A Hole in the Universe

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “Yeah. He’s dead. Polie put him in one of them bin things. He filled it with rocks and threw him in the river.”

  She dropped the bread bag onto the ground. “No, he didn’t.” She made herself smile. “You’re just saying that.” To get back at her and Polie both.

  CHAPTER 23

  A strand of yellow police tape dangled from the porch railing. The previous night’s storm had brought down a large tree limb that covered most of the old woman’s backyard. Gordon had just gotten home from work when he saw Detective Kaminski leaving Mrs. Jukas’s house. He asked the detective if he thought it would be all right for him to cut up the branches and remove them from her yard so that Mrs. Jukas wouldn’t have to come home to such a mess. It wasn’t up to him, Detective Kaminski said, and besides, the old woman wasn’t any better. Her niece in Michigan wanted the doctors to take her off life support, but without a living will the hospital had refused.

  “Thank goodness,” Gordon said.

  “You’re glad?”

  “Well, of course. I can’t believe her niece would ask that.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be laying there like that, would you, barely alive, hooked up to machines?”

  “No, I know what you mean.”

  “But if the tree’s bothering you, I suppose you could always ask the niece.”

  “It’s not bothering me. That’s not what I meant.”

  The detective opened his notebook. “Sheila Brown. She remembers you from years ago when she used to visit here. She said her aunt was always afraid of you.”

  “She got over that, I think. For the most part, anyway.”

  The detective flipped a page. “I don’t know, according to her lawyer there was some problem about a ladder,” he said.

  Gordon tried to explain, but the detective kept interrupting: Why had he taken the ladder from her? Where was it now? How long had he been out of work? Had his brother been giving him money? Things must have been getting pretty desperate, then.

  “I was behind on my bills, but I wasn’t desperate,” Gordon said.

  “How come you were fired?”

  “I’m not sure. Neil Dubbin, I don’t know if you know Neil, he’s . . . well, he’s volatile.”

  “Volatile?” The detective chuckled. “He said you tried to burn his building down.”

  A few days passed. As its leaves withered in the heat, the huge limb seemed to be sinking into Mrs. Jukas’s yard. Decay was a quicker process when no one cared, eventually a contagion. Every day, Gordon noticed some new deterioration in the neighborhood, in his own house. And it wasn’t just things, but people. First Mrs. Jukas, now Inez and her family were gone. They hadn’t trusted him, but he had enjoyed watching the comings and goings of their large family. He seldom saw Marvella Fossum. The other night she fell asleep on the top step, smoking a cigarette. Jada tried to wake her up, then gave up and sat next to her. She had still been there when he went to bed, laughing and calling out wisecracks to passersby as if this were a perfectly normal situation in a perfectly normal life. Didn’t everyone sit by their stoned-out mother so she wouldn’t topple down the porch stairs? Was anyone sitting with Mrs. Jukas? He would ask Kaminski if she could have visitors.

  There hadn’t been any police activity next door unless they came while he was at work. During the day someone had thrown beer bottles from a car. Gordon went out to pick up the broken glass before his pizza came. There were a few pieces on Mrs. Jukas’s front walk, but he was afraid to step onto her property without permission. Her grass hadn’t been cut. A drainpipe leaned out from the corner of her house. Across the street the curb was lined with boxes of trash and an old rug that Inez’s sons had thrown out at the end of the move. Jada had just come out to look through the boxes. From the corner of his eye, he saw her pull out a bent metal shoe rack, then stash it up on the porch. She pushed the rug away from the telephone pole, then rolled it toward the house. Even from here he could hear her grunting as she tried to drag it up the steps. He started into the house when she began calling his name.

  “Hey, Gordon! Gordon!”

  He closed the door, then through the curtain watched her struggle to get the rug onto the porch. Every time she got it halfway up, it slipped back down. Now she was trying to push it up, but she was too skinny, the rug too bulky. Watching her shove her bony shoulder up against the coarse, unyielding rug filled him with a terrible anger. He closed his eyes, trying to will away the pain, then shuddered as it tore through him. He would not do this. He could not. He would not feel this. Would not, but there it was, her, all the pain and futility he’d ever steeled himself against, not just loose in the world, but in this place, here, where he’d sought refuge.

  A dusty white car was coming down the street, antenna bent, windshield smudged, and, flapping out from under one door, the ruffled red hem of Delores’s skirt. “Yes,” he said softly, with more longing than he had ever known before. She got out and hurried across the street to help Jada. Together they wrestled the rug onto the porch.

  “She didn’t want me to come inside,” Delores told him when she finally came in. Gordon offered her a bandage, but she kept sucking her bloody knuckle. She’d cut it helping Jada. “She said her mother was sick. But I think Jada’s the sick one. She looks awful, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” he said as she opened the envelope, getting a little blood on the back of the photograph she was removing. She held it against her chest.

  “She said you were just out there.”

  “I was picking up some trash.”

  “And you didn’t see her?” she said with a bewildered edge to her voice.

  “Not really.”

  “You didn’t see her trying to get that big rug up on the porch?”

  “Yes, I saw her.” He met her gaze.

  “And you didn’t help her?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  Biting her lip, she looked at him a moment more, as if to comprehend what he’d said. He asked to see the picture, and she handed it to him hesitantly. The agency had sent it. It had just come in the mail, and she wanted to share it with someone. Someone—not her family, but him, he realized.

  “She’s pretty.” He looked closely. May Loo’s stern little face intrigued him with its self-containment. “It’s almost as if she’s trying to send some kind of message or something.”

  “I thought the same thing! I’ll bet they told her to smile, but she wouldn’t. It looks like that, doesn’t it? As if it’s her life and, damn it, she’s going to be in charge,” she said with tender pride.

  “Look at her eyes. How they’re staring straight into the camera.” His own eyes burned with the press of Delores’s arm as she leaned closer.

  “I know. It’s almost scary, isn’t it?”

  “Think she’ll like it here?”

  “What’s not to like? Except me, of course,” she added with an uneasy laugh, and suddenly the moment had changed again. She was complaining about her family. It wasn’t just May Loo they were critical of, but adoption itself. Especially by an unmarried woman not making much money who lived in a tenement in one of the poorest cities in the state. Even her pregnant, twenty-year-old, unmarried-but-engaged niece had weighed in with a warning about single motherhood. “And every single e-mail, that’s the bottom line,” she continued. Her oldest sister had been bombarding her with stories about adoptions that turned out badly. “The worst one was the boy that stabbed his mother to death while she was playing the piano.”

  “Maybe it was her playing. Maybe it was that bad.” He grinned with Delores’s quick laugh.

  “That’s exactly what I said, too, but Linda, she has no sense of humor.”

  The doorbell rang and he jumped up. His pizza was here, his third in less than a week. He had worked up the courage to place an order when he saw one being delivered down the street. He usually saved two slices for work the next day. That way he wouldn’t have to pack a lunch. “Thank you,” he said, giving the delivery boy the exac
t change.

  “Yeah, right.” The boy clomped down the steps.

  “What’s his problem?” Delores said as his car peeled down the street.

  “I don’t think he likes his job. He was like that last time, too.”

  “Did you tip him?”

  “No!” He was embarrassed. “Should I call and have him come back?”

  “Just do it next time. Um, smells good.” Delores followed him into the kitchen. “What kind is it?”

  “Pepperoni and cheese.”

  “Oh, I love pepperoni.” She leaned over the box and inhaled deeply.

  He offered her some, then was annoyed when she accepted. She curled the slice and ate it like a sandwich. Sauce leaked onto her silk shirt, and there was a ridge of cheese under her thumbnail. She wet the corner of a dish towel and scrubbed the stain, spreading it to an orangy smear, then hung the towel back up. He took it down and rinsed it in cold water.

  “I can’t believe we ate that whole pizza.” She stuffed the empty box into the trash.

  “I know.” He took it out and folded it to take up less room. “I usually save two slices for lunch at work.” He hated himself for her crestfallen look.

  “Oh. The two slices I just ate. Now I feel guilty.”

  “No, don’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. Really.”

  Yes, you did, her stare said. “I annoy the hell out of you, don’t I, Gordon.”

  “No! Really. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know why I did.” He felt horrible.

  “Because it was the truth. And that’s okay. But what’s not is setting me up just to shoot me down.” She smiled, but her eyes blistered with tears.

  “No! I wasn’t doing that. I—”

  “That’s all right. People have been doing that to me all my life. I guess I’m just one big, easy target.” She wiped her eyes, then blew her nose in the greasy napkin, and he forced himself not to look away. “You know what else my sister said? That the agency probably won’t even approve me. Then she says the only reason she’s telling me is so I wouldn’t be absolutely devastated when it happens.” She shook her head and closed her eyes. “But I will be. I know I will.”

  “They’ll approve you. Of course they will. Why wouldn’t they?” She still hadn’t looked up. “Because of you, she said. Because you’re my friend.”

  “Well, then . . . well, then maybe we shouldn’t be friends.” Saying it sucked every molecule of oxygen from his lungs. He felt weak.

  She nodded. “Maybe not for a while, anyway. At least not until I’m approved. Or maybe I should wait until she’s here, you know, with me, and it’s all finalized. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I know what you mean. I understand. Yes, of course.” But he didn’t, instead felt it again, anger so foreign it felt like a growth in his chest. “But it’s not just me you should worry about, but Smick, that boss of yours. Being with a married man won’t help your cause now, will it?”

  Her cheeks flared as red as if they’d been slapped. “That’s been over for a while now. And just so you’ll know, I’m very ashamed of that.”

  You should be, he thought as the door closed quietly behind her.

  The phone rang moments after he got into bed.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh, Gordon. Darn, I was just going to hang up. I woke you up, didn’t I,” Lisa whispered as if he still might be sleeping.

  “No, I wasn’t asleep.” He was disappointed. He’d been sure it was Delores.

  “Well, the reason I’m calling so late is that my mom and dad just left. They’d come by for dinner, and all Daddy could talk about was you and what a great job you were doing, and how much your supervisor likes you. He said every single day without fail you do the work of ten men, and I thought to myself, I’ll bet no one’s told you, and so that’s why I’m calling, just to tell you how happy I am and how . . . how proud I am of you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And Dennis is, too, Gordon. But he’s having a hard time right now. A really hard time.”

  “Is he all right? He’s not sick or anything, is he?”

  “I don’t know. He just seems so flat. So distant. He comes home from work, then just sits in the dark listening to music until it’s time for bed. And then he only sleeps for an hour or two.”

  “What do you think is wrong?”

  “Us, I think.”

  He didn’t know what to say. The silence roared in his ear.

  “Would you come and see him? I think he needs that right now. I think it would help.”

  He went downstairs and sat on the couch. He remembered the Christmas morning he’d walked in here and found his first bicycle under the tree. His happiness deflated when his mother and father said he was too big for training wheels. He could still feel the terror and the humiliation of those wobbly trips back and forth along the sidewalk with his father running behind while he held on to the back of the seat, trying to keep his huge son balanced. And then his father’s disappointment every time he let go and the bike careened out of control. It was eventually easier on them both to just quit. And then one day he looked out the window and saw his younger brother being pushed down the street. His father let go and Dennis kept pedaling triumphantly ahead, ownership his, as always, by achievement.

  I’m not a good man, he thought, staring at the sheer, still curtain. My brother needs help and I know I should care, but I can’t. I don’t. He was still trapped, but here there were no guards, no one on the catwalks, and the only locks opened from the inside.

  Gordon was scraping patches of peeling paint on the back of the house. His resolve to call Delores and apologize grew with the rhythm of the work. Maybe they couldn’t spend time with each other, but they could at least talk on the phone, he would tell her. What would be the harm? The adoption people wouldn’t know. And then when she passed all the tests and finally did get May Loo, they could see each other again. He carried the step stool around front, relieved to see more blistered clapboards. Work was his refuge. He began to scrape, working through the layers, not once gouging the wood. He didn’t know why he’d lost his temper and spoken to her that way. Maybe he’d never know how to deal with people. How could he be part of a relationship when he didn’t even know how to be a friend? Friendships had always been for other people. It had always been easier to not have feelings, to just go through the motions, but he was tired of being alone. Even pain and anger might be better than this. Climb down now, then, and call her, he kept telling himself, but he was afraid. He could feel his resolve weakening. He went inside and picked up the phone. What if Delores wanted him to leave her alone but was too kind to say it? Maybe May Loo was her best excuse for getting rid of him. The number he dialed was Dennis’s.

  “Dennis? Gordon’s here.”

  Lisa slowly opened his study door. His brother’s greeting was a dim smile. It was Lisa who told him to sit down, who said Dennis had missed him and was glad to see him. She said she’d be right back with coffee for them. Neither wanting to be left alone with the other, each declined, but she left anyway.

  The brilliant July morning seemed worlds away from this stale room dim with closed blinds and Dennis’s heavy silence. Gordon was reminded of his father’s morose visits to Fortley and the pain of their forced conversations.

  He cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. “Lisa says you’re not feeling too good. Are you sick?” he asked. Had Dennis nodded? He wasn’t sure.

  “I’m all right,” Dennis finally said in such a low voice, it was a moment before Gordon understood.

  “You don’t look all right.”

  Dennis sighed. “I don’t, huh?”

  “No. You look . . . well, depressed.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  “Are you?” he said quickly, to parry the glint of threat in his brother’s tone.

  “I said I was all right, didn’t I?”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  Returning, Lisa set the tray between them
on the glass-topped table. Dennis waved off his mug. “Then don’t take it,” she said. “But Gordon might like some.”

  “He already said he didn’t,” Dennis said with such contempt that Gordon couldn’t look at her. He squirmed, as unnerved by their strife as he had been by his parents’.

  “But this is good,” he said with a quick, eager sip. “I’m glad now that I have it. I got up so early to start scraping before the heat that I didn’t get a chance to make any.”

  “Scraping what?” Dennis asked.

  “The house. It’s coming along good. Yesterday I got the back done. Now I’m starting on the front.” His next sip deteriorated into a slurp that sent coffee down his windpipe.

  “What the hell’re you scraping the house for?”

  “So I can paint it,” he said, coughing. “Thanks,” he wheezed as Lisa handed him a napkin.

  “I just had it painted. It cost me two thousand dollars and now you’re scraping it all off?”

  “It was starting to peel. I did some, so then I figured I might as well keep going.”

  “ ‘Keep going’? What do you mean, ‘keep going’?”

  “The places that peeled, that’s all. So I can touch it up like Dad always did.”

  Dennis stared at him. “Kaminski came by. What’s he talking about, you want to cut up Jukas’s tree? What the hell’s that all about?”

  “No, a branch. A big branch, it—”

  “What the hell’re you thinking?”

  “I just offered. I thought it would help, that’s all.”

  “Help? Help who, you?”

  “Mrs. Jukas, of course.” He stiffened.

  “Don’t you get it? Don’t you see what’s happening here?” Dennis rose from the shadows like a flame to oxygen. “They think you did it! Naturally! Of course they do!”

  “They’ll find out I didn’t.” Fury burned in his chest.

  “Yeah, and meanwhile they’re asking questions all over town about you.”

  “Dennis,” Lisa warned. “What’s the point? Gordon knows what’s going on. You don’t have to make him feel more uncomfortable about it all. So let’s just drop it, please. Gordon,” she added quickly, “how about coming to dinner next Sunday? I thought we could do something special for Mum and Dad,” she was telling Dennis. “The next day they leave for Australia and they’ll be gone so long, over a month.”