Part 71 (1/2)

Helter Skelter.

BY MARITA GOLDEN.

Miss me?” You issue the blunt question that is also a command each time you see the boy. He nods his head, moving it up and down, up and down. Too fast. Automatic. Like a tic or a reflex. Does he really miss you? It's a simple question. Juwan's response makes you feel like s.h.i.+t. Though it's the end of October, there's still only a hint of fall but Bunny's made him wear a thick parka, a turtleneck sweater and corduroy pants. Strapped into the pa.s.senger side front seat, the safety belt holding him in place, the boy is staring at you, deep eyes aglow with an innocence you wonder if you ever knew.

There's no escape from the wide, round brown eyes, the lashes thick and lush as fur. No escape once the boy turns those eyes on you. You study the shapely head and the frail, almost feminine face that lives behind a veil of something secret and unreachable to you. As if at any moment, with the slightest pressure, the boy will break. Ten years old and no sign yet of the gritty toughness he should have by now. After all he is your son.

You have picked him up at school as a weekday surprise. You wanted it to be just you and the boy. He has broken your heart. But who and what hasn't? You don't know how you are breathing, how you stand, wake up or sleep, swimming as you do every moment through the wreckage you have wrought. Trying to resist the pull of the undertow.

He is a quiet boy. This always unnerves you. Infects you with a guilt that is old and punis.h.i.+ng and all-purpose. Last weekend you skipped seeing the kids. The undertow got you. Dragged you, no sucked you into a murderous whirlpool. Ate your black a.s.s for breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. You stayed in the house all weekend. At the kitchen table. Smoking. Cleaning your guns.

On the way to the movies, Juwan asks if he can turn to another radio station. You've got it on smooth jazz. When he asks this, you remember the radio fights in this car with Bunny (”G.o.d, I hate that jazz muzak, it's like a drug”). She always wants to listen to people talking, talking, on NPR, and the kids, begging you to turn to a station that plays hip hop or rap. ”Sure,” you tell the boy, the sound of those jovial arguments a snarled tape on fast forward behind a locked door in your mind. On those rare Sat.u.r.day or Sundays, you were all driving together, you solved the sparring by giving everybody ten minutes on their station of choice. The girls sitting in the backseat, their high-pitched, quivering voices singing along with Aaliyah: Rock the boat.

Rock the boat.

Work the middle.

Work the middle.

Change Positions.

Change Positions.

snapping their fingers, twisting and squirming in their seats imitating the now-dead singer's video moves.

DMX blasts through the speakers and the song-profane, apocalyptic, thunderous-is the beat of everything you feel inside. But beside you Juwan is moving his head to the sounds so you let it go. Let it slide.

When the song ends and the commercials come on Juwan asks, ”You feel better, Dad? Mom said last week you were sick.”

”Yeah, I'm better now,” you lie. The lie opens you up and you ask about the twins. Juwan squinches up his face, takes a deep breath and then launches into a catalogue of the girls' recent offenses and punishments. You don't like this about the boy, the way he savors being a tattle tale. Roslyn was caught playing with matches in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Mom told her no video games and no T.V. But she could still do gymnastics because of the compet.i.tion next week. She couldn't let down the team. And she made her apologize to Gramma for almost burning the house down.

Juwan is rarely punished. You wonder if he has any imagination at all. You've seen their sibling rivalry. You know kids are cruel, mean little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds but ”Burn down the house,” you yell, almost side swiping a car at the thought.

Juwan purses his lips, eyes gleaming with a hard, mischievous glow. ”Some magazines caught fire. Roslyn threw a lit match on them to see what would happen. That's when Roseanne ran upstairs and Mom came down and stomped on the fire and put it out.”

He likes to make things up. Always exaggerating. You can hardly trust anything he tells you. It would be okay if he just lied in those stories he writes. That's what storytelling is, a pack of lies. His teacher, Miss Harley, had him transferred to the Gifted and Talented program in part because of his essays and poems and stories. But he's got to learn that you don't lie all the time. And you just told him you were feeling fine.

At the mall you park close to the theater. It's a new mall, built like a small town with brick sidewalks and old-fas.h.i.+oned streetlights and a nostalgic atmosphere to make it easier for you to open your wallet. At Juwan's insistence, you stop at the bookstore. He rushes through the doors straight back to the children's section, that's designed like an indoor playground. You stand in the front of the store, trying to catch your breath. It's one of the chains where they sell coffee, cookies, cards, cups, CD's, calendars, why not condoms too you wonder? It's like a cathedral, and you recall how big churches convince you they got nothing to do with G.o.d and how the Smithsonian, the times you went there with Bunny and the kids, made you hate culture, made you glad that you watch the X-Files and had seen A Few Good Men sixteen times.

You wander to the back of the store and find Juwan and he's got an armful of books. He's just like you in this. If you come into a store, you already know what you want. You find it and get the h.e.l.l out. He's holding books about dinosaurs and two Harry Potter books and one called Bud, Not Buddy. You'll have to use your plastic.

”Pleeeeeze?” he whines.

You're proud that he reads, that he's an honor roll, Gifted and Talented kid. But you also know that n.o.body likes a kid who's too smart. Because books send another message too. You think you're better. Too good to shoot some hoops with us. Too good to hang out. You heard Bunny tell him one day, ”Books are bridges to people and experiences. You're never lonely with a book.” You'd wanted to tell Juwan books can also be walls and to ask him, ”What's in those books anyway? What are you hiding from?”

But you leave the store carrying a bag full of books. You walk across the street to the theater. The movie is Shrek. It's slick, animated, and rated PG, but the inside jokes and smart humor are for you. Although he downed a c.o.ke and shared a tub of b.u.t.tered popcorn with you, as you leave the theater Juwan announces, ”I'm hungry.” It is now dusk and will soon be dark. It's a school night. Bunny will raise h.e.l.l, you getting him back so late. But he's your kid and he wants to go to McDonald's. As a cop you ate so much of that c.r.a.p you should own stock in the company, so you take him instead to TGI Friday's, a few steps from the theater. And over dinner as he munches his fries and wolfs down the cheeseburger, Juwan tells you he's thinking about being an animator when he grows up, so he can make movies like Shrek. He wants to work for Disney and already knows how much money animators make, how many hours the cartoonists spent drawing the figures in the film.

As you walk to the car he reaches for your hand. This time you do not falter in your touch, grateful for the way the boy's palm in yours steadies you, even for just a moment.

Parked in front of your mother-in-law's house, where your wife and children now live, he asks, ”Daddy, can you come inside? Can you stay?” He is sliding his hands up and down the seat belt.

”Juwan, you know I can't stay.”

Your words inspire that sad-eyed, near-tears, stricken look that you hate. But this time it's a show of love, you're sure. Not like when you force him to go outside and play with the other boys in the neighborhood. Boys who had stopped coming to knock on the door to ask for Juwan because he's always in his room, his head stuck in a book or drawing (not even playing video games like the other boys, like his sisters even).

”I can't come in, but you'll be coming home soon.” You hear the arch, almost sinister trembling in your voice. You're sure he hears it, too.

But he asks hopefully, a smile shattering the solemnity of only a moment ago. ”To stay?”

”To stay.” Just saying the words, a.s.suring the boy of what you fear is a lie, melts a measure of the disdain gnawing at you. After all, you and the boy want the same thing. For them to come home.

”Your mom and me just gotta work some things out.” You feel suddenly generous and pull out your wallet and press a five dollar bill in his hand.

”This is just for you. Put it in your bank.”

”My bank's at home.”

”Well put it wherever you keep your stuff here. Okay?”

”Okay.” Juwan releases the safety belt, lifts his parka, and stuffs the bill into the pocket of his pants.

”Now, go tell your mom to come out. I want to talk to her.” The words sound like a court order, like a summons, although they spring, in fact, from the hungry soil of your need for Bunny, for him, for the girls.

”Okay,” the boy says, reaching to open the door, then hesitating as the eyes look again at you and ask, as they always do, for more than you can give.

You playfully punch him on the jaw and say, ”I'll call you tomorrow.” You watch him walk away from the car to the house, wondering if you will call him tomorrow, what you will say.

Once the front door is open you hear Juwan's excited, pleading voice. Bunny stares at you through the gla.s.s top of the storm door and nods. Then she closes the door. She'll probably make you wait like last time. Ten f.u.c.king minutes before she came to the car. Her mother, Elmira, had told you she'd prefer if you waited for the children outside.

”I don't have much,” she'd told you, blocking your entry that day, ”but I want to keep it. I don't want anything to get started in my house.” Like you can't be trusted in the same room with your own wife and kids. Like you're dangerous. You only ever hit Bunny that one time. One time because everything was falling apart. Everything still is. Elmira, short, stout, her hands on her wide hips as she looked up at you contemptuously. Her graying hair is nappy, uncombed, shooting out all over her head. She reminds you of a pit bull, always looking for trouble. And Bunny letting her talk to you that way.

”What do you want, Carson?”

You hadn't even heard Bunny approach the car. You turn on the ceiling light. She's leaning through the open window on the pa.s.senger side, her long auburn hair grazing her arms. Her arms and hair are inside the car, filling it with the fragrance of Dove soap, hair conditioner, and Jergens lotion. You aren't like some men. You even know what size bra (36D) and panties (6), and shoes (8 ) she wears. You know everything you are sure, about your wife. The car is thick with her smell, the scent of a woman who has had your babies and whose love is the only thing you want in this world or the next. Her arms and her hair are inside the car. But she keeps her face outside. You look at her hands. She's still wearing her wedding ring. Your wedding ring. A dark deep brownish-red color stains her lips and her skin glows like she's just had a facial or maybe great s.e.x.

”You look good,” you say slowly, seeing in her gaze that you look like s.h.i.+t. You haven't slept a full night since she left. And you feel like you've always felt, even in the uniform, even with the badge and the night stick, like a too-short, freckle-faced, sandy-haired red-bone runt. You don't know how you ended up with her.

”What is it, Carson? What do you want?”

”I wanna talk.”