A Hole in the Universe

by Mary McGarry Morris

  Twenty-five years ago, the biggest ruckus on Clover Street used to be Mr. Shire’s weekend binges. When he was especially bad, Mrs. Shire would lock all the doors, triggering Mr. Shire’s barrage of rocks banging off the dented aluminum siding until the police would finally come and talk Mrs. Shire into letting him in. Gordon folded the paper towel into a smaller and smaller square. No, the biggest commotion on Clover Street had been the morning the cruisers came for him.

  He dialed Dennis’s number. No one would be home now. He’d leave a message about Mrs. Jukas. That way Dennis could handle it himself. Lisa answered and he stammered a moment, saying he was surprised, he thought she was at the lake. She had been, but Dennis had asked her to come home, had begged her. Their first appointment with the marriage counselor was tomorrow. Gordon squirmed, almost in real pain. He didn’t want to hear or be part of any of this, but Lisa continued. She’d already had one session herself but had been so insulted when the counselor called her an enabler that she almost got up and left. But it was true. She’d ignored the signs and looked the other way for years not because she loved Dennis so much that she was afraid of losing him, but because she didn’t love herself enough to do something about it.

  “Now that I look back I can see what I was doing, but when you’re in the middle of it, it all seems . . . normal. Or at least I convinced myself it was. Every time I think of it, I’m just so disgusted with myself. Everyone must have known.” She gave a bitter little snort. “I mean, if you did, so did a lot of other people. But you were the only one who would tell me. The only one with enough courage.”

  “No, that wasn’t it. I was mad.”

  “Well, thank you, then. I’m glad you were.”

  “I mean I was mad at Dennis, that’s why I told you.”

  “Having it come from his big brother was a shock, a real wake-up call. He’s the one who’s always had to put your life back together, and here you are telling him he’s doing something wrong.”

  He knew what she was trying to say, but he couldn’t help bristling. “I don’t know if you’ve heard yet or not,” he said with bruised dignity, “but I’ve got a new job, thanks to your father. I start Monday at the brewery. I’ll be working full-time.”

  “Oh, Gordon!” Her voice broke. “I’m so happy for you. For all of us.”

  As soon as he hung up, he realized he hadn’t said anything about Mrs. Jukas. Instead of calling back, he decided to go next door and look around more carefully. He had just gotten outside when his phone began to ring.

  “Gordon?”

  “Dennis!” He smiled, relieved to hear his brother’s voice. “Talk about mental tel—”

  “What the fuck are you thinking, going to my father-in-law without asking me? Without even a phone call! What’s wrong with you? Don’t you get it? Don’t you know how things work?”

  “I’m sorry. There was an ad. So I went, that’s all. Well, first I called.”

  “You couldn’t call me? How ’bout a heads up? How ’bout some goddamn simple consideration for my situation here?”

  “That’s why I couldn’t call you. I didn’t want to put you in a tight spot. I figured I’d just call and ask—”

  “Yeah, and go right over my head, right? Like Dennis is on everyone’s shit list, so forget about him. Don’t even consider how he’ll feel.”

  “No! No, Dennis, I swear. It wasn’t like that at all. In fact, I didn’t even think I’d get a job, much less get put through to Mr. Harrington.”

  “You know, my whole life I’ve been living in your shadow. Always embarrassed, always afraid no matter what I said or did, the only thing people’d be thinking was, I wonder if he’s like his brother.”

  “I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am.”

  “No, you’re not sorry. You’re a fuck-up, a serial fuck-up, and you don’t even know it.”

  Dennis’s tirade continued unchallenged. A tide of seething anger rose in Gordon’s chest, then ebbed: how naive to think he could work at the brewery. Sooner or later he would offend or frighten someone, and the fallout would be so much worse than if he worked for a stranger. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to take it,” he managed to interrupt. “I’ll call Mr. Harrington—or you can if you want,” he added quickly. “You can tell him I don’t think I should because of the family connection.”

  “I can’t do that! See? See the corner you’ve painted me into?” Dennis groaned.

  No, he didn’t see, he thought, crossing the lawn. His brother was being obstinate. Whatever move Gordon made was bound to be the wrong one. Now more than ever he wished he could talk to Delores. She always understood the complexities of family life, which right now seemed far more trouble than they were worth. For the briefest of moments he regretted the things he’d said to her, then as quickly reminded himself of her terrible duplicity. He wished he were far away from here right now, with no one to think of but himself.

  There were two more newspapers on Mrs. Jukas’s porch. Her mailbox lid stuck up over the catalogs jammed into it. He rang the bell, knocked on the door, then went around to the back of the house. On the top step the old metal milk crate still held the same three cans that it had for days. The wooden door rattled with his knock, and dust puffed out of the sagging screen. He leaned over the loose railing and looked in the window. Nervous as he was, he strained closer. If she walked into her kitchen right now and saw him, she’d have him arrested; no explanation would suffice. The cupboard doors above the stove were open. Cookies spilled onto the counter from a torn bag. There was a bottle of ginger ale on the table. This was nothing like the destruction in his own kitchen, but it didn’t look right, not at all the way the old woman would leave things. As he came down the steps, a glint in the dewy grass caught his eye. A key. He picked it up, then went back up to try it in the lock when he realized how stupid that was.

  Instead, he pushed the key through the mail slot. It fell with a clink on the other side of the door. He blew street dust off the newspapers, then forced them through the slot. At least now there were fewer signs of an empty house. Next he slid through the catalogs one by one, then her Newsweek magazine. He glanced in the window as he turned to go. What was that? He pressed his face against the grimy glass to see through the curtain. It was a shoe, a black shoe, a woman’s foot just barely visible inside the front hall. “Mrs. Jukas! Mrs. Jukas!” he shouted as he banged on the window, then on the door. Wait. What was he doing? If she could get up, she wouldn’t be lying there. His hand closed over the doorknob, then pulled back, fearful not of what he might find, but of what might happen if he entered a house without permission. “Mrs. Jukas!” he called, cheek against the glass. “I’ll be right back! It’s all right! I’m going to get help!”

  He ran down her walkway, then stood staring up and down the street. The young woman who lived on the corner was pushing her toddler, who sat huddled in the stroller between bags of groceries. She lowered her gaze and hurried by. “Excuse me. Ma’am!” he called on her heels. Turning, she hissed some Spanish invective warning him away. He ran into his house and grabbed the phone to call his brother. “Is Dennis there?” he gasped. The answering service said the office was closed, but if he wanted to leave—

  Before, he’d always had to look up Delores’s number, but this time he didn’t. Suddenly all things seemed clear, but with a clarity that placed him outside of himself, witness to this blundering, slow-moving, incompetent man. “Please, please, please be there,” he squealed, eyes closed, head bobbing with each ring as if trying to reel her in, home from wherever she might be. Her new job. She was probably at work.

  “Hello!” She was out of breath.

  “Delores! Something’s happened. Mrs. Jukas, I think she’s hurt. She must be. I saw her foot. It looks like she fell down, and I don’t know what to do.”

  She asked if her door was open. He didn’t know, he said. He was afraid to try it. “Call the police, then,” she said. “Call 911, they’ll come. They’ll be there in two minutes. They
’ll know what to do.”

  “I can’t! I’m afraid. What if they think I did something to her?”

  “All right. Look, Gordon, now just calm down. I’ll take care of it. I’ll call. Wait there. I’ll be right over.”

  Jada heard the sirens and knew. The ambulance backed up onto the lawn. Three cruisers had arrived, one parked directly below.

  “Are they coming here?” her mother shrieked from the bed.

  “No. It’s the old lady’s house. They’re going in.”

  “What’re they doing? What’re they doing?” her mother whimpered into her hands, rocking back like a terrified child desperate to soothe herself.

  “Nothing yet. They keep going in and out,” Jada reported from the front window. The cops kept moving around. Mostly, though, they were talking to each other. The black cop with white hair was the one that had been there last night. He was talking to Gordon. Delores stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. A small crowd had gathered in front of Gordon’s house.

  “They’re coming out. They got her. They’re taking her out,” Jada said, her mother screeching with each report. “She’s on a stretcher. The doctor, he’s holding some kinda thing on her face. An oxygen mask it looks like. They just stopped so he can fix it.”

  “She’s alive?” her mother asked incredulously. She emerged, squinting and cowering, from the dark room into the midday glare.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. They keep doing things, like, working on her.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Her mother covered her face and crouched low.

  “At least she’s not dead.” Jada was relieved. For the last few days she’d been convinced the old lady’s body was over there swelling up in the heat. Sometimes she even thought she could smell it.

  “So now she’ll tell, she’ll say it was us. Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! What’re they doing now?” Her mother turned in little circles.

  “Nothing. They’re putting her in the ambulance. They shut the doors. They got the lights on. They’re leaving.”

  Her mother staggered against the wall as she tried to run back into the bedroom. “I gotta go! Quick, we gotta get outta here!”

  “No! No, it’s too late. They’re coming. Two cops, they’re coming up the stairs, Ma!”

  Her mother wasn’t home, she told them. The older cop remembered Jada, but not her name. She told him and he wrote it down.

  “How old?”

  “Twelve.” She was afraid to say thirteen. She wanted to be eleven, ten, nine. The bedroom beyond was silent. She worried that her mother might be crawling out the window onto the shed roof. No, she was way too wasted. The old woman across the street, she was unconscious, the cop was telling her. They weren’t sure exactly when, a few days ago, but she’d been viciously beaten. She was in pretty bad shape. Did Jada know anything? No. Had she seen anybody around her house? Anything strange going on over there the last few days? No. What’s in that room? A bed. Anybody in it? He reached around the corner and flipped the switch. He stepped inside.

  “Marvella!” he called to the blanketed lump in the bed.

  “It’s okay, Ma,” Jada tried to warn her. “They don’t care about that. The old lady, the one across the street. She got beat up and they just want to know if we saw anybody over there.”

  Her mother covered her eyes and begged Jada to put out the light.

  “Is it okay?” Jada asked the cop. Sweat plastered her T-shirt to her back. Her mother was going to fall apart any minute. She could tell.

  The cop said to leave it on. He had to take notes.

  Her mother said she didn’t feel too good.

  “When’s the last time you got high?” he asked.

  She didn’t know. She was trying to quit, doing it herself. Cold turkey. She was pregnant. She had to get clean, she said, and something lurched in Jada’s chest. Even in the lie she found hope. If they could just get through this, everything would be all right. Her mother was saying she hadn’t left this bed in a week.

  “Except for last night,” the cop said, and she looked confused. “What was that, Feaster and Polie, what were you tryna get in his truck for?”

  “I don’t remember. I was mad, but I don’t know why.” She looked at Jada. “I was mad at you, right?”

  “Yeah.” She stared at her mother. “The assholes, you didn’t want them talking to me. You said to come in and I wouldn’t.” Actually, she had screwed up the drop in Dearborn. Thurman had shown up so wasted that he could barely talk, and she had to do the deal herself, forty rocks in her crotch, with him in his do-rag and gang pants, slobbering all over her on a park bench in the middle of prepville while people kept walking by, looking at them like they were freaks. The guy that finally came was older. He looked like he belonged in Dearborn, but his hands were shaking and he had those jangly crack eyes like her mother’s. He said it was too obvious with Thurman there, so they’d go do the deal in his car, just him and her. The minute she got in he took off. He only went around the block, but she was so scared that she riffled through the bills instead of counting and had come up sixty bucks short. As a result, she and Thurman hadn’t gotten a penny from Feaster. And when they got back her mother flipped out because Feaster wouldn’t give her the rocks he’d promised her if Jada ran for him. Jada had never seen him and Polie as scared as when the cops came.

  “Was Feaster here two days ago? He and Polie?” the older cop asked.

  “Not that I remember,” her mother said.

  “Somebody said they were. One of your neighbors, they saw the truck out there.”

  “Ask them, then, don’t ask me,” her mother said.

  “Feaster doesn’t like the old lady, does he?” the cop asked.

  Her mother shrugged. Her teeth were chattering. She hugged herself.

  “You see anybody over there on Monday? Up on her porch?”

  “Yeah,” she said, shivering. “That big guy, the one across the street. Gordon. He killed somebody once.”

  “But all he did was bring groceries!” Jada blurted.

  “When?” the younger cop asked. “When’d he bring groceries?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes. Whenever she needs them,” Jada said.

  “Did he bring her any Monday?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” She could feel the sting of her mother’s stare.

  “Yeah, he did,” her mother said, coughing. They waited for her to stop. The younger cop covered his nose and mouth. “I remember,” she wheezed. “He had two or three bags.” Her chest rose and fell as she tried to catch her breath.

  “But he left them on the porch,” Jada told her mother.

  “I don’t know,” her mother groaned, doubling over. “Jesus, I’m gonna be sick again.”

  The younger cop continued trying to pin Jada down about Gordon and the groceries. She couldn’t remember. She wasn’t sure. Her own stomach was heaving. She had to go to the bathroom.

  Maybe it had to be this way. Besides, Jukas was nothing but a mean old bitch. Even the cops didn’t seem to care all that much. So no matter what, life would just go on like always. The cops were gone, leaving behind the sweet, limy scent of their aftershave, the same as Uncle Bob’s. The smell reminded her of a long ride to the zoo once with her aunt and uncle. It had been Uncle Bob’s first time there, too. When the baby was old enough, she’d take it to the zoo. She’d get a carriage and take it for long walks. Her mother had probably never been to the zoo either. She’d take her, too. There was so much she’d do for them, her mother and the baby both.

  Her mother crawled into bed. She couldn’t stop crying. Jada stroked her sweaty back. “It’s okay, it’s okay, Ma.”

  “I’m scared. I’m so scared, I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t be scared, Ma. I’m going to take care of you. I promise. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  “He knows,” her mother moaned. “I could tell the way he was looking at me.”

  “No, he was looking at you like, ‘Well, it couldn
’ta been her, not all sick and pregnant like the way she is.’ ”

  Her mother rose up on one wobbly elbow. “Yeah, that’s right. I’m not that strong.”

  “Yeah, so see, Ma. It’s a good thing you’re having a baby,” she said, her voice racing to the manic pitch her mother hated, but she couldn’t help it because this time she knew things were finally going to get better. “So you gotta eat good food cuz you wanna have a healthy baby, right? Right, Ma?”

  Her mother sagged back down. She pulled the pillow over her head, begging Jada to leave her alone, but Jada was too happy to care. The choice was simple, her mother and the baby, or the old bitch.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Why? Why do that to an old lady?” the detective muttered again.

  What could Gordon say? What was the motive for any heinous act? He had only known his own, fear and cowardice, and here it was again, tire tracks in the lawn, the confusion of voices, another question while he was still answering the first one. The facts flashed on and off in his brain. The truth was in the details, but they kept twisting the details around. Why hadn’t he just gone in the unlocked back door? He’d told them twice, he hadn’t known it was unlocked until they told him. If he was so concerned about her, why hadn’t he tried the key? Why was his hand bandaged? Why did he put the money through the mail slot? He’d already told them. Here—he gave them the receipt. The time on the slip seemed of most interest to them. Where were the groceries, then? He showed them the bags on his counter. Where’s the juice and milk? the detective asked, checking the contents against the receipt. He explained why he’d had to throw them out. A detective in surgical gloves fished the empty containers from his trash. So he had drunk them first. Actually, no, he had poured them down the drain.