She tries to hide the gun in the folds of her wide-legged pajama pants. “Sorry. Did I wake you up? I thought I heard something.”
Scott doesn’t even look up. He’s staring at his hands, folded tight between his knees. “I thought you were having an affair.”
“What?”
“I heard you creeping around. At first I figured bathroom, a drink. Then I caught you outside, with the bat, and I thought, oh, she’s being paranoid, but one night I cracked the window and heard a man’s voice.”
It takes a moment before Cory realizes what he must have heard. “The new neighbor. Two men. They’re out there all hours.”
Scott nods. “Yeah, I know. I figured that out.” He looks up at her. “Did you unload it?”
Cory hesitates, then drops the bullets in her hand and hands Scott the gun.
“So why didn’t you shoot him?”
“It was a pup.”
“He’ll grow up.”
“I know.”
“Will you shoot him then?”
Cory shakes her head and begins to cry. “I can’t.”
Scott walks over to the window and stares at the backyard, streaked in light from the neighbor’s porch fixtures and the moon, half hidden behind a bank of thunder clouds.
“What do you think they’re talking about over there?”
AKA JUAN
Lawan would have been on time to pick up Gloria if he hadn’t circled back for Tricia, thinking it will make breaking the news easier, though he knows the second he drives off — that’s stupid. Tricia will make it worse. Because it’s weird to introduce a new girlfriend in a situation like this, and she knows it too, but can’t resist. She’s wanted to meet his family ever since she found out they are white.
On the way to the hospital Lawan lets Tricia choose the music while he watches the clock. Time seems to be moving faster than usual. Yesterday, Karen told him to be at the hospital by ten thirty. “They should have Mom discharged by then. You can bring her home in the van and I’ll meet you at the house.”
Lawan drives disabled kids for the county. They’re all in wheelchairs, skulls cradled by headrests and chins fixed by straps, like victims of mad scientists in the old black-and-white movies. The van he uses has a power ramp and bars to secure the chairs, and Lawan knows his boss won’t care if he drives Gloria home in it, but the way Karen assigned the task, as if he were some Negro houseboy in the prewar South, pissed him off, so he let an uncomfortable few seconds go by before saying, “I’m not supposed to use the van for personal stuff.”
Karen gave him that look. She cannot believe he works such a menial job. “This is for our mother, and it will take twenty minutes.”
Lawan relented because he’d have to go regardless. Gloria might be able to get from her chair into a car, but just barely, and only with someone strong to lean on. Six months pregnant, Karen could hardly be used as muscle, Kevin has a bad back from the bike accident a few years ago, and Dennis is built like you’d expect of someone who sits in a chair all day. If Gloria started to go down, he’d only serve as something soft to fall on.
By the time Lawan pulls into the hospital’s drive, it’s eleven fifteen. He tells Tricia to stay put. “I’ll go see what’s what.”
The automatic doors part, sending a burst of hospital-scented air at his face. In the far corner, Gloria sits reading. That morning, when she called to verify what time he’d be there, she said what she always says: “It’s Gloria, your mom.” He doesn’t think she ever identifies herself like this with the others.
Before she even looks up, Lawan offers his alibi. “Long morning.”
The kids release him from the weight of time. If he’s late, teachers and therapists assume one of them was sick or had a meltdown. Which is sometimes true. Every week or two he has to pull over and get in the back, hold somebody’s hand or stroke their hair. Once in a while, he sings. You can do stuff like that and nobody’s embarrassed, or tells on you afterward. They all just smile. The ones that can anyway.
Still, he feels a shit for blaming the kids. What the fuck, though. They don’t know.
Gloria tucks her book, something about Chinese farmers judging from the cover, into her bag. “No worries, honey, no worries. I was perfectly content.”
“I’ll get the bags and come back for you.”
Lawan turns and there’s Tricia, looking especially hot in a tight pair of red jeans. She introduces herself as Lawan’s friend and gets behind Gloria’s chair, popping its wheels free and maneuvering around the lobby furniture. Her son, Tyler, who has cerebral palsy, is on Lawan’s route.
Once they’re underway, Gloria in back secured to the bars, Tricia and she shout out get-to-know-you questions over the engine noise until it becomes too awkward and they fall silent. Lawan tunes to public radio because he’s used to classical music. It soothes the kids better than the stuff with words.
At the house, they’re all standing on the front porch — Dennis in his lawyer suit, Karen with her white doctor’s coat peeking out below her jacket, and Kevin wearing his standard khakis and spike-soled bicycling shoes, their gleaming white and green plastic surface freshly buffed. Lawan figures they’re out there just to make a point about how late he is. Otherwise, why not go in the house and sit down? It’s only fifty degrees, a damp May day that can’t make up its mind, and they have keys, of course. They all used to live here.
They appear to be arguing, but that doesn’t worry him. They argue a lot because Frank and Gloria always promoted opinions as if they mattered.
Getting out, Lawan hitches up his jeans, rebuckling to the next belt hole, and tries to look a little harried, remind them all that he might be late, but he’s the one who brought her. He pushes Gloria’s chair with Tricia trailing and as they reach the porch, everyone looks at her a second too long before saying hello.
“Tricia,” Lawan points. “Kevin, Dennis, Karen.” He thumbs toward the house. “So what’s the plan? How are we getting her inside?”
Everybody glances at each other and Lawan can tell they hadn’t thought about that. “Never going to be able to do these stairs.”
The house, a brick colonial with rotting porch columns, has five steps up to the front door. Lawan watches Karen squirm. She’s the doctor. Should have seen this problem coming. Finally he says, “I think I can get her around back and take her in through the patio door.”
The house sits on a hill, so the basement is a walkout, but it’s been a few years since Gloria was strong enough to garden and maneuvering her chair down the weed-choked incline proves difficult. Lawan manages, though, and keeps her pitched back on rear wheels across the choppy patio, its bricks sunken and heaved because Frank didn’t dig the base deep enough. He’s dead now, and the next owner will have to deal with it.
Inside, they all realize Lawan has only changed the problem. This is the basement, with a pool table from the 1970s, an old couch on which he lost his virginity to a homely girl named Reisha and, in the other room, the furnace, water heater, and laundry. Between the rooms a narrow, steep staircase leads to the main floor.
“Well, how the hell are we going to get her upstairs?” Dennis says.
“Can you sit on the stairs,” Tricia asks, “and scoot up backward?”
Karen looks at her with a suspicious, even hostile, glance, but Gloria deems it an excellent idea.
“I’ll go up on my ass just like I came down.”
She makes a move to stand and Lawan hustles forward, offering his arm. When she leans on it, he realizes she’s lost weight, and she didn’t have much to spare. Gloria has always been tall and bony, like one of those funny birds that can’t fly.