“April.”
He tried not to be offended that she shook so warily.
Constance had been watching silently, as if waiting for something to happen. Now, with everyone settled, she threw a kitchen towel over her shoulder and retreated to the back room.
Michael Boni was still looking cross. “Is there anyone else you two are planning to invite without telling me?”
“Relax,” McGee said, slipping out of her coat.
April raised her hips and slid a phone from her back pocket, lowering her eyes to the screen. “Don’t let me interrupt.”
Michael Boni looked as though he was going to say something in response, but then he turned to McGee instead.
“It’s fine,” McGee said. “I’m listening. I’m here. Let’s get started.”
Michael Boni reached for the coffeepot, taking his time pouring a cup. Now everyone was waiting for him, which was how he seemed to prefer it.
His cup full, he slapped a notepad onto the table. “I drew a map.”
McGee was quick to grab it. She spent a moment looking the drawing over. “There’s another entrance here.” She pointed to a spot. “More out of the way.”
Then Michael Boni was staring at Darius, waiting for him to take a look. To say something, to have some sort of opinion. But from where Darius was sitting, the map was upside down. He tried turning his head. But even if everything had been right side up, he doubted he would’ve been able to make any sense of it. The place was too distracting. Plastic grapes dangled from the partition behind Michael Boni’s head, making him look as though he were wearing giant purple earrings. Across the room, a small, duct-taped fish tank lined with pink and blue gravel sat beneath a sign that said SKATES SHARPENED WHILE YOU WAIT.
“Well?” Michael Boni said.
“It’s fine.”
“That’s all you’ve got?”
Darius leaned forward, squinting into the far corner of the dining room, at something half hidden behind a pile of boxes. “Is that a barber chair?”
April glanced up from her phone and looked to where Darius was looking. “I think so.”
“Can we focus on this?” Michael Boni said, tapping his finger on the map. “Can we leave the decorations for later?”
From the kitchen came the clanging of pots, the scent of onion and garlic sizzling in oil. Darius wondered how long it took to make a stew. A slow simmer, a low flame?
“What time is it?” he said.
Michael Boni frowned. “You have somewhere to be?”
Darius could think of a lot of other places he’d like to be. Unlike the rest of them, he’d been up all night working. Grabbing one of the mugs, he poured himself some coffee. Most of all, he would’ve liked to crawl into bed. That’s where Sylvia was. Shawn and Nina, too. That was where all the sensible people were.
“How’s the bread?” April asked quietly in Darius’s direction, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“Delicious.”
And Violet would be in bed, too. But that was an image Darius tried to wipe from his mind. He’d been trying to wipe it away for a long time now.
Michael Boni and McGee had drawn closer on their side of the table, elbows touching as they bent over the map. Darius hadn’t been wrong about the two of them. They really were meant for each other.
April plunged the serrated edge of the knife into the crust, like a handsaw hacking through wood.
Michael Boni looked up, not bothering to hide his irritation.
April continued sawing until the bread tumbled free. “Oh,” she said, “am I interrupting?”
“Yes,” Michael Boni said.
“It’s fine,” McGee said. “That’s why it’s there.”
The crust ground beneath April’s straight white teeth. “So what’s it going to be this time?”
McGee glanced up distractedly. “Hmm?”
“What are you demolishing this time?” April said, tearing off another hunk. “There was what—the shoe place, the supermarket, the …”
“Jazz club,” Darius offered, and April thanked him with a tip of her crust.
“We can talk about it later,” McGee said.
April leaned across the table, peering at the notebook page. “I want to talk about it now.”
McGee tried to put on a patient smile. “You said before you didn’t want to know.”
“I changed my mind.”
“If you want to help,” McGee said, “great.”
April looked from McGee to Michael Boni. “Help do what?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Michael Boni said.
April focused in on him. “Blow shit up?”
Michael Boni spent a moment sourly exploring the gaps and grooves of his teeth. “There’s more to it than that.”
April shrugged. “From the stories in the paper, I really couldn’t tell.”
Michael Boni turned to McGee. “Is she always like this?”
“No,” April said before McGee had a chance to answer. “I’m trying something new.”
“This has nothing to do with you,” Michael Boni said.
McGee reached out and put her hand on April’s slender arm. “I explained it to you.”
“But why?” April said, pulling her arm back toward her lap. “That’s what I want to know. This isn’t you. You don’t just destroy things.”
“Have you been outside?” Michael Boni said. “Have you looked around?”
McGee nodded. “It’s already destroyed.”
“But this?” April glanced around the restaurant. “Is this what you want instead?”
“Why not?” Michael Boni said.
“It’s still ruins.” Darius said, the sound of his voice surprising even himself. “It’s just ruins made into something else.”
“What did you expect?” Michael Boni said. “Skyscrapers?”
Darius had never stopped to put it into words, but yes, he supposed he did. And why not? This place certainly wasn’t what he wanted. Castoffs, scraps, leftover trash from businesses that had failed or fled or gone up in flames. How could McGee and Michael Boni not see how depressing this was?
“It’s just nerves talking,” McGee said. “Stress.”
Darius took a slow sip of coffee. “It’s been a long time since I felt this calm.” He turned to April. “How about you?”
“I feel fine.”
Darius turned to McGee and Michael Boni. “We feel fine.”
In a whisper, April said, “Maybe it’s the two of you feeling nerves.”
Now Michael Boni was glaring at Darius. “You’ve known all along.”
Had he? He was no longer sure. All he’d ever really wanted was to be a better sort of person, the sort of man who provided for the future, who fixed what was broken. Above all else, he’d wanted to stop being weak. But what would Sylvia say, he wondered, if she were to see him in this dump, surrounded by these characters? Would she see the new man he’d been trying to become?
They’d known each other more than thirty years. All the way back to elementary school. No one believed them when they told the story, how he and Sylvia had grown up on the same block, identical adjacent buildings, apartments on the very same floor, rooms in the very same corner. But they’d been kids; they’d thought everything worked that way. And how one day when they were eight years old, they’d smuggled rulers home from school, and in their separate bedrooms they’d measured the exact same spot on the exact same wall, and there they’d drawn a circle, and into that circle they’d pretended they could talk to each other. Into that circle they could say whatever they wanted, could share their every secret. This went on for years, until over time they gradually forgot, the circles eventually fading. But by then Darius and Sylvia were inseparable, no longer needed their imaginations.
The mistake Darius had made was assuming everything with Sylvia would always come that easily.
He’d tried to change, and he’d failed. Ever since the day he’d seen what was in Michael Boni’s garage, Darius had
n’t been able to go a single day without getting tangled in Violet’s limbs. Nothing had worked out like he’d planned. He’d wanted to be a better person. Instead, he’d just made things worse.
In less than an hour, Sylvia would be waking up. If he wasn’t there when it happened, he’d miss his chance to see her. Another day would pass in which he wouldn’t get to curl up beside her, wouldn’t feel the warmth at the back of her knees. And then Darius found his mind wandering up from Sylvia’s knees to warmth at higher points on Violet, places less subtle but agonizingly unforgettable, no matter how hard he tried to forget them.
“Where are you going?” Michael Boni said as Darius rose from the table.
“Home.”
April was sliding toward the end of the bench, making way.
“You can’t leave,” Michael Boni said.
But of course he could. It was just a matter of will, of following through. And Darius had been practicing. Not for this moment in particular, but it seemed to him now the skill was transferable. If he could just squeeze out of the booth and then allow his feet to carry him out of the restaurant, he thought, he’d be okay. He’d go home, wake Sylvia up, tell her what he’d done. She might forgive him; she might not. Either way, it would be over.
“You’re a fucking coward,” Michael Boni said as Darius reached the door. “I always knew it.”
“I’m going, too,” April said.
McGee’s frown sharpened. “What do you mean?”
April shifted in her seat, slid the phone back into her pocket. “I’m going home.”
“You just got here,” McGee said. “You came all this way.”
“Let her go,” Michael Boni said. “We don’t need them.”
April rose, and McGee did, too.
April was so much taller, she had to bend low, scooping her friend in her arms, almost like a child. “I’m glad I came.”
“I need your help.” McGee’s voice was muffled in April’s shoulder.
“No, you don’t. You never really have.”
McGee said, “I told my parents you’re coming.”
“It’s you they want to see, not me.”
“I can’t do it alone.”
April shook her head, smiling sadly. “They’re your parents.”
“What do I say?”
“Tell them the truth.”
McGee stepped back, laughing without a trace of humor.
“If you’re so sure you’re doing the right thing,” April said, “tell them the truth.”
McGee kept drifting backward, collapsing against the corner of the booth. “Everyone’s gone.”
Were those tears in her eyes?
“You can go, too,” April said. “There’s nothing stopping you.”
“Everything we ever did was a failure.”
“Go to Portland,” April said softly. “Find Myles.”
McGee looked almost disappointed. “Portland doesn’t need me.”
April looked as if she were about to say something more, but even from across the room, Darius could see it wouldn’t do any good.
“Please be careful,” April said, folding McGee one last time in her arms. And then she was coming toward him, and Darius stepped aside, holding open the door.
Twenty-Six
They are asleep.
At this hour, as if they might be doing something else.
How little a tree changes, even over years.
Always one dog barks and then another.
Never alone.
And did I leave footprints across the lawn?
Mother, father.
And yet my tree, still.
Mom, Dad.
Otherwise, how incredibly silent.
Cold.
A winter carnival, a carny, and Myles picking his prize, a fluorescent green dog.
The random things one thinks of at the randomest times.
And what did I expect to find?
I should have brought another sweater.
Maybe to find the curtains drawn, something, anything, blocking the view.
Music, they say, for some reason being a trigger for memory.
Instead, an open window, the moon like a faint spotlight on their bed.
Familiar smells and tastes, too.
If I trust my memory.
As if I had anything else to trust.
The things one finds oneself wondering.
Knots and limbs, stabbing through the seat of my pants.
How something so large must have appeared to someone so small.
Thirty, forty feet tall to a girl two, three times shorter than the lowest branches.
Someone, as if I weren’t thinking of myself.
And Myles grinning in the frigid air, as if that green dog were the answer.
To think I used to climb up here in shorts.
What was the question?
Nothing between me and them now but a window screen, a few branches and leaves.
Certain sensations you can never return to, never experience again.
Comfort, to a child, an insignificant thing.
If you’re not careful up there, darling, you’ll break your etc. etc. Quote unquote.
What did Myles think it meant, the dog’s green fur, so bright it hurt to look?
The temptation to tweet and caw and wake them up.
The afternoon Mother brought home the mechanic, the song that was playing on her car stereo.
When you sit up in the tree staring, we wonder what you see. Quote unquote.
The ache in my back.
When we got back from Seattle, silently stuffing that green dog in the bottom of my duffel bag.
Like the world is a movie playing inside your head. Quote unquote.
And Myles never knowing I kept it.
In the driveway the mechanic raising the hood, and Mother leaving the engine running, the radio playing.
Before the tree itself, before I could climb, my fascination with the seedcases covering the ground.
And what was the name of that girl down the street who remembered events by the outfits she’d been wearing?
For me the place of memory always outdoors.
A summer day with the car stereo playing, and everything a little too bright, the sun, the blue and whites of the sky.
And in my head.
Propellers, were they called, the way they spun and twisted to the ground?
Wings?
No expectation of being able to see them at all.
The same duffel bag where I kept the poems Myles wrote, all those slanting, skidding rhymes.
Darling, what do you mean you don’t want a tree house? Quote unquote.
Even after Mother and the mechanic went in the house together, the engine, the radio, still going.
A chorus repeating baby, baby.
Along with the CD mixes of songs Myles thought I’d like.
The girl down the street remembered what everyone else was wearing, too.
The mechanic Dad said he didn’t trust.
Seedcases the first things I ever dissected.
A summer day, the engine running, and Mother walking into the bedroom and closing the blinds.
Our daughter the squirrel tamer. Quote unquote.
As if I would ever tame anything.
And it was the middle of the afternoon.
The brittle hulls, and inside the case the seed itself, slightly wet and bitter.
The yellow shorts the neighbor girl wore the day Dad ran over her dog.
His brown suit, her dead dog.
Dad rolls onto his other side, moonlit blanket rippling like a wave.
And where was I supposed to be that summer day?
A friend’s?
A neighbor’s?
When I was ten, I vowed I would never again cut my hair.
Was I supposed to be anywhere?
Along with the necklace Myles gave me for our first anniversary, a pendant of tarnished brass watch gears—which I told him I lost.
And for some reason they decided I should go to music camp.
Don’t you think it’ll be nice for you to make some friends, darling? Quote unquote.
Because mechanics are not to be trusted. Quote unquote.
Meaning what, precisely, by not trust?
Not to be trusted with one’s car?
At seven? eight? nine? climbing the tree for the first time and discovering the seedcases in the tree were green and elastic, compared to the brown and brittle ones spread across the lawn.
Not to be trusted with one’s wife?
You have a wonderful ear for music. Quote unquote.
This key, that key, whatever sounded nice.
And what sort of trust does that imply for one’s wife?
From the tree, watching the blinds blow in, hearing them smack against the sill in the breeze.
A wonderful ear for music?
To this day I don’t know what that means.
For a mechanic, I can admit a certain allure.
The blinds, which they’ve since replaced with curtains.
Or was that the squeaking of bedsprings, not the blinds at all?
Angels of Detroit Page 33