God's Pocket - Pete Dexter

by Pete Dexter

  He was going to tell her there was a problem with the arrangements as soon as he got in the house. He didn't know how he was going to tell her, except he was going to do it without stopping or thinking it over, but then it was too late because Jeanie gave him one of those smiles she used for priests she didn't know, and walked past without even noticing his ear.

  She sat down in the middle of the sofa, then dropped her head into one of the cushions and pulled her feet up and closed her eyes. "Jeanie?" he said, but she settled deeper into the couch, farther from him.

  Mickey went upstairs and looked in the bathroom mirror.

  She should of noticed the ear. It was skinned, top to bottom, and torn about half an inch where it connected to his jaw. The blood from the tear had run in a thin path straight down his neck into his shirt. He found some alcohol in the cabinet, thrown in there a long time ago and hidden by years of accumulated makeup and perfume and shit for glossy hair.

  When Jeanie was through using something, she didn't throw it away. She just quit using it.

  He soaked a Kleenex in alcohol and cleaned the ear, starting with the edge and working in into all the ridges and nests in there. Then, slowly, he pulled his left hand out of his pocket. He unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall off the damaged arm. The inside of the elbow was dark red and turning blue, about half as big again as it had been the last time he'd seen it. When he leaned to turn on the bath water, the elbow moved, and the pain, now there was time for it, took him over. He closed his eyes and bent over the arm and thought of Leon in the truck, and Jeanie up here in the room with Richard Shellburn.

  And now there was time, he let himself feel it. And then he was throwing up, wet-eyed and shaking, again and again, a long time after his stomach had given up the beer he'd drunk with Jack Moran. When it stopped he stood up, and stepped into the bath. He found some of her bubble bath on the edge of the tub and poured that over the water. The water was hot, and he was tired every way there was to be tired.

  He lay down and the water took the weight out of his elbow, out of his chest. He closed his eyes and held on. It wouldn't be the same for her after it was all over, he knew that. She would wake up in the mornings different, and maybe she would look at him again, and maybe she wouldn't. He held on. He wanted to go downstairs where she was sleeping and give her something, or just be in the same room with her. He opened his eyes, and it was all weak. The bathroom looked different, he couldn't say how. The truck had looked different at first after old Daniel was gone too.

  He wanted to give her something so bad it made him weak, and he saw that took away the thing she'd wanted him for. And then there were two quick knocks and the door opened—before he had a chance—and Jeanie walked one step into the bathroom and stopped cold, staring at the bathtub where he was lying up to his chin in bubbles, crying like a baby.

  She never said a word. She just turned around and walked out, and closed the door behind her.

  * * *

  It wasn't that she'd traded in her husband for Richard Shellburn. It was more like he'd deserted her. That was a good word for it. Deserted. Ever since what happened to Leon, Mickey wasn't there anymore. He never got near her. He was out in his truck or he was drinking. She'd told him something had happened to Leon, and he'd gone to deliver meat. It was more like he didn't know what to do than he didn't care, but it amounted to the same thing.

  There was a time when his awkward way around her was nice—after all the others it was sweet, a man like a boy—but when she'd finally needed him for something, he'd been afraid to get near it. It wasn't just finding out what happened to Leon, but that would have done for starters.

  She woke up on the couch, thinking about that. It was dark outside and she didn't know how long she'd been asleep. Her sisters hadn't come back, the house was quiet. Mickey was probably across the street at the Hollywood. It didn't seem to matter, he'd taken himself out of it. She thought of Richard Shellburn again and the strange way he'd held her. It was as new remembering it as when it happened. She wondered if the place in Maryland was real, he'd seemed so sad ....

  She got up, wanting to look at herself in a mirror. She wanted to see what Richard Shellburn had seen. And so she'd walked up the stairs to the bathroom, knocked—why hadn't he said he was in there?—and then walked in on him, like that. She might as well of found him dressed in nylons and high heels. The bathroom smelled like vomit, and she got out before she threw up too.

  She got out and went down the stairs, and the phone rang. She had a feeling it was Richard Shellburn, and put something for him in her voice. "Hello?"

  "Jeanie?" It wasn't the columnist, but it was somebody drunk.

  "Yes."

  "Lemme tell you some advice. Go ask your husband where Leon is."

  She said, "Who is this?" It sounded like Jack Moran.

  "Jack?"

  There was a pause at the other end, the sound of a beery opening. "I ain't sayin' who this is, but just do yourself one favor. Ask your husband where the body is." And then he hung up.

  "Ask your husband where the body is.”

  It had that old, comfortable feel of tragedy. Leon was supposed to be at Jack Moran's, at least that's who had his suit. Then she remembered the cop. Eisenhower, like the president. He'd looked at her too. He was quieter about it than Richard Shellburn, but he liked her. She thought maybe Eisenhower had taken Leon somewhere to test him. The cops hadn't wanted to, but he said he'd look into it again. He hadn't wanted to, but he was the kind who would do what he said.

  Yes, Eisenhower had taken Leon for tests. She didn't know why Jack Moran would be calling her up at this time of night to tell her something like that, except Jack Moran was an ugly drunk. She wanted to tell Mickey—no, she wanted to tell Richard Shellburn.

  When she had to, Jeanie could be adjustable.

  She heard the toilet flush, and then the sound of his footsteps, going into Leon's room. The phone rang again. "Did you ask him?" She hung it up, then put the receiver under a pillow. It was quiet upstairs, and she went into the kitchen and made herself a cup of hot chocolate.

  She wondered how it was Richard Shellburn had noticed her, with all the girls there were in Center City. Just their clothes made her. feel too far behind to ever catch up, and made her not want to go there anymore.

  Somehow, though, he'd looked past all of them and found his way to her house. And he'd laid down with her on a bed and held her, and told her about another place. She remembered the way he'd been and knew she was the only one he would tell.

  She liked that. She liked it a ways better than walking in the bathroom and finding her husband—who'd never even say it if he had a headache before—crying in the bathtub. The hot chocolate made her sleepy, but she stayed in the kitchen. She didn't want to go upstairs.

  She hadn't thought about Shellburn's looks. She guessed his face was handsome once, but he was beyond that now. He seemed so sad. He was older than Mickey, and his back and arms weren't hard, but Richard Shellburn was from some other place where that didn't have nothing to do with it. She'd been with most kinds of men, some of them gone to seed, but there was a difference between that and somebody who never had muscles. She reminded herself then that she hadn't traded in Mickey for the columnist. He'd deserted.

  She fixed another cup of hot chocolate and sat for an hour in the kitchen, thinking about them, and then Joyce came in the door, carrying a sack of groceries, and Jeanie realized that it had been an hour and she hadn't thought about Leon once. She thought maybe she was making an adjustment.

  She slept alone and woke up rested, the first time since Leon died. Joanie had moved back to her own house, Joyce had slept on the couch. The door connecting Leon's bedroom to the bathroom was open when she got up, and Mickey was gone.

  She took a long bath, paying attention to her waist and her legs and her arms. She had skin like a girl. No family resemblances at all. She imagined how she would look to Richard Shellburn.

  She stayed in the tub until the wa
ter turned cool, and then wrapped herself in a beach towel Mickey had bought her in Atlantic City. Then she did her eyes, using lighter shades than yesterday. Without knowing it, she painted herself happier. She began to hum. She brushed out her hair, watching how it fell over the line of her shoulders—a girl's hair, blowing on the beach at Atlantic City—and then she noticed a ball of Kleenex the size of a fist lying in the wastebasket, covered with dried blood. She had to look twice to see what it was.

  Everything stopped. She dropped the brush in the sink and went into her bedroom, and put on the same underwear and dress she had worn the day before. There was something inside her—as ugly as a ball of dried blood—and it hadn't gone away. She'd thought it was gone, but it was there, and it frightened her. She went downstairs and found Joyce in the kitchen eating waffles. "Mickey left early," her sister said. "It wasn't even light. Didn't say where he was going .... "

  Jeanie sat down beside the telephone and dialed the number Eisenhower had left. The man who answered the phone was the one who'd called Monday and said Leon was dead.

  "This is Mrs. Scarpato," she said. "Leon Hubbard's mother, and last night I received a phone call about my son."

  "Slow down, slow down," he said. "You said your name was what?"

  "This is Jeanie Scarpato. My son was Leon Hubbard."

  "Oh," he said, "Mrs. Hubbard."

  She looked at her sister and shook her head. "Last night I got a call about my son, that I should ask my husband where the body was."

  The policeman said, "Do you have reason to believe your son has been harmed in some way?"

  "This is Mrs. Scarpato," she said. "You talked to me Monday, on the telephone, and told me that my son Leon had been killed in a construction accident."

  "Oh, the dead son. You should of said so. I thought it was somebody else. You know, we get a lot of calls come through AID and it helps if the complainant identifies themselves."

  She said, "Is Mr. Eisenhower coming in?"

  He said, “Officer Eisenhower has been reassigned back to detectives."

  She said, "Could you tell me if he had my son taken somewhere for tests?"

  "Tests?" he said.

  "To tell how he died," she said. She heard her voice shaking. "There was some question of how my son died .... "

  "Wel1, I don't think he would of took him anywhere," he said. She could just see him looking under his desk. "If it was a homicide, the M.E. might still have him, but we don't take the bodies, ma'am. We're the investigative arm, and if there was some reason to take a body somewhere for tests, I can assure you Officer Eisenhower would of told me."

  She left her number for Eisenhower and hung up the phone. It was inside her, ugly as dried blood, and she was afraid of it. She thought it must have been there every day of her life, a plug in some smooth surface inside her, and then Leon had died and pulled it loose, and let the light in behind it. In the light, all the familiar footings inside her turned out to be ledges. In the light, she could see the long drops, and it made her afraid even to breathe.

  "Mickey seemed different this morning," Joyce was saying.

  "Like he was sorry now for how he acted." She fit the last piece of waffle into her mouth. "They're always sorry when it's too late." She put her fork across the plate and put the plate in the sink and ran cold water over it.

  When she turned away from the sink, she saw Jeanie was getting ready to cry. "You've got to get used to it," she said.

  "You don't know what it is," Jeanie said.

  Her sister said, "You're not the only one ever had something happened. At least it was a good, clean thing. He didn't get cancer and suffer all summer, like some of them from this neighborhood. Think how terrible that would of been."

  Jeanie said, "I don't need to borrow grief from nobody."

  And then Joyce was putting on her coat, and deserting her too.

  4

  A Newspaper Romance

  They came for Arthur early in the morning. Sophie recognized one of them from Monday morning. He was the man who had gone with Arthur and Mickey to steal the truck at New Jersey. He was wearing a very smart coat, although it would have looked better with a tie.

  It was her habit to cut a carnation for Arthur's friends when they came to visit, but there was something about this man—even Monday there had been something—that you didn't want to pin a flower on him. He was quiet, but he wasn't shy. She liked shy men, now that she was older, but she hadn't ever liked men without manners.

  It was Thursday morning, before the children started walking past the window on their way to school. The schools made the boys wear ties and the girls all had uniforms, different colors for different schools. She liked watching them on the way to school, except the ones who smoked. She did not think girls ought to be smoking cigarettes in Catholic school uniforms.

  They came in, the man from Monday morning and another man, who was younger—just a baby, really—and bigger. She liked his haircut. She admired the size of their shoulders and backs and arms. They had been watching the shop, she knew because they came in right after Arthur. He was normal again when he came in, his hair combed nice, and he'd put on a nice smell. She thought any woman would be lucky to have Arthur when he was normal. He'd leaned over the counter to kiss her, and then gone into the back to take care of his business. He'd said, "Get your suntan lotion packed, Sophie, we're goin' to Disney World."

  Nobody could make her smile like Arthur. He was in back two minutes when they came for him. The one from Monday morning came in first and looked from side to side, paying as much attention to her as the flower arrangements. The younger one came in behind and locked the front door. "Where is he?" said the one from Monday morning.

  The younger one pulled the shade over the long window that ran the length of the door, and she stared at them in the darkened room and understood they were going to kill Arthur. The one from Monday morning walked around the counter and knocked seventy corsage boxes off a card table in back.

  "You ought to be ashamed," she said. "This is how you do your business? Scaring old women?"

  He pushed her out of the way and looked behind the curtain that hid the cashbox under the counter. "You going to steal my money too?" she said. "You going to do your filth and steal twenty dollars from an old woman too? Like the niggers?" Aunt Sophie did not think the men needed to know there was $30,000 in there.

  The one from Monday morning said, "He's in back," and came around the counter. The younger one had already taken the gun out of his belt, and now the one from Monday morning took his out too. It was a fancy gun with a wooden handle and a barrel that was so long and black it seemed a second behind the rest when he brought it around. He didn't need a barrel like that to kill Arthur.

  The younger one said, "You want me to go around to the back?" The other one thought it over.

  "Yeah," he said, "he can't run, but what the fuck? Take the back to make sure.”

  The old woman spoke to the one who was still a baby. She said, "You're so young, why would you want to hurt an old woman and her nephew?" He put the gun back in his pants and unbuttoned his coat. “Arthur takes care of me," she said. "If you hurt him, you might as well kill me too. Without him, who's going to take care of me?”

  The young one went out the front door. She watched until the shade had stopped moving. "He's so young for this business," she said.

  The man from Monday morning looked at her, for the first time. "If I was you, I'd shut my mouth," he said. "We can leave as much behind as we want to here."

  She said, "He's hardly more than a baby."

  The man from Monday morning said, "You keep that in mind, old woman." He looked at his watch, giving the other one time to get in back. "You just keep that in mind."

  She saw he was getting ready to go into the back for Arthur now. "He never hurt you," she said. "He ain't in nobody's way. He'll do anything you want. Please, Arthur ain't no trouble, you don't have to do this .... "

  The man from Monday looked at
his watch again. It hadn't been very long, it couldn't be time yet. He pointed the gun at the old woman's face, but she never thought he meant to shoot her.

  “Remember what I said, missus. We're comin' back out this way in a minute."

  She crossed herself and he saw she was leaving it up to God. He turned his back, satisfied with that, and stepped toward the door to the meat locker. She saw him take the safety off and noticed how relaxed he held the gun, like it was part of his hand.

  And she reached through the curtain and found her own gun—a fifty-year-old revolver her husband had given her the first year they were married. It had never been fired. The man from Monday morning was at the door now, and she pointed the gun at the back of his head. The gun must have been about his age, and it seemed to her that it must have been there all that time, waiting for him. Like God had made one, and then the other to correct the mistake.

  She held the gun in both hands and pulled at the trigger. Her husband had taught her to shoot, but it was a long, long time ago, she couldn't even remember where they went to practice, so she just pulled. It wasn't up to her anyway. It was moving by itself now, after all those quiet years, to meet him.

  The noise when it went off shattered the glass door to the refrigerated box where she kept her roses. She thought it was the noise. The man from Monday morning turned around—he was ten feet from the roses—and his gun was coming back for her.

  She knew it was him, even though he didn't look the same. His eyes were bigger, for one thing. She wished she'd been wearing her glasses when they'd come in, and she wished the gun wasn't so loud.

  Her ears were ringing. She couldn't hear herself shout to Arthur to run for his life.

  The man from Monday morning must have thought she was talking to him because his gun stopped, and he took a step sideways, like he was going for the front door.

  She jerked the trigger again, and the second shot caught him in the neck, right below the chin. She was sure. It threw him back into the wall, and she had to remind herself now who it was, because he didn't look anything like he had. And then he fired his own gun and blew out the other door to the flower box. She'd have to get the roses out of there right away.