The Journey Prize Stories 22 (6 page)

“Let's have some Kool-Aid,” Mr. Crisander said. “Mickey misses you two.”

We had never been inside Mr. Crisander's house before. My mother drove us to and from the baseball games and sat in the stands and read a magazine. She said that the baseball diamond was one thing but a person's house was another. If Mr. Crisander ever invited us in, we were supposed to check with her first. “All I'm saying is, better safe than on Geraldo,”
she said. But Mr. Crisander had never asked before and he might not ask again. Nate and I wanted to see Mickey. We followed him up the front walk.

His house was the same as ours – the living room was to the left of the front door, and on the other side there were twisty stairs to the basement, and down the middle, a hallway that led to the kitchen – but Mr. Crisander's house seemed bigger because it was so empty. In our living room we had a sofa that turned into a bed, a loveseat, a bookshelf, and a big coffee table that my mother buffed with Pledge before my aunts came over. Mr. Crisander only had a rabbit ear
TV
and a
VOR
, and and olive green wingback chair that was rubbed down to beige on one side. Mickey blinked at us from her bed in the window seat.

“Look who's here, Mickey,” Mr. Crisander said loudly. We stood in the alcove and waved. Mickey blinked back.

“She's doing a lot better,” Mr. Crisander said more softly to us. “But the vet says she's a little heavy from the lack of exercise. I'm thinking of making her a wheelchair she can power with her front legs.”

Mickey's front legs looked like spindly little toothpicks that had been jammed into her giant watermelon body, but we didn't say anything.

“We'll be in the kitchen if you need us, Mickey,” Mr. Crisander shouted. “Her hearing's going,” he said as we walked down the hallway.

Mr. Crisander dumped two packets of Kool-Aid powder into a big blue pitcher, but he filled it to the brim without even measuring and he didn't stir for long enough. The Kool-Aid tasted like water but looked like pale blood.

“Would you like to see Mickey's room?” he asked.

“Mickey has her own room?” I couldn't believe it. Mickey was the luckiest pig in the world.

“We have bunk beds,” Nate said as Mr. Crisander took us back down the hall.

“Well, pigs aren't very good with ladders,” he said.

Mickey's room was painted light purple. She had a wooden scratching post drilled into the floor and a large rope with big knots that was probably a toy. There was a giant teddy bear losing his stuffing from a hole in his face, and a beanbag chair with a Mickey-sized depression still in the middle of it. In the corner of the room there was a large dog house in the shape of an igloo. Inside it we saw a fluffy pink comforter. Mickey also had a radio. It was set high on a wooden shelf near the top of the window, and it was tuned to the same station my mother liked.

“What do you think?”

Next to the radio was a small picture in a gold frame. The photo was blurry and old, the corners of it yellow and blotchy. It was even harder to see because it was up so high, but we could tell it was of a woman with long dark hair and tiny eyes. She wore a funny-looking pointed hat that cast a big shadow over her face, but I still saw that she had a hand over her mouth. She might have been smiling.

“Is that your wife?” Nate pointed. Suddenly it seemed possible that someone like Mr. Crisander might have a wife.

“No,” Mr. Crisander said, “she's not.”

Nate and I finished our drinks. “Thanks for the Kool-Aid. It was really good,” I lied.

Mr. Crisander told us we were welcome any time we liked. Any friend of Mickey's was a friend of his, and bygones were bygones.

“Maybe on Friday night you guys can come over and watch a movie,” he said as we made our way to the front door. “Give your mom a break. I'll make popcorn.”

Maybe, we said, but right now we had to go. It was Sunday and we were already late.

T
he first time Oscar asked to stay with them, Leo's mother said, “I don't want no dope fiend hanging around my son.” But he showed up again two weeks later, the night after Leo's thirteenth birthday. He walked right in the front door and stood in the kitchen with his seven-string Ibanez electric guitar slung over his shoulder. He had nothing else with him at all, not even a jacket. He said he needed a loan, or else he needed somewhere to stay where no one could find him. He said he was going to stay clean for sure this time, and that he owed some guy a lot of money.

Leo's mother put her fork down on her plate. She held her hand up to her forehead, which was creased, and she closed her eyes, like she was in pain. She suddenly looked old to Leo, like she was a very old woman instead of just a mom. When she opened her eyes a moment later, she looked angry and sad at the same time. She held on to the kitchen table with both hands then, tightly. She stared at Leo the whole time, as if she was really talking to him and not his uncle. She said that she
was a hairdresser with a kid to support and that she didn't have money to loan anybody, but that Oscar could stay in the basement for a while if he needed to. She said she didn't trust him, after the way he'd left before, and that she probably never would. He'd be locked in, she explained, because the only way to get out was through the kitchen and she didn't want him going around upstairs when she wasn't home. She said he could come upstairs in the evenings and have dinner with them, and that she'd keep some food for him in the mini-fridge downstairs, and buy his smokes, so long as he paid her back when he got clean.

“Any sign of coke,” she said, “or any of that shit and you're out. And you can't smoke around Leo.”

“No problem,” said Oscar. “I can handle that.” Then he stood his guitar against the fridge and sat down next to Leo on the cat-hair covered chair where Mr. Tibbs would sit when no one else was in the room. Uncle Oscar's eyes were red and he hadn't shaved in a while. His hands shook as he ate and he kept dropping goulash on his Sepultura T-shirt. He hardly ate anything at all, even though it looked like it had been a while since he'd had a meal. He gave off a sweet smell like brown bananas, and Leo didn't eat very much either. As soon as Uncle Oscar finished, he picked up his guitar and went downstairs.

“What about Mr. Tibbs?” Leo asked his mom. “How's he going to use the bathroom?”

“We'll have to bring the kitty litter upstairs for a while.”

“How's Uncle Oscar supposed to use the bathroom?”

“There's the laundry sink. He can use that,” his mother said. Then she told Leo that before he was allowed to play croquet he had to go upstairs and get a spare set of sheets and
bring them down to his uncle, and then bring the kitty litter up to the kitchen.

“But what if there's a fire?” said Leo. “And I'm at school and you're at work? How will Uncle Oscar get out?”

“He can climb out through the basement window any time he wants,” she said. “He's not really trapped down there.”

“Oh,” said Leo.

When Leo went downstairs his uncle was slouched on the couch with his feet on an upside-down milk crate. He was watching
Wheel of Fortune
on the old
TV
set and smoking a cigarette. He'd taken off his workboots and left them beside the milk crate, their tops flopped over. His wool socks were worn through at the heel. As soon as he saw Leo, he stubbed his cigarette out in an empty flower pot. “Thanks, kiddo,” he said.

Leo put the sheets down beside him and tried not to cough. “How long you going to stay?” he said.

“Not long.”

Leo went over to get the kitty litter and when he passed the laundry sink it smelled like barf. He looked inside and the stainless steel was clean and wet.

“Where's your Harley?” he asked.

“Sold it.”

“What'd you get for it?”

“A grand.”

“ls that more than the money you owe?”

“No.”

Leo thought about that for a moment. He wondered how much coke someone would have to do in order to owe someone that much money and decided it would have to be a lot. In the drawer of Leo's bedside table there were two brand new
twenty dollar bills that his mother had just given him for his birthday. Like he was just trying to make conversation, he said, “How much does coke usually cost?” But his uncle kept watching
Wheel of Fortune
like he hadn't heard the question.

Leo looked at the tiny window on the far wall, just below the ceiling. Beneath the window was a wheelbarrow full of gardening tools that his mother hadn't used in years. He thought that if he turned the wheelbarrow over and stood on it, he could reach the window and squeeze through. He thought his uncle probably could fit through too, but he wasn't sure.

When Leo came back upstairs his mother was washing the supper dishes, her back turned to him.

“Close the door,” she said. “Lock the deadbolt.” There was a plate with three peanut butter cookies on the kitchen table and Leo sat down. His mother told him she didn't want him spending any more time with his uncle than he had to. She told Leo they had to be extra careful to keep the front door locked from now on, and that he had to keep the basement door locked whenever they weren't home. Then she rinsed the dish soap off her hands and dried them with a tea towel. She turned from the sink to face Leo, placed a hand on each of his shoulders, and looked him in the eye.

“Your uncle,” she said, “cannot be trusted. But I know I can trust you. Promise me you won't tell anyone he's staying here.”

“No problem,” Leo said. “I can handle that.”

Leo managed to not tell anyone about Uncle Oscar for a whole week. But then on Monday after school he told his friend Francesco that his uncle had a seven-string Ibanez electric guitar, and that he used to have a custom Harley, but that
he didn't have his bike anymore because he was a dope fiend and was living in the basement. He said he stayed down there all day, watching
TV
and smoking and pissing in the laundry sink, and that he was strung out when he first came to stay with them, but now he seemed like he was clean. He told Francesco that he didn't like having another man around the house, and that he hated the kitty litter stink in the kitchen. Then Francesco looked at him like he wasn't listening, so Leo said, “You want to play croquet with me in the parkette right now? I've got money so we can go to the store after.”

“Fuck that shit,” said Francesco. “I got a game in Mississauga.” Francesco was the sweeper for the Saint Erbin Academy boys' soccer team. He also knew how to play four songs on the guitar and he had a girlfriend named Isabel, who wasn't bad looking.

“Probably be rained out,” said Leo.

“So how you gonna play croquet?”

“See you tomorrow,” said Leo. Then he left and went and got on the southbound bus. The bus was crowded with kids in Saint Erbin uniforms: grey polyester old-man pants and black running shoes. Most of them wore sweatshirts to cover up their maroon Saint Erbin golf shirts, even though it was too humid for long sleeves. The bus stank of deodorant and Leo found it hard to breathe. He took his puffer from his front pocket and inhaled and thought about what he hadn't told Francesco. On Saturday afternoon Leo's mother had told him to bring two tuna sandwiches down to the basement. When he'd opened the door, Mr. Tibbs ran down ahead of him and then Leo came down and found his uncle on the couch with his fly open, pumping his dick in his hand. His uncle put it
away and started to do up his fly and Leo'd said, “Sorry,” because he didn't know what else to say. “Don't worry about it,” his uncle said and then took the sandwiches from him like it wasn't a big deal. Leo went upstairs to his room and punched his mattress three times as hard as he could. Then he locked the door and pulled down his pants and held his own dick in his hand. He tried to think about Francesco's girlfriend, Isabel, but he couldn't do anything because he kept picturing his uncle trying to jerk off, so he went to play croquet in the backyard instead.

When Leo got off the bus and walked up to the corner just before his street, the Camaro ss was parked there like always, with Ramon behind the wheel. The Camaro ss was black with white racing stripes. It had twin air vents on the hood and silver rims and was low to the ground and reminded Leo of a snake. Ramon had flat cheeks with little scars on them and he wore a black Blue Jays ball cap with a gold sticker on its brim, and black wraparound sunglasses even though the sky was dark and grey. His seat was reclined and he was leaning back. Leo knew he was nineteen years old, because his mother used to babysit Ramon when he was seven and Leo was one. His mother would talk about Ramon sometimes, about when she would stay at home looking after the two of them, before Leo's father left and she took the job at DivaMax. Leo had been too young to remember, but he could tell by the way Ramon looked at him that he knew who he was. Francesco had told Leo that Ramon sold weed and coke. Instead of crossing the street like he usually did, Leo walked up to Ramon's window and said, “How much is it for some coke?”

Ramon looked at him for a second and then looked away
and Leo couldn't tell what kind of expression was on his face because his glasses hid his eyes.

“Get out of here,” said Ramon. But Leo just stood there. Ramon looked at him again and his face scrunched up like he was laughing, but he didn't make any sound. Then he took his sunglasses off and started to polish the lenses on his T-shirt. Leo thought that Ramon looked friendlier without his sunglasses on, and he figured that was why he wore them all the time.

“How much are we talking about?” said Ramon.

“You know,” said Leo. “Enough.”

“Fifty,” said Ramon.

Leo thought that might be a fair price, but he said, “That's too much. You're charging too much for that shit,” so Ramon wouldn't think he actually wanted to buy some. Ramon put his sunglasses back on and smiled and raised his eyebrows, as if Leo had said something funny. Leo turned then, and kept walking home, and he thought he heard Ramon say something about his mom, but he didn't turn around.