten tomorrow night. I'll be on it. Got a spare room?"
"Sure. I'll meet your flight."
"Don't bother with that. That's a nightmare. I'll take the train downtown and grab a cab from there. Can you email me a file on this before I go, so I can read it on the plane? Background on the woman. And Jack. Newspaper articles. Copy of the state's case. Stuff like that. From Francis."
"You'll have it."
Muhammad Ali—not that one, another one—works in a restaurant. It's to the west of Chicago's Near North side, but still an easy walk from the Drake. The restaurant is called "Serena's" after his wife, who owns it. Muhammad, who is coal black and mountainous, is front man, bookkeeper, husband, and crap catcher to the girl of his dreams, Serena, a native of Singapore, who is minuscule.
I try not to think what my life would be like today if not for them.
***
I booked first-class for the flight with an open return. It was painfully expensive, but eight hours in steerage would have been even more painful. I took the hit to my bank account as a reminder that
I'd have to get a little more serious about finding someone to move into Sam and Teresa's place.
Since finding this place and the great life that comes with it, I have always rented the four units through dumb good luck. There's a fifth unit that I keep empty for Muhammad and Serena when they come—they're my partners in this investment—or for good friends on a vacation or a short term. The apartments are side-by-side, each with a small but useful kitchen, a good-sized room off that for whatever, plus a bedroom and big bath. They open to the front and rear and have big windows and a couple of skylights.
I get very good rates but it's a fair trade because of all the rest we have and share.
There's the Great Room. Valerie named it, not me. It's thirty by sixty with a high barrel-vaulted ceiling. Usually we keep its wide doorways open on both ends. A few insects wander in but the salamanders control them. I don't know what controls the salamanders. Sometimes you look up and there's one making his way across the ceiling. We coexist. It's island life. The room is full of sofas and soft chairs, a big-screen TV, a six-speaker Bose setup, a dining table that seats twelve, and an Olhausen pool table behind that. And space here and there for a little dancing.
I've created a great kitchen off the Great Room where we prepare big meals like the one we'd have this night. It has granite counter tops, a big dual-fuel Viking—eight gas-fired stove-top burners, including a continuous grate, and two electric ovens—a built-in Sub-Zero, and every appliance I ever coveted. Counter and stools for spectators and critics. Spacious and well-lit. Hell of a kitchen.