PALINDROME (10 page)

“Come in, come in,” Carli said greeting me.
“
Mi casa es su casa
.” Carli had a good heart, she just had a
messed up life. Carli stood almost six feet tall. Her skin was milk
white, and she wore those diabetic socks that flopped loosely
around her ankles. Carli had circulation problems. Like Batman, she
was a cigarette addict. She couldn’t even stop during her pregnancy
and now, with Mark breathing the same air . . .

“No cigarettes while I’m here. Give your baby
a chance, for Christ’s sake.”

“No problem,” she said, putting the butt out
on the old porcelain sink. She liberated a Bud and took a swig.
“Got to keep my mouth busy though.” She smacked the beer can down
on the table and smiled. “Hey, want some of these? I got a
ba-jillion
of them free at the clinic.” Carli reached into a
bag and pulled out a bundle of those diabetic socks, the ones with
no elastic knitted into the top. Like I said, she had a good heart.
What was hers was mine.

“No thanks, you think I never want to get
laid again? I’m only twenty-one. Have you got any idea how those
things turn a guy off?”

Carli smirked and gestured to Mark. “Didn’t
stop me from getting knocked up.”

What could I say? Mark burped. I held him up
and jiggled him like a toy. “No it didn’t. No it didn’t, and look
at the beautiful baby boy you have now.” Like my brother Ax, Mark
was content with his environment, whatever it was. It didn’t bother
him that he lived in a rusted camper with cockroaches and bedbugs,
and that his mother had maybe five years left before her arteries
turned to granite and her blood stopped flowing. Mark was content
and happy to breathe smelly, cigarette-tainted air and feast on
baby formula bought with food stamps at Walmart. Except for the
cigarette smoke, it wouldn’t have bothered Ax either. The really
sad part was that Carli was only twenty-eight years old. “Here,
take this precious little boy, and I’ll make some dinner.”

“Deal!” Carli announced excitedly. She
grabbed her Bud and sat down on the sofa that was covered with a
bed sheet. I handed Mark back to her. “All your crap’s still in the
fridge; no one’s touched it.”

I opened the refrigerator. All was as it had
been the last time I visited. Carli refrigerated everything: the
cans of baby formula and the cans of crushed tomatoes that I had
bought were all there alongside the stacks of aluminum trays that
Meals on Wheels delivered to her everyday. I did a quick count.
“Okay if I make a big batch? You’ll have leftovers.” There were
several unopened trays.
Dear God,
I wondered,
what does
this woman eat?

“Sure,” she said, “Make a butt load. You know
I don’t cook.”

“What about your husband? He doesn’t cook
either?” I grabbed a huge pot, which I had previously scrubbed to
death with a Brillo pad, and began opening the foil trays. They
were all the same; each contained a portion of baked chicken,
mashed potatoes, and broccoli. I washed my hands and began deboning
the chicken.

“No, that sonofabitch don’t cook. He don’t do
nothing worthwhile except repair transmissions and flirt with the
chicca that works with him at the transmission shop.”

I knew that Sepp didn’t sleep at home much,
and I knew he was an asshole. It didn’t surprise me that he was
fooling around on Carli. Again, what could I say, “He’s still
paying your bills?” I had all the chicken in the pot and began
dicing onions.

Carli didn’t answer at first. She was holding
Mark and staring off into space. Her voice was low and even, devoid
of emotion. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. Look at me, Lexa. He’s
not a good man but he’s not bad-looking. Why am I surprised that
he’s unfaithful?”

“Because he’s your goddamn husband, that’s
why. He made a commitment to you. He gave you a son.” I was
chopping the hell out of the onions. Chicken caccitore called for
large pieces of onion, but I had reduced them to the consistency of
baby food.
How can people live like this?
You watch those
hill folk on the Jerry Springer Show, and you think,
this is all
scripted and made up.
Then you see it with your very own eyes,
and you just can’t believe it. I was screaming in my head,
change, change, you can change it
. I heard Ax’s voice, “be
the change.” I missed the stupid onion and cut a gash in my finger.
“Shit!”

Carli jumped up. She put Mark in his crib and
examined my finger. “You stupid bitch, what the hell did you do?”
She wrapped my finger in paper towel. “No worries, I got all kinds
of free antiseptic stuff—one minute.” Carli went into the bathroom
and came out with a first-aid kit. I washed my hands and she helped
me with the bacitracin ointment and a Band-Aid.

“Why do you put up with that?”

Carli looked at me with an expression that
said,
you know why
. “Low self esteem, darling—what do you
think? I ain’t bright or pretty or sexy. I take what I can get.”
All of a sudden a smile came to her. “He’ll be home tonight. I got
my welfare check today, picked it up before I went to the
clinic.”

“So what now, he takes your money too?”

“Just the spare change. I keep enough to take
care of little Mark and buy my cigarettes. I only give him enough
for beer. He ain’t all that bad. Like I said, I only got myself to
blame; I ain’t got no fairy Godmother. It’s just Mark and me, and
you. Bless your heart, Lexa. Here, let me open up those cans of
tomatoes. Go play with the baby. You can put in the seasoning when
everything else is in the pot.”

I was fighting back tears.

Carli saw it and shook her head. “Lighten up,
will you, just because this is Long Island doesn’t mean everyone
lives like the Great Gatsby. This is my life and I accept it.”

“But you’re twenty-eight years old. You can
make your life better. You don’t have to live like this.”

Carli’s eyes turned gray and cold. “I like
you, Lexa, and I look forward to your visits, but don’t get all
high on the hog. I grew up in an orphan home. I was beaten up by
stupid boys who had me six ways from Sunday. No one at the home
ever raised a finger to stop it. I’ve been through a lot worse than
I’m going through now. I got a baby and a roof over my head, and a
dear friend who comes over once a week to turn slop into delicious
chicken caccitore . . . and I got a husband who doesn’t beat me. I
did make my life better. It just doesn’t look that way to you.”
Carli gave me a big kiss on the forehead. “Now relax and go play
with the baby. You’ve inspired me. I actually feel like
cooking.”

~~~

I was sitting in the car outside Carli’s
camper and thinking about her crappy life. I wanted to mold every
ounce of my soft tissue into rock-hard sinewy muscle, surprise Sepp
on his way home from work, and pound him to within an inch of his
life.
Take her money?
He was coming over to steal from his
wife and child. He had a beautiful son, but he wasn’t coming home
to see him. He wasn’t coming home to see the mother of his child.
He was coming over for beer money. My blood was running cold, and I
wanted to do something terrible, and then once again, I heard Ax’s
voice in my head, “Be the change.” Be the change; how? Should I
pummel Sepp into a bloody pulp? How would that help Carli? And then
I realized that it wouldn’t; it would only make things worse. Sepp
would leave and never come back. He would abandon Carli and Mark
and find a job in another town where he could work as a mechanic
and mess around with loose women. Mark’s father was a piece of
garbage, but I guess it was better than not having a father at
all.

I took a few deep breaths to try to calm
myself. Something caught my eye. Darla must have put them in the
backseat of my car when I went to the emergency room. Sitting on
the seat behind me was a dozen crushed yellow roses and the card
from Emilio Bolan. Somehow, with everything that had transpired, I
had forgotten about the bouquet. With my plan for Sepp’s
annihilation fading into the recesses of my mind, I began to wonder
why a classy lawyer like Bolan would send me flowers.

Fifteen: Pain Management

Keith
Cooper sat in his Camaro for
twenty minutes fighting the urge to drive off and leave Shawn Riley
high and dry. He had driven through the morning mist, beneath a
depressing gray sky.

The mist turned to heavy rain. He watched
Riley’s car from the other end of the Best Buy parking lot. It was
early, and the lot was predominantly empty. He was half an hour
late and in no hurry to accommodate a screw-up like Riley. In his
mind, Riley was someone who threw away his life and spent his days
and nights stoned on heroin.

What is that jerk waiting for? Doesn’t he
see my car?
Cooper’s patience had been thin ever since his
bogus rape arrest. He had been more tolerant of Riley before the
arrest, but now with his mind and interests focused on
self-preservation . . . well, he no longer wanted to be bothered
with him. He had asked Riley to follow the girl, and he had
completely screwed up the assignment. Riley had made up a bullshit
story. He said that she had not come out of the ladies’ room down
the hall from the Legal Aid office. He was thinking the worst. He
could envision Vincent’s body half-covered with his hand reaching
up through the sand like in the final scene from Stephen King’s
Carrie
. This was a relationship he wanted no part of.

The rain seemed as if it would never stop.
“Screw it!” He pulled his hood up over his head, got out of the
car, and bolted through the parking lot, splashing through rain
puddles as he ran.

He ripped open Riley’s passenger door and
dove into the car. The smell of stale beer hit his nostrils before
he could close the door behind him. “What the—” Riley was out cold.
The driver’s seat was reclined to the fullest horizontal position.
Riley was on his back with his arms hanging off either side of the
seat. “Hey, asshole, wake up.” Riley began to snore. He turned on
his side but showed no recognition of Cooper’s presence next to
him. Cooper wiped the rain off his face. The quick dash through the
parking lot had soaked him thoroughly. “Asshole, wake up!” he said
in a louder voice. Riley didn’t stir. Cooper opened the passenger
door and slammed it so hard the car rocked. “Shit.”
What now? He
could be out for hours.

Why am I here?
Cooper thought as he
waited impatiently for Riley to stir. He stared through the
windshield, watching as the rain bathed it and ran over the glass
like thick, translucent syrup. After a few minutes, the glass began
to fog. He felt in his pocket for the cellophane bags and
considered whether to leave Riley’s stuff in the car and take off.
“Shit.” He leaned over and smacked Riley on the cheek: once, twice,
three times. Riley finally began to stir. “Snap out of it,” Cooper
demanded. “Junkie asshole, wake up!”

“What, what?” Riley said, slow to awaken.
“What are you slapping me for? I’m here.” Riley licked his dry lips
and swallowed to moisten his pasty mouth. “Hey, Bro, how long have
you been sitting there? I was getting a little rest.” He stretched
his back. His face contorted as he attempted to move. “Oh damn,
that still hurts.”

“Hurt your back?” Cooper asked.

“I blew it out burying Vinnie last night. I
broke the shovel and had to dig with the spade. I’m dying.” Riley
reached for the seat lever. “Help me, will you?”

“What do you need help with?”

“My back, jerkoff. I can’t sit up. I’ll pull
the lever, and you let the seat up slowly, just a little at a time.
I drove here with the seat almost all the way down.”

“You’re a mess,” Cooper said as he put his
hand on the top of the driver’s seat. “Okay, I’m holding it down.
Let it up.”

“Slow, got it? Don’t jerk it.”

“No problem.”

Riley released the seat. Cooper let it up
slowly, but not slowly enough, Riley winced as his back
straightened. “Christ that hurts,” he said. He grabbed a half-empty
can of Miller from the cup holder and took a gulp. He belched.

Cooper shielded his face with his hand.
“Dude, your breath smells like old socks.” He reached into his
pocket and handed Riley a plastic bag filled with heroin
packets.

Riley grabbed the bag. He snorted several
times to clear his nose and began to count the packets. “What the
hell is this? Where’s the rest?” He turned to Cooper; his
expression at once reflected his dissatisfaction.

“That’s all I have for now.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not kidding; that’s all I have.”

“Hey,” Riley said as he pointed a menacing
finger at Cooper’s face. “I said, you’re kidding, right? You think
I lugged a corpse through the rain and dug a grave for this? This
is bullshit.”

“Hey, calm down, all right. I’ll have more by
the end of the week.”

“And what am I supposed to do until then,
huh?”

“Shit, Shawn, stretch it out. I mean how much
do you use?”

“What do you care how much I use? I told you
how much I needed, and that’s what I expected to get. Is this some
kind of game? I’m not messing with you. I need my shit.”

“Look, man, I said it’s coming. Deal,
okay?
” He reached into his other pocket. “Take this if you
run short.” He handed him a prescription bottle.

Riley took the bottle from Cooper and
examined the label. “What the hell is this?”

“Hillbilly heroin.”

“Oxy? Get the hell out of here. What am I
supposed to do with this?”

“Look, it’s the same stuff. It’ll keep you
going.”

“Like I’m gonna shoot this crap; are you
kidding? Do you know how dangerous it is?”

“Don’t be such a drama queen, Shawn. You used
to be
the man
, now you act like a real pussy. You’re afraid
to shoot it, don’t shoot it. Lot’s of ways to skin a cat.”