Have Mercy (Have a Life #1) (12 page)

I had Trigonometry and Spanish exams in the morning and American Literary Heritage and Plant and Animal Classification in the afternoon.  The Plant and Animal Classification exam turned out to be half essay question, “please describe what is meant by evidence of common descent,” and I got stuck on that and I wrote something lame-o about me and The Griffin being really alike and everything because I was trying to distance myself from Granny O’Reilly and Jane; to pretend I was born fully formed right out of The Griffin’s head or something.  Anyway, I was pretty sure I flunked all of the exams because I couldn’t focus and couldn’t remember any of the questions when Tim asked me later what they were.  Junior teachers were proctoring, so I didn’t have to endure my own teachers’ fake sympathy, although when I turned around to close the door behind me after I finished the Spanish exam, I caught the proctor whispering to a student and looking at me.  Or maybe I was turning into a raving paranoid which was very likely on no sleep.

              Tim was waiting for me after each session.  “You okay?” he asked.  “Need something?  Anything?”

              Which was a funny question to ask because I did need something, but I had no idea what it was.  I felt frozen.  I certainly didn’t want to go home and face the battleground there.  I kept calling The Griffin, but he didn’t pick up.  He was traveling on the bus and probably couldn’t even hear it ringing.  I knew if I could only see him, talk to him, that he would tell me to come right down.  The possibility of that conversation and my escape was the only thing keeping me going. 

              “I think some music would help,” he said, after our last exam.

              “Absolutely.” 

              I winced when I saw both Jane’s Kia and Granny O’Reilly’s rental SUV parked in front of the house.  But at least it was quiet.  Unless they killed each other.  I laughed.

              “What’s so funny?” Tim asked.

              “I was thinking how that social worker Mrs. Valliere thought it was such a hot idea to bring my grandmother in to supervise me.”

              We opened the Trap and turned everything on.  If I moved to Ohio I would have to leave my gear behind.  I touched it as if I was saying goodbye to a friend.

              “You can have all this stuff,” I told Tim. 

              “I couldn’t do that,” he said.

              “Well, at least keep it safe for me.  For when we get back together.”  The thought that we might never see each other, never play together again was too depressing to think about.  I put it in a box to think about at a later date.

              “I talked to Raymond today,” Tim said.

              “
Ray
mond? 
The Griffin’s
Raymond?”

              “Yeah.  We’re kind of like buddies.  They’re in Houston now.”

              “What do you mean, ‘they’re in Houston’?  Like the whole band?”

              “Yeah.  They’re practicing for the tour.  Raymond says your dad is staking everything on this.  It’s the first time in ten years they played without Aerosmith.”

              “So, the Griffin is there too?”

              “Of course he’s there.  Hey, listen.  I think I have a new song,” Tim said.  He ran through some chords.  “I have most of the words, too.”

              The Griffin was in Houston and couldn’t pick up his freaking phone?   “Okay.” 

              Captain Kirby came running up to the Trap and sat behind the drums, pulling out her sticks.

              “What happened to your bike?” Tim asked her.

              “Sold it.”

              “You
said
you were test driving it,” I said. 

              “Yeah, well, I found a chop shop in Harrisburg that does pick-up and delivery I had to get rid of it quick before too many people saw me on it.” 
Bada boom, bada bing, ya cha cha cha.
  “What are we on?”

              The protocol we developed during the five months Tim and I had been together was to go through all of our old songs before we tried something new.  The Griffin had told me, and I verified it on the net, that you have to play a song a hundred times in the woodshed, as musicians call it, before you can take it to the stage.  It was our way of getting to a hundred.

              We played all ten of them then got to
Hole in the Sky. 

              “We don’t have to,” Tim said.

              “Of course we do.  I’m all right,” I said.

              “You got to stare the griffin in the eye,” Captain Kirby said.  “So to speak.  It’s the only way to tame it.”

              Tim played the intro then raised his finger for us to join him. I picked up the mike and sang, faltering only a little:

If I could, I’d fly away,

There’s nothing here to make me stay. 

              Sometimes I think I’d like to die

              ‘cause then I’d fly up

              through that big hole,

              that big hole in the sky.”

We practiced until ten o’clock.  If we went a minute past ten, Jane said Mrs. Tudesco would call the cops on us for disturbing the peace, which she actually did once despite the fact that her little yapping dogs had fits in the middle of the night and woke up the whole neighborhood.  Anyway, I didn’t want to bring any more attention to our house with policemen etcetera.

              Tim and Captain Kirby left, promising to meet me in the morning to form a body guard for me in school, and I closed up the Trap and tiptoed up the stairs to the house.  Granny O’Reilly was at the kitchen table, smoking, doing a crossword puzzle.

              I coughed, hoping she would get the telepathic message.  “Where’s my mom?”

              “Out.”

              “You know we’re not actually allowed to smoke in here.  In the house,” I said.

              She squinted at me through the smoke.  “Your dinner is by the microwave.  You can heat it up.”

              “I’m not hungry.” 

              “Of course not.  Children are never hungry and you’re the most unoriginal child I’ve ever met.”

              Even someone as unoriginal as Granny O’Reilly was on me for being unoriginal.  There must be something to it.  I sat down across from her and started fraying a paper napkin. 

              “Stop that.”

              I kept fraying.

              “Nervous mannerisms are very unattractive.  In women, particularly.”

              I threw the pieces on the table.  “I thought Mom wasn’t supposed to go anywhere.”

              “She can do what she wants until the sentencing.  Except see that wretched boy.”  She peered at me.  “Do you know him?”

              “Rob?”

              “Is that his name?”

              “He was here to see The Griffin.  That’s the first time I met him.  Well, I didn’t actually meet him or talk to him or anything.  There were lots of kids here.”

              “She shouldn’t have allowed it.  What was she thinking?  I wouldn’t have allowed it.”

              “Well, The Griffin is my father and I never get to see him,” I said.  “I think Jane…I mean, Mom…just lets him come here so he can see me.  He’s on the road all the time and when would he get to see me?  Only on the band bus when he’s going from here to there.  It makes perfect sense.”

              “He isn’t on the road half as much as you think he is,” Granny O’Reilly said.

              “Of course he is,” I said, but even as I said it, I saw his house in Texas on Google Earth.  I saw the names “Marjewel and Isak” listed as people he might know on People Search.  Of course that’s where he was.  He couldn’t be driving around forever.

              “What’s he like?” she asked.  “Rob.”

              Prom night seemed so long ago.  “I don’t know.  Captain Kirby didn’t like him.”

              “That girl?  Your friend?”

              “My colleague,” I said. 

              “She has what we call ‘street smarts’,” Granny O’Reilly said.  “You could do worse than her for a friend.”

              “Hmmm.”  My street smart friend had stolen a bike that was worth five thousand dollars and had already sold it.  I don’t know, could they arrest you when your friend does something bad and you know about it but don’t say anything?  And what if she needed the money for groceries for her mother or something? Could they arrest
anyone
for that?  “Well, she didn’t like him, that’s all I know.”

              The front door opened and Jane came bursting through.  She seemed in high spirits.  “Well, that’s taken care of,” she said, taking off her trench coat and flinging it on a chair. 

              “What?” I asked.

              “I asked Rob if he lied to me about his age and he said ‘yes.’  See?  I told you.”

              I moaned.

              “You saw …
Rob
?” Granny O’Reilly asked.

              “Of course I did.  How else was I supposed to ask him?  I knew he wouldn’t lie to me again.”  She looked really pleased with herself.

              “Mom,” I said, slowly, “That was the one thing you weren’t allowed to do: make contact with Rob.”

              “Well, I don’t see how else I could have cleared my name.  I don’t know why the DA isn’t taking that into account.  But it’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it?  He lied to me about his age and the only reason I’m being charged is because he wasn’t eighteen.  So.  I think this should be the end of it.” 

              She lit up a cigarette. 

              “Where did you run into him?” I asked.  “Doesn’t he live in Nazareth?”

              “Well,
exactly
,” Jane said.  “I waited for him at his school.  Then I gave him a ride home.  He was really sweet about the whole thing.  He admitted he lied to me about how old he was and how he was still in school and everything.  You know, Mom, I know you think that I’m flakey, but you have to admit I’m a very good judge of character.  I think this whole thing will just blow over once he tells the judge that he lied.”

              “So, let me get this straight,” Granny O’Reilly said, “You not only talked to him, but you invited him into your car?”

              “Just to drive him home.  I didn’t want people to see us talking.”

              Granny O’Reilly put her head down on the table, then asked her, “Did you talk to your lawyer before you did this?”

              “My lawyer is incompetent.  She doesn’t think it’s an issue, and I keep telling her, it’s the
only
issue and I don’t see why no one’s bringing it up.  Is there any coffee around here?” 

              Jane zoomed around the kitchen, picking up the covered dish by the microwave and putting it in the wave.  “This looks good,” she said.

              Granny O’Reilly stared at Jane, then at me, in disbelief.  I was ashamed to meet her eyes.  I had a box for Jane, of course.  It was my biggest box because I had known Jane longer than I knew anyone else in my life, but it wasn’t big enough to hold what she’d just done.

              “I don’t see why you two look so depressed,” Jane said. “The kid was underage.  He lied about it.  He admitted he lied.  I fixed it.  Business as usual.”

              Which wasn’t exactly how the DA saw it.  Fifteen minutes later, Jane’s lawyer called and I could hear her loud voice through the cell phone.

              “But you’re not listening to
me
,” Jane said, over and over, then she started to cry.

              After she hung up the phone, she stared at the floor.

              “What’s going on, Mom,” I asked her.  “What did your lawyer say?”

              “Well, at least your grandmother’s here,” she said.

              “I am not going to Akron.  If I can’t stay here, I’m going to Houston.”

              And we said stuff like that back and forth for about an hour until Granny O’Reilly finally said, “Actions have consequences, Jane.  That’s the one thing you could never understand,” and went upstairs to bed before Jane could contradict her.

              I don’t think that Granny O’Reilly went to sleep because I heard noises all night upstairs like she was walking around and going to the bathroom.   

              Jane and I didn’t go to bed either.  We were like
glued
to the sofa in the living room.  At one point, Jane said, “I tried to make everything right.  You know that, don’t you, Mercedes?  That’s the only reason I went to see him.  Jesus, why else would I go see him?  He wasn’t that wonderful, you know.”

              And I nodded like I understood, but the whole thing was so overwhelming to me I just made my mind go blank so it wouldn’t explode.

              It was noon when the sheriff knocked on the door with another warrant for her arrest.  Granny O’Reilly came downstairs fully dressed as soon as the sheriff’s car pulled up and said, “I’ll meet you there.” When the sheriff said he would have to take Jane in himself and escorted her out, Granny O’Reilly went upstairs to get her purse and saw me staring at her.  “I’m never going to be free of her, am I?” she said. 

              And while it sounded mean, it was exactly what I was thinking.