Bad People (11 page)

He looked at her. “You need a plan.”

“No I don’t. Because of you. I
get
you. That’s my gift. This woman you’re fucking—”

“I’m not fucking her.”

“This woman you’re fucking is going to fuck you right back. Remember I’m on your side, no matter what. Okay?”

She waited.

“Say
okay
.”

He nodded.

“Say
okay
.”

“All right.”

“Oh you poor boy.” She sat back on the bed and tore open the take-out plastic bag. Then she move her butt and felt under the bedding for something. She pulled it free. “Oh! There you are! My little white iPod!”

Chapter 12: Connie

Connie doctor’s office had called twice to say that the test result had arrived. That could only be bad news. If it had been good news they would have called once and then let it go. No urgency. But the doctor’s office had called twice. No getting around it; Connie made the appointment.

She sat on the end of her bed in her room waiting for Stephen-David to come out of his bathroom, to let him know she would be going out for appointments. 10:30 and he’d just gotten up.

Stephen-David was doing nothing for his last summer before senior year, and he was home every day and sleeping. She had fretted over keeping the doctor appointments secret from him almost as if he would’ve been interested. It had become a reflex, being secretive. When had that happened?

Maybe it ran in the family. Her son didn’t talk to her, not willingly. Her husband had been keeping a lifetime of secrets. Maybe she’d learn it from them, the Hart men. Absorbed it into her skin, like the lead paint from unsafe houses.

Robb would have said he had lied to her to spare her. Something like:
I didn’t want to worry you, Connie. It’s my instinct to protect you
.

Well you always believed you were good at that, didn’t you?
she’d have retorted. The protector. The rescuer.

All right, lets have it out
, he would have told her.

Even in death he kept after her, his voice inside her head arguing what was right, his point of view on everything, from car wax to theology, ground right into her bones. Backed again to the wall with his fucking reason.

Why should I listen to you anymore? You were shooting heroin between your toes!
She’d accuse him, fighting not to sound shrill, not to sound like the fifteen-year-old runaway she once was.

To see what you’d gone through
, Robb would say.

Connie.
I never shot up anything!

Robb.
But the drugs, the street, there’s a lot you couldn’t tell me. I don’t blame you
—

Connie.
I told you everything!

No, Connie. Nobody tells everything. We all keep our secrets
.

Robb would have crossed his arms then and stood in judgment over her suspicion that he was judging her.

Connie.
I was in trouble. A lot of kids have trouble. Get into trouble
.

Robb.
We’re not talking about other kids. We’re talking about you, honey
.

Connie.
Don’t talk down to me
.

I’m talking
to
you, honey. Trying to anyway. It’s your self-esteem that’s the issue. Has always been the issue. Understand me? You could do wonders, you could realize some potential if only you’d make a significant effort to work on your poor self-image. Deep inside you still feel like that little girl turning tricks on the street for drugs and food, don’t you.? Behind all this middle-class veneer, don’t you? Isn’t that right, honey? That’s what’s bothering you. Admit it.

Connie.
I never did that
.

You never
called
it that
.

Connie.
Because I never did that
.

You did things. Things you didn’t want to do.

Connie.
Maybe. Who hasn’t?

Robb.
I haven’t. Yes, I shot heroin. I did that as a conscious choice. To be closer to you. To understand you, and to understand Stephen-David too. I avoided the whole drug culture. But now that I am a responsible adult I have to know what is out there, I had to go down into it, the world that you and Stephen-David and other—I won’t say weak-willed—I’ll say:
challenged
individuals have to contend with. I love the boy, but he’s half yours—he’s got your weaknesses and insecurities, and now no father around to guide him. Or you
.

In her mind’s eye, the ghost of her dead husband put its arm around her. Cold blanketed her shoulders. Connie almost felt the ghost make an impression on the bed. Her bed, not theirs. Their bed was gone, as their house was gone, but the ghost had not stayed to haunt the garage, or haunt the souls of its murderers. No. The ghost haunted her.

Robb.
You poor, poor little girl. You’ll never survive without me. You know that. You’ll be back on the street in no time
.

I was never on the street. Not the way you imply.

You did things.

No.

Tell me. You did things.

No.

You traded sex for drugs and food. And shelter. Tell me you did.

Not like that.

You did things you wish you hadn’t.

Oh yes.

Because you thought you had to.

No. Because I
did
have to.

Robb.
Because you have no self-esteem. And now I’m gone and now you will never have it, because only I can give it to you. Understand? Now you’ll go back to being what you were before me.

You have a son that hates you. You went on a date with a boy, and flatter yourself that he’d be interested in you. At least you found some contact at your own maturity-level. Why don’t you just fuck Barry instead, he’s your puppy. Him you can control. He can’t scare you! You’re so little, darling. So small and little, how are you ever going to make it on your own now that I am gone?

The shower stopped. Stephen-David eventually emerged from the bathroom. The hallway filled with steam clouds. She got up, closed her bedroom door to a crack before he could pass and happen to look in on her crying. She wiped her eyes on the back of her hands and avoided the mirror over the dresser. When she heard Stephen-David’s bedroom door slam she hurried out at a trot, grabbing her bag off the hall table as she moved.

She made it down to the parking garage, got in the car, squeezing her body between the door and the jamb with only inches of give because of the ridiculous, Gulf War -inspired, vehicle next to hers. Somewhere distant a child’s laughter echoed and a parent’s scolding followed it.

She started to back out, and there was a thunk under the driver’s side rear and then a shout.

She stopped and looked back, seeing nothing at first. Then a woman ran frantically into her sightline. Connie opened her door, dinging the side of the car in the next space. The woman waved her arms. Connie fought her way out of her seat belt and tumbled out of the car.

A wheel behind her wheel spun helplessly in the air. A tricycle upended. Crushed.

“Oh my god,” she heard someone say. Herself.

The woman: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

A child crying? No. Yes? Far away. Ohmigod. Like a ghost.

The woman: “Get over here, you little shit!”

The child came running from up the row and Connie took a breath.

A little boy, four or five, running and crying, arms out, pleading—for mother or tricycle, Connie couldn’t tell which.

The mother said, “I told you to hold onto it!” She shook her son by the shoulders.

“It’s all right,” said Connie. “Poor thing, he’s scared.”

“He’d better be!”

“It’s this garage. It slants.”

The woman still looked at her son, who was bawling now. “ When I tell you to hold on to something—
you hold onto it
! Understand, young man!”

Connie didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t leave, she couldn’t free the tricycle on her own, and she had to stand there watching this mother berate her child. Never interfere with a mother and a child. There was no way to do that.

“Apologize,” the mother told the shaking child.

The boy looked at his tricycle and was only thinking about that.

The woman turned to Connie. “How are we going to get that out from under your bumper?” she asked.

Connie went to the rear of her car and examined it. But for the big front wheel, the tricycle was jammed in tight, she tried to wriggle it. It didn’t budge, held solid like it had been welded there. “I can pull forward a little, but not much.” The spaces were miniscule, about the only car that fit into them well was Stephen-David’s little hybrid. “My son is upstairs, I’ll see if he can help us.”

“Have you got a jack?”

“Sure….”

“We’ll jack the back up, then it will come free.”

“I have an appointment…”

The woman looked at her almost cross-eyed. She had a straight long jaw. “Then you’ll need your car, won’t you.”

“You’re right of course.” Then for no reason Connie said something god-awful. “My husband died. Recently. He was murdered. He might have been sick. I’m on my way to the hospital. Not the hospital. The clinic. To pick up a test.”

“Oh!” said the woman. “Pop the trunk for me will you?”

Connie reached back into the car to do as instructed. The woman ordered her son to stand against a concrete pillar across the way, and once he got there, warned him not to move. Connie watched this via the side view mirror: standing, blubbering, eyes downcast, hands behind his rear, bouncing his back again and again off the concrete pillar.

“Okay now pop it!” the woman reminded her about the trunk.

“Okay, there you go!” she said when Connie complied. The woman fumbled to find the release. “Where’s your jack?” she said when the trunk was open. “I don’t see it.” Connie went back to the trunk to look. “Never mind, I see it,” said the woman.

The woman wore a print dress, like a farm dresser, of dark blue, with tiny white daisies. Her stockings were flesh tone and thick, she wore low high-heels, but the heel was broad at the base, and the material (not leather whatever it was) looked thicker than hide. She crouched, lay the jack on the cement, and hiked the loose folds of dress material out of the way into the Vee of her lap. She quickly assembled the jack and placed it under the car. She held it firmly with one hand and pumped with the other. Two or three pumps and the body of the car began rising; she looked up at Connie, smiling with her mouth only.

“See if you can pull it out of there now,” she told Connie.

Connie grabbed the trike by the big wheel and yanked. The car lurched in her direction; the jack tottered. “Easy!” said the woman. When the car settled she gave it two more pumps. The tricycle was wrapped up into the wheel well and Connie worked it down first. The Jetta’s rear wheel finally spun. The tricycle dropped and she pulled it free.

“Well that’s that,” said the woman. She lowered the back end and dissembled the jack, replaced it in the trunk, and closed the trunk. She took the tricycle from Connie.

“Thank you,” said Connie. “Sorry for the trouble.”

“What trouble?” said the woman. “You didn’t do anything.” Then she nodded and gave the same smile-less smile as before. She ordered her son to her side, and walked toward the elevator, twisted tricycle in one hand, son’s hand in the other. She stopped at the dumpster near the elevator. Its lid was up and she tossed the tricycle in with a sideways swing of the arm. The boy wailed “No!” and she jerked his hand just enough to straighten him. The elevator was there and they got in and went up.

Connie still had the doctor to get to. The tire looked fine though the inside of the wheel well was scraped. And she’d dented and scratched the door of the tank parked next to her. She wrote a note on the back of a couple old parking meter sticker and climbed up on the tank to attach it to the windshield.

Would Stephen-David have come down to help her if she’d asked him?

She got in, backed slowly into the lane, drove around the columns and waited for the gate to rise. When it did, she turned left. The phone rang. Barry’s number.

Not now. She pressed
ignore
.