Bloodroot (18 page)

“Dinner, drinks,” I said. “Nothing major.”

“I’ll bet it was special anyway.”

“You could say that,” I said with a smile.

“And I thought
I
had news worth celebrating,” Kelsey said. She stood and chugged her beer. Looking down at me, she straddled my thighs. My heart started pounding. She settled down into my lap, wiggling her hips. My hands on the small of her back, breathing in her skin, I moved my mouth over her throat. Searching until I felt her clean, strong pulse on my tongue, pumping away through her veins.

“Come home with me,” she said, her hands in my hair.

“What? You don’t wanna do it in the bathroom?” I said into her shoulder. “Like in the good ol’ days?”

“Forget this teenage shit,” she said, her hips rocking. “You really wanna dry hump out here all night when you could have the real thing? You spend the night with me, you might even get to work on time tomorrow.”

“Forget work,” I said, grabbing her braid, winding it around my forearm. “Forget tomorrow.”

MONDAY EVENING, THE CAB DROPPED ME IN THE MIDDLE OF MY
street. Al’s black Charger was docked in front of my building, taking up three parking spaces. Al sat on the stoop, staring off into some random slice of sky from behind a pair of dark aviator glasses. A decent impression of a man deep in thought. I wasn’t fooled. And no way was this a social call. He cracked his knuckles and rolled a toothpick over his teeth.

I slung my bag over my shoulder, paid the driver, and headed Al’s way, holding my head down, pretending I hadn’t noticed him. He stood as I approached, jamming his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. I feigned surprise as I hopped the curb.

“What’s up, Al?”

“Cute,” Al said. “But not my type.”

“The cabdriver?”

Al unleashed a loud, fake laugh. “You’re almost as quick as your brother. Between the two of you, I’m gonna get a complex.” He removed the toothpick, touched it to the tip of my nose, and put it back in his mouth. “Not the cabdriver, smart guy. The professor lady you went out with last night. What’s her name? Kelsey? The one with the apartment on Van Buren. I’m talking about her.”

“For fuck’s sake.” I dropped my bag and turned away. “You’ve been following me? What the hell for? Where’s Danny? Does he even know you’re here?”

“Don’t get your shit crossed up,” Al said, “and go thinking I take orders from Danny. Your brother’s busy. Don’t worry about him.”

“Kelsey’s got nothing to do with the weekend. And she doesn’t know a thing about it, if that’s what you’re here for. Leave her alone.”

“Relax, loverboy,” Al said. “Nobody’s going after your girl.” He set his hand on my shoulder. “Long as she stays ignorant, bang her till your dick falls off for all I care. You did hit it, right? Tell me you at least sealed the deal.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“You’re right,” Al said. “I really don’t give a fuck. I’m just trying to be friendly here.” He sat back down on the stoop, patting the concrete. “C’mere, sit down, have a smoke with me.”

“No thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” Al said, lighting up. He eased back on his elbows, blocking my path up the stairs. “How long you worked at that college?”

“Like it’s any of your business,” I said. “I’m going up to my apartment. Move out of the way.”

“If you invited me upstairs, you could relax a bit, change clothes, have a beer.”

“No way,” I said. “You shouldn’t get your shit crossed up, either. Just because you and me had a few beers in high school doesn’t mean I’m gonna take any bullshit from you.” I put my foot on the bottom step. “Quit following me and get off my stoop. I’m tired. I had a long day at work.”

“When you get irritated,” Al said, “I can see the family resemblance. Your brother’s got a temper, too.” Al looked down at my foot, grinning. He didn’t move. “I could give a fuck about high school. You and I are going to have a conversation whether you like it or not.” He kicked my foot off the step. “I got all day.”

I crossed my arms, turned in a circle on the sidewalk. Kelsey had left me feeling better than I had in forever but Al’s visit had killed that buzz. I felt almost as hollowed out as I had on Saturday. I hated him for it.

“Quit dancing around like a fag,” Al said, “and sit.”

I did, on the bottom step, wondering if Al’s main function in this world was as an impediment, a block of granite that other people broke against. He reminded me of a bully I knew from grammar school. Caving in would only encourage him. I wanted nothing to do with Al, but what else was I going to do? Kick him in the balls and run away? “Just tell me what you want.”

“That’s more like it,” Al said. “So it’s been in the papers that your college wants to build new dorms. Over on the old Bloodroot property. Seems everything’s ready to go, except for one problem. Your boss. You catch the way I’m drifting with this?”

“I don’t have anything to do with the dorms or the museum. I’m low-level faculty. A name on a schedule and a paycheck.” I bummed a smoke from him. “There’s nothing I can tell you or Santoro or anyone else that they can’t find out for themselves.”

“I thought maybe you had some inside scoop,” Al said. “That Friends of Bloodroot group did start in your department. Tell me about them. That Whitestone guy, your boss, tell me about him.”

“I don’t know anything about him,” I said. “The group’s a bunch of tenured old farts and some kiss-ass instructors. A few biddies who like getting their name in the
Advance
throw lunches and write checks for him.”

Al raised his eyebrows. “Is Kelsey in the group?”

“No,” I said. “She isn’t. And I still don’t see what this has to do with you following me around.”

“That’s a different thing. Bavasi wanted me to keep an eye on you,” Al said. “Just for a coupla days. Because of this weekend. Things like that, they can make people squirrelly.”

“I’m fine with this weekend. I’m not telling another living soul about it. You think I want people knowing what I did? I’d just as soon forget it.” I scratched my fingernail at the faded gang sign spray-painted on the concrete. “Not a word to Bavasi about Kelsey, understand?”

“Or what, tough guy?” Al said. “He’s gonna ask and I’m gonna tell.”

“It’s none of his business.”

“You took his money,” Al said.

“I wasn’t helping him, or you,” I said. “I was helping Danny. I wasn’t joining up for anything. Santoro can’t buy my life.”

“He might disagree with you there.”

Something clicked in my brain. “Construction,” I said. “Danny said Santoro’s into construction. He’s hooked up to build those dorms.”

Al tossed his chewed toothpick in the street, pulled a fresh one from behind his ear and stuck it in his mouth. He said nothing.

“Al, forget about Kelsey, as a favor to me. She’s not even staying in town much longer.”

“Then get it while you can,” Al said. He stood and stretched, looking again at his empty slice of sky. “Think about this. Is now really the time to drag someone new into your life? You live small; keep it that way. We may have more work to do. You may put her in a bad position. A lot worse than any of the ones you put her in last night.”

“Fuck you, Al. Don’t come by my place again.”

He laughed again, this time for real. “Whatever. Talk to Danny. Spend the rest of that cash and see how you feel. Ditch Kelsey and spend it on hookers. That usually works for me. Maybe I can find you one that likes soccer jerseys.”

I ran at him, shoving him against his car.

“Whoa there, tough guy,” he said, chuckling, raising his hands in the air in mock surrender. “What’ll the neighbors think?”

I stepped back, now furious at myself as well as at him. All I’d needed to do was laugh him off, ignore his gangland-enforcer act. I’d just shown him I wasn’t that tough a nut to crack. What would Santoro think of that information?

Al dusted off his jacket, got in his car, and drove away. Across the street, Maxie barked in his yard. I picked up my schoolbag and stormed inside.

 

 

 

AFTER A LONG SHOWER,
I grabbed a Coke and went out on the porch, trying to figure out who made me angriest. I settled on myself. I had no reason to be mad at Danny. He hadn’t put Al on me, and Al was only following orders. I was the one who’d lost control.

The sun was going down, streetlights popping on like sleepy eyes fluttering to half-awake. In the distance, a ferry bulging with commuters steamed across the bay, heading home from Manhattan trailing a boiling green and gray wake, the fading sunlight glinting off its windows.

People from the neighborhood trudged up my street toward the bus stop, most of them hoping to catch up to that same boat for a ride into the city. They counted change, fiddled with clip-on IDs, stared at cheap watches that beat in strict allegiance with the stern, merciless time clocks waiting on the other side of the water. Few people worked days in my neighborhood. Janitors, night watchmen, all-night discount-store cashiers, tow-truck drivers, judging by the uniforms. The bus stop crowd, anonymous in blue and gray and khaki, looking like so many cheap wine bottles wrapped in paper bags, formed a sad counterweight to the bustling, bouncing, blinged-out dealers on the other corner. A cop car rolled by, pretending to pay attention.

I thought of my father, of the night shifts he pulled at the dockside warehouses, of the weeks on end that he left for work when the other kids’ dads came home. I remembered Danny and me running amok through the house with our exhausted mother snapping at our heels. We were so devoid of mercy for her adult worries and aches. I wondered if even then my mother was getting sick, tiny tendrils of her brain curling in on themselves like burning hairs. Had I missed my father in my sleep?

Like our father, Danny had become a creature of the night, first as a junkie and now as whatever it was he called himself. I doubted my father saw the irony that I did. Was that all Danny had really done, follow his father out into the night? I knew Robert Curran hated the choices his youngest son had made. If he only knew, I thought.

It was Monday evening, turning fast into Monday night. I was supposed to be, at that very moment, with my parents. I went inside and checked the phone; they hadn’t called. Normally, I couldn’t run ten minutes late without hearing from them. Dinner was an hour ago. What were the chances my folks had forgotten? Nonexistent. My insides chilled over. My mother was having a bad day, an awful day, maybe her worst yet. That had to be it.

I called a cab and ran downstairs to wait, horrific images—her lost, her bloody, her screaming—gliding like ghouls across my mind. I stood at the curb, bouncing on my heels, my arms crossed, twisting my bottom lip between my finger and thumb. What had my mother done that my father would allow me to stay away from her?

From the day of her diagnosis, there was only one reaction to her disease my father would not tolerate. Shame. He would not be ashamed of his wife, he said. And he would not allow me, he said, to be ashamed of my mother. He would not cancel visits if she turned unwell. I would not slip away out the door if she took a bad turn in front of me, leaving her asking later where I had gone. My father made no blushing apologies, offered no explanations or excuses to the neighbors. As best as he could, he let her be who she was and tried to fear neither who she was becoming nor who she was no longer.

I tried my best to emulate him and rise to the challenge. I spent as much time with them as I could stand, which was much less than I truly had at my disposal. When I could I went with them to the doctors. I set my hand on his forearm when my father clenched his fists at their insistence he consider a nursing home.
Maybe not yet, but soon, Mr. Curran.
I nodded in agreement as he told each doctor the same thing.
I will not send my wife who I love away from me.
Unlike so many other people that I knew, perhaps even unlike me, family was a simple thing to my father. You stayed together. Always.

For the most part, I failed to follow my father’s example. I did the best I could to hide it from him. To hide my panic when Mom disappeared in front of us, in the middle of a meal or a conversation. To hide the fact that I became deeply afraid, not only for her but of her. I tried to conceal the shame I felt at my own fear, at the shame that soaked my bones when I let that fear feed me lies that I mumbled over the telephone, lies claiming I was too busy or too tired to keep an appointed visit. As my mother got worse, though, my father only got stronger.

He endured her memory lapses and her confusion. He took the blame when he could, admitting to misplacing things that she’d lost years ago, or claiming to have forgotten right in step with her where and when they got married. He played along when she awoke from an evening nap and staggered out of the bedroom in her night-gown, her hair wild as Medusa’s, chastising him for being an unruly patient. It had happened once when I was there. That night she spoke to me as if I was her father, upbraiding me for smuggling beer for the patients into the hospital. Such a terrible thing for the chief surgeon to do. Sometimes she just paced, wringing her hands, wondering aloud how to save Danny from the doctors.