This was the first time he had willingly spoken to me, and it stopped me. “Yeah?” I said. “You caught me on the news?”
He shook his head. “No, YouTube.”
I didn’t know what that was, but I felt some sort of encouragement that he was volunteering to have a conversation with me. More just to keep it going than out of any real curiosity, I asked him what he thought.
He handed me the office keys and had me sign the checkout sheet before telling me that I must’ve had some sort of angle for doing what I did. “You’re no hero, that’s for damn sure,” he said, his eyes hard as they met mine.
“Fuck you,” I told him, and I left him to go do my job.
I started off the night listening to music, but after twenty minutes or so curiosity got the better of me and I tuned into the same talk show that had been talking about me when I first got out of prison. They were talking about me again; this time the calls were all over the place with some callers claiming that what I did didn’t change the fact that I was a murderous scumbag and a rat to boot and that I was still going to get mine in the end, others thinking I had some ulterior motive for my heroism, while a few scattered callers talked about forgiveness and redemption and how I should be given credit for potentially saving lives inside that liquor store. I didn’t much enjoy listening to any of it, but I couldn’t turn it off, and after a while I admitted to myself the reason why – that I was hoping that Allison, or at least the woman who sounded like my daughter, would call back in. She didn’t.
The talk show discussed me for two hours before they moved on to a different topic. I went through the radio dial then, but couldn’t find any other shows talking about me. I turned the radio off, not much in the mood to listen to anything. As it was, because of my shoulder I was moving slower than usual and was behind schedule. I had been chewing aspirin all night, but it didn’t help much, and I was only able to lift my right arm up to my chest. When I tried lifting it higher, the pain brought tears to my eyes. I tried pushing myself harder to catch up, but I didn’t finish cleaning the last office until two-thirty. When I checked the keys back in the kid working security made a comment about me being late.
“So what?”
“You’re supposed to finish by two o’clock,” he said peevishly. “Not spending a half-hour extra in those offices taking a nap or whatever else you were doing. That’s so what. I’ll have to report this.”
His new-found boldness was annoying and I decided I liked it better when he was too afraid to say much of anything. I leaned in closer to him and told him how he looked like a guy I once knew, and it was the truth.
“Duane Halvin,” I said. “Big roly-poly kid. Thirty years old and still had baby fat. Christ, the two of you could’ve been separated at birth.” I leaned in closer, added, “I had to put an ice pick through his eye, and the thing was, I used to see Duane all the time at the track and I liked the guy. He was fun to hang around. You, not so much.”
His hard grin fell slack once he registered what I was saying. I left him then, remembering how the same pretty much happened with Duane Halvin once he realized what I had the ice pick for.
I’ve never been a heavy drinker, usually limiting myself to a couple of beers or a shot now and again. When I got back to my apartment I poured six ounces of cheap whiskey into a glass. With how anxious I was, and with the way my mind was racing and my shoulder throbbing like hell, I knew without the whiskey I’d have no chance of sleeping. After I drank it, I sat in my recliner and held a bag of ice to my shoulder, waiting until my eyelids felt heavy before moving to the bed.
Mercifully, I was out after I closed my eyes.
chapter 19
1980
My mom’s waiting by the curb. While we talk on the phone every week for about a minute, this is the first time I’ve seen her in three years, even though we live only twenty minutes from each other. Our weekly conversation always goes the same way:
“How are you, mom?”
“Fine. And yourself?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good. Your children?”
“Fine.”
“Well, goodbye then.”
She never asks about Jenny, which is expected since the two of them don’t get along, to put it mildly. As far as I go, our weekly conversations are on a par with any we’ve ever had. Our relationship has always been an uneasy truce. I don’t think there was ever a time we felt comfortable together, and while she never said as much in words, she made it clear in actions and attitude that I should’ve been the son to die early, not my brothers, Tony and Jim.
She looks the same since I’ve seen her last. Plump, sturdy frame, gray hair in a bun and as tightly wound as steel wool. Her face round and placid, her legs like small tree stumps. The black dress she’s wearing is hanging off her like a canvas sack. If she were living in a remote village near some forest in Russia, she’d look like the type of woman who could outwrestle a wolf if she had to and make Sunday dinner out of it. In her wedding pictures she was beautiful. Slender, narrow, heart-shaped face, thick black hair that fell past delicate bare shoulders. Hard to believe it’s the same person. I don’t know when she changed. Outside of her gray hair, I can’t remember her ever looking much different than she does now.
I pull the car up next to her. She gets in, and up close I notice how much older she actually looks, her skin more faded and wrinkled, her eyes duller. Still, her face is locked in a dour frown, almost as if it’s been carved out of stone. She asks where her grandchildren are.
“They’re too young for this,” I say.
“I was hoping to see them,” she says, her German-Jewish accent as thick as ever.
“Some other time.”
We both know it won’t be any time soon. How many times have we seen each other in the last ten years? Three times is all I can remember, and I think we both prefer it this way. There’s a discomfort between us. I can feel it in my gut, and even though she’s sitting stoically with her hands folded in her lap, I know she feels it too. It’s funny how I always felt so at ease with my pop, and never with her.
As I’m pulling the car away from the curb I tell her she didn’t have to wait for me outside, that she could’ve waited inside her apartment and I would’ve come and got her. She only hesitates for a second before telling me that she didn’t want me to have to find a parking space, especially given how difficult it can be finding free parking around there. It’s a bald-faced lie. There are a half dozen empty spots in plain view. We both know the reason is because she doesn’t want me in her apartment, and she certainly doesn’t want to have to explain me to any of her friends or neighbors we might bump into. As far as she’s concerned her two sons are dead, and I’ve always been something else entirely.
We drive in silence to the cemetery with neither of us bothering to make small talk. I notice her looking at the Rolex watch Sal Lombard gave me. It was stupid of me wearing it, not that it much matters. I could give her some bullshit explanation about winning it in a poker game or having a good week at the track, but she’ll know I’m lying. She has no reason to think that I do anything other than work in a liquor store, but it’s always been like she knows I make my money other ways than the job I’m supposed to have. I don’t bother explaining the Rolex to her, there’s no point.
On the way to the cemetery I stop off to buy flowers. While I do this, my mom sits silently in the car. When I return I hand her the dozen white roses I bought. Her mouth crumbles for a moment before she gets her emotion under control.
“What about for your brothers,” she says. “You can’t be bothered to buy flowers for them?”
We’re going to the cemetery for the twentieth anniversary of my pop’s death. If she wanted me to buy flowers for Tony and Jim she should’ve said something instead of stewing in all her regret. I feel a vein pulsing along my temple, and I swallow back what I want to say, instead tell her that we can split the roses among all three graves. I know she’s not happy with that, but I’m not about to go back into that store because of some fucking whim of hers, especially with the way she’d been staring earlier at my Rolex.