A Hole in the Universe

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “I don’t care. Do what you want. I’ll probably be in bed anyway.”

  “No! No, you won’t, Dennis Loomis. I think you can sit down and have dinner with your family at least one night, especially before Mum and Dad’s trip.”

  “That’s all right, Lisa. I can’t anyway, so—”

  “I don’t ask much of you, Gordon, do I?” Her tone hardened. “So will you please do this for me and for your brother?”

  Stunned, Gordon nodded. She had never spoken to him this way.

  “He doesn’t want to.” Dennis seemed amused. “He wants to be left alone. He doesn’t need anybody. He doesn’t care about anybody. He never did, never in his whole life, so why the hell should he start now?”

  Jada was lonely. She had been looking for Thurman. His cousin Antawan hadn’t seen him since he’d shaved his head. His older sister, Jesenia, on Margin Street, had heard that he’d gone to New York with a couple of gangbangers. “You Jada?” she asked as Jada went down the steps.

  “Yeah!” she said, turning with a smile.

  “If you’re smart, you’ll stay away from him.”

  “Thurm’s cool. He’s good. He’s my friend.”

  “He’s saying things about you. Bad things.”

  She shrugged and continued on her way. She went into the drugstore and looked at the pictures in People until the Indian at the counter said buy it or leave, he wasn’t running any library here. She walked by the Market, slowing down just enough to flip the bird at the bitch with the tubes. She turned in to the parking lot, then pushed her way through spindly trees and trash-blown brush. Twigs snapped underfoot. Maybe Cootie’s dog was still alive. She should have gone back that day and given him something to eat. No sound came as she neared the cardboard lean-to, not a cry, nothing. Not wanting to look, she ran by. When she came to the flattened box on the ground, she sat down and hugged herself. If only someone would hold her like this, be close to her the way Thurman had. She closed her eyes to meditate the way she’d seen once on television. Sink into the dark, into the deep, deep, deep, deep, she tried to will herself. Instead, she thought about the baby and how much she already loved it, even if Polie was the father. Her mother was still on crack. She had promised Polie she was getting an abortion. Twice now he’d come to bring her into Boston, but she’d start throwing up and saying she was sick. Jada knew she was just too scared. Scared of everything and everyone. Yesterday a sheriff banged on the door. Her mother locked herself in the bathroom, shaking and sobbing that it wasn’t her, that the old lady was lying, but all the sheriff did was slide another eviction notice under the door. Jada almost hoped they did get evicted. Because that’s what her mother needed right now, a jolt to get her back on her feet and thinking straight. Yesterday when Delores helped her carry the rug up the steps, she had almost told her how bad things were.

  She was cutting through backyards when she heard barking. “Hey, c’mere, boy,” she called softly. The black-and-white puppy ran toward the fence, wiggling all over, the way Leonardo used to. His little snout stuck out through the chain link. She touched the wet pink nose and laughed. “What’s your name, pretty boy?” She hurried to the gate with the dog squealing and yipping alongside the fence, his stubby tail wagging. “Yipper, huh? That’s a good name, you little yipper.” The puppy jumped against the fence and squealed even more. “Shh. Shh. What’s the matter? You don’t like it in there, do you. Jesus Christ, I don’t blame you.”

  The rusty gate creaked as she forced it open. A tattered trampoline took up most of the tiny yard, leaving little room for the puppy to roam. A scum of leaf bits and dead midges floated in his water bowl. “Wanna come with me? Wanna go for a walk? Yeah, you need some exercise.” The minute she touched his warm, fuzzy head, the puppy grew quiet and she knew how desperate he was for love. Nobody was ever out here with him. He was always tied up. They probably only came out to give him a kick when he barked. “Good boy, that’s a good boy, now,” she whispered as she untied the rope from the red leash. “Here we go!” she cried, snatching him up and running as fast as she could, four, five, six blocks. Three more and she’d be home. Safe. She put him down on the sidewalk and pulled on the leash, expecting him to strain back the way Leonardo used to. Instead, he trotted alongside. His jaunty bounce made her laugh.

  When Gordon finished priming the scraped clapboards, he washed his brush and then went back out to spray the roses. All his care was finally paying off. There were only a few black spots on the leaves, and each bush had new blooms. He cut off three full-flowering stems. They were for Lisa. Her dinner was tonight, and he was dreading it. He wished he could call Delores and ask her to go with him. It seemed so strange that just when he realized how much he needed her in his life, she had to step away. A plastic grocery bag and newspaper pages had blown up against Mrs. Jukas’s steps, but there was nothing he could do.

  “Hey, look at my new dog,” Jada called, crossing the street. The puppy wiggled toward him. “Sit down! Sit!” she said, and he did. “Good boy!” she said, and the puppy leaped at Gordon. “Sit!” she ordered, and once again he obeyed, however reluctantly.

  Gordon laughed. He knelt down and petted his back. The puppy sprang, jumping and squealing. She told him to sit again, but Gordon said it was all right, that he was a very nice puppy. “A very good little puppy,” he said now as he rubbed his head. “What’s his name?”

  “Yipper.”

  “How long have you had him?”

  “Not too long.”

  “He’s pretty well-trained.”

  “Yeah, well, we been working on it, haven’t we, Yipper?” She knelt down, too, and stroked her hand along his back to the tip of his tail. “I told him, You gotta have manners. You can’t be jumping and barking and pissing on people all the time.”

  “Well,” he said, standing up. She did, too. “I’d better get my things put away here.”

  “Yeah, I been watching you. You been working out here a lot, huh? How come?” she asked as he reached down for his spray bottle. She picked up his pruner and handed it to him. With the puppy happily alongside, she followed him toward the garage. “You gonna sell it? That’s what my uncle Bob used to say, ‘Time to fix’er up and sell.’ He does that every place he lives to get a better house, and now you should see his house, the one he lives in now. It’s like this wicked nice place with marble floors and all kinds of beautiful paintings,” she called into the hot, musty garage as he hung the pruner on its nail. Her ragged, run-on voice filled the bright doorway. “I was just there last week and my aunt Sue, she wanted me to stay a couple days and help her with this big party—she’s always having parties—but I couldn’t. My mother,” she said as he stepped out past her. “She’s gonna have a baby, did I tell you that? Yeah, I’m really excited. I can’t wait, but anyway, she’s got, like, that morning sickness, ’cept for her morning’s all day long. So I have to stay home, you know, to help her and stuff,” she said, so close on his heels that he almost tripped on the puppy. He picked up the cut roses. “Oh, my God, they’re so beautiful.” She leaned close to smell one. “They for Delores?”

  “No, my sister-in-law.”

  “Oh yeah, the one with the kids, a boy and a girl, right?”

  “Yes, well, I better go in and get ready.” He started toward the house.

  “Get ready for what? She having a party or something?”

  “No, just dinner.”

  She picked up the puppy and climbed the steps after him. “You should get a dog. I’ll bet you’d like that. It’s nice to hold them, and the way they love you and stuff,” she said as the puppy licked her chin.

  “It wouldn’t be fair to the dog, having to be alone all day.”

  “Oh, yeah, where you working now? I see you leave early, but you don’t get home till after six usually.”

  “Yes. It’s a new job.”

  “Where?”

  “You probably never heard of it.” He put his hand on the knob. “Well, I’d better get busy. I’ve got quite
a few things to do in here.” If he opened the door, she’d be right in after him.

  “Too bad about the old . . . about Mrs. Jukas, huh?”

  “Yes. It’s a terrible thing. Poor woman.”

  “Well, don’t feel too bad. She hated you almost as much as me and my mother.”

  “She didn’t hate me,” he said quickly.

  “Well, she was a bitch—to me, anyway. Like I’m some piece of . . . crap. Like I don’t have feelings or something.” She looked up at him, and for a moment he was afraid she might cry.

  “I better go get ready.”

  “You’re still mad at me! I told you, I was scared, that’s all. That’s what happened that time.” She gestured up toward the second floor.

  “Yes. Well. I understand.”

  “No, you don’t. You think I’m some kinda little slut or something. Well, I’m not! I’m a good person. I am!”

  “Yes. Of course. I know you are.”

  “Then how come we’re not friends anymore? Ever since that night you won’t even talk to me.”

  “We’re friends.” He cringed. That night. Even the way she said it was an indictment. “See? Here, take this. It’s for you.” He handed her one of the roses.

  “Thanks,” she said, grinning.

  Once inside, he hurried upstairs. He was supposed to be at Dennis’s at six for dinner, and it was four forty-five. He was unbuttoning his shirt when loud voices rose from the street. He looked out the window and saw two young men, shouting and running toward Jada. The shorter man, burly and bald, grabbed her while the other tried to pull the dog from her. Jada kicked and shrieked for them to let her go. The burly man was behind her with his hairy forearm across her throat. Yelping, the dog ran in circles while the second man tried to grab his leash.

  “What are you doing?” Gordon demanded as he ran into the street.

  “She took my dog! This is my dog!” The second man had finally gotten the leash.

  “Leave her alone!” Gordon ordered. The man still gripped Jada’s neck.

  “She’s a fucking thief,” the man shouted as if to justify his hold on the skinny girl. “She came and took him right outta the yard.”

  “I don’t care what the hell she did. Let go of her,” Gordon growled, advancing on him.

  He released her, and Jada rubbed her neck with both hands. Up on the porch, Marvella Fossum peered down from the doorway.

  “It’s not his dog!” Jada cried. She grabbed for the dog, and the man pushed her back.

  “What are you, nuts? It’s my dog!” he said, lifting his chin from the puppy’s lapping tongue.

  “Jada.” Gordon moved closer until he was between her and the men. “He says it’s his. Is it?”

  “No! It’s mine!”

  “She says it’s hers.”

  “Hey, look, I ain’t got time for this. It’s my dog,” the man said, backing off, the exuberant puppy in his arms. “And if you got a problem with that, then you do something about it. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “It’s not your dog, you fucking asshole!” Jada screamed, and now the burly man charged toward her.

  “Watch your mouth, you crazy spook, or whatever the hell you are.”

  “Jada!” Gordon grabbed her as she lunged forward, trying to get at the man. “Stop it! Stop that now,” he said. The man laughed as she screamed obscenities at him.

  “It’s not your dog,” Gordon told her. “You know it’s not, so stop it! Stop it! Why are you doing this?” Even with both arms around her, she struggled and screamed.

  “Why?” He turned her to face him. “Why?”

  “I found him.” She sank against him, sobbing. “I didn’t steal him, I swear I didn’t. I found him. And I wanted to keep him. That’s all, I was just tryna help him, that’s all I was doing.”

  “Go home, Jada. Go on inside.” He stepped away now that the men were gone. “Go on. Go ahead now.”

  She picked up the rose from the sidewalk. “You don’t believe me, do you.”

  He nodded. “I believe you.” Believed that she’d take whatever she needed to get by. Believed that for her there was no other choice.

  CHAPTER 24

  After drinks in the great room, Lisa had eased her guests into the dining room. It was a casual affair, the women in slacks, the men in open-necked shirts, place mats instead of linen. Up and down the table, small votive candles floated in bowls of water above iridescent glass chips, reflecting ripples of light off everyone’s faces. Lisa looked especially pretty tonight, radiant, Gordon thought as she sat beside her mother. His initial panic at seeing so many people here had subsided into a careful busyness with his utensils and his food. He was pleased to see his roses in the middle of the table, however spindly they were compared to the profuse arrangement they had replaced, pink and orange dahlias spiked with pink and white astilbe. The brighter bouquet sat on the sideboard, but it was the fragrance of roses that graced the room. He was grateful for the anonymity he felt as conversations cross-fired around him. They were all vigorous talkers, each as anxious to be heard as he was to be ignored. Twice now from his end of the table, Mr. Harrington had tried to include him. Gordon’s responses were brief. His pallor ashen, Dennis sat at the other end. Above the untouched food on his plate, his fixed smile made him look bored and distracted. Across from Gordon was Father Hensile. Next to the priest sat Luke, the new youth minister. A delicate young man with thinning hair, he seemed only a shade less nervous than Gordon, and his fair cheeks smarted with any attention. Farther down the table were Marty and Becca Brock, Mitzi and Tom Harrington’s very best friends. Tom and Marty had been roommates at Dartmouth. In fact, it had been Marty’s sister who had introduced Lisa’s parents. Well into her seventies, Becca Brock was a petite, startling-looking woman with heavily made-up eyes and long, inky-black hair. Busily opinionated, she was able to tune in to three or four conversations at once. She had just asked Jennifer, the teenage girl hired to help with dinner, to get her another fork, her tines were bent. Dennis stared at her.

  “And that was the last we ever saw of him.” Tom had been telling Father Hensile about a man he and Marty Brock fondly recalled as Mossie. Lisa looked up quickly and asked her father if he’d like more wine. It was obviously a story she’d heard too many times before. The way both men told it, Mossie, heir to a steel company, got up one day in his parents’ Pittsburgh manor, had a robust breakfast with his father, “steak, home fries, eggs, put on his snowshoes, then went three miles into the woods out back—”

  “Oh, five or six, anyway,” Marty interjected. “They owned half the county.”

  “He dug a little hollow in the snow, sat down against a tree, and put the gun in his mouth—”

  “Tom!” Mitzi said with a pained smile. “Lisa wants you to try the new Merlot. Here, dear, let me.” Mother and daughter exchanged looks as Lisa passed the bottle.

  The teenage girl had returned with a new fork. The men continued to wonder why Mossie would choose to end such a charmed life. “Looks, brains, bucks, dames, the kid had it all!” Marty sighed as he cut his veal.

  “Amazing,” Tom agreed, as if suicide had been just another of Mossie’s accomplishments.

  Gordon thought of Jerry Cox. He had killed only what was already dead. His suicide had been the ultimate pretense, an empty contrition, the coward’s last opportunity to inflict more pain on good people.

  “Would you pass the sauce, please,” said John Stanley from Gordon’s right. John Stanley was a reedy, droopy-faced man whose crisp British accent Gordon found unnerving. Its authority announced itself like the running tap tap tap of a guard’s baton along the bars, demanding attention, respect, obedience. Gordon couldn’t see any sauce.

  “Gravy. Right there.” With John Stanley’s sharp nod, Gordon seized the boat too quickly by its handle, splashing gravy into a candled bowl. “May I have its dish, please?” Stanley held the gravy boat over his own plate to catch the dribbles. “It’s right there.”

  “Oh, yes, here
. I’m sorry.” Gordon handed him the dish.

  Like a slow-turning beacon, Dennis’s dull gaze caught him.

  “You are just the most fabulous cook!” Becca Brock called across to Lisa, who had gotten up to fill her father’s wineglass, though he had already said he didn’t want any. She leaned close and squeezed his shoulder.

  “So, Gordon, I hear you’re painting the house,” he said with the cue.

  “Yes, sir. Well, touching it up.”

  “Well, you ever need any help now you be sure and call”—he peered over his glasses—“your brother here.”

  “I don’t know, Dennis is pretty busy.”

  “He could use the exercise.”

  “He gets plenty of that, sir,” Gordon said, and everyone laughed—with some relief now that Gordon had spoken and seemed normal enough.

  “I did some work with the Samaritans,” Rena Stanley was telling Marty Brock.

  “Suicide should be a person’s right,” Becca Brock declared. “I mean, we control everything else in our lives, why not that?”

  “For God’s sake,” Dennis said under his breath.

  What’s wrong with him? Gordon thought, looking between his brother and sister-in-law. In the watery candlelight her olive skin glowed. Doesn’t he know what he has here? Two beautiful, healthy children downstairs watching videos with the Stanley children. Friends, a brother who loves him. Or was that it? Did Dennis really think he had no feelings? That he didn’t care about him? That he never had? Gordon’s chest felt heavy, watching him.

  Dennis gave another sigh, sprawled back in his chair, bored with the too familiar repartee, irritated and making no effort to hide it.