A Hole in the Universe (51 page)

Jada stood waiting, watching her come.

L
ast night’s snow wouldn’t last long. The noonday streets were gray with slush. Dennis was parked in front of the house, doors locked, motor running. Gordon had called earlier to say this was the only time Delores could take him driving. He might be late, so if Dennis wanted to cancel, that was fine, they’d meet again next week. Dennis said he’d wait. He looked out the window. He was committed to this, didn’t want to break the streak. As long as he kept up his end, carried his share of the load, then maybe everything would be all right.

There was a new FOR SALE sign on Mrs. Jukas’s lawn. They kept getting knocked down or taken. Kids, Gordon said. Covered with snow, the little house didn’t look half-bad. Maybe someone would come along desperate enough to overlook what had happened there—and who lived next door. The tenement across the street was being fixed up, new windows and siding. The purple Navigator was gone. It had been five months since the driver was charged with Mrs. Jukas’s murder and the dealer with being an accessory. He shook his head. Gordon had been lucky. This time, anyway. Next time there might not be a witness. And Kaminski had even admitted it, privately, of course: There’d always be some cop somewhere thinking he never should have been let out in the first place.

Delores’s car pulled into the driveway, slowly, as if in two sections, the hood and then long tail end rising and sinking. He didn’t know which irritated him more, the ridiculous berm or seeing Gordon behind the wheel of that junk. Delores hurried over to say she hoped he hadn’t been waiting too long; some of the roads hadn’t been very well plowed. Gordon was apologizing. The back door of Delores’s car opened and a tall, skinny girl climbed out.

“We made it!” she cried as she pretended to stagger toward them. “All in one piece!”

“Dennis, this is Jada Fossum,” Delores said. “And Jada, this is Dr. Loomis, Gordon’s brother.”

“Yeah, I seen you before.” Her smile was alarming.

“But it’s nice to meet him, isn’t it?” Delores said.

Wincing, she held out her hand. Her fingernails were yellow and black, tiger-striped like Delores’s. “Yeah, that’s right. It is. Very nice to meet you. I’m sure,” she added with that almost threatening grin.

Even the touch of her hand was unsettling. A child who’d never been a child, she knew too much and wanted it known, especially by men. “Very nice to meet you, too, Jada. I’ve heard a lot about you,” he added to make something clear, though he couldn’t have said what.

“Only good stuff, right?” The edge in her voice was as sharp as her stare.

“Of course.” He smiled, then looked at Delores. “So how’re the lessons going?”

“Pretty good,” Jada answered. “Long as you got a couple hours.” She laughed.

“It’s not that bad, is it?” Gordon checked his watch.

“Actually, he’s doing great.” Delores patted Gordon’s shoulder, a gesture Dennis found oddly repulsive. Those two big bodies, he thought, all that flesh, one against the other.

“Every time, he just gets better and better,” she was saying.

“She says I’m too cautious.” Gordon smiled at her.

Dennis dug his boot into the snowy rim of the sidewalk.

“Yeah, he’s always riding the brake,” the girl interjected, hands up, swaying from side to side. “Like, whoa, watch out! Any minute now we’re gonna crash!”

“Jada.” Delores touched her arm.

“Hey, I’m the backseat driver, right?” the girl said, but to Dennis, still trying to make him laugh.

“I don’t think so,” Delores said quietly.

Ignoring the girl, Dennis asked Delores how the dress shop was going. He knew she was either going to buy it or already had. Gordon was always so vague, it was hard to remember what he said, the little he did. Business was good, she said. She was bringing in a few new lines. Aiming for a younger, more hip clientele.
Jesus,
he thought with a glance at her red-velvet-and-fur bomber jacket. Her black-checked pants ended inches above her ankles. Lisa had come in the other day, she was saying. She’d bought a silk sweater for her mother, a birthday present.

“Hey, Thurm!” the girl shouted, then darted across the street toward a tall slouch of a boy shuffling by. Except for his orange knit cap, he was dressed in baggy black, hands deep in low-riding pockets. They stood on the corner. The girl’s arms flew as she talked.

“Who’s that?” Delores asked.

“Thurman Dominguez,” Gordon said, staring. It was a look Dennis hadn’t seen before, menacing and cold.

“Jada!” Delores called. She waited a minute, then called again to say they had to go. Ignoring her, the girl bounced with excitement and kept talking.

“Now what do I do?” Delores said under her breath.

“Get in the car,” Gordon said.

“I can’t just leave her.”

“She’ll come.”

She opened the door and the girl ran across the street and climbed in beside her.

 

 

They were led to the back booth of the bright little restaurant. As soon as they sat down, Gordon began to study the menu. Dennis asked if he was in that much of a rush.

“I’m sorry.” Gordon closed the menu. “I just wanted to see what they have. I really like Italian food.”

Maybe he liked it too much, Dennis said, laughing.

“I know.” Gordon patted his belly. “I’ve gotta do something about this.”

They talked for a few minutes about dieting. Dennis suggested he sign up at a gym. There was a Gold’s Gym near the plant. “It’s within walking distance. You could go after work, you know, an hour or so. Lift a little, put a couple miles in on the treadmill. Maybe even go early, before work. That’s really the best time. I don’t even think straight in the morning unless I’ve run a couple miles. . . .”

He has that look again,
Dennis thought,
that childlike courtesy. I can talk myself hoarse and those flat eyes just keep on looking at me. That big, implacable face, never disagreeing, for fear of what, an argument? A stir in the air? The energy it might take?
These Saturday lunches were far more effort than they were worth. And boring as hell. Thankfully, today’s would have to be short. The receptionist was coming in for a while this afternoon to go over the new phone system. She was attracted to him. He could tell. Nothing like Jilly, of course. This one was older and married with a couple kids, two in college, not the type to have any illusions. No desperate need for a family. If anything, just the opposite: her husband bullied her, and the older son had what sounded like one hell of a drug problem. He had missed Jilly terribly at first, still did in a way, though the therapist said what he really missed was the excitement of being with someone who barely knew him, someone he could be a good person for, a confidante, someone he could help without being permanently committed to.

“Same with Lisa,” he added quickly, brightly, to bring himself around. “She’s running five miles a day now.”

“How’s she doing?” Gordon asked.

“Good. She’s deep into Father Hank’s youth thing, the new center, so she’s happy. Well, busy, anyway.”

Gordon seemed about to say something, but just then the waitress brought their meals. He ate with a fixed intensity Dennis could not watch. There was so much his brother needed.
It’s more than food. Poor bastard, he’s never gotten any breaks, just the short end of the stick. Second best, far behind, it’s the only way he’s ever known.
“Hey, Gord. Something’s been bothering the hell outta me ever since that night at the house—the police, and what I said. I’m sorry. I was way outta line.”

Gordon looked up, surprised and still chewing. “No. You weren’t. You weren’t at all. Of course you’d think that.” He gave that imploring little shrug. “Who wouldn’t?”

Anger flashed through Dennis at once again having his feelings, his efforts, so trivialized. There was no getting through the thickness. Ever. “And that’s okay? That’s all right?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, but that’s the way it is.”

Gordon pushed back his plate. “Why do we keep doing this?” He spoke urgently, yet so softly that Dennis had to lean over the table to hear him. “What’s the point? You always end up mad at me. It can’t be very pleasant for you. So why bother?”

“Because we’re brothers!” Truly it was that simple, but for some reason that was the part Gordon least understood. They stared at each other a moment. “Jesus Christ,” Dennis said, shaking his head. “You really think this is a bother? Seeing you once a week? Calling you, checking to see how things’re going? See if you need anything? Or maybe it’s a bother to you. Maybe that’s it.” Yes. That’s exactly what it was.

“Of course not. It’s not a bother. I like to hear from you.” Gordon paused. “I enjoy your company,” he said so stiltedly, so formally and falsely earnest, that Dennis felt as if he’d just been punched in the chest.

For the first time he felt the vastness of the chasm between them. “No, you don’t. You never call. You’re not the least bit interested in me or my kids. There’s no feeling there. There never was. Even as a kid you were like that. You never got it. You still don’t. I mean, who’ve you got in your life if you don’t have family? Delores? That, that trampy kid, that what’s-her-name?”

“Jada.”

“Yeah, and what the hell’s she doing in a car with you? Are you nuts? Someone like that? She’s a lost cause, a quick trip to disaster! Jesus Christ, don’t you ever think things through? All right, so Delores is a flake, she’s a little light on top, but that doesn’t mean you—”

Gordon seized his wrist, squeezing so hard that it stung. “Shut up! Shut up, Dennis. For once, just shut up and listen.”

All the while his brother talked, Dennis smiled thinly, because it was all he knew to do, keep his chin up and smile, hang tough through the hard times, the grimness, the shame and helplessness.

“Leave Delores out of this. She’s a good person. She deserves better than me and Jada Fossum and everyone else she tries to help, but the thing is with Delores, she doesn’t know that. She thinks she’s lucky that people like us need her. She thinks that’s what life is all about. She really believes that, that people can be better. Me! And a kid like Jada, that we can be just like everybody else. You know? She does. She really does,” he added with a rueful chuckle.

“Same as me, Gordo.” His voice cracked. He rapped on the table a few times, then continued. “That’s all I’m trying to do, give you a fighting chance here, that’s all.”

Gordon looked down, then finally back, struggling to meet Dennis’s gaze. “Then trust me. Please?”

 

 

It was a raw, windy day, spring now after the long, stormy winter. The little stone house they passed was not a house at all, he realized when he saw the wide double doors in back. It was the repository where caskets were stored when the frozen ground couldn’t be dug. Their footsteps over the crushed white stone seemed all the noise on earth as he followed her down the hill. She knew exactly where it was, she said, clutching the gold-foiled pot of red and yellow tulips. There, there it is, she called with orange pollen on her chin.

Her grave was on the lower slope, in the shade of a tall tree just beginning to leaf. There were two dates under Janine Walters’s name, under the baby’s only one. The stone of polished gray granite was smaller than he had expected. Modest, like those around it, no hint of the violence, no image or engraved lament of the terrible wrong that had been done.
There should be something,
he thought, looking around,
something more than this.
What, though? Why did it bother him so? What awful arrogance had made him assume she in any way belonged to him? Life was commemorated here. And at least in this she had communion with all these others, he thought, not with relief or solace, but with a painful, humbling submission.

He kept glancing back, afraid one of her relatives might appear over the hill and be horrified by his presence. It had been Delores’s idea to come. She set the pot close to the stone, then knelt down and crossed herself. He couldn’t kneel or pray. The wind blew through his jacket with a rude flapping noise. He was ashamed to be invading her solitude once again.

You need to do this. It’ll be good for you,
Delores had coaxed. But she was wrong. He did not belong here. The dead cannot forgive, and the living have no right.

“Gordon?” Delores said, looking back. To appease her, he bowed his head until she rose to leave.

“What a beautiful place,” she said as they drove through the ornate iron gates. “And her plot, it’s so peaceful there on the hill. Not like some places. My aunt and uncle’s is right next to the highway. Well, there’s a fence, of course, but it’s right there, all that traffic whizzing by. But in a way it’s kind of funny, because my uncle . . . well, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, you’ll think it’s in the genes, but my uncle was a car thief—well, not your regular car thief, more like a specialist, kind of. The owner would have him steal the car, then he’d push it in the river or burn it, whatever, and the owner’d pay him from the insurance. And until the day she died, my sweet aunt Hazel told everyone he was a safety consultant. Which I suppose he was in a way, when you think of it. I remember once my father lent him his car to take one of his kids somewhere, and he was a nervous wreck until the car got back, and my uncle Fred, he goes, ‘For God’s sake, Lou, what’d you think I was gonna do, dump your car? You’re not a client!’ ” she roared, laughing, chin still smudged, her windblown hair a mess.

He eased his head back and closed his eyes, settling into her nearness.
It’s always best this way on a long drive. Even though he cannot see the passing trees and signs and towns, he hears them in her voice. He is as often amused as rankled by her insistent vision of a world in which selfishness is the greatest sin. It’s amazing how this woman can talk, on and on, sometimes not even pausing for breath, as if possessed for so long of her own indomitable universe that she must give it all to him, filling the gaps with her exuberance, investing him, who has none of his own, with a history, people he doesn’t know, places he has never been, on and on it goes, as relentless as the girl Jada, the way she hits the tethered ball with the wooden paddle, fifty times, fifty-one, fifty-two, to a hundred sometimes, a hundred one, a hundred two, faster and faster, desperate to keep it going and going and going, because—because they must. It is as simple as that, Delores tells them.