by Nancy Rue
“Was she one?”
“She says so. She told me the story about the time you—”
“Bonner.”
“What?”
“If you discussed me the whole time, no wonder it didn’t turn into anything. Women like to talk about themselves—hadn’t you noticed?”
I wanted to bite my tongue completely off before the words even left it. The food I didn’t realize he’d ordered arrived, and I used that time to try to figure out a way to get out of the trap I’d just created for myself. I came up with zilch by the time the server dashed off to get Bonner more tzatziki sauce for his pita bread.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll pray, and then let’s talk about you.”
While Bonner thanked God for the food, I begged him for appendicitis. I did not want to go where Bonner was going to try to take me.
The amen was barely out of his mouth before he started in. The topic, however, caught me off guard.
“The Watchdogs, as you call them, are worried about you. I am too.”
I was only relieved for a half a second. This wasn’t a subject I was crazy about either.
“Why?” I said. “Because I missed one meeting?”
“No.”
“Then it’s the reason I missed. You told them about the Harley lessons, I take it.”
“That’s only part of it—”
“Do tell me what that has to do with the group.”
“I will,” he said. “If you’ll just hush up a minute.”
“Sorry,” I said. I snapped the cloth napkin into my lap. “Go on.”
“Just hear me out before you jump in.”
I stuffed a forkful of spinach pie into my mouth and chewed. It tasted like cardboard, which I was sure wasn’t the chef’s fault.
“It’s you dodging this new thing Garry has us looking at,” Bonner said. “Not that you won’t be in charge of it. I’m happy to do that. Again.”
I kept chewing.
“It’s about you not seeing the point.”
“What is the point?”
“It’s what it always is. Salvation.”
“As in where you gonna go when you die.”
He frowned. “You know I don’t think it’s as simple as that. It’s about having a relationship with Jesus Christ that will last into eternity.”
“For us. You, me, and the Watchdogs.”
“See?” Bonner pointed his fork at me, and then put it down when I scowled at it. “That’s it, though. We talked about it at the meeting. Once we all thought about it, it was like you were telling us we’re being selfish with our faith.”
My neck bristled, and I put my own fork down. “When did I say that?”
“You didn’t exactly say it. We just felt like that was what you were thinking.”
“Since when did I not just come right out and say what I was thinking? What I said was what I meant: We’ve got this live-a-moral-life thing down; maybe it’s time to get out there and do something with that.”
“You don’t think we all witness? Frank alone has probably brought more people to Christ than Garry himself.”
“Which means what?” I said, although I had no idea why I said it.
“Their souls are saved,” he said simply.
“And what about everything between now and death?”
Bonner tilted his head.
“We’re all so caught up in the afterlife, we have no idea what’s going on in this life. I’ve seen things in the last twenty-four hours that tell me I don’t know a dad-gum thing about God’s world. And neither do you or Frank, or anybody else in our church as far as I can see.”
He blinked as if I’d slapped him. Maybe I would have, if I didn’t have anymore control over my hand than I did my mouth. Where was all this stuff coming from?
Yet even as I watched Bonner poke at his lamb kebab for a moment and then push his plate to the edge of the table, I didn’t want to take the words back. They might not have been mine, but they were true. Still, I hated that I’d put those two red smears at the tops of Bonner’s cheeks.
“Y’know what?” I said. “I think we need a change of topic—and a change of scene. You want to come see my Harley?”
“I don’t know what to do with this, Allison.”
“I don’t either,” I said. “Let’s just drop it till we figure it out, huh?”
He agreed, which meant we rode in silence in the Jag down to Palm Row. When we pulled in, I automatically looked to see if Owen or Miz Vernell were on their porches, waiting up for me.
They were, along with a police officer on my front walkway, leaning over two shadowy figures on my steps.
“What in the world?” Bonner said.
The red-and-blues on the police cruiser flashed alarmingly on the faces of the two on the steps. One was a wisp of a woman, hugging her knees to her chest and rocking back and forth.
It was Geneveve. And next to her sprawled a preadolescent boy.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I was out of the car before Bonner had it completely stopped.
“Allison, wait!” he hissed after me. “You don’t know what you’re walking into!”
I ignored both him and Miz Vernell, whose cobweb voice tried to thread its way to me from her side porch. Owen was standing at the other edge of my yard, rubbernecking like he was at the site of a train wreck. I ignored him, too. I had eyes only for Geneveve, who was clearly unraveling right there on my steps.
“Is there a problem, officer?”
He turned his red head toward me, hand up as if that were going to stop me from marching across my own property.
“I’m Allison Chamberlain,” I said. “This is my house.”
His look was so doubtful I went for my ID. At which point his hand went to his gun.
“Oh for Pete’s sake, don’t go all Law & Order on me. I’m just trying to show you my driver’s license.”
“It’s okay, Kent,” Bonner said behind me. “She’s for real.”
The ruddy-faced officer, to his credit, looked relieved, as well he should. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-one years old. I would hate to have to smack his little freckled face.
“What’s going on?” I said.
He let me approach, and I went straight to the step next to Geneveve.
“So you know these folks?” Kent said.
“I know this lady,” I said. “What’s the problem?”
I was asking Geneveve, who only continued to rock and retch out a guttural moan. On the other side of her, the kid was flipping something from one hand to the other and seemed completely unconcerned that a police officer was shining a flashlight in his face.
“We got a call from a neighbor reporting a possible break-in,” Kent said.
“Were you trying to break into my house, Geneveve?”
Bonner let out a disgusted sigh. Geneveve shook her head and mumbled something unintelligible. Beside her the kid had moved on to Olympic-level stunts with whatever it was he was playing with.
Another, bulkier officer coming from my house passed us down the steps and shook his head at Kent, who looked at me.
“We have no reason to arrest her unless you want to press trespassing charges.”
“She was waiting for me on my steps,” I said. “Since when is that trespassing?”
“When you say it is,” the other officer said—in a Florida cracker accent you could have scooped up like a spoonful of grits.
“I don’t,” I said.
Kent once again looked relieved and nodded to his partner.
“Thanks for coming by,” Bonner said to them, hand out for the grateful handshake. Him I really did want to smack.
I turned to Geneveve, who had stopped rocking and
was simply staring as if she could no longer remember how to move. Her scrawny kid, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to stop moving. Apparently oblivious to the cruiser lights still bruising his face, he was now standing up on the middle step, flipping the whatever-it-was behind his back and attempting to catch it with his tongue. He missed, and the toy pinged onto the walkway just beyond my foot.
Only it wasn’t a toy. It was the house key I kept under one of the terra-cotta pots on the front porch.
He dove for it, but I covered it with my foot and almost took his hand out. By then, Bonner had already seen Kent and Company to the cruiser as if they’d been attending a friendly barbecue in my backyard.
“You just cheated death, kid,” I said. I pocketed the key. “I think you better have a seat.”
“Hey, it’s all good,” he said, in a voice still some distance from manhood. And then he stunned me with a smile. For all his skinny, swaggering arrogance, he was a downright cute kid.
With skin like rubbed sage and cinnamon-colored, out-of-control hair, he was obviously mulatto, though there was no denying he was Geneveve’s child. His enormous brown eyes took up the entire upper half of his face, and if she still knew how to smile, I imagined her grin would have matched his—wide and toothy and completely charming. His build, however, had come from someone else’s DNA. He was already a head and a half taller than Geneveve, even if you didn’t count the four inches of stand-up hair. In fact most of his body weight was probably in that ’do as well. A closer look, and I retracted that thought. His huge feet were as out of proportion as a puppy’s.
He sat on the step like I’d told him to, back curved as if he wasn’t yet proud of his height.
“So what’s your name?” I said.
“What makes you think I have one?” he said.
“Okay, I’ll just make one up for you. I’m going to call you Clarence.”
“Say what?”
“Clarence. I think it fits.”
He spewed out an expletive. “My name Desmond,” he informed me.
I didn’t see how that was a whole lot better than “Clarence,” but I nodded. Beside me Geneveve nodded as well, the first sign of coherence I’d seen since I arrived.
“This your boy?” I asked.
Another nod.
“How old is he?”
“Fifteen,” Desmond said.
“Did I ask you?”
“I’m just sayin’.”
“No, you’re just lyin’. You can’t be over ten years old.”
“Ex-cuse me?”
He dropped another word-bomb that would have gotten my teeth knocked from my head at that age. By Sylvia. Which was the main reason I didn’t swear to this day.
“He twelve,” Geneveve whispered.
I did a double take, not only because she’d spoken, but because she must have been all of about fifteen when she gave birth to him. Even through her dope-ravaged skin I could tell she wasn’t much more than twenty-seven.
“Everything’s cool, Allison.” Bonner was standing at the edge of the lane where the cruiser had finally pulled away. “I’m going to go talk to Owen, let him know.”
“Yeah, Owen’ll be better off if you tell him.” I stood up, hand on Geneveve’s elbow so she had to rise with me. “Listen, thanks for keeping Barney Fife from drawing on me.”
“They were just doing their job.”
With one hand on Geneveve and the other on the back of Desmond’s T-shirt, I moved toward the house. “Can we take a rain check on the bike showing?”
Bonner’s eyebrows rose. “What are you doing, Allison?”
“I’m taking my guests inside. I’ll call you.”
I didn’t wait for another protest before I used the key I’d taken from Desmond to open the front door and escorted him and his mother into the foyer. Geneveve went straight to the old church pew against the wall and all but disappeared into the array of throw pillows. Desmond stood gazing around with an awe he forgot to hide.
I took in the view with him—the yellow and white walls, the splotches of red in the pillows and rugs, the wainscoting that gleamed like a happy gaze. As Sylvia-filled and honest as my home was, it suddenly seemed pretentious again.
“Nice digs,” Desmond said. “You rich?”
He’d successfully covered his awe with a half-smirk he must have practiced in front of a mirror. No prepubescent male just naturally looked that on top of it. I swallowed a snicker.
“Why do you ask?” I said.
“I just like to know what I’m workin’ with.”
“Get over yourself, kid. You already dodged a police bullet once tonight. Don’t push it.”
He gave me The Smile and put out his fist for what I assumed was some kind of brothers-in-the-hood exchange. I just looked at him.
“It’s all good….” He tilted his chin up. “So what’s your name—or do I get to make one up?”
This kid was just too cute for his own good.
“Allison,” I said.
“Naw—you don’t look like no Allison to me. You look more like a …” He rubbed his chin. “A Tiffany. I’ma call you that.”
“Call me anything you want, Clarence.”
His barely there eyebrows knit together over his finely chiseled nose—the one thing that indicated he was going to be more than just cute someday. If he lived that long.
“What you say your name was?”
“Allison.”
He shook his head solemnly. “That’s not workin’ for me. What about if I call you ‘Big Al’? You still gon’ call me Clarence if I do that?”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
I turned to Geneveve, who was on her way to a fetal position on the pew.
“Come on, girlfriend,” I said. “Let’s get some food into you.”
I wrangled her to her feet and half carried her through the dining room and into the kitchen. Desmond trailed us in there. I could only assume he was casing the place for the family silver. Good thing Sylvia and I had sold it years ago and spent the money on a trip to Tahiti.
“What are we havin’ for dinner, Big Al?” he said. “You gon’ cook us some T-bone steaks?”
I watched Geneveve as I deposited her in one of the chairs at the bistro table and hoped she didn’t slither off onto the floor. She was either completely unaware of the mouth her kid had on him or she didn’t care. In either case, no wonder he was such a little wise guy.
“You missed the dinner hour, dude,” I said. “It’s mac and cheese or nothing. Take your pick.”
He pondered that before saying, “I ain’t had no mac and cheese in a long time. You got a TV?”
Why hadn’t I thought of that?
I handed him a Granny Smith to hold him over—which he looked at and said, “How come this apple green?”—and set him up in the small den just off the kitchen.
“Have at it,” I said, and handed him the remote as he slouched into the green leather recliner.
“You got cable?” he said.
Before I could even answer, he was devouring the screen with his eyes. I left him to it and went back to Geneveve.
She’d managed to stay in the chair, but her head was facedown in her arms on the tabletop. Her shoulders shook, but no sound escaped her lips. She reminded me of her father who refused to give his pain a voice, and I got that ache in my chest again.
“All right,” I said. “I’m going to feed you and the pipsqueak in there, and then we’ll talk showers for both of you. Once we get him down for the night, we can discuss why you came here. I mean, I’m glad you did, but it caught me a little off guard. I didn’t have time to notify the neighbors. Like I should have to, right?”
She didn’t answer, and I didn’t expect her to. I was babbling more for myself tha
n for her anyway. Beneath it was the subtext: Is this what you want me to do, God? Because once again, I’m driving off a cliff here. Right on the back of that Harley you told me to buy.
I kept up the chatter as I prepared some absolutely-no-nutritional-value macaroni and cheese from a box and put it on plates with baby carrots. When I delivered Desmond’s, he never moved his eyes from the TV screen.
Which meant I practically had to handcuff him to get him into the bathroom to take a shower. His charm failed him at that point, and he made an attempt at being menacing by pulling his entire face into a pout. I laughed out loud.
“What?” he said. “That ain’t funny!”
“Actually, no, Desmond, the way you smell goes way beyond funny. Five minutes in the shower—you’ll be a new man.”
“I ain’t takin’ no shower!”
“Fine. Then it’s outside with the hose. Your choice.”
He slammed the bathroom door, and I could hear him fumbling with the knob.
“Give it up,” I said from the hallway. “It doesn’t lock.”
Fortunately the window in there was nailed shut. Resistance was futile. Thirty seconds later I heard water running. Another minute and he was performing a rap song under the spray. Obscene lyrics aside, at least it was better than a screaming fit. I got the impression that wasn’t his style anyway.
Meanwhile I had Geneveve soaking in the tub in my bathroom, which gave me a few minutes to determine what the next step should be. I wasn’t even sure why I’d done as much as I had already. Why hadn’t I just found out what Geneveve wanted, given them a free meal, and driven them home?
Because they don’t have a home.
“I knew that, God,” I said. “I did.”
But it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Neither that nor Ed’s last words to me: “You’ll take care of them. I know you will.”
Desmond was easier after his shower—in which he used up all the hot water—and a cup of warm milk with cinnamon, Sylvia’s prescription for hyper kids at bedtime. I had gallons of it in my childhood, and just as I always had, Desmond conked out. His fingers were still curled loosely around the remote in his lap in the recliner when I covered him with a blanket.