Ask Again, Yes (12 page)

“I’m going over there,” Francis said.

“Wait,” Peter said. “Just wait a second.” As Peter held the curved blue handset like a supplicant offering alms, Kate could see that he was thinking of a way to minimize the drama, a way to keep them out of it despite having to use their phone. It struck Kate how much he looked like his father as he struggled to articulate what he wanted to say. They had the same way of holding themselves, that same way of appearing to wear their trouble lightly.

But just like that Peter’s second was up. Francis moved past Lena and in what seemed like a single instant, he was standing on the Stanhopes’ faded welcome mat, pounding on their door with his legs set apart in a stance Kate had never seen him strike before. “Brian!” he shouted. “Anne!” He tried the handle. Pounded again. He’d given the gun lock to Brian himself, back in January. It was New Year’s Day, the hardware store was closed, but Francis had an extra combination lock still in the packaging sitting in his shed. He’d walked back there with Brian, and when he opened the door they were hit with the smell of old grass and gasoline. He found it right away, a miracle, and he’d watched as Brian ripped it open. As Francis was pulling the shed door closed behind them, he told Brian not to write the code down anyplace. Brian had looked at him as if to ask if Francis really thought he was that much of an idiot, and
Francis had shrugged, angry all of a sudden, very tempted to point out that Brian was the asshole who’d lost track of a loaded gun.

So the boy had to be wrong. Maybe she’d made a threat. It had been almost five months since the incident at Food King, since he gave Brian that lock. Almost five months of making a habit stick. As Francis considered what to do, he leaned over and ran his hand over his calf as if the gun Peter had seen might have somehow been his own. He unsnapped the holster, but then snapped it closed again. It was completely impossible. He remembered a story from home, from just before he left for America. A family up the lane had lost two children, drowned in their well, three years apart. First the one died, and then three years later another, in nearly the exact same way, at nearly the exact same age. “God love them,” his mother had whispered to his father in their kitchen, overcome with grief. “Couldn’t it have happened to any one of us?” Now, nearly thirty years on, Francis wanted to return to the scene, wanted to raise his mother and father from the dead just to say, no, now that he’d time to think about it, he just did not agree. It could not have happened to any one of them.

“Francis!” Lena yelled across the yard. A light inside the Maldonados’ house went on. The Nagles, too, had woken up. The 911 operator had instructed Peter to remain on the line so he had, and now he looked to Kate to relay to him what was going on outside. He should hang up, he thought. It was probably fine. He’d gotten nervous and had overreacted and now everything would be worse. His father had planned on leaving that weekend. He’d said it might be for just a little while and Peter decided right then not to call him on anything, to let him say whatever ridiculous thing he wanted to say, and Peter would just do what he liked. That’s when he’d sent the paper plane out the window. That’s when he decided he didn’t really care if he got caught. The operator on the other line was asking him what happened, what kind of gun, whether it was loaded, but Peter ignored her. “Just tell them to come quickly,” he said. “As quickly as they can.”

From inside the Stanhope home came footsteps. “Coming!” called Anne Stanhope, as brightly as if it were three o’clock in the afternoon. Francis looked across to Lena and waved in a way that would let her know it was all fine.

Anne threw open the door and staggered back several steps. She was empty-handed, Francis noticed first. She was wearing a paisley nightshirt, little colorful teardrops hanging loosely over slim legs. She looked like she was in pain, and Francis wondered for a moment if the boy had only gotten half mixed up. If in fact it was Brian who’d had enough and reached for the closest thing.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, taking one tentative step inside. Anne dropped slowly to her knees, sat back on her heels. Francis looked quickly around the room, to the stairs, to the shadowed place behind the open door. In the distance, sirens.

“Where’s Brian?” He took another few steps farther into the house.

“I’m very sorry about all this,” Anne said, and when Francis glanced at her, she seemed sorry. Her face was ashen and she looked exhausted, brokenhearted. Then she reached under the couch cushion next to her and, moving faster than Francis thought possible, removed a gun, pointed, and fired.

six

I
N GEORGE’S APARTMENT, THEY
ate on paper plates. Peter tagged along when his uncle headed to the wholesalers in Long Island City every few months to buy a six-pack of the white undershirts George wore every day and a package of two thousand premium, heavy-duty paper plates, which he kept stacked on the counter in two equally sized towers. He didn’t have a kitchen table so they ate in front of the TV, their dinner on their knees. For utensils, they used the silverware that Brenda left behind when she moved back in with her parents, and the sink always had a scatter of forks, knives, and spoons across the bottom. In the bathroom, Brenda left a jar of face cream that George shoved to the corner of the counter, where it slowly became crowded out with cans of shaving cream, Old Spice, Clearasil, mouthwash, toothbrushes left in scummy puddles here and there. Once in a while, after a shower, Peter would open that tub of cream and inhale. Cucumbers. Dryer sheets. The bright silver cap of the jar never seemed to gather dust, and Peter wondered if his father and George did the same.

Brian got moved to modified duty after everything happened, and then to Traffic once the case settled. The house sold quickly, to a young
family from Rockaway, and the realtor arranged for an estate salesperson to go in and tag all their furniture. Their dishes, even. Linens. Tupperware. The umbrella stand and the three umbrellas that sat inside. Peter’s bike went, his old Lincoln Logs. Every dollar had to go to legal fees, medical fees, all in and straight out again as if through a swinging door. Brian made the mistake of telling Peter, and Peter, who had been stoic through everything, who had remained unflappable through his mother’s detention—the county jail, an indictment, most of a trial, a settlement, a state hospital—was rattled, finally, by this: the thought that there were strangers moving through their house in Gillam, looking at his sticker collection and trying out his creaky desk chair, while he and his father sat on George’s couch in Queens, watching
Jeopardy!
Brian watched him take it in. They were nearly the same height now. Their hands the same breadth. Peter flushed a deep red and Brian looked away. It was easy to forget how young he was.

“What about my stuff?” Peter asked. “The stuff that’s not worth money. My notebooks. Other things.”

“We’ll get it, Pete. Don’t worry. The lady will set that stuff aside and we’ll pick it all up.”

“My tapes?”

“Yeah, I told her to leave them aside, too.”

“They’re in a shoebox in my closet. You told her that?”

“No, but I’ll tell her today. I’ll call her.”

“My books, too.” He had a beautiful hardcover copy of
The Hobbit
that had a thick gold page across from the title page and another at the end. He’d won it in the fire prevention poster contest in sixth grade, and the moment he held it he decided he’d never crack the binding. When he became too curious about the story inside, he’d gotten a library copy to read and leave winged open on his pillow all day. Kate had won second place and got a copy of
Anne of Green Gables
.

“Yeah, your books, too. All that. We’re going to go back and get it.”

“When?”

“I don’t know, buddy. Pretty soon.”

Peter nodded, and then carefully placed his fork on top of the torn-off paper towel that was his napkin. He plucked his jacket from where it was strewn across the back of the TV, and walked out of the apartment. The deli downstairs had two video games in the back, and Peter often went down to play
Duck Hunt
or
Pac-Man
in the afternoons. He also liked to sit outside the noodle shop on Queens Boulevard and watch the 7 train rattle by overhead.

“What did I say?” Brian asked when he’d left, leaning back into the deep cushions of the couch.

“He just wants his things,” George said. “Are you really going to go back there? Like you said?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

George shrugged and glanced over at the closed apartment door before turning back to his show.

There were some, Brian knew, who thought he should have been fired, who thought he was incompetent, who thought he was a d-bag who couldn’t control his wife. But he hadn’t committed a crime; she had. He’d been a witness. A victim, even. Francis Gleeson’s face looked better, Brian had heard. Not normal, exactly, but you might not need to look away. He could speak and eat. He was walking now. They’d known almost right away that he would live. Once he made it through the first twelve hours, there was hope. Once he made it twenty-four hours, it was clear that he was stronger than anyone expected, but then what? He’d live but in what capacity? In the stack of paperwork that came months after it happened, just before the criminal suit was settled, Brian read that as they were rolling him into surgery that first night, a nurse had told Lena Gleeson that he’d already gotten a round of blood transfusions, and asked if they should give him another if he needed it. Lena had
not understood the question at first, the question behind the question, but once it clicked she became ferocious and told them to use their own blood if they had to; she told them to wring themselves dry as long as they saved him. And then she waited outside the door for six, seven, eight hours, just to see him for ten minutes. She was there the next day and night, and the next, for the next three months, until he got moved to a rehab hospital upstate. Some of the nurses were annoyed by her doggedness, by her suspicious regard of every move they made, but others said it was her will that saved him. He was strong, yes, and had gotten lucky, but those things alone wouldn’t have been enough.

The stack of paperwork was six inches deep, but the details about Lena were what Brian returned to again and again. He heard on the job that as soon as Francis was strong enough, she’d drive upstate to the rehab hospital only to drive him all the way back down again to Gillam and over to the lake. He was still in a wheelchair then, so she’d fix him up beside a bench with a broad straw sun hat and a blanket on his knees. She’d talk away to him there, and coming up behind them, Brian imagined, seeing only their silhouettes against the sun, they looked like any couple out enjoying the day. People would pass them on their morning walks and say hello, ask how he was doing. Lena would turn and smile at Francis to include him, as if his face were not a blasted-out shell, as if he were a well man who might add something: lovely weather today. When he was well enough to go to Mass and could walk short lengths on his own, she’d led him by the hand down the side aisle. Now she didn’t need to hold his hand, Brian had heard. He could walk the whole circumference of the lake on his own. Last time Brian saw him was across a courtroom. His hair was buzzed very short. He wore an eye patch over his left eye. His skin looked raw and stretched tight. On one side of his face, his cheek gave way to his neck without the interruption of a jaw, or so it seemed.

Foolishly, Brian thought it might all go away once Francis stabilized. That Francis would wake up and tell the world it was partly his fault,
really. It was Francis, after all, who used his influence—everyone knew him, everyone liked him—to keep the whole incident at Food King a private matter. And why? Francis should have let them charge her right then. He should have let them take her in. She would have done a month at the hospital and then come home better.

For over a year now Brian spent his days directing the cars and trucks on the Manhattan side of the Queensboro Bridge. “Oh, fine,” he’d always say whenever Peter or George asked how his day had been. Or, “Good except for the damn rain.” Or the damn cold. Or the damn heat. But he said it pleasantly, or tried to, and pretty much everyone in the world complained about the rain and the cold and the heat. It was just a thing to say. Peter said that he noticed the weather more now that they were in Queens (he never said that they’d
moved
to Queens, only that they were
in
Queens now) because there was so much more time spent standing in it, waiting for buses, walking to the train, walking home from the grocery store with the plastic handles of heavy bags cutting into the palms of his hands. One day, Brian took the Q32 into the city as always, but instead of getting off at Second Avenue he stayed on, swaying along with the rest of the passengers as the bus barreled across Third, Lex, Park. He got off at Thirty-Second, bought a hot dog, ate it, then took the bus right back to Sunnyside, where he lay down in the honeyed rectangle of light that shone onto George’s worn parquet floors. He didn’t even know what he was thinking about. The next day he pretended he’d gotten his schedule mixed up. He called the pension fund administrator and double-checked his tier, his eligibility. He was young, still. It would be better to wait until twenty years, but when he pictured another whole year of standing on Fifty-Ninth Street and inhaling exhaust fumes, he felt something inside him lie down and die. Then one day, a few weeks later, without discussing it with Peter, without discussing it with his brother, whose pullout couch he and Peter had been sharing since they left Gillam, Brian handed in his shield. He always imagined he’d wait until a Friday, but he couldn’t wait even one more day, so he did it
on a Thursday, then took the bus back to Sunnyside, got in his car (even though it was a prime spot, good on the street until Saturday), and drove out to Shea, where he sat idling by the right field gate and had a clear view of the bleachers along the third base line.