by Adam Rapp
Corinthia swallows the rest of the sausage patty and says, “When you were up in Joliet, did Dennis Foley’s family ever try to get in touch with you?”
“Why would they wanna do that?” Lavert asks.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I’ve heard about how a family will sometimes visit a convict.”
In last year’s government and justice class, when they studied capital punishment, they watched a Sean Penn movie in which he portrayed a death-row inmate convicted of killing a young teenage couple, and one of the victims’ relatives came to visit him before he was put to death. Even though Sean Penn’s character had changed and become a better person, the victim’s visiting relative had nothing in her heart for him. Nothing but hate. The question of who was worse — the rehabilitated death-row man or the embittered relative — inspired a heated debate afterward. Mr. Noah, the government and justice teacher, had to separate Karl Moore and Felix Stinson, who almost went to blows in the back of the class.
“I wouldn’t wanna have nothin’ to do with some low-minded thugs who killed my son,” Lavert offers after drinking from his mug of tea.
“But you didn’t kill him.”
“But I was there.” He drums his fingers on the tabletop a few times. “All I’d want is revenge,” he continues. “And there ain’t nothin’ good about revenge, except maybe the little bit of satisfaction you might feel. But that passes just like anything else.”
Julie comes by to check on them, and Lavert asks for more hot water for his tea.
After the waitress refills his mug, Corinthia says, “Do you have kids?”
“Nah,” Lavert replies. “No kids. Just me and my gramamma.”
Corinthia finishes the last bite of her waffles, swallows, and sets her fork down. She looks at Lavert again, directly into his large brown eyes. Her gaze travels down to his full mouth, and then to the dark, smooth skin of his neck, which seems as if it would be warm to the touch.
“So what’s chemo like?” she asks.
She surprises herself with the question. It comes out more trivially than she’d intended. She might have just as easily asked him what his favorite food was or whether or not he smoked cigarettes.
“Chemo?” he says. “It ain’t no Bourne Legacy, I’ll tell you that much.” He wipes his mouth with his napkin. “It’s mostly boring. You basically sit in this big La-Z-Boy – type chair, and they hook you up to this machine that puts the medicine in you.”
“How long does it take?”
“Coupla hours.”
“And all you do is sit there?”
“Sit there and let the chemo do its thing. You can read,” he adds. “Listen to music. Some people watch movies on their iPads.”
“Can you have visitors?”
“Why?” he says. “You wanna come sit with me? Watch me turn green and spit up on myself like a baby?”
“I’m a good babysitter,” she says, and though she’s joking, it’s true. There was a brief time when she was the most affordable, most sought-after babysitter in her neighborhood. But at eleven, when the legendary tumor arrived and caused her epic growth spurt, the neighborhood children became terrified of the monster on Stained Glass Drive and, just like that, her babysitting career was cut short.
“I’d like to come tomorrow,” she says to Lavert.
“You can’t,” he says.
“Why not?”
“’Cause it’s at nine a.m. and you got school.”
“I’m not in school,” she says.
“Why not?”
“Because I got suspended.”
“Suspended for what?”
“Let’s just say I got a little excited about some bad news.”
“You broke some shit?”
“How’d you know?”
“’Cause usually you only get suspended for fightin’ or breakin’ shit. You can be a straight-up gangbanger, but if you don’t fight or break nothin’, they’ll leave you be.”
She says, “Sounds like you have firsthand knowledge.”
Lavert smiles, revealing that missing incisor.
“What was the bad news?” he asks, changing the subject.
“I found out my brother was missing.”
“For real?” Lavert says.
“He just up and disappeared. No one knows where he is.”
“So what’d you do?”
“I broke a door.”
“You were mad.”
“I guess I was,” she says.
“You two are close?”
“Sort of.”
“Well, I hope he comes back,” Lavert offers.
She can feel the white lie sitting in her stomach like a coiled, indigestible rope. She is hesitant to tell Lavert the truth about why she broke Bob Sluba’s life sciences door. The last thing she wants is to give him an excuse to dismiss her as some depraved lunatic besieged by apocalyptic visions.
“Breakin’ down doors?” Lavert says, attempting levity again. “You a straight-up gangsta.”
“Ha!” she says, and laughs.
He laughs, too. His laugh is slow, and there’s an ache in it.
“You got a pretty smile,” Lavert tells her.
“I do?” she says. “Really?”
“Real pretty,” he says. “But don’t let it go to your head.”
In Lavert’s silver Dodge Neon, which smells like the pine-scented deodorizing tree hanging from his rearview mirror, Corinthia Bledsoe pushes the passenger’s-side seat back as far as it will go and utilizes its maximum recline. Nonetheless, her knees are still tented high above the dash.
After Lavert politely asks her to wear her seat belt (she does so), he turns on the radio to an R & B/soul station, on which some lovelorn man with a husky voice is singing a slow jam about how when he met the love of his life, the rain stopped and the sky went blue and how she was a downright revelation and the chance of a lifetime and one in a million, etc., etc.
During this song and the next (similarly themed, but performed by a female singer and with less “mamba” to its bass line), Lavert and Corinthia don’t speak. They simply let the music play while they pass through the small neighborhoods of Lugo.
Corinthia is pretty certain she can feel something like fondness or affection or maybe even the slightest hint of romance mingling in the front cab of his fuel-efficient compact car. She has a thousand questions for Lavert, like, for instance, where exactly did he grow up, and did he finish high school or get his GED in prison, and before the robbery did he have any goals, and did he and Dee commit other crimes, and when he was up in Joliet at Stateville, did he have a girlfriend like a pen pal, and did anyone ever come and visit him or send him care packages, and on and on and on.
But as they drive through her hometown, with its low storefront buildings and the windowless post office and the Roman Catholic church (St. Joseph’s), with its modest white steeple, crawling a few miles per hour below the speed limit, all of these questions remain lodged in her head and she decides not to push things.
It starts to rain just as Lavert turns onto Stained Glass Drive. Distant thunder bellows as heavy drops splat silently on the windshield. Corinthia directs him to her house, and he puts the car in park and keeps the engine running.
Lavert turns the wipers on and says, “So, this is you, huh?”
“This is me,” Corinthia says.
Lavert studies the house, the front yard, the driveway. “You climb that big-ass tree?” he asks, pointing to the old sycamore.
“Used to,” Corinthia replies. “As a kid.”
She goes on to tell him how she fell out of it once and broke her wrist, and how when her brother, Channing, was a boy, he’d do pull-ups from its lowest branches.
“Your pops drives an Audi?”
“That’s his, yeah.”
“Pimpin’ ride,” he says.
“It was a gift he got himself for his fortieth birthday.”
“What’s he do?”
“He’s a foreman at Bazoo Mea
tpacking.”
“Y’all must get a lotta free steaks,” Lavert says.
Corinthia smiles and says, “Twice a week.”
“You like livin’ with your parents?”
“At this point I don’t really have a choice. Only one more year.”
“And then what?”
“I go away to school.”
“Where you gonna go?” Lavert asks.
“Not sure yet,” she says. “Maybe this place up in northern Wisconsin.”
“You must like cold weather.”
“You’ve been up there?”
“Spent some time in Milwaukee. My moms had a job at a brewery for a few years. People talk about Chicago winters. Winter in Milwaukee was mad worse than Chicago. February felt like it lasted a doggone year. Can’t even imagine what it’s like way up north. . . .”
During a long pause in the conversation, Corinthia watches the wipers glide across the windshield. She almost gets lost in their perfect, hypnotic choreography.
“You a good student?” Lavert asks, finally breaking the silence.
“Pretty good,” she replies, “yeah.”
“As and Bs?”
“Straight As.”
“Damn,” he says, “Straight As? You got some future ahead of you, huh.”
They look at each other. The rain patters on the roof of the car. Corinthia has the distinct feeling that she is slowly falling into his deep-brown irises, like they are pools of velveteen warmth she could bathe in. She has the strange sensation that she is breathing underwater.
“Can I ask you a question?” Lavert says.
“Anything,” she says.
“How on earth did you get my phone number?”
“The old-fashioned way,” Corinthia replies. “I called information.”
He tells her that he’ll pick her up in front of her house in the morning.
“Eight forty-five,” he says.
“Bright and early,” Corinthia says. “See you then.”
After she undoes her seat belt, she leans over and kisses him on the cheek. His face is warm and smooth and emits a faint animal fragrance. The smell makes her feel like she’s just acquired a great secret, a thing she will hoard for the rest of her life.
She lets herself out.
“’Night,” she says, and closes the door.
She watches his car pull away down Stained Glass Drive and turn at the stop sign. As she crosses under the old sycamore, she has to duck to avoid its lower branches. When she arrives at her front door, she comes upon Chet, the ceramic FirmaMall Dalmatian guarding the mailbox. Corinthia lifts her fingers to her mouth, hoping to keep the taste of Lavert’s cheek on her lips for a few more moments.
When she enters the house, her father is asleep at the kitchen table. As Corinthia crosses the threshold, hoping to sneak by him and go down to the basement to use her private bathroom, he lifts his head off his arm.
“Hey,” he says, not quite sitting up.
“Hey,” Corinthia replies, stopping.
“Out late.”
“I was with Cloris,” Corinthia lies. “We were at Uncle’s.”
“Late-night waffles,” he says.
Her father is wearing light-blue pajama bottoms and an old white T-shirt.
“She says hi,” Corinthia lies.
“Cloris,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “How is Lugo’s favorite librarian?”
“She’s good,” Corinthia replies. “She still has to get her muffler fixed. That poor station wagon’s starting to sound like a runaway garbage truck.”
“I’d be happy to fix it for her.”
“I suspect she secretly likes it,” Corinthia says. “It makes her feel like she’s getting away with something.”
“Seriously,” Brill says, “tell her I’ll replace her muffler if she brings me the parts. Save her some money.”
Brill’s always been a good mechanic. He worked in a garage the summer after junior year in high school, so he knows his way around engines and exhaust systems.
“I’ll tell her,” Corinthia says. “That’s really sweet of you, Daddy.”
They are quiet. Corinthia notices how tired and puffy his face looks. There are dark rings under his eyes. His lips look dry and chapped. His hair is matted on one side, and he needs a shave. His glasses have fallen onto the Spanish tiles.
“Your glasses,” Corinthia says, pointing to them.
Brill reaches down and picks them up but doesn’t bother putting them on.
“Thanks,” he says, setting them on the table.
The rain can be heard hitting the roof. Through the window over the sink, Corinthia can see it detonating on the wet driveway, which reflects the sodium vapor light from the lamp hanging over the garage.
“It’s really coming down out there,” Brill says. “Maybe some of this heat’ll lift.”
“Why are you down here?” Corinthia asks.
“I keep tossing and turning,” he says. “Can’t get comfortable. Your poor mother’s gonna have to start sleeping in full pads.”
“You were sound asleep on your arm when I walked in.”
“Yeah,” he says, “I guess I was.”
She asks him if he’d like her to go get him a pillow, but he declines the offer.
“I’ll go back up soon,” he says.
“You must be exhausted,” she says, folding her arms in front of her.
Corinthia has always thought her father to be handsome, even as he ages, even when he’s tired. Channing looks more and more like him, she thinks, especially lately.
Brill says, “I like your shirt.”
She tells him how she found it at a thrift store in nearby Kaskaskia. This particular thrift store carries larger-size clothes, and the owner, a woman who calls herself Suzy Blue, e-mails Corinthia when new items come in that might be of interest to her.
“Pretty rainbow,” Brill says.
It’s rare that Corinthia will wear a halter top, and she feels suddenly exposed. She’s always sensed that her father knows more about her than he’s willing to let on.
“How was work?” she asks.
Brill says, “It wasn’t easy having to be there.”
“You going in tomorrow?”
“I might do half a day,” he says. “Hopefully our friends over at Missing Persons’ll have some information for us.”
“I think Channing’s okay,” Corinthia offers.
Brill looks up. He puts his glasses on and sits up. He says, “What makes you say that, Cori? Do you know something?”
“Gut feeling,” she says.
“You’ve been having a few of those lately, huh?”
Corinthia nods.
She can’t bring herself to mention the little wooden figure she discovered beside her brother’s alarm clock or Channing’s visit to her room the night before the tornadoes came. Even though she and Channing have grown apart in recent months, she somehow feels that sharing this information with her dad would be a betrayal. Something deep inside her knows Channing wanted to disappear.
From above, the sound of Marlene Bledsoe’s feet can be heard padding down the hall. A door creaks open and closes.
“Mom’s obviously not sleeping either,” Corinthia says.
“She’s likely running a bath.”
“The house that never sleeps.”
“I think we’re all just a little on edge.”
Corinthia uncrosses her arms and opens her mouth, intending to say something.
“What?” Brill says.
“Do you ever have visions?” she asks.
He thinks for a moment. He says, “Like you with those tornadoes?”
Corinthia nods.
“Once I had a dream that I fell off the garage roof of your grandmother’s house, and then a few months later it happened. But that was me just being stupid with your uncle Kurt.”
“Did you get hurt?”
“Broke my left wrist. I had to wear a cast for a few weeks, which got me a lot of attention
from the girls in my eighth-grade class, so that was a perk.”
“Was Mom in that class?”
“I didn’t meet your mother till we were freshmen.”
Corinthia already knew this, but she doesn’t have a clue about their first encounter at Lugo Memorial. Did they pass each other in the hallway? Did they sit beside each other in a class? Was he behind her in line at the water fountain? Did she strategically drop her books so he’d offer to help her pick them up?
Was it love at first sight?
Lately Corinthia finds herself searching her parents’ faces for a trace of her own identity. Sometimes she thinks she and her father share the same wide nose, the same slow, deliberate wrists. The only thing of her mother that she recognizes is when Marlene uncorks a laugh. She and her mother laugh with the same measured cadence, three or four loud reports — squawks, really — and then it’s over. When Corinthia hears this, she feels a tinge of shame. She’s been trying to transform her laugh for the past few years. She’d prefer one more like Cloris Honniotis’s, a low, demonic snigger, a sound Corinthia has tried to appropriate to her best abilities, but when she least suspects it, her mother’s laugh always creeps back in.
“I really did see those tornadoes,” Corinthia tells her father.
“Well,” he says, “I highly doubt you’d lie about something like that.”
“I’m not a liar.”
“No, you’re not,” Brill says.
“I saw three of them, and that’s how many there were.”
“I’m not denying any of this, Cori.”
“I just hate that people think I’m crazy.”
“You’re not crazy.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re my dad.”
“I’m too tired to pretend right now. I believe you.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” he says.
“Good,” Corinthia replies.
He sits up a little straighter now.
“And what’s this business I heard about from Vice Principal Mejerus? Apparently you interrupted the assembly with some ‘absurd’ announcement — something about penguins?”
“It wasn’t absurd.”
“Those were his words,” Brill says. “‘She assailed the assembly with an absurd notion.’ I’m just quoting what he said.”