by Martin Clark
“Not really.”
“Before you get away, let me ask your advice on something that’s sort of in your field of expertise.” Joel swatted at a fly buzzing near his face. “Do you think it would be wise for me to speak to Christy about the suit? I believe if we sat down together, I could talk some reason into her. Or—”
“No. Don’t. Bad idea.” Edmund frowned. “That’s a dead-solid loser. Let Sa’ad do the talkin’. She ain’t goin’ to throw in the towel on millions just ’cause you ask sweetly and remind her you’re a good fellow. She’s a mean, conniving little brat, and her daddy’s probably pullin’ the strings anyhow. I’m not even sure all the way across the country is enough distance. That pretty clear?”
“Very. But I still think I could get this resolved if I had the chance.”
“Don’t do it, Joel. Take it from a pro—they’ll twist and shape whatever happens till it bites you in the ass. Claim you were threatenin’ her or sniffin’ around for some more adventure. Remember me tellin’ you about her little escapade at college last fall? The overdose that hit while she was havin’ intercourse with some hippie kid? She’s not a person you need to be breakin’ bread with, not stable. No tellin’ what she might say or do, and the capes-and-hats would have a field day.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
“You’re welcome. I hope you’re listenin’.”
“I’ll certainly consider it,” Joel said.
“Take care, Preacher. And good luck.” Edmund climbed into his white car and drove toward the main road. Joel watched him go, stood in his sister’s gravel drive kicking at the small rocks, waiting for Edmund to tap his horn or blink the lights or lower the glass and shout a last goodbye. He never did, though, just turned onto the hardtop and accelerated until he vanished from sight.
Baker was still in his cheap pool, playing with an elaborate submarine and a red ball, and Sophie was leaning against the door frame, arms folded, one leg crossing the other at the ankle. “I don’t like that man, Joel. Something about him. I’m glad he’s moving on.”
“He’s a good guy, all in all. You’d have to know his story. He was active in our church and stuck by me through everything that happened. He’s the same as most of us, Sophie. He has his faults, but he’s been a friend where I’m concerned.”
“I can sense it a mile away. There’s something there I don’t care for. He’s entirely too glib.” She didn’t change her position in the doorway.
“I think you’re being far too critical of someone you’ve met for all of ten minutes.”
“Bad vibes, Joel. Trust me. I’ve felt them before.”
“Well, he is a man. Maybe that’s it.” He winced, wished he could suck back the words as soon as he’d spoken them. “I didn’t mean it like that . . . to say that. I was only . . . I’m sorry. I’m tired and bleary-eyed and wrung out. I’m sorry.” He bit his lip. “I wasn’t thinking. Too many days in jail and too many miles on the highway.”
Sophie straightened up from the door frame and took a step outside, fixing Joel with an angry, baleful glare.
“I’m sorry. It was a stupid, rude thing to say.”
Her scowl continued, full bore. “Yes, it was.”
“I don’t know where that came from. It just popped out.”
Sophie didn’t speak.
“I’m sorry. I’m on your side. If I could, you know I’d hunt down Neal and kick his tail for you.”
Her stern expression began to soften around the edges. “I’d like to see that—Gandhi takes up arms. And you’d what? ‘Kick his tail’?”
“Well, maybe I’d just drop a hunger strike on him or something. Or a general boycott. How about that?”
Sophie relaxed her features, and her brother caught a glimpse of a generous face that was immutable and pretty and entirely his sister’s, unmistakable to a sibling’s eye no matter how many wrinkles and pranks the years left behind. He flashed on a darling little girl in black shoes and an Easter dress, the two of them holding hands and picking up dyed eggs in their parents’ midwestern yard.
“Come on, I’ll show you to your luxurious digs.”
Sophie led Joel into her house. He followed her through a living room full of toys, empty glasses, a solitary tennis shoe and crayons flung onto a coffee table, to a hallway door with a decrepit knob that squeaked when Joel turned it. They walked down a set of wooden steps, carefully foot-feeling a path to the bottom, the descent blind and musty, the smell reminiscent of earth and moist, decaying leaves. Sophie tugged a string hanging from the ceiling and lit a bare bulb above their heads. When the light came to life, she surveyed her brother’s expression, saw the way everything had gone flat in him. They were standing on a cement floor, a water heater to their right. A beige washer and dryer were across the room; the top of the washer was angled open, and a pink plastic basket with an overflow of clothes had been dropped next to the dryer. There wasn’t the first window in the room, just pipes, wires and four gray cinder-block walls.
“Welcome to my basement,” Sophie said. She gave her brother a little bow, put her arm across her waist in a show of pretend formality.
“Indeed.” This was the best Joel could muster.
“Surprised?”
“By what?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. By where we’re living? By where you’ll be living?”
“Is this my room? Down here? I don’t see a bed or anything.”
“Your bed’s behind the partition.” She pointed at a divider—three sections of dark brown paneling—extending into the room from a far wall. “There’s a bed on the other side, and a dresser and a rug and a radio. The dresser and bed are especially expensive—Empire period, I think—and the radio’s one of those Bose wave machines, cost close to five hundred bucks new.”
Joel took her by the hand, and they sat on the last wooden step, twisting sideways so they both could fit. “What happened to the river house? I didn’t realize you’d moved. This is . . . uh . . . new.”
“This, Joel, is the world of a single parent who gets it from every direction.”
He released her hand. “I don’t understand—I thought Neal left you everything. You guys had a beautiful home and cars and who knows what else.”
“And I got it all. I got a seven-thousand-square-foot castle that costs more to maintain than I make in a year as a secretary. After I finally sold it and paid the mortgage, I cleared, what, maybe sixty thousand? It costs an arm and a leg every time you raise the hood on a Jag, and talk about worthless in the snow, so now I have a more practical ride. I’ve got trinkets and gizmos and state-of-the-art espresso machines and a Peter Max and a set of Waterford crystal to go to war over, but I’d trade the whole heap for a reliable transmission and a pair of comfortable shoes.” She made a grand sweep of the room with her hand. “Before you lies the kingdom of the wounded gentry. Bauble rich, cash poor. You’re getting the picture, I hope.”
“Don’t you get some help from Neal? Child support? Alimony?”
“Ah. Alimony and child support. I receive a whopping thousand bucks a month. He sends it in francs. I swear I’m not making that up. He got off light because he gave me so much other stuff. Besides, he’s in Europe and not practicing medicine, and what am I going to do about it?”
Joel was growing uncomfortable on the hard step. “What’s he up to over there?”
“He’s taking art classes. I imagine by now he has a goatee, and probably a beret and a sash. Maybe a plumed chapeau for special occasions. I hope he dies a brutal, ugly death, Joel. I know you forgive everyone for everything, but I will never forgive him for how he’s treated us. He hasn’t seen his son in over a year. Not a letter, not a call. And as far as sacked wives go, I’m damn lucky. I have a house and enough to make ends meet. It could be worse, believe me.”
“I’m sorry. I can understand why you despise him, but it won’t do any good to let your anger fester. You need—”
Sophie held up a hand, cutting him off. “Don’t
tell me what I need. What I need is to see Neal flayed on a hot rock with buzzards pecking at his liver.” She kept her hand in the air and directed her index finger at her brother. “And do you want to know the last chapter? Neal will show up ten years from now, all mystery and promises and manhood, and he’ll treat Baker like a prince, tell him some half-assed tale of woe and whisk my son right out of here after I’ve loved him and raised him and struggled to do right by him. I’ll be the hag who grounded him and made him go to summer school, and Neal’s the cool guy with vacations and football tickets. I can already hear it: ‘You didn’t get my letters? I wrote and called, Son. It broke my heart not to be able to keep in touch. Your mom must’ve thrown away the letters. And didn’t she tell you when I phoned?’ ”
“I think things will be okay, Sophie. I know you’re an excellent mother. Your son will appreciate that in the long haul.”
“He’s a good kid, a joy. That’s the saddest part.”
Joel put his arm around his sister. The side of his face pressed against her hair, and he could smell hot weather and what remained of yesterday’s strawberry shampoo. “Thanks for putting up with one more problem in your life. I’m going to try to get on my feet right away.”
“I hope so, Joel. I can’t carry the three of us, and we’ve got Mom to worry about, too.”
He still had her next to him. “How bad is she? I phoned her when I could but I might as well have been from Mars, and I faithfully wrote every week. I couldn’t decide which was crueler—agitating her with three-minute phone conversations and puzzling letters or just leaving her be.”
“She’s like any seventy-nine-year-old with Alzheimer’s. I think they used to call it ‘hardening of the arteries,’ didn’t they? She’s here and there and daffy most of the time. I can’t imagine how terrible it must be, everything washing straight through your head and nothing ever sticking.”
“I’ll drive out to see her tomorrow,” he said. “At least she isn’t aware her only son’s a jailbird. I suppose that’s a blessing.”
“It’s like talking to a black hole. I don’t know if it makes any difference, but I still go three or four days a week and every Sunday afternoon.”
“Company has to help. I’m betting it somehow registers with her.” Joel heard choppy footsteps on the floor above them and Baker shouting for his mom. “How about a quick prayer?” he asked.
“No offense, but that’s your business, Joel. You can pray all you want. I have better things to do. It’s fair to assume the Lord knows what I need without my pestering Him every five minutes, right? Sort of like psychics and the lottery—they should win every drawing.” She separated herself from him. “And don’t start with me about religion and church and whatever else. I don’t want to hear it.”
The next morning, Joel dropped his sister at work and drove her Taurus station wagon to the High Pines Assisted Living Center. The trip to the center took half an hour, most of it on Interstate 90. Joel traveled deliberately and tuned to NPR, grateful to be out from behind bars and the cacophony of Snoop Dogg and Metallica and 96.3 Classic Rock that kicked off every day in jail. He noticed the vehicle’s interior could use a thorough cleaning, something he would take care of as soon as he finished visiting his mother. There was a pink stain on the passenger seat and smears all over the dash and windshield. He kept the windows down, let the morning air blow on him from all directions.
Helen King’s room at High Pines was hot and smelled like pee and Vicks cherry throat lozenges. Joel’s mother didn’t seem to recognize him but was clearly happy to have a visitor. She’d painted on big rouge cheeks and crazy makeup and was dressed as if she were about to leave for a cattle roundup, looked like Carol Burnett in costume for an Annie Oakley skit. A pipe-cleaner-and-construction-paper turkey occupied the heart of her dresser, and an orange-and-black spook—a Halloween holdover, evidently— was next to the turkey. There were at least a hundred white plastic forks and spoons on top of a small refrigerator. Tissues covered in perfect lipstick mouths were arranged beneath her mirror, the red-orange prints the last part of her morning ritual, a delicate pucker and blot to do away with any excess color.
Joel took a seat on the corner of her single bed. “How are you, Mom?”
“I feel fine. I’m going home tomorrow.” She was sitting in the room’s only chair.
“Home?” Joel said.
“I’m not staying here, locked up like this.”
“You’re not locked up. You can come and go as you please. This is a nice place.”
“Who are you? You look like a man on TV.”
“I’m Joel, your son.” He slid nearer her chair, as if proximity might improve her memory.
“I’m going home tomorrow. After I eat, that is. I’ll have my meal, then I’m leaving.”
“Great,” he answered. In Roanoke, the locals had said the Alzheimer’s sickness caused people “to go back.” Slipping, spinning, failing, misfiring, regressing . . . going back. “Do you remember the last time we saw each other, when you were in Roanoke?” he asked her. “The day Sophie came to Virginia and picked you up?”
“Where?” One of her eyelids hung too low, kept a partial hood over her vision.
“Roanoke, Virginia. You stayed with Martha and me after you left Indianapolis, and then at The Glade, that nice place out by Vinton.” He and Sophie had moved her to Missoula a week before he began his sentence, had refused to totally surrender her to a world of old-folks volunteers, hairnetted dieticians and aides in teddy-bear smocks, all of whom were big-hearted and conscientious but not the same as kin.
“I’ve never been to Virginia, have I?” Her voice was heartbreaking, searching and rueful and confused. Her eyes were cloudy, her movements guarded.
Joel got the impression she’d simply begun to separate from herself, that a corner of her soul had been cut loose and was flapping in the wind. “A while ago, yes.”
“What day is it?”
“Thursday.”
“Are you the doctor?” she wanted to know.
“No,” he said patiently, “I’m your son.”
“My son?”
“Yes.”
“I’m leaving here and going home.”
“Where’s that?” he asked, curious to see what she’d come up with.
“Two hundred eight Wilton Road, of course. Indianapolis, Indiana.” His childhood home, where she’d lived until her husband died, then for three years more.
They talked this way for several minutes, until a woman came on the PA to announce a bingo game in the activities area. Helen King stood and patted her gray bangs, passed by her son without another sound and hurried out of the room. Joel called after her, then caught up with her in the hall, but she was a juggernaut in a loud western shirt, determined to get a choice spot and her fair share of cards before the game started. He kissed her cheek while she was on the fly, told her he loved her. She made a noise that was not quite a word and didn’t slow her determined pace. Joel stood still and watched her merge into a phalanx of walkers, canes, stooped shoulders and crooked spines. She turned left, into a set of double doors, and disappeared.
After ten days of living in his sister’s basement with his convict’s leprosy, Joel began to discover how difficult starting over was going to be. He had no particular skill, no experience he could count on, no marketable trade, no flashy degree or snazzy story to sell. He’d known this much was coming though, realized it soon after he’d landed in jail, and he’d resigned himself to a different kind of work, was ready to take on grim, monotonous hours and punch a clock at minimum wage. He would gladly grovel in a fast-food uniform or stock shelves with high-school bag boys. He would do whatever it took. He would be meek.
He found out in short order it wasn’t going to be so simple. His life quickly became making do and cutting corners and skipping lunch and wasting Sophie’s gas on one dead-end job interview after another. His second morning in town, at nine o’clock, he lined up at the unemployment office behind a m
an who’d already been drinking, the drunk swaying and humming and turning around every so often to ask Joel some cockeyed question and finally coloring the seat of his pants with urine. One Monday when he went into the kitchen to fix his breakfast coffee, Sophie had left him a five-dollar bill and a promotional coupon for a free slice of pizza, charity for her wretched brother.
Despite his best efforts, two weeks came and went without any work. He prayed every morning and every night, did his best to keep his faith intact. There was a country church about a mile from Sophie’s, and he plodded the distance one afternoon, even though the preacher had posted a trite message on the signboard, spelled out in black letters: GIVE THE DEVIL AN INCH AND HE’LL BECOME YOUR RULER. The door to the church was bolted, so he sat in the grass and enjoyed the mountains and magnificent sky. He stared into the high wispy clouds and blue heavens that went on forever and asked the Lord what he needed to do.
His probation officer, a weasel of a man named Jack Howard, made his problems worse. He’d been twice to Howard’s office without finding him there, and finally had waited in the lobby for an hour before he actually got to meet the man who’d be supervising him. Howard was fiftyish, an odd-looking sort with a slender neck, hardly any eyebrows and a pinched, feral face. His feet were on his desk when Joel walked through the door, grudgingly allowed in by a grumpy secretary named Mrs. Heller.
“Welcome, Mr. King,” he said over the tops of his shoes, a pair of black lace-ups with rubber soles. “Take a seat and let’s get to know each other.”
“Thanks.” Joel sat in a chair with a bright blue vinyl back.
“So what kind of ’vert are you, Joel? Boys or girls?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not sure I follow you.”
“I get a misdemeanor, contributing-to-a-minor case from Virginia, I gotta figure you didn’t give some kid a sip of champagne at his parents’ New Year’s Eve dinner. I figure it’s a plea bargain on somethin’ pretty important, and I’m guessing you were diddlin’ a child. I want you to tell me if it was a boy or a girl. I’d like to know what kind of per-vert I got on my roster.” He split the word to help Joel with the first reference.