A Hole in the Universe

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “Then I’m calling the cops, is that what you want? Cuz if you don’t, you better put that stuff down and get the hell outta here.”

  “What’s wrong?” Gordon asked, wiping his hands on his apron. Both spoke at once, June saying the girl was a thief while Jada insisted she had money. “So you’re paying for that stuff?” he asked uneasily.

  “Well, yeah!” Jada said, rolling her eyes. “I got the money right here in my pocket.”

  “And what else’ve you got in there, you little thief?” June reached toward Jada’s pocket.

  “Don’t you touch me, bitch!” she warned. The crack was in the same pocket as the money. She’d forgotten to put it down the front of her pants.

  “See!” June crowed to Gordon. “What’d I tell you?”

  Leaning, Jada released her armload of groceries onto the lemons. “Here!” She took out the bills and waved them in the bitch’s pinched gray face. “Eighteen bucks!”

  Gordon assured June he’d bring Jada through the checkout himself. He carried the groceries up front, then bagged everything as Serena rang it through. Jada tossed a pack of bubble gum onto the mat.

  “Twenty forty-nine,” Serena said.

  “Oh.” Stunned, Jada checked one of the pizza boxes. Two forty-nine. “Take this off, then. I only got eighteen.” She’d have cereal, and her mother could have the other pizza.

  “Oh yeah, like she wasn’t going to steal anything,” June crowed from the next register.

  “Bitch!” Jada shot back.

  “Here. Here, it’s okay. Take this.” Gordon was trying to put money into Jada’s hand.

  “Count your fingers, make sure they’re all there now,” June cackled. “Fossums’ll steal anything.”

  “Go fuck yourself!” Jada cried, shoving past his outstretched arm. Coins fell and rolled across the floor.

  “I don’t need shit. I don’t need anybody’s shit,” she panted as she ran home through pelting rain. The front door was wide open. The television was on and all the lights, dresser drawers dumped out onto the bed, the corners of the kitchen linoleum torn back, the dented trash can tipped, its stinking contents spilling onto the floor, while from behind the couch a voice in perfect diction repeated, “Please hang up and try your call again. If you need assistance, dial your operator. Please hang up now. This is a recording.” She reached down and fished up the phone. It was cracked. Directly above was a hole in the wall. She threw herself onto the couch. She was eating soggy pretzels and watching cartoons when the doorbell rang.

  “Here.” The big guy, Gordon, held out two bags of groceries.

  “Yeah? What do you want?”

  “Well, here. They’re yours.”

  “How much do I owe you? I forget,” she said, hoping he’d say it was all right, she didn’t have to pay.

  “Eighteen’s fine.”

  “Yeah, but now I only got five left.” She slipped one bill from the rest. “I had to get some stuff, some medicine for my mother.”

  “Oh,” he said with a look of consternation as he took the five.

  “But I’ll pay you back.”

  “Oh. Okay. All right, then.” He nodded as if to convince himself.

  The minute he left she tried to light the oven. It wouldn’t go on. The gas must have been shut off. “Goddamn her,” she muttered, emptying the frozen pizza onto the counter. She’d have to eat it raw. Or maybe that guy Gordon would let her use his stove. She could see him out in the rain, picking dead branches off his bushes. She ran to the front door, then closed it quickly when the Navigator pulled up. Polie was driving. Ronnie Feaster ran up the steps. He rang the bell, then banged on the door.

  “Give her this, then,” he said when she told him her mother wasn’t home. He handed her a piece of folded paper. His new pager number. He was always getting new ones—just to be safe. When she started to close the door, he blocked it with his foot. He needed a favor. Twenty bucks he’d pay her, and all she had to do was wait by the swings on the South Common for a guy and a girl in a black Jeep Wrangler. Same deal as last time: they’d pay and she’d pass the stuff. She said she couldn’t.

  “Me and Polie’ll be in the bar. It’s right across the street. The Tower. We’ll be there. We’ll be watching.”

  “Yeah, like a cop’s not gonna know, right, me standing out in the rain.”

  “Say you’re waiting for a ride, for your mother to pick you up.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “C’mon. I told you before, you’re like my star. The cops, they don’t stop girls. They don’t want to be checking your underpants and have you start yelling rape or something. C’mon, piece of cake.” He held out his hand.

  She thought of Polie and shivered. “No, I can’t. Plus, I got a ton of homework. I got all these tests tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday.” He grinned.

  “They’re special tests. I been sick.”

  “Come on! All right, how much you want? Twenty-five?”

  “Yeah, like I ever see it.”

  “That’s Marvella’s fault. So this time we don’t tell her. C’mon!”

  “I can’t. I’m hungry. I was just gonna eat.”

  “C’mon. Twenty minutes this’ll take, and after, you can have whatever you want to eat. Anything!”

  “Burger King?” Without a car, she never got to go there.

  “Sure! Whatever!” He mussed her hair, and she grinned.

  She sat in the backseat, trying to avoid Polie’s eyes in the mirror. Disgusting creep, he wouldn’t dare put a move on her now. She studied the shiny black hair curling over Ronnie’s collar. She wouldn’t mind him being her father. A mean son of a bitch, but at least he cared what happened to her. She hated running drugs, but her mother usually made her go, and besides, she liked being needed, liked being able to help him out in a bind. If she got caught, she wouldn’t face nearly the time an adult would, but they’d definitely take her away from her mother, and if they didn’t send her to juvie, they’d put her in foster care again. And that scared her more than anything else.

  Gordon came outside the minute Jilly Cross pulled up. She had called a while ago to say she’d be right over if he still wanted to see those condos. She looked tired. Her eyes were puffy, and her hair was twisted into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. “I’m sorry about last week,” she said as they turned the corner.

  “That’s okay.”

  They drove for a while. Finally, he asked where the condo was. Collerton, she said, but so close to the line that part of their service road was in Dearborn. Her voice trailed off. He tried to think of something to say, something to tell her. Anything to get her attention.

  “Look! See? See that? That used to be the hot dog plant.” He pointed to the dreary clump of cement-block buildings they were passing. “Every month we’d go there and buy hot dogs. My dad and me. A five-pound box. Half skinless and half natural casings.” He smiled, recalling how his father hated to pay full price for anything. New shoes came from the factory store that sold seconds and over-stocks. “It was great! The whole city was like that, so many interesting places to go and things to do.” There had even been an underwear factory in the city then and one that made jackets and coats. For half price they could buy juice by the case from Whipple’s, the fruit-juice company. “If you want, I can show you sometime where they all are,” he said as she turned down the road to the condo complex. “Where they were, anyway,” he added as she parked the car.

  “So, what’s your sister-in-law like?” she asked, throwing him off base a minute.

  “Very nice. She’s a very nice person.” He looked out at what appeared to be clusters of attached English Tudor cottages. “I don’t know, it looks pretty expensive here.”

  “Kind of, but Dennis said your sister-in-law’s getting you a job at Harrington’s. You’d make a lot more there.”

  “Oh, no. No, I’m fine where I am. I like it there. I don’t want to work at the brewery.”

  “That’s not what your
sister-in-law wants.”

  “I haven’t discussed it with her. Maybe she thinks I do, I don’t know.”

  “What is she, some kind of control freak?”

  “Lisa? No, she’s wonderful. She’s a wonderful woman.”

  She opened the door and got out. They went quickly through the model condo, then Jilly drove to the next one, which was smaller and cheaper. Except for a few questions about Dennis, she had little to say on the way back. He felt deflated when she turned onto Clover Street.

  “The house looks like it’s in good condition.” She peered over the wheel. “A lot better than any of the others here.”

  “It is! Dennis took really good care of it.” He smiled out at the neat little house. “Even the roses are doing good now. See all the buds?”

  “He’s a good brother, huh?”

  “Yes. Very good.” He looked at her. “Would you like to come in?” he asked, then froze.

  “I can’t,” she said too quickly. “But thank you.”

  “I mean the house, to see what condition it’s in.”

  “Oh, you mean an appraisal.”

  He nodded. A second chance, that’s all he wanted.

  “But first, you were telling me about your sister-in-law. What’s she like?”

  He’d already told her. “She’s very kind and patient, and she’s got a really good sense of humor. She always made me feel . . . well, comfortable—I guess that’s the word.”

  “She’s really religious, huh? Like really into the church.”

  That was an odd thing to say. He wasn’t sure how to respond. But maybe this was how men and women got to know one another, after a certain amount of awkward probing. He’d have to think of a question about her family. “I don’t know much about that part of her life, but one thing’s always impressed me about Lisa. She’s one of those people who know what you’re trying to say before you can even get it out.” He saw her fidget with the key chain. Afraid she would turn the ignition, he amazed himself and continued talking. He was telling her how of all the women Dennis had brought on visits, Lisa had been the most natural. He said he still didn’t know if Dennis wanted his approval of the women or theirs of him.

  “Probably both,” she said, smiling.

  “Yes, but when I heard her last name, Harrington, I was really nervous. I kept thinking, Here’s this pretty young woman from one of the richest families around, and to hear her laughing and talking in the visitors’ room you’d’ve thought she was in my living room or something.”

  “Sounds like someone’s got a real thing for their sister-in-law,” she said with raised eyebrows. “Well, anyway.” She reached into the console for a card. “Here. Hillman Appraisal. That’s who I use most of the time. Ask for Randy. He’s the owner.”

  He kept looking at the card.

  “Is that okay?” She started the car.

  “Yes. Yes, Randy—I’ll remember that.” So maybe that’s all this was, a business relationship. A favor for Dennis, compelling her to go through the motions with his loser brother. But no, there was something more here. Her interest in him went deeper than that. He could feel it. He could see it in her uneasy eyes.

  CHAPTER 8

  Neil Dubbin had hired one of his brother-in-law’s carpenters to install the new vinyl shelving and display racks. After three outrageous painting estimates, he had assigned the job to Gordon. The work had gone slowly at first, with Gordon not only performing his routine store duties, but trying, when he found time to paint, to make each brush stroke perfect. Now that his pace was faster, most of the storage areas were finished.

  He was back on the ladder, touching up some ceiling molding, when Leo said he was needed up front. He had been called down twice in the last half hour, to help unload truck deliveries, now this time to fix June’s register tape. Every few days the tape would snarl, jamming the register and locking the cash drawer shut. Neil was trying to remove the rolls from the cartridge, but he was so nervous that his hand shook. Gordon took his place and peered into the frozen cartridge, while behind him Neil launched into another litany of failure. He was still using thirty-year-old manual registers when every place else had been computerized. “I must be nuts. I’ve wasted how many years in this dump, and Jesus Christ, here I am, still trying to make a go of it. What I should do is just walk out that goddamn door and let my sister and her idiot husband run things if they want to keep this dump going so bad.”

  “Almost got it,” Gordon grunted, wedging the tip of the slender screwdriver down alongside the tape spool. “Same thing,” he muttered. “That one little wheel’s slipped.”

  June sat on a crate, sipping blue Gatorade. She’d just had a weak spell. Six customers waited in line at the next register. Serena was ringing up orders and doing her own bagging.

  “This is ridiculous!” said a disheveled woman in a stained white uniform. Her two small children wailed because she’d just smacked their hands for taking gum after she’d said no.

  “Can’t somebody do that register?” another woman asked, pointing.

  “Where’s the kid? Why isn’t he bagging?” Neil asked, looking around for Thurman.

  “He went out to round up carts,” June said, wheezing, and smirked at him. “Ten minutes ago.” He had gone out for a cigarette.

  “Oh, Jesus.” Neil started for the door. Out on the street, a slight, thin-haired man in a gray suit was shouting at Thurman, who was a head taller than he was. Just yesterday the boy had blown up at Leo and stormed out. When his grandmother got home from work, she’d marched him into the store and made him apologize to Leo and Neil.

  “Fuck you!” Thurman’s voice exploded through the opening door. With Neil’s arrival, the man gestured angrily at Thurman, who stood in the hot sun, glaring in his long-sleeved white shirt and baggy prison pants. Neil patted the man’s shoulder and tried to bring him inside, but the man looked back and said something. The boy lunged and the man shoved him away, but the boy came at him again. Neil pushed between them. The man’s round, fair face blotched with rage as he strained against Neil to get at Thurman.

  “Gordon!” June implored, pulling her tank to the door, but he was numb, frozen.

  “Oh, my God!” a woman in line cried out, saying she knew the boy’s grandmother.

  “He pushed them right into me,” the man panted as he came through the door.

  “They’re hard to stop sometimes,” Neil said, then, seeing the boy on his heels, ordered him to go home and cool off. With that, Thurman charged inside, shouting that the asshole had driven into the carts on purpose, that’s how his car got scratched.

  “He wouldn’t wait!” Thurman insisted.

  “Yeah, right,” the man said, straightening his tie. He stared at Gordon.

  “Ask him what he called me!” Thurman said to Neil. “Go ahead, ask him!”

  “Get the hell outta here! I’m not going to say it again. You go home and cool off. Now!” Neil ordered.

  “No!” Thurman bellowed. “I’m not leaving! I didn’t do anything! He’s the one, not me! Ask him what he said! Go ahead!”

  “Look, that’s it! I’ve had enough of your mouth, you hear me? What do you want? You want me to fire you? I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s what you want.” Neil had gotten Thurman to the door.

  “You’re Loomis, right?” The man’s eyes raged with turbulence. His head trembled.

  Gordon nodded.

  “I want you to ask him! Go ahead! Ask him what he called me!” the boy demanded as the man advanced on Gordon.

  “Here, look! Look at this.” The man held out his open wallet with shaking hands. “See! See that beautiful face? That’s all that’s left because of you! A picture,” he said, his low, anguished voice running into Neil’s and Thurman’s.

  Gordon’s head jerked away from her joyful smile. Twenty-five years ago, her pictures had made her seem so much older than he had been then. Now he realized how young she had been, how pretty.

  “Fucking spick, that’s wh
at he said! That’s what he called me,” Thurman said through the closing door.

  “You son of a bitch,” the man spat. “You don’t even care, do you. At least Cox had the decency to blow his fucking brains out as soon as he got out.”

  Gordon stared down at his huge, sweaty feet in these absurd blue-and-white sneakers. At least in a cell the bars had been visible.

  “But it’s over for you, right? You did your time. You just come back, start over, what the hell do you care! She wasn’t anything to you, right?” He paused, mouth quivering. “But she was my sister. Janine! Oh God,” he moaned, and covered his face, still holding the wallet. Business cards and photographs slid to the floor.

  Neil picked them up. “Tom,” he said, holding them out.

  “My sister’s gone,” the man sobbed in his struggle with the inexplicable, this monstrous and simple fact. “And my parents, they died of broken hearts. But you, you’re still here. Why? How can you be? What kind of person are you? Look at you! You can’t even look me in the eye, can you?”

  Gordon shook his head. No.

  “Do something!” the man screamed, slapping the wallet at Gordon’s chest in a frenzy of rage and impotence. “Say something! Don’t just stand there, you fucking coward, you no-good bastard, you stupid son of a bitch!” He hit him in the neck, and Serena screamed.

  Gordon stood there. He could not express it, could not say that the very fact of his emptiness meant something, that never for a moment had he denied or relinquished guilt, and so in that ineffable way did mourn and suffer her loss. Even his torturous memories were meaningless, as futile as this brother’s outburst. What possible atonement was there for taking her life? What reparation might balance the loss? None, of course. Not even execution or suicide could plug the hole he had made in the universe. And in his own soul. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so very sorry.”

  “Sorry! Sorry! What’s sorry? What’s that? That’s nothing! That’s a word! A fucking, useless, empty word, that’s all the fuck that is!” The man’s voice broke with a rubbly gasp, the unseen wreckage of a cave collapsing in on itself.