The Child (12 page)

That happened sometimes. Exercise takes motivation. Especially with all the white bread. David could pull off a few push-ups in his cell, but he was never a gym queen before and didn’t even know what to do with the weights. Better to just hide on the bunk and keep very, very quiet.

Eva inhaled. This was her plan to cheer him up. That’s what she always seemed to be after, helping the person in front of her out of a nightmare of unfairness. With a plan. Things never turn around without one. The forces are too strong.

“How are you holding up?”

David was panicked. “One of the weirdest things about being in jail is that you can’t have conversations with anybody. No one knows how to discuss. They just take a position and repeat it over and over again. And if you don’t give up, they’ll stab you. No one knows how to take in information or how to negotiate.”

Hockey smiled. “That’s why they’re in jail.”

“Then why am
I
here?”

“What do you think?” that was Eva, being a therapist.

“People are fucked up about sex.”

The two lawyers had their two different reactions to that one.
Yes
. And
but
.

“But,” Hockey said, “a lot of people don’t agree with fucking little boys. Take some responsibility. You shouldn’t be in jail, but come on, David. Stew needs a boyfriend his own age to ruin his life.”

“Just get me out of here.”

“I really think we can.” That was Eva. She’s the one who agreed that he was being victimized.

“Great. How?” There was hope, suddenly, in David’s face.

Eva felt the breeze of grace. This was her calling. People were treated unjustly. If they didn’t have enough power to protect themselves, others had to intervene and help. It was the primary responsibility of being a human. It was the reason to have society. Now if only someone would intervene for Eva with her family. It had to happen some day. Maybe her niece/nephew would be the one to put a stop to this. She had to wait. There also needed to be someone who would intervene for Mary. She deserved a fair opportunity. Eva prayed there would be a person with decency and mercy who could open that door for her beloved. Someone had to intervene for Hockey. He needed better meds and didn’t know how to invent them himself. And Stew. He had to get an apartment in Brooklyn somewhere and start all over again. Find a nice boyfriend to come home to who would be responsible and generous. Now Eva was intervening for David, being her best. Fighting for someone who needs it–that’s what life is all about.

“I think if we work with the truth and we’re smart, we can win. Our argument is fair. It’s clear and true. If we explain it well, we should win.”

“What is the
truth
?” Hockey snapped. She knew he’d been feeling poorly about everything and not able to get caught up in the fight yet. Maybe that’s why he was being sarcastic. He was scared. That made sense.

Eva was scared, too. “That there is a double standard in the culture for May-December romances. And David should not have to go to jail for twenty-five years–or at all–just because he’s an older man romancing a younger one and not a professor having an affair with his female graduate student.”

“That sounds okay.” David cheered up considerably. He wasn’t alone, and it showed on his face.

People need each other. David needed them, and now Hockey needed her. Walking back to the car, Eva could see that Hockey was not feeling well at all. He was pissy. Sad.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

The best thing was to not condescend. To treat him as if it wasn’t happening until he said that it was.

“Hockey, is that really why you think people are in jail? Because they don’t know how to negotiate? It’s because they don’t have rights.”

“You’re funny. People aren’t as weak as you think.”

“What do you mean?”

“Eva, you think everything is logical.” He slid behind the wheel and they were off on the return through river, tree, lean steeples, whispering pines, crackle. “You just figure out what’s going on, and then you explain it clearly and everything will be okay. Nothing works that way. You can’t win like that. People don’t just capitulate because you’re telling the truth.”

“It would be very good for me to learn how to fight and win.”

“Winning is good. I just remembered.”

“It would be a new feeling for me.” All those welfare cases Eva had fought for so many years. Even if the client won, they often ultimately lost. They won a meager benefit in a no-win system.

“It’s all coming back to me.” Hockey was doing seventy. Breaking the rules but not expecting a consequence. “When it comes to the law there’s something stronger than truth, smarts, or love of justice.”

“What’s that?”

“Strategy.”

They sat in the car in silence for a while, toyed with the radio. Eva didn’t say anything, but she was thinking. She remembered that strategy could win a very hollow victory. She wanted to remind Hockey of something he believed in. Something that would remind him that people’s lives matter.

“If Jose had lived, would he ever have betrayed you?”

“Never.”

That was the source of life, having been loved. Eva sat back, relaxed. Hockey still knew what was true.

Stew was in the kitchen boiling eggs for egg salad. Far behind there was a wind chime and incessant yapping of alien forces. He let those eggs cook for twelve minutes just to be sure. They would be as hard as potatoes and tougher to criticize. His mother and sister liked everything just so.

His mother and Carole were sitting in the adjacent living room drinking coffee. They had matching mother-daughter haircuts and dye jobs, but Carole was fatter. Although a mother herself, she had a girlish plump. Stew knew that if they stepped into the kitchen and caught him making their lunch with runny eggs, they would let him have it all right.

The two women were discussing purchases, banal details, the tiniest maneuvers. Earlier that day they had walked on a street together and shared some common topics, traded minor decisions. These were experiences that Stew would never have with his mother or his sister. He would like to, but he couldn’t give them what they demanded in return. A mirror. Instead he made them uncomfortable. He was living proof of another world. Anything Stew said was viewed with suspicion. No one would identify with it. There was no way on this planet that he was going near that living room to let them look down on him. He would not give them the chance they craved to tell their in-jokes and display their intimacies. Stew would not let them raise their eyebrows and throw glances across the room at each other, even though obviously that is what they wanted most of all. They wanted to show off that they were in and he was out.

“Mom, you remember when Christina divorced Bobby, that lawyer she used?”

That was Carole.

“The black guy? You don’t need a divorce. You and Sam can work it out. Just deal with your problems. Don’t blame him and everything will be all right.” Brigid sucked on a Carlton. “If men blame themselves, we have to pay. They can’t live with it. I don’t care if everything’s my fault as long as my life doesn’t fall apart. Blame it on me, big deal. What do I care?”

Stew knew they were sending him messages about how they were the real family. Mom and Dad and Carole and her husband, Sam, and their little son, Victor. There was no question about it. They were the ones that nobody tried to get rid of, to kick out the door into juvenile hall, all the time pretending they didn’t want to, just had to. Once they got him out, they would never let him back in. Then he’d have to peddle his ass and be poor forever. His mother’s and sister’s tones of intimacy felt heightened as never before. He began to suspect that they purposefully designed to prove what an outsider he was. They were planning it. Showing off how they talk to each other four times a day on the telephone, and that whenever his name came up, it was always as the negative example. About how terrible he is.

“Everything okay in there?”

That was Carole again.

“Yeah,” Stew called back. “Lunch is almost ready.”

Stew ran the hot eggs under the cold water. They were still too hot to handle. He held one in a paper towel, but it was too hot. He dropped it. Fucking egg. He hated that egg. He picked it up and smashed it in the sink, pressed his palm down on it and squashed
it. It was too rubbery. He stabbed it to death with a knife, puncturing the rubbery shell. Immediately he was terrified. What if Carole came in? They’d call the police. Quickly he started scooping up the egg and wrapping it in a napkin, stuffing it into his jacket pocket so he could throw it away later at the 7-Eleven. But the eggshell pieces were too small, and he had to pick them all off the metal sink.

He plucked the next hot egg and dropped it. This time on purpose. He stomped it. The egg squashed out onto the linoleum, and Stew admired it for one fleeting moment before picking it up with a paper towel. He propped a chair against the kitchen door, then he sponged the floor and then used the same sponge on a dish, even though it was forbidden. If anyone had seen him smash an egg, they would raise their eyebrows and then gab about it on the phone, repeating the same stupid words for hours. For years. They would never let it go.

Stew cracked another egg and peeled it. Then another. He mashed them up in a bowl with a fork and added some mayonnaise. He got mayonnaise on his fingers and wiped it on the wall. Then, afraid, he washed it off with a sponge. He couldn’t breathe.

“Victor, help Uncle Stew.”

Victor came in through the swinging doors wearing oversized baseball regalia, some of it inherited from Uncle Stew, like the cap that fell over the kid’s eyebrows.

“I’m mad,” Stew said.

“I’m hungry,” Victor answered.

“Carole just wants to show off how your grandma knows every fucking detail of her stupid life.” Stew peeled the remaining eggs. “I have friends who have great lives, filled with things those two
corpses could never imagine. If I tried to tell them, they would be too stupid to get it.”

“Like what?”

Victor had been a very strange baby. Very passive. Now, as a little boy, he was extremely quiet. Sometimes he asked questions, but they seemed to be by rote and not very imaginative. Stew never felt that Victor actually realized that life was going on.

 

“How is Daddy?” Carole asked in the other room. It was the question she knew Brigid wanted to answer.

“Always criticizing himself. He’s never satisfied.”

Stew and Victor were quiet, listening.

“This thing with Stew is making us both crazy.”

Not again
, Stew thought. It was too much pressure, this constant assault.

“If Stew doesn’t get out of the house,” Brigid flapped, “something terrible will happen. You remember what it was like the last time your father left me.”

“Daddy’s not going to do that again.” Carole lit her cigarette. “He was being a baby.”

“I couldn’t sleep for a year,” Brigid’s voice croaked. “I stayed up all night smoking.”

“I remember.”

“I couldn’t get under the sheets. I couldn’t stand being in bed. I had to weigh down one side with old coats. Every time I dreamed, I dreamed of loving your father. Waking up was a nightmare; it made me afraid to go to sleep. I cried every day for a year. My face changed from so much grief.”

“I remember.”

“Every night I stared at the hook in the bedroom wall and at my belt. The skin on my neck stretched. I stayed up smoking with that belt around my neck. I can’t go through that again.”

“How can you ever trust Daddy after that?”

“I can’t,” Brigid said. “But I can’t trust anyone else, either. At least I know that I love him. Trust is a luxury for the young. I’d rather love him and not trust him than trust and love no one. Stew isn’t the only person in this story. He’s a kid. Everything can still happen for him. Not for me.”

The thing about those bitches was that they had never done anything interesting. They’d never actually taken a risk and gotten caught and still not regretted it. Those two mules knew nothing about living, and yet they were in charge. How did this happen? That’s what Stew would like to know. Well, he wasn’t going anywhere and that was that. He didn’t have anywhere to go, even if he wanted to. He needed to stay home.

“You see, Victor. If you ask those bitches what goes on in the men’s room, they would say wee-wee and ca-ca. Some of the guys I meet there are from Puerto Rico, some are from Albany. If Mom knew, she would throw them in jail. Dad’s trying to get rid of me, but I don’t want to go. I need a home. I’m only fifteen. If he gets rid of me, I’ll get AIDS.”

Stew was sweating. He felt weird. The room was tipping. He was furious.

“I’m hungry.” Victor looked around the kitchen.

Carole reached for another cigarette. Her lighter jammed. “Shit.” She called out. “Victor! Everything okay in there?”

Victor looked at Stew. “Yeah,” he said.

Stew gripped the counter.

“Mom,” Carole said. “I love you.” She found the matches.

Brigid sat back in her chair. “Thank God you were born.”

“The egg salad is almost ready,” Stew called out to his mother and sister. Then he whispered
, “Listen, Victor, don’t eat this egg salad. It has spit in it. It’s only for stupid, boring bitches. They hate me, and they’re going to hate you, because you’re going to have a great life once you figure out that you’re alive. If Mom throws me out, I might have to come live with you and Carole and Sam.”

“I’m hungry.”

“How will I get food if they throw me out? Don’t eat the egg salad, Victor. Have an apple.”

“I want a Big Mac.”

“This is a Big Mac,” Stew said, holding up the apple. “Just pretend. That’s what I have to do. I’m stuck in this fucking house, but I pretend I’m at the train station or the mall or the rest stop or the park.” Stew was scared; he didn’t know how far he could go. “Then sometimes I can escape for just a few hours and all my friends are waiting for me.” His voice was strangely melodic, singing terror. “Those guys I was telling you about? What about you, Victor? Do you like guys?” There, he’d done it. Carole would kill him.