by Laura Bickle
Lily snorts. “I’d pay good money to see that.”
“Yeah, well. About money. Since things are going south...” On impulse, I dig into my pocket, come up with the fistful of cash. Awkwardly, I hold it out to her.
“Raz, what the hell?” She doesn’t take it, just stares at my hand, like it’s a poisoned, ratty green flower.
“Look, I don’t know how things are going to go down. But I want you to keep this. To have a fresh start for yourself.”
“Raz, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” I take her hands, open them like clamshells, and put the cash in. She should have it anyway, for what the Mob took from her family. “I don’t know what the heck is going to happen next door, and I want...I want you to have something.” It sounds lame. Paternalistic and patronizing as hell.
She stares down at her hands. “I’ll...I’ll hold this for you. Keep it safe. On one condition.”
“Anything.”
Her gaze slides to the open closet door, where the flapper dress hangs. “I want you to take me to prom.”
I open my mouth, close it. With all this blowing up around us, I don’t know how that’s going to be possible. Prom is tomorrow night, and it’s what’s brought so much shit down on our heads.
She reaches forward, puts her fingers on my lips. “I want us to have one night. One night together.”
She slides her fingers away and kisses me. That kiss is so full of promise, ripe as a peach and just as full of sunlight.
I nod. I promise. And I’ll do right by her.
WE COOK UP A PLAN TO get me home. It’s not the most brilliant plan ever conceived.
We consider calling over and asking Bert to come get me, but our phones are probably being monitored, and I don’t want to risk the girls any more than I already have. We think about stuffing me into a cardboard box and dropping me off at the doorstep, but I’m pretty sure that’s gonna be a no-go. I’ve already used my watch once today, so I need to come up with something else.
So we decide to do what we’d always done as kids—use the fire escape.
Lily enlists the help of one of the neighborhood cats, a big gray tom with green eyes, serrated ears, and sideburns the size of ham hocks. He’s easily twenty pounds, and he stares down at us from the roof with an expression of mild tolerance. Lily coaxes him down with hamburger.
Across the alley, Bert has left the window open for me.
We wait until the cop goes around the corner on his rounds. I rush out of Lily’s window and take a flying leap to my fire escape like Superman. My boots hit the railings with a huge crash, and I scramble into the window, head first.
I lean against the wall inside, panting. I listen.
The cop comes back. “What the heck was that?”
Lily’s voice: “Mr. Gray was chasing a pigeon. He pounced and missed.” Cooing. “He’s a big boy.”
“You shouldn’t be out here.”
“Yessir.”
I peer up over the windowsill. Lily gathers the cat into her arms and takes him inside. He has a toothy, thrilled grin on his face about actually getting to go inside.
I take a deep breath. Home safe. Sorta.
I head out of my room to the living room, ready to share the bad news of the key with Carl, Bert, and Pops.
“Guys, I didn’t—”
But I draw up short.
A wheelchair sits in the living room with its back to me. Fear lances through me as I approach it. Fear and apprehension and delight.
“Sid?” I whisper.
The wheelchair slowly turns.
Sid’s crumpled into this little metal chair like a big piece of paper wadded up into impossibly-tiny proportions. His hair is stringy and stuck to the back of his head, not the lush barbarian mane I know. He’s wearing a hospital gown, and his feet are covered in socks.
My gaze strays to his eyes. Eye. He’s wearing a bandage over half his face.
“Hey, Raz,” he says.
I run to him and throw my arms around him. He winces, and I pull back, but he pats my forearms. He doesn’t seem to be able to raise his arms to my shoulders.
“You’re home!” I blurt.
“He was apparently enough of a pain in the ass that they let him check himself out,” Carl says. He’s sitting on the end of the couch, beaming at his father with a megawatt smile. God, it’s so good to see that.
“Imagine that,” Pops says. He and Bert are in the kitchen, making sandwiches.
“Screw the hospital.” Sid makes a face and an obscene gesture toward the door.
I gaze at the wheelchair. “Um. How did you get up here?”
Sid scowls some more. “They wouldn’t let me leave without a wheelchair. Pops made the cops carry me up the stairs.”
“Which was funny as fuck,” Bert says, chortling as he slathers mayo on white bread.
“They almost dropped me. Twice.”
“Which was funny as fuck.”
“Bert, bite me. You know I can command you to do that.”
“Heh. With these teeth? I think not.” Bert grins with his full complement of reptile teeth.
The banter is soothing. I’m still staring at the wheelchair, not wanting to ask how badly Sid’s hurt. If he can even walk. I’m just too happy to see him.
Sid catches me looking. He wiggles his sock-covered feet at me. “I’m stuck in here for a bit. Then I’ll try a walker. Don’t worry. I can pull myself up to go to the bathroom and wipe my own ass.”
I don’t ask him about his eye.
“Nurses not hot enough for you?” Carl teases.
“The guy I had was pretty hot, actually,” Sid deadpans.
Carl rocks back on his heels with his unibrow wriggling on his forehead. Sid smirks. I can’t tell if he’s kidding or not. Nobody wants to think about their parents dating, ever.
“So,” Pops says, handing me a plate with a bologna sandwich, “how did the mission go?”
The smile slides off my face. “There was no key.”
Pops scowls. “That little bastard.”
Bert throws up his clawed hands, pitching the butter knife into the sink with a dramatic clatter. “I hope he swallowed it and it gives him a perforated colon!”
“Would serve him right,” Pops growls.
I sink down to the couch next to Carl. “What do we do now?”
Through his good eye, Sid’s gaze is dark. Wrath seethes under his pale skin. I’ve never seen him this angry before. He growls, so quietly that I have to lean in to hear it, “We figure it out, or we tear this place apart. He can rot until we find it.”
Pops shakes his head. “I’ve already searched his room. It has to be in the vault somewhere.”
“It would take crowbars, sledgehammers, and probably weeks to break into each one of those safe deposit boxes,” Carl moans. “That’s assuming, of course, that the cops weren’t watching.”
“I could find out,” I said quietly.
All heads turn toward me.
“Through the Bunko. Maybe,” I amend.
“You can’t Bunko all those safe deposit boxes,” Bert says. “It would take hours, and the cops would catch you behind that yellow police line they’ve got strung up down there.”
“Maybe if I handle enough of Dad’s other stuff, something will jump out...” I feel helpless. But I don’t see any other way.
“I could try, too,” Carl says.
“No.” I shake my head. “He’s...he’s my father.” And I have a hand in creating all this misery. I should be doing something to fix it.
Something.
I pull myself off the couch. Nobody stops me.
But whispers follow me:
“What if he sees—?”
“Let him. It’s his decision.”
I walk down the hall to my father’s room and close the door behind me.
HIS ROOM IS A VAULT of secrets.
It reminds me, in many ways, of a hotel room. There’s a bed crowned with a bookshelf headboard and an ugly be
dspread that dates back to the time my mother was still around. The top of the bureau is perfectly clean, except for a small silver tray that holds my dad’s watch and coins. There are no photographs, no pictures of family. No artwork on the blank white walls. The shades are drawn, and the light that filters through has a dim, yellow quality. There are no books, no magazines, nothing with any personality. Nothing that indicates what a scalding, forceful personality my father has.
It gives up nothing.
My hands ball into fists at my sides. Is this happening on purpose, or is just a sign that he just doesn’t give a shit? Either way, I’ll make this room give up its secrets.
I slap my hand against the bureau. It wobbles. I open myself to the Bunko, brace myself.
An image bubbles up of my father and mother hauling the bureau home from a garage sale, up the steps. She’s pulling and he’s pushing. My father’s sweating and bitching about how heavy it is. My mother is swearing and insisting that it’s beautiful. She’s pregnant. I don’t know with who—me or Zach.
I want to watch this forever. It’s a slice of normalcy I don’t have in my own memory. As they come over the top of the stairs, the back leg of the bureau splinters off and clatters down the stairs.
The image fades. I come to my hands and knees, peer down at the legs on the floor. The one in the back is still broken, but it’s stabilized by two packs of playing cards.
There are things here amid the dust bunnies. Coins. My hand crawls over them, but I find nothing special: just random junk images that come from money. Voices and nonsensical images that bleed together. No one defining thing, no bit of ownership. Money is always that way.
And there’s a ring.
I pull it back through the dust to peer at it. It’s my mother’s wedding ring—white gold, with a pattern of leaves stamped in it. I remember the click of it on a pizza pan when she folded out homemade pizza dough. It has to belong to my mother. My dad made a big fucking deal of melting his down and selling it for scrap.
I stare at it, wondering if she threw it at him when she left. Or if my dad asked for it back. If he had, I’m surprised he didn’t melt it down.
I close my eyes and reach out with the Bunko. I do so with trepidation, and the fingers of my mind are reluctant to reach out and know the truth. I can’t control what the Bunko will show me. But I can’t help it. I want to see my mother again.
She is as I remember her: tall, with dark hair that curls past her shoulders. She doesn’t appear in the polka-dotted dress Bert wore. Instead, she’s wearing a pink dress with huge shoulder pads and white ankle boots. She stands next to my father in a wood-paneled room, holding a bouquet of flowers. There’s a man in a black robe before them, holding a Bible. A less-gray version of Pops and a younger version of Sid stand behind them. They both have more hair.
My father slides the ring onto my mother’s finger. They both look happy. I’ve never seen my father this way before. His face shines, and he has the hope of a younger man.
The image flickers, passes into others. My mother rests in a hospital bed, holding a baby. She cuddles the baby and rocks it. My father isn’t there. Another image of her, with a toddler I think is Zach, taking his first steps while she claps and cries. My father isn’t there. Another baby in another hospital, one that seems to be me. My mother’s singing Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” to the baby. I remember her singing that. My father isn’t there.
My mother’s now at the beach in a big floppy sun hat, watching Zach and me build sand castles with soda cups and margarine tubs. She’s gazing up at the horizon, and as her eyes track distant boats and seagulls, I wonder what she’s thinking about.
The sand melts away into fighting. This, I remember. The two of them would scream at each other until my father grabbed his coat and stormed off to get hammered.
This time, it’s winter. Snow’s falling outside the black window, spangles in the darkness. My mother’s wearing her red Christmas sweater, the one with the jingle bells sewn into the hem.
“Is that what I am to you? Nothing?” Her voice has dropped, and her eyes are full of wrath.
“That’s not true.” My dad has shut down. He’s reaching into the closet for his coat.
“Was it just my job to bring you sons? Continue this little dynasty of...of warlocks?” My mother points beyond the wall, to my room and Zach’s room. A note of pleading enters her voice. “Those boys need you to tell them what’s happening. They need you to tell them what those visions mean. They’re terrified, and they need their father!” The jingle bells shudder for emphasis.
My father spins. “Don’t you tell me how to handle my sons.”
“You’re not handling them!”
My father reaches for her. His hand lands on her throat, just below the collar of her sweater. It’s a threat. He could choke her out, if he wanted to. The jingle bells rattle in a frisson of fear.
My mother shuts up. They glare at each other.
Without another word, my father removes his hand. He gathers his coat and leaves.
My mother sinks to the bed and cries. The bedspread is the same as the one on the bed now: geometric flowers.
It dissolves into another image. My mother stands at the kitchen counter, grating vegetables. She has her back to my father, refusing to look at him.
“Jackie,” he says. “I’m asking you to leave.”
She shakes her head, wordless. A tear drips into the onions.
My father takes her hands from the grater. They’re moist with vegetable juice. He puts a big wad of money into them, much bigger than the hunk I gave Lily.
There’s no malice, just a peculiar degree of tenderness in his voice. “Jackie. I’m asking you to go.”
“I’m not leaving the boys. I won’t.” She puts the money on the countertop and wipes her dripping nose with the back of her hand.
My father’s eyes are cold. Cold like glass and twice as bright. “If you don’t...there’s going to be hell to pay. I promise.”
My mother lifts her chin, and my father reaches for her throat.
CHAPTER 25
I drop the ring. It lands on its side, rolling.
I sit back on my heels, stunned, and press the heels of my hands to my eyes. My father...
The ring rolls on the wooden floor, a distant metallic sound, rolling away from me. I don’t react until it clinks against the metal grate of the heating vent.
I turn, scrabbling for it.
Too late. The ring bounces over the ornamental grate then disappears into darkness. It plinks and rattles as it goes down the pipes of the ductwork, beyond reach.
“Dammit.” My fingers futilely slip through the grate. I hope it hasn’t gone as far as the boiler. Maybe I can get Bert to help me take the ductwork out, retrieve it from wherever it’s settled.
But...I’ve seen enough. Enough to know that my father deserves to burn in hell. I wonder if there’s a way I can negotiate that with Hoodie, serve him up on a platter.
Tears scald my eyes. I scrub at my face with my sleeve.
I swear never to forgive him. For anything.
I savagely rip out the drawers of the bureau. Socks and shorts and folded-up jeans spill out. I let them lie where they fall on the floor. I tear open the doors of the bookcase headboard, finding nothing but a cellphone, an alarm clock, and a bottle of gin.
I rip the closet doors open. One of the louvered doors comes off its hinges, chewing a satisfying chunk out of the plaster.
My father’s clothes hang inside, all neat. There’s a suit I’m sure his gut’s grown too big for. I yank it off the hangers. A whole bunch of polo shirts in every color of the rainbow. They come off the hangers in a satisfying way, the hooks grasping at the closet rod with wire claws and letting go with metallic shrieks.
There’s the big ass gun safe my father has in the back, the one that took four men and a demon to haul up the stairs. The Bastard. It’s got a huge combination lock. I kick at it, barely scuffing the enamel. Nobody know
s the fucking combination.
The hamper on the bottom of the floor catches my eye. I shove it over with my foot. There are enough clothes there for a week. Khakis and polo shirts. His uniform.
In a moment of inspiration, I reach in and dig out the shirt he was wearing the day he made the deal with Hoodie. I don’t remember what color it was, but we had pizza that night and he dribbled pizza sauce all over the front.
The yellow one. I hold it up in my fist, glaring at it, daring it to give up its secrets.
Images come to me in staccato, angry flashes. I don’t know if that has to do with my dad or my frame of mind. I see my dad negotiating with a bitchy customer who thinks her knockoff handbag is worth money. He chews Bert’s ass out for the register being three bucks short, bitching about how demons can’t count. He approaches the night window, and his hand trembles as Hoodie waits for him.
The hourglass sits in his hands. It’s very light. Fragile. He walks up the stairs with it, tucking it under his arm...
...and puts it in the safe in his closet.
I try to see the numbers on the combination dial, but the vision is too indistinct. All I hear is the bone-deep clicking of the tumblers turning.
My eyes snap open. That son of a bitch!
I growl in frustration. The fucking key was a red herring. He was screwing with us this whole time.
I slam my fist against the enameled steel of the safe, succeeding only in hurting my fist. I shake it in annoyance. My reflection in the safe glowers. I press my palm to it, smudging the surface. Hell, I can’t even stand to look at myself. I try to Bunko the safe, but all it shows me is an image of my dad walking around the room in his underwear, swearing at the ceiling. Asshole.
I stumble down the hallway to glare at Sid, Bert, and then Pops in turn. When I let out my breath, it’s shaking.
“So why did my mother really leave?”
Sid’s jaw hardens. Bert looks down at his toenails. It’s Pops who speaks. “I don’t know for sure. I just know that she was here one day, gone the next.”
I stare at him, hard, as if I can see right through him if I concentrate enough.