Red on Red (41 page)

“I’d never guess.”

“Ah, shut up. Anyway, when he built it, it really was the sticks up here—shut up again, you don’t even need to say it, I saw you think it—but it drove his wife crazy. She split, and his business went under. I even felt bad for the guy, how little we gave him for it. Lena’s a tough lady. I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side.”

Lena, Nick noted—that would be the wife.

“I’ll try to stay off it. Where is she?”

“She went out food shopping. She’ll be home soon.”

“I’d hate to miss her, but I got to be getting back.”

“That would put you on her bad side. Besides, the car’s gone. Napolitano came by this morning to check on us. I told him about the deer. He took the car to his brother-in-law, a mechanic, to bang out the dents. It’ll be back tomorrow. Next day, latest.”

How long would he be here? There was a crash downstairs, and then two kinds of screaming, accusatory and agonized. Esposito shook his head and bellowed a warning before hobbling down to dispense justice. Was it like this every day? Family life must be like farm life, with all the bloody calvings and cullings, not for the squeamish. Nick waited awhile before following.

Nick had occasionally wondered about Lena. Most facts he knew were few and recent, such as her law degree. She was the mother of three children, and she and her husband did not hate each other, as far as Nick had reluctantly overheard. Once, on the phone, there had been something about school, the kids, and Esposito had said, “Well, the world needs laborers, too.” He’d held the phone away from his ear for the
response, but he’d baited the reaction. Nick assumed Lena was beautiful, maybe foolishly, and that she was patient, which was a theory with a better foundation. The first would have to be true for the marriage to begin; the second would have to be true for it to go on. Nick was glad he could think this well, with a head full of country air.

When Lena arrived, arms full of grocery bags, she was not what Nick had expected. In his mind, she’d had ample stripper hips and pert C-cups, dancing the cha-cha in her miniskirt as she’d fried the calamar’. She wore a winter coat, so it was hard to take in her full shape, but his first thought was that she looked plain. Mouse-brown hair escaping from a loose ponytail, a heart-shaped face, glasses. She put the bags down on the floor, and took off the glasses and coat to reveal a blue T-shirt and sweatpants underneath.

“Nick! Welcome. I’ve heard so much about you! God, I’m a mess. Oh, well! Boys! Groceries in the car!”

She walked over to Nick and stopped short, a few feet ahead of him, then leaned in to peck his cheek.

“So good to finally meet you! I don’t want to touch you. I don’t know where you’re hurt. Two more broken toys in the house. Well, we’ll have to fix them….”

Up close, with the warmth of the greeting, Lena became instantly prettier. Her wide brown eyes and slightly crooked smile took him in with bemused pity and ready allegiance. She was as glad to see him, genuinely, as the children had been. The series of battlefield promotions that had deepened his bond with Esposito had been earned, he felt. They were part of the meritocracy of friendship. This kind of love, family love, ardent and unexamined, was pure windfall. He felt like an impostor, a counterfeit relation, a beggar at the door who’d concocted a story of shipwreck and separation from the name on the mailbox. It was thrilling. Nick noted, too, that one part of his fantasy was fact. Lena did have C-cups. He blushed, and she walked away, shouting orders to the children to unload the car. “Yes, you, too, John. I told you before, your foot’s not broken….”

It was overwhelming, all of it. So much of this was new to Nick. The appliances seemed to run constantly, beeping alerts; the food arrived in hurricane-prep quantities that made Nick fear the supply routes were at risk—brightly colored brand-name family-size boxes and bottles, lo-cal and high-fiber, junk for special treats. Nick was the solitary offspring of
another solitary, who lived in a city packed with strangers; he had learned the etiquette of not making eye contact on the subway, of saying only what needed to be said at the table. Here, festival moved to riot and back. Nothing was unsaid—hungers, grudges, victories, states of mind, bowel updates—it was a town of town criers. Nick thought of Allison, how they had run out of things to talk about. This was the life that had been denied them. Pangs of envy and relief struck Nick in sudden, arrhythmic intervals, and he did not know what to make of it, embedded as he was, for the indefinite course. Still, his prison terrors began to fade.

Lena was the center of it all, and the apex. Her approval was sought most; her authority was final. With the children, Lena viewed Esposito as middle management or double agent, nominally adult but essentially male, and hence untrustworthy in his judgment about interesting dangers—sharp things, hot things, throwables, heights. She had bought all of Esposito’s clothes for him, which surprised Nick, given how his high goombah style fit him like skin. Did she know his taste, or had she shaped it? The implications preoccupied Nick for an hour. Lena was the only one in the house who had firm impulse control, a fully developed sense of irony. On any given occasion of conflict or chaos, she looked to Nick to appreciate her position, and he did. Often, he just shrugged; mostly, that was all she wanted. She was so much prettier, he thought, than when he’d first seen her. Before dinner, Nick made a feeble attempt at helping her set the table, but she ordered him to take a seat.

“And you ought to call your father, Nick. He might be worried.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“God, I’m sorry. Did I just say that? Did it sound the way—”

“Yeah, but you’re right.”

But he didn’t. He didn’t want to worry his father, but also he didn’t want to think about the straitened life he’d return to, soon enough, let alone the disclosure of his overnight with Daysi. The table seemed crowded, with the six of them, everyone talking at once. Little Al erupted when he saw that his brother John had a plastic cup with Bugs Bunny on it, which he preferred to his own Woody Woodpecker; John obligingly switched, and peace was restored. Nick detected subtle favoritisms, in how Esposito treated John, how Lena dealt with RJ and Al; it intrigued him, because each favorite took after the opposite parent, one’s dynamism, the other’s discernment. All three had proclaimed their intention to be cops, which had drawn a pointed lack of comment from Lena.
There was salad, then spaghetti and meatballs. Lena watched Nick, to see how much he ate. Nick ate two helpings, not just out of courtesy. At the end of the meal, the kids had ice cream, and Lena led them out without argument, after they lined up, in age order, to give Nick a kiss. It was bedtime. John stopped at the door.

“When we say prayers, we’ll ask for you to get better. Should we ask God for anything else?”

“Just tell him I said hi.”

“Okay, I will.”

Lena led them upstairs, and Esposito refilled the wineglasses. She would follow the children to bed, not long after. When the children were asleep, Esposito led Nick up to watch them. From the door, Nick could see the moisture and heat leave the bodies in a shimmer, the catlike languor of limbs draped off bunks, sudden twitches of fleeting dreams. Superhero pajamas—Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, ready for slumber battle. Esposito looked over, to see if Nick saw what he saw, if he got it. Nick had been amazed by how they loved him without knowing him, and was touched that they continued to, after they did. Esposito smiled and put an arm on Nick’s shoulder, indicating they should go downstairs.

Esposito wanted a cigar and he wanted company. He was less direct than usual, suggesting that it was Nick who wanted to sit in the cold night, and he would oblige him, as a good host. Nick helped him with his coat, and got his own. They hobbled to the front stoop and sat. Nick suspected that there was a talk of some consequence about to happen. Would there be accusations, a revolver, a shot to the head? No, the kids were too young to help drag his body into the woods, and Esposito couldn’t manage alone. Besides, Lena liked him. Esposito drew on the cigar, then blew smoke rings. How long had it been since Nick had seen a smoke ring? It seemed childish at first, like skipping stones, the kind of game you’re determined to learn when time is all you have. The smoke rings were bright shadows, as bewitching as skipped stones, the first ones rolling into broad and loose circles, the later ones tight little O’s, so that for a moment the whole of them made the shape of a horn. The announcement, it was time:
Ta-daaa!

“So … whaddaya think?” Esposito asked.

Nick waited to answer, uncertain of the question. He was tactical in his reply.

“It is what it is. This is it, isn’t it?”

Esposito smiled again, and patted Nick on the back. He had understood perfectly.

“Yeah. You said it.”

Nick wished Lena were there, so they could exchange shrugs. A strange currency, sympathy, meaning as much as you wanted, and nothing, like a poker chip. Nick allowed a moment to pass, betting Esposito would elaborate. He puffed on the cigar, but did not bother with any more rings. No more signals in the smoke.

“These guys, my little guys, they’re everything to me. I love how they are with each other. Even when they fight, they forget a minute later. One grabs the other, ‘Look, that cloud looks like a big fat butt. C’mere, look!’ They could each have their own room, but they like sharing that one. This is life to them, the way the world works. When my old partner offed himself—you knew that, right?—anyway, we weren’t close, work was work. First he thought he was a hotshot, that he was better than me, and then he wasn’t much of a worker. He went to hell. Never wanted to leave the office, and when he did, he wanted to drive by places where he thought his ex was hooking up, pretending it was for cases. He annoyed the shit out of me. Don’t get me wrong—I’m sad about it, sorry about it, wish it didn’t happen. A tragedy, I guess. But not mine. Some of the guys, they kinda gave me the hairy eyeball for a while after that. You know how people are. It’s better now, but I don’t forget.

“Anyway, I told Lena about it, on the sly, I thought. At least, I told her the basics. But Johnny Boy, the middle one—isn’t he just like me, don’t you think? Roman nose and all. Anyway, he comes up to me, crying, he hugs me, he tells me, ‘Daddy, you must be so sad.’ Because he figures it must be like losing RJ or Al. It wasn’t. I almost laughed, at first. I gotta tell ya, somebody’s always got me under surveillance—IAB at work, my kids at home—and they get it wrong half the time. More than that, thank God. Remember how Malcolm Cole said brothers aren’t always brothers? That surprised me, because—well, what did I know about it? And my kid, Johnny—Anyway, it made me think.”

Esposito ground out the last of his cigar and slapped Nick on the knee.

“Anyway, I’m glad you’re here.”

They stumbled getting up, lurching for crutches, grabbing hands, one to lift the other, laughing about how well the pills worked for the pain. Nick went to sleep, giving thanks for everything, to everyone, knowing
that they would never have a conversation like that again, knowing there would be no need.

The next day, Nick resolved to go home after breakfast, then lunch, but the hours drifted, easy with leisure, rife with little diversions, balmy with mild opiates. Time seemed treasured and wasted at once, lounging in the bosomy armchairs in “the entertainment center.” Nick allowed Al to sit on his lap, carefully. Johnny Boy sat on the arm of Esposito’s chair, and RJ lay on the floor between them. These became their fixed places, and everyone went to them without question whenever they entered the room. Sports and cartoons, sometimes, mostly the history and nature channels. Both were nonstop pageants of atrocity: Panzer divisions in blitzkrieg, tearing through Poland and France; herds of wildebeests falling to crocodiles in their mad passage of the flood-swollen Zambezi. Cities besieged and sacked, some rising again, like Rome, or lost to legend: Carthage, Machu Picchu, Roanoke. It was odd how reassuring it all was, from the distance, from the comfort of upholstery, in the knowledge that the channel could be changed. The television shows were like campfire stories, told to conjure and banish dread. Nature was scarier, with the shaking-camera reenactments of shark attacks, or sadder, all the little sea turtles that never made it out of the egg. Natural death was rare in nature, Nick observed. The five of them never watched the news.

When Esposito staggered up for a bathroom break, Johnny slipped off the chair and approached Nick, his face earnest, his hand touching Nick’s twice in a brushing, tapping gesture, like a dog that needs to go out. “Is it true you saved Daddy’s life?”

“No, not really.”

“Did you save him in 9/11?”

As Nick smiled at the muddled fantasy, RJ rolled over on the rug and tugged at Nick’s pants leg. Though Nick expected a certain archness from him, an older brother’s privileged irony, his question was far more blunt.

“Did you shoot the guy who hurt him?”

The forthrightness disarmed Nick, and the form seemed so much like cross-examination that he thought a DA should bark out “Objection!” It would not have been sustained.

“Yes.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I missed.”

The possibility had not occurred to the boys; when they played war, no shots went astray. RJ continued to hold the cuff of Nick’s trousers. Not his, but Esposito’s, borrowed, as all he wore. Another week here, and Nick would have the same funny haircut as the rest of the kids.

“Mom and Dad said not to ask you about it,” offered Johnny gently, as if to allow a moment for all of them to collect themselves.

“You should listen to them,” said Nick, grateful for the respite, the opportunity to pretend to the obscurities of adulthood again. But Johnny was not finished, and his hand taps, needy and trusting, made his next question all the more painful and penetrating.

“Did Daddy ever kill anybody?”

Nick waited a second, so the answer seemed neither too rushed nor too considered. The boys must have had some advantage, some prior knowledge, when they’d asked about him. This question sounded like a guess, and Nick guessed his response, solemnly shaking his head. No. He didn’t know if they believed him, but they knew they would get no more. This is how you learn to truly lie, Nick thought, with family, out of love. When Esposito hobbled back, they were watching a show about the hidden treasures of the Templars, and none of them betrayed any confidences.