“I think you don’t know.” A smart eleven-year-old.
“You’re right, but I’m doing everything I can to make it okay.”
“Like committing a robbery?”
“I didn’t-” I stopped. He deserved the truth and I wished I knew it. “It’s complicated,” I said. “You’ve got to trust me.”
He looked at me for awhile, then said, “Why?”
“Because-” I started. “Just because.”
“That’s not a reason.”
“I know. But it’s all I’ve got.”
He nodded unhappily. “Now can I watch TV?”
I shook my head. “Where did you get those pajamas?”
He tipped his head toward the kitchen.
“Mom?” I called.
She came to the door.
I pointed at Jason and asked, “Are those-?”
She nodded. “Your old pajamas.”
“You’ve saved them for thirty-five years?”
“They were in perfectly good shape.”
“But thirty-five years?”
“I thought maybe one day I would have a grandson.”
“If you did, I would buy him pajamas myself.”
She turned back to the kitchen. “They were in perfect shape.”
Fifteen minutes later, Mom called us to the table. She’d served enough food to feed twelve-a platter of roasted pork, pierogi sautéed with onions, a bowl of mashed potatoes, red cabbage salad, sliced and buttered bread. Jason was half my size and usually ate twice as much as I did but tonight he ate slowly, carefully, chewing each bite far longer than he needed to. Mom watched him, concerned.
“Still uncomfortable to eat?” I asked him.
He shook his head.
Mom said, “The doctor says he’s fine with a regular diet.” She spooned potatoes onto his already full plate.
“Can I be done?” he said.
“Eat your dinner first,” Mom said.
He cut a small bite of pork, put it in his mouth, chewed a long time, then raised his napkin to his mouth and spit the pork into it. He slid his chair away from the table and wandered back into the living room. A few moments later, he turned on Dirty Dancing.
Mom stared at his plate, then looked at me. “Eat your dinner, for God’s sake.”
I did.
Afterward, I went to the living room and sat next to Jason on the couch. He was quiet and I kept my mouth shut, and after a little while he leaned against me and I put my arm around his shoulder and held him. We stayed like that for an hour, maybe more. Then Mom came in and said Jason should get some sleep.
I squeezed his shoulder and said, “Get well fast.”
He nodded and said, “I want to go back to your house with you.”
“Soon, okay?” I said. “Real soon.”
I DROVE TO THE Patio Motel, a blue two-story strip with a big 1960s-style neon sign out front, left over from when Lincoln Avenue was a main route in and out of the city for trucks and tourists. Now the customers were mostly men and women who’d slipped away from their famlies and parked their cars side by side outside rooms with a single dim light on or none at all. A shoulder-high wooden fence blocked the parking lot from the street. I parked close to it to make my Skylark invisible-or almost-and went into the office.
The man behind the desk was bald and pronounced his Rs like Ws. He took my fifty-five dollars and gave me a room key. If he recognized me from the TV news, he didn’t show it.
The room had a NO SMOKING sign on the door and smelled like stale smoke. The walls could have used painting, the floors a new carpet, but the bed looked just right. I put my suitcase on a chair next to it, went back to the door and chained it, then peered out the window at the traffic and the nighttime city. The business next door advertised yoga tai-chi. Out front, the block-lettered Patio Motel sign glowed orange against the dark. Under the name of the motel, blue neon cursive added, AN ADVENTURE IN LIVING. If that wasn’t enough, another sign offered free movies.
I pulled the curtains, stripped off my pants and shirt, turned off the light, and climbed into bed. The unfamiliar darkness and smells surrounded me. The bedside clock said the time was 10:28. I flipped the lamp back on and fished my cell phone out of my jeans. Corrine had told me she would come to me if I needed her. Did I need her? I dialed her home number. It rang four times and her machine picked up. I listened to her voice asking me to leave a message but hung up before the recording signal. I dialed her cell phone. It rang six times and put me through to voice mail. I hung up again.
I turned off the lamp and stretched out in the strange bed. I spun David Russo’s ring on my finger. Where would Corrine be at this time of night? That kind of thinking would get me nowhere, so I thought about Lucinda, then Mom, and then Jason. Jason had told me that he wanted to go home. I thought about that. My house was his home. I was his home. That made me glad, and I wondered if that was a good thing. Good or bad didn’t matter, I decided-it just made me glad. I realized I wanted to go home too.
TWENTY-TWO
I WOKE EARLY. THE bedside clock said 5:34. The sun wouldn’t come up for another hour.
I showered and shaved, then stepped out into the morning cold and darkness and dropped the room key at the front desk. A box at the corner sold copies of the Chicago Tribune. I dropped in my quarters and looked at the paper under a streetlight. It had a photo of me at the bottom of the front page. The photo was old, taken around the time the police department fired me after I crashed my cruiser. I looked drunk in the photo. No surprise. I had more hair then, less of it gray. I had a cut on my chin. You would still recognize me.
At the corner a block and a half away, the lights were on in a diner. I walked to it and went inside. A TV played near the ceiling. The air was warm and smelled like bacon grease. The griddle was out in the open, and the griddle man-a dark-haired kid in white pants, white T-shirt, and white apron-welcomed me with a big smile as I sat at the counter. Maybe he hadn’t read the paper.
He said he cooked the best hash browns in the city, so I told him to give me some with a couple of scrambled eggs, toast, and sausage. A woman came in wearing a short blue skirt, scuffed red high heels, a leather jacket, and dirty blond hair that needed a brush. She sat two stools away from me and eyed me like I might be business, then told the griddle man she wanted coffee. He didn’t offer her hash browns but poured her a cup and slid a container of sugar across the counter to her. She used four packs.
Breakfast did me good. The hooker watched me eat. So did the griddle man.
“How’re the hash browns?” he said.
“Best in the city.”
He nodded his appreciation. “My secret recipe,” he said.
The hooker frowned. “He uses boric acid. Also kills roaches.”
He grabbed a dirty dishtowel and threw it at her. “Get the fuck out of my restaurant.”
She rolled her eyes like she’d heard that before. “Give me more coffee.”
He did.
The six A.M. news came on and an anchorwoman with dark hair and dark eyes said that a tanker truck full of petroleum had flipped on the Southside and was burning. She cut away to a reporter standing at the crash site. The camera showed huge flames rising from the truck into the dark sky. Firemen stood at a distance, aiming hoses at the edges of the fire, controlling the burn, not fighting it. You could just about feel waves of heat coming off the TV.
The griddle man looked at the screen and shook his head. “Like hell itself is burning.”
The hooker shrugged.
The on-site reporter finished his story and cut back to the anchorwoman. She shook her head like she felt the heat too, then said, “Meanwhile, police continue their search for-”
I gulped another bite of toast, took a ten-dollar bill from my wallet, and tossed it on the counter. I scurried for the door as a picture of me popped onto the screen. The griddle man watched me like I’d turned into a strange, dangerous animal. The hooker didn’t seem to notice me go.