When You Were Older (retail)
Page 24
‘And Ben doesn’t?’
‘No. Ben doesn’t.’
And with that pronouncement, he crossed the shop, fetched the wrench, and stuck his head back under the hood of the BMW. As if ignoring me would solve everything. But, damn … that’s a big everything.
‘You have no right to say that. Just because it didn’t look like a life you’d want. Ben had a job. He loved that job. He saw just about everybody in town, every day. He liked everybody and everybody liked him. And he loves his home. You know, the one he’s lived in since he was six years old. And now he’ll probably never get to see it again. You have any idea how much he hates being away from home? He’s more miserable in that state hospital than you’d be in prison.’
‘I doubt that,’ Chris muttered.
‘Plus you’d get out after a year or two.’
He drew his head back out from under the hood. Looked right into my eyes. Pointed at a spot at the bridge of my nose with the wrench. I tried not to go cross-eyed.
‘Fuck you, Rusty. I’m not doing that to myself. I’m not doing that to my family. I’m not doing that to my girlfriend. I’m not doing it to Mark, either. You think I want to be responsible for Mark doing even more time?’
Bingo. Oh, snap.
‘Nice one,’ I said. ‘Two in one day.’
He rolled his eyes and ducked under the hood again.
‘So, basically, what you just slipped and told me is that if you were to tell the actual story of what happened that night, Mark would be charged with additional crimes. Like, and this is just a wild guess here, but … maybe the ones that are sitting on Ben right now?’
I remember thinking Chris must be a fundamentally stupid man. A smart one would have taken an oath of silence in my presence long ago.
For several minutes – or at least it seemed like several minutes – he just worked at loosening the bolts around the BMW’s fan. He didn’t look at me or speak. Then he stopped, and held very still. He continued to stare at the engine.
‘You can ride me like this till the fucking cows come home, man. I’m not doing it. Why are you even fighting this? I don’t get you at all. Great, you’re a fucking hero because you didn’t come right home and stick your brother in a mental institution first thing. But there must’ve been part of you that wanted to. Because I spent less than a day with that guy, and I nearly lost my mind. So now he’s away, and it’s not your fault. You can always say you did your best for him. Nobody can blame you after all you did. You’re better off. You can have your life back, man. Maybe the Muslim girl’ll even come back. You know. If she’s sure Ben’s locked up for ever. Because she sure as hell won’t want to spend her life with the guy who set her business on fire. Right under her hands and knees. You could have your life again. I don’t get why things aren’t OK just the way they are.’
I winced at the mention of her, but only inwardly. It was something I wasn’t prepared to let anybody see. I’d built strong armor around the fact that I still hadn’t heard from her. I dealt with it when I was alone, to the extent I dealt with it at all. In the shower. On the drive out to the state hospital. In bed at night, waiting for the sleep that first wouldn’t come, then wouldn’t stay.
I did not deal with it in the presence of Chris Kerricker.
He finished. And waited. He still didn’t move. He still didn’t stop staring at the engine. As though the engine were about to argue with him. Not me.
‘All good points,’ I said.
I watched him closely. He shifted his head as though he might look at me. But he didn’t. I guess he thought better of it. He didn’t speak.
‘There’s not one thing you just said that I haven’t thought of myself. And I’m not going to say you’re flat-out wrong about any of it. There’s just one problem with the whole damn package.’
I waited for input. I’m not sure why.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Tell me the problem. You will, anyway.’
‘I don’t think Ben did anything wrong.’
I waited a while longer, in case there was more he wanted to say. Apparently not. He finished unbolting the fan, and unhooked it from the three or four belts that circled it.
‘Well, then,’ I said. ‘See you tomorrow.’
He dropped the fan. Which I’m guessing was an expensive mistake.
‘Oh, bloody fucking hell!’ he bellowed. ‘When are you gonna leave me alone, man?’
‘When you tell me what happened that night.’
But nothing moved for a long time. So I decided to call it a day.
‘Well. Till tomorrow, then.’
I glanced over my shoulder to see Chris flipping me his middle finger as I walked away.
I arrived at the state hospital at twenty after eleven. Just like I did every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. With a ten-minute cushion to sign in before visiting hours. Maybe I had learned promptness from Ben.
I stood in front of the window, listening to the woman behind the desk snap her chewing gum. I hate it when people snap their gum. It puts me on edge.
Or maybe I’d been on edge lately anyway.
‘Dr Bosco wants to talk to you today,’ she said.
‘Before or after I see Ben?’
‘Before. Lemme call her.’
She had hot-pink fingernails so long that she had to dial the phone with the eraser end of a pencil. Looking back, that’s another connection I make now that I couldn’t have made at the time. Because the other half of that connection hadn’t surfaced yet.
‘Dr Bosco?’ I heard her say. ‘Yeah. He’s here. OK.’
She hung up. Dialed again in the same weird manner.
‘John? You want to come up front? Get Ben Ammiano’s brother and see him back to Bosco’s office? OK. Thanks.’
She hung up again.
‘Have a seat,’ she said, pointing with the dialing pencil. As if I wouldn’t know from experience where a seat could be found.
I didn’t sit. I was too off-balance to sit. I didn’t like the dangling sword of knowing the doctor wanted to talk to me.
The big door buzzed, then popped open. John nodded at me. Big John, they called him. The go-to psych tech when a patient gets out of hand.
We walked side by side down the bright hallway. I tried to remind myself I was not going to the gallows. Probably. He opened the door to Dr Bosco’s office and motioned me in, then closed the door behind me.
Dr Bosco was on the phone. She held up one finger, then pointed it toward a chair.
I forced myself.
She wore her unusually long gray hair in an intricate braid that morning. She wore red. A bright-red wool blazer.
‘I’m going to have to get back to you,’ she said into the phone. ‘I’ve got somebody here.’
She hung up the phone and leveled me with her friendly – yet somehow intimidating – gaze.
‘Problem?’ I asked. Then I attempted to swallow, with mixed success.
‘We have a problem every visiting day, Russell. We’ve just gotten him settled down. And then he sees you. And then he falls apart again. And he wants to go home. And it takes him a long time to settle again. Just about as long as it takes for the next visiting day to come around. It’s gotten to be a bad pattern. I’m going to make a suggestion. And I have no idea how it’s going to strike you.’
She allowed a pause.
‘You’re not going to suggest I don’t visit.’
More silence.
She was. She was suggesting that.
I looked her right in the eye. I didn’t do that often. With anybody. Not lately.
I asked, ‘Is this one of those things like loading kids up with Ritalin because it makes it easier for the teachers to deal with them?’
I expected her to avert her gaze. She didn’t.
‘Russell, if it was, I wouldn’t be suggesting it. It’s just starting to seem cruel. For whatever reason, Ben is incapable of remembering that you haven’t come to get him and take him home. Whether this is courtesy of his brain damage
, or a function of how much he doesn’t want to know the truth, I couldn’t tell you. I just know that every time you walk out of here without him it breaks his heart. He cries for the rest of the day. He says, “My buddy left without me.” A hundred times. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.’
‘Please. Don’t tell me that.’
‘How can I not tell you, Russell? It’s the damn truth.’
‘I’m getting tired of the damn truth.’
‘I imagine you are, my friend.’
A little ripple of electricity ran through me when she called me ‘my friend’. It was as though she were channeling Nazir.
‘He’ll think I forgot him.’
Then we both took a long breath. A moment to poke our heads up above the sludge of the damn truth.
‘Maybe we could just try it for a couple of months,’ she said. ‘See if we like the effect on his mood better than what we’ve got now.’
‘All right. Here’s some damn truth for you, too, doctor. I’m not in any position for experiments. I have to choose. I have to make a move. Make up my damn mind. I’ve got nothing keeping me in Kansas except Ben. I still pay rent on my apartment in New York. My stuff is still there. My mail is still dropping there. My utilities are probably about to be turned off. Any chance I have at continuing my career path is there. If I’m not going to see Ben, I need to make a full break. I’m not just going to sit here in Nowhere-ville for a couple of months while we wait and see.’
Bosco rocked back in her big leather chair until she hit the back of it with a little cushiony ‘whump’.
‘Oh, Russell. I had no idea. Russell, go get your life back. I had no idea you were staying here for Ben, and Ben only. And if it’s doing him more harm than good … Just go. Let us take care of Ben. If it breaks his heart because he thinks you’ve forgotten him, you can fly out once or twice a year and tell him you haven’t. You need a life. You need time to process everything that’s happened to you. Don’t you ever feel tired? Like you’re pushing a river?’
‘Always.’
‘So maybe stop pushing?’
‘Don’t hit me with all the psychological crap,’ I said. But in a tone that made it clear I didn’t mean it as a genuine complaint.
‘I have to,’ she said. ‘I’m a crappy psychologist.’
‘No, I think you’re a decent one.’
‘If I was, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be in private practice. Earning a mint. Get yourself someplace cheery for the holidays, young man.’
‘Sure. Good idea. I’ll go back to my apartment in Jersey City, overlooking lower Manhattan. I can spend the holidays looking at the empty space where my office used to be. Maybe the rubble is still smoking. That would be cheery.’
‘Might be more fun than this.’
I rose to my feet. A little unsteady.
‘You going in to see Ben now?’ As though she fully expected me to ignore her warnings.
‘No. I’m going home.’
As I was walking out of her office, it struck me as ironic. Maybe even funny. I finally broke the stranglehold of Nowhere-ville. After the better part of three months, I finally got it to let me go. Right at the same moment I accidentally let down and called it home.
I checked my cell phone when I got back to the car. Just like I always did. Nobody had called.
I drove home, or back to my mother’s house, or whatever you want to call it, and checked the message machine there, too. Like I always did.
Nothing.
I sat for while with my head in my hands. I’m not sure how long.
Then I pulled out the comically thin local phone book and looked up that real-estate agent who’d been friends with my mom for ever. Cheryl Baker-Keene.
I dialed her cell phone. Told her who I was. Told her it was time to unload my mother’s house.
She said she understood completely. She said she’d be over in less than an hour.
‘I have no idea how long it’ll take me to go through all my mom’s stuff,’ I told Cheryl.
I was re-experiencing how perky she always looked. And, in reality, was. It was a nearly oppressive amount of perk.
‘May I make a suggestion?’
‘Please.’
‘There are services that’ll do it for you. For a fee, of course. There’s one I recommend all the time. Two local sisters. They haul away everything that isn’t worth selling and sell everything that is. Then they clean the house all up for sale. They’re fast. And they send you whatever money’s left over after their fee.’
‘Sold. I didn’t know there were people who do that.’
‘Lots of people lose their parents, Rusty. And then they have to deal with the estate. I see it all the time. It’s too overwhelming. Partly because their parents accumulated a lifetime’s worth of stuff. Partly because it’s a shared history. Too much emotion.’
‘So let me see if I have this straight. I could basically pack a few things and walk out of here. Almost anytime. And you would handle the rest.’
‘That’s my job. What you would have to do is make sure you’re taking anything you might possibly want. Because anything you don’t take will be disposed of. One way or the other.’
I looked around. What did I want? I could think of a couple of wants, but they would not be filled by anything under this roof.
‘Just photos, I guess. The photos on the mantel. And the big album.’
‘Financial records.’
‘Right. I’m glad you said that. I have to tie up a lot of loose ends of Mom’s business. I’ve been letting things slide.’
‘That’s how I earn my percentage. May I make another suggestion?’
‘OK.’
‘I know you’re probably not feeling very sentimental right now. But check the attic. The attic is always where the memories live. Holiday decorations that’re a family tradition by now, but you won’t think of them if it’s off-season. The ashtray you made for your mom at summer camp.’
I almost said, So that’s where you find an ashtray around here. I didn’t.
‘I have to ask you a weird favor,’ I said.
‘I’ve probably heard weirder.’
‘I keep thinking …’ Then I stopped. And seriously questioned if I could go on. But I had to. I had no choice. ‘I keep thinking maybe my friend Anat lost my phone number. Maybe it was in the bakery and got burned up. Maybe she can’t get it from information because she doesn’t know my cell phone is listed in Jersey City, not New York. But she knows where this house is …’
I waited. Silence. I looked up, hoping Cheryl Baker-Keene wouldn’t have heard about me and Anat, that her eyes wouldn’t be full of pathetic sympathy. I lost. They were.
‘Did you ever try to call her? Or go out to their house?’
‘The only phone number I ever had was the bakery phone. It took me two weeks to find out where they lived – it wasn’t listed – and by the time I got out there, they’d packed up and gone. I have no idea where they went. Never mind. It’s stupid.’ I knew Anat probably hadn’t even tried to call.
I dropped my head into my hands. Thinking, I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry. And crying. Just a little bit.
Cheryl came close and sat on the couch beside me. I willed her not to touch me. She put her hand on my arm.
‘What did you think I could do to help?’
‘I was thinking maybe I could write a note. In case she came by the house. Later. After it’s sold. Do you think whoever buys the house would give her a note if they had one?’
‘I’d be willing to ask.’
I kept my head in my hands. It was the closest thing to a dark cave I could find.
‘It’s stupid. I know it is. But I feel like otherwise I’ll always wonder. You know. If her father’s keeping her from getting in touch with me. Or if she lost my number. Or …’
Needless to say, I was headed for my most likely option. That Anat didn’t want to get in touch with me. I decided to stall. I decided not to get there. Ever.
She might have waited for a minute or two. I’m not sure why. Maybe to see if I would ever unbury my head.
Finally I heard the door click closed behind her.
Here’s what I found in the attic, other than old furniture: three cardboard cartons. They were each the same size. All former paper-towel cartons from the supermarket. Probably from Gerson’s. Carefully labeled. Carefully taped.
I was unprepared for this level of sparse organization. Why was the house so cluttered compared to this? Somehow my mother had exerted more control over her ancient memories than over her everyday life. Maybe there was some logic to that. I couldn’t decide.
One box said CHRISTMAS. One said RUSTY. One said BEN.
I opened the Christmas box. Also very organized. On the bottom she’d packed the strings of lights for the tree, thoughtfully wound into a circle and secured with twist ties. No tangles. On top she’d packed the ornaments, each carefully wrapped in a full sheet of newspaper.
In the middle, the Christmas village. Fresh unused cotton batting, still in plastic. The houses. The horse-drawn sled. The mirror lake. The ice-skating skunk. The family of deer, perpetually bent to drink.
I taped it back up and brought it downstairs.
I remembered Dr Bosco telling me to get myself someplace cheery for the holidays. I’d pack this in the car with a few boxes of finance stuff, and drive it back to New Jersey. And I’d cheery up the apartment with the Christmas village. I didn’t have a mantel. But maybe I could rig a table-top. It was worth a try.
I opened my box. But I didn’t rummage around in there long. It was mostly what I would’ve expected. Report cards full of As. Handmade Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day cards. Pictures I’d drawn in kindergarten. I opened Ben’s. The same. Nothing of any intrinsic value. Stuff only a mother could love.
I taped up my box again and carted it down to the car.
Then, as an afterthought, I went back up for Ben’s carton, and loaded that into the car as well.