You Only Get Letters from Jail (6 page)

“Where'd you go?” he asked. His voice was quiet and low and I didn't know if he was talking to me or Nadine. “Darlene said you came into the office, said you wanted to look at the Vette and she gave you the keys to open it up and the next thing she knows you're gone with the car.”

Nadine walked over to the couch and stood behind him. She put her hands on his shoulders and started squeezing the muscles to either side of his neck. “It was just a little
test-drive, Eddie. Maybe I'm thinking about buying it—it's worth what, about a hundred washed cars? Two hundred?” The only person who ever called my dad Eddie was my mother, and that was only when she was happy with him and I couldn't remember the last time I had heard her say it.

My dad turned around and looked at both of us. “Nadine, that is a 1979 Corvette Stingray L82 with a glass T-top and a 5.7-liter 350 V8 tuned to 220 horsepower. That is a fourteen-thousand-dollar car.” His voice was winding tight like an engine, but he downshifted and dropped back to the quiet tone again. “It's my signature car. It's not meant for driving.”

Nadine gripped her hands into my dad's shoulders. “It's just a car, Eddie. It's a nice car, but it's not everything.” She rubbed his shoulders so that his shirt bunched up under her hands and I was waiting for him to turn on me for being an accomplice, but he didn't. Nadine rubbed the fight out of him.

“Okay,” my dad said. He stretched his neck back and stood. “Okay.” He picked his glass up off the coffee table and there was a lime rind inside and the glass was full to the brim and I knew he was on vodka and tonics and maybe that was part of the reason he had been soft on our crime. “I sold the Buick,” he said. He raised his glass in a toast but me and Nadine were empty-handed. “You need drinks,” he said, and Nadine went into the kitchen and came back with beers—one for her and one for me—and I took it and held the bottle like it was a live snake.
“Here's to five hundred over blue book,” he said, and we all knocked glass together and when my dad didn't say anything more, I drank.

I had never drank beer in front of my dad—had never really had beers before at all unless I counted the two I shared with Ronnie when his dad left his fishing ice chest in the garage and forgot to unpack it and we sat behind his house drinking them and then pretended to be wasted. My dad took out his Who records—all thirteen of them—and he stacked the turntable and turned up the music and the house was hot, so we opened the front windows and I wondered what our house looked like from the sidewalk, if somebody walking by would look in through the window and see the dining room light shining over the table and hear the music and see us laughing and if that person would envy us and our good time.

“I coulda been the drummer,” my dad shouted over the music. “I should have pushed my way to the front of the stage. I keep thinking that—why didn't I just get closer and force my way?”

“I wish you could play for us, Eddie,” Nadine said. “I bet you were good.”

“I was brilliant,” he said.

“I have an idea,” she said. Nadine disappeared into the kitchen and when she came out again she had three pots and two wooden spoons and she turned the pots upside down on the table and handed my dad the spoons like they were sticks.

My dad looked down at the kit that most kids start on. “I can't,” he said. “This is ridiculous.”

But he was smiling like he wanted to and all he needed was a push, so Nadine said, “Please, Eddie,” and the next thing I knew he was pounding along to the A-side of the record that was playing.

Nadine only had a couple changes of clothes and nothing much for summer, and she asked to borrow a pair of my boxers and one of my shirts, and the thought of her in a pair of my underwear was more than my mind could wrap around, so I started putting my dad's albums in alphabetical order and tried not to imagine the places in my shorts that Nadine's bare skin was touching. When she came back downstairs she reached out and took my hand and I was too surprised to jerk back or wipe it on my jeans first, and then she was pressed against me and we were dancing, or at least she was dancing and I was shuffling along and trying not to step on her feet. My dad was sweating and his forehead had gone slick and his hair was sticking in points against his skin and his hands were flying, alternating pots, and he was desperately trying to keep rhythm with a kick drum that wasn't there. “The Kids Are Alright” came on and I liked that song and my dad started shouting the words so that Nadine laughed and when she spun me around I wasn't expecting it and I almost fell down, but she pulled me back toward her and kept on taking the lead, and we all decided we liked that song and we let my dad play it over and over again until he got tired of stopping the record and we just let it play through.

When I woke up I was in my bed and my shoes were off but I was still in my clothes. My sheets were in a ball at
my feet and my blanket was on the floor in a lump with my pillow. I sat up and my head spun everything to the left so that I had to put my hand out and touch the wall, and then I realized how thirsty I was and all I wanted was a drink, but the very thought of putting something in my mouth made me want to throw up. I waited for the room to center again and then I stood up and went to the door.

The house was shut down and quiet and I stood in the hallway until my eyes adjusted to the dark and I thought I could walk to the bathroom. A streetlight spilled smeary white light through the glazed bathroom window and into the hallway. My dad's bedroom door was shut, but Nadine's was open a crack and I wondered if she had made it upstairs, and when, and if I hadn't been able to walk myself, maybe she had been the one walking me. I went to her door and started to look in through the crack, but I could hear them before I could see them, my dad breathing, and Nadine making quiet sounds that came and went in waves. I could see their shadow on the wall, one shape under the blanket and what light there was marking their movements in negative relief, and I stepped back and went to the bathroom and shut the door and stood over the sink for a while before I tried to drink. I stayed in the dark. Then I held my head under the faucet and let the water run off my face and whatever came close to my mouth I sucked in and drank. I stood up and let the tap run full blast into the sink so that I could feel the tiny spray against my hands, which were gripping the edges and holding me up, and I stood shaking for a minute and I thought the
water didn't stand a chance at staying in me, but my head went straight and my thirst retreated and after a few minutes my stomach relaxed and kept the water down. When I left the bathroom Nadine's door was closed, and even though I stood against it as close as I could with my ear almost to the wood, I couldn't hear any more sound on the other side.

I thought I wouldn't be able to fall asleep again, that I was destined to stare at my ceiling, but when I opened my eyes my room was hot and full of light, and I realized it was Sunday and morning. I cranked my window open and a small breeze came in and it was cool and felt good. The neighborhood was quiet except for the sound of a few cars passing through and a lawn mower somewhere down the street. I pulled clothes out of my drawers and went to the bathroom and put my head under the faucet and let the cold water run just like I had during the night, only this time I soaked my hair and drank and washed my face and brushed my teeth. When I was done I almost felt better but there was a taste in my mouth that I couldn't get rid of, something coppery, but more like pennies than blood.

My dad's door was open but the bedroom was empty and I didn't stop to take inventory of the condition of his bed, whether the covers were kicked back, whether it had been slept in or not. I passed Nadine's door and it was cracked again and even though I wanted to keep walking, I stopped and tried to look through the gap. I couldn't hear any noise, so I pushed the door with the palm of my hand and it opened wide and I could see that the curtains
were pulled back and the windows were open and the bed had been stripped and the sheets and blanket were folded in a small pile at the foot of the mattress. I looked around the room, and Nadine's bag was gone. I turned back to the bed and then I saw my boxers sticking out from under the stack of bedding. I lifted up the pillow and the boxers were spread out flat as if she were lying there but invisible.

I went downstairs and my dad was sitting on the couch with cartoons on but the sound too low to hear and it didn't matter because he had music playing anyway. He was dressed in a white undershirt and a pair of shorts, and his dark hair was standing up on one side and creased flat on the other. He was drinking a beer and his wallet was on the coffee table and it was unfolded and spread apart and looked empty, and I didn't know if it was empty by accident or on purpose.

“She left,” he said. He did not turn to look at me right away, but when he did his beard looked like an eraser had rubbed out pencil on his face and he looked old and hard to recognize.

The needle on the turntable lifted up, moved back and dropped to the beginning of the album. I knew all the words to the song, and so did my dad, and so did Nadine now, I figured, since we had sung it over and over again last night under the hard circle of bright dining room light and the beat of wooden spoons on cheap metal pots.

“I hate this fucking song,” I said.

I picked up my backpack from the floor by the front window, and I rolled back the lock on the door and pushed
the screen and the air smelled like cut grass and sprinkler water. “Hey, Floyd, wait,” my dad said from behind me. “Wait a minute. We can get some breakfast together.”

I didn't slow down. The Vette was gone from the driveway and my dad's Ford sat there looking dirty and used. I hit the sidewalk and kept walking, crossed the street and turned right at the corner. Even though it was early there was heat underneath the morning air and I could tell it was waiting to break through and take over for the day. My legs loosened up and warmed to the motion and I felt as if walking had never felt this good before, as if I had never felt it like this with my feet connected to the pavement and me just following along. If I crossed the park I could go back to the old house and see Jerry, but instead I stayed on the sidewalk and followed the street. Ronnie lived a couple miles away and he had my Salinger book. I had lent it to him before I made the switch to Kafka, but now I wanted my book back.

There had been rain and everything was washed clean, colored knife-sharp and throwing back hard sunshine. There was still the cupboard smell of potatoes—dank and dark—from the dirt that hadn't dried between the yellowed patches of grass that were trying to get a foothold in the gravel. My mother was leaning into the open yawn of the hood of my car, pointing at colored wires with a filed nail, careful to poke without touching so she wouldn't spoil her manicure with sticky grease. I didn't have to look at her to know that she was doing this. There was a man standing beside her, a tall man in dirty jeans, and I knew what kind of show she'd be putting on for his benefit. I knew she was asking questions in her high-fret guitar-string voice, and that she wasn't listening for the answers. What she knew about cars I could fit into the corner of my eye, pick out with my finger, and wipe across my pants, and I was glad that I didn't have to listen to her.

Ruby touched my arm as she spoke. “This is my favorite rabbit,” she said.

Ruby had taken it upon herself to tell me her name without asking for mine and walk me over to the sheet-metal garage so she could show me the badly weathered and leaning rabbit hutches that had been built along the outer wall. On this side of the garage I couldn't see the driveway; the sun was blocked and the air was cooler. I could open my eyes without trying to rub the glare out of them. The separated cages were faced with thick, dense wire mesh that was too tightly bunched to squeeze a finger through, but Ruby put her hand up to the front of the third cage and tried to coax the rabbit forward with a weak wiggle of her pinkie through a hole.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“I turned sixteen last month,” I said. “What about you?”

“Twelve,” she said. “I wish I was thirteen.”

“There's nothing great about being thirteen,” I said. I could remember being thirteen and in eighth grade, afraid of having to take a shower in PE, but being forced to anyway, standing naked in a group under a shower and trying not to look down.

“I just don't want to be twelve anymore. I feel like I should be older. I look older, don't I?”

She turned to face me and my eyes landed on her chest for a second, on the small bumps under her T-shirt that weren't quite boobs, but were bigger than what my friend Robbie called “mosquito bites.” Robbie had told me that he'd had his hand on some mosquito bites once and when
he'd tried to rub the nipples between his fingers, he'd gotten lost, slid off the mark without realizing it, and had spent the next several minutes trying to find his way back to second base. “Never again,” he'd said. “I could've been pinching at a mole for all I knew.”

“Well?” she said.

I leaned down and tried to look through the wire at the rabbit in the corner of the cage. “You could be older, I guess,” I said.

Ruby turned toward the cage and pushed in next to me so that our shoulders were touching. She smelled like maple syrup. “Her name is Thumper,” she said.

“That's a great name,” I said.
Original
, I thought, but I didn't say it. Maybe out here in the middle of Podunk they didn't have a copy of
Bambi
. I looked at Ruby and the bulk of bra under her shirt, and I knew she was too old to really have an attachment to a rabbit's name from a baby's cartoon. Maybe she didn't know that Thumper was a boy rabbit, what with his absence of animated balls and the whine in his voice through the entire movie—it was easy to be confused. Maybe she had hoped for a boy rabbit, mistaken a wad of fur between his legs, and had been strapped with a girl.