Barker House

by David Moloney

  “I warned you,” he said. “This is coming out of your cut.” He drank two more hot beers in silence. When he was ready to move on, he lectured me about sticking it out at the jail, about the security of a union and a pension. I could tell by his tone that he’d concluded I wasn’t going to carry the ledger when he was gone. After only an hour my skin turned pink. I didn’t mind sunburn. Working indoors, I wanted to look like it was summer.

  We went inside and I made tuna sandwiches while he counted out the cash from the jail and added it to his pile. He huffed from his nostrils and tapped the bills. “What’s this Tully guy’s first name?”

  “You can’t do anything,” I said and put his sandwich in front of him. “You’ll get me jammed up at work.”

  “I’m not eating a grand. I’ll just have a talk with him.”

  “Forget it. I’m not telling you his name. Take my cut. I don’t need it.”

  “So what are we doing this for?”

  I ate some tuna, then asked, “How’s the treatment working?”

  “Uncle John is taking me Monday for a PET scan,” he said. He bit his sandwich. His head looked tiny without hair, his eyes threatening without eyebrows. I don’t have his head. Mine looks normal shaved to the skin.

  “Think there’s any hope it shrunk?” I asked.

  “Shit!” he yelled and dropped the pen he’d picked up to write in his ledger. “Shit, that is freezing.”

  “You have to be more careful. What if you fell in the water?”

  He didn’t answer. After he finished his sandwich he stood at the sink window and stared out at the pool. He sipped another beer. “Before this summer’s over I’m going for one last swim.”

  I watched him squint out the window, then rub his head, where just last summer combable gray hair could be found.

  Tully’s truck was parked outside his house, a colonial, with a red front door and moss on the roof. The windows had shutters and there was new white siding. A big oak tree stood tall and plumed over the dormer. A congenial home. A pink bike lay in the thick grass. I thought about Tully betting on Boise State, listening to the game on headphones while he cut his lawn.

  “I knock, and when he answers, I’ll grab him by the throat,” my father said. He held his gloved hand open, all that was missing was a beer can.

  “We agreed I go to the door, alone. It’s the only way I do this.” I was being insincere. He was going whether I’d gone along or not.

  “Yes, sir.”

  I gave a long stare and then got out of my car. I crossed the dead-end street in the bright sun. The fealty of the dead end: no traffic, fixed neighbors, a fairly secure promise the road was forever tied off. The only other house looked quiet, with no cars. Middle of a workday, not many people would be home. But I knew it was Tully’s day off. His kids would be at school, his wife at work.

  I walked up the wooden steps and knocked loudly. A dog barked from the vacant house next door. It sounded big. I got a whiff of onions and looked around for the source. A terra-cotta pot to the left of the door, with long green blades sticking out straight, some topped with purple flowers. I bent and pinched off a blade. Chives. The door opened and I dropped the herb. Tully had on a white T-shirt and basketball shorts. His calves were thick and veiny.

  “Are you fucking for real?”

  “You put us in a bind,” I said.

  “Who’s us?” he asked. “You show up on my day off to shake me down?”

  “This isn’t a shakedown. It’s a friendly reminder.”

  “Bullshit. It’s a shakedown,” my father said from behind me.

  “You brought your dad?”

  “Some good faith, Tully. A couple hundred, anything,” I said.

  “I’m hard up. I’ve told you.”

  “Let’s go inside,” my dad said. “To talk.”

  I could feel my dad closing in behind me, right over my shoulder. He should’ve stayed in the car. Tully looked not scared but distracted, in a boyish way, like we’d interrupted him jerking off.

  “We’ll talk at work,” said Tully, and he started to close the door. My dad rushed past me and drove the door open. He grabbed Tully by his shoulders and they fell into the house. It happened fast and I went inside without thinking and shut the door. Inside the house, the dog’s bark was muffled. The two of them wrestled at the foot of a stairway. A laptop was open on the coffee table in the adjacent room, SportsCenter muted on the TV. Maybe he had been jerking it.

  I’d seen my father fight a few times; the most memorable was when a customer on my newspaper route refused to pay overdue fees. Once I watched from my bedroom window as my father and his brother exchanged blows and fuck-yous in the driveway. I’d never seen him lose a fight and now he had my co-worker by the throat in his own home. Tully was squeaking out sounds, but no real words. My dad’s feet were sliding on a rug. His shirt was pulled up, his tumor-ridden abdomen showing, and Tully, years younger and in better health, was unable to shake him.

  “Even with cancer! You fucking seeing this, Mike?” my dad yelled, and he cocked back his right arm and punched Tully in his face.

  Tully stopped struggling and, seemingly spent too, my father released his grip. Tully lay on his side, gasping. My father straddled him and gave a long, blank stare up toward the ceiling. I grabbed my father under the armpits and hoisted him until he was standing.

  “I don’t have it,” Tully said. He spat blood into his hand. “Do what you want, I just don’t have it.”

  There was nothing more to do, short of us robbing the house, so I told my dad it was time to go. He walked slowly behind me across the street, victorious, taking in the scenery. He got inside the car and clapped his hands loudly.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I started driving away. “Yes, what? You know what you just did? I’m fucked at the House. You just made life hell for me.”

  My father held his palm out and I looked away from the road to see a gold wedding band sitting on the glove.

  “That’s probably worth like a hundred bucks,” I said.

  “That’s not the point, Mike. Not the point at all.”

  “Are you going to bring me to McDonald’s every time?” Ava asked. She’d lost her second canine tooth on the bottom. It was strange to see up close, the loss and growth of teeth. I’d forgotten the process.

  “I don’t know where else to take you.”

  “I’m sick of eating these. I don’t really even like them.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I was trying to be nice.”

  We sat while I tried to think of something else. She had on that girls-and-monsters shirt again. The same pink shorts with the ink stains. I wondered if Nina told Ava about the plea deal, or if Ava told Nina about my dad and my urinal issues. Maybe I was only a means to keep them connected. I didn’t know what I was to anyone.

  “How is your dad doing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We haven’t spoken in a few days.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “I know that. You might be the smartest person I know.”

  She smiled. “Can we see a movie?”

  “I don’t think so. It’ll be late. Wouldn’t your Grammy be worried?”

  “She doesn’t even hear me come in.”

  “Too tired from work?”

  “I’ve never seen her have a job.”

  Nina had lied. I was beginning to question why I had any interest in her. If I dropped my enthusiasm for Nina, where would that leave Ava and me? This could be the last time I saw her. “I’m not a big movie person.”

  “Do you have a pool?” she asked.

  “My apartment complex has one but I’ve never seen it open.”

  She slid the cup of melting ice cream to the center of the table. She was disappointed. “I’m not allowed back in the one at our apartment.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “People
make things up,” she said.

  “Did they post a photo of you? Who cares? Go back.”

  “There’s only two lifeguards. Trust me—they remember me.”

  “Maybe I can talk to them.”

  “Please don’t bring me home yet,” she said. “I don’t want to go home.”

  I couldn’t imagine not wanting to go home as a kid. She stared at the table. If she was playing me, she didn’t have to work so hard.

  “If I go in that stupid ball pit, will you come with me?” I asked.

  We were the only ones in the pit and we whipped the light balls at each other. She dove in and grabbed at my ankles and tried pulling me under. She said something from inside the balls, cunt maybe, but I couldn’t be sure. We laughed and I gave her ten fingers a few times so she could do a full flip into the pit. The people who watched from the restaurant weren’t laughing with us but they should have been. I hadn’t laughed for real in a long time. My phone vibrated in my shorts pocket so I held my hands up to Ava in surrender. She let one last ball fly by my head while I checked my phone. It was my dad. I had to answer. “Are you okay?”

  “Eighty dollars,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “That’s what I got for his ring. Come get your take, whenever.” He hung up the phone.

  “What is it?” Ava asked.

  “Still want to go for that swim?”

  It was hot inside the car, the sun beating on the leather seats and steering wheel. We stood outside with the doors open to air it out. In the middle of the busy street, seagulls yelled at each other and fought over spilled french fries and a white bag. Cars drove around them and a city bus beeped its loud horn and they flew off.

  We drove to my parents’ and I let Ava sit in the front seat. She messed with the radio and tapped her bare knees. I thought about my dad, what he’d done to Tully. In all the excitement, I never asked how his PET scan went.

  When we pulled up, Ava said, “I don’t have a bathing suit.” I shouldn’t have dragged her there. My dad would ask about her. But he’d liked Nina back in high school. He’d be happy we reconnected.

  “You can wear a big T-shirt.”

  My mother was at work again. She’d be fine, I knew, with keeping herself busy. We went through the front door and I told Ava to wait in the living room while I got her one of my dad’s old green shirts with the big shamrock on the front. When I came back, she was holding a photo of me as a kid.

  “This is a really nice house,” she said.

  I’d never heard anyone call the house nice. I handed her the shirt. She thanked me and I showed her where the bathroom was. I went back to the kitchen to see if my dad was outside. He was in his bathing suit standing at the edge of the deck, facing the pool. He put his thin arms out and dove into the water. He came up out of the water and flailed his arms in the air, and then he gave a loud shriek.

  Out the window I yelled, “Get out of the water!”

  He directed his head toward the sound of my voice but his eyes were somewhere else. He didn’t answer me. Ava hurried up next to me in the green shirt. She had tied her hair up with one of my mother’s hair ties. My dad shook and rocked and splashed water with his fists like he was fighting it.

  “If the water is that cold I do not want to go in,” Ava said.

  “It’s not,” I said. “I’ll explain it all later.”

  It was not until I was dragging my father out of the pool, with Ava reaching down, grabbing at his biceps, trying to help, that I realized she’d never forget this. It’d stay with her forever and it wouldn’t be up to her.

  Brenner / Gen Pop U4

  “Property”

  Her mother used to restore old dolls, specifically, American compo dolls. Madame Alexander, Amberg. One of her last memories of her mother, it must have been a Sunday afternoon, when she would invite Brenner to stand at the sink with her and watch her take the green out of a doll’s mohair wig. It was such a careful process. The doll would be covered in plastic wrap so it wouldn’t get wet. Each strand of hair was massaged in the soapy water, then brushed with a metal comb. She’d fill cracks, airbrush their faces, paint their eyes and mouths, so gentle, and her strokes clean, but then she’d scuff them. “No one wants a doll that looks new,” she’d say. The dolls were sent to her in the mail. She cared for them as if they were the owners’ children. Brenner was tempted to play with the dolls, but it was her mother’s work, and she wouldn’t have dared. In this last memory, maybe the last before breast cancer took her, her mother made up a doll’s face, with charcoal eyebrows and magenta cheeks, and though Brenner couldn’t remember her mother’s face much from that day, that doll’s face remained with her.

  Inside the Property Room, Brenner stood before a clown-faced junkie, pupils pointed down, thick red lipstick cracked and smeared, still groggy from whatever she’d swallowed or stuck in her arm before her arrest. The woman was young, younger than Brenner, who was twenty-five. Hobson called her a whippersnapper, and she didn’t think he knew what it meant. He might as well pat her head and give her a sticker. Nashua had scooped up six women in a prostitution ring, and Brenner was sure to spend her entire break searching holes for bags.

  “Fishhook your cheeks,” Brenner explained, miming the action. “Straighten up. I said straighten up. With your fingers. Fishhook.”

  The new admit was nude, her skin bruised in all sorts of places, but the ones that stood out to Brenner were the deep blue ones on her armpits. She stumbled and caught herself against the bricked wall, then leaned there. Behind her were shelves of bagged and boxed inmate property, shoes, jewelry, clothes, suits dropped off by loved ones or good lawyers for court. The large closet-like room smelled like wet sneakers. Behind Brenner was a shower where inmates rinsed, like at a public pool. They’d dry off and get walked through the unclothed search procedure. Other than the Bubble on Max, which was a boys’ club for male officers to pack dips and nap, the Property Room was the only room that was not under video surveillance.

  “Hon, you need to get this over with,” Brenner said. Brenner took the few steps that were in between them and she helped the woman stand up. “I’m going to inspect your mouth. Then I’m going to bend you over at the waist and check you. Can you do this with me?”

  The inmate nodded, her dry tongue peaked between her crusted lips. Brenner checked her mouth. She’d been working at the jail for a year and she had learned much about people. How bad people’s teeth could get. The inmates—the hookers and women with gangrene arms—their teeth could get rocklike, gravelly. Dr. McKiel, the county dentist, didn’t get paid nearly enough.

  The inmate’s breath smelled like cigarettes. Brenner grabbed her around the waist with her left arm and pushed her into a bow with her other hand. The inmate let all her weight collapse in Brenner’s grasp and her arms hung limp. Brenner struggled to hold her up and spread her feet to get a stronger stance, then inspected the inmate’s vagina and anus as respectfully as one could.

  Hunter retired, so Brenner was the only female officer on first shift. Radio calls all day: “Brenner, 10-11 Property.” As a policy, men couldn’t change out the women. Strip searches gave her an affinity for the inmates. She didn’t like that. She wanted to be hard on them. But if one was in distress, or agitated, the male officers would call her down to U1 or Booking, and she’d be expected to calm them. The male officers were never expected to calm anyone. They’d move right past verbal de-escalation and straight to force. With this approach, voice before fists, they could mistake Brenner’s professionalism for sympathy. The men called her an inmate hugger. And she could be guilty of sympathizing with them. Some were pregnant, or thought they might be, or missed the children they had. But sympathy inside the House was a weakness, and that made her think of her father. He was fascinated by her decision to work at the House. “You’re obviously trying to prove something,” he’d said, working over his eggs and Tabasco, “but they’re going to eat you alive.” Did he say that? It felt like something
he’d say. No one had eaten her alive. She’d look in the mirror before muster each morning and say “Fuck you.” Best softball pitcher in Merrimack Valley history. Dominated in D1. Graduated summa cum laude in criminal justice. Signed on at Securitas and patrolled the old mills now turned apartments. Bided her time for a real law enforcement job. Where did he expect her to work? It was always going to be a badge.

  Outside the Property Room, Tully took over and escorted the inmate to the large holding tank. Tully, the Property officer, was stocky, prominent brow with black hair combed to the right. He lent Brenner his leather gloves when she had to dig into pockets; would sometimes tell her, when an inmate seemed strange or agitated or drunk, “I’ll be right outside this door if you need me.” She never did need him, or the coddling aspect of the male/female officer relationship. Or the other way, the male officers who raised their voices, yelled, postured, and pushed her aside. It took her most of her first year to figure out how to be. She requested a bigger, baggier uniform. She stopped smiling and saying thank you to officers who held doors for her, wrote more D-tickets for violations of 3.1 of the inmate handbook, Disrespect to Officer. As much as she wanted to get a drink after work, she didn’t join the first shifters at Willie’s.

  Tully was married, and she looked forward to their interactions each day. They shared a sick-humored small talk that bordered on flirtation. He’d ask her how the fish market was today. She’d tell him clammy. He’d laugh and spit cherry Skoal juice in his cup, tell her the girls in the tank asked if she was single. “You be the judge. If they’re cute …” she’d say. He looked forward to seeing her too, she knew, because he perked up whenever she came into Property. Tully was an abrasive officer, the kind that treated the job as a sentenced penalty, so far removed from the excitement of the early days, and now every task was a trial, every inmate an enemy.

  When Tully returned to the Property Room, Brenner was digging through a trash bag, attempting to fulfill a request from an inmate on U9, who wanted his court clothes released to his mother for dry cleaning, a common request.