A Hole in the Universe

by Mary McGarry Morris

  He had replaced almost all of the cracked tiles by the front doors. Working had always been the best therapy. He sat back on his heels. A few more to go. Little by little, one step at a time, that’s all it took to make things look better. These black and gray tiles matched the rest of the floor. Last week, he had found them down in the cellar in a soot-covered box. When he showed Neil, he was told not to bother, the new owner would probably gut the place and start over. But then after Neil’s letdown this morning, Gordon had taken to his knees, scraping and gluing. Maybe the next potential buyer wouldn’t be so quick to write the place off. His lower back ached, and the cuts in his hands stung from the acrid glue. He felt a little light-headed, and his stomach was growling. He hadn’t even stopped for lunch. His enthusiasm for these projects seemed to irritate Neil. It was the same reaction Dennis had whenever Gordon mentioned repairs around the house, the brass hooks he had screwed over the sink for dish towels instead of hanging them on the oven door the way his mother used to, the stops he had glued in their old maple bureau to make the drawers line up evenly, the shims he had painstakingly shaved from the handle of an old paint stirrer and then wedged under the hinges so that the coat-closet door would finally latch shut. Dennis had given him that same look in the lobby the other night, as if he still didn’t get it, did he. Get what, though? That nothing was worth anything anymore? Not even people?

  June and Serena were concerned about Neil. After two days of almost giddy happiness, he was curled up on his cot now in a migrainous fog, clutching a bottle of Fiorinal. The Realtor’s very first client had wanted to buy the Market. He was an intense young black man in a pale-blue suit that glowed under the fluorescent lights. He drove a silver Mercedes and owned two other grocery stores, in Haverhill and Lowell. His goal was a chain of stores catering to the ethnic makeup of their particular locales. He had returned last night with his accountant to look at the books. This morning the Realtor called to say the accountant had declared the books rigged and the store a financial sinkhole. The only way to make a go of the business would be to double its size, and no bank was going to make that kind of investment in this part of the city.

  “That guy, the accountant, he’s from Dearborn. I mean, what the hell does he know about a place like this?” Serena said.

  “All he needs to know.” June sighed as she popped open a Diet Coke. “Where the hell’s Thurman? Three times now I told him to bring the carts in.”

  “Yeah, there’s only one left.”

  “I’ll go get them,” Gordon called as he brushed glue on the back of the last tile. “I’m almost done.”

  “No. You’ve got enough to do,” Serena said.

  “Yeah, that’s Thurman’s job,” June said.

  “I know, but I feel a little funny,” he said as he stood up. He needed some fresh air.

  “Then go home! To get some rest, I mean,” June added uneasily.

  “I know. I can barely keep my eyes open.” Serena yawned.

  “It’s the rain,” June said.

  It was the glue, but he was afraid to persist for fear they would think he was in some fume-crazed, murderous state.

  “It’s like night out there, it’s so dark,” Serena said.

  Suddenly, an ungodly wail filled the store. “What is that?” Gordon yelled, lurching toward the women. They shrank back, white-faced and gasping, while Thurman continued to push his broom toward them, singing to music only he could hear. Hand at her chest, June took off down the aisle. With a frantic tap on the boy’s shoulder, she ordered him outside to bring in the shopping carts.

  “There’s nobody here,” he protested, lifting an earpiece.

  “But there will be,” she said.

  “So then I’ll get’em.”

  “No, now!”

  “It’s, like, pouring out there!”

  “Go get the goddamn carts or I get Neil, whichever,” she wheezed.

  “Yeah, right.” Thurman laughed, then replaced his earpiece and headed back up the aisle, singing in a high-pitched, scratchy voice.

  “I’ll go. I don’t mind. I like the rain,” Gordon said, fumbling the torn store poncho over his head. The women’s eyes met: He likes the rain—of course, deviant that he is.

  Hurrying into the downpour, he was immediately calmed by the steady rain-beat on the visor. He took long, deep breaths, trying to clear his head and lungs as he struggled to push the carts through the rutted lot. He lined them up outside the front door, then headed down the street looking for more, sloshing through puddles. The few cars that drove by had their lights on. Their wheels sprayed up waves of water, drenching him. He took his time coming back with the rest of the carts. He was so wet now that it didn’t matter. He held his head back and let the rain sting his face. He pushed these carts into the others, then reached for the door. He froze. The eerie tableau through the blurred glass couldn’t be real. The rain streaming down the cloudy panes gave the fluorescent lights inside a pulsating, garish yellow glow. The man in the black ski mask and hooded sweatshirt pointed a gun at Serena as she hurried out of the office with two cash boxes in her arms. Huddled by her register, June held her tubes to her nose and stared out at Gordon. Thurman’s head bobbed along the back aisle in rhythmic oblivion. It was after three, so Leo had already gone home. With empty storefronts on either side as well as across the street, the nearest phone would be in the liquor store around the corner. By then it would be too late. He could run around back onto the loading dock to use the meat-room phone, then he remembered that door was always locked. Two more aisles to go and Thurman would be in sight of the gunman. Serena set the cash boxes on the counter. She started to back away, but the gunman spun around, screaming and gesturing with the gun. With each demand he sprang forward on one foot, then lurched back again to scream at June. Terrified, Serena seized a handful of plastic bags, most drifting to her feet as she tried to get one inside the other. She dumped the money from the drawers into the bag. June began to cry. A car was coming down the street. Gordon ran toward it waving his arms, but the horrified woman at the wheel veered into the oncoming lane, then sped away. The Market door flew open and the man ran outside. Gordon watched from the road with dirty water gushing past his feet.

  “He’s got a gun! He just held us up!” Serena screamed from the doorway as the man sprinted down Nash Street, hugging the bag to his chest.

  Gordon’s heavy, sodden sneakers splashed down the street, but once around the corner, the thief disappeared into the foggy rain. When he got back, three cruisers were in front of the Market, parked at the chaotic angles in which they’d arrived. Questioning Thurman was futile, though both women agreed that his sudden caterwaul of song had triggered the thief’s flight. Serena couldn’t stop shaking. June was hyperventilating. Her son was on his way to bring her home. This was the first holdup in which they’d actually seen a gun. Befuddled by pain and medication, Neil hunched in the front window, wearing a Red Sox cap and sunglasses over his light-sensitive eyes. “I was asleep,” he told silver-haired Detective Warren, who with his forearm kept shifting his belly into place. He asked the women to describe the thief’s voice. Shaky, they agreed. No accent. Not deep or high or soft.

  “Scared,” Serena said, hugging herself. “Like if we didn’t do what he said, he’d just shoot. Like he couldn’t even help it.”

  “So where were you again?” Detective Warren hefted his girth toward Gordon.

  “Out there. Getting the carts.”

  “For how long?”

  “Five minutes. I’m not sure.”

  “Five minutes. That’s a long time to be out in that.”

  “Just about all the carts were out there. Some were even down the street.”

  “So when you finally got them all collected, you were right there by the window.”

  “Yes,” he said, the details already blurring through the curtain of jailhouse blindness.

  “So you must’ve seen something. You were standing right by the window there.”

 
“I wasn’t really looking. I was trying to get the carts lined up.” June stared at him.

  “So you didn’t see anything until when?”

  “He ran out the door and Serena yelled. That’s when I started chasing him.”

  Warren’s eyes were cold on his. The detective wet his thumb and flipped a page in his blue spiral pad. “According to Serena Rimsky, you were standing in the middle of the road waving your arms when she yelled at you.”

  “Maybe. I might have been. I don’t know. I’m not sure.” Admit it, he thought as the detective stared at him. Tell him the truth, that you weren’t thinking straight. That once again at the crucial moment you panicked.

  You don’t know anything, kid, remember that.You were there, that’s all—you were just there: Jackie McBride’s first rule for survival.

  “How long you been out?” the detective asked in a low voice.

  “Since May first.”

  “You don’t remember me, do you.”

  “I don’t know, sir. I’m not sure.”

  “It was twenty-six years ago. I remember, my wife was pregnant. My daughter, that’s how old she is.” His thin wet smile said all the rest, though the steady overhead hum of the fluorescent tubes was the only sound anywhere.

  There was a short article in the paper the next day reporting a holdup at the Nash Street Market, owned by Neil Dubbin. Gordon was relieved his name hadn’t been printed. That night Dennis called. “Lisa just showed me the paper. That’s why I’m calling. About the holdup. We wanted to make sure you’re all right,” he was saying into the answering machine. Hearing Lisa in the background, Gordon felt safe picking up the phone. He said he was fine, then explained how he’d been outside while it was taking place. Well, that’s good. That’s good, Dennis kept saying, then handed the phone to Lisa, who wanted to talk to him.

  “Gordon, it’s not safe. You can’t keep working there. That’s it. I’m going to call my father and—”

  “No, Lisa. I’m fine, really. I don’t want you to do that.”

  At work he would look up to find the women staring. With his approach they would look the other way, pretending to be busy. Leo had stopped talking to him altogether. Now when his teenage daughters came into the store, Leo hustled them into the back room away from Gordon.

  Neil was disgusted. “What do you think you’re here for? Cuz you’re a good bagger? Cuz I want the fucking floor there fixed? No!”

  For one reason and one reason only—to prevent exactly what had just happened. But where the hell had he been at the moment of crisis, of conjunction, when once again the planets lined up in the inexorable constellation of bad breaks and failure under which Neil was doomed to live out his life? What the hell had he been doing rounding up carts when that was Thurman’s job?

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry’s not gonna cut it. Not when I’m out three thousand dollars.”

  Three hundred, Gordon knew but didn’t say anything. The police weren’t around the corner before Neil was running new tapes through the registers for his insurance company.

  “Tell me something,” Neil said, following him out to the loading dock the next day. He was unshaven and his clothes were wrinkled. “You must have connections, right? I mean, you know, people that know people, well . . .” He lowered his voice. “Like for instance, people that are good with . . . fires.”

  “No, I don’t.” He just stood there, holding on to the empty crates.

  A look of disgust came over Neil’s face. “I don’t get it. You’re supposed to be inside, but no matter what June says you gotta get outside. You have to, you want to because you love the fucking pouring rain so much. Then what do you do, you take off, you go for a walk. But meanwhile there’s a fucking holdup going on. You come back, but what, just a little too early, though, right, so you take off again. And now I’m supposed to go, ‘Oh, what a fucking coincidence’?”

  “It was. But if you want to fire me, that’s all right, I understand.”

  “Get outta my fucking way!” Neil gave him a shove and pushed past him, then paused as if to accommodate the expected or desired attack.

  The next morning Neil was about an hour late opening the store. His hands shook and everything had to be repeated before he seemed to understand. Later that afternoon there was a commotion by the register. Serena shouted for help.

  Thurman had Cootie pinned up against the wall.

  “Those’re mine! I swear to God, those’re mine!” the old man insisted as Thurman fished packs of cigarettes out of his pockets. He pulled three more packs from the lining of the ragged jacket. Eleven in all.

  “That’s it.” June picked up the phone.

  “No! No, please don’t! Don’t let her. Please, Neil! Please!” Cootie begged. “I’ll work, I’ll pick up all the papers out there. And the cans, they’ll all be yours. You let me before, Neil. And I did a good job. You know I did,” the old man bawled. “Please, Neil, please!”

  “Why? Why the hell should I?” Neil sounded as desperate as the old man.

  “My dog. My poor little dog.” Cootie pointed to the animal tied to the parking meter. Briars studded his matted fur. “They’ll put him to sleep. They told me last time, they said they would. Please, Neil, please. I’ll do anything.”

  Neil took him outside, then stood close by, talking, while Cootie untied the dog. The bedraggled creature rose on his shaky legs, then limped down the street next to his master, who hunched forward, trying to light a cigarette against the wind.

  The next day Gordon went into the storeroom, surprising Thurman as the boy was stuffing two cartons of Newports into his backpack. Gordon asked if he’d paid for them. What the hell business was it of his? Thurman sneered, zipping up the backpack.

  “It’s Neil’s business,” he said quietly.

  “Oh, fuck, yeah, right.” Thurman laughed.

  “Just put them back, and that’ll be the end of it,” he said.

  Thurman was already heading out through the store.

  Neil had enough trouble, he didn’t need this, Gordon thought as he followed the boy onto the street. “What’re you, in some big rush to get in a cell? Because that’s what’s going to happen. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Fuck off!” Thurman kept saying, trying to get away, until Gordon finally yanked the backpack from his shoulder. He took out the cigarette cartons and brought them inside. The women had been watching from the window. Without a word Gordon put the cartons back on the shelf. That night Neil called Thurman’s grandmother and fired him.

  Delores was ringing his doorbell. He came quickly onto the porch so he wouldn’t have to invite her in.

  She had just made oatmeal cookies. “Here, have one while they’re still warm.” She started to open the tin, but he said he wasn’t hungry right now. “I’m not disturbing you, am I?” she asked.

  He said it had been a long day. Across the street two men were trying to light the grill they had just carried onto the strip of grass in front of their house. The door above them kept opening and banging shut as women carried platters and bowls of food onto the porch.

  “I read about the holdup. And I kept calling to see if you were all right, but you didn’t answer, so then I started worrying,” Delores said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “That’s good. So, what have you been up to? What have you been doing?”

  “Nothing much. I don’t know.” He knew by her hungry smile that she wanted to talk about the other night.

  “The paper said the guy had a gun.” She paused. “Have they caught him yet?”

  “No. Not that I know of, anyway.”

  “Did you see what he looked like?”

  “No, he had a mask. Plus I was outside.”

  She asked if he thought there was any connection to the attempted break-in at his house the other night. He assured her there wasn’t. She asked if that girl Jada had come around again since that night. That night. So that was how she would get to talking about Dennis cheating
on his wife.

  “She did, the other day with her dog. But I was eating, so I didn’t go to the door. She always seems to come at dinnertime.”

  “She thinks you’re lonely. Aside from me, she said she’s your only company.”

  “I don’t like her thinking she can just run over here anytime she wants,” he said slowly, as pointedly as he could without coming right out with it. “I feel like telling her it’s not very polite.”

  Delores laughed. “You can try, but I don’t think polite’s in that girl’s dictionary.”

  “I know, but it’s annoying. I mean, I have things to do. And you know how it is, after being around people all day, you just want to be quiet when you get home. And alone.”

  “Alone? Around here?” Delores said as a flurry of children sped by on bikes.

  If I could go inside, I would be, he thought. Across the street, family members continued to stream from the house onto the porch steps. Below them a young man in baggy army pants was grilling sausages and hamburgers. The old woman, Inez, sat on the top step. She kept reaching back to serve everyone from the salad bowls and platters arrayed behind her on the porch floor. Salsa music blared from a second-floor window. A dog was barking. A woman with long black hair backed out the front door now with drink coolers and a stack of paper cups under her chin. A thick cloud of greasy smoke hung over the sizzling grill.

  “Smells good,” Delores said.

  A passing car blew its horn, and the young man waved his spatula overhead.

  “Yo!” Delores laughed when he did it again as another horn blared in greeting. “It’s so muggy tonight.” She blew the hair off her forehead. “Do you mind if I sit down?” She was dragging a white plastic chair closer to the railing.