The Most Dangerous Thing

by Laura Lippman

  “I’m going to go outside,” Mickey says. “Look around.”

  “You get all your stuff unpacked?”

  A pause. She’s actually thinking about whether to lie to her. The thing that kills Rita is that Mickey wants Rita to see her thinking about lying. “I’ve done enough,” she says. “For now.”

  “You did a shit job packing my glasses,” Rita says.

  “Maybe you should have packed them. I guess you were too busy.”

  She puts a lot of spin on busy. There’s no doubt what she means.

  “Yeah, I was busy. Busy working every night, so you can have food and clothes and a roof over your head.”

  “Yes,” Mickey says, looking upward. “And what a roof it is.”

  Rita raises a hand, her temper roaring back, even as Larry says, “Ladies, ladies.” Larry doesn’t like conflict. She better keep it in check if she wants to keep him, not let Mickey get a rise out of her. She wonders if Mickey understands this, if she’s baiting her mother to make her look bad in front of Larry.

  Joey bellows from the bedroom, waking up from his nap. Rita’s policy is that if he takes a nap at nursery school, he sure as hell is going to take one at home. But he never goes down without a fight.

  “Go get your brother,” she tells Mickey.

  “I was going to—”

  “Get your brother. Your stepfather and I have to—wash the sheets.”

  “He’s not my stepfather,” Mickey says, and Rita can’t be sure, but she thinks Larry nods.

  “Get your brother,” she says.

  “Half brother,” Mickey says. She always has to have the last word.

  As soon as Mickey leaves the room, Rita grabs the laundry basket and a random selection of clothes, doesn’t even bother with detergent.

  “Why do I—” Larry starts, and she gives his crotch a quick squeeze. “You’ll like it,” she whispers. “Doing laundry is good clean fun.”

  They can’t lock the door as it turns out, but they close it and start out standing. No one’s coming through that door unless they’re determined to push 250 pounds of human aside. But Rita doesn’t want to finish that way. It’s too tempting for her to press herself against the rattling washer, full of someone else’s clothes, Larry behind her, vibrating all over. She has to stuff her fist in her mouth to keep her pleasure to herself, and even Larry, expert at stifling his own cries, has to bite her shoulder to muffle his groans. He breaks the skin, although he doesn’t draw blood. She thinks she hears someone start to open the door, only to retreat.

  This is how I will keep you. She almost says it out loud. She has to be fun, spontaneous, dirty.

  Back in the apartment, little Joey is running around naked, screaming at the top of his lungs, and Mickey’s just watching him, no expression on her face.

  “Nake! Nake!” he screams. “I’m nake.” It’s the word he used as a toddler. He knows it’s funny.

  “What the hell, Mickey?”

  “He took his clothes off,” she says with a shrug. “I can’t help it if he’s retarded.”

  “Don’t call your brother retarded.”

  “Look at that little thing,” Larry says. “No resemblance there.”

  Rita shoots him a look. Shut the fuck up. Luckily, Mickey is oblivious, for once. She’s watching her brother run in circles as if she can’t remember what it’s like to be that young and silly. “Nake! Nake!” he cries. Rita reminds herself to be kind to Mickey, the less advantaged child, the one without a father, whereas Joey has two in a sense. Rita can tell it baffles Mickey that Rick Senior doesn’t have any obligations toward her since moving out. He’s kind enough to include her on some outings, but everything’s tailored to Joey—tot lot, cartoons—which makes it boring as hell for Mickey. Yet Rita can’t blame Rick, either. It’s biology. He’s taking care of what he believes to be his child. Eventually, Joey is what will bind Larry to her, far more important than hot sex in the laundry room and blow jobs at the drive-in. He just needs some time.

  “Nake! Nake! I’m nake!” Joey screams.

  “Retard,” Mickey says under her breath, but she’s smiling. They’re all smiling. Rita wonders if it would be wrong to start calling Joey by his middle name, which happens to be Lawrence.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Summer 1980

  Tim stands outside his house, watching the participants gather for the Fourth of July parade. He tries not to take it personally, that his one-block street, Sekots Lane, is used as a staging area for the annual parade, but he can’t help feeling slighted. Sekots has always felt like an annex to the real neighborhood, some orphan street that got tacked on by mistake. Sekots dead-ends into a hill where children sledded once, but the Dickeyville Garden Club planted it aggressively, hoping to block out the view of the Wakefield Apartments above them. Seemed ridiculous at the time, all those little saplings, but trees grow, and the club’s objective has been achieved. Tim remembers when those trees were smaller than his boys.

  It’s been years since his family was home for this parade. Even through last year, with his work life on and off, they were able to take their usual week in Ocean City. They always go to an old-fashioned rooming house that Tim’s family stayed in when he was a boy. It’s not fancy. In fact, it’s downright crummy, but what’s the point of spending dough on a place where you only come to shake sand out of your suit and hang wet towels over the railings. The location is prime, two blocks from the beach, within walking distance of the attractions along the boardwalk, where they spent almost every evening. Last summer, it broke Go-Go’s heart when he just missed the height cutoff for the bumper cars. Tim pleaded, even tried to slip the attendant a fiver. Go-Go threw a tantrum, not entirely out of character for him, although it struck Tim as particularly violent and out of control. Last summer—no, Tim tells himself. It hadn’t happened yet. It was only the one time. Go-Go said it was the only time he was ever in that old bastard’s cabin.

  No shore this summer, even though Tim is back to work. He has a gig at Tuerkes, which sells luggage and leather goods. Not doing the books, but working the floor as a sales associate. He likes it, sort of. He actually has to dress better than he did when he was working in accounting, and he enjoys the store’s deep leathery smell, the company of the other guys. They’re young, blow-dried. They go to discos and come in after the weekends, talking about the pussy they get, claiming a girl’s drink preference tells you everything about her, whether it’s a Wallbanger or a Sex on the Beach. They swear that the best girls, the classy girls, drink white wine spritzers or Bristol Cream. The women they talk about—they seem like an entirely new species to Tim. They could be imported from the moon.

  The Tuerkes job felt like a demotion at first, but now Tim thinks it might be a turning point. Learn the ropes at Tuerkes, rise up, maybe start his own business. The economy is god-awful, but it won’t always be. People will have money to spend again one day. The trick is figuring out what they’ll want, or how to make them think they want what you’re selling. He’s seen customers in Tuerkes who have no more need of a $200 briefcase than a pig needs a sports car, but the briefcase represents something to them, a dream, an ambition. What will people want when the money flows again? High-end appliances? Jewelry? With men wearing it now, the market has doubled. Gadgets? Look at Hechinger, beginning to spread all over the goddamn place. Who knew that a fucking hardware store could get so big? A hammer is a hammer is a hammer.

  In the meantime, Tim has no seniority and no paid vacation. Which is a better excuse for not going to the shore than ’fessing up to his kids that they pretty much have no money. Interest rates hovering at 17 percent this year, and he had to pay a penalty to cash in a CD. That hurt. He told the older boys that they had to get part-time jobs this summer, making it seem like a character-building exercise. But he can’t force Go-Go to get a job and the kid’s a nonstop fount of needs. Lately, he’s obsessed with this video game where some yellow dot eats other yellow dots until some ghosts eat the big yellow dot. Th
ank god there’s not an arcade within walking distance or Go-Go would spend all his days there, buying time at what Tim has figured to be about three minutes per quarter, give or take.

  A month ago, Go-Go started pestering him for money for a Fourth of July costume. The kid’s all excited about marching in the parade, although he’s keeping his outfit a secret, says he doesn’t want anyone to steal his idea. There are prizes for the best ones, penny-ante shit, but Go-Go’s acting like the crown jewels are at stake. Tim said he couldn’t give him money if he didn’t know what it was for, and Go-Go stopped asking. Very un-Go-Go like. Also unlike him to keep a secret, but he has managed to hide his costume from everyone, even his brothers. Even now, he is still in the house, in his room, determined not to put in an appearance until the parade actually starts.

  The Dickeyville Fourth of July parade is one of those things that people love about the neighborhood, but the preciousness of it is a little much for Tim. Jesus, it looks like everyone is going to march in the damn thing, who’s going to be left to watch? The theme is vaguely patriotic, yet also kind of feel-good: We are all Americans. No shit, Sherlock. Who else celebrates the Fourth of July? Maybe the Brits are lifting a pint, glad to be rid of us, but their economy is in the crapper, too. Adherence to the theme doesn’t seem to be that hard-and-fast, anyway. Tim sees a platoon of tiny little girls in old-fashioned dresses, with buggies and baby dolls. Behind them, a Cub Scout troop. Tim didn’t realize there were so many little kids in the neighborhood. Judging by their ages, the Bicentennial was a big year for making babies.

  As Tim looks around, he can’t believe this mix of hippies and preppies are his neighbors. He doesn’t fit in with either crowd. How did this happen? Was it always this way? He can’t remember now why he bought the house on Sekots Lane, other than that the price was right and he wanted a place whose walls didn’t connect to someone else’s walls. That seemed like a big step up. He’d like to blame Doris, but she fought him about the house—after the fact, which is the only way she fights. She said the neighborhood was too isolated and that she’d rather wait until they could afford something bigger. She also asked what was the point of moving to a place full of old-fashioned stone and brick houses surrounded by wooded hillsides, only to buy a new house that backed up to an apartment complex. “Things don’t break as much in a new house,” he argued. That’s a laugh. Things are constantly breaking in the house on Sekots Lane. There’s probably not an original appliance left in the place, and he’s pretty sure the hot-water heater is going down for the count.

  Five minutes until the parade. It’s going to be a bitch of a day, hot and steamy. It makes Tim sweat just to look at the guy dressed up as George Washington. Even the sucker doing Jimmy Carter in shirtsleeves looks hot, and the poor Reagan impersonator is wearing a suit. Tim might vote for Reagan, although he’s keeping that to himself. If Teddy Kennedy can wrest the nomination away from Carter next month, then it will be different. Tim could never vote against a Kennedy. Sure, he knows about the dead girl, the secretary, and believes Kennedy was probably banging her, or planning to. So what? Those were his prerogatives. Tim doesn’t begrudge him a thing. He should be president, although Tim can’t imagine how many Secret Service agents it would take to keep him safe. Some nut will take a shot at him. There’s always a nut somewhere, willing to take a shot.

  The parade is finally under way, transforming itself from a milling, formless mass into something with shape and purpose. The fife-and-drum trio has started playing, everyone is lining up. Where’s Go-Go? Tim begins to wonder if the boy understands how parades work, or if he even bothered to register, surely a prerequisite for marching and being considered for a prize. Go-Go has trouble understanding things like that, rules and regulations. His old man can sympathize.

  The parade stretches out, heading down Pickwick toward the more picturesque heart of the village, wending its way toward the banks of the Gwynns Falls. Tim wonders if it’s too early to have a beer. It’s a holiday, isn’t it? The usual rules don’t apply. He goes back into the house and grabs a Schaefer. It is, as the song says, the one beer to have when you’re having more than one and Tim definitely plans to have more than one today.

  A young mother, one of the ones who’s shadowing the buggy brigade, shoots him a dirty look. Hey, he put it in a Styrofoam koozie. No one can see the can. It’s a holiday, dammit.

  Then he sees Go-Go, coming out the front door. Shit. He’s dressed as one of the U.S. Olympic hockey players. Not a bad idea, actually, for a display of patriotism. He’s more on the money than those little girls with their baby carriages. But the kid has to be dying inside all that gear. Because he’s not just any hockey player, he’s the goalie, Jim Craig, complete with pads and face mask. Although the pants are nothing but red sweatpants with duct tape and white paper stars along the sides, the rest of the costume looks authentic. Tim wonders where Doris got the scratch for it, if she’s one of those women who squirrels away money behind his back. She better not be. Shit, did Go-Go steal the stuff?

  All those concerns are overshadowed by the fact that the kid is wearing actual skates. Sure, he’s got rubber covers on the blades, but he’s walking in skates. Short and rinky-dink as the Dickeyville parade is, there’s no way Go-Go is going to make it to the end in that outfit, brandishing a hockey stick.

  Tim goes up to him. “Great costume, buddy.”

  Go-Go nods his thanks, his entire being focused on what he has to do—the sweater, those skates. He’s almost vibrating inside all that gear. At least he has the good sense to wear the mask up on his head.

  “But, buddy, you’ll never be able to walk in that getup. Even if you took off the skates—”

  “I won’t,” Go-Go says. “The skates are the best part. I’m Jim Craig.”

  “I got that, buddy.”

  “I turned away thirty-six of the Soviets’ thirty-nine attempts on goal.”

  “Yeah, in February, at Lake Placid. But it’s July in Baltimore. You’ll die. I mean, literally, Go-Go. You could die from the heat.”

  Doris comes up, wringing her hands. “You can’t walk in that outfit, Go-Go. You’ll get sick.”

  Funny, but Doris taking his side makes Tim want to find another one. He isn’t going to be like her, the enemy of fun, the worrywart.

  “Look,” he says, “how about if I walk with you? Maybe bring some water. That way, if you get thirsty or something—”

  Go-Go has been mincing forward all this time, slowly but surely, the gap between him and the parade growing larger and larger.

  “You mean, like a bodyguard?”

  “Sure,” his father says. “Like a bodyguard. I bet Jim Craig had a bodyguard when he went home to”—where was Jim Craig from?—“Philadelphia and all his friends came out to see him.”

  “Jim Craig,” Go-Go says, every word, every step, a concentrated effort, “is from Massachusetts. Like Father Andrew.”

  “Massachusetts, Pennsylvania. I always get them confused.”

  Tim has Doris fill an old thermos with ice water, reluctantly trades it for his beer, then falls in behind Go-Go. Still, they’re losing ground with every labored step. Pretty soon, they can barely see the little girls with their baby carriages.

  “You know, Jim Craig was a big hero in that game.”

  “I know,” Go-Go says.

  “And sometimes, when someone is a big hero, people carry him on their shoulders.”

  Go-Go doesn’t break stride. If you could call those tiny, painful steps strides. “Did they do that with Jim Craig, though?”

  “They did, I think, when he went home. To Massachusetts. I’m pretty sure when he went back to his hometown, that’s exactly what they did.”

  He hoists his son to his shoulders. He’s ten and wearing all that gear. It’s no small thing. And it’s so damn hot. Still, Tim makes better time than Go-Go ever could have. With each lumbering step, the skates bang his chest and Go-Go ends up hitting him on the head with the stick every time he tries to adjust hi
mself. But they are narrowing the gap now. As they catch up to the parade and the spectators, Go-Go hands his hockey stick to his father. He then lifts his arms, hands clenched, clearly imitating some victory grip he’s seen in a movie or TV show.

  His brothers, who had been following the parade on their bikes, circle back, riding in slow, lazy circles around them.

  “Let’s take turns,” Sean says. “We can go faster than you.”

  “He’s too big for you to carry.”

  “Not for me and Tim together.”

  They leave their bikes by the side of the road—no need to fear them being taken here in Dickeyville, where everyone knows everyone, although some colored kids might come along. The brothers make a seat of their hands and carry Go-Go the next block. Tim then takes him back on his shoulder for a segment. And so they go, now part of the parade. But for the final stage, for the approach to the finish alongside the stream, Go-Go wants to get back on his father’s shoulders and do his hand thing again. This time, Sean carries the hockey stick.

  They’re all dripping with sweat, smelly and disgusting. But the woman who frowned at Tim’s can of Schaefer smiles at him now. He smiles for himself. Go-Go wins second prize—really, it should have been first, just for the sheer stamina involved—but he’s pleased as hell with the ten-dollar gift certificate to G. C. Murphy’s and the look on his face is more than enough reward for Tim. Even with Tim back at work, things are still lean for the family.

  Go-Go must understand this because later that night, after running through a list of all the things a boy can do with ten dollars at G. C. Murphy’s, he offers to put it toward school supplies.