Derailed

by Jackson Neta

  Estelle was standing at the kitchen counter opening mail. “Harry . . . here’s one for you.” She flipped an envelope my way, and I caught it like a Frisbee, glancing at the return address. From my son? Rodney’s name was followed by a long inmate number and the address of the county jail on Memorial Drive in Atlanta. My shoulders sagged. How’d he get himself arrested again? I’d visited that gray-towered bastille on police business and knew it didn’t qualify as anyone’s “home away from home.”

  Swearing under my breath, I ripped the letter open and turned it away from DaShawn, glad for once that he was glued to American Idol. The boy didn’t need to deal with his father being in jail again.

  I’d been estranged from Rodney for over ten years until the Department of Children and Family Services brought me his son a couple of years ago—a grandson I didn’t even know I had—while Rodney was in Cook County Jail. We’d managed a few contacts, and I’d lined up an attorney who got his case dismissed. Thought things were going better between us. Then he went down to Atlanta “to put his life back together.” We texted a couple of times, and then he quit answering. Made me mad, so I quit trying.

  I scanned his scrawl. He’d been picked up on a drug charge, but this time he wasn’t claiming it was a bogus setup. “It was my mistake, Dad. I never should’ve—” Dad? He called me Dad? I sat up a little straighter and kept reading. Rodney said he’d completed a drug treatment program that qualified him for early release—middle of February—provided he had “suitable accommodations.” Meaning he needed a place to stay. “But I don’t really want to go back to staying where I was. I’m afraid I’d just get back into the old patterns. So, I’m wondering if I could come live with you guys for a while?”

  I slapped the letter closed and looked around the room as if someone was going to catch me reading such an outrageous request. Slowly I opened the letter and reread the words: “So, I’m wondering if I could come live with you guys for a while?”

  No way was Rodney gonna insinuate himself into our happy family! Wasn’t gonna happen! Outta the question!

  I started to fold the letter and return it to its envelope when I realized there was a second sheet of paper, a printed form from the Criminal Court of DeKalb County. Rodney had already filled in his name and inmate number at the top. All it needed was my name, address, relationship to the inmate, and a dated signature to create a formal invitation.

  Of all the nerve!

  I put everything back into the envelope and stuffed it into my pocket just as Estelle called, “Y’all shut that trash off and come to the table now. The pizza’s gettin’ cold.”

  We held hands and I said a blessing, pretty much the same short prayer I usually prayed, but the thought of what we were doing struck me as I said amen. We were a family, the kind of family I’d never provided for Rodney. His resentment of my too-busy life while I’d been a Chicago cop had taken its toll, and when I was home, I drank too much.

  God had given me a second chance to be the kind of a father to DaShawn I’d never been to Rodney, and I wasn’t gonna risk that by . . .

  I looked around the kitchen table. There was something wrong with this beautiful picture. I knew God had forgiven me, but that didn’t mean the past didn’t still hang heavy over my head.

  “So,” Estelle said in a voice meant to perk us all up as she poured Pepsi into our glasses from a two-liter bottle, “what’d Rodney have to say?”

  “My dad? Did he call?” DaShawn’s eyes went big as he tried to corral his mouth full of pizza.

  I sighed and gave Estelle a thanks-a-lot look. “No, son, he didn’t call. I got a letter from him today.” I glared at Estelle, but she ignored my distress. “He’s still in Atlanta, but—”

  “But what?”

  “He just wanted us to know he’s okay, and he’s thinkin’ about us.” What else could I say? “And . . . and he wishes he were here.”

  DaShawn nodded with the understanding of a boy who’d been disappointed too many times.

  Chapter 2

  Estelle’s plus size bounced our bed as she flopped down beside me, half sitting up against the pillows. “So . . .” She waited until I looked up from reading my Michael Connelly novel. “What did Rodney’s letter really say?”

  “Ah, not much. He’s still in Atlanta.” I shrugged and turned back to see how Detective Harry Bosch was going to catch the bad guys in the pages of my novel. I liked Harry . . . especially his name.

  “Harry Bentley, I’m a real person talkin’ to you here, not ink on some dead trees. What did Rodney have to say? I know it wasn’t good, ’cause I can read your body language better’n you can read that book.”

  I closed it reluctantly and sighed. “He’s back in jail—”

  “Oh no. Harry, I’m so sorry. How come?”

  “Got busted for drugs, I guess. Says he’s up for release. But this time . . .” Don’t know why I felt the need to defend him, but I pressed on. “This time he’s gone through a drug treatment program, and . . . and he even called me ‘Dad.’ ”

  “Really?” There was genuine wonderment in Estelle’s voice.

  “Yeah, and he signed it, ‘Merry Christmas, Rodney.’ ”

  She nodded slowly. “Well, that sounds hopeful—though he’s a little late with the Merry Christmas.” Estelle sighed like she’d just finished climbing the stairs to our little apartment. “Well, I sure do hope he can turn it around this time—not just for his sake, but for DaShawn. But Harry . . .” She hesitated a moment. “I don’t know how long it’ll last unless he makes a clean break with his runnin’ buddies. I had my doubts when he went down to Atlanta sayin’ he was gonna hook up with some old friends.” She shook her head. “He needs to get away from ’em—all of ’em, Harry!”

  “I know.” I nodded in agreement as Estelle tied a night scarf around her head to protect her ’do. “You’re right. He needs help—” I grimaced. “—and that’s the other reason he wrote. He, uh, asked if he could come stay with us. Actually, it’s a requirement for his early release, someplace to go. He even included a form from the county he wants me to fill out.” I watched Estelle’s mouth slowly drop open. “But don’t worry, babe. It ain’t gonna happen.”

  She didn’t speak for a long moment, and I wondered what she was thinking. Her fingers toyed with the edge of the sheet. “Well, that’s right, of course. We just don’t have the room. He’d be all up in our business—I mean, we wouldn’t have any privacy, not to mention we gotta think of DaShawn now.”

  “I know, I know! It’s an outrageous idea. Out of the question.”

  Estelle pulled the blankets up to her chin, staring blankly at the foot of our bed as she slowly nodded her head. I turned to look at the same nothingness and nodded my head in unison.

  “Though . . . you know, Harry, sometimes I wish we did have a big enough place where Leroy could come. I really do.”

  Long-term sorrow filled Estelle’s voice. Estelle had an adult son too, but Leroy was schizophrenic and had nearly died in a house fire when he was trying to live alone. His burns were still not fully healed.

  “I know, babe. But you know he needs to be in an institution where he can get his whirlpool sessions and those pressure sleeves put on—”

  “But it won’t be that way forever. He’s almost healed.”

  Her pain about Leroy was deep. “The burns are almost healed,” I said softly, “but he still needs full-time care, Estelle.”

  “Oh, I know!” She waved her hand across her face as if brushing away a gnat. “But . . . what if he got better? We ain’t got no place for him, even then.”

  To my way of thinking, the idea of Leroy staying with us was really out of the question. But I was smart enough not to say so, not while my wife was having one of her guilt waves over not being able to care for her son in the way she thought she ought to.

  Tuesday morning, after DaShawn had finally headed back to school, Estelle poured me a second cup of coffee and then sat down across the table from me. She blew bri
efly into her cup. “You know, Harry, I been thinkin’ . . . we really do need more space. I mean, even for DaShawn. We’re all on top of each other up in here.”

  That was obvious, especially with DaShawn—now a gangling thirteen-year-old—in the house for five days straight in the middle of winter. We hadn’t planned to stay in my little apartment after getting married, but a whole year had gone by, and we were still stuck there.

  “Guess you’re right.” I stroked my chin, feeling the small beard framing my mouth and chin. But wise is as wise does, and I had to admit, staying cramped in our little apartment didn’t make much sense. Thinking out loud, I said, “You know, with the recession and all, it’s a buyer’s market out there. Maybe we oughta take a look—not for Rodney, that’s a whole other thing, and, uh, not . . .” I wouldn’t rub it in about Leroy. “Let’s just say you’re right. We need it for ourselves. Maybe I’ll take a look tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? Harry Bentley, sometimes you go from zero to sixty before I can even catch my breath.”

  “What? Didn’t you just say—”

  “I mean, it’s the middle of winter. We just had a record snowstorm. This is no time to move.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not . . . but think about it. Anyone tryin’ to sell now has got to be desperate, so it might be the very best time to buy.”

  She held up her hands. “Whatever.”

  I finished my coffee, then casually went over and flipped on the computer. By noon I’d found four places on the Internet that looked interesting, especially with their summertime photographs of green lawns, flowers, and blue sky. Estelle had the day off, and I persuaded her to at least do a drive-by with me. But she was kinda closed-mouthed about it all, and I realized it was hard to get a sense of what the houses were like when the sky was overcast and the ground was decorated with mounds of dirty snow.

  I had Bible study that evening with a group of brothers—mostly husbands of Estelle’s group of sisters that called themselves the Yada Yada Prayer Group—and when I mentioned we’d been looking at houses, Peter Douglass leaned over to me. “Stick around afterwards, Harry, I want to talk to you about that.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. Peter was one of the smartest businessmen I knew.

  As the other brothers were leaving, he took me aside. “You bank with Chicago Sheridan, same as me, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I was talking to my banker today, and he was complaining about all the repossessions they’re having to process. I’m not one to take advantage of someone else’s misfortune, but—” He shrugged. “—once the bank pulls the plug on a place, I don’t think there’s any harm in picking up a good deal where you can. You should check it out.”

  Made sense. In fact, I kept thinking about what he’d said until I fell asleep that night.

  After dropping Estelle at work the next day, I drove over to the bank to talk to the mortgage officer who handled repossessed properties. She handed me a binder to look through—dozens of single-family homes. While I was looking, she brought over another listing. “I know you weren’t looking at two-flats, but here’s one you might consider. I’m familiar with this place because we did everything we could to keep the old lady in it, but it just didn’t work out. Neighborhood’s great, and with the income from the second unit, you’d qualify, no problem.”

  I studied the listing she handed me. Classic Chicago greystone, two stories over a basement with a wide tower of bay windows up the front, giving the building a somewhat castle-like appearance. It reminded me of the apartment on the South Side where I’d grown up . . . and suddenly the thought crossed my mind that it might be possible to move my elderly mother into a place like that.

  I flipped over the listing and checked the asking price. The bank had conveniently calculated the monthly payments for anyone with good credit. Whoa, not bad! With what we were paying for our apartment plus what Mom was paying for hers, we’d almost have it covered.

  I got copies of the listing on the two-flat as well as a couple of other properties and thanked the banker. But as I left the parking lot, nearly getting high-centered on a pile of snow, reality started to set in. With my pension and Estelle’s part-time wages from Manna House, it seemed risky to take on a mortgage. What if we ended up like all those other “risk takers” who’d gotten themselves in over their heads? Ha! We might find ourselves knocking on the doors of some shelter.

  Still . . . Estelle was right. Sooner or later we were going to have to do something. I checked the address for the two-flat. Wasn’t too far out of my way, so I swung by for a quick look.

  The house was on Beecham, a block that dead-ended on the north at Saint Mark’s Memorial Cemetery, which wrapped around behind the homes and the alley to the east. When I turned onto Beecham from Chase Avenue, my foot came off the gas and I slowed to a crawl. In spite of week-old snow, the little neighborhood of brick bungalows and two-flats was so typically Chicago, I immediately felt at home—until I noticed the new McMansion built at the north end of the block, one of those big new houses that looked like the manor house at the end of a plantation lane using the cul-de-sac as its private drive. I briefly wondered if it’d end up in some bank’s repossession binder too . . . but that wasn’t why I was there.

  I bounced over icy ruts under large, leafless trees, imagining the cool shade their arching canopy would provide come summer. I smiled. Very copacetic! Halfway up the block on the left was the greystone. There were still enormous mounds of dirty snow encasing unmoved cars interspersed with parking spots residents had laboriously shoveled out and marked off for their private use with sawhorses and old lawn chairs.

  More than once over the years interlopers had been shot when they dared to “steal” a cleared and claimed parking spot in Chicago, so I carefully checked up and down the block before nudging my RAV4 into an open space without knocking over the sawhorses on either end. I was only going to be a minute, and no one seemed to be watching. I jumped out, zipped up my Chicago Bears jacket, and pulled my flat hat a little lower. Even though the temperature was hovering around freezing, the wind still had a bite.

  If there was a for-sale sign in front, it was buried in snow . . . no, there it was, the word Foreclosure poking out. The building was obviously vacant. The unshoveled walk to the door had only a few footprints, probably from the mail carrier. I walked around the side of the building, where there were more tracks, a beaten path that ended at the side door. Just beyond I noticed a basement window had been knocked out and wondered about squatters, but the tracks I’d followed were iced over as though no one had passed that way for a few days. I plowed on through virgin, knee-deep drifts that sometimes held my weight and sometimes caved in, until I got around to the back of the house. A large white-barked sycamore tree spread over most of the small yard, and farther back was a two-car garage, served by the alley beyond. But there were no tracks leading across the yard to the garage or the trash dumpsters along its side. More evidence that no one was living there. I looked back up at the building. The tuck-pointing appeared sound, and someone had installed new windows on both floors.

  The place might be worth considering.

  When I picked up Estelle from work that afternoon, I told her about my exploits, carefully broaching the idea of a two-flat we might share with my mom. Estelle was silent for several moments, and I glanced over to see her gazing out the side window. Finally, she gave a short little laugh and shook her head. “Harry, tryin’ to keep up with you is like chasin’ a squirrel! Here I am, just gettin’ used to the idea of us buyin’ a house, and now it’s a two-flat and movin’ your mom in!” She cut her eyes sideways at me. “But . . . there’s somethin’ that feels right about it. I know we gotta do some-thin’ about your mom, and it’d sure be convenient to have her so close. I’m gonna pray about it.”

  Estelle’s eagerness to pray about the two-flat should’ve encouraged me, but instead it got under my skin—not because I didn’t value prayer but because I’d forgotten to
pray. How could I have forgotten? I’d been a Christian for four years now, but sometimes around Estelle, I felt like I was still in kindergarten.

  Chapter 3

  I had a hard time falling to sleep that night as I wrestled with Estelle’s comment. But it wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t accused me of not praying about the two-flat. All she’d said was she was going to pray.

  But it had showed me up.

  Man! Most of the time marriage is great, but sometimes it felt like a catch-22. I tried to do the right thing—like looking for a better place for my family—but I still ended up doing it wrong. I could just hear Pastor Cobbs preachin’ about the Apostle Paul making the same complaint: “What I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.” That was me, all right.

  I punched my pillow and turned over. Estelle’s breathing was steady, just shy of a snore. How come she was able to sleep like a baby? I guess my reaction to Estelle’s promise to pray said something about our relationship too. If I’d taken the time to pray, I’d probably have included her more. But I plowed on, doing it all on my own, without her and without God.

  All right, all right, God. I get it! I’m sorry! I really don’t want to do this without you. Please forgive me.

  I let that soak in for a minute, staring into the darkness.

  Wait . . . had God just been talkin’ to me? Not in a big dramatic way, like that time I’d nearly heard his voice when I was going blind. Still . . . it felt like he’d been guiding my thoughts.

  My skin prickled. Did God care that much? A hot tear collected at the corner of my eye, and I quickly wiped it way. Man, why was I getting so emotional these days? Was it a symptom of getting older? I grinned at myself in the dark. I guess you either let things touch you or you get harder. Seemed like the more of life you see, the more you gotta go one way or the other.