Joe (18 page)

“Hey, it’s okay,” he whispered, in that
soft Texas drawl he had. “Let’s go find Davis. I was thinking I would like to
stop for some ice cream before I take y’all home.”

Dominic’s head popped up from where it
had been resting in the crook of Russ’ shoulder. He pulled his two middle
fingers out of his mouth. “Ice cream! Yes! Ice cream! I want ice cream. Mommy!
Mommy! Mommy! Ice cream. Wuss says I can have Ice cweeeam!”

“Okay,” Mina said. She rubbed her son’s
back and stared at the man who had managed to make her fall in love with him on
their first date. Earlier she’d said that he was a good guy. Scratch that, he
was a goddam angel. He’d just saved her from what would have been the worst
heartache of her life.
A keeper,
her mother would have said.
A real
keeper.

They collected Davis and picked up the
ice cream from the Dairy Queen around the corner from Mina’s house. Now they
were sitting on the back porch and watching the boys chase each other around
the yard. Russ was puffing a cigarette and sipping from the beer Mina had
offered him. She hadn’t said much, other than asking him if he would like to
stay for a little while, and he was just as silent as he always was, slanting a
smile at Dominic and applauding when the boy made Russ watch some amazing trick
he could perform. She had to say something. It simply would not be right not
to.

 “Thank you, Russ.”

He looked at her now, and his deep blue
eyes were warm and beautiful. That diagonal smile found his lips. “You are
quite welcome, ma’am,” he said, tipping an imaginary hat on his head.

Mina couldn’t help but smile. He was
like some noble, romantic, gun slinging cowboy who had ridden into town on his
white horse to sweep her off her feet. She never, not in her wildest dreams,
would have thought she could have fallen for such a man, a
cop
as well.
She had always gone for the bad boys, but then, look where had that gotten her.

“I-I—”

Mina didn’t know what to say. She…
what
,
exactly? She should have been watching her child? Yes, that. She was
embarrassed out of her mind? That too. She usually paid better attention and
she was horrified beyond words and, and,
what
? All of that. More than
that. But what to say?

“Thank you,” she repeated stupidly.

Russell patted her leg and sat back
again, returning a wave to Dominic, who had waved at Russ perhaps a hundred
times just since they had been sitting out here. “Don’t you fret over what
happened, darlin’,” he told her. “No harm done. Your boy’s right there and he’s
just fine. I meant it when I said it happens to the best of parents. My momma,
God rest her soul, raised me and my three brothers by herself. She worked hard.
She was a great parent, and she lost me once.” Russ chuckled, slanted smile on
his lips once more. “Jus’ left me at the park and didn’t figure it out until
she got home and noticed only three ducklings climbing outta the car when there
shoulda been four. She was a good mother, just like you are.” He shrugged. “It
just, you know, happens to everyone at least once.”

Now it really hit her. A man like
Russell Remington wasn’t just rare, his kind was nearly
extinct
. There
were other good men out there, sure. There were even good men who were willing
to love another man’s child as though it were their own. However—and yes, this
was shallow, but the truth often is—there were not so many good men who
looked
like Russell Remington. It was truly a wonder that some younger, childless girl
had not picked him up and tied him down already. It was very nearly the
equivalent of winning the lottery. It scared the shit out of her.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you out for a
long time,” he said quietly.

“I’m glad you did,” she said. “Would you
like to stay for dinner?”

He nodded. “I would like that very
much.”

Russ helped clean up after dinner and
then left shortly after, kissing Mina again on the forehead, hugging Dominic
and waving goodbye to Davis. Later that night, as Mina lay in her bed staring
at the ceiling, she couldn’t help but replay the events of the day over and
over in her head. Russell had told her that he saw the creeper-man watching
Dominic from across the carousel and had just heard his—
intuition?
—warning
bells go off in his head. When he had seen that Dominic wasn’t over by the exit
gate, he’d looked for the man he’d been watching in the yellow shirt, and there
he was, leading Dominic away with one dark hand on the boy’s shoulder. Mina had
to keep shoving those
potentials
out of her mind.
What if, what if,
what if?
Terrible things, those what if’s. What finally allowed her some
sleep was thinking about Russell, and how much she truly wanted him to be her
man. Dominic loved him. Hell, even Davis didn’t seem to mind him.

It was all almost too good to be true.
It was so
right,
she was so
happy
that she couldn’t help but
worry. Just a tiny bit. Just a little twinge of—
intuition?—
worry that
spiraled once around the base of her stomach and then died out.

Because Mina was not young enough or
naïve enough not to know that with every parade, there comes a chance of rain.

Chapter
Twenty-Nine

Michael

The
girl was strange, and she was all that Michael could think about.

Yes, he was attracted to her, but this
was not the main reason that she had been occupying his mind since yesterday when
he had gotten her to agree to a date—if you could call meeting at Landry’s
Tobacco shop (
and bring gloves
) a date—in exchange for his promise to
skip his classes on the coming Monday.

Yes, strange.

Perhaps it was that he was a writer—a
pretty good one,
if ah do say so mahself
—and that he was inquisitive and
curious by nature. He had replayed his few interactions with the raven-haired
girl over and over in his head, and found that the questions he kept asking as
a result of this examination were, well,
strange
ones. The girl named
Joe was a…
mystery.
To a young writer, this was a very sexy word.

Perhaps this was the reason that one
couldn’t help but notice her, despite the fact that she tried so obviously not
to draw attention to herself. She sat in the back of the class. She never
raised her hand to answer questions, didn’t offer any opinions when a class
discussion was in session. She spoke very little, in fact. Michael suspected
she spoke as little as possible, and that this was because of her stutter. He
had always been hyperaware of the inside workings of others though, so he knew
that the reason she was short spoken was not because she was embarrassed about
her speech impediment. He figured it was more because speaking was too much of
a task, and she didn’t care to bother with it. Michael found all of this
endearing, and also utterly intriguing. Joe, he suspected, led an extraordinary
life. One that may inspire great stories, like glorious sunsets have so long
inspired painters.

Or so he
suspected
.

At the moment Michael was rummaging
through his closet looking for a pair of gloves. Why had the raven-haired girl
wanted him to bring gloves to a tobacco shop? It was the middle of spring and
already the weather was too warm out to require them.

“So she told you to meet her at some
tobacco store out in Peculiar and to bring
gloves
?” Trey asked echoing
Michael’s thoughts. He was sitting on Michael’s bed and bouncing a ping-pong
ball off the wall, catching it as it came flying back.

Michael was hunched over, digging
through a box in the back of his closet, still looking for his winter gloves.
“Yeah,” he said. “Weird right?”

“Not just weird,
fucking
weird…What
are you looking for?”

“Gloves.”

Trey’s brow furrowed, and a light bulb
went off in his head. “She probably meant
work
gloves,” he said.

In the closet, Michael paused. He turned
his head to look at Trey. “Why would she want me to bring
work
gloves?”
he asked.

Trey shrugged. “Why would she want you
to bring
winter
gloves? Why did she make you say you would skip your
classes on Monday? Why are her eyes that odd silver-blue color? Who knows,
dude?” He shrugged again. “Chick is just weird.”

Michael stood and came out of the
closet. He shut the door behind him. 

Trey caught the ping-pong ball, held it,
and looked over at Michael. “She’s not the type you usually go for,” he said,
giving Michael a level stare.

Michael studied him for moment. “That’s
because she’s too…
rare
to be a ‘type’. To be a type there has to be
others like you. I don’t think I’ve met any others like her.”

“You sound like you’re in love.”

“And
you
sound like you don’t
approve,” Michael said.

Trey sighed. “It’s not that, bro. It’s
just…”

“Just, what?”

Another sigh. “It’s just that she seems
like trouble to me, man. I mean, just from what you’ve told me about her makes
her seem like a…a
weirdo.
I’m sorry, but there’s just no other way to
say it. What kind of girl will only agree to go out with you on the condition
that you miss school the next day? What, does she want you to prove yourself to
her by skipping classes right before the mid-term? And more importantly, why
would you agree?”

Michael’s shoulders stiffened a little.
“It wasn’t like that, dude.
She’s
not like that.” He paused, thinking.
“It was like she was, I don’t know,
warning
me or something. Like she
was scared of something.”

Trey raised his eyebrows, as if this
proved his point. Maybe it did. “First of all, you don’t know her well enough
to know what she’s like. Second, that’s even
weirder
.”

Michael could feel himself becoming defensive,
and a few threads of anger weaved through his stomach. “I don’t get what your
problem is,” he said, and not very nicely. “And by the way, I saw you looking
at her too when I pointed her out at the bar. I saw you stare at her for a few
extra seconds.”

Trey put his hands up in a surrender
position. “You’re right. She’s definitely got something about her that holds
your attention. I think it was her eyes. They’re so…different it’s hard not to
look at her for a moment. Don’t get mad, bro. She just…freaks me out a little
bit.”

Michael blew out a breath and grabbed
his keys off of the nightstand next to his bed. Trey was probably right about
one thing; Joe could’ve meant
work
gloves. It certainly made more sense.
Maybe she wanted him to help her out with some kind of work at the tobacco
store. And really, he couldn’t be mad at Trey. Trey was his best friend, had
been since the two of them were just boys. He always told Michael exactly how
he felt, didn’t mince words or sugarcoat. Trey was this way with everyone,
actually, and many people were not fond of him as a result of it. Michael, on
the other hand, appreciated the raw honesty his best friend provided. Always
had. He always said things with the best of intentions in mind; the kind of
friend who would tell you about the onion on your breath before a date. Most
people pretend they want the truth, and then when they get it they mistake it
for cruelty or maliciousness. In other words, most people thought Trey was an
asshole. Michael knew this not to be true. This didn’t mean that Michael always
agreed with what he said.

“I gotta go get some work gloves. You
want to come?” he asked.

Trey pocketed the ping-pong ball and
stood from the bed. He smiled and scratched at the stubble on his cheeks.
“Yeah, might as well. Ain’t got shit-else to do.”

They went to the store, and the
raven-haired girl did not come up again in conversation. This was another thing
Trey could be counted on for. Once he said his piece, he wouldn’t go on and on
about it. Unless you brought it up again, and Michael didn’t. Nonetheless, the
girl stayed as glued to his mind as she had been since his infatuation with her
had begun. He also had confidence in the fact that his insight into others was
much sharper than Trey’s. After all, he had run into the very person that the
raven-haired girl was searching for. He had
literally
run into the
Decider, and he had, if only for a few unsettling moments, seen past the guy’s
impeccable mask. He had seen something behind that plain, friendly face and
just for a moment he had been—what was the word he had used?
Uneasy.

However, he didn’t know just how
important this was. After all, he couldn’t see the future.

The girl was occupying most of his
thoughts. His biggest question, the one that would give the greatest insight
into all the other, more minor, questions that the girl evoked in him, was what
made her the way she was? Where does a girl like Joe even
come from?

Chapter
Thirty

Joe

Unlike
most people, Saturday is not one of my favorite days of the week.

This is due to one reason: I go to see
my mother on Saturdays. I do not dislike my mother. She has never abused me. As
a child there was always plenty of food on the table, and I never went to
school in old clothes or with untidy hair. She taught me manners. She took me
to the doctor and got me medicine when I was sick. She even taught me how to
read. For these things, I will always love her and be grateful. I am fully
aware that there are much worse mothers in the world.

Admittedly, I still don’t like going to
see her.

I have to, though. As I have mentioned
previously, my mother is extremely agoraphobic. Her condition worsened after
the incident that landed my father in jail. Before she would simply avoid large
crowds and open places, but she’d still function well enough to go to the
grocery store or the post office if needed. Now she
never
leaves the
house. Never.

She makes a grocery list, and every
Saturday I go shopping and acquire her requested items. The house she lives in
was her father’s, and it is paid off. My mother used to work from home as an
accountant, using the office in the back of the house to hold meetings with
clients. She still has one or two accounts that she handles, but mostly she
just does it to earn extra cash. My father earned more than enough for her to
live on before he was arrested and thrown in jail. So her condition is
supported by her financial security, and she has very little need to leave her
home.

I pulled into the large circular driveway
and parked as close to the front door of the house as possible. The house sat
on four acres of green grass surrounded on three sides by thin wooded areas.
Beyond these trees were other houses, but they were hardly visible from any
place on my mother’s property. The yard was landscaped every week in seasons
that required it. Red mulch and white flowers filled the beds at the base of
the house and surrounded the old oak trees scattered about the land. The grass
was trimmed short and well watered. The home was nearly seventy years old and
beautiful in its well-maintained state. As a child, I had spent all summer out
in this yard, catching ring-neck snakes and blue-tailed skinks. There was an
Olympic-sized pool around back, hidden from view by a white privacy fence.
Despite the many unpleasant memories I associated with the place, it was still
a wonderful place to have grown up.

I got out of the car and retrieved the
four grocery sacks from the long seat of my El Camino, shutting my door with my
foot. As I walked up the stone steps that led to the large porch, I sighed,
trying to prepare myself for this encounter with my mother.
Just get in,
leave the groceries, and get out.
Sure, that was going to happen.

I don’t have a key to her house, so I
set the groceries in my right hand down and rang the doorbell. After a moment,
I heard the cover on the peephole in the door slide back, and then the deadbolt
slid back and my mother opened the door. I bent, retrieving the sacks I had set
down.

Her sandy blond hair was curled neatly
about her shoulders and her face was made up tastefully. She wore a white
sundress with large yellow flowers printed all over it. On her feet she wore
yellow wedges that strapped behind her ankles and over her red-painted toes. A
red apron was tied behind her neck and about her waist. She looked like a woman
with no problems at all. I wondered what she thought I looked like, but really,
I knew.

She swung the door open, glancing around
at the outside world uneasily and waving an impatient hand for me to enter.
“Come on. Get in,” she said.

Nice to see you, too, Mom.

I stepped past her with the groceries,
and she shut the door behind me and reengaged the deadbolt. Taking the bags
from my left hand, she led me into the kitchen. “Did you remember the red
onions?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. I thought you weren’t going to
come,” she said.

I set the groceries I was still holding
down on the counter. “I a-a-always come.”

My mother began digging through the
sacks and putting things away. I didn’t move to help her. She liked to put
things where she wanted, and she was anal about organization. Now would be my
cue to leave.

“How much were these?” she asked.

“Duh-don’t worry—”

 She pulled two hundred dollar
bills from the pocket of her apron and handed them to me.

“This is t-too much,” I said.

My mother waved a hand in dismissal, but
she was studying my attire with clear distaste. “Why do you go out like that?”
she asked.

I looked down at my old jeans and white t-shirt.
I looked just fine. I wanted to say that I least I
go out.
I didn’t.
That would have just been cruel. “It’s cuh-comfortable,” I said instead.

“The doctors all said that you would
grow out of that, you know? Stupid incompetent quacks,” she said.

“Wuh-what?”

She gestured to me with a tube of
Crystal Light. “That. That stutter. They said, ‘Oh, it’s nothing to worry about
Mrs. Knowe.’ Buncha quacks if you ask me. They said that it’s usually males who
don’t grow out of that impediment.” She said this last word as though it was a
dirty thing that may leave a bad taste on her tongue, and gave me a level
stare.

I returned it. “Well, ya-ya-you’re the
one who nuh-named me Joe.”

Childish, yes, but she was goading, and
right now, I had enough on my mind already. I didn’t need her crap.

The tube of Crystal Light flew from her
hand and crashed against one of cabinets with a
thwack!
My back
stiffened. My mother’s pretty face was twisted up in a scowl. “That psychopath
you call a father named you that!” she screamed.

I began to back out of my mother’s
kitchen, watching her. This was not the way our encounters usually went.
Usually, I dropped off the groceries, she paid me too much for them, made some
comment about my hair or my clothes and some comparison about how she always
wore dresses and acted like a lady when she was my age, being clear about the
fact that she was some great beauty—and wonder how it was that she should have
had a strange,
impediment
-having child like myself. These things don’t
bother me much anymore, though obviously I don’t find them pleasant. My mother
is very beautiful, my father as well, and it
is
some kind of wonder how
the two of them, with their blond hair and blue eyes, had a child like me. I
found it an even bigger wonder that their two poor intellects had reproduced my
own. So when you think about it, we are about even in our feelings toward each
other. However,
this
kind of occurrence was not the in the job
description. Something must have set her off.

“I-I’ll see you nuh-next Saturday,” I
said, and then I left.

On the way out, I passed the small table
by the front door where my mother always kept her mail, and I saw the thing
that must have triggered her foul behavior. I was tempted to slip it into my
pocket and take its poison out with me, but I didn’t. I had bigger poison to
deal with at the moment, and it came in the form of a madman who was planning
to gun down innocent people in a mass quantity. My mother would just have to
deal with this poison on her own.

It was a letter from my father.

I gave it one last look and slipped out
the door. In my life, I have learned to let the past stay right where it was.
Dealing with the future was difficult enough. Besides, every time I saw my
mother’s scarred face I was reminded of the past anyway. I didn’t need my
father’s crazy letters to do the same.

No, I remembered it all too clearly as
it was. After all, the incident with my father had been the last time I’d drawn
the future, before this most recent one of course, and as with the daycare incident
and the fire incident, it was something that just couldn’t be forgotten.

It was one of those things that changes
you, that makes you are what you are today.