“Like the park,” she remarked, raising the paper fan once again to cool herself.
“You’ve seen it?” He sighed. “I helped build that park—me and Nicky, some of the other kids, most of the parents on the street. The house there had burned down, and the owner just walked away. We cleaned up the lot, put in the benches and the playground equipment, planted flowers and bushes and trees. I think half the teenagers in the neighborhood lost their virginity in that park.”
“Including you?”
His smile was faint and, around the edges, derisive. “Yeah, including me.”
With Meghan Donovan? she wanted to ask. Was that where young Reid had gotten his start on what even his hard-hearted father admitted had been a rough life?
“Didn’t you ever want him?” she asked softly, only vaguely aware of the longing in her voice.
Jamey looked annoyed, as if he would like nothing more than to ignore her and walk away. She wouldn’t be surprised if he did. It seemed he had a little experience at just such behavior. Then, with a loud, heavy sigh, he answered. “I was seventeen, Karen. I’d been looking after my parents for as long as I could remember. I was about to finish school and get out on my own. I planned to enlist in the Army and see someplace other than Serenity Street for a change. The last thing I wanted was the responsibilities of a family.”
“But you had those responsibilities, whether you wanted them or not.” It was an unnecessary reminder, but she’d needed to make it anyway. She’d wanted to be a parent all her life. Since junior high her only goals had been to marry Evan and raise a family with him, and all Jamey had wanted was to be free of responsibility. She would have given everything to have a baby, and he would have given everything to not have one. “What did you do?”
“We got married. Five days after Reid was born, she took off with him. No one knew where they’d gone.”
And no one had cared. Not Meghan’s parents and certainly not her husband, Reid’s father. “You must have been relieved.”
He finally sat down, the house paint flaking off on his shirt where they touched. “Yes, I was relieved. I went ahead and signed up, and for years at a time I didn’t even think about them. I’m not proud of that, Karen. If I could go back and do things differently, believe me, I would.”
Starting with a foolproof method of birth control, she thought, thereby ensuring that neither he nor Meghan got saddled with unwanted responsibilities, ensuring that Reid never had a chance to screw up his life or live it right because he would never have a life to start with.
“You could do things differently now.”
Jamey scowled at her. “Be a father to him now? Yeah, right. He hates me.”
“You disappeared from his life before he even knew who you were, and now that you are here, you make it so damned clear that you disapprove of him. You tell people that he’s a punk, that he’s dangerous, that they should stay away from him for their own safety. You expect the worst of him. You refuse to believe that there might be anything good or decent in him. Of course he hates you.”
“He is a punk,” he said defensively.
“Because he’s never had a chance to be anything else. Because the only people in his life are punks. That’s the only example that’s ever been set for him. But you could change that. You could quit being so damned judgmental. You could start looking for the good in him—the part that prompted him to fix my gate when no one was around to see him do it, the part that led him to feed this puppy when everyone else was letting it starve to death.”
For a long while they stared at each other. He was wavering, she thought for an instant; then he disgustedly shook his head. “Whatever he did, he did for his own reasons. He expects to get something out of it. You’ll see.”
“Maybe...but you never will. You’re too narrow-minded. You treat a bunch of drunks in your bar with more compassion and understanding than you do your own son.”
He got to his feet and paced to the top of the steps. When he turned back, he was still looking annoyed. “If you want to meet some of the people, come on. Otherwise, I’m going to find better things to do with my day off.”
She rocked a couple of times, considering the consequences of letting her temper tell him to go on, that she neither needed nor wanted his help with meeting the neighbors. She could ask Alicia, she had told him Friday, but she had no idea whether the girl would be willing to help her. She could ask Reid when she saw him again, but that might not be a bright idea. If he was even a little as bad as his father insisted, then the people she wanted to meet would be even less receptive to his presence in their homes than to hers. Her only real options were to go it alone or with Jamey now.
With a regal nod, she got to her feet, picked up the bright new leash she’d bought yesterday, snapped it to the matching collar around the puppy’s neck and started toward the steps. “Come on, Jethro, we’re going for a walk.”
Chapter 4
The visits took more than three hours, though each one passed quickly enough. Jamey avoided the building where Reid and the Morgans lived, as well as those their friends called home. In the buildings he did take Karen to, a number of people wouldn’t answer their doors. Plenty of others chose not to invite them inside. As he had expected, they were wary, suspicious and less than welcoming. A couple of kids were happy to see Jethro, but no one was happy to see Karen. He had warned her. It wasn’t his fault she hadn’t listened.
But she didn’t seem the least bit disappointed. She wasn’t expecting instant results. She was pleased enough with simply meeting a few people. She’d lived on Serenity a week, and other than the troublemakers and the regulars at O’Shea’s, today was probably the first time she’d laid eyes on anyone.
They came out of the last apartment house before the street ended and turned back toward home. They had to pass the park on the way. “Maybe this will be my first project,” she mused as she drew one hand along the iron fence. “Maybe the kids would come out if they had a place to play.”
“Not when there’s a chance they’ll get shot while playing.”
She pretended not to have heard him. “We could set up some sort of program—have a play period for a couple of hours every morning and every evening when all the mothers and whatever fathers are available could bring their kids to the park. Even Ryan Morgan won’t harass one mother when there are ten or twenty others to back her up. We could do the first one early—maybe eight to ten, before it gets too hot.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Before you open O’Shea’s.”
“Hey, I don’t have any kids to take to the park,” he warned.
“But you are a father, like it or not. It wouldn’t hurt you to act like one.”
Reaching out, he caught hold of her hand and turned her to face him. “Acting like a father to other people’s children won’t fix anything for Reid or me. Mothering other people’s children isn’t going to fix your problems, either.”
Her gaze was steady and even. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Trying to forget my infertility by taking care of other mothers’ kids?” When he didn’t say anything, she went on. “Or is that what you’re doing? Trying to forget your failure to be a father to Reid by taking care of all those vulnerable people at the bar?”
When he still remained silent, she pulled her hand free and turned into the park. Once it had been lush grass with stepping stones making a winding path around the perimeter and to each bench. Now the grass was gone, the stones were cracked, and the benches had been destroyed. All but a few of the trees were dead; three had been set on fire where they’d stood. The dirt was littered with cigarette butts, empty beer cans and liquor bottles, fast-food wrappers and refuse of a more intimate nature. Even without the soft cushion of healthy grass and the cover of trees and shrubs in nighttime shade, kids were still using the park for sex. At least some of them were being careful about it. That should count for something.
He wondered how careful Reid was. The girl he’d been with Tuesday night, Tanya St
anford, had a reputation for being available to just about anyone with the right lines and the right moves. The way she’d been hanging on to Reid had made Jamey uncomfortable—as had no doubt been intended. It had reminded him too much of the way Meghan had clung to him twenty-six long years ago. But at least if Tanya or one of his other girlfriends got pregnant and decided to have the baby, Reid would be there. He would know from the example Jamey had set for him everything not to do. He would be a better father, with all his disadvantages, than Jamey ever was.
Then Jamey scowled. There was far more risk to casual sex today than he and Meghan had ever faced. Accepting responsibility for an unplanned child paled in comparison to a slow, torturous death from AIDS. Given a choice, he would wish abstinence for Reid. Without a choice, caution was the best he could hope for.
He stopped in the gateway and watched Karen. She was carrying Jethro now to protect his feet from the broken glass that covered the ground and moving in a slow circle around the lot. She paused to glance at the graffiti that covered the walls, neon profanities that were once used for shock, that were now an everyday, every-sentence part of these kids’ vocabularies.
When she came full circle, she was smiling just a little. “This will be nice. We can replace the swings and the jungle gym, maybe put in some picnic tables and a grill, plant flowers and some more trees, add a sandbox for the little ones and—”
“Karen, you’re wasting your time. The Morgans won’t let you replace the swings, plant some flowers and add a sandbox.”
She faced him stubbornly. “You know what this street really needs? A few residents with backbone. Ryan Morgan is one snotty little kid. Yes, he’s a thief and a thug and. a murderer, but he’s just one guy. How can an entire neighborhood be held hostage by one little bastard?”
“He’s one little bastard who would cut your throat in a heartbeat if he heard you talk like that about him. No, wait,” he said sarcastically. “Knives are Trevor’s weapon of choice. Marino likes fists, shotguns and gasoline. Tommy Murphy prefers baseball bats, and Ryan likes handguns. He would put a bullet right between your eyes if he decided he didn’t like the way you look or the way you walk or the way you talk.”
She ignored the important part of his statement and focused instead on something he hadn’t said. “What is Reid’s weapon of choice?”
He looked at her blankly. “Reid’s...” He’d never given it much thought before. Everyone on the street knew the preferences of every punk—it was almost like a signature with which they claimed credit for their deeds—but he’d never heard anything about Reid. The kid had never admitted to any assault, had never been accused of actually physically hurting anyone. “I don’t know.”
Her smile was smugly scornful. “And you say he’s exactly like the others. I don’t think so.” Bending, she set Jethro on the ground, then started walking. She was halfway to the corner when he caught up with her.
“Let’s get some lunch,” he suggested.
“Your place or mine?”
“Neither. Someplace away from Serenity.”
“Let’s get a Lucky Dog and a Snoball and sit by the river.”
“A hot dog and shaved ice? You’re a cheap date.”
“Yeah, but I’m worth every penny. Besides, you’ll have to buy Jethro a hot dog, too, ’cause I don’t plan on sharing mine.”
They strolled down Serenity to the end, the only people out in the middle of a hot August day. Once they turned toward the more respectable part of the Quarter, though, they came across other signs of life—kids splashing in plastic wading pools, dogs behind fences barking at Jethro as he trotted past, people sitting on porches. Then houses gave way to businesses and locals gave way to tourists.
They bought hot dogs and sodas near Jax Brewery and crossed a parking lot and the trolley track to reach the levee. They found a bench in the shade and ate their lunch, then Karen broke off bits of the third hot dog to feed to the mutt. Once he’d had his fill of food and sniffing all the new scents, he curled up under the bench and went to sleep.
“That’s the laziest dog I’ve ever seen.”
“He’s just a puppy, and he just walked miles,” she said in his defense. “Besides, he has to regain the strength he lost when he wasn’t eating regularly.”
“Is that why you chose such a big house? So you’d have plenty of rooms to fill with strays?”
She gazed out at the river traffic. “Alicia says Reid was a stray.”
Jamey didn’t say anything. It was understandable that someone who wanted children as much as she did couldn’t comprehend someone who had a child giving him up so easily, and all the talk in the world wouldn’t make it any clearer for her. Hell, he had trouble with it himself. His only excuse was that he’d been a selfish bastard. The knowledge was little comfort to himself and none at all to Reid, but it was all Jamey could offer.
“Actually,” she went on, “I chose such a big house because it fit my budget. All that room will come in handy, though. Once we get to work, we’ll be able to use every bit of space.”
“If you actually get this place going, how do you plan to pay your staff?”
“They’ll be donating their services to start. Once we’ve proved that we’re there to stay, there are grants and corporate donations for the asking.”
He knew getting money wasn’t that simple, and knew that she knew it, too. “You know that many do-gooders?”
She gave him a chastising look for both his choice of words and his sardonic tone. “I know enough. People are basically good. They want to help. They just don’t know how.”
“You can help best by getting your stuff out of that house and setting it on fire. With any luck, the whole block will burn down.”
“Jolie made a similar suggestion,” she said drily, “but last I heard, arson was still a crime.”
“Yeah, but burning the trash isn’t, and that’s what you would really be doing.”
She gave him another of those chastening looks. “Let’s make a deal for the rest of the day: you don’t bother me about leaving, and I won’t say anything else about Reid. Okay?”
Jamey directed his gaze to the ferry crossing the river from Canal Street to Algiers. “The ferry used to be free to pedestrians—may still be, I don’t know. When we were kids, we used to ride it back and forth over and over—Jolie, Nicky and me. It wasn’t exciting, but it was a nice change from Serenity, and it was the closest we ever got to the water other than sitting on the bank down there—” he nodded toward the warehouses closer to his little corner of the Quarter “—and throwing rocks at the rats.”
“I’ve sat right here and thrown rocks at the rats,” Karen said with a laugh. “Evan and I used to come to the Quarter every weekend that he wasn’t working. We’d have beignets at the Café du Monde, walk around the square and down Bourbon Street, wander through the shops, then wind up over here with a muffaletta from Central Grocery. We loved this place. It was so different from Landry.”
It was different from the very city that surrounded it, Jamey acknowledged as the ferry docked. It was unique in all of America—at least, on the surface. Historic, exotic, romantic. Also poor, crime-ridden and depressed. But the tourists—and even though she’d lived in the city, that was what Karen had been on those weekend visits—rarely saw those parts. Tourists who wandered into those parts generally got the scare of their lives before they found their way out again. More than a few over the years hadn’t gotten out again.
“What is Landry like?” He already had a vision of the town that could produce a bright-eyed optimist like her: Norman Rockwell, Southern style. Mayberry moved down from North Carolina. All-America, Small-town USA. Her reply confirmed it.
“It’s a small town—about twelve thousand people. Not very many people there are rich, but not many are poor, either. It’s a pretty place, on the older side but well maintained. There’s not much crime, all the bars are outside the town limits, the kids do well in school and almost everyone goes to church.
It’s safe to be out alone at night, and some people still don’t lock their doors when they go out.”
“And all the politicians are honest, there’s no racial tension, and the sun shines every day.”
She laughed. “I know. I sound like a Pollyanna, but it’s true. Landry is the sweetest, nicest little place to settle and raise a family. They’ve managed to hold on to the best of the ‘good old days’ while incorporating the best of the nineties. It’s a lovely place.”
So why did you leave it for Serenity? That was the obvious next question, but he didn’t ask it. He suspected one small part of her answer—to settle and raise a family—played a role in her decision. “So nothing bad ever happens in Landry.”
He wasn’t prepared for the turn her expression took, into sorrow. “Oh, bad things happen, and because they happen so rarely, they seem even worse. People in Landry aren’t accustomed to things like rape, assault and murder—the town’s had only one murder in seven years—so when they happen, it’s so shocking, so far outside their experience, so out of place.”
Bad things just didn’t happen in All-America, Small-town USA. How fortunate for them. Murders were so commonplace in New Orleans that people hardly noticed anymore. There had been a time in Jamey’s memory when voices raised in anger followed by gunshots would have sent half the residents of Serenity scrambling for a phone to call the police. Now, if they noticed at all, they did nothing. They didn’t want to get involved. They were afraid. They just didn’t care anymore. Even he felt little or nothing when news of another death filtered its way into the bar. If the victim was remotely innocent, there might be a moment’s regret that another soul had lost his chance to escape Serenity. If the victim was scum like the Morgans, there would be a moment’s relief that there was one less bastard to fear on the street. Then it was back to life as usual.
He had become almost as unfeeling as the people he despised, he realized. Maybe it had been necessary for his own survival. Maybe the only way to cope with so many people leaving his life—either for a better life, like Jolie; for prison, like Nicky; or for a cheap casket in an aboveground grave like countless others—was to stop being touched by it. To stop caring on any but the most surface levels.
Convincing Jamey Page 9