Untouchable (18 page)

He’d kept the paper in his wallet for years, since the time Lucy took The Kid to visit her parents over a summer break and it seemed like maybe they weren’t coming back. The Kid was three at the time; they had just celebrated his birthday. Lucy had left the phone number on the kitchen table, taken The Kid’s hand, lifted her suitcase and walked out of the house to the taxi waiting at the curb. Darby stood on the porch and watched them go. It was a planned vacation. Twelve days with her parents, then a return flight home. But it had become something else in the weeks leading up to the flight. The trip to Chicago was an unanswered question. Neither of them had said it explicitly, but the return ticket home no longer seemed guaranteed.

He’d called the number every night to talk to The Kid before he went to bed, to talk to Lucy for a while, soft night voices on the phone, Midwest to west coast, back and forth, a delicate negotiation, neither sure exactly what they wanted the outcome to be. Every night, twenty minutes, an hour, talking like they were discussing something that had already happened, something that had come and gone. Darby listless those twelve days, watching TV in the empty house, going out on jobs, drinking with Bob, aching for a cigarette. Thinking that maybe this should be the end, that it would be easier this way, it would be better for all of them. The Kid would adjust, The Kid would adapt. Kids did that, they survived. But he still found himself counting the days until their planned return, and then counting the days after, the postponement of the return, the no man’s land after the plane tickets expired. At night he’d call the number and Earl would answer the phone, always Earl, his daughter’s sudden guardian. Darby would ask to speak to Lucy or The Kid and Earl would put him through a whole rigmarole of bullshit,
Let me see if they’re awake, Let me see if she’s taking calls,
his voice leaking acid. On the fifteenth night, something in Darby’s voice set Earl off, something in the way he asked to speak to Lucy, and Earl finally burst, barking at Darby in a hoarse whisper,
I swear I can make it so you’ll never see either of them again
, this then triggering Darby, an explosion on his end of the line, a release, Darby raging in the living room, phone to his mouth.
You faker. You fraud. Suddenly you’re a father again? Fuck you, you phony. Fuck you, you fraud.

End of conversation, obviously. The line going dead out in Chicago. Darby left standing in the dark living room, holding the dial tone. He heard nothing for two days. He didn’t know what to think, whether this was it, whether it was really over. And then, early on the morning of the third day, he heard an unmistakable sound, the popping of a taxicab’s trunk. He went to the living room window, watched Lucy and The Kid get out of the cab and stand on the curb while the driver lifted out their suitcase. He’d never been so relieved in his life. The sound of a taxicab’s trunk popping. He hadn’t known what he wanted, but now he knew. He’d kept the slip of paper in his wallet to remind himself of that sound, of what was possible, what he always thought would be the worst-case scenario.

He stood at the pay phone on Alvarado the day after they’d told him she was gone, listening to the ring on the other end of the line. He half expected Earl to answer the phone, Earl’s booming salesman’s voice, until he remembered that Earl was gone, that Earl had been gone for almost a year.

The line clicked again and Darby heard her voice, Lucy’s mother, sounding so old, so tired.
Hello?
Less a greeting than a resigned invitation to speak. A voice long-used to receiving bad news on the phone.

Hello?
Dolores said again. That same weary tone to her voice. Hello? Hello?

He just started talking. He knew that if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have the courage to say anything, so he just started talking, telling the story of Lucy teaching a lesson and then falling in her classroom, Lucy lifted and carried down the hall by a student in her class, a star football player, followed to the nurse’s office by a trail of concerned students, and then the cops standing on the front porch of their house, hats in hands, informing Darby as Lucy’s next of kin. He told Dolores the whole story in what seemed like a single, unbroken breath. It was the most he’d ever spoken to her at one time.

Dolores said nothing. Darby listened to her breathing for a while, pictured her sitting in the dining room of the house in Chicago, late afternoon, fading light in the windows, autumn in the Midwest. She said nothing, and then she said,
Thank you for calling
, and the line clicked back to the dial tone.

She didn’t come to the memorial service. Darby wasn’t surprised. He understood, it made sense why she hadn’t come. She was alone now and she’d had too much of this, too many phone calls taking pieces of her away.

He stood outside the Everclean garage, called Bob’s aunt’s house from the new cell phone. On the third ring, Bob answered the phone, his voice boozy and thick.

“If you’re calling to apologize, I don’t want to hear it. Wasn’t your fault.”

“I should have been down there.”

“It was a stupid thing. Wasn’t your fault.” Bob coughed away from the receiver. “Molina tell you about my forced leave of absence?”

“He said he told you to take some time off.”

“He told me to take a week, then we’d discuss if I was ready to come back. I said I was embarrassed enough, I don’t need a week. Give me a night, two nights.”

“Take the week.”

“I don’t need a week. How’s The Kid feeling?”

“He’s fine.”

“What was it? The flu?”

“Something like that.”

“Flu-like symptoms?”

“Just something he picked up. Nothing serious.”

“Bring him by when he’s feeling better. I haven’t seen him in a month of Sundays.”

“I was on my way down, Bob. I was just about to leave the house.”

“I don’t want to hear it. Wasn’t your fault. It was a one-man job.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Tell Molina two days,” Bob said. “Forty-eight hours and I’ll be back. Tell him to take his leave of absence and shove it up his ass.”

Miss Ramirez was frazzled, running out of patience. It was near the end of the day, the class restless, kids hanging over the sides of their chairs, pushing their seats back on two legs, one leg, whispering, passing notes, popping up, sitting down, bouncing like crickets. Every ten seconds she had to tell another student to sit down, pay attention, put their hands where she could see them.

She cleared her throat and said that she had an important announcement. There was a serious situation in the schools right now. There was something very dangerous circulating among older kids at the high schools, something they had to look out for. She held up a sheet of paper. In the center of the page was a stencil of a large blue star. The kids looked at the star. A few whispered to each other. They’d heard about this from their older brothers and sisters, from their older cousins. Miss Ramirez shushed the room. She said that some older kids had gotten hold of these blue stars, and that these blue stars were actually illegal drugs. She said the real stars were much smaller, about the size of a dime, and they were printed on little pieces of paper. They worked like tattoos. A person who used illegal drugs would lick a spot on their hand or arm and then press the blue star to their skin. She said that they all needed to look out for the blue stars, and if they saw them, to run away. If an older kid had a blue star, if an older kid tried to lick their arms or hands and press a blue star to their skin they were to yell and run away, they were to tell an adult immediately.

Agitation in the classroom. The end-of-day excitement had turned to something else, nervousness and fear. No one wanted their arms or hands licked. No one wanted a blue star pressed to their skin.

Miss Ramirez said that they’d all seen the police car and ambulance at the school. She said that she wasn’t trying to scare them, but Rey Lugo had gotten very sick because of one of the blue stars. Someone had pressed a star to his arm before he got to school that day. Rey was still in the hospital, recovering. He would be okay, but it was a very serious situation. She repeated her earlier warning, that if anyone approached them with a blue star they were to run away and find an adult.

The agitation in the classroom grew. No one wanted to be like Rey Lugo, walking down the hallway in a scary daze, throwing up into their hands.

Miss Ramirez passed copies of the paper down the rows. It was a letter to parents, with the stencil reproduction of the star in the middle of the page. The kids read the letter to themselves, mouths working, trying to find any information Miss Ramirez had withheld for their parents’ eyes only, anything they weren’t supposed to see.

The Kid looked at the star, touched its points with his fingertips. He imagined being zombie-fied by the star like Rey Lugo, emptied out by the illegal drug it held. The thought was scary, but he couldn’t stop thinking it. He imagined staring off down to the end of the hallway in disbelief, seeing things that weren’t there. What had Rey seen? What would The Kid see? He wondered this as the bell rang, as the classroom emptied. He touched a point of the star. What would he see that he couldn’t believe?

They ate dinner in the parking lot of a burger place on Temple Street, listening to a Country station on the radio, Darby trying to forget his conversation with Molina, the thought of Bob alone at the job site, Bob screaming in a closet.

“What do you want to go as?” Darby said.

The Kid chewed the last of their fries.
Go as what?

“To your Halloween party. If you could go as anything. If you could dress up as anything.”

We could just go to the drug store and see what they have.

“We can’t buy a costume,” Darby said. “We’ve never bought a costume.”

It’s easier just to buy one.

Lucy had always made The Kid’s Halloween costumes. She couldn’t sew, but she cobbled things together, old clothes and accessories, props made from household items. The Kid as a pirate one year; the President of the U.S. the next. A bag of groceries in fourth grade, her best work in Darby’s opinion, The Kid wrapped in a giant brown paper bag she’d made out of a month’s worth of supermarket bags, empty cereal boxes and milk cartons and soup cans poking out of the top, an itemized receipt taped to his front. The Kid won second place in the school’s costume contest that year, brought home a gift certificate for a children’s bookstore that he was so proud of he refused to redeem, keeping it displayed on a shelf in his bedroom instead.

Darby turned in his seat, looked at The Kid. “You’re going to go to school with those cards, those great cards we made, and you’re going to show up in a cheapo costume?”

The Kid shrugged, took a pull on his root beer.

“No way,” Darby said. “We need a costume worthy of those cards.”

They went to the thrift store on Vermont Avenue, looked through the overburdened racks of second- and third-hand clothes, shirts and pants and three-piece suits. The Kid started to brighten a little, started to warm to the idea. He decided that he’d dress as a character from his comic: Smooshie Smith, Talk Show Host of the Future. They couldn’t find anything in the boys’ section, but over on the mens’ rack Darby found the perfect Smooshie Smith blazer, yellow and green checked, loud as a police siren, small enough that it would only look slightly absurd hanging off The Kid’s slim shoulders. The Kid came over with a clip-on tie he’d pulled from a display, stripes that clashed beautifully with the blazer’s checks, a knot as big as Darby’s fist. Darby navigated The Kid into the blazer, clipped the tie to the front of The Kid’s school shirt. The Kid looked ridiculous. The Kid looked great. They could roll the blazer’s sleeves under, pin the extra fabric at the back. He steered The Kid to a full-length mirror by the restrooms. The Kid grinned at his reflection. They bought the blazer and tie, a mustard yellow dress shirt, a pair of lime green golf slacks. The whole outfit came to five bucks. The Kid insisted on paying with money he’d saved from his allowance. He still felt bad about the ruined clothes from his gym locker. Darby let him pay, hoped it would put the issue to rest.

Back at the house, Darby pulled a kitchen chair out onto the front porch, plugged the electric clippers into an outlet in the living room, ran the cord out through the window, between the security bars. Turned on the living room lights, the porch light, so he could see what he was doing. The Kid sat in the chair with a bath towel draped over his shoulders, while Darby cut his hair. The buzz of the clippers in the quiet of the evening, the sound of the radio through the open windows of the pickup, the same Country station, a Merle Travis song,
Sixteen Tons
. Darby turned The Kid’s head gently, careful to get the cut symmetrical, not to go too short, not to nick The Kid’s scalp. The Kid used to sing while Darby did this, that overloud voice belting TV commercial jingles and sitcom theme songs, Lucy back at her desk in the darkening house, grading papers, singing right along, Darby trying to keep The Kid’s head still while he sang, while he kicked his feet to the rhythm and turned to warble a line back to his mother. Darby kidding The Kid every couple of minutes, a little strangled noise to imply that he’d screwed the cut up horribly, an old joke, The Kid rolling his eyes, not too concerned. The idea that his father could make a mistake was so ridiculous that it didn’t warrant a serious response.

The Kid sat still now, looking out across the front yard at a skinny stray cat crossing under the streetlight. Darby held The Kid’s head in his hands, hummed along with Merle Travis, trying not to think of Bob in a small closet, screaming.

When he was done, he patted The Kid on the shoulder, the all-clear sign. The Kid hopped down from the chair and shook out his towel, went inside to get the broom and dustpan.

Darby didn’t want the night to begin yet, didn’t want The Kid to go up to bed. The looming silence of the house pressed behind him, a ferocious thing, something Darby had to push back against, something he had to keep at bay. He didn’t want to be alone in the house, in the pickup, waiting for a call on the pager.