by Dave King
I toss the change purse from the doorway. It bounces off the sandwich, and Ryan looks up with a start. I smile falsely and tug the strap of his backpack. “Not,” I say. Let’s get you to school.
15
WE’RE EARLY, but I had to get out of that house. I put her in park and nod officially at Ryan, and as he opens his door he says, “Could you, um, maybe like . . .” He trails off, scratching the lunch box handle with his thumbnail. “Do you think you could pick me up a little—like later?”
I turn down the radio. Ahead of us, a school bus swerves to the curb, and kids pile out, dressed like athletes and rock stars. I think of one of our first afternoons, when I arrived just as they swarmed from the building. A stocky black kid shouted, “Ryan Mohr, your dad’s here,” and Ryan gave the kid a shove before hoisting himself into the cab. Now I wonder if he’s gotten shit for traveling with a head case. Children are disloyal, I guess, and you can’t take it personally.
Ryan says, “So like five?” and tries to scramble away. I put my hand on his arm. “What?” he says.
I draw two circles above my wristwatch to indicate the missing hours. I raise my eyebrows, and I think this is clear. But Ryan only looks at me bluntly. I wet my lips and search for some way to ask what’s up. “Day,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His face reddens, and I know he’s bullshitting me. He knows I know, too. He leans over to look at my watch and says, “It’s almost eight,” and he sounds so impatient that I wave him away. Go on, then. For a moment he stares at me, then he presses a dashboard button, and my old station comes on. Neil Young is singing about rust. The door closes quietly, and I lean over the steering wheel and gaze at the oak leaves reflected in my windshield. I don’t watch him enter the building.
The school bus that was in front of me is gone, and a little Neon pulls in. I watch a woman lean over for a smooch just as a small, fat girl pops out the other side; then there’s a moment of indecision, and the kid presents a kiss in return. I punch the buttons until I relocate Ryan’s station, then peel out of the parking lot, and at the gates of the convent I push up the volume. What a day for disturbing the peace! Sister Amity and Robin are out by the Contemplation Garden, contemplating a pair of balled-up shrubs. I get out, slamming the door, and I’m heading for the maintenance shed when Sister Amity calls out.
“Howard! I had no idea you were a sports fan!” What the hell is she talking about? She offers what would be a shameless leer if she were a vaudevillian, not a nun, and I respond with my coolest stare. I think of Ryan letting me circle out the afternoon.
“The fights! The other night, Curtis Hall! I saw you there!” She rushes toward me, arms outstretched, and I remember the black-and-white fan club I spotted as Perez entered. “Talk about the last two people you’d expect at a boxing match,” she says to Robin.
Robin says, “Really,” and I wonder if she means me, too. Robin can’t stand Sister Amity, and the look she gives me says get her the fuck out of here.
But Sister Amity says, “Stick around, please, Howard. You can help move these lilacs.” She fishes in a sleeve for a tissue and dabs some perspiration from her lip, then replaces the tissue with a ladylike smile. It’s hot in the sun.
Robin’s been hosing two holes in the ground, in preparation for the bushes. Now she drops the hose and exhales heavily, making a little pfft sound with her lips. “I need a break first,” she announces. She goes to her van and gets a pack of cigarettes, lights one, and smokes it sitting on the bumper. At last she says, “So what were you doing at the fights?” I guess she thinks this ought to be good.
Sister Amity says, “One of Sister Hillary’s Boys Club students won a trophy.”
“Sister Hillary teaches boxing?”
“Not boxing. Dance.” She turns to include me, and since I don’t know Sister Hillary, I picture a black-clad Sister Amity haranguing a ballerina squad in a room full of mirrors. “So this young man, Nelson Perez, took a course in movement, and two years later he’s in the Golden Gloves! Oh, it was very exciting, wasn’t it, Howard? Up against a great big fellow who came right out swinging, but in the end they did decide for Nelson.”
I avoid reading, so I never checked the sports pages for the results of that match, and this is my first news of Nagy’s defeat. I think of the two boys, salty and bleeding under the lights, and I remember the crowd’s roars as Perez entered the arena. How I’d wished that crowd disappointed! I wonder how Nagy’s feeling this week and whether he can bring himself to climb from his bed, and suddenly I’m picturing the hospital where I woke up. I look at Robin, hunched over her smoke, and I doubt she’s even paying attention. She puckers her lips and blows a ribbon of gray, and I look out past the convent to where the ha-ha rises into thin, cloudless air. I can hear the surf noise of passing cars.
Sister Amity is saying, “All the champions will have their own float, then they go off to the nationals in Kansas City.” She peers at Robin’s holes in the ground, where the water has mostly been absorbed by the earth, then reaches up to finger a lilac leaf. The bush has a waist where its branches have been cinched with twine, and above Sister Amity’s head, thin sprays of buds wave like so many lavender gloves. “Sister Hillary is beside herself at a protégé’s making such a success. I think she’s more thrilled than if it had been one of her girls. And to tell the truth, we all of us want to see Nelson again. Well, any time there’s a parade I go along. And the majorettes, and the school bands . . .” She pauses, blotting her face again, and says, “But of course, it’s a big day for you, too, isn’t it, Howard? Won’t you be marching with your unit?”
I look at her. I’ve been only half listening, and it takes a moment to realize what she’s talking about. I think of the guys who show up on Memorial Day: fat-bellied patriots with their fists and their slogans, their untrimmed, greasy beards and stickered wheelchairs shaming the spectators, soaking the brightness from every sunshiny spring day. Why, most don’t even wear uniforms! My mouth goes dry—I’m not part of that, no matter what happened to me. I glance at Sister Amity’s innocent little black-framed face, so square and assertive, and as I touch my scar with my fingertips her eyes brighten, as if I might tell her what my life is like. But I’m speechless.
It’s not that her assumption is so terrible, though anyone who knows me knows I go my own way. And it’s not that she acts like she’s talking to a child. It’s all the things that have gone down, everything that didn’t happen to me that I always thought would. It’s being an exemplar of the admirably rebuilt life, the days spent zigging a holy lawn mower around paradise, the nights with strangers in my home. It’s having a child on furlough from another family, from Sylvia’s family; it’s wanting to do the best I can. Pretending I don’t still suffer from nightmares that set me bellowing in my sleep, while Laurel and the others pretend they don’t hear. It’s that maybe I wasn’t so much to begin with, but everything that was worth parading has been gone for so long I barely remember it. It’s wondering by what queer twist I survived, and why I was given sixteen days and a lifetime of bleak endurance. It’s the futility, always, of being understood.
“Howard,” Robin says sharply. “Give me a hand here, would you?” I turn, wiping my cheek with my wrist, and see that she’s leaped at the wrapped ball of a lilac tree, her cigarette still clenched tightly in her lips. I stoop to get a grip on the ball and gesture for her to keep an eye on the branches, and as I do so she mutters through the smoke: “Don’t mind her, Howard. Not one more thought.” And then, perhaps as much to herself as to me, she adds, “These people just have no fucking life.”
16
WHEN I’M ALONE, I attack the underbrush. There’s no other way to put it. I have a small, sharp pruning saw for the low branches of the pines and a Weedwacker for the tall grass, and in no time at all my T-shirt is soaked with sweat and pine needles are shimmying inside my overalls. I came through this area earlier in the week with a Bush Hog, so the assertive scr
ub has already been tamed, but I search for anything unruly to subdue. Around each trunk, clumps of grass stand in spring luxuriance; I go at the grass as if it’s done me personal wrong, and in the process send bunnies scurrying and small snakes slithering to find holes in the earth.
Around eleven I realize I’ve put a crack in the Weedwacker. I set the machine on the ground, and I’m inordinately sorry for having treated it so roughly. A cloud of gnatlike insects pulses about me, inflecting the humidity with the grit of their dry, weightless bodies. For thirty seconds I bat furiously at the bugs. Then I spit out a gob of dusty carapaces and scrub my hands up and down my face: the stubbled jawline and scratchy cheeks, the salt-drenched neck and damp hair, on the shaggy side. Finally, my broad forehead, with its flat dent and semirigid puff of scar.
Some small rodent clatters through the undergrowth, crackling leaves and snapping twigs, and when the sound stops I hear the babble of the stream. I stroll to where the water slips under an arch in the stone wall, and on impulse I take a seat on the bank, roll up my pant legs and strip off my shoes and socks. And my feet are old. I’m only middle-aged and in not bad shape, but my unshod feet look sad and fleshy in the dappled shade, with clusters of broken capillaries and thick, yellowed nails. There’s the small cut I got running across the lawns in the dark and a hunk of callus where a baby toe has been forced inward, and I think back to my elementary school days and the sight of my father’s feet, which even in my early memories look like this. They were the first thing about him to evoke my revulsion. But these are just my feet, and I’m alone—here and everywhere—with no one ever to find them repulsive, so I brush away a bit of sock fluff and plunge them into the cold, clear water. Looking upstream, I notice a gray minnow battling the eddies to nibble at a waterweed. The minnow releases itself into the current, glancing incuriously at my bare feet as it sweeps past. I sit motionless until my distress is diminished.
Returning to Ryan’s school at the end of the day, I think of my panic the night I couldn’t locate him, and when I pull in and find the playground empty and the glass entryway dark, my throat goes dry. But then I spot him, way off to the side. He’s sitting on the curb with his chin in his hands, and as I turn the truck in that direction I’m overwhelmed with relief. He climbs aboard in his shuffling manner, murmuring, “Hi, Howie,” so quietly that I barely hear it, and suddenly I wonder if he thought I wouldn’t show up. I stick out my hand, and he pulls it to his chest in one of those up-close buddy hugs the young black guys favor. And though it’s awkward bumping torsos in the close quarters of the cab, the affection’s unprecedented. I rub my cheek on his Indians cap and wonder if we’re even now: if his bullshitting me this morning and my shaking him the day we dropped by Sylvia’s are both now water over the dam. As Laurel said, things happen sometimes.
I suppose Ryan got a detention he was afraid to discuss, or perhaps he’s on some goofy committee or club. Sylvia once nagged me into staying after school to make tissue-paper carnations for the homecoming ball, and I was so embarrassed I told my dad I’d been kept late for cursing. I can picture Ryan doing exactly the same thing. Whatever he’s got going, he’s feeling remorseful, though he doesn’t explain himself. We go home and cook a couple steaks and eat them with fried potatoes and a nice big salad, and for a few hours I’m content.
Around ten-thirty, we’re watching an X-Files rerun. It’s later than Ryan typically hits the sack, but it’s Friday, and when the show comes on I think oh, hell. A week ago at this time I was touring the back yards.
Now I’m sprawled at the end of the couch, my feet on a hassock, a bowl of microwave popcorn in my lap. Ryan’s not saying anything, but I know he’s awake because he helps himself to popcorn, and when an onscreen figure suddenly bursts into flames he jumps. After a while he slides his legs onto the couch and shifts his weight, and then he’s leaning against me, his body warm and sticky in the heat. I hear Laurel step to the parlor archway, but when she says, “Boys, can I have a word with y’all?” it takes me a moment to realize she means us. In this house, the boys are Nit and Nat.
But Ryan’s as alert as a beagle. “We’re in the middle of a show!”
Laurel cranes her neck at the TV. “When it’s over, then.” She looks firmly at me before disappearing through the archway.
Ryan says, “Sheesh!” and takes another fistful of popcorn, but when The X-Files ends we dutifully turn off the set. We find Laurel at the table with bills spread all around.
“Howard,” she says, laying a hand on a stack of papers. “Here’s the gas and electric, also a water assessment from the city. They’re all paid out of your account, so don’t forget to file the statements away.” She picks up an invoice addressed to one of her cafés, squints at it, and reaches for a pen. I rub my chin and wait. Ruby wanders in, panting, and laps at Ryan’s bare leg, and as he squats to scratch her fat fist of a head I see a bright scrape running down his forearm. There’s a second abrasion on his calf, and though neither injury looks very deep, they stand out pinkly on Ryan’s brown skin. I wonder how he got hurt.
Ryan runs his nails down Ruby’s back and wrinkles his nose. “This dog stinks,” he says.
“Summertime, honey. Gets awful hot for her.” Laurel turns another paper. “Did you guys know we have shortcake? Season’s first strawberries.” I go to the fridge and get out the berries and a bowl of freshly whipped cream, and I gesture with the whipped cream in Laurel’s direction. “No thanks, How.” I cut two squares of shortcake and place them in bowls, then spoon on the strawberries and cream, and only after Ryan and I are seated at the table does Laurel set down her pen. “So we had a very interesting phone call today,” she says. “Lucky I just happened to be—Howard, do you ever check that answering machine?” I shrug cheerfully, and she says, “Well, never mind that now. Anyway, it was Ryan’s mama calling, and we had a nice chat. She said things are going along well for her at that place, but she also said no one’s been responding to her calls.” She looks questioningly at Ryan, whose only answer is to dig in his bowl. “Ryan, sweetie? Your mama would very much like to see you.”
Ryan shoots me a guarded look. At last he says, “So?”
Laurel purses her lips. “Don’t you miss her?” Ryan puts a huge spoonful of whipped cream in his mouth, and as we watch him swallow, she taps the pen against her ear. I know she doesn’t consider herself good at this, and she must wish I could jump in and take over. “Been kind of a while, babe. She said she misses you.”
Ryan sighs. I peer at the little downturned face, inexpressive as ever, and remember the impasse of his nerve-racking first days. I reach over to pat his shoulder, and when he slumps away I feel a pang of pure empathy. I’ve sat through some well-meant interrogations myself.
Laurel rubs her palms together. She’s wearing a slim little cherry-pink tank top, and she’s pinned her hair up so her long neck looks graceful. For a moment she watches me, biting her lip as she collects her thoughts. Then she says, “Here’s what it is. That center where his mom’s at is doing some kind of family participation day. Where people who have loved ones there get to come on in and take part in the activities? She said there’s an orientation and after that just their regular schedule, but the guests and everybody are included, with the idea of bringing them up to speed on the patient’s—what’s it called?—her program. So it’s somewhat more special than your usual visiting hours type thing.” She pronounces it thang and bites her lip again, then nods at my half-eaten shortcake. “That good?” I pass her the bowl. “Anyway, a week from Wednesday from like nine a.m. to three-thirty. I guess if you wanted to stay on and hang out or whatever . . .”
Ryan’s got the spoon in his mouth, but he talks through it. “I have school.”
“You could miss a day, sweetie. ’Specially if it’s to see your mom.” She smiles encouragingly, but casts a glance at the papers, and I realize she’s eager to get back to her accounts. “See now, if you’d been speaking to your mom regularly, you’d know all this already.” Rya
n takes the spoon from his mouth and starts mashing his shortcake.
Laurel says quietly, “I think it’s a big part of her cure.” Then the three of us sit quietly as Ryan turns his dessert to mush. It strikes me that since Laurel and Sylvia haven’t met, today might well have been their first real conversation. How jubilant Sylvia must have been to discover such efficient aid!
I think, as I so often have, of that morning of Sylvia’s departure. Telling Ryan to quit busting her chops; minutes later saying, “Let’s just go.” I wonder how she’s doing—I do!—but I also know her knack for getting her own way. Suddenly it’s a choice between two people’s desires, and without really meaning to speak, I say, “Not.” It would be different if Ryan were longing to see his mother, but at the moment his preferences carry some weight.
The others look up. I say “Not,” again, and then, “Not go.” It’s never been my position that he should continue to ignore his mother, but suddenly this is what I’m saying. I think of Sylvia claiming I got her into this, and I think of that surprise hug today in the truck. I consider the disaster of our visit to Sylvia’s house, and I think he’ll really hate me if I drag him to her as a hostage. So I say, “Not,” a fourth time, and the word comes out easily. I fold my arms across my chest.
Laurel turns deliberately to Ryan. “Well, Ry,” she says, and her tone is clipped, “Howard’s your guardian here, and you’ll do what he says. But I think you might take some time to reconsider. I bet you’d learn a lot just seeing what your ma’s been doing.”
“I don’t want to,” he says. With the battle won, he suddenly turns brattish, and as he sets his bowl down the spoon clatters inside. I keep my arms folded and maintain my expression, but I can’t help being surprised by the sway I hold. When was the last time my word meant anything? Have I been hasty?