Sacred Sins (37 page)

“Ed's not used to articulating to women. Come on
over, Ed. Tess'll fix you bean curds.” He stepped outside, grateful for the rush of cold air. His arm was no longer numb, but beginning to throb like a toothache. “Where are you parked?” He was already scanning the lot for the black and white.

“Just over there.”

“Walk the lady to her car, will you, Ed?” Taking her by the front of her coat, he kissed her hard. “Thanks for coming by.”

“You're welcome.”

She waited until he'd started toward the Mustang before she turned with Ed. “You'll look out for him?”

“Sure.”

Digging her keys out of her pocket, she nodded. “The man who stabbed Ben is dead?”

“Yeah.” He took the keys from her, and in a gesture she found sweet, unlocked the car himself. Tess looked at his face and saw, as clearly as if he'd spoken, who had fired the shot. Her values, the code she lived by, warred briefly with a new awareness. Putting a hand on his collar, she drew him down and kissed him. “Thanks for keeping him alive.” She got in the car, smiling up at him before she shut the door. “See you at dinner.”

Half in love with her himself, Ed walked back to his partner. “You don't go to Thanksgiving dinner, you're one dumb sonofabitch.”

Ben shook off grogginess as Ed slammed the car door. “What?”

“And you shouldn't need her Uncle Joe to punch you in the ribs.” Ed started the engine with a roar.

“Ed, did you get a bad piece of granola?”

“You better start looking at what's in front of your face, partner, before you end up tripping over the saw.”

“Saw? What saw?”

“Farmer's sawing wood,” Ed began as he drove off the lot. “City slicker's watching him. Dinner bell rings
and the farmer starts moving but he trips over the saw. He just picks himself up and starts cutting wood again. Slicker asks him why he doesn't go in to dinner and the farmer says, since he tripped over the saw, it's no use going in. There won't be anything left.”

Ben sat in silence for a full ten seconds. “That explains it. Why don't you turn back around, we'll go into the hospital and have them take a look at you?”

“The point is, if you fuck around when opportunity is staring you in the face, you miss it. You got a hell of a woman, Ben.”

“I think I know that.”

“Then you better be damn careful you don't trip over the saw.”

I
T WAS JUST
beginning to snow when Joey walked out of the back door. Knowing the storm door rattled, he pulled it carefully closed until it latched. He'd remembered to take his gloves, and had even pulled his blue ski cap over his head. Rather than changing to boots, he kept on his high tops. They were his favorite.

No one saw him leave.

His mother was in the den with his stepfather. He knew they'd been arguing about him, because their voices had been pitched low and had carried that thin, nervous tone their voices carried whenever they argued about him.

They didn't think he knew.

His mother had roasted a turkey with all the trimmings. Throughout the meal she had chatted brightly, too brightly, about it being nice to have Thanksgiving with just the family. Donald had joked about leftovers and bragged about the pumpkin pie he'd baked himself. There'd been cranberry sauce and real butter and the little crescent rolls that popped up fluffy in the oven.

It had been the most miserable meal of Joey's life.

His mother didn't want him to have any problems.

She wanted him to be happy, do well in school, and go out for basketball. Normal. That was the word Joey had heard her use in an urgent undertone to his stepfather.
I just want him to be normal.

But he wasn't. Joey guessed his stepfather sort of understood that, and that's why they argued. He wasn't normal. He was an alcoholic, just like his father.

His mother said his father was NO GOOD.

Joey understood that alcoholism was a disease. He understood addiction and that there was no cure, only a continuing period of recovery. He also understood that there were millions of alcoholics, and that it was possible to be one and live the normal life his mother wanted so badly for him. It took acceptance and effort and change. Sometimes he got tired of making the effort. If he told his mother he was tired, she would get upset.

He knew, too, that alcoholism could often be inherited. He'd inherited his from his father, the same way he'd inherited the NO GOOD.

The streets were quiet as he headed out of the nice, tidy neighborhood. Snowflakes fluttered in the beam of streetlights like the fairy dancers in storybooks he remembered his mother reading him years before. He could see the illumination in windows where people were eating their Thanksgiving meal or resting after the effort in front of the TV.

His father hadn't come for him.

He hadn't called.

Joey thought he understood why his father didn't love him anymore. He didn't like to be reminded about the drinking and the fighting and the bad times.

Dr. Court said his father's disease hadn't been Joey's fault. But Joey figured if he'd gotten the sickness from his father, then maybe, somehow, his father had gotten the sickness from him.

He remembered lying in bed, knowing it was late,
and hearing his father shout in that thick nasty voice he used when he'd been drinking a lot.

“All you think about is that kid. You never think about me. Everything changed after we had him.”

Then later he had heard his father cry, big, wet sobs which were somehow even worse than the temper.

“I'm sorry, Lois. I love you, I love you so much. It's the pressure that makes me like this. Those bastards at work are always on my back. I'd tell them all to get fucked tomorrow, but Joey needs a new pair of shoes every time I turn around.”

Joey waited for a car to rumble past, then crossed the street and headed for the park. Snow was falling thickly now, a white curtain buffeted by the wind. The air whipped healthy pink into his cheeks.

Once he'd thought if he hadn't needed new shoes, his father wouldn't need to get drunk. Then he'd realized things would be easier on everyone if he just wasn't there. So he'd run away when he'd been nine. It had been scary because he'd gotten lost and it had been dark and there'd been noises. The police had found him in a few hours, but to Joey it had seemed like days.

His mother had cried and his father had held him so tight. Everyone had made promises they had meant to keep. For a while things had been better. His father had gone to AA and his mother had laughed more. That was the Christmas Joey had gotten his two-wheeler and his father had spent hours running beside the bike with his hand hooked under the seat. He hadn't let Joey fall, not even once.

But just before Easter his father had started coming home late again. Joey's mother's eyes had stayed red, and the laughter had stopped. One night Joey's father had taken the turn into the driveway too wide and hadn't seen the two-wheeler. His father had come in the house
shouting. Joey had woken up to the swearing, the accusations. His father had wanted to get Joey out of bed and take him outside to show him what his negligence had done. His mother had blocked the way.

That was the first night he'd heard his father strike his mother.

If he'd put the bike away instead of leaving it on the lawn beside the driveway, his father wouldn't have hit it. Then his father wouldn't have gotten so angry. His father wouldn't have hit his mother and given her a bruise on her cheek she tried to hide with makeup.

That was the first night Joey tried alcohol.

He hadn't liked the taste. It had hurt his mouth and made his stomach rise up uncomfortably. But when he'd sipped from the bottle three or four times, he felt strangely as if he'd slipped on a thin plastic shield. He didn't feel like crying anymore. There had been a nice, quiet buzz in his head as he climbed back into his bed. He'd fallen dreamlessly to sleep.

From that night Joey had used alcohol as an anesthetic whenever his parents fought.

Then the divorce had come in a horrible culmination of arguments, shouting, and name calling. One day his mother had picked him up at school to drive him to a small apartment. There she explained to him as gently as possible why they wouldn't be living with his father any longer.

He'd been ashamed, horribly ashamed, because he'd been glad.

They'd started their new life. His mother had gone back to work. She cut her hair and no longer wore her wedding ring. But Joey noticed from time to time the thin circle of white skin the band had covered for over a decade.

He could still remember how anxious, how pleading
her eyes had been when she'd explained to him about the divorce. She'd been so afraid he would blame her, so she'd justified a move that left her riddled with guilt and uncertainty by telling him what he already knew. But hearing it from her had shattered whatever thin defenses he'd had left.

He could remember, too, how hard she'd cried the first time she came home from work to find her eleven-year-old son drunk.

The park was quiet. On the ground a thin, pretty layer of white had already formed. In another hour no one would notice his footprints. Joey thought that was the way it should be. Snow was falling now in big, soft flakes which clung to the branches of trees and lay glistening and fresh on bushes. Flakes melted on his face, making his skin damp, but he didn't mind. He wondered, only briefly, if his mother had gone up to his room yet and discovered him gone. He was sorry she was going to be upset, but he knew what he was doing would make things easier for everyone. Especially himself.

He wasn't nine years old this time. And he wasn't afraid.

He'd gone to Alateen and Alanon meetings with his mother. They didn't reach him. He didn't let them reach him because he didn't want to admit he was ashamed to be like his father.

Then Donald Monroe had come along. Joey wanted to be glad his mother was happy again, then felt guilty because he was so close to accepting a replacement for his father. His mother was happy again, and Joey was glad because he loved her so much. His father grew more and more bitter, and Joey resented the change because he loved his father so much.

His mother married and her name changed. It was no longer the same as Joey's. They moved into a house
in a quietly affluent neighborhood. Joey's room overlooked the backyard. His father complained about the child-support payments.

When Joey had begun to see Tess, he was finding a way to get drunk every day, and he'd already begun to contemplate suicide.

He hadn't liked going to see her at first. But she hadn't pulled at him or pressured or claimed to understand. She'd just talked. When he stopped drinking, she gave him a calendar, what she had called a perpetual calendar that he could use forever.

“You have something to be proud of today, Joey. And every day when you get up in the morning, you'll have something to be proud of.”

Sometimes, he'd believed her.

She never gave him that quick, sharp look when he walked into the room. His mother still did. Dr. Court had given him the calendar and believed in him. His mother still waited for him to disappoint her. That's why she'd taken him out of his school. That's why she wouldn't let him hang around with his friends.

You'll make new friends, Joey. I only want the best for you.

She only wanted him not to be like his father.

But he was.

And when he grew up he might have a son, and his son would be like him. It would never stop. It was like a curse. He'd read about curses. They could be passed from generation to generation. Sometimes they could be exorcised. One of the books he kept under his mattress explained the ceremony for exorcizing evil. He'd followed it point by point one night when his mother and stepfather had been at a business dinner. When he was finished, he didn't feel any different. It proved to him that the evil, the no good inside of him, was stronger than the good.

That's when he'd begun to dream of the bridge.

Dr. Court wanted to send him to a place where people understood dreams about death. He'd found the brochures his mother had thrown away. It looked like a nice place, quiet. Joey had saved the brochures, thinking it might be a better place than the school he hated. He'd nearly worked up the nerve to talk to Dr. Court about it when his mother said he didn't need to see the doctor anymore.

He'd wanted to see Dr. Court, but his mother had that bright, nervous smile on.

Now they were home arguing about it, about him. It was always about him.

His mother was going to have a new baby. She was already picking out colors for the nursery and talking about names. Joey thought it might be nice to have a new baby in the house. He'd been glad when Donald asked him to help paint the nursery.

Then one night he'd dreamed that the baby had been dead.

He wanted to talk to Dr. Court about it, but his mother said he didn't need to see her anymore.

The surface of the bridge was slippery with its coating of snow. Joey's footprints were long, sliding marks. He could hear the rush of traffic below, but walked on the side that overlooked the creek and the trees. It was a high, exhilarating feeling to walk up here, above the tops of the trees, with the sky so dark above his head. The wind was frigid, but the walk had kept his muscles warm.