When I sat up, Ahab stuck the harpoon in a little deeper. The white whale tasks me. That those were the words that came to mind only proved I was screwed. See, that was the thing about Bobby and my brother: they knew where they were going. I didn’t know anything, or how to do anything except quote dead writers and shoot a fifteen-foot fadeaway jumper. Not much of a job market for the former, nor for the latter when the shooter is a six-foot-tall, slow-footed white boy. There were days I wished I woke up with a hunger for adding machines and ledger books. I wanted to know where I was going, or even where I wasn’t. I guess that’s completely understandable when you’re on the verge of choosing a major and minor subject from the mootsville trinity of English, philosophy, and psychology. I hobbled to the bathroom as if on a wooden leg, and thought I was very badly in need of my own white whale. I needed to chase something in my life other than Mindy’s ass.
Christ, I looked like shit, but at least no one was home to see but me. When I peeled back my shirt, I got weak at the sight of my shoulder. I was black, blue, yellow, brown, and orange from my right nipple across my chest, around my back, and halfway down my arm. My skin looked like a box of melted crayons. Though puffed and swollen, I could just about raise my arm without losing consciousness. No bones seemed to be broken or sticking out where they didn’t belong. I figured I’d live. I swallowed way too many aspirins, finished undressing, showered, and brushed my teeth. It improved my aroma, if not my appearance.
I called Mindy’s number and got no answer. That was odd. I knew she was probably at school, but her mom was almost always home. For some reason I couldn’t quite explain, I got a sick feeling in my gut. Maybe it was the paranoid afterglow of whatever narcotic Bobby had given me. Yeah, I thought, that was it. Because of my shoulder pain and the drug hangover, getting dressed went about as smoothly as a thumbless man tying his shoes. Still, I managed to do it in less than a week. Of course, the aspirin didn’t kick in until I was done. There was the newspaper and a note for me on the kitchen table. I was confident the note was from Aaron, probably lambasting me for coming home drunk, for being a lazy, aimless piece of shit with no ambition and no future. I was getting a little tired of his notes and lectures, so I didn’t look at the note until I’d fortified myself with some of my mom’s coffee. Fortified being the key word, because if you could survive the over-percolated and burnt black goo that passed for coffee in the Prager household, you could survive almost anything.
I looked at the back page of the paper, the sports section calling to me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Aaron’s damned note. I figured I’d read it just to be done with it. The note was from Aaron. That much I’d gotten right. Everything else I’d gotten wrong, as wrong as getting could get. I was out of the apartment almost before I finished reading the note.
• • •
What’s in a name? Sometimes everything. Kings Highway Hospital was small and privately owned, not one of the bloated gas giants run by the city like Kings County or Bellevue, and it was where Aaron’s note said the ambulance had brought Mindy.
Mindy’s mom was a heavyset woman who, with a babushka around her head and some gold teeth in her mouth, would not have looked out of place in the Ukrainian shtetl from which her grandparents or parents had no doubt come. Her large, doe-brown eyes were moist and bloodshot, her voice choked with tears and barely contained panic. She lit up when I came running toward her down the hall. Mindy’s father — his burden unlightened by my arrival — was there too: pacing, twitchy, blank-faced. He was a gaunt man, now a scarecrow. Her mother locked me in her embrace, my right shoulder burning in pain. I toughed it out. These people didn’t need to hear about my relatively minor woes. Mr. Weinstock gave me a ghost-like pat on the back.
“Beatrice, Beatrice,” her husband said, putting his twig arm across her shoulders. “Mindy will be all right. You know how stubborn a girl she is. If anyone will be good, it will be our Mindy.”
I wanted to make a joke, to tell them that she had survived my mom’s coffee many times, so of course Mindy would be okay. But this was no time for jokes and smiles.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked. Aaron’s note had been sketchy on details.
Her mom answered through her tears. “She’s … she’s in … a
… coma.”
“A coma! What happened?” I asked.
“They found her on the street last night in the snow, unconscious with a big gash across her forehead,” her father said. “The cops think it was a botched mugging.”
I didn’t understand. “Botched?”
“Yeah, the detective said they found her watch and wallet on her. She must have put up some fight, boy.” His sunken chest swelled with pride. He turned to his wife. “She’s such a fighter. That’s why I know she will be fine.”
“Where did they find her?” I asked. “When?”
“In the snow, like I — ”
“No, Herbie,” Mrs. Weinstock interrupted, impatient. “Moe means where, on what street?”
I nodded. “Right.”
“Sorry, Moe. They found her on East 17th and Glenwood Road in front of a house. An old woman looking through her window told the police she saw her struggling with a young, light-skinned colored — black man,” he was quick to correct himself. “The old woman said the black man had pink blotches on his hands and face.”
“Pink blotches, huh? That should make him easier to find,” I said.
“I suppose you’re right. Meanwhile, the old woman said that he dropped Mindy to the sidewalk and limped away. Mindy must have given him such a kick or something to make him let go.”
There was that sick feeling in my gut again, only this time it was worse, much worse. I was trying to figure out a delicate way to ask the next question, but couldn’t find the words. I just asked it raw.
“Were there other injuries?”
Her father shook his head. “You mean … was he trying to rape her?”
I didn’t, but said yes anyway.
“No, they don’t think so,” he said, thankful for something. “She was bruised up all over, though, so he must have beat her up pretty bad.”
My head was spinning. Suddenly this relationship, which I had been willing to dismiss as mostly about sex, didn’t feel that way. I was torn, and torn apart inside. I wanted to fall to pieces and to rip someone to shreds.
“Can I see her?”
“The doctors are in with her now, and they said it will be a while,” her mom answered. “Go, do what you have to do. Go to school. We’ll call you if she — ”
“When she wakes up,” her dad shouted. “When!”
“Okay, Herbie. Okay, when. Moe, we’ll call you when she wakes up or if there’s any change.”
I hugged them both and drifted back down the hall, down the stairs, and out onto Kings Highway. I just stood there, lost, staring at nothing in particular. Then I heard someone, a woman, say, “Look, Jim, there’s Daddy. No, there, up on the second floor. See, he’s in the window, waving.”
I looked up and there in a second floor window was a man, the silhouette of a man, really, in a robe. He was waving down. His wave was weak and unenthusiastic. I turned to look at Jim. He was a boy of six or seven, overdressed against the cold. His face was full of many things: fear, longing, anger, maybe even love. Mostly, he seemed confused.