Читать книгу August and then some - David Prete - Страница 9

Grand Central Terminal. Hundreds of people move under the green ceiling of constellations that hear every voice. I walk to the main concourse; the heartbeat in my head reminds me how much I drank last night. I squint at the departures board. 12:07 Hudson Line local to Poughkeepsie departing from track 32, making stops at 125th Street, Morris Heights, University Heights, Marble Hill, Spuyten Duyvil, Riverdale, Ludlow, Yonkers … I could recite that shit in my sleep, if I slept.

Coke in hand, turkey hero with mayonnaise in mid-bite, I flip around toward my track, and crash lunch-first into a woman hustling to get her train. She glances back and throws me a “Sorry,” with an I’m-too-late-to-be-too-worried face. I wipe the mayonnaise off my mouth … Oh, shit. I vaguely remember walking down Avenue A last night crashing into another woman. Did we crash? No, I think I grabbed her. Probably grabbed her. Maybe she smacked me. Did I get smacked? Yeah. I think I did.

On the train I take my last bite, crumple the wax paper, put it back in the brown bag, and lay it on the seat next to me so no one sits there. I lean my head against the window and try to get comfortable in the seat that was designed by an idiot. My face feels ten degrees hotter than it needs to be. Beer, my head keeps telling me with every heartbeat, beer, beer… I touch my cheekbone. Yeah, I think I did get smacked last night. The details aren’t clear. Probably wasn’t as bad as a couple weeks ago when I was walking down Avenue A, saw this girl coming at me, and decided to grab both of her shoulders. I stopped her in mid-stride and her boyfriend asked me if I had a fucking problem. I told him the last time someone asked me that they were in the third grade and still sleeping with their mother. When he tried to shove me I was quick enough to grab him by his wrists and yanked him off the curb smack into a parked car. But I was too sloshed to stop his fist when he came back at me. He only got off one punch because girlfriend was yelling at him to stop. With my ass on the street I told him that he just proved the opposite of what he was trying to prove. It sounded like a good line at the time. It made him turn back around, made his girlfriend grab his arm and yell at him to stop already. Which he finally did. I just wanted to gum up the works of their relationship, separate them for a second, see how they handle drunken scrutiny. Yeah, I’m guessing last night was a milder version of that.

Me and Stephanie didn’t say much beyond what’s up last night. We sat up there invisible to the rest of the neighborhood until my first six-pack ran out and I went to the deli for more. I asked her if she wanted one, but she said no. Sad girl.

After 125th Street the train crosses the East River, hugs the banks of the South Bronx, and shoots up the Hudson. I see signs fly by with the word Yonkers on them. My heart rate speeds up and my insides try to make a B-line out my ass. This stop always comes too soon. I think about staying on. Taking this train as far as it goes then hitching a one-way ride north, which is stupid because people don’t hitchhike anymore.

I step onto the platform and my t-shirt gets blown in the trail-wind of the train. I watch the train go up the tracks and get smaller until I can’t see or hear it.

The river is about a mile wide here and seems to separate nature from nurture. I stand on the nurture side with the new apartment buildings and cafés. Cliffs inhabited only by trees stand on the New Jersey side and look down perpetually forgiving the Yonkers side.

I pass a café lined with bay windows that has a new co-op building above it. Right now it’s past lunchtime and the place is practically empty. A few waitresses lean on the bar and pick at their fingernails while the television over their heads plays last night’s Yankees highlights. A few tables are taken by people sitting across from each other, talking to someone else on their cell phones. This café’s valet wears a white shirt and a bowtie, and sits on a stool in a chained-off parking lot that can hold maybe ten cars. He stares at the water and fingers the stack of unused parking stubs.

I walk three blocks away from the water on a street lined with tall brick housing projects. Cages cover the first floor windows, graffiti covers front doors, and smashed lights hang above entrances. The buildings resemble the hospital where my mom worked: flat, only the essentials. Summer-school kids walk by them, dip their hands into bags of Bugles and Doritos. They laugh and talk loud enough that I can hear them over the four lanes of traffic between us. They’ve hung backpacks from their elbows and attitudes on their faces that explain they can do anything they want, no permission needed. It’s like watching me and Nokey a year ago.

A few blocks past that stand City Hall and the Yonkers court-house buildings. The courthouse clock says I have five minutes to get into the Integrated Domestic Violence building.

My charges have been read. Probable cause and intent to steal and sell have all been established. The trial date is set for two months from now. But I’m being good. I have sought and maintained employment, enrolled in an educational program in pursuit of a GED, am complying with periodic check-ins with the authorities, refraining from possessing firearms, undergoing family psychological treatment, and failing to see where the justice is in all this relentless bullshit.

Family psychological treatment works like this: we all sit in a white, cinderblock-walled room and stare in opposite directions. We pick at the arms of our padded metal chairs as our appointed counselor asks us questions about how we feel and why. My mother cries in that quiet dab-your-nose kind of way and my dad says absolutely nothing.

Today is no different. Our counselor says, “What’s going on today?” She’s got this low, one-note tone that makes everything she says sound like it’s in parentheses.

After she asks what’s going on there’s a real long silence.

I say: I think I got punched last night.

COUNSELOR: You think you got punched?

ME: Yeah. Not sure.

MOM: (Looks at me, concern in her eyes.)

COUNSELOR: Why do you think you did? And why aren’t you sure?

ME: I’m not sure. And I don’t know.

COUNSELOR: Did you get into a fight?

ME: Probably not exactly.

COUNSELOR: Where were you?

ME: Hard to say exactly.

COUNSELOR: Were you out somewhere?

ME: Yeah. I think so.

COUNSELOR: Who were you with?

ME: Well if I did get hit, I guess the person who hit me was there. Other than that—

MOM: Jake, please stop.

COUNSELOR: No, it’s OK.

MOM: Why do you constantly badger this woman? ME: I’m not—

MOM: She’s trying to help.

ME: OK.

COUNSELOR: It’s OK, Mrs Savage.

MOM: Miss.

COUNSELOR: (Cringing.) I’m sorry.

DAD: (Inhaling deeply, letting it out as protest.)

MOM: Just call me Francine already. (Head falling into hands.)

COUNSELOR: Francine, you all get to talk about whatever you want to talk about. Anything that’s on your mind.

Silence.

COUNSELOR: Anything.

More silence.

Mom wipes nose.

Counselor looks from face to face, encouraging and waiting for the next word.

Dad picks at chair.

Silence.

ME: I’m OK.

Short silence.

COUNSELOR: What do you mean, Jake?

ME: If I was hit—

MOM: Jake …

ME: I’m saying that if I was hit, and I might have been, I’m O-K.

COUNSELOR: Well, Jake, according to your psychiatrist’s evaluation you’re not really OK.

ME: He’s not my psychiatrist. I don’t have a psychiatrist. I only went to one because they told me to.

COUNSELOR: He’s a medical doctor whose diagnosis for you was “severe depression”.

ME: I maintain my right to refuse medication, because I’m not depressed. How many times do I have to say this? If he wanted to give me something to knock me out at night, then fine. But apparently he didn’t think sleep was so worthy, so forget him. I’m OK. All right? I’m A-OK. Not that anyone was worried.

COUNSELOR: Is anyone worried about Jake?

Short silence.

DAD: (Staring at the floor, expression hidden.) I am.

EVERYONE: (Silence.)

She yells my name as I trot down the courthouse stairs, her voice a perpetual panic attack. I turn mid-step and with my eyes ask what she wants. She settles on the stair above me, a forced sliver of a smile poking through her puffy face.

“You gave our counselor a hard time in there.”

“We all get them.”

If I know my mom, she’s now using the obvious as a segue into what she really wants to say.

“Jake.” She preps herself with a deliberate inhalation. “I want you to know you can come home.”

Do I know my mom?

“Home?” I say like she’s joking.

“Yes.”

“Where’s that?”

“With me.”

“Not an option, Mom.”

She nods her head and purses her lips as if she was expecting a response like that. She reaches up to touch my peach-fuzz hair. “You don’t look very good.”

I duck away from her hand. “Me? Look at the eyes on you.”

“That all you’ve been doing?” Now she looks me back in the eye and I notice a familiar distant gaze, a clear film covering the emotions in her eyes. I recognise it from when she’s gotten one of her doctor friends to prescribe her sleeping pills. “Little Xanax too?”

She lets out a sigh so distinctly defeated that I’m sure I’ll be able to reproduce it on my deathbed. “How any other way can I sleep?”

“Lot of Xanax. You got any for me.”

“I’ll get fired.”

“Oh, please. I gotta get to my train.”

I’m able to take one step down before she says, “Wait.”

“I’m late. Whudda you want?”

She reaches into her shoulder bag and pulls out an envelope.

“I don’t need that.”

“But Jake, look at you. Your shoulder bones are sticking out. You can’t be eating.”

“I eat great. Thank you.”

“Then take it to go to the dentist or something.” She emphatically extends it in my direction. “I mean what if something happens to you and you have to go to the doctor? Or the hospital? Take it.”

“I’ll take some Xanax.”

“I insist you take it.”

“I insist you put it away.”

She drops her arm, still holding the envelope at her side. “You can’t do whatever it is you think you’re doing by yourself. Our counselor won’t say that, but we all know it. You can’t take this one alone.”

“I’ve taken many things alone.”

She shakes her head like she pities me. “Look. You tried something, Jake. OK? And I know it’s almost more than I can say for myself. It wasn’t the smartest thing, but I get it OK? You wanted to fix things.”

I point directly at her chest and say, “Someone had to.”

For this she slaps my face. Which stuns us both for a few seconds.

“Jesus, this is like the family habit. We don’t smoke, but we can backhand with the best of em. I wonder if the courthouse security cameras caught that one.” I do jumping jacks on the stairs. “Hey, coppers. Judges. You getting this?”

And for this I get three slaps in the mouth. Then she vices my face between her palms. “Goddamn you. Stop the fucking sarcasm.” She lets go of me. “Get real. There’s things we’re not going to say in there. We both know that. But don’t you get it? I’m forgiving you.”

“YOU’RE forgiving ME?”

“Yes. And neither one of us can afford for you to not accept that.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because we’re already family; we don’t need to be enemies on top of that.”

I take my time backing off her and taking the steps down again. Behind me she says, “You could stop hating him.”

“I don’t.”

“Yes you do. You’re afraid of him. He’s got a way of scaring people for good. Trust me.”

“I’ll take some Xanax.”