The Good Boy (11 page)

“Someone else started it? What, it was an actual pissing match?”

“No.”

“So it was a coincidence? You had to pee, and Bob’s locker was the closest pot?”

“I thought you said there’s no such thing as coincidence.”

“Sure there is.” He turns around in his seat and watches Joel take the towel to the back window. “I think what I said was that you can’t explain a coincidence. That’s why a crime is never a coincidence. For a crime, there’s always an explanation.”

Joel keeps smearing the towel around so the lather blocks his reflection.

Pete turns back, head against the rest. “I have a feeling, Joel: I think you might be able to explain this.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You think your being home means you scored a sick day? You’ve already been caught and convicted. Look. I’m not asking for a confession. Just an explanation.”

Joel keeps on cleaning the window and eventually he says, “I was making a map and Bob ruined it.”

“He spilled on it or something?”

“He peeled off the Apennines and smashed them together and shaped them into a duck. Or some bird. I don’t know. It had a long neck.”

“I don’t know what that is, Apennines. What is that?”

“They’re mountains.”

“Did you ask him why he did that? With the mountains?”

Joel wipes the window left to right and back, same as he’d shake his head no.

“What about your teacher? Did you talk to your teacher?”

“She said the map was wonderful.”

“Wonderful,” Pete says, but not at all in agreement. He feels himself get hot: this new school where all the kids get pats on the back just for showing up is like a moral bounce house—nothing hurts. Kids have to learn hurt, and loss, and what disappointment feels like—and not just by watching their parents.

“It wasn’t wonderful at all,” Joel says. “It was wrong.”

“So was pissing on another guy’s clothes.”

Pete picks up the Dustbuster and turns it on, an end to the conversation, but the motor doesn’t start up all the way before it sputters out again. He fucks with the switch and now he’s frustrated because what probably happened at school was that the teacher was too busy convincing other kids of their specialness to notice Joel was upset. He’s probably the smartest kid in class and if that gets him overlooked,
that’s
the problem—not that he likes things done right or that he’s curious or that he remembers things better than Pete ever has and hell, Pete’s trained to remember them; no, the problem is not Joel.

In the rearview, Joel turns and sprays the side window that’s already clean and Pete can’t help but think maybe Sarah’s the one who’s jumbling the boy’s head. She thinks Joel’s slipping through the cracks and so she wants to put a real cushy net underneath when what the boy probably needs is to land flat on his ass once or twice, to give all those smarts some street.

Pete ditches the Dustbuster and turns all the way around to say, “I’m disappointed, Joel. You’re smarter than that. You know better, and that puts it on you to be better. Not to let guys like Bob Schnapper draw you off sides.”

“Like in football?”

“Exactly like that. Think about it: the other guy has the ball, and you’re just trying to defend yourself, and he can talk trash and make you mad and do whatever he wants, but you’re the one who can’t cross the line.”

Joel rolls off his knees and sits down, the top of his head all that’s left in frame as the cage between them comes into focus, a steel divide between father and son. He says, “I’m sorry.”

Pete says, “Don’t be sorry. Be smarter.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m nuts.”

Pete wonders where he heard that, and how many other offhand remarks of Sarah’s he’s soaked up. “I don’t think you’re nuts, Joel. But you are grounded. That means no police games, no chasing around the neighborhood, and I’m sorry, but no Butch.”

Joel’s eyes go gloomy. “That’s not fair.”

“You want fair, Joel? Talk to a judge.”

“Judge Crawford?”

“Sure,” Pete says, and finds himself grinning—not because of Kitty, but because Joel thinks of her. Of course he does: she’s the only judge he knows. Still, it’s amusing, and: “I’m sure Judge Crawford would hear your case.”

“Can I tell her?” Joel asks. “Well, I mean, can I ask? I mean, some kids do bad things, and they don’t ever get in trouble.”

Pete looks back: Joel sits in the cage, so small with his socked feet dangling over the side. Pete wonders if he’s talking about McKenna, a sneaky move in the ongoing sibling chess match. “Someone in particular?”

“No.”

“Your sister?”

“I said no.” Joel keeps his head down, focuses on wrapping the towel around his hand like he’s dressing a wound. There’s someone, but he’s not saying. He’s not a snitch.

“I’m not following, Joel. What do you want to ask the judge?”

Joel tips his toes together again. He thinks for a little while and says, “I don’t know what I was supposed to do.”

“About Bob Schnapper?”

Joel looks up, making eye contact, and Pete sees the boy’s chest rise and fall, quick and bated, like Pete got it all wrong—like there’s something much, much bigger stuck in there.

“Are we talking about Bob Schnapper?”

Joel looks away and he says, “I wish I’d punched him in the nose.”

So it is Bob Schnapper. But it is also Oliver Quick.

“You and I talked about that, Joel. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“But you’re the police.”

Pete looks over the neighbor’s ragged fence, their Foreclosure sign. And trash in the alley: a long-gone to-go cup, a forgotten
La Raza
newspaper rain-melted to mâché. Dead leaves over near-dead grass on their stamp-size lawn; the uneven steps to the run-down rental that they’re supposed to call home.

And all of it this way because Pete did his job.

“Dad?”

“Yeah,” he hears himself say, though everything goes out of focus as his mind racks toward that one punch.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He throws the towel onto the pavement, says, “Listen, I need you to finish up here. I have to go to work.” He can see Quick’s face, the flash of his camera.

“Okay. Is Butchie going with you?” Joel gets out of the squad and follows him toward the house, a half step behind.

“Just do the windows and lock it up and I’ll be back out.” Quick saw them together. He knew the judge. He didn’t know the context.

“Yes, sir.”

He turns back for the squad, Joel right behind him.

“And I need you to feed the dog later.” What Quick saw was a headline.

“Butchie is staying?”

“Butch could use a wash, too.” What Pete saw was a threat.

“I thought you said I wasn’t allowed—”

“I have to go and I need you to take care of him, okay? Forget what I said before.” He slams the squad’s passenger doors. What the cameras saw ruined him.

“Okay. But, Dad—”

“Just take care of Butch. Okay? Please?” He goes around to the driver’s side, Joel on his heels.

“Is he in trouble?”

Pete stops. Turns. Sees his boy; finally hears him. Wonders if he heard. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Because you’re going to go to work without him.” He looks like he’s about to cry.

“It’s a side job. The Metro. I thought I said.”

“No.” Joel looks down at the pavement.

Pete gets into the car, starts the engine. Thinks about it. Wishes there were a way to keep his mistakes from catching up with the boy. Wonders how much he knows about Ja’Kobe White. If he’s worried. But can only say, when he rolls down the window, “Take care of the dog.”

6

The house is quiet now—Joel in his room reading and Butchie toweled off, splayed out, asleep in the corner—when McKenna comes crashing, heavy on attitude, up the stairs and into her room. Joel hears her shoes go
thunk, plunk
when she chucks them into the closet.

Butchie startles at the noise but doesn’t wake; his eyelids don’t get but half open before he settles right back into snoozeland.

Joel finishes the chapter he was reading and he feels terrible. He didn’t like the beginning of the book at all, when starving wolves killed the dogs and travelers one by one. But then it turned into White Fang’s story, about him growing up and wanting to explore; that part was really good. Now, though, the wolf-dog is in an Indian camp, and the people are mean and the other dogs are mean and the worst part is they force White Fang to be the meanest of all. Joel wishes White Fang had escaped into the forest when he had the chance.

“Jesus,” Mike says, aggravated.

Joel closes the book and decides to see what Jesus is up to in his sister’s room.

She says, “Get out, Joely,” before he reaches her door. Inside, she’s already switched her school uniform for stretch pants and either a very long shirt or a very short dress. She stands sideways in front of her makeup mirror, probably making up stuff that’s wrong with her. Everything that was ever in a drawer is out: on the floor, the bed, the bureau tops. The flat iron makes the room smell like burned hair.

“What’s wrong?” Joel asks.

“You’re standing there watching me.” She turns the other way in the mirror.

“Well, you’re supposed to be watching me, because Mom’s running late and Dad’s gone to work.”

“That’s fucking fabulous.”

“You don’t want to watch me? What about this?” Joel does the samba dance move that Molly taught him—a one a-two, two a-two—hips popping.

“
That
is fucking fabulous.”

“Thanks.”

“Now go away.”

“Come on, tell me what’s wrong.”

“Get me a Diet Coke first.”

“Okay.”

When he gets back, Mike’s at her computer and wearing a completely different outfit, this one flimsy layered shirts that run into a low-slung denim skirt. Joel doesn’t mean to stare, but the get-up gets caught up at her waistline, same place her ever-changing diet can’t seem to reach.

“What?” she asks, though the snarl in her voice means she already knows—and hates—the what. She takes the pop from him and says, “Don’t you have anything better to do than stand there?”

“Sure,” Joel says, “I can sit.” He clears a spot on her bed, tossing clothes she didn’t wear over the book bag she won’t use.

“Boy, I wish you had a life.” Mike leans back at her desk—chair facing the door so that her cyberlink to the outside world is not—and clicks her mouse with one hand, smoothing her straight blond bangs with the other. She used to be strawberry-blond and she used to have curls; Joel thought she looked so pretty after the long days she spent at the beach this year, all summered and sun-dried. But before school started, she used some kind of gunk to make her hair relax. Now, it’s the most relaxed thing about her.

“Hey, Spaceboy,” she says as she types. “If you’re going to sit there, make yourself interesting.”

“I’m not interesting. I’m grounded.”

“Seriously? What now? Did you freak out at the teacher again?”

“No. It was a kid.”

“What did he do?”

“He ruined my school project.”

“Did you kick his ass?”

“I peed in his gym locker.”

She quits typing, looks up from her screen. “No. You. Didn’t.”

“Yeah.”

“That is like the best fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Dad doesn’t think so.”

“Oh please. What does he know? He’s the one who landed us in this place.”

“I like this place.”

“It’s a dump.” Mike types fast and even, like a court stenographer.

“He said I could talk to the judge.”

She looks up again, the light reflected from the screen turning her eyes to steel. “Of course he did. He
lu-huhves
the judge.”

“She’s a nice lady.”

“She bothers me.”

“Still?”

“Always.” She lifts her pointer finger, what she calls her bullshit detector, and whistles as it spins.

Joel thinks it’s a pretty stiff opinion; even though they had to move here after his dad was finished protecting her, it’s not like that was the judge’s idea. And anyway, Mike only ever met her once—the night she came to dinner. It was at their old house. It was a big deal, even though no one said so—like when Grandma Murphy used to visit, and his mom would spend two days cleaning and another day in the kitchen and everybody acted like she always did that. And also cooked a roast.

When the judge arrived, though, she was nothing like Grandma. She was a small woman who stood tall; Joel glimpsed the skin on the tops of her feet between her straight-leg pants and her patent-leather heels. Her blouse was paper thin and cream colored and unbuttoned pretty far—bare skin there, too, and also a nice pearl necklace. It wasn’t so much about the way she dressed, though, as the way she moved—naturally, like how her hair fell in waves around her shoulders. Not like Mike’s hair, who forced the style after she flattened her curls, or like his mom’s, whose just kind of sat there.

Now that he thinks about it, that was kind of how things went at the dinner table, too.

Maybe it was because when they sat down, Mike was trying to act cool, so she gave Joel some grief about getting grounded. She told the judge he’d been caught playing Roadkill. Joel argued he’d been playing 911, and their dad, at the head of the table, said 911 was just a different name for the same game. He looked at the judge when he said it and there was a smile in both corners of his mouth. The judge smiled and said she’d never heard of either game. Joel’s mom wasn’t smiling at all, and she said that whatever the game was called, the idea came from Pete and “his pals in property crimes,” who had been telling lies over beers on the back porch the previous weekend.

The judge seemed interested in the game, so Joel told her about it. The way it went was, one guy would be the lookout, the other the victim. So if his pal Kink played lookout, for instance, he would signal Joel when a car was coming. Then Joel would lie down on the side of the street all contorted—like he’d been hit by a car or whatever and left there. Kink would start the clock, and then the car would slow down, or maybe even stop, and Joel would try to stay there as long as he could before the person got out or he got too nervous. Then he’d get up and run away. Whoever could stay the longest was the winner.