The Great Jeff

by Tony Abbott

  I jumped out five blocks from Belmont, traced the streets up to my house, my old house. They wouldn’t be working at night, would they? It was probably empty.

  So what?

  So it was my house.

  But was it? The sad gray house, the house I don’t belong to?

  Whatever. I was a ghost, moving like a ghost on the sidewalk, invisible among the raindrops. The FOR RENT sign was gone. Had someone moved in? From where I stood on the sidewalk, you could see through to the lights in the backyard beyond ours. Good. The rooms were still empty. I was alone.

  Up the dark path to the front door, up the steps. The wind rose, it rained harder. I knew where the puddles would be and avoided them. The toes of my sneakers and my socks were already wet enough. I heard noises from the end of the street. People talking. Teenagers. I didn’t move. The voices stopped. A car pulled away. I was out of the glare of the streetlight. It looked like no one was standing on the step where I was standing.

  I didn’t bother to try the knob. The welcome mat was gone. A smell came from the gap around the door. Leaning, I peeked in the front window to make sure. The living room was dead. I pulled my hood forward; it was soaked from the cold steady drops.

  Down the steps and past the garage to the back door. Locked. I looked up at my old room. I couldn’t breathe. The window was cracked open. So were others. Why? The smell. They had painted inside and were airing the smell out of it.

  I hoisted myself onto the railing. It was slippery. Grabbing the edge of the low roof over the door, I elbowed up, then crawled on my stomach to my window. The sash was up several inches. Rain beaded the inside sill.

  The screen was tight but I jiggled it until the tab was visible. Fishing into my pack, I pulled out a card. Mom’s debit card. It was good for something at least. I flicked the tab, slicing my finger, but the screen came loose. I laid it on the shingles and grabbed the sill with both hands to pull myself into my old room. I reattached the screen behind me and pushed the window down. I was inside.

  The floor was waiting to be sanded, but the walls had just been painted. Drop cloths and cans and brushes and roller pans were scattered here and there, and the ceiling light was down and lying on its side in a cardboard box, its wires like ghost fingers coiling down from the attic. I mopped up the rain with one of the loose rags, wiped a smear of finger blood from the sill, and sat in the middle of the floor, crossing my legs. I hunched under my hoodie, wet and cold.

  My room.

  I closed my eyes and imagined it before everything was taken away. My desk. The old chair. The dresser. My bed. Oh, my bed. Why did I even come here? To be back in my old life? Except this wasn’t my room anymore. It wasn’t anything. The soul of me was gone from it. It was a grave. A hotel room was better. The storage locker. The car. The air was thick with paint fumes and didn’t smell of living people.

  I suddenly thought of the furnace in the basement. It had to be fixed by now. Even if it wasn’t, there was the clothes dryer. I yanked off my hoodie, shirt, and pants on the way downstairs, found that those floors had been done, adding to the smell. I tossed my clothes in the dryer, setting it to maximum heat. I sat on top, my butt and legs warming, until I wondered if the workmen were keeping anything in the fridge.

  Some haul—a squirt bottle of hot sauce, two cans of beer, an unopened bag of sauerkraut, and a bowl of shriveled cherry tomatoes. I couldn’t see any connection. I ate the tomatoes. My empty stomach squirmed. Too much acid. My previous meal was cereal and two containers of cream. Mom liked her morning coffee white-white.

  The dryer buzzed. My clothes were dry and hot. They felt so good. I went back upstairs to my room and felt like crying. Minutes passed of doing nothing but breathing in that little room before I realized my head was pounding. The chemicals from the floor and the paint were slamming my head, burning the backs of my eyes.

  I made my way downstairs. The empty living room. Grandpa’s room. He was everything. So many things. Always moving. His room was a tomb now. My throat choked me.

  I sat in the doorway, remembering. Daddy, oh, Daddy. I wondered what was happening with Mom right then and how scared she must be. Looking back, as much time as I’d spent with her, all I’d seen was the way she was acting, not the way she was inside. She was so scared and she loved me so much. And she hurt.

  She tried, every day she tried, but she was sick, sick with drinking and by not being smart when she was that way, and by being scared. She loved me so much and hurt so much and made mistakes.

  I balled up my hands in my pockets, knowing I was going to leave right then and make my way to the hospital to be with her, when there was a sharp knock at the back of the house.

  I swung around. An arm moved outside the kitchen window next to the door. A face appeared, with hands cupped against the glass. I froze.

  Rich? What’s he doing here? Go away. Go away!

  After a few seconds—it seemed so much longer—he tapped the window. I still didn’t move. Finally, he called through the door.

  “Jeff. Let me in. I’m getting soaked out here.”

  CHAPTER 37

  WINNER OF EVERYTHING

  Planting my foot inside it, I unlocked the back door and pulled it in partway.

  “Rich, just go home—”

  It wasn’t Rich. It was Tom Bender. The face I’d seen every day since third grade, then not again until last week or the week before or whenever.

  He was squinting dumbly at me as the rain pelted his head. I swore at him.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “Me? What are you doing here? Let me in.”

  The great Tom Bender, boyfriend of Courtney, winner of everything. He was dripping, shivering. I slid my foot aside and he came in.

  “Wipe your stupid feet.” I kicked over a rag with my foot. “This is a new floor. How did you even know I was here?”

  He got most of the puddle, walking the rag around under both feet like a prisoner in ankle cuffs. “I was at Rich’s house—”

  “Was he poisoning you against me?”

  He stopped. “What? No—”

  “No, no, of course not. Because nobody does that, right? Well, you can just”—and I did that thing with my finger that the lady did in New Hampshire when she saw me on her private road. The rotate move.

  “Are you stirring something? Is it soup? What kind?”

  “You’ve seen the freak, now go back to your friends.”

  “Rich’s mom was supposed to look out for me after school. My parents are away in different places.”

  “Why are you even talking to me?” I said. “I hate you!”

  He paused, then went on like he hadn’t heard me. “But his mother went out, and Rich’s sister’s boyfriend is over, and Rich is gross sick with a cold. It’s like being alone. He told me you left your house. I wanted to see for myself. What’s going on?”

  I looked at him, giving me that same face he used to, half all open and friendly, half wondering about something, and I hated it, couldn’t stand to see it, but a heavy weight collapsed on me. Seriously, my body rippled all the way to the floor with exhaustion. I couldn’t muster a lie, not just then. It was different from not lying to Jano, because he knew I was living the same life he was. This was different, Tom was nobody to me, but I still couldn’t lie. Lying was useless. I didn’t want to fight. I was too tired. I had nothing left.

  “My mother got… She lost her job. Two months ago, almost. Month and a half. But she didn’t pay the rent long before that, so we had to leave.…”

  “Whoa. Where are you living?”

  “Somewhere. Nowhere. Hotels. Mom’s friend for a week. Since then, places, here and there. A shelter for a few nights. Our car. Just… places.”

  It was a sad list when I said it out loud, and he cursed under his breath the way he never used to. “Man, I’m sorry. This stinks. I’m sorry.”

  I looked around. The shiny floor was moving from the rain crying down the window.

  “Do
es anybody know?” he asked. “At school?”

  I thought of Hannah, made her face vanish. “No. I’m too good at keeping secrets.”

  “Where’s your mother now? I mean, is she okay?”

  “My mother? Okay? No. She’s drunk. She’s a drunk. She drank when I was at St. Catherine’s, and it’s worse now. It’s why she lost all her jobs. Plus, she broke her foot. Or her ankle, I don’t know. They took her to the hospital tonight.” My eyes burned from the smell. “She told me to hide from the police. Stupid idea. Once they figure out she was drunk, they’ll come for me anyway. I’ll have to leave my lousy school, become a foster kid who knows where, with a mom in jail, so just… just go away.…”

  “No way. They’ll figure something out.”

  “Yeah, what? What exactly?” I mocked him. “You don’t know anything. She screwed up so royally, maybe I should hide.”

  “Good plan, but there must be a better place. How can you stand the smell here?”

  “That’s my business. Go away, will you?”

  All I wanted to do was drop to the floor and sleep.

  Instead of going away, he pretended not to hear again, turned, and squeaked open the basement door. It was the same old squeak as when he used to come over. He peered down the stairs. Ignoring everything, he went all the way to the bottom.

  The light switch clicked, and I heard another sharp curse under his breath. I pulled my sleeve over my eyes, sniffed up, and went down, too. No old couch, no piles of comics on the floor, no TV. Another dead, empty room. Whatever I might remember about it had been vacuumed away.

  “We hung out here so much after school,” he said. “So many hours. It’s crazy.”

  And it popped out of me. “I felt so good when I was down here.”

  He grinned. “With me? Right? You felt good because I was here?”

  “What are you being all funny for? I hate you. Get out of here.”

  I was mad and flicked the light out on us, then trotted back upstairs—where I heard an engine idling and the sharp crackle of a police radio.

  CHAPTER 38

  LEAVING

  I stopped mid-step and listened.

  He bumped me from behind. “Hey, use all the stairs—”

  “Shh!”

  A light flared suddenly through the front window across the dining room and against our old kitchen cabinets. It moved along the counter and went out. The front doorknob twisted back and forth. There was a tap at the window.

  “Who’s that?” he whispered. “Is it the landlord?”

  “Will you shut up!”

  The beam of light passed across the kitchen wall again, then fell. Darkness. A few seconds later, the side doorknob was jostled. I pulled the basement door closed except for a crack. The light sliced in the side window now and passed through to the living room.

  “Did you tell Rich you were coming?” I whispered. “Did his mother send the cops?”

  “She’s not there, remember?”

  “Whatever. This is breaking and entering!”

  “You broke in. I was invited.”

  “Invited? ‘Oh, I’m all wet! Please help me, please!’”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “Shh!”

  The radio yakked again, farther away this time, and a car door thumped. Two car doors. Voices from the front of the house.

  “They’ll call the landlord,” I said.

  He nudged my arm. “Out the back.”

  I gave him a look. “What?”

  “They’re in front,” he said. “Out the back—hurry!”

  I crouched and dashed across the kitchen floor, carefully unbolted the back door, and push-pulled it inch by inch until it was free. Cold rainy air. No voices. Onto the steps, closing the door, then across the yard, slowly, so I wouldn’t splash or slip on the wet grass. One yard, the next, and the next. He was still with me.

  “Go back to Rich’s,” I said. “This is dumb. I’m going to the hospital to see my mother, and don’t tell him anything.”

  “What are you afraid of—”

  The thin beam of a powerful flashlight flicked through a hedge behind him. A voice calling. Another siren whooped a couple of streets away.

  “Go!” I said. I pushed him away and he fell on his butt in the soaked grass. I left him and ran through a bank of hedges to a short curving street and slid in a puddle, soaking both shoes completely. I hurried up the sidewalk as quickly as I could to the top of a small rise and down the other side. Cars approached quickly.

  Someone hissed from the corner. It was him, coming around the opposite way.

  “What is your problem?” I shouted. “Get out of here—”

  “They almost got me!” he said. “What do I do now?”

  “‘Help me, help me!’” I said, mocking him again. “Look, just go. You didn’t do anything wrong yet, so go!” I started off, but a bunch of sirens crisscrossed each other in front of and behind us. I swore. Then he swore. Then I swore again.

  “Let’s just go to the hospital,” he said. “My dad’ll pick us up from there.”

  “You’re deadwood. Look at you—”

  “Look at me? I got here faster than you did!”

  “You’re such a jerk,” I said.

  “You are.”

  His lame comeback, like he couldn’t tell I hated him and hated the cold, the night, my house, my mother, me, everything. I swore again and started walking fast through backyards toward downtown, miles away. We started walking fast. The dummy wouldn’t leave. Sirens whined, but farther away now. The temperature was dropping fast. It was stupid. The mess of my life was getting messier.

  I stopped in somebody’s soggy brown garden. “I need to get my bearings. Hold on.”

  A phone tinkled. He dug in his pocket and pulled out a pink case.

  “It’s my mother’s phone,” he said. “Hello? Dad? Finally. When do you think you’ll be home?” He held it flat so I could hear. There was a lot of honking on the phone.

  “It’ll be a couple more hours because of the snow and this traffic.” His father’s voice, tinny and far away. “I’m going to try to drive through it before the storm reaches you. Can you put Rich’s mom on the phone?”

  He looked at me. “I’m… I’m with Jeff now.…”

  “Jeff?” his father said. “What? Why? Never mind, put his mother on.”

  “She’s… out… for a while. We’re good.”

  “Does Rich’s mother know where you are? Tell her if you haven’t. Okay, it’s rolling again. Mommy’s not starting until late tomorrow. Stay where you are. I’ll pick you up at Jeff’s. Gotta go.”

  “Be safe!” Tom said as his father hung up.

  I shook my head. “You’ll twist into knots to not lie, won’t you?”

  “It’s a gift. I have others.”

  I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to hear my voice. I didn’t want to hear his voice either. He reminded me of so much it twisted my insides. I hurried off across the yard, then across another to a street a block away from the main one. He followed me, of course. The air was black now, with the rain coming fast and hard. I was soaked through. Every now and again I wrung out my hood, and icy rain slid down my back.

  It was so much fun.

  CHAPTER 39

  IT WAS WHAT IT WAS

  For the next hour, the rain spat like bullets. Rivers sliced along the gutters and overflowed the storm drains with mounds of rolling water. Nobody sane would walk in it. We walked in it. One minute poured into the next. We were out of backyards now, sloshing down side streets. I hated that he was with me, stuck to me. I wished it were Hannah, as bad as I’d left it with her. Or nobody. Nobody would be better.

  “My feet are soaked,” he said as we cut through one side street after another. “And frozen. Wet feet make you feel colder than dry feet at the same temperature. Did you know that?”

  I said nothing.

  “Really, wet cold is worse than dry cold,” he said. “Neat, huh, how being on t
he street teaches you physics?”

  “On the street? What is this, like your big adventure? Tagging along with a loser into the creepy parts of Bridgeport at midnight? You’re all the same, using me to pretend you’re risky or whatever. Rich does it, Hannah, all of you.”

  “What? No.” He walked a few steps behind me. “And it’s actually not midnight. It’s like eight something.” He pulled out his phone. “Eight twenty-one. Who’s Hannah?”

  “Keep quiet.”

  He wouldn’t. “There’s something really hideous called trench foot, did you know that? From the trenches in World War One. It happened to soldiers who tramped around with wet feet in their boots all the time. Tramping in trenches.”

  “Dictionary,” I said. “You’re a dictionary.”

  “Wikipedia, Mrs. Tracy says.”

  “So you talk in class now?”

  “And some of them had to have their feet cut off because the skin died and there was gangrene. From the water always in the bottoms of the trenches.”

  Gangrene. Black dead skin. I wondered if Grandpa was watching me, wondering what the heck I was doing in my life.

  Slogging and slogging, I pushed on, hoping I’d see a dim glow in the distance that would be the hospital. I knew it sat on a hill, huge and blazing with sick people. Grandpa had gone there for his operations and for his failing heart. The air was gray, thick with rain. No hospital. There was no way to see that far.

  I sank inside. “We’re, like, hours away from the dumb place.”

  “My parents had a big thing last week,” he said out of nowhere.

  “What?”

  “An argument. About money.”

  “Too much?”

  He could have said a thousand things, called me an idiot or a jerk, but he didn’t, just walked past me, then stopped to let me lead. It was quiet for a while. Then he said, “My dad only works three days a week. For two months now. He started by telling us it’ll pick up again, but he doesn’t say that anymore. They did that to him just before the holidays, you believe it?”