The Most Dangerous Thing (24 page)

Gwen stares out the window at York Road, and Tim
follows her gaze. It’s one of those places that seem to have changed very little
over the years. It’s ugly now, but it was always ugly.

“I’m going to go talk to her.”

“Her?”

“The PI.”

Tim shakes his head. “Don’t. This is about my
family, not yours, Gwen.”

“It’s about all of us. There’s no hierarchy.”

“Really? Were you sexually molested in the woods? I
mean, nonconsensually?”

She blushes. “That’s a little crude, Tim. Even for
you.”

“Sorry, I don’t mean to take the bloom off your
first love, the tender memories of dry-humping and second base.”

He has been too specific. She shoots him a look. “I
always thought you watched us.”

“Only once,” he admits. “And not out there. In the
basement.”

She looks down at her plate. “That summer, when
Chicken—when he—disappeared that last time, Sean and I started using the cabin.
Only a few times. It smelled so bad. I felt dirty there.”

“And not in the good way.”

“Tim.”

God, they are their young selves again, him teasing
Gwen because he’s so insanely jealous of his brother, having a willing
girlfriend when Tim can’t find one. It’s not that he wants her, or ever really
wanted her. It’s that his brother leapfrogged ahead of him. Later, Go-Go got
more pussy than the two of them combined. You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to
figure that one out.

“Did you ever go back?” she asks. “After?”

She doesn’t have to specify back to where.
“No.”

“My dad did. He went back again and again. He
doesn’t know I know this. He would set out for these long walks on weekends and
he wouldn’t invite me, the way he used to. I’m sure that’s where he went.”

“He probably thought you had no interest. You were
a teenager by then. Trust me, teenage girls have very little use for their
fathers. Their fathers’ wallets, but not their fathers.”

“My dad and I got along well. Then and now. Yet we
can’t talk about this.”

“Gwen, let it go. This isn’t about you.”

Gwen glances around the table, in search of
something. She grabs a napkin, rummages in her purse, finds a pen. A much-chewed
pen, Tim observes, the one thing about Gwen that is not put together, polished.
She draws a star in the way that grade-schoolers are taught, with five slashing
lines.

“This was us. The five points of a star,” she says.
“Remember? Mickey said we were like a starfish.”

“A starfish regenerates its limbs. My brother isn’t
coming back.
My
brother, Gwen.” He is trying to
underline to her that he gets to decide this. He and Sean, if it comes to that,
but not Gwen.

“Now look at the center. When you draw a star this
way, it forms a pentagon at the center. That was Chicken George. Not just him,
but the woods, and our adventures there. When he molested Go-Go, when he died—we
were all cut off from each other. I suddenly couldn’t stand to be around Sean. I
didn’t know why, I just know it was so. And I think he was relieved that I
didn’t want to go with him anymore. Mickey went to a new school, and we didn’t
see her anymore, but we had always gone to different schools, so that wasn’t it.
You think it’s dangerous to look closer at this. I think it’s dangerous to look
away.”

Their appointment had been for twelve forty-five,
late for lunch in this part of town, and the diner has emptied, entered the
afternoon lull. He sees the homicide detectives up at the cashier, paying their
separate checks, shaking toothpicks free from the dispenser. A lawyer he knows,
a formidable defense attorney, is finishing her coffee at the counter, reading
the paper. She catches his gaze, arches an eyebrow at him. That old bag doesn’t
miss a trick.

“I’ve got to get back to work.” In his mind, he is
running through the chain of events if this were ever to become public. What if
Gwen decides to write about this, for God’s sake? Writers have so few
boundaries. Didn’t she publish an article about her own daughter’s adoption a
few years back, complete with details no one needed to know about her fertility
problems? Maybe he should tell his boss, confidentially and preemptively. Hell,
forget his boss, how does he tell Arlene, someone from whom he has no other
secrets?
When I was a kid
. . . But even
now, even with Go-Go dead, it feels like a betrayal.
They
are not supposed to talk about this.
Even with his mother, in the
weeks since Go-Go’s death, they have strenuously avoided the topic. “You don’t
think—” his mother said the weekend after the funeral, when everyone else’s
lives were going back to normal and they were left alone in their new normal,
this territory of grief, whose boundaries lie far beyond their range of vision,
making it impossible to know how long they will be here, if they will ever
leave. “No,” he said. He didn’t think it was a suicide. He didn’t think it had
anything to do with what happened when Go-Go was nine because why now? It made
no sense. He got drunk. He cracked up his car. End of story.

His conversation with Gwen has nowhere to go, but
they make a stab at it. They talk idly about their children, schools, whether
they fit the definition of helicopter parents, although they’re both pretty sure
they don’t. Gwen wraps a strand of hair around her finger, a habit he remembers
from childhood. She’s going to do whatever she wants. She always has. A moment
ago, when she mentioned breaking up with Sean, Tim almost blurted out what he
has always known about his brother: Sean was relieved that Gwen broke up with
him because he was terrified of her, of sex. Oh, Sean wanted to have sex. But
not with Gwen, because she was too scary-good at getting what she wanted, and
what if she wanted to be his only girl, ever? As a newly pretty girl, Gwen was
rough with her power, as reckless in her own way as Go-Go. She was like a child
discovering a loaded gun in Daddy’s nightstand. Even if nothing happens, the
sight is terror enough, the weapon juggling in those small hands, so many
possible outcomes, almost all bad.

As a woman, she is smoother, but still not as
smooth as she thinks she is. She will do whatever she wants, with no regard for
anyone’s feelings. She always has.

Chapter Thirty-two

R
ita can tell it’s going to be a bad day even before she opens her eyes. She feels it in her bones. Well, technically, she feels it in her
joints,
which are not the same thing as bones, as she now knows, thanks to all those smarty-pants doctors, men younger than her, who could be the very residents who used to undertip her at Connolly’s. In spite of herself, Rita has learned a lot about the body, her body. She could probably pass whatever test people have to take for medical school from all the tedious blah, blah, blah about her joints, tendons, lining, inflammation. Her situation boils down to this: She hurts. A lot.

Besides, Rita has no desire to go to medical school, so having all this information at her fingertips—her swollen, clumsy, useless fingertips—is like being asked to familiarize yourself with the life story of a person who ran you down with a car. What’s the point of understanding a disease when the disease can’t be cured? Rita has to settle for
managing
her rheumatoid arthritis. Her doctor keeps trying various drugs in new combinations.
A little more of this, a little less of this. Wait, this is interacting badly with that.
He reminds her of Mickey as a child, busily arranging spindly wildflowers in a jar, the stems wilting, the blossoms drooping from all her handling. Meanwhile, Rita can’t find a sleep drug that works. Even with Ambien, her sleep is thin, barely sleep at all.

She bets her doctor sleeps beautifully. Probably has one of those special beds—the one designed for astronauts, or the one with the individual controls. There’s not a bed in the world that could help Rita sleep better. Rita, who could sleep sitting up, in a car, even on her feet once upon a time. She tried a water bed after she was diagnosed, thinking the heat would help, but it was a bust. She gave it to Joey, who gave it to Mickey, which pissed her off a little. “If I want your sister to have something, I’ll give it to her,” she told Joey. “But you never want her to have anything,” he pointed out. Not exactly true. It’s just that anything Rita has to give, she always offers Joey first.

And why shouldn’t she? Mickey—Rita’s not about to use that stupid name she’s conferred on herself, kids don’t get to pick their own names, that’s a parent’s right—doesn’t do anything for her. Never visits, even though she almost certainly gets to fly for free, deadheading or whatever they call it. Won’t send money when she knows Rita is perpetually short. Says she doesn’t have any, but Rita doubts it. That girl is a squirrel, putting away anything she can. As a child, Mickey had drawers full of things she had found, stupid, nasty things. Nests, rocks, birds’ eggs. She yowled when Rita threw them out, but you can’t have things like that in the dresser drawers. Dirt attracts dirt.

Rita brings her legs over the side of the bed. Stiff, but not awful. Then again, her legs never bother her that much. The pain lives in her upper body, in her hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders. She makes her way to the kitchen, bumping the corner of the old-fashioned bureau. The slight movement almost knocks off the scarf she has draped over the mirror. Rita has covered up all but one of the mirrors in the house, a small makeup mirror in the bathroom, the one she uses when brushing her hair and applying lipstick. She’s OK with seeing herself, but she doesn’t like to be surprised by her image, doesn’t want that moon face sneaking up on her. She has to be prepared. It’s a tough thing, trying to get rid of one’s image. Her bungalow, it turns out, is full of reflective surfaces—the windows at night, the microwave door, even the faucet. The world keeps throwing her face in her face.

In the kitchen, she puts the water on to boil, shakes a cigarette out of the pack, which she leaves here at night so she won’t be tempted to smoke in bed. When rheumatoid arthritis was finally diagnosed—after three years of chasing so many other demons and diagnoses—she was advised that smoking was a risk factor and she should quit. “But I’ve got it already,” she told the doctor. “Can’t unring the bell, can I?” Her fingers are knobby and stiff; lighting the cigarette off the burner and getting it to her lips requires effort. But it’s worth it. Smoking’s one of those pleasures that never dims. Smoking and orgasms, and Rita’s resigned to the fact that the only orgasms in her future will be thanks to her Medicaid-subsidized massage tool, applied to one of the few places where she feels no pain.

The aches started about eight years ago, moody and intermittent. Rita assumed they were occupational, as did most doctors. She had spent decades carrying trays, scrubbing down tables. Something was bound to give, and she’d have chosen tendinitis over varicose veins any day. Rita took good care of her legs. She would come home from work, prop them up on the coffee table, coax her guy into rubbing them, applying cream, promising there would be rubbing in his future, a promise she always kept. Rita was no tease. Funny, Rick did the best job, bone tired as he was after a day at the garage. Larry had him beat in bed, but Rick—well, Rick knew what it felt like to put in a hard day’s work, while Larry didn’t have a clue. Yeah, Rick was the better man all around. But she didn’t love him, and it would have been wrong, staying with him only because he treated her well. If you don’t love a man and you stick it out with him, you’re little better than a whore in Rita’s book, whether it’s his paycheck or his love or a roof that’s keeping you with him. Even if Larry hadn’t resurfaced, she would have ended up cheating on Rick.

Not that she counts Larry as cheating. She wishes she could have done it more gracefully, not let things get so nasty between her and Rick. But she doesn’t regret doing it. Rita doesn’t regret anything.

The water boils as she finishes her cigarette. Her hands cushioned in oven mitts, she manages to pour most of the water in her cup, splashing only a little on the counter. But the jar of Folgers mocks her, its lid unbudgeable. She thinks about the ease with which she opened those huge jars back in Connolly’s, how she was the one who could get any top off. Where’s her gripper? Joey has given her an assortment of tools and devices, but she constantly misplaces them. She’ll catch herself in the act time and again, putting something down and thinking,
Oh, I shouldn’t put that there, I’ll never remember,
even as another part of her brain chimes in:
But you can’t forget this spot, it’s such an unlikely place.
Sure enough, when she goes looking for something, she remembers she put it in an unlikely spot, just not what that spot was. She’s got to have a jolt of caffeine. She will have to search her bungalow for the gripper, and small as the place is, her water will probably be cold by the time she finds it.

Rita moved to Florida, real Florida as she thought of it, shortly after Larry turned out to be Larry. Unreliable, incapable of holding down a real job, no interest in being a father to his son. She had no one but herself to blame—and no interest in doing so. She tried to make a go of it with her kid’s real father, a man she loved. How can that be wrong? She relocated to Boca Raton with Joey and a guy who seemed steady. She was trying to be pragmatic again, but the guy didn’t last, as it turned out. Other men came and went in the little bungalow. One stayed five years, the rest were more short-term. Joey never minded, although he liked it better when it was just the two of them. No, Rick was the one who raised a fuss, back when she first left. He challenged her for custody, and she pulled out her ace in the hole, said he wasn’t Joey’s father anyway. A judge laid it out for Rick: He could act like Joey’s parent, keep paying support, have a relationship with him. Or he could walk away, scot free. Either way, he couldn’t have custody and he couldn’t force Rita to stay in Baltimore. So what did that sap do? He decided to keep paying, so she would at least send Joey up there for a couple of visits a year.

Maybe Rick deserves a little credit for how Joey turned out. Her son stayed in Florida, although he lives down in Fort Lauderdale, married a nice girl, who looks a little like Rita in her prime, has three kids. He visits every weekend, fights her battles for her—got her on SSI disability, arranged for cheaper drugs, found whatever agencies to assist her. Now here’s a kid who has every right to hate her, and he rocks steady. It’s Mickey who barely picks up a phone. What ails the girl? She doesn’t call her brother, either, and has never even seen her nieces and nephew, except in pictures. Joey shrugs it off. “We’re just not that close, Ma. I’m ten years younger, and we moved away when I was eight, leaving her in Baltimore.”

“So why did you give her the bed?” Man, that bugs her.

“I had to drive a rental truck up there anyway, to bring back stuff from Dad’s house. And we couldn’t give that thing away on Craigslist. Why not give it to Mickey? It was nice to see her, even if it was for Dad’s funeral.”

Rick died at the age of seventy last year. A stroke, out of nowhere, and no way to prepare for it. A weakness somewhere, maybe lurking there for years and then—
kaboom
. Dudley Do-Right to the end, he included Joey in his will, despite having two kids with the namby-pamby he married. Maybe it’s because they’re both girls and Rick was very specific about the things he wanted Joey to have—tools, a Jet Ski. He left him a little money, too. Rita’s emotions were all over the place when she heard about Rick’s death. Sad, mocking, resentful. Joey decided to drive a U-Haul up there and bring back the things his not-father had left him, despite having little use for them. He’s not particularly handy, can’t fix anything for shit. He is Larry’s son.

Rita’s sixty-three now, but crabbed and wrecked as her body is, she never doubts she’s going to live a long time, even with the smoking. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” her doctor always says. “I mean, other than the rheumatoid arthritis. Your cholesterol’s good, your blood pressure is good.” He says it grudgingly, as if Rita doesn’t deserve any good health. That’s the thing about doctors. They secretly want to call the shots, decide who gets the good life, and it pisses them off when someone like Rita isn’t crushed by illness.

Rita walks through her house, checking surfaces low and high. It’s a tiny house, two bedrooms off an open area that contains the kitchen, dining nook, and living room. The Strawberry Hill apartment was bigger. Where did her grabber go? Again, all she remembers is the very thought—
Well, this is a weird place to leave it.
Ah, she spies it through the sliding glass doors that lead to a tiny patio, sitting on a wrought-iron table. That’s right. It was a pretty evening last night, warm but not hot, probably one of the last decent nights before full-on summer lands. Rita sat on the patio, eating an entire jar of cashews, rationalizing that she needed a treat. Her days of watching her figure are long gone, and although she’s not fat—Rita’s genes keep her lean, another thing that probably pisses her doctor off—she’s got a few rolls on her.

The patio door’s lock is sticky, hard to maneuver on her best days. It’s easier to slip out the front door and circle around, grab the grabber, and come back to the front door—which has locked behind her.
Fuck
. Her bones, her joints, whatever, didn’t begin to tell the story of how bad today was going to be. Given the nature of her relationships with the neighbors—she hates the one to the east, the one to the west hates her—she can’t see knocking on their doors at 7
A.M
., asking to use the phone to call Joey. Who, bless him, would be here as fast as he can with her spare keys, no questions asked. She could walk to the Circle K and use the pay phone, but it would take her forever to shuffle that dusty mile. Plus, while her loose flowery nightgown and slippers pass muster for sitting on her front steps, it’s not an outfit that a sane woman wears walking down a busy street. She’d get picked up and taken in for a psych exam.

She sits on the steps, picks up the paper, which they won’t stop delivering no matter how often she cancels it. She gets all the news she wants from television, and the last thing she needs is something that comes in the house only to pile up and have to be discarded. Her grandchildren lecture her on recycling. On recycling and smoking and voting. When did children get so
moral
? Weren’t the parents and grandparents supposed to be instructing them? She has asked them as much, and they say: “But, Grandma, it’s going to be our world.”

She doesn’t have the heart to tell them that you get the world on loan, on terms you don’t dictate and can’t control. It’s about as good a deal as those furniture leases with all the hidden interest rates. Rita figures she had the world for about twenty years, from age twenty to forty. Then it was Joey’s turn to step up, take his bite out of it. Being Joey, he took a small, polite bite, sort of like:
Oh, thank you for my job as a probation officer and my nice wife and my three children, but really, I couldn’t eat another bite.
He was born good, that’s all there is to it, and Mickey was born—not bad, but angry and fretful, always discontent, so concerned with the fairness of things that she ended up with nothing. Best Rita can tell, Mickey’s never had a happy day in her life, and it breaks her heart, truly. Because for all she has to mourn—the breakdown of her body, being alone, all the daily demon worries about money and bills—she had a lot of fun, when there was fun to be had. A lot. She scratches her ankles, one part of her body that hasn’t succumbed to the pain or the steroids, smiling at her memories.

A patrol car idles by and she flags it down, thinking the cops can help her break into her own house. She’s pretty sure the bathroom window is unlocked and someone could wiggle through it. Someone whose body is reliable, that is. The officers are Latino, very handsome, but Rita’s not deluded enough to flirt with them, although she’s happy when one sees a photograph of her in the front hall and asks: “Is that you?” She nods and he says, respectfullike: “You must have had to beat them off with a stick.” He adds quickly: “I bet you still do.”

“No,” Rita says. “Now I have to beat them
with
a stick and drag them in here.” She brandishes her grabber at them, and they laugh. Rita doesn’t need the pretense that she hasn’t aged. The idea of aging bothers her less than it might have, perhaps because she has a specific reason to look as she does. She can tell herself she’d look good if it weren’t for the steroids. “I got a daughter, though, who looks exactly like that now. Better, if you want to know the truth.”