Finn (4 page)

The fact that he was trying to sound like my father really set me off, because if I made a list of the people I loved most in the world, my father would occupy the number one spot, even though he’s been dead for a long time. And to have someone as disgusting as Soul Patch pretend to be my father while snatching me out of school and forcing me into a big van painted up with barbarian women in bikinis—let’s just say it gave me a new burst of energy.

Soul Patch quietly apologized as he clamped his sweaty hand over my mouth. He was wearing one of those fingerless gloves that bicyclists wear. I was glad of it, too, because even though the leather was damp and a little rank, I imagined that the palms of his hands were a thousand times worse. He was being very formal for some reason, asking me to please watch my head as I stepped up on the van’s running board, and, after we were inside, wondering if the duct tape was too tight as he wrapped it around my hands. He apologized for it being so hot in the back of the van, since most vans didn’t have air conditioning, at least not for the cargo area, and his van didn’t have any at all, not even for the driver. The formality didn’t exactly make me feel comfortable, but at least I wasn’t quite so scared when he climbed back out and slid the side door shut. He said, “Watch yourself, now,” as he slammed it, which struck me as funny. It was something a soccer Mom would say.

The van had a metal mesh wall blocking off the cargo area, so I couldn’t do very much in the way of eye-scratching, ear-biting, or crotch-pounding, which were three other things I heard were good in a crisis. Soul Patch strapped on his seatbelt and brushed his sweaty hair straight back with the tips of his thumb and forefinger—he was strangely careful about keeping the bicycle glove away from his hair, as if he had heard that human hair sweat destroys even a good pair of bicycling gloves—and then, when he was all strapped in, he heaved a big sigh, as if we had both just narrowly escaped an ambush, and said, “So, are we all set?”

He seemed to be asking the question as much for himself as for me, but I answered by holding up my arms, so he could see the long red curves where the fence had scratched me. I guess he had been focused on trussing me up, because he was genuinely surprised to see the blood. The cuts were pretty shallow, so it’s possible that they hadn’t started bleeding when he was taping me up. Now, though, there were some nice thick red lines—no big deal, really. I’ve had a lot worse. Still, I thought he was going to pass out when he saw it.

He said, “Oh,
man!
” His head drooped as if he was going to put it between his legs, the way you do to avoid fainting. I couldn’t be sure, but it was completely possible that the sight of the blood on my arms actually did make him feel faint. That’s how totally
not
threatening he was. When he squeezed the bridge of his nose, the Velcro flaps of the bicycle gloves—he didn’t fasten them, I think, because his hands were too fat—brushed his unshaven cheeks and made a scritching sound. Then he turned to me. “You’re okay, right?” he said. “I mean, you’re not going to need stitches, are you?”

I shrugged, although it was completely obvious that I didn’t need them.

Soul Patch slammed the steering wheel. The padding in the palm of his gloves absorbed most of the force and made a little squeaky noise, like a bath toy, which irritated him even more because even his angry gesture was a flop. “That’s just what I need,” he said. “Your mother’s going to
freak.”
Then he turned off his hazards, signaled with his left blinker—he was such a careful driver!—and pulled slowly away from the curb, driving gently, as if I was fragile cargo.

It all made sense as soon as he mentioned my mother, but the fact that she was involved was quite serious. She wasn’t supposed to come near me any more, at least not according to the judge’s order. I would have been happy if she had just stayed in Texas or wherever and left me alone. As far as I was concerned, the farther away the better.

Even if it had been legal, my mother wouldn’t have dared to come see me at my grandparents. They were my Dad’s parents, not hers. His parents never liked my Mom, starting from even before they met. They disliked her on principle, because they thought she wasn’t good enough for my Dad. They made it hard enough for her when my Dad was still alive, and then, after he was gone, they didn’t hold anything back. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve sat at the kitchen table and listened to my grandmother badmouth my Mom. She always calls her “that woman.” To this day, I’ve never heard my grandmother speak my mother’s name, which is Claire. “That woman,” my grandmother will say, “never lived up to your father’s level.” Meaning, I suppose, that it’s her fault she was born who she was. It’s annoying to listen to my grandmother say those things. It makes it a lot harder to respect her as a person if, after all these years, she can’t find it in her heart to forgive my mother for what she did. But my grandmother still blames my mother for my father’s death. She says that my mother caused it. “By omission, if not commission,” she says. I wish she could just let it be. I hate the way she stirs things up.

“So you must be the boyfriend,” I said. My voice felt small rattling around in the back of that big van, which was bare inside, no seats or anything. It wasn’t exactly comfortable back there, bouncing around on the metal floor. He didn’t seem to hear me, so I gave one of my patented folded tongue whistles. You can hear it from about a mile away.

That got his attention. “Oh my God,” he said.

“I
said,
‘Are you the boyfriend?’” He laughed at that, which surprised me.

“You make it sound so temporary,” he said. “I’m your mother’s husband, which I guess makes me your step-dad. But you don’t have to call me that right away. I’m Bobby. Sorry about back there. Not a very good first impression.”

“You could have invited me over.
Politely,”
I said.

He laughed again. “Now why didn’t I think of that?” he said sarcastically. Even his sarcasm was babyish. “I’ll try to remember,” he said. “For next time.”

He was right, of course. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have come near him. I told him so, although I think the way I put it was that under normal circumstances I wouldn’t come anywhere near such a fat stinking bastard. He even thought that was sort of funny. He kept on laughing until I insulted his soul patch, which seemed to touch a nerve.

After that, he suggested we keep our thoughts to ourselves until we got to where we were going.

W
ho can explain the river of junk that flows through a person’s mind? Propped up against the back doors of that rancid van, I should have been thinking of a million things, such as: how to fool Bobby into thinking I was carsick, or what I’d whisper to the police if I managed to sneak a phone call, or how I’d calm down my mother when I saw her. Useful things. But what was I thinking about instead? The sky, which was pretty much all I could see through the bug-splattered windshield, and how blue it looked. Blue, and strangely merciful. I can’t really explain why I thought that. I just did. I should have been listening for changes in the road, memorizing the turns we made, studying the branches of trees we passed, for landmarks. Anything but making googly eyes at the clouds like a baby. I swear, sometimes I could shoot myself.

Even with my temporary lapse, I was confident we were still in the city when Bobby finally parked the van. The potholes had been getting worse and worse, which was a sure sign we weren’t in the suburbs. Bobby got out and opened the side door for me, bowing like a butler after it slid open and locked in place with a loud thunk. He made a big show of helping me out. I ignored his help, pretending I didn’t need it. That was a big mistake. I don’t ever recommend jumping with duct tape around your wrists, because you’re liable to lose your balance when you land, and by then it’s too late to think about how you’re going to protect yourself from the ground when you fall, because you can’t use your hands much for that, either. I ended up face-down in the gutter. My mouth touched wet garbage.

So I had to accept Bobby’s help in the end, anyway, and now I had some new scrapes on my knees and one on my elbow to add to the list. Bobby brushed off my knees, which I resented, because, in my mind, street filth was still a lot cleaner than his fingers. He stayed close to me as we walked down the sidewalk. He was constantly trying to put his arm around me, not because he was feeling particularly friendly, which he hadn’t been since the soul patch comment, but because he wanted to hide the fact that my hands were bound together with duct tape. In broad daylight. A girl walking down the street like that in my grandparents’ neighborhood would have been surrounded by police before she got ten feet, but no one here seemed to care, or even to notice.

I had never seen this neighborhood before. It was all row houses, tiny narrow identical ones with fake stone siding and pretentious marble steps, all squeezed in together with about two inches of sidewalk in front of them. The row houses looked as if they were all trying to keep from being pushed into the street by someone who thought they were totally hideous. The puny sidewalk was full of white trash bags, which stank like summer garbage. Some of the houses were abandoned, with plywood sheets nailed over fire-blackened window frames. A lot of them had spray-painted signs saying “If animal trapped inside, call. . .” but there was never a phone number written in. There were no trees anywhere.

The streets were full of people, unlike my grandparents’ neighborhood, where you’re lucky to see an overweight jogger or a big black nanny out with a blond toddler. Everyone here was black. There were street corner boys dressed up in baggy clothes, waving their long arms and mouthing rap songs. I couldn’t tell if they were trying to be funny, or menacing, or both.

Gigantic families clustered on the marble steps, as if a smoke alarm had driven them all out half dressed, eating, in curlers, clutching their pathetic belongings. Some of the old men stood there in their pajamas, smoking. It was so noisy! Babies squalled, their fat mamas shrieked, kids whooped, rap music blared, the passing cars honked their horns, sometimes friendly, sometimes not. Everybody seemed to know everybody else, except for Bobby.

The fact that we were white seemed to make us invisible, which was the opposite of my grandparents’ neighborhood, where it’s black people who are invisible. Wait, I take that back. It wasn’t exactly the opposite. In my grandparents’ neighborhood, they just
pretended
that black people were invisible. Black people are actually watched very closely there. But here, in this neighborhood, Bobby and I were barely noticed, or if we were, it was with a knowing look, as if all white people wrapped their children up with duct tape and dragged them down the sidewalk.

There were several men in dreadlocks who actually looked like they knew what to do with a giant heap of knotty hair—unlike the bicycle courier back at Field, who was white and whose dreadlocks were yellowish and scrawny. A squat balding man walked by with something rolled up in a newspaper. He was carrying it at arm’s length. His face was turned away, as if what he was carrying really stank. As he passed, I saw a furry little tail poking out of one end of the roll and some whiskers poking out of the other end. I couldn’t tell whether it was a kitten or a very large rat. Whatever it was was definitely dead.

“This is us,” Bobby said, stepping up to one of the identical steel front doors. It took him a minute to find the key. He had an enormous wad of keys. Most of them looked brand new, as if he had swiped a lot of blanks at the hardware store. He pawed through them, grunting when he found the right one. “Sorry about the mess,” he said, kicking the door open with the toe of his boot, which hit the door like a hammer and made a loud clang. There were a lot of black dents in the bottom of the door. The last thing I saw on the street, before we plunged into the steaming atmosphere of the house, was a big sign nailed to the front of a church across the street. It was one of those temporary churches black people set up in storefronts. The sign was shaped like a rocket. Badly painted fire spewed from its engines. The sign said, “Fly with Jesus to the heavens.”

“Your mother should be here any minute,” Bobby said, bolting the door. Then he told me to make myself comfortable. I said
as if.
The air was putrid and sticky. Bobby started to clear some moldy TV dinners off the sofa. The trays left a dusty outline on the upholstery, which was blue denim. The pillows looked like overstuffed plumber’s pants, complete with a butt crack.

I sat down on the stairs by the front door. I kept moving up the stairs, one by one, trying to find the most comfortable height, but then Bobby came over to the banister and told me to please stay in view, so I moved down to the fourth stair. It was still better than sitting on the denim sofa. I’ve always liked sitting on stairs. It makes me feel like I have options.

Soon, there was banging at the door. I could hear the crinkle of paper shopping bags, which my Mom always insists on—she thinks they’re classier than plastic—and her shrill voice cursing Bobby and demanding that he open the damn door because her hands were full. Bobby’s thick fingers fumbled with the bolt. He kept saying, “Hold your horses, sweetie.” He sounded nervous. He was a big guy, but he was right to be nervous. Mom was capable of anything.