Chapter 7

            I watched every car pass with increasing paranoia. The cold breeze against my bare legs heightened my self-awareness as I wondered if I was being watched, perhaps even hunted. Sitting there so conspicuously in my hospital gown and coat, I may as well have had a bull’s eye painted on my back. The road showed no sign of Mickey, and without a watch, I had lost track of time.

     Each person I saw became a suspect. A thin woman pushing a stroller seemed least likely, but as she eyed me with her own curiosity, my agitation made me feel as though I looked guilty, therefore I felt it.

     My mind skipped like a tape that had been rewound too many times as I tried to piece together what had happened. My last full memory was the pictures; the last scraps I had of Roni were in that garage.

     I had written my name on that cushion because she would slink into the seat by the armrest whenever I stood up. She laughed when I penned my name to it. I bounded onto the cushion with both feet, marker in hand, “Out of my way woman!”

     Her photos lived in a box on a shelf. I had removed them from the house to get them out of sight. Signs of her were everywhere and allowed my grief to get a choke hold. I wanted them gone from view. The garage seemed to be where her memory lived the strongest anyway. Who would have known that later I would spend so much time there to be closer to her? I should have kept them in the house. If I had, they would not have been cooked to gray ash.

     The garage also housed her Christmas ornaments; the ones we always used to decorate her stolen trees. When she first moved from her parents’ house to her own apartment, she could not afford a Christmas tree. We got one for her that Christmas and had every year since. This year she didn’t get one, and that tree ended up gray ash just like the pictures. I wished I hadn’t made that bonfire Christmas morning, that there was still something somewhere of her. The handsaw Mickey never seemed to remember was resting on the workbench, where I’d left it Christmas morning. I laughed to myself as I wondered why I hadn’t used it to smash the window. I would have saved myself a lot of blood and pain if I had. It had simply not occurred to me. Nothing occurred to me that day; not how to save myself, not to grab the photos. Hindsight may be 20/20, but it is also cruel.

     As I fast-forwarded the tape, scratchy fades and blurs of smoke, and Mickey came to focus, but only briefly before the memory of cold snow on blisters, and blood frozen to my elbow emerged then vanished to be replaced again with Roni.    The raven hair, the smell of shampoo and too-sweet lip gloss, the way she touched my cheek to draw me to her for a gentle peck of a kiss. She was the wish-hanger who lived somewhere above the Earth and was willing to jump from a cliff if it would allow her to feel the breeze like never before.

     I remember thinking only of her and all the pieces of her that disappeared with my old garage. Then fast forward to the present, the strange visitor, my mother looking like death, and how each person bore a hole through me with stares as they passed by. I wondered which one of them was the failed assassin, and if any of them were Roni’s successful one. Maybe my arsonist/assassin and her killer were the same, and if this was true, I would have to find out what we had both done to deserve death. And I would have to live with the guilt that I had survived while she could not escape it.

     An old man, hair grayed at his temples under a crumpled fedora, shuffled past. He slowed to stare at me with apprehension. His path arced when he neared me as though he feared I’d jump from my seat and attack him if he got too close. How deranged I must have looked. My appearance, while I hadn’t seen a mirror, was apparent in his raised caterpillar eyebrows and slack jaw. I raked my hair with my hand to tame what I assumed was a wild mess.

     When he got past me, he shuffled faster with his eyes trained on me continuously, and made his way into a phone booth.

     I rewound the tape again to the big men I had known in my life. The Martin brothers were certainly large, but Robbie and David only traveled as a set, never alone that I had ever seen. Tate was a Fat Albert, not an Arnold.

     The nurse would have known Cal as a police officer and I wouldn’t have the need to play this guessing game if it were him. For a moment I wondered if Cal had tried to off me for his notion that I had something to do with Roni’s death – one more thing to investigate.

     My father was a large man, but I hadn’t seen him in years. Last I heard he was still serving his sentence in the state penitentiary for a botched burglary. Fine role model. When Cal said my mother was a drunk and my father a criminal, he wasn’t lying. I couldn’t deny it, though I still believed that I was different than they were.

     My grandmother used to say that the apple fell from the tree but rolled down the hill and across the road. I wanted desperately to believe her and Roni helped me to by telling me that Mickey would be my redemption. Mickey made me have to be a better person.

     This Arnold-big man seemed to visit in close proximity to when my mom visited. I wondered if she would have maybe seen this person either coming or going. Once Mickey got back I’d have to pay her a visit, though nothing could be further from what I wanted to do.

     She was never as happy as when I moved out of her basement; my father was already gone and she was free, having divorced him when he got sent up.

     I was the child that forced her to be an adult. She resented me for tying her to a home and a husband that she did not want or love. Her visit, I am certain, was because of the publicity.

     That I had to see her at all clinched my insides into fists. The idea of walking into that dingy house, stained with cigarette smoke and overwrought with the stench of unwashed dishes sickened me. The smoke alone was more than I could even consider as each breath was like swallowing broken glass. But if she knew something, I had to find out what. As much as I didn’t like living without Roni, I wasn’t ready to die, in a garage or otherwise.

     Mickey would refuse to go with me to Mom’s. My mother’s wrongs against me were primarily those of neglect; she ignored my very existence whenever possible, particularly after my dad got sent away. It was easier to lose me once Dad wasn’t there. To Mickey, however, her wrongs were much more hateful, and he, much less capable of ignoring or forgetting them.

     Once he was wounded severely enough, Mickey would finger the bruise anew every time he was reminded of it – reliving the pain and refocusing the blame. If he walked into that house he would poke and prod himself to find the sore spots and reclaim the ache and anger she had left. He would feel them all over again then sulk about it for days.    

     Once when he had come over to pick me up for work, she answered the door and spewed some horrible vodka-soaked words about him being unwanted.

     “You again?” she slurred. “You’re comin’ here an awful lot lately.” She walked to the sofa and sat.

     “You know what I heard?  You were raised by your granny cuz your momma didn’t want a retard for a kid, then she run off with some man and never came back. Can’t say I blame her. We don’t wantcha either. Go on. Duncan will have to so-sociate with you outside of my house.  You hear me? Go on. Get out. Go back to your granny. Oh, that’s right, she’s dead.”

     She cackled a laugh that spurred her on and she opened her mouth to spew some more when I ran up the stairs and told her to shut up. I dragged Mickey away.

     He didn’t speak for an hour then just kept repeating, “You don’t want me either? My aunt doesn’t want me. My Gram was the only one, now she’s gone.” He cried until his face had gone red, swiping at the tears, frustrated at their defiance to fall when he wanted them to stop.

     I had to baby him for weeks afterwards to convince him that I still wanted him and that I was his family now. He stayed with me nearly every night those first couple of weeks, sneaking him into the basement when my mom was asleep after our shift ended at IGA, and out again when she was out of the house. But his aunt said she needed him to help her around the house and wanted him to come home. Mostly I think she wanted his income. She would send him out for groceries and to pay her utilities and sometimes even the mortgage without ever giving him a dime to cover the expense and she had him paying rent for his room.

     My mother was a horrible woman when she was piss-drunk. I could forgive her what she’d done to me, and even appreciated that she ignored my existence but I struggled with ever speaking to her again after what she did to him.

     I didn’t want to go to her house any more than Mickey would want to but I had to go.

     Mickey ran to me, out of breath.

     “Hey Duncan. I’m back.”

     “So I see, Mr. Obvious.”

     His cheeks flushed, “I parked over there where no other cars were around so I wouldn’t hit anybody.”

     He leaned down and rested his hands on his knees trying to catch his breath. I stood to go with him.

     “Wait,” he said. “When I went in to your house,” he huffed for breath.

     “Take your time, Mick. What’s wrong?”

     “When I went to your house, Dunc, the door was already open and all kinds of stuff was thrown all over. I grabbed some clothes but forgot ‘em. I wanted to get out as fast as I could.”

     I cupped his elbow, looked to the hospital where someone was pointing toward us and told Mickey to run.

     My plans to see my mother would have to wait until later. I had to see my house.

     When we got there we walked into a disaster area.

     My sofa was overturned, each shelf, drawer and cabinet had been gone through and their contents vomited onto the carpet. My bedroom had been ransacked as well; my closet was emptied onto my bed and floor.

     I could only stare in surreal disbelief and did not know where to begin the cleaning effort.

     Mickey picked up my clothes from the arm of the recliner by the door and thrust them into my arms. I stared at them unsure what I was supposed to do with them.

     “Put ‘em on,” Mickey said.

     I went into the bathroom, dropped my coat to the floor and took off the hospital gown. I examined my back in the mirror, then washed my face, and ran a wet comb through my hair. Once I was dressed I snapped the hospital ID bracelet from my wrist and walked to the kitchen.

     Mickey sat on a chair at the table, ghostly white.

     “What is it?” Because what more could have happened in so short a time?

     He lifted something from the table and stretched it toward me. It was a picture of Roni.

     “It must not have made it to the garage with the others,” I said.

     “I didn’t want to see it,” Mickey said. “It makes me too sad.”

     “Me too.” But I only mumbled the words.

     It was a picture taken in the back yard. Summer time. We had cooked out on the grill for the fourth of July. She was in a bikini top and cut-off denim shorts. Her hair was pulled back to a ponytail. Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, but I knew from the size of her smile that her eyes would have been squinted. She held a bottle of beer to the camera in a toast.

     Behind her in the photo, Mickey was watching her. His head fell to one side and I imagined that when he saw the picture in the mess on the floor, he remembered seeing her tanned skin and the thin blue tie of her bikini top, the indention of her spine and the curve of her hip above her shorts. No wonder he didn’t want to see it.

     That day the grocery store was closed. Dean and Tom came by for a few drinks, and a couple of the waitresses from The Hive stopped by for drinks after we had eaten.

     Roni got to my house first, helped set up, sliced tomatoes, shucked corn, and opened containers of pasta and potato salads.

     We worked in tandem. I prepared the meat for the grill, got the fire going, iced the beer and two-dollar wine. She rolled past me to get to the fridge and slipped a hand around my waist for a slight squeeze.

     I turned and brushed my hand down her bare back as she walked away.

     Rushville always put on a good fireworks show and we could see them from the back yard. As darkness approached and mosquitoes started to swarm, she asked for a shirt.

     “Middle drawer. You know where they are.”

     She did the strangest thing then. She walked around to the front of the house instead of going in the back door. She returned without a t-shirt moments later, claimed to have gotten sidetracked then walked into the house to get it.

     Our friends started to leave around midnight, a few hanging on until two with a pick-up card game at the kitchen table. I told Roni she could stay the night. Mickey was staying, too. But she insisted she needed to go and promised to return the shirt.

     She said her good-bye with a tight squeeze around Mickey’s soft middle. He held her like a child would a kitten, resting his head against her dark hair and giving her a gentle stroke. She purred.

     She gave me a playful wink, touched my cheek and instead of planting the slight peck of a kiss I usually got, she pulled my ear to her lips.

     “A little game, Duncan. I left something for you. I’m not going to tell you where, or what, or even why. It’s a secret I need you to keep.”

     The card game rolled on.

     “Ante up, Manning”

     “Go on and play,” she said.

     By the time the game was over, I had forgotten all about her secret I was supposed to keep. She never spoke of it again. Until I stared at that picture, it wasn’t even a memory. She was always saying off-the-wall things. It had meant nothing to me at the time. Remembering it now gave me a chill. Something was going on with her way back then and I didn’t even see it.

     Someone else knew about her secret, I was certain. The same person that went on a treasure hunt through my house, most likely.

     I stared at the picture for a while longer, pressed it to my chest then shoved it in my coat pocket. A remnant of my girl had been found. I would not lose this one. I could keep her with me always.

     “Let’s go.” I said to Mickey.

     “What about this mess?”

     “Later” I said, already walking to the door.

     He trailed behind me. “I can’t go out there!” He ducked back.

     “What is wrong with you?”

     “TV truck. I already talked to them once. I’m no hero. I hate being on the TV. They say stupid stuff about me being brave, and then show me saying something dumb. I hate them. Please don’t make me go out there.”

     “Go out the back door and run to your aunt’s house. I have to go somewhere by myself.”

     “By yourself?” His insecurity clung to the words. “You need me to protect you, don’t you? Someone’s trying to hurt you. I don’t want you to be alone.”

     “I’ll be okay. I’m just going to my mom’s.”

     He shook his head gravely, then slipped out and bolted through the back yard.

     What Roni hid in my house may still be here, or the people who broke in got it. Or maybe she’d taken it with her some other time. I wondered if it was the same thing that was in her plastic container.

     The TV truck was gone.

     I patted my pocket, feeling for her photo and walked out the door.