Chapter 11

Roni was great with a plan. She didn’t know caution or danger, only what had to be done.  She’d toss her hair over her shoulder and get her hands dirty. And by the looks of the mess she’d gotten herself, and us into, I’d say dirty was exactly the word for what she’d done. She’d put on that high, never-care giggle of hers and work her way out of it. Her technique worked on Mick and me, worked on her folks and Cal. It even worked on Tate to a degree.

I think that’s what killed her. Something she couldn’t flip her hair out of the way of and something she couldn’t giggle her way from under.

“Dunc?” Mickey was across the room flipping the pages. “There’s a room.”

“A what?”

“Room.”

I stepped closer to him, knowing I’d need to lean over his shoulder so he could show me. Words never came to Mickey for explaining some things. It was a room to him and any other word was wrong for it. Just the one word. The right one and that was all.

“See here,” he pointed at a tiny square. “See.”

I shook my head.

“Look again.” He persisted.

“Under the eyes?” I asked.

“Yep. We gotta get in that bathroom.”

My exasperation with him, with all of this shit, must have shown on my face. I couldn’t even form the words. And there was Roni in my head, flipping the raven’s wing of hair out of her face and giggling.

I almost wanted to giggle with her. Mickey didn’t get much credit for being smart from too many people, but the truth was the more cryptic the more he understood it. These words in this ledger are simple, little puzzles to him. He just had to put them together. He’d always been able to do that. Broken down into small pieces, Mickey would get just about anything. It was the big picture that was simply too much for him to handle.

“Well we can’t just waltz in there,” I said, still not knowing what under the eyes had to do with a room, but certain he would eventually tell me when he was able to put more words to the thought and spit them out in one big lump rather than one at a time.

I got behind the wheel, fielding Mickey’s questions about why we had to go back to my mom’s.

“Because she can get into the bathroom at The Hive. We can’t.”

“But Dunc. Why would she go to The Hive? She never goes there. Won’t that be suspicious?”

“Because my dad knows people there and they could go together. He’ll do this for me. I know he will.” My dad wanted back in my life and I knew he’d see this as the chance.

Mickey squirmed in his seat like he had to take a piss, and pulled his collar up around him against the cool of the car. Mickey could whine without uttering a word. All of his body language did it for him. He fingered the bruise my mother had left on him once again and looked some kind of pathetic riding next to me, pouting.

“Roni would know what to do.” He kept right on squirming.

I took this as a scolding from him; that on some level Mick was losing his faith in me to solve this. So while I wanted to tell him that she wasn’t as smart as she thought she was, or we wouldn’t be doing any of this shit, I just took the jab quietly. He might have been right. I was losing faith in me too, but Roni’s way sure as hell hadn’t worked a year ago.

My God, did I miss her though.  For all her madness she lightened me up, gave me small hopes, included Mick and me in her big dreams. Inside I always knew they wouldn’t work out, but she could suspend my disbelief better than anyone. My disbelief hung on those electric wires right next to all her other wishes – up and out of the way when she was around.

“Wait in the car,” I told Mickey when we pulled up to the house. We didn’t need a Mom versus Mickey scene; we just needed to get this done.

I went in and wasted no time with the psycho family reunion shit. Despite my mother’s efforts to twist and manipulate it into some success on her part, Dad managed to control her long enough so I could tell them what I needed from them.

“You sure are going through a lot of trouble, Boy,” Mom said.

“Wouldn’t you if someone was trying to kill you?” I spit the words at her.

My father stood in the doorway between kitchen and family room. “Your mother would probably just thank them and ask them to hurry and get it over with.”

He had a point.

He stepped forward though and said, “Let’s do this tonight.”

I pulled the ledger from the inside pocket of my coat and walked to the kitchen table. Moving aside an empty vodka bottle, a full ashtray and the rest of the everyday clutter of a drunken housewife, I lay it out for them to see.

Mom swayed over as though she was reluctant, spewing the same negative crap she always did, then became mildly interested, and finally she was reading over my shoulder as I pointed out the clues Mickey’d found.

“Under the eyes,” she said with some recognition in her voice.

“You know what that means?” I was stunned.

“Sure. There’s a linen closet in the women’s bathroom. They keep cleaning supplies and stuff in it.”

“The eyes,” I prompted. Fuck! Is this like pulling teeth or what?

“A poster. Two big eyes are watching the women in the bathroom all the time. It’s always been sort of a joke, Peeping Tom sees all. See? And the poster’s on that door.”

“Ok, so I guess when we go later, you need to go in that closet. For some reason Mickey says it’s a room. So maybe see if it has a panel that opens up to something else, or…I don’t know.” I shook my head, shaking loose the idea that it all seemed a little too far-fetched, and skeptical to me. I wasn’t able to handle a stretch like a secret panel in a linen closet in a dive bar’s women’s bathroom.

“And look for what? You think the murderer is hiding in the broom closet or something?” She snorted like I was the obtuse one, sloshed a bit of vodka to the floor and leaned into Dad, obviously for balance, though she tried to play it off as affection.

“Jesus, Mom. Do you recall ever being clever in your whole life? If you do, draw on that experience and try real hard to do it again.”

“Easy, Duncan,” Dad said, resting a hand on my shoulder, “I’ll have her sober enough to do this by later tonight. I will.”

He pulled the drink from her hand, sat her firmly in a chair and grabbed her by the chin.

“We’ve suspected that there’s not a maternal bone in your body for years. But, you better try to find one and get hold of it, cuz your son is going to die if you fuck this up. Do you understand?”

Her eyes filled up at first and I thought she might cry. I was struck stupid at the sight of them. He, the freshly paroled con, and she, the pathetic drunk. These were my parents, my role models, and tonight, my accomplices. What the hell was I doing?

Mom broke the spell and instead of crying she chuckled. “I can handle it,” she slurred, as she reached for his crotch, got a handful and said, “I’ll use this bone.”

His hand went up high above his head, meaning to bring it down and slap her, and at that she cackled like a fool.

“Be serious you raving bitch!” He deflated though, before the urge to strike was too overpowering. He lowered his hand and shook it off, closing his eyes and sucking in a deep breath.

I grabbed the book from the table and turned to walk out of the house and their fucked-up lives forever when she yelled to me, “Oh baby, come back. I was just making a joke to lighten the mood.”

“Not everything needs to be lightened,” Dad said.

“Get your shit together, both of you.” I pointed at both of them, and while I looked Dad straight in the eyes and he looked back solidly, Mom swayed to some brain music she’d found to escape to and looked away. “And be ready if you’re going to help me. If you don’t think you can, then tell me right now so I can do this another way.”

Mom tugged her kimono and pushed her wild hair from her face; Dad glared at her.

“Don’t you dare ruin this,” he said it in a low scratched whisper, through clinched teeth. Some inkling of paternal love possibly surfacing for the first time since I was a toddler.

When I got back to the car Mickey was slumped and rocking.

“They’re in,” I said. “We’re good to go tonight at eleven.”

He just kept rocking.

“Mick?”

He looked up at me then, “Dunc. I really gotta pee.”

I laughed big and loud for the first time in many months.

“Why you laughing like that?” He asked, looking at me like I’d come unhinged.

“Cuz I thought you looked like you had to pee earlier, but that you were just nervous and whiny.” I laughed harder and couldn’t stop. Tears filled my eyes. My sides hurt. I couldn’t take a breath in.

“Duncan?”

I just kept laughing. I really did come unhinged. For all the times the tears wouldn’t come with grief, they seemed to have found their escape through laughter. The uncontrollable seizure I found myself in scared the hell out of me. I laughed and cried and seized, my face wet with tears, my body full of anguish and nameless emotions pouring out. The butterflies escaped from me. I gasped and got scared that it might not ever end, this massive purge of fear and hate and love and grief, tears and laughter of things lost and found, and all the bubbles I’d created to contain them bursting and flying out of me at once.

Through gasps for air when the barrage started to ease, I told Mickey that no one was around and he could just pee next to the car.

Then we went to make the rest of the plans. My disbelief firmly hanging from wire somewhere in Roni’s world for the duration of the night. I needed her hope to get through this, because my trust and faith resided, by necessity, in three of the screwiest people I have ever known.