My voice is unsteady. I still can’t quite believe I’m doing this.
“I wanted you to see where I’m from,” I tell her.
She looks out the window. I can hear sirens from somewhere across the river, and the sound of traffic, and that’s how I know it.
I’m home.
Thirty-One
WE WALK FOR FIVE BLOCKS WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING.
It’s late afternoon, edging toward dusk and already getting dark on Parker Avenue, where the twilight seems to settle across the river like a dirty blanket. Immediately I feel all my old instincts coming back, a kind of heightened predator/prey awareness that creeps its way up my spine and tightens the skin across my scalp. I really don’t want to be here. From this point forward, I know every crack in the sidewalk, every broken parking meter and ripped-out pay phone. Walking along, I keep my hands in my pockets because they’re shaking a little and I don’t want Gatsby to see. I can hear a baby crying from one of the buildings up the street. We stop in front of a three-story walkup with a fire escape hanging crookedly off the side.
“This is where I used to live,” I tell Gatsby. “After my mom died. My mom and dad used to run the wedding-planner scam from an apartment across the river, but the cops shut us down.”
Gatsby looks at me. “What’s a wedding-planner scam?”
“Pretty much what it sounds like. You pick up the Sunday paper and read the engagement announcements and go around visiting couples, offering to do the wedding, the pictures, the flowers, the whole thing. They write you a check for a deposit, and you skip out with it.”
“You actually did that to people?” Gatsby asks. “Took their savings away?”
“For a while, yeah.” I hear sirens again, this time coming closer, and have to remind myself they’re not for me—I don’t have to look back or walk faster. “See that church?” I point past a parking lot enshrouded with a chainlink fence and a big sign reading no loitering. “Dad and I went there right after my mom died.”
“You went to church?”
“Not exactly,” I say. “Dad and I sold hymnals to the priest. Except there really weren’t any hymnals to sell.” I shrugged. “I was nine years old at the time. It was the first time I remember lying to somebody’s face.”
“And they just gave you the money?”
“That’s right.”
“And you took it.”
“You’d be surprised what people will believe when it comes from a kid.” I point to a bar up on the corner. “See that place? Last year, we hustled a man out of five thousand bucks. It was his retirement money, probably everything he had in savings. He thought he was buying a time-share in the Outer Banks. I never saw him again.”
“Will,” Gatsby says slowly, “I get what you’re doing, but I really don’t think I need to know this . . .”
“It’s not fun for me either,” I say. “But I need you to know who I am.”
We keep walking. After a while, we stop at an intersection, and Gatsby turns around, looking back at the old neighborhood. I can feel her trying to decide if this is just another angle that I’m playing, and I decide not to say anything. Down the block, the wind has begun to pick up, and it feels like it’s getting colder by the second. Somewhere behind a fence, a dog keeps barking and barking. It sounds angry, hungry, or both. I can smell the chemicals across the river, and more than anything that takes me back to where I least want to be.
“I don’t understand,” she says. “Why did you bring me here?”
There’s a rattle of metal off to the left. I feel a hot surge of adrenaline pulse through my arms. Somebody steps out of the alleyway in front of us—a tall, almost skeletally skinny guy in a hooded sweatshirt—and stares at me for a long second.
“You,” he says.
I look back at him. “Richie?”
“Billy.” The guy grins, then cackles happily, sticking out his hand for a fist-bump and a hug. “Good to see you, man! I didn’t know you were back! Yo, Lisa, look who it is.”
A woman in cornrows and a leather jacket comes around the corner, pushing a baby stroller, and gives me a shy smile. “Billy Humbert? What are you doing back here?” She glances at Richie. “It’s been forever.” Her eyes flash over to Gatsby while the baby in the stroller starts crying. “You brought a friend with you?”
“Rich, Lisa, this is—”
“G,” Gatsby interrupts, holding out her hand, which Richie shakes. “I’m . . . a friend from school.”
“Nice to meet you,” Lisa says, reaching down to pick up the baby and rock her on her shoulder. “Billy and us go way back, don’t we? Since he was growing up in the South Ward, and that was way back in the day.”
Gatsby looks at the baby. “Your daughter is beautiful.”
“Thanks,” Lisa says. “Her name’s Corrine. You wanna hold her?”
“I . . . uh—” That’s as far as Gatsby gets before Lisa thrusts the baby into her arms, still crying. Lisa looks at me while Gatsby tries rocking Corrine, bouncing her on her shoulder. “How you been, honey?”
“I’m all right,” I say, which is about as far from the truth as I can get. “Just came around to say hello, see how things were back in the neighborhood.”
“Going to see your old man?” Rich asks, and I can tell from the way he says it that there’s more to the story already. On Gatsby’s shoulder, the baby’s crying louder now, but Richie keeps talking, raising his voice to be heard over the wails. “Last time I saw him, he looked pretty rough. He still living in that place above the market?”
I shrug. “Haven’t seen him lately.”
“Rich and I were just heading over to St. Luke’s for some dinner,” Lisa says. “You want to join us? They start serving at five.”
Gatsby hands Corrine back to Lisa, and we make our way up the street, past shuttered storefronts and darkened windows, heading for the church in the distance. When we get to St. Luke’s, the line of people waiting on the sidewalk is already starting to move inside, and I can smell hot food and fresh coffee. Gatsby and I step in line, and she leans over to whisper in my ear.
“Will, isn’t this the church that you said . . .”
I nod. At this point I have no idea what I’m doing here but it’s too late to turn back now. Walking into the sanctuary, we each grab a styrofoam plate and join the long, slow shuffle of people, most of them men, most of them silent, heading for the long tables, where a mismatched group of college kids and suburban families are serving hot sausages, fresh fruit, coffee and bottled water, granola bars and yogurt. There are stacks of clean blankets, coats, and hats in boxes by the doors. It’s about as far from the dining hall at Connaughton as I can imagine, but the familiarity of it cuts deep, like the smell of the river or the sirens on State Street.
Sitting down with Rich and Lisa, Gatsby and I find ourselves looking across the open room to the back, where a bald priest whom I recognize from a long time ago is talking to a couple guys wearing shirts from the local food bank. Lisa starts feeding Corrine, who’s already got yogurt smeared across her face, while Rich looks over at Gatsby.
“So, what school you go to?”
Gatsby glances at me. “It’s, ah, not around here.”
“Billy?”
I turn around and see the priest standing behind me, and just like that, his name pops into my head.
“Father Tom.”
“You’re Billy Humbert, aren’t you? You and your dad used to live up on Congress Avenue.” It’s not really a question, because I already know he knows me and remembers the twenty-five hundred dollars that the parish handed over, eight years earlier, for the hymnals that never arrived. I stare at him. His craggy face is creased with deep wrinkles, but his blue eyes are clear and sharp. “How’s your old man doing, anyway?”
“I don’t—” I swallow hard. “I don’t really see him that much anymore,” I say. Father Tom just keeps staring. It occurs to me that, in a really uncomfortable way, everything I’ve done up until now has led me to this moment.
I look up at Father Tom.
“I just wanted to say”—I clear my throat—“I’m sorry. About what we did.”
Father Tom just regards me. We have stolen money from this man’s church, a lot of money, and there are plenty of things he could say at this moment—he’d be well within his rights to call the police and hold me here till they arrive—but in the end he just puts a hand on my shoulder. It’s a heavy hand, but the weight of it feels reassuring somehow.
“It’s good to see you again, Billy,” he says. “Don’t be a stranger.”
Then he turns and walks away.
“What was that about?” Gatsby asks as we make our way back up State Street. Rich and Lisa have said their goodbyes at the corner, turning left and vanishing into the night, leaving the two of us alone.
“I’m not sure,” I say.
“The priest just let you walk away. Even after what you did.”
I nod. And then it occurs to me that Father Tom let me go because he knew what I did, even though I’m not exactly sure what that means or how I’d explain it to Gatsby—or even to myself. It seems to me that the things that we most need to be forgiven for are the offenses that are inarguably all our fault, the crimes that we can’t possibly atone for. And I wonder if that’s what people mean when they use the word grace. I open my mouth to try to put this into words, but then I stop.
Instead I just ask: “Are you cold?”
“I’m okay.” Gatsby glances up into the darkness to the top of a building. “This is us,” she says.
“Yeah.”
We go inside and start up the stairs toward the roof.
As we fly home, Gatsby falls asleep beside me, her head resting on my shoulder as I stare out the window at the glassy black expanse of the Atlantic coastline. I’m tired—exhausted, really—but my mind refuses to slow down. Something’s changed, and it all has to do with that moment when Father Tom let me walk away, forgiven and clean, for no good reason at all, except that I needed it. I just wish I knew what it meant.
As we land, I feel Gatsby stirring, lifting her head and sitting up, rubbing her eyes. “Mm,” she says sleepily, and looks at me. “Are we back?”
Nodding, I help her to her feet and we step down out of the helicopter, then make our way across the darkened grounds as I walk her back to her room. The night smells like the ocean and dry leaves. The next snowstorm we get won’t melt away so quickly. There’s a sadness to it, a sense that fall is coming to an end, once and for all.
“Gatsby?”
She looks up at me sleepily.
“I almost forgot—I brought you something. I picked it up before Homecoming.”
I reach deep into my coat pocket and hand her the package. It’s still wrapped in the faded old map of the Pacific. “You can just ignore the wrapping paper.”
She peels off the map and pulls out the copy of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales, turning it over slowly in her hands. “It’s lovely,” she says, and then passes it back to me. “But I can’t accept this.”
“Why not? It’s the real deal.”
“That’s not why.”
“Gatsby—”
“I need time, Will.”
I nod, and she just gazes up at me for a moment before stepping inside her room. I turn around, heading back toward my dorm, when a car swerves up in front of me, so close I have to jump backwards to avoid being hit. That’s when I realize that time is the one thing I don’t have.
“Get in,” Dad says.
The car smells like a distillery mixed with cigarette smoke. Rhonda’s in the passenger seat, chuffing a Camel Light while playing Candy Crush on her phone, so I climb into the back, which still isn’t far enough away from either of them. “What are you doing back here?”
“Shut up.” From the driver’s seat, Dad looks back, his face twisted with anger. The car is idling, and Dad is showing no signs of putting it into drive. “What happened to Andrea?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I got back to the motel room and she was gone.”
Shaking my head, I give him my best blank look. “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”
Dad’s right eyelid flutters and his lower lip droops down just slightly on that side, and for a second he looks like a man suffering a mild stroke. Then he manages to thrust his arm back over the seat, grabbing ahold of my collar. Since we’re in a compact car, there’s nowhere for me to go, and frankly, at this point I’m too tired to stop him. “The maid said she let you into my room. I know you were there. You cut her loose.”
“Dad, seriously—”
“I warned you about this. If you queer this deal for me, you’ll be sucking your turkey and cranberry sauce through a tube this year, you understand?”
“A lovely holiday sentiment,” I tell him. “Can I go to bed now?”
Dad reaches out toward Rhonda with his right palm up, and she puts something in his hand. In the light from the dashboard, I see that it’s a gun—a small black automatic. Dad looks down at it for a moment, and then his eyes flick back up to me. His voice has become very low now, almost inaudible, and there’s something about his quiet tone that scares me more than any amount of yelling and screaming.
“You’ve been through a lot,” he says. “I know. So far, I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt. But you’re a big boy now, and I’m just telling you this, man to man.” Raising the gun, he points it straight at my head. “If you or that smalltime grifter girlfriend of yours botch this for me, there will be repercussions, you understand?”
“You’re going to shoot me now?” I’m trying to hide the quaver in my voice, with minimal success. “Seriously?”
“I need this score.” The gun doesn’t move. “Don’t mess it up for me, Billy.”
“You already did that yourself, a long time ago.” I pull the door handle and step out. “Oh, and Dad?” I lower my head to glance back in at him. “Father Tom says hello.”
I walk the rest of the way to my room without looking back.
Thirty-Two
I WAKE UP LATE THE NEXT MORNING TO THE SOUND OF squirrels chattering and squabbling outside my window. It’s almost ten a.m. but it feels much later, and I roll over as thick fingers of daylight attempt to push their way under the curtains. The squabbling noises get louder, becoming progressively more animated and articulate, shaping themselves into words and sentences. Which means either Connaughton Academy has the most intelligent squirrels in the world, or . . .
. . . they aren’t squirrels.
Pulling aside the curtain, I look out and see the Fox 25 TV news van parked across the lawn next to a platform with an empty podium and a microphone. There are several reporters out there already, along with mike booms and cameras, and a group of curious students has gathered outside a wood barricade.
This can’t be good.
Somewhere in my dresser I find a clean set of clothes, and I brush my teeth and grab my coat before stepping out into the bright, cold morning air, which is when I see the new banner hanging from the trees overhead:
WELCOME, EBEYE CHILDREN’S HEALTH CLINIC, REPUBLIC OF MARSHALL ISLANDS!
Oh no.
From up the road comes the loud roar of a diesel engine. I can already see an airport shuttle bus pulling up on the other side of the barricade, and the crowd steps back as the cameras surge forward with the instinctive feeding frenzy that one sees only in certain predatory fish and the media. I can already make out Dr. Melville with his dog at the front of the crowd, but I can’t tell whether he’s seen me yet. Not that it matters now, I suppose; I’ve got nowhere to hide.
“Hey, Will. How was your night?”
I look around and see Andrea. She’s standing there smiling radiantly, her hair and makeup perfect, the very picture of scholastic excellence. You’d never guess that the last time I saw her she was duct-taped to a chair in the bathtub of a Motel 6, swearing she was going to kill me.
“Hey, look,” I say, “about what happened yesterday—”
“No need to apologize,” she says, still smiling. Her eyes are positively sparkling, and I see that she’s holding a huge cardboard check, like the ones that lottery winners are photographed with after they hit the jackpot. This one reads: to the ebeye children’s health clinic, in the amount of $127,770.00. “Just get ready. It’s your time to shine.”
“Hold it.” I look down at the big check, then back up at her. “What are you doing with that check?”
“Giving it to your people, of course. At least, you know, symbolically.” She flicks the hair from her eyes. “The actual money is going into my bank account, where I’ll pick it up in cash on my way out of town tonight.”
“Wait. You’re seriously keeping it?”
“Uh, let’s see . . .” she says, putting her finger to her lips in mock consideration. “Yes. And, of course, fifty thousand of that money is coming directly from Brandt. Which means—oh, right . . .” She leans forward and whispers in my ear, “This is me beating you.”
“Andrea, the bet’s off.”
“Why, just because you’re about to lose? Forget it. You had your chance to bow out gracefully”—she cocks her head and gives me a little smile—“and now you can prepare to wallow in total, humiliating defeat.”
“Andrea, wait.”
Without another word, she starts winding her way forward with the big check held up over her head. Dr. Melville crosses the lawn to meet her, and when the door of the airport shuttle bus opens, I see a tall, weathered-looking African American man in khakis and a chambray shirt stepping down. It must be Nathan Stanley, the head of the children’s clinic on Ebeye. He’s clutching the hand of a middle-aged woman who I can only assume is his wife. The couple moves slowly, with the careful determination of people who have traveled a long way and see no point in hurrying now.
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