“I went back there, you know,” she said.
“Where?”
“The woods. But Cootie’s dog, he was gone.”
Thurman wiped his mouth with his hand. “Oh yeah?” He grinned. “Wanna go find him?” He stood up and flipped a heel of bread into her lap. “You can give him that!” He grabbed her hand and pulled her up. “C’mon,” he said, rubbing her belly as she leaned into him. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, stroking his fuzzy head. “I should go home first. My mother, she’s sick in bed.”
“She’s down by the tracks. I saw her. She was with some creep. One of them bums from under the bridge. Scary guy with no teeth.”
Jada ran down to the railroad tracks, but no one was around. When she finally got home her mother was on the couch, holding a bloody towel to her nose. It wouldn’t stop bleeding. The blood was running down her throat, she said, gagging. Not knowing what else to do, Jada ran into the kitchen for a glass of water. Her mother’s hands shook so much that the water spilled all over her. Jada held the glass to her mouth. Her mother tried to take a sip, but she choked and blood gushed down her chin. Jada pressed the towel against her nose. She’d looked everywhere for a rock, she gasped through the towel, but couldn’t find any. She’d even gone out looking for Polie, but no one would tell her where he was. All she could get was shit some junkie shot her up with, some poison that was killing her. “I think I’m dying. That’s what it feels like.” Her skin was sweaty and greasy gray. Her eyes bulged out of her head.
“All right. All right,” Jada said in a panic. “That’s why you gotta quit, Ma. For you and the baby.” She wished she had the brochures. Her head felt woozy.
“I don’t wanna baby,” she groaned. “I just wanna life, that’s all, a normal fucking life like everybody else has.”
“You will, Ma.” Jada ached to put her arms around her, but was afraid.
“No, I won’t. I never will.” She doubled over, gagging and holding her belly. “Oh God, I’m so sick. I’m gonna die. I wish I could. I wish I could just die.” She was trembling so violently that her teeth banged together. “Get me something. Help me, baby. Help me,” she grunted, looking out in terror past Jada.
“Okay, Ma. Okay, I’ll get you some. See?” she said, fumbling a rock from her pocket. “Just this one, okay? I’ll get it ready, then tomorrow we’ll go down to rehab and get you all signed up, okay? Where’s the pipe, the bottle?” she asked, lifting her mother’s arms, feeling down between the cushions.
She ran into the bedroom and ripped the blanket off the bed, and the Mountain Dew bottle rolled onto the floor. She stuck the straw back in the side as she ran around, looking for a lighter. Matches. Anything. “Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! Just wait!” she panted, and dumped out her mother’s pocketbook on the couch. The first match hissed out. She struck another one and held the trembling flame to the rock.
“Here, here it is, Ma.” She put the straw in her mother’s mouth. Her mother’s eyes widened, glaring with such rage that Jada jerked back and held the bottle at arm’s length. “Inhale, Ma! C’mon! Try! You have to!”
With that her mother’s body shuddered. Head back, spine arched, she stiffened, seized by a groan from deep in her bowels, from a foul and wrenching darkness. Her eyes rolled back and her mouth hung open. She sagged forward and her chin hit her chest.
“Ma? Ma?” Jada cried, trying to pinch the slack lips around the straw. “Ma! Don’t! Don’t do this!” she screamed, throwing herself at her.
CHAPTER 26
T
he minute the guard opened the door, she changed her mind about showing Gordon the new picture of May Loo. Stiffly erect, he seemed as immovable as the metal table and chairs bolted to the floor. His face under the wire-caged ceiling lights was haggard and gray. Days after his arrest, the papers had been filled with stories of the first murder. She’d vowed not to read them, then spent hours poring over every word, looking for some portentous fact that had eluded her the first time. The details had evoked a new horror in her. She had been too young then. It had barely seemed real: the boy on trial, the murderer in the papers, was not the same Gordon Loomis she had known. But this man, this murderer, was someone she loved, which made her part of the ugliness and her life even more pathetic. As much as she wanted to comfort him, the new, strong voice in her head warned,
Keep your distance.You have your own future to think of. And May Loo’s.
She couldn’t even be sure of his innocence anymore. The impenetrable calm thickened around him like ice. She couldn’t tell if his was the inertia of shock or disinterest now with his forced half-smile. Her monologue felt like a flimsy boat she could barely cling to as they drifted further apart. Soon it would be over, and they both knew it.
She had just told him how the drug dealers were out in force again, back on the streets. “And here you sit, but I guess the police think that’s okay,” she said, wanting to agitate him, the guard, someone—or maybe just herself. Anything would be better than his funereal composure. How could he just sit there and let this happen all over again?
“It’s been cool these last few days, thank goodness. I’ve been painting the spare room.” She didn’t dare call it May Loo’s room. “Yellow walls, with the cutest border—these little ballet dancers. Now I’m going to do the bureau. It’s unfinished.” She had to take a deep breath. “You’ve done a lot of painting. How many coats do you think I should do?”
He blinked, trying to refocus. “I don’t know. I didn’t paint furniture.”
She glanced at her watch. This was a waste of time and a day’s pay. Her home visit was next week. She’d lose another day then.
“You should go,” he said, and she felt guilty in her relief, then sad with the loss of an old hope. When she used to visit him at Fortley, she’d be so giddily nervous that the words would just spill out, then all the way home she’d cringe, remembering every inane thing she’d said, prattling on about people he didn’t even know, places he’d never been to, and never once would he tell her anything about himself. She’d always felt the need to entertain him, as if she might entice him to freedom with the wonders of ordinary living. Or had she just been trying to convince herself each time that it was worth it, that thirty-day span between visits a perilous footbridge made bearable because every experience, no matter how dull or painful, could be reworked, refashioned, polished, and cut for his diversion? And what pleasure the anticipation and telling gave her compared to the flatness she would feel afterward, this same emptiness. Freedom had been a disappointment for both of them.
She asked if he needed anything. No, he said. Dennis and Lisa had brought a few things from home. She stood up. Could she check on the house for him? No. She couldn’t get in anyway: Dennis had locked everything up, he said too defensively, irritating her again. Could she water the lawn, then? It hadn’t rained all week. Things were getting awfully dry.
How cruel and sadistic to goad him like this, to pick at his scabs.
What about his roses?
His precious roses, that’s all he cares about.
The roses . . . He thought a moment. No, he answered hesitantly, they should be all right. She could water them, she said. Every day on her way home from work, she could swing by.
Free as she was in her car out there in the world, where living things still needed care.
Just tell her what to do—should she spray them with the hose—
“No!” he interrupted, as if it were painful to hear. If she wanted to, if she didn’t mind, that is, then she should fill the watering can and water only the base of the bush. For about a minute—he usually counted slowly to sixty. Anything else? Well, if she had time, there was a special mixture he’d made. The bottle was on the back steps, and if she could spray the whole bush once a week, he’d really appreciate it. She asked if that was the fertilizer. No, the fertilizer was in a tall can in the garage; measure out an eighth of a cup into the cap and spread the granules around the base.
“Just pour them out? That’s all I do?”
“Actually, I use the hand cultivator. It’s on a nail in the garage, and I just kind of scratch it around.” Demonstrating, he clawed the tabletop with his fingertips. “Just work the granules in a little, then water. And be sure and take some roses. The pruner’s in the garage, right next to the cultivator. The key’s under the bottom step.”
“I don’t want to cut your roses, Gordon. You worked so hard on them.”
“No, the more you cut, the more they grow. It makes them stronger.” He smiled.
“Does that work for people, too?”
“Maybe. For some people.”
“But not for you, though, right?”
“I don’t know.” He stiffened.
“Why? Why don’t you know?”
Are you that numb, that dead inside?
“Because I don’t think like that. I can’t. I never have. I wouldn’t dare.”
“So in other words, this is fine. It’s just the way things are, and you don’t have a damn thing to say about it!” She didn’t want to cry.
He leaned forward and gripped the sides of the table, trembling, as if to wrench it up from the floor. “What can I do? There’s nothing I can do. Nothing. Nothing but wait.”
“You could talk to me! You could tell me what you’re thinking! What you’re feeling. Something, goddamn it!”
He stared, bitterly, as if she had demanded something vile of him. “They never should have let me out, all right, that’s what I keep thinking. That I should have stayed. At least then they’d be looking for the one that did it. I let her down both ways. First by not helping her and now by being here. You want to know how I feel? I feel like this loose gear that just kind of rattles around in space, and every now and again I crash down into someone’s world and ruin everything.”
“Gordon.” She closed her eyes.
“It’s true. I just don’t want to mess yours up any more than I already have.”
“You haven’t messed anything up for me, Gordon—far from it.”
“Like the adoption. May Loo. You shouldn’t even be here. Think how this looks.”
“Things like that don’t matter to me. I know they should, but they don’t. I’ll do everything I’m supposed to, and if it works out, then great! But if it doesn’t because of you, Gordon, because you’re in my life, then that’s too bad. That’s just the way it goes, you know? Here,” she said, fumbling open her purse. She handed him the color photograph. “I wanted to show you. I just got it.”
“She’s smiling!” He almost smiled himself.
“I know. Isn’t she cute?”
He nodded.
“No, tell me. Tell me what you’re thinking right now as you look at it.”
“I . . .” He looked up in panic.
“Tell me. Say it. Please.”
He held it closer, studying it. “I’m thinking . . . I’m thinking how lucky this little girl is because pretty soon she’s going to have you with her every day for the rest of her life.”
For a moment neither one spoke or looked at the other. “Thank you,” she finally said.
He nodded and held out the picture.
“No, that’s yours to keep. I have another one,” she lied.
After work she drove straight to his house. The watering can wasn’t on the back steps or in the garage.
Probably stolen,
she thought, trying to keep the hose low while she counted to sixty, though it was too late. Her first explosive aim had already drenched the bush. Next, she sprayed the leaves with Gordon’s soapy mixture. He hadn’t told her how much to use, probably the whole bottle if it was weekly. By the time she was done, bubbles floated everywhere, fat and shimmering on the wet leaves, across the weedy yards, down the street. Working the fertilizer into the soil was quick but messy. She stood up, knees, hands, and feet muddied, her cloth sandals probably ruined. She should have changed first. Using the pruner, she cut the fullest blooms. She rinsed her scratched, stinging hands under the hose, then gathered up the cut flowers. What was the pleasure in that? she wondered, slamming the trunk shut. She glanced back at the twisted hose. Why coil it back up on the hanger when she’d just have to take it down again? She patted her arms dry with a tissue. The scratches stung, but it was a good hurt.
The next time she came, she tried not to wet the leaves, but somehow they were soaked again. What difference could it possibly make? They’d get a lot wetter when it rained. She turned off the water. She had to get home and sand the dresser before the second coat.
“Hi,” said a voice from behind.
“Oh!” she gasped. “Jada, you scared me.” The girl just stood there with her hands in her pockets. “So what’s going on?” Delores said as she yanked the muddy hose into a pile. “How’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I saw you. You were out here the other day, too.” Jada’s eyes shone flat, the way light hits a mirror.
“Yeah, I told Gordon I’d do this, but it’s not my thing. Look at my hands, look what his roses did. They attacked me,” she said, trying to laugh.
“He’s still in jail, huh?” Jada asked, following her to the car.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.” Delores got in.
“You think he did it?” Jada asked through the window.
“No. Of course not.”
“Well, he didn’t,” the girl said as if she hadn’t heard her.
“Do you know who did?”
Jada shook her head.
“How do you know it wasn’t him, then?”
“Because. Because I just know. Gordon, he wouldn’t do that. He’d get mad, but he’d never, like, do anything.”
“Yeah, like the night I let you in, why’d he get so mad? What was that all about?”
The girl’s answer was a weary shrug. She asked Delores where she was going. An appointment, Delores lied. She could tell Jada wanted something. “Well, I better get going.” She started the engine, but Jada moved closer to the window.
“You live on Lowell Street, right?”
“Yes, why?”
“Remember you said I could come there sometime?”