by Nancy Rue
“I get that,” India said. “But Allison, honey, we need to be so careful. You remember that woman that showed up in Kathleen McElhinney’s group and told everybody she had pancreatic cancer? They raised all kinds of money for her medical bills and then she took off with the cash and they never saw her again. Turns out she’d pulled the same scam in three other churches. The woman never even had cancer.”
Frank inched to the edge of his chair, already shaping what he was going to say with his hands. “I don’t doubt that this woman and her son are in real trouble, but there are free rehabilitation programs.”
“That boy ought to be in foster care,” Mary Alice said. “They have people with experience handling children like that.”
“Are you serious?” I said. “Do you know how many kids who grow up in foster care end up in prison?”
“It sounds like this kid is halfway there already.” India put up her hand before I could protest. “So we give money for her to have decent rehab. What are the odds she won’t come out and start using again? These people have deep-seated problems, darlin’. I just think you’re being naive to think we can save them.”
“I hear they go right back to where they were living before and start all over,” Mary Alice said.
Bonner leaned forward on the couch. “Where are they living now?”
I pulled in a long breath through my nose. “They’re staying with me.”
“Lord have mercy,” someone said. It could have been any of them.
“Look, I haven’t said a word about giving Geneveve and her boy money. All I want is your help. Desmond needs male role models. Geneveve needs the kind of support I got from you all when I was lost—”
“Honey, that was completely different!” India tossed her head back. “You weren’t doing drugs and selling your body down on West King Street.”
“Allison.”
They all turned to Bonner, desperation on their faces.
“We’re concerned about your safety in this,” he said. “The Harley’s bad enough. Every day I think I’m going to get a call that the paramedics have had to scrape you up off of US 1.”
“Thanks for that,” I said.
“But taking in strangers you don’t really know anything about, except that one’s a drug addict and the other one’s a juvenile kleptomaniac, that’s just—irresponsible. You’re going to wake up one morning with everything you own gone, your identity stolen.” He closed his eyes. “And your heart broken.”
“I have to agree with that, Missy,” Frank said. “I surely do. I think we all do.”
I stared from one face to the next and didn’t see one that was familiar. It was as if each of them were masquerading as someone else. Or was it that they’d just now removed the masks I’d always thought were the genuinely compassionate countenances of Mary Alice Moss and India Morehead and Frank Parker and Bonner Bailey? I had no idea what to do. I didn’t have a disguise to put on or take off. I could only stand there with my disbelief hanging out and let them work me over like a panel of strangers.
Until the Nudge became a Shove, pushing me naked out of the middle-school locker room and into the hall, where all I could do was blurt out what I didn’t know was in me.
“So that’s what we’re about then,” I said. “Staying safe in our gated-community faith, where we make room for God. Well, you know what? That’s a fantasy and a lie.”
“Allison!” Mary Alice said.
“We’re about saving souls,” Frank said.
“No, we’re about numbers. We’re about how many people—‘decent’ people, mind you—can be saved and put on the rolls and expected to tithe.”
“That’s not fair,” Bonner said.
“We give them the fire insurance salvation pitch, and they buy into it, and then we protect them in here so that none of us has to see what’s going on outside the gates. We’re in here worshiping a Jesus we’ve made up, while most of the souls out there, right out there, are crying out for the Jesus that really exists. I didn’t realize until I wound up down there on West King that I don’t know a thing about the real Jesus. Not a thing. And you just showed me that you don’t either.”
I could see it as I stood there heaving for air that I was as bumbling and obnoxious as that naked middle-school kid, but I didn’t try to tell them the words hadn’t been mine. That they’d come from a place I didn’t know about until I found myself there. As shocked and hurt as my friends now looked, I didn’t want to take a single syllable back.
“We’re family,” Bonner said. “You don’t go after family that way.”
“If you can’t tell your own family how you feel, then what’s the point in having one?” I shook my head. “I’ve been here before with ‘family.’ I just thought this one was different.”
I didn’t need a Nudge to tell me it was time to leave. There was no hurry. I knew nobody would try to stop me, and I wasn’t running away anyway. I just had to go before the sadness sank in.
My bike was waiting for me, silent and ready, as if she knew all along I wouldn’t come out happy. I sat on it for a minute in a yellow circle of light from the faux gas street lamp.
In my teens, whenever I had a meltdown in front of my father and told him what a greedy, narrow-minded impostor he was, I always came away feeling smug and self-righteous and satisfied with my adolescent self. I felt none of that now. I’d seen in the unmasked faces of my Watchdogs that I had come off that way, but I had no sense of a job well done—no urge to brush my hands together and say, “They know what time it is now.” This job was just beginning, a job I still had no idea how to do. All I knew was that I was going to have to do it without them.
It was overwhelmingly sad. No one should have to attend two funerals in one day.
Maybe it was the sadness that distracted me from paying attention to what I was doing. Or maybe Bonner was right that I would inevitably crash someday and have to be peeled from the pavement with a spatula. Whatever it was, I careened too fast around the corner into Palm Row and overcorrected myself straight toward a coconut palm. Somehow I managed to remain upright and avoid it, but not before Chief saw it all from the side porch.
I took off my helmet and glared at him. “If you say, ‘What did you do wrong?’ so help me I’ll run you over.”
“Not saying a word,” Chief said.
He got up from the swing and moved easily down the steps. The moment I realized I was enjoying the way he moved, I hastened the Classic into the garage, parked her, and came out with my helmet and a clearer head. Chief was astride the Road King, his own helmet fastened in place.
“Get on,” he said. “Let’s go for a ride.”
“Chief, really, it’s been a rough evening—”
“I can see that. That’s why you need a ride.”
As I climbed on behind him, I told myself I just didn’t have the energy to argue. Then I told myself the truth, which was that the man had an intensity that was hard to resist. No wonder Hank was—
“Where is she?” I said over the slow idle of the engine.
“Who?”
“Hank.”
“She had to go.”
“I can’t leave that kid alone.”
“Trust me. He’s down for the count. Hank said to give you this.”
He held up a folded note between two gloved fingers.
“Sorry I couldn’t wait,” she’d written. “Meet me at the Galleon on Friday morning if you want to talk.”
“Hang on,” Chief said.
The bike rolled quietly to the corner, but I knew we were about to take off in Chief’s no-messing-around-let’s-get-this-done style. I fumbled around with where to put my hands, until he reached back and pulled them to his waist.
“That’s holding on,” he said.
If I’d ever known him to a
ctually smile, I would imagine something on the amused side curving his lips.
I didn’t ask where we were going because it felt good to have somebody else choosing the direction. What Chief chose was an easy cruise up St. George Street to King and a smooth sweep over the temporary Bridge of Lions that wouldn’t have been possible at high traffic times. Reconstruction of the aging 1920s structure, guarded by its famous pair of kingly concrete beasts, made crossing it a teeth-gnashing experience during the day. With the sun sunken beyond the city and her inhabitants settled into their brews at Scarlett O’Hara’s or their lobsters at O. C. White’s, we floated over the Matanzas Bay with the freedom of the seagulls that now slept on the sea wall. I’d never crossed it on a bike, and the unfettered feel of it was at once frightening and exhilarating—the first time. The second time, after a U-turn on Anastasia Boulevard, I tilted my head and closed my eyes and wished it would never end.
Chief pulled the bike to the curb on Avenida Menendez and took off his helmet.
“I like to sit on the wall,” he said. “You?”
“How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
I actually did like to come here on evenings like this, when a warm wind was blowing the stars around. It was especially delicious to me after a dreary day when stars weren’t expected and came out as a treat for those who were paying attention.
At this end the wall was lined with short, thick posts called bollards, all connected by nautical-size chain designed to separate people on the walkway from the marina below, with moderate success. More than one drunk had sat on the decorative chains and found himself—or herself—thrashing among the mackerel in the Matanzas. I stepped over one and lowered myself to the wall to let my legs hang over the side. Below, the anchored sailboats rocked themselves to sleep and the fish leaped from the water, some of them as high as four feet above its surface as if they knew they were safe from the fishermen soaking up suds at the bar at the Santa Maria out on the pier.
When Chief eased down beside me, I said, “You really have a passion for riding, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?”
“Why is it that every time I ask you something about yourself, we wind up talking about me?”
“Occupational habit,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“What it’s like to really love doing something so much you can’t not do it.”
“Feels like freedom,” he said. “Like the possibilities are endless.” He looked at me sideways. “You never had that?”
I shook my head. “I thought I did when I was about seventeen. We—I wanted to just take off and go until I found something that needed doing and do it and move on to the next place. But it was just an old dream that didn’t work out.” I laughed. “Do I sound like a heroine in a romance novel?”
“Never read a romance novel.”
“Come to think of it, I never have either.”
“Didn’t think you were the type. So—rough time at the church.”
He said it as if he’d predicted it. I wondered if he and Hank had laid bets on it.
“Yeah,” I said. “I expected support and I didn’t get it, which leaves me pretty much where I started.” I stopped bouncing my heels against the wall. “I have to see this through with Geneveve and the kid—I know that. I guess I’ll just take baby steps and see what happens.”
“If you go too slow, it’s hard to keep your balance.”
I grunted. “I’ve heard that before.”
“Something every biker has to remember.” Chief pressed his hands on either side of him on the wall. “I’ll be reminding you of that, among other things.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You need a Riding Guide—it’s like a mentor until you get some miles on you.” It was his turn to grunt. “Otherwise you’re going to kill yourself or somebody else.”
“You’re the second person to tell me that tonight,” I said. “Only you I actually believe. Are you saying you’re going to be this guide person for me?”
“If it works for you.”
“I guess it does,” I said.
“I’m going to start by showing you how to get your bike out of your street without revving the engine all the way up.” I thought I saw his lip twitch. “I had a visit from your next-door neighbor while you were gone.”
“Which one?”
“Lady with—”
“Miz Vernell.”
“She was actually leaving a note on the door when I opened it. Almost gave her a coronary.”
“Let me guess: She said my bike was too loud and I was disturbing the serenity of Palm Row.”
“No, she said she was calling the police the next time she couldn’t hear Wheel of Fortune because you were starting up that awful machine.”
I blinked at him. “What did you do, take notes? I know that’s exactly what she said.” I raked a hand through my hair. “I’ll have to go over there tomorrow and try to appease her somehow.”
“Or you can just let me show you how to drive it out without drowning out Pat Sajak. I promised her I would.”
“You did.” I rolled my eyes. That was going to be her main topic of conversation over coffee cake with Owen tomorrow. “Thanks. Otherwise I’m looking at jail time.”
“They don’t put you in jail for violating a noise ordinance.”
“You’re not going to charge me for that piece of advice, are you?”
“Nah. This is strictly pro bono.”
I felt myself smile. “And the help with the Harley?”
“I’m doing that so you don’t give the rest of us a bad name. Next piece of advice.”
“Yeah?”
He looked me straight in the eyes, once more the eagle with wisdom borne from the heights. “Take it one ride at a time.”
“Am I to also take it that you’re not just talking about the Harley?”
“Take it however it fits, Classic,” he said. “However it fits.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I got up the next morning with my first “ride” planned: I had to enroll Desmond in school. My motive was not entirely his welfare. Not only had he already missed the first month, but if he hung around at my house one more day, one of us was going down.
My announcement was met with the resistance I expected, although I had to give the kid credit for being consistent. He used every charm-filled ploy in his repertoire to get me to change my mind, including telling me how much he would miss me. It didn’t occur to me until Geneveve and I left him in the office at the middle school that by now all the who’s-cool-and-who’s-not lines had already been drawn. For once I hoped his technique worked for him, because from what I saw in that place, he was going to need something to survive. The lineup of kids in the office all looked like they’d done time or were about to. And half of them were girls.
Geneveve seemed only slightly more aware of him that day than previously. It was me he said good-bye to, me he told he’d have this place under control before lunch. His mother just looked at him as if she wondered where he’d come from.
That was understandable, considering the condition she was still in. I watched her nervously, waiting for the DT’s or some other ugly sign of withdrawal to kick in. Early Friday morning she finally seemed to have slept herself out and came down to the kitchen before I had to drag her from the bed. I put a cup of coffee in her hand and laid things out for her across the bistro table.
“How are you doing this, Geneveve? You were so doped up when I found you, you’ve got to be craving by now. I’m not going to throw you out if somehow you’re using, but I have to know.”
She stared into the coffee as if she were waiting for the answer to float to the top. “I’m clean right now. I done this before—got myself not using for sometime a week, maybe two. And t
hen I go right back.”
“Well, yeah. You’re an addict. That’s how it works.”
“I don’t want it to work that way no more. I wanna stop this time, for good.” Her eyes did a frenetic search of the room and came to rest on me, brimming fear. “I want my boy to know his real mama. ’Cept—Miss Angel—I don’t even know her—and she’s me.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear,” I said. “I’ll look into some programs today—”
“Ain’t gonna work.”
I hadn’t heard that kind of firmness in her voice before and it made me set my cup on the table.
“I been in so many programs. My daddy spent all his money on trying to get me clean. My sister use all kinda candles and crystals and she done give up on me cause she said I didn’t wanna change. But I do now, Miss Angel. And I know you can change me.”
I was still shaking my head when she came off the bistro chair and flew into my arms. Once again I was caught off guard by the brittle weightless form that was her body. I knew if I told her now that I couldn’t change her, that I didn’t even know how to help her, she would crush to powder in my hands.
I decided one thing for sure when I’d dropped Desmond off for his second day at school and was headed for the Spanish Galleon for a quick cup with Hank before I went to work. I wasn’t going to try any of the things Geneveve had already attempted. It was pointless to tell her what a mess she’d made of her life; that was as apparent to her as it was to everybody else. And I wasn’t going to make her a prisoner in my house. I’d never understood that approach when I worked teaching arts and crafts to patients in the rehab facility. They were locked up so they couldn’t get their hands on any of the substances that had put them there, but it was obvious that most of them were going to be released, clean and sober, and go right back to the old neighborhood—where nobody made decoupage or macramé—and pick up where they left off because they didn’t know how to do anything else. Just like India said.
So I knew what I wasn’t going to do. I just didn’t know what to put in its place.