Night Navigation Page 20

  She begins to suck on her teeth, one tooth at a time. She has a terrible fear, she says, of going around with a piece of spinach or something gross stuck on a tooth and she'll walk about and no one will tell her. I'll tell you, I'll tell you, he's said, but it doesn't make her stop. The sucking sound drives him nuts. He breathes, tries to calm down. Dr. Taylor's substitute for Xanax: close your eyes, put yourself in a safe place. Took him a while to imagine himself back in the loft, the covers over his head. Now that he's got his license back, be good if Tess would let him borrow her truck from time to time, safer, but she doesn't offer and he's not asking. He needs a vehicle. Unlikely his mother's going to ever help him get another car. Not after what he did with the Tempo.

  When he opens his eyes, they're on Main Street. "It's on Buford, back behind the hospital," he says. But he doesn't want to go that way. Just the mention of it and the cover of darkness is gone and there he is putting a chair through the psych ward window, leaping to his escape because they wouldn't take him out for a smoke. "I don't want to go by the hospital."

  "I know that," Tess says.

  He told her the whole horror tale back when they were doing that kind of talking, removing the cover-ups, their clothes. Before they freaked, scrammed back to camouflage.

  She makes the turn to get to Buford from the other side. Rozmer said red brick, with a parking lot in back. "There," he says, "on the corner. The one with the purple flowers."

  "Looks like a regular home. They've got twelve kids in there? You'd think they'd have some sort of sign: Harbor House."

  "They don't want to advertise. They had to go through the whole 'not in my backyard' fight. People afraid these kids are going to steal their hubcaps, sell their kids dope."

  Tess laughs. "Or worse." She pulls into the driveway. Both dogs rise. Tess takes him right to the front walk, the hole in her muffler announcing his arrival.

  He gives the door a good shove. "Sorry I'm so edgy."

  She nods. "What time you want me to pick you up?"

  The door hinges whine. "What's good for you?"

  Of course neither of them's got a watch, but Tess always seems to know. She looks at the sky. "It's about two now," she says.

  "Won't be long I think. This interview? More Rozmer wanting me to continue my 'drop and roll' practice."

  "The job's only going to be a few hours a week. Might be a good thing."

  "Can't think they're going to hire someone with my history to work with kids."

  "Your interview's at two, right?" She puts the truck in gear. "I'm going to the library, see what my work schedule is at the store. Want me to pick you up some Golden Seal? Good for bleeding."

  Shit. He did not need a mention of his gums right at this ordeal-moment. He shuts the door, tests to make sure it's closed all the way.

  Tess cranes her neck to catch his eye. "I'll come back about two forty-five. You want to go to the three o'clock meeting, then do some grocery shopping?"

  "I don't know," he says.

  He watches her back the rusty pickup straight out of the long driveway, nary a correction of the wheel. She gives him a thumbs up when she makes the turn. He wishes he could back his way into being "just friends" with such ease. What a mistake to jeopardize the whole housemate deal by getting involved with Tess. Why AA advises no new relationships that first year. Plus, well, the fatal attraction is not there. 'Course he never got into that. It's me, not you, he'd said. Her response reassuring: I'm not that into you either. Let that not be just a cover for a hurt that's going to welt up and turn ugly. Rozmer's response to that: dream on. He was a shit and he promptly admits it. He follows the brick walk to the front door. VISITORS PLEASE SPEAK TO A STAFF MEMBER UPON ARRIVAL. He presses the doorbell three times like Rozmer told him. Quick and short: the code for letting staff know you're legit. Foolish really because after one such ring, every delinquent in the place knows exactly what it means and passes it on to the undesirables before nightfall.

  The sound of someone coming. Mark adjusts his face, runs his hand over his head, a head shaved so close it reveals his weird hairline and all because Rozmer didn't have a half-inch guard. At least the reflection of his face through the screen looks a little less P.O.W. The added weight? Zyprexa or the hash browns and eggs? Don't wear black, Rozmer told him, as though he needed such a pearl. He's donned his whitest T and a green plaid shirt rolled to the elbows. He looks at his arms: only a few faint needle scars left, the track marks paled to indecipherable. One hundred and thirty days. A boy, maybe fifteen, opens the door, looks at him through the screen. The usual exterior afflictions: acne and a nervous Adam's apple. Plus the doughy paunch of Game-Boy aficionados, anti-psychotic meds. "My name's Mark Merrick. I have an appointment with Ms. Glick at two."

  "Wait," the kid says, and leaves him hanging in the sun. The need for a smoke, his fingers beginning their gimme-tingle, and not one of those filterless, loose-ass roll-your-owns of his current life. Why did he let Rozmer pressure him into having this interview? Lot of days lately it's an effort to throw the sheet off, put his feet on the floor. Jacobs says the time between three and six months of recovery is often called the "Fuckits."

  From the back he hears voices, then the sound of a vacuum. The boy returns, no efforts at doing anything social with his face. He unlocks the screen door. Mark feels the sweat trickle down— his body always so eager to give him away. He follows the boy through a large foyer, a lineup of Macs on either side of the room— state of the art—two girls working at one. They go silent, slide him hostile glances. He feels their eyes on him as he moves away. Troubled teenage girls doing time at Harbor House, always under supervision. Forms of bullshit might be even more inventive than the boys'.

  They go down a long hall, doors open onto bedrooms: twin beds, dressers. Neat, everything new. Place just opened up. A Catholic Charity way station for kids coming out of the psych unit but not yet ready to go home or into foster care. Mornings they go to summer school, come back and do homework, have an outing. Place is getting the kinks out, Rozmer says. Already had one slit-wrists rush to Emergency that's upped the reality-amps: twelve fucked-up adolescents bouncing off the walls—no matter how attractive the posters—offers as much calm as the presence of land mines permits. This is why, Rozmer, it ain't a good place for a shell-shock like me. You can play music with them, basketball, Rozmer says. Dream on.

  The boy points to a small office at the end of the hall. NAOMI GLICK on the door. Then he disappears into a bedroom, leaves the door ajar. One of the rules. Mark settles in the chair across from the desk. The space is so small he has to cramp up, sit straight to have room for his knees. Naomi Glick's desk is piled with folders; "piled" may be too orderly a word. Geegaws crowd the shelves on the back wall: a collection of what must be doll teacups, a miniature farm: cut-out painted cows, chickens, sheep munching inside a fence backed by a blue silo. Get Tess one of those. The opposite of Ben Jacobs's exterior decor. Lots of clues, but clues to what? No photos though, no smiling family portraits, no line of big-teethed children in front of azure skies with sweet clouds. If Ms. Glick is a large person, things will be close. The air conditioner's on high: frosty. His body's starting to chill along the sweat lanes.

  "Hey." Ms. Glick enters, extends her hand. Wiry, short. Knotty little arms. Maybe a few years younger than he is. "Naomi," she says.

  He struggles to stand in the awkward space, after a quick brush of his damp fingers on his pants. "Mark Merrick." He's looking down at the top of her head. One thing in common: premature gray.

  "Sorry to keep you waiting." She pushes the door to almost closed. "Bill says you're in recovery, out of rehab for three months."

  Bill? Bill? Then it comes to him: William Rozmer. "Yes," he says.

  She drums her small fingers on the tops of the folders. "Have to go right to the personal in hiring someone to be a per diem aide here. Drugs being one of these kids' main issues as I'm sure you're aware."

  Her nails are bitten down, the cuticles raw.
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  "Actually I'm relieved to have that in the open. Get it over with." And he is.

  Her nails, his sweaty tang: their bodies exchanging data.

  "Bill says you've made a contract to be randomly drug-tested. I feel that's going to help if you decide you want the job, help clear things with my bosses at Catholic Charities." She takes a sheaf of papers from under the piles, flips through them. "You're a musician, a runner, a basketball player in high school. Still like to play a little pickup?"

  "I'm getting back into shape," he says.

  She hands him several of the sheets. "An application, releases, references," she says. "We have to run a background check to make sure you have no child abuse offenses. Sooner you get these all back to me the better. If you want the job." She hands him a pamphlet. "Harbor House guidelines. What we give all the kids' parents, their siblings…" Suddenly she leans across the piles, fixes him with her small black eyes. "Bill tells me that both your brother and your father killed themselves, so I'm wondering…" Something thuds hard against the back wall, the desk vibrates against his knees. Naomi Glick is on her feet and out the door. "Got to go," she says. "Main thing: get everything back to me as soon as you can."

  Loud voices, glass breaking. He sits for a few minutes. Down the long hall he sees the front door. He looks at the papers in his wet hands. He can drop them in the trash or leave them on top of the piles. This place is fucked up. He has no business being here.

  Tess dances while she shops. Shit Mu-zack, she says, but all we got. He follows her bobbing dreads, gyrating elbows, down the Dinners and Soups aisle, moving their cart to the beat of the music too. His job is to push the cart and to restrain overdoing it on the Family-Size Double Chocolate Brownie mixes. Actually from Tess he's learning to be a good shopper: not so much the price to ounces, but checking the ingredients for poisons and saturated fats, what's good to stock up on, the uses of tofu.

  "Heads up," Tess calls from way down the aisle as she under-hands him a box of Annie's Shells and Cheese, All Natural. "Pick up a few more if you think those look good," she says and disappears around the corner. Mostly they don't do prepared foods, but every now and then she can't resist a Dirty Rice. He checks over what they have so far: spaghetti sauce, yellow mustard, A.1., whole-wheat wraps, bananas, milk, green tea, a Styrofoam tray of chicken thighs. Be good to give up eating the flesh of others. He places the toilet paper, cat food, detergent, tampons in the child carrier seat. His food stamps cover the edibles until they run out, and Tess buys the rest. Only gets $140 a month so he's got to go light on junk, make the marrow bones for Luke and Queenie an occasional treat. Also he has to chip in on Tess's gas. So far finances not an issue, leaves them the energy to keep their mood swings from knocking one of them down for the count.

  He trolls past the bagel and donut cases, Tess bouncing ahead. Tess: cooler than cool. Putting her life back together. Be so good to latch on. Why can't he? But he is glad she talked him into shopping. The forty choices of toothpaste, the babies' grins, swathe Ms. Glick's slash to the heart, the whole Harbor fiasco. How could Rozmer have set him up for so much danger? Serious dip in the Trust and Judgment stocks. Definitely he was not up for a meeting: he is sick of meetings. Give his higher power a little R & R. Plus he doesn't want to see Rozmer right now. Rozmer's own mania streaking up the chart. Phone machine Word for the Day untranslatable. May have to fire Rozmer, rustle up a sponsor who doesn't push him onto the tracks of an oncoming train. He pulls up next to Tess; the fluorescence of the deli counter glints off the rhinestone stud in her nose. "Think we've probably maxed out the benefit card for July."

  Tess sets what looks like a silver wheel in the cart. Definitely not edible. He transfers it to the child seat. "Duct tape?" he says.

  "For the bats. Three in two days."

  "Four." The last two nights he's been startled awake by Tess's screams, her turning on every light, the careen of a bat through the house. Tess's refusal to go back to her room until the two of them have checked every inch, until he promised to place a blanket along the bottom of her door once she sealed herself in. It has been his job to find the bats each morning after their vampire swoops through the dark. Unfortunately two of them today and both of them in Tess's room: one tucked in behind a picture of Queenie, the other actually sitting on Tess's bookcase, its little ears visible against a white mug. He is able to place a towel over their brown stillness and carry them into the woods while they chitter beneath his hand, look up at him once he places them on the rotting stump, their tiny teeth going. "Duct tape?" he says again. "Hang it in strips from the ceiling, catch them like flies in mid-plunge for your hair?"

  "Ha, ha. I've decided they're not coming in when we open the door. They're sneaking in somewhere else. Maybe around the edges of that panel in your mom's closet, the one that goes to the storage space under the eaves. I'm going to duct-tape all around that."

  "Better clear it with my mother. She's coming down later."

  "You going to tell her about Harbor?"

  Then they both stop, lean toward the music. "Been a long time since I've heard this one," he says.

  "Me, too." They move toward the checkout. Tess begins to sing, "'Well, I've got to run to keep from hiding, and I'm bound to keep on riding…'"

  The cashier gives them a maternal smile.

  Mark swings in behind Tess, hums in his head: "'And I don't own the clothes I'm wearing. And the road goes on forever. But I'm not going to let them catch me, no.'"

  Tess rushes down the final hill so fast Mark presses his foot to the floorboards. The B & R Roto-Rooter sign has just emerged from behind the trees. "Want to check the mailbox?" But just as she starts to slow for the turn off the highway, she hits the accelerator again.

  The dogs slide to the floor in back as his hands smack the glove compartment to keep from being thrown. "What the hell, Tess?"

  "Jesusgod, look who's behind us. Shit, shit, shit. Should I turn in or keep going?"

  A green truck coming on full ahead. "Fuck." No question it's Smithy's green truck, Rudy at the wheel. "Turn, turn. But not so fast you turn us over." Tess cuts the corner so wide they almost slide into the ditch. Rudy's coming on too fast to follow. He hits the brakes, skids. Just misses the guardrails. Queenie and Luke leap up. Rudy's head hangs out the passenger window, his face twisted, his mouth at full scream.

  Tess hesitates. "Should I drive on through to your road? We'll be trapped. Dead end." There's the scrunch of Rudy grinding the gears to reverse.

  "Keep going. At least we'll have a phone. Or I'll beat his head in with your tire iron."

  Tess speeds past the Roto-Rooter septic holding tank. Mark keeps his eye on Smithy's truck. Rudy backs up full throttle, barely misses their mailbox. Then he roars down the drive after them. The B & R owner stands in the open door of the big shed, raises his hand in protest. Maybe he'll call the cops. Best scenario. "Step on it," Mark says. The truck bangs up the rise at the beginning of their road. Tess hits every pothole full on. They streak by the pole barn.

  "Oh Mark, your mother's already here," Tess yells over the yapping racket.

  "Just one good thing after another," he says. "Pull up right behind her car." Tess screeches to a stop. "Take the dogs in. Try to keep it as cool as you can." They all pile out. Queenie and Luke begin a wild chase around the yard. Del opens the front door. Mark hops into the truck bed. "Where's your tire iron? Your jack?"

  "I don't have one." Tess is busy grabbing Queenie by the collar, dragging her bulldog reluctance toward the house.

  "What's wrong?" Del calls, starting down the walk.

  "Tess, bring me the wrecking bar on the other side of my bed. Mom, go back inside. Tess will fill you in." Mark jumps to the ground and unhooks one of the chains that anchors the tailgate. He wraps the steel links around his hand, then turns to face the road.

  20 : Echolocation

  THROUGH THE WINDOW Del watches Tess run toward Mark, the cordless phone in one hand, the long, heavy bar in the other. Above the
scrabble of Queenie's nails, her whines, as she races back and forth between the two doors, Del listens for the rumble of a truck coming. Luke is nowhere in sight. "Queenie," she says, grabbing Tess's dog by the collar, tucking her between her own trembling legs, "it's going to be all right." Del doesn't believe this: "all" and "right" are never paired. She's been expecting some violent contact from Rudy ever since he threatened to burn down their barn, ever since Mark returned, ever since Tess moved in. Every time the phone rings, "This is it" squeezes her stomach hard. Except at Richard's. At Richard's she's able to sink into her drawings, the black of the graphite, the white of the paper.

  Mark turns toward the house. He gives her a reassuring wave. She reassures herself with this: Though Mark's still up and down, he seems to be keeping his promise. Tense as it is sometimes between him and Tess when Del comes down from Richard's for her two days of restaking her claim, as irritable as Mark sometimes is with her, he doesn't drop over the edge. He's going to meetings, keeping his appointments. Three months, three months is a long time.

  Tess and Mark stand without moving. Del rests her forehead on the glass, unlocks her knees a little on Queenie's pulsing flanks. Minutes pass. She sees Mark loosen. He leans the bar against the bumper, begins to roll a cigarette. Tess sits on the lowered tailgate. A brown blur streaks around the bend in the road: Luke. He returns at a full run when Mark whistles. She lets go of Queenie, shoves back the bolt on the front door to let Luke in. If Rudy was going to drive up in the truck, he'd be here by now. Possible that he parked in the gravel bank to sneak down over the ridge, but not likely.

  The wrecking bar slung over his shoulder, Mark walks toward the barn. The tilt of his dark head, his angular rhythm: always that shock, that second of Lee alive once more, growing smaller and smaller till finally he's gone. Maybe Mark's going to climb the hill, look down over the land to see if Rudy's lurking about, but wouldn't it be better if they all stayed in the house, all possible entries locked. Even the dog panel down. She's going to recommend they put a lock on the kennel gate, start keeping the dog door closed. Rudy's thin enough to slither through.