But, no, that wasn’t what Kevin wanted to talk to him about.
“Your uncle called,” Kevin said, something in his tone telling Dooley that he was relieved his uncle hadn’t showed up in person. Dooley’s uncle scared the pants off Kevin. He had ever since that night Kevin had been up at cash, calling customers who had items out past the return date and telling them that they had exactly twenty-four hours to drop the items back into the store’s drop box before a charge for the full replacement value would be applied to their credit cards. Dooley hadn’t been paying attention other than to note that Kevin was talking to these particular customers like they were deadbeats who needed to be taught a lesson. Less than fifteen minutes later, the electronic buzzer above the door sounded and Dooley’s uncle appeared in a T-shirt, pajama bottoms, and slippers, his hair wild, suggesting to Dooley that he had leapt into his car out of a sound sleep. Dooley’s first thought: I screwed up somehow and he’s here to yell at me. But Dooley’s uncle didn’t even seem to notice Dooley. That’s when Dooley saw that he had a DVD case in his hand—something he must have rented for Jeannie. He marched straight to the counter and waved it under Kevin’s nose. “Did you just call me?” he demanded. Jesus, he was pissed off. “Because if you did, I’m here to tell you, you take that tone with me again, and I personally am going to take this item”—he waved the DVD case at Kevin—“and insert it into your drop box.” Kevin looked like he was going to piss his pants. He opened his mouth and reached for the phone beside the cash. Dooley’s uncle dropped a hand onto Kevin’s arm. “And don’t try to intimidate me by threatening to call the cops. I am a cop, you knucklehead.” His uncle slapped the DVD case onto the counter and marched out of the store. Kevin, white-faced, glanced over at Dooley and for the next couple of days—Dooley was pretty sure it wasn’t his imagination—he treated Dooley a little nicer.
“Did he say what he wanted?” Dooley asked.
“He said he wants you to go home. Immediately.” The last word came out sounding exactly like Dooley’s uncle.
“What for?”
“He didn’t say.” Sub-text: And I sure as hell didn’t ask.
“He didn’t want to talk to me?”
“He just said, ‘Tell Ryan to come home immediately.’ He asked me if I thought I could handle that. He’s never going to get over that phone call, is he?”
“Probably not,” Dooley said. He ducked out from behind the counter.
“I’m not paying you for missed time,” Kevin said.
Right.
As soon as Dooley got out of the store, he took out his cell phone and speed-dialed home.
“Is everything okay?” he said.
“You got my message?” his uncle said.
“Yeah.”
“So get home.”
“I’m on my way, but—”
“Just get here, Ryan.”
Something was wrong, but what? His uncle’s voice didn’t have that edge of annoyance to it that signaled to Dooley that he had done something his uncle disapproved of or was pissed off about. But it didn’t sound right, either. It sounded flat. Tired.
Three
There was a car parked outside Dooley’s uncle’s house, blocking the driveway. Dooley’s first thought: No matter how tired or preoccupied or annoyed his uncle was, if (when) he saw that car, he’d be on the phone to one of his cop buddies. Pretty soon after that, the owner of the car would have to shell out big bucks for a fine and towing fees at some inconveniently located police impound lot, and Dooley would have to listen to his uncle bitch about it for days (“What kind of numb-nuts parks his car right across the mouth of someone’s driveway, for Christ’s sake?”). As Dooley passed the car on his way into the house, he took a closer look at it. Scratch that scenario. His uncle didn’t have to call one of his cop buddies. The boys in blue were already here—in fact, they had just come out of the house and were on the porch—which was enough to make Dooley wish he was back at the store. Dooley’s uncle was one thing. Yeah, he was a hard-ass. But his cop days were in the past. He ran a dry-cleaning business now. He could (and did) give Dooley a hard time, but he couldn’t lock him up and throw away the key. Dooley’s uncle’s friends were something else, especially the ones who were still on the job. Sometimes, like on poker night, Dooley would walk into the house, come up against a wall of true blue, and have to fight the reflex to plant his hands and spread ’em. But what were cops doing here tonight? Dooley’s stomach clenched as he made his way up the front walk.
The cops, two of them, both in plainclothes, were coming down the porch steps. They looked at Dooley as they passed but didn’t say anything, which told Dooley that they weren’t here to see him. But the somber expressions on their faces also told him that they weren’t old pals of his uncle who had been here on a social visit. Dooley heard two car doors open and then close again. He glanced at the cop car. The two cops were in it, but so far the one behind the wheel hadn’t started the engine.
The front door was unlocked. Dooley pushed it open. Yeah, something was definitely wrong. His uncle was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands. He looked up when Dooley appeared in the doorway.
“Sit down, Ryan,” he said, still in that flat, tired tone.
Dooley stayed where he was.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “What were they doing here?”
“It’s Lorraine.”
Well, that figured. Lorraine had always had a knack for taking a good day and turning it into crap.
“What about her?”
His uncle stared at him for a moment before finally saying, “She’s dead.”
Dead?
“What happened?” Dooley said.
“They’re not saying much, but it looks like it’s drug-related.”
Something else that figured.
“Overdose?”
It took a moment for his uncle to answer.
“Could be. Or bad drugs. You never know what’s out there.”
Dooley stood in the doorway between the front hall and the living room for a few moments, absorbing the news.
Lorraine was dead. That was it. It was over.
He crossed from the hall into the living room and sank into an armchair opposite his uncle. Bad drugs he could understand. His uncle was right—you never knew what was out there. But an overdose—well, that raised a big question: accidental or intentional? Knowing Lorraine, it was probably the former. But what if it wasn’t that? What if—?
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Last night? How come they’re just telling you now?” As soon as Dooley asked, he realized what a stupid question it was. “She didn’t have you listed as next-of-kin, huh?”
“Actually, she did.” His uncle sounded surprised. “But they only found her this morning, and it took them a while to ID her. She didn’t have a purse or wallet on her.”
“Where?”
“Downtown.” His uncle stood up. It seemed to be an effort. “They want me to go and identify her.” That explained why the cops hadn’t taken off. They were waiting for Dooley’s uncle. “You want to come?”
Was his uncle expecting him to say yes? Should he say yes? If he was some other guy with some other mother, he probably would have.
“No.”
His uncle nodded. Dooley detected no disappointment, no disapproval, no surprise.
“I could have left it,” he said. “I could have let you finish your shift.”
But he hadn’t. He’d called and told Kevin to send Dooley home because that’s what you were supposed to do. And now here Dooley was, refusing to play his part.
“If you want me to come …” he began.
His uncle shook his head. “I’ll take care of it.” He hesitated. “You think you’ll be okay here by yourself?”
“Yeah, sure,” Dooley said. He couldn’t believe it. She was dead.
He stayed in the chair for a full ten minutes after his uncle left. Jesus, what he wouldn’t do for a drink or a jo
int, anything to chase away that jangly feeling inside him. He got up and went into the kitchen. His uncle kept his booze in a cupboard above the counter. When he passed it, his hand shook. It would be so easy to reach up and take down a bottle of Jack. His eyes shifted lower, to a bulletin board, everything on it—a calendar, a shopping list, emergency phone numbers, a couple of business cards—all lined up neatly and, beside that, the phone. He grabbed the receiver and punched in Beth’s cell phone number. It had started to ring by the time he realized that he’d punched in her old number, not her new one. He hung up before Beth’s mother 42 could answer, dug in his pocket for the slip of paper she had written the new one on, and tried again.
He was relieved when Beth answered on the second ring. Then he thought about why his uncle preferred it when Dooley called from a landline. The thing about cell phones was that you could take them anywhere and when you answered them, you could be anywhere. If he wanted to be sure where she was, he should have called her on her home phone, except that nine times out of ten when he did that her mother picked up. He could always hear the frost in her voice when she realized who was calling. Most of the time she said Beth wasn’t home. Most of the time it turned out she was lying.
“Hey,” Beth said. “What’s up?” Hearing her voice eased some of the tightness in his chest.
“Where are you?” Dooley said.
“Where do you think I am? I’m at home. And so are you.” She must have seen his uncle’s number on her readout. “I thought you were closing tonight.”
“I got off early,” Dooley said. “What are you doing?”
“Homework.”
“Alone?”
“Of course, alone,” she said. But he couldn’t help wondering: Why of course? She hadn’t been alone last night. She’d been with her history team. Nor, as far as he could tell, had she been alone the night before. “You sound funny. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. How’d you make out with that team thing?”
“Same old.” She sighed and Dooley pictured her leaning back in her chair, maybe even moving to her bed. He pictured her in what she usually wore to bed, which was mainly little tank tops and drawstring pants. Boy, he loved those drawstrings. He wondered if Nevin had ever pulled them. “What about you? What’s up with you?” she said.
“Nothing much,” Dooley said. Well, except that his uncle was down at the morgue identifying a body. But he didn’t want to get into that. It would just open up doors that he had already told Beth were closed. “I’m off tomorrow night.” He hesitated. He didn’t want it to sound like that was the only reason he had called because it wasn’t. For once, it wasn’t even close. “I don’t suppose your mom has plans?”
“Why?” Beth said. “Did you want to come over?”
He did, but not if Beth’s mother was going to be there. Beth said she didn’t care what her mother thought. She said her mother couldn’t tell her who she could see and who she couldn’t, and Dooley bet that was true. But all the same, he hated going over there when her mother was there because, on top of everything else, she never let them have any privacy. No way would she let them go into Beth’s room. That meant they were stuck in the dining room, maybe doing homework together, or they were in the living room watching TV or a movie, with Beth’s mother more annoying than all those commercials, the way she kept interrupting, checking up on them. She didn’t even try to be subtle. She would appear in the doorway and stare at Dooley, letting him know that she had his number, she knew exactly what kind of guy he was, and if he valued his life, he had better keep his hands off her daughter.
“I want to see you,” he said.
“I don’t know,” Beth said, slowly, drawing the words out, rattling him a little because he still couldn’t believe he was going with a girl like her, and he wondered sometimes—okay, a lot—exactly what she saw in him, especially when there were guys like Nevin around, guys she could debate with, if that’s what she wanted to do, while she was riding around in a midnight blue Jag. “She has her book club tomorrow night.”
Oh. Possibly the one thing worse than a bunch of cops and retired cops playing poker was a bunch of middle-aged women earnestly discussing some book that had recently been on Oprah’s bedside table.
“And it’s at your place, huh?”
Beth laughed. Was that a good sign?
“They’re going to see the movie version of the book they read last month. They do that sometimes. After that, they’re going out for drinks. We’ll have the place to ourselves until at least midnight.”
We?
“Come over at six,” she said. “I’ll make dinner.”
And there it was in that grave-dark night—one bright little light, something to look forward to.
Dooley was watching TV when his uncle got home. He notched down the volume and waited. His uncle went straight through to the kitchen. Dooley got up and followed him. His uncle poured himself a scotch, straight up. He downed it in one swallow and poured himself another, this one more generous. He took a sip before brushing wordlessly past Dooley on his way back into the living room, where he dropped down into an armchair.
Dooley sat down again and waited, but his uncle didn’t say anything. He just worked on his scotch. He made pretty good progress, too, in pretty good time. Dooley had never seen his uncle drink like that. It made him wonder.
“So,” he said after another moment. “Was it her?”
His uncle gave him a sharp look, like what kind of boneheaded question was that?
Okay, then.
“Now what?” Dooley said, mainly because he felt he had to say something, and he sure couldn’t say what was really on his mind.
“Now they do an autopsy. When they finish that, they release the body and we do something about a funeral,” his uncle said, sounding a whole lot more annoyed than Dooley imagined he himself would if his sister had just died, assuming he had a sister, which he didn’t. “I’ll make some calls in the morning.”
Dooley watched him for a moment, wondering if this was a good time. Probably not. Where Lorraine was concerned, there was no such thing as a good time, which meant he might as well come right out and ask the question he’d been wondering about.
“You said they found her downtown,” he said.
“Yeah. So?” He sounded pissed off. Or maybe that was just his way of showing grief.
“So, did the cops tell you anything? Do they know how long she’d been in town or what she was doing here?”
His uncle met Dooley’s eyes for a split second, and Dooley was rattled by the change he saw in them, as if he’d been looking into a brightly lit window only to have someone suddenly pull the curtains shut. It took a moment before he answered.
“She lived here.”
“Lived here?” What did that mean?
“She had a place across town,” his uncle said.
“For how long?”
“What difference does it make?”
What difference?
“For how long?” Dooley said again. He felt his chest tighten.
His uncle downed the last of the scotch and set his glass on a coaster on the side table. “A few years.”
A few? That meant more than two. His eyes locked onto his uncle, who was staring at the empty glass, maybe doing what Dooley was doing, maybe wishing it was full and he could lift it to his lips and …
“I asked you that time what she was up to,” Dooley said. “You said you had no idea.”
His uncle glanced up at him, frowning slightly, like he’d been asked directions to a place he’d never heard of.
“I thought she’d taken off,” Dooley said. He was breathing a little harder now. His fingers were tingling. He had to fight the urge to jump up out of his chair. “You know, because she was always talking about that, about going out west. I told you that, remember?”
“What’s your point, Ryan?”
“I thought she was gone.” That was his point. “And the whole time, she was living just across t
own?”
“So what if she was?” His uncle picked up his glass, saw that it was empty, and put it back down again. “You telling me that if you’d known where she was living, you’d have gone over there every week for Sunday dinner, something like that?”
No, nothing like that. Dooley couldn’t imagine going over there any more than he could imagine Lorraine cooking Sunday dinner.
His uncle heaved himself up out of the chair and stood there a moment, studying the empty glass. Finally he picked it up and carried it into the kitchen. Dooley heard him unscrew the top off the bottle of scotch. He heard the glug-glug-glug of a generous measure being poured. His uncle reappeared, glass in hand. As he walked back through the living room, he paused and said, “I’m sorry.” He walked carefully through the living room, clutching the glass, and made his way unsteadily up the stairs.
Dooley stayed where he was. The TV was playing a rerun of a sitcom that was on a hundred times a day. The characters were all young and had great apartments filled with all kinds of cool stuff, which didn’t make sense to Dooley because most of them had crap jobs. But Dooley wasn’t really watching. He was wondering what his uncle meant. Was he sorry Lorraine was dead? Or was there something more to it?
Four
If anyone had asked him, Hey, imagine if Lorraine suddenly stopped breathing, what do you think you’d be doing the very next day?, he never would have come up with what he was actually doing, which I was shoving books into his locker that he didn’t need for the morning and pulling out others that he did need. He paused as his hand closed around his math textbook. What the hell was he even doing here? His mother had just died. You were supposed to do something when that happened, weren’t you? Something besides the same-old same-old.
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