“Depends on how bad it is,” Jason said, scrubbing the headlights. “Why are bugs so hard to get off? They’re so little.”
“Let me try,” Harvey said.
When the body and all four wheels were covered in a soapy film, Jason lifted Harvey up to sponge the roof.
“Why don’t we all die at the same time?” Harvey wanted to know. “How come we die apart, usually?”
“You’re asking the wrong guy.”
“Why aren’t you the right guy?”
“It’s just an expression. It means I don’t know.”
By the time they had finished wiping all over, the soap had dried in the pattern of their streaks. Jason lit a cigarette.
“It’s still dirty,” Harvey said. “After all our work, we’ve made it dirtier.”
Jason laughed and it made him cough.
“Looks like we just spread the dirt around,” Harvey went on, throwing her sponge into the bucket. Then she sat in the driveway with her legs crossed and her bottom lip pushed out.
When Jason went to get the hose, Harvey followed. “Are you going to get lung cancer, Jason?”
“Not planning on it.”
“Wanda said Mom’s great-aunt got it from smoking, and that a person should never try it because it’s addicting.”
Harvey watched Jason’s hands move quickly on the faucet. Water rushed through the rubber pipe. They could hear it rushing through the pipe to make a spray. When they got back to the car, Jason told Harvey to get the sponge. But she turned around and went into the house.
Jason waited a few minutes for her to come out, then continued on by himself. The water from the hose made his hands cold, but he was careful not to drop the sponge on the driveway, where little stones could stick to it, then scratch the paintwork. This was something he would have explained to Harvey. But she had gone into the house and he didn’t know why.
On the back of the car were two fading bumper stickers. One said:
JESUS LOVES YOU!
BUT EVERYONE ELSE THINKS YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE
The other was a Nirvana sticker that showed the medical cross section of a pregnant woman’s stomach.
When it was almost done, Jason gave the wheels another going-over. One of his tires was almost bald, and the rubber sidewall was cracking. Looking at the worn-out treads made Jason tired, so he sat with his back against the wheel and closed his eyes. Music was still playing from inside the car. He wondered if it might be draining too much of the battery, but he couldn’t get up. It was a slow song—the sort that comes on just before a bar closes, and people look around for someone to fight or go home with.
When he opened his eyes again, he noticed gutters along the edge of his house that were sagging with dirt and stagnant water. One section had already separated and was almost completely off.
Jason bought the house after he got out of prison, using money his mother had left when she died. His brother had deposited Jason’s share into a bank account and mailed a statement to the prison.
The property was cheap, because you could hear the freeway, and the neighborhood was considered a high-crime area—though more families were moving in, and you hardly saw cops anymore. The house had been empty for a long time, and was probably used as a place to take drugs. People had almost certainly died in it.
The carpet was rotten when Jason moved in, so he ripped it up and for a while just lived with the concrete slab. He found two hundred dollars stashed in a lamp, and shells from a handgun in the sink trap. He put in new pipes and drywall and spent the last of his inheritance getting central heat and air. Everything else, he fixed over time with the money saved from not drinking.
Jason hadn’t noticed how bad the gutters looked until now—or that the siding was coming off on the far corner of the house. In another place, it was actually bent back, exposing the wood frame and insulation.
When a tear in the screen door caught Jason’s eye, he noticed a face looking out through the mesh. It was a small face. And from a distance it could have belonged to a girl or a boy. When he raised his arm to wave, the face disappeared. Jason sat there wondering if it had been there to begin with—and if it wasn’t Harvey’s face, then whose? Ghosts, he realized, are not the people who’ve died but the people who won’t.
His shirt was wet where he sat against the wheel. He felt for his cigarettes, but they weren’t in his pocket.
He imagined driving Harvey to school in the morning. Her first day of second grade. She had probably wanted to wash the car so it would look nice beside all the other cars. He pictured them lined up in the school parking lot. Then, with an effort, Jason got up and stepped over to the trunk. He bent down and peeled off the JESUS LOVES YOU sticker. Then he sat on the rear bumper, feeling the car dip with his weight.
He tried to imagine what Harvey’s classroom would look like, but saw only the classrooms from when he was a child, and heard the sound of a bell, and shoes tapping through the corridors. It had been his job to carry crates of milk from the nurse’s office to each grade, because he was disruptive in class, and had to be given a physical task that would keep him busy.
His brother, Steve, was in a classroom with the youngest kids. They used to paint with their feet. Clap along to songs. Raise their hands and then forget what they wanted to say. Jason used to stand on a milk crate and watch through a window in the door.
Giving the milk out meant slipping Steve an extra carton or an extra straw. The first time Steve got embarrassed and tried to give it back, but Jason told him to shut up and hide it. If anyone suspected anything, Jason’s plan was to say that one was leaking and he’d tossed it. He even kept an empty carton hidden in his bag in case anyone wanted proof. The only thing that could give him away was the date stamped on the top—it would have to match the date on the one that had gone missing.
But no one ever said anything about stolen milk, and Jason figured out there were extras because of kids who were sick. There were so many extras during flu season that Jason started bringing them home, so his mother would always have something for her coffee and Steve didn’t have to run water from the faucet on his Lucky Charms.
Jason had trouble at school because he had to stay awake at night for the same reason he couldn’t run away. And he wanted to run away, to leave everyone and everything behind—the way you escape from a nightmare.
Since Harvey had moved in, there were times like that: times when he felt he couldn’t go on, when he looked at the telephone, or started to dial Wanda’s number, or imagined leaving the house and never coming back.
Once he sat in the garage and told himself that after completing the motorcycle, he would ride out into the night with only the clothes on his back.
It was when little problems mounted up that Jason felt the worst. The toilet isn’t flushing. The AC is broken. Harvey won’t stop coughing. No more diapers.
But in the end Jason realized that it was also the little things, like pizza night, playing drums, and watching cartoons, that made life worth living.
As he sat there, weighing out the moments of their first summer together, his eyes settled on the neighbors’ mailbox, mottled where he’d struck it with an empty beer bottle several years ago. Someone had pushed out the dent with a hammer, but you could still see the damage.
The husband worked on a construction site and came home with dust on his pants. The mother cleaned houses. Jason knew because she had a sticker on the side of her minivan.
HEAVENLY SHINE CLEANING SERVICES
(516) XXX-XXXX
24/7
SE HABLA ESPAÑOL
On her days off, the woman snipped things in the garden wearing her husband’s old coat. Sometimes she sat on the front porch in bare feet and talked on the phone in Spanish.
They had two children who, on warm days, ran around the garden in pajamas, jumping over a plastic house that was too small for them.
Sometimes the son waited on the porch for his father to pull up, then carried his hard hat or put it on himself.
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The neighbors had flowers lining the driveway and rosebushes at the side where the sun fell heaviest. There were hanging baskets too, which Jason had seen getting watered by the children on footstools with glass jars.
Twice a year, a blue or pink balloon was tied to the ruined mailbox. Minivans with chrome wheels pulled up one by one. Soon the backyard was full of people. Salsa music. A piñata. A spread of things to eat. Children running with their shoes off. Older girls in bright dresses standing with their mothers. Men in shorts and sandals, holding bottles of beer, laughing occasionally about work, and moving their feet to the music.
Sometimes the parties went on until dark. Then the music was turned off. Voices filled the driveway as sleeping children were buckled into seats.
Jason used to watch from the spare room. Used to sit there watching until everyone disappeared and there was only darkness.
XXVII
HE FINISHED DRYING the car with old T-shirts, then dragged the hose over the dead yellow grass of his yard. When he got inside, Harvey had all her Polly Pocket dolls on the floor. The dolls were at school, Harvey said. It was their first day, and they were eating raisins in the cafeteria and braiding each other’s hair. Harvey asked Jason if he could braid hair—asked if he knew about the rabbits jumping.
“Want to get McDonald’s for dinner?” he said.
Harvey was trying to force a rubber shoe on a doll foot. “What about ribs and barbecue pizza?”
“Washing the car wiped me out. How about Taco Bell? You’re half Spanish, after all.”
Jason washed his hands and looked at the ribs defrosting in the sink. Then he sat in front of the TV and noticed all the oil on his pants.
“Holy Christ!” he cried.
Harvey looked up from her dolls.
“There’s shit on my pants!”
“It’s on your face too,” Harvey said. “But I was afraid to tell you.”
After a long shower, Jason sat on the bed drying his hair with a towel, listening to Harvey play with the dolls in the living room. She was talking to them and they were talking to each other. He wondered if she knew it was all pretend, or if part of her believed what she was making up.
Tomorrow would be her first day of school. She had picked out what she was going to wear three weeks ago. Her T-shirt still had the tag on. Jason wondered if she’d outgrown it already.
After loading his soiled pants and shirt into the washer, Jason opened the refrigerator and stood there looking in. Harvey put her dolls down. “Thought you were too tired to cook?”
“I am,” he said, spooning macaroni and cheese from a plastic container.
Harvey got to her feet. “We’re having leftovers for our celebration dinner?”
“We’ll celebrate tomorrow,” he said. “Ribs take a while to bake, anyway.”
Harvey stood watching him sprinkle ground beef on the macaroni. Then he cut a jalapeño pepper for himself. “Find something good on TV while I heat this up,” he said.
“I thought we were getting McDonald’s or Taco Bell because I’m half Spanish?”
Jason stopped what he was doing and looked at the plates. “Well, I’ve made this now. Just go put the TV on. We’ll get McDonald’s later this week.”
He poured Harvey a glass of milk and opened a can of Mountain Dew for himself. When they were sitting, Harvey scarfed her food down and asked if there was any more.
Jason looked at her. “Thought you weren’t hungry?” he said, then scraped the rest of his food onto her plate.
“How come you get soda?” she said.
“Because I don’t like milk.”
Harvey looked at her glass. “Me neither.”
Then they didn’t talk because there was a show about how camels survive in the desert.
“That’s like our yard,” Harvey said, pointing to the endless yellow plain on the screen. “Can we get a camel?”
When they had finished eating, Jason went out for a cigarette, then came back in and told Harvey to get her shoes from the cupboard.
“Where are we going?”
“Out.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost five.”
“But I have school tomorrow. It’s my first day.”
“Then hurry up.”
When they were in the car, Jason turned around to make sure she was buckled. They drove down Hands Creek Boulevard. It was warm, and they passed a few people on motorcycles.
“That’ll be you someday,” Harvey said. “After your bike is builded.”
When they pulled into a strip mall, Harvey recognized where they were. “Why are we going to Home Depot? Did you get the job?”
“No, I did not.”
“Then why are we here?”
After passing through the automatic doors, Jason took Harvey’s hand and they followed signs to the garden center.
“What are we doing here?”
“Getting stuff we need,” Jason said. “You’ll see.”
The garden department extended into an area with a clear plastic roof. There were flocks of small trees, bags of mulch, water fountains on pallets, and trays of flowers on trolleys.
Jason stopped a man in an orange apron and asked which flowers were the best for a new garden. His name, Bernie, was written in Magic Marker on his apron.
Bernie led them to a trolley of plants he said were a mix of perennials and annuals. The man explained that perennials would come back to life every year, while the bloom of an annual lasted only the summer, as the plant itself would not survive the first frost.
Harvey thought perennials sounded better.
“If they die before the end of summer,” Bernie said, “just bring them back.”
They were also going to need topsoil and a bag of mulch, which Bernie said was essential for protecting new plants.
When they got home, Jason and Harvey walked around the house to find the sunniest spot. They decided the best place was right in front.
“And if we put them here,” Harvey said, “anyone who comes to visit will say, ‘Oh, look, what pretty flowers.’”
Once they had marked the spot for each plant with handfuls of yellow grass, Harvey asked how they were going to dig, because the earth was hard and dry.
Jason had a look in the garage, but most of his tools were useless as gardening implements. In the end, he took a carving knife from the kitchen drawer and found that repeated striking was quite effective. As he was chopping up the ground, the neighbors went past in their minivan. Harvey waved.
Jason looked up from his stabbing. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Just waving.”
“Well, quit it. We don’t talk to them.”
Once the ground was churned up, Harvey said they should add water to make it soft. Jason filled a bucket, then lit a cigarette and watched Harvey pour.
When the earth was grainy and they could move their hands around in it, Harvey squeezed the soil between her fingers. “I used to work in the garden with my mom,” she said. “In winter we made piles of leaves and I jumped in them.”
“That’s nice.”
“Can I do that with you?”
They dug holes for the flowers with dessert spoons, then laid each plant in the ground root-first. Once everything was done and the mulch was spread, they sat on the front step.
Jason said it didn’t look much different. That they should have gotten more flowers.
“I think they’re cute,” Harvey said. “I like them.”
After putting her pajamas on, Harvey opened the front door to say good night to the flowers. Then, in bed, she imagined them growing into bright trees with branches she could pull herself into and swing from. Jason could watch and tell her what a good climber she was.
THE NEXT MORNING Jason got up early to make French toast as a surprise for Harvey’s first day. As he was splitting the frozen segments with a knife, he heard a loud bang. Harvey had fallen off the bed and cut her lip on the side of an open drawer.
He couldn’t remember where Wanda had put the first-aid kit, so he went back to the kitchen and grabbed a frozen piece of French toast which he told Harvey to press on the swollen part. Then he rummaged around in the garage and found a Band-Aid, but the sticky part was old, so he used small patches of duct tape to hold it on.
Her lip was soon very swollen. When Harvey saw herself in the mirror, she cried and said she couldn’t go to school because everyone would make fun of her.
“I told you not to jump on the bed, Harvey!” Jason shouted. “I told you a hundred times not to do that.”
Her face darkened over the half-cooked French toast on her plate.
“Eat,” Jason commanded. “Or I’m really gonna lose it.”
“I can’t,” she sobbed, touching the fat part of her lip. “I’m not hungry.”
Jason stood there and made her eat half a piece before she could leave the table and go cry in her room.
SCHOOL WAS TEN minutes away.
Harvey looked out the window as they passed all the places that were now familiar.
Jason stared at her in his rearview mirror. The old Band-Aid was leaking blood and Harvey was licking it.
When they were a block or so from school, Harvey threw up. Jason stopped the car and turned to see her panting as though out of breath. Her arms and legs were covered.
“Shit shit shit!” he screamed. When he punched the steering wheel, Harvey threw up again. It was now on the back of his seat and pooling on the floor.
Someone behind in an SUV laid on the horn. Jason jumped out of the car with his fists raised. “Why don’t you go fuck yourself!” Spittle sprayed out with the words. He expected it to be some meathead with blow-up muscles and a crew cut, ready to jump out and fight with him—but it was a small, shocked woman with children in the backseat.
Jason got back in the car and pulled away, turning onto the first side road he could find. Then he got out again and stood in the empty street. His hands were shaking and he needed a cigarette. He swung open the back door and undid Harvey’s seat belt, which was coated with pale yellow chunks. The seat, her clothes, and her shoes were covered with sick, and the acrid smell filled his nose and mouth.
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