Only the Rain Page 6

  Back before Mom had me, she asked a friend of hers to use an old photo of Pops in his dress blues, and somehow combine it with the photo of Gee and little Davy. I don’t know if there was such a thing as Photoshop back then or not, but I do know that Gee cherished that photo of the three of them, even though if you got close up the photo of Pops looked like a kind of cutout superimposed behind Gee’s right shoulder. Still, when Pops and Gee took Mom and me in, it was almost like we were a family of five instead of four. Hardly a night passed that Mom didn’t say “Goodnight, Davy,” on her way up the stairs. Later, when she wasn’t able to climb the stairs anymore and slept on a roll-up bed in the dining room, I’d sometimes hear her talking in the middle of the night, and the only thing that kept me from being scared was telling myself she was talking to her brother, Davy.

  And there was other stuff in that box too, every piece wrapped in its own sheet of Bubble Wrap, all those worthless, priceless pieces of the past the four of us had shared. I was weak and shaky and teary-eyed from looking at them, even the ones I didn’t remember ever seeing before, and at the same time I felt all dirty and despicable because of those bundles of cash at my feet.

  Then my phone beeped in my pocket and nearly shocked me out of my skin. It was a text from the daycare center, reminding me that they closed at six and would I be coming soon? I texted back B there in 10. Then I repacked the box and covered the cut tape with strips of fresh duct tape, one strip over each cut because I knew I would be back to look inside that box again.

  Then it was a matter of finding somewhere else to put the money. I started looking at the furniture pushed up against the wall. The secretary and dresser had lots of empty drawers, but how bright would it be to dump the money in there?

  I finally settled on the rolltop desk, especially after I found a key in the little drawer underneath the rolltop part. The key was for locking the rolltop down, which was exactly what I did after I’d stuffed each of the six pigeonholes with bundles of cash, then stacked the rest of the bundles in front of the pigeonholes. Afterward I pocketed the key to guarantee that if maybe Pops ever got the idea of locking something of his own in there, he wouldn’t be able to get the top up.

  Before leaving I checked and double-checked and triple-checked everything I’d touched, and felt for that key in my pocket at least a half-dozen times, making sure it hadn’t evaporated, I guess. Then I locked up the unit, shook the padlock as hard as I could to make sure it was secure, and climbed back into the truck with nothing in my hands but a smashed-down shoebox.

  I backtracked a couple of miles, using those few minutes to calm myself down as much as I could before I picked up the girls. I pulled over a block from the daycare to stuff the shoebox into a trash can, then drove forward and parked again and apologized to Anita, a college girl who had stayed late and was keeping the girls entertained with a game of Chutes and Ladders.

  I was still out of breath and nauseated when I pulled into the garage at home and unbuckled Emma from her car seat. Then Dani climbed out and sniffed the air and squealed, “I smell pasgetti!,” and I couldn’t keep it down any longer. I hustled outside around the corner of the garage and hoped the neighbors weren’t watching while I puked into the grass.

  Sunday mornings I usually stay in bed with Cindy, snuggling and talking about whatever, until we hear the girls making noise. But that next Sunday wasn’t typical, and I was awake before dawn, even though I’d spent most of the night jerking awake at the slightest sound, some of them probably not even real. I slipped out of bed and dressed and put on a pot of coffee, and while the coffee was dripping into the pot I walked out our street to the intersection, where there’s one of those glass boxes with newspapers in it.

  I bought a copy and checked out the entire front page before I got back home. Nothing. Then I laid it out on the counter and drank my coffee and went through the paper from front to back. By the time I got to the last page, the coffee tasted sour going down and even worse in my stomach.

  Around here, it’s big news if the police shut down a meth lab. The whole county is basically a bunch of small towns and villages, a lot of two- or three-man police forces whose biggest excitement is breaking up a bar fight or a domestic disturbance. Early last spring a van with fourteen illegals in it was stopped along the interstate that runs through the northern part of the county, and before long that part of the highway looked like a state trooper convention. I swear that if it had happened at night instead of in the afternoon, the glow from all those flashing red and blue lights would have painted the sky like the aurora borealis. It was all anybody could talk about for at least a week.

  So when the Sunday paper had not a word in it about a meth lab being raided out along Route 218, I knew that despite the call I made from the nursing home, no raid had taken place, or one had but nobody was arrested. And every implication of that was sickening. I knew I had to do something, but what?

  That morning dragged on forever, though even now I can’t remember any of it, except that it seemed an eternity before the girls finished lunch and I came up with a plan. I said, “How about after your mom and me clean up the dishes, we go get G-paw and take him out for an ice cream?” Of course, that suggestion had the effect I knew it would, at least from the girls.

  Cindy said, “I thought you said you were going to mow the yard today. And then you’d bring him over for a barbecue tonight. Remember?”

  She could tell by the look on my face that I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “I mentioned it Friday when you wanted the truck for the day,” she said. “Don’t you remember? It was your idea last Monday, Tuesday night. You said if the weather was good on Sunday, today, which it is, you wanted to mow the yard and then bring Pops over to spend the day with us. That’s why there’s a rack of ribs and four chicken breasts thawing out in the refrigerator right now.”

  The girls started chanting, “Ice cream! Ice cream!” And I told them, “Hush now, I can’t think.”

  Cindy said, “We can do it some other time if you want, it’s up to you. But remember that Dani starts first grade the day after Labor Day, and I haven’t had a chance to get her any school supplies yet, and both girls need a couple of outfits and new shoes. I was planning on going to the outlets next weekend to do all that. Which means putting off a barbecue until, what—the second weekend in September?”

  I sat there blinking, feeling stupid, unable to put a single clear thought together.

  “Ice cream,” Dani said in a loud whisper.

  So Emma, of course, had to scream it at the top of her lungs. “Ice creeeeem!”

  And at the sound of that shriek I jerked. I practically jumped out of my chair.

  Cindy studied me for a few seconds. “You all right?” she asked. “Are you still not feeling well?”

  I took a couple of breaths, then I gave them all what even I knew was a phony smile. “Let’s do this, okay, guys? I’ll get started on the yard while you two help your mom out in here. I want your rooms cleaned too before Pops gets here. And if you do everything Mom asks you to, when I go pick up Pops I’ll bring home some of that cookie dough ice cream you like.”

  “Yeah!” Dani said, and Emma grinned and bounced up and down in her booster seat.

  I asked Cindy, “Is that okay?”

  “Sounds like a plan. You mind getting the ice cream at the Giant Eagle down the road from Pops? They have those sweet Hawaiian rolls he likes.”

  “Sure. Make me a list.”

  “The girls and I will make potato salad. Can you buy another side, something without mayonnaise in it?”

  I pushed myself away from the table, put my hands on the edge of the table and stood up. “Put it on the list so I don’t forget.”

  She followed me out into the pantry and stopped me before I went out the back door. “Hey,” she said, just loud enough for her and me.

  I turned.

  “Are you all right?”

  I smiled again. “Don’t I look all right?
”

  “No, you don’t. You look like you need to go back to bed.”

  “My stomach’s a little queasy, that’s all.”

  “Why don’t you forget about the yard for today?”

  “Well if you have a magic wand you can wave over it, you be my guest.”

  I knew the moment I said it, it was not a good thing to say. We don’t talk that way to each other. I think we both try to be as gentle with each other and the girls as we can. Cindy has a special aversion to sarcasm, which, as she has told me many times, especially after one of her mother’s visits, she considers “the lowest form of humor.”

  And now I couldn’t bear that look in her eyes. I stepped back and put my arms around her and pulled her up against me. “I’m sorry, baby. I just . . .”

  She rubbed her hand around in a circle between my shoulder blades. “Not enough sleep and an upset stomach, I know. Let’s forget about a barbecue today.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I told her. “I really do want Pops to get a little sunshine before it’s gone for the year.”

  “You’re going to end up making yourself even sicker.”

  “I’m a big boy,” I told her, and I kissed the side of her head.

  “A big stubborn baby,” she said, but she gave me another squeeze before she let go and turned back to the kitchen.

  The yard that day seemed twice as big as usual. I kept wanting to turn the lawn tractor out onto the sidewalk, and keep on going until there was nowhere left to go.

  While I was mowing and dreaming of driving straight into the ocean, Cindy called Pops to remind him about the barbecue and ask what time he wanted to come over. And Pops, being Pops, said something like, “Let me have my secretary check the schedule. I know I have a board meeting at eleven, I address Congress at twelve, and from one to two I’m supposed to go skinny-dipping with Lucy Liu. But I can put those off until tomorrow, especially for some of Russell’s burned spareribs.”

  Cindy thought Pops was hilarious. He never made fun of other people, only himself. And sometimes politicians and actors and millionaire athletes. But the real people, as he called the rest of us, he left alone.

  Anyway, they decided on 3:00 p.m., and Cindy talked him out of driving over himself, said it would be a waste of gas since I had to go right past his place anyway to pick up a few things from the store. “And of course,” Cindy told me, “he argued that it would be a waste of even more gas for you to drive the whole way over there when he could go to the store himself.”

  I hadn’t noticed any major problems with his driving skills up till then except for the slowness and a tendency to drift to the right, which he blamed on the Lumina being out of alignment, but Cindy has always been very protective of him and seems to worry about him even more than I do. And the thing about Pops is, if a man asks him to do something, Pops will argue until kingdom come, but if a woman asks, he’s eventually going to end up doing whatever she wants.

  So after I showered and made a quick stop at Giant Eagle, I went to pick him up—and there he was waiting on the bench out front of Brookside, exactly like I knew he would be. He climbed in and buckled up, and I said, “Lucy Liu, Pops?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t think she’s a beautiful woman.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Name a woman more beautiful than her.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, uh . . .”

  “Don’t even try, son. It’s an exercise in futility.”

  Being around Pops always made me feel better. All day long my head had felt like it was being squeezed in a vise, while at the same time it was swelling from the inside out. But now, for the first time in forty-eight hours, the pressure let up a little bit.

  There was something about Pops’ attitude, I guess, even when he wasn’t saying anything. I mean there he was almost eighty years old, and still wearing the sleeves of his T-shirt rolled up so as to show off his biceps. Within an hour he’d be doing one-handed push-ups in the yard with one of the girls riding on his back. I used to marvel at the way he’d make a speed bag sing. He was the toughest old bird I knew, and yet the softest when it came down to his family. I guess it’s fair to say he was everything I wanted to be, but now believed I never could. Even if I gave the money back, I would always be a thief. I would be like the glass deer I broke and then glued back into place. Maybe nobody else ever noticed the damage, but I always knew it was there. And I was always worried that sooner or later somebody else would see it too.

  On the way out of town I played with the idea of telling him everything. But then he said, “You get that furniture moved around out in the unit?”

  I nodded, because I couldn’t bear to lie to him out loud. “There’s your key in the console,” I told him. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Is there enough room for your bike?”

  “Plenty,” I said.

  “Things must be going pretty good at the plant if you’re thinking about getting a car.”

  “Real well,” I told him. Then, “Hey, by the way, do me a favor and don’t mention anything about a new car to Cindy. I was going to surprise her with the idea, but in fact I’m having second thoughts about putting the bike away so early. I can’t let one little skid spook me into not riding. Not with at least two more months of good riding left.”

  “It’s not the skid that’s important, though. It’s those babies of yours.”

  “I know, Pops. I know.”

  I could feel him looking at me a couple of times, but he didn’t say anything more.

  Then I saw the Get-Go up ahead, and that’s when I decided I couldn’t wait until later to satisfy my curiosity. I had planned to run past the naked girl’s house after I took Pops home that night, but it would be dark by then and besides I would probably be half-crazy with nervousness wondering if the place had gotten busted or not.

  So I flipped my turn signal on and said, “You mind if we take the scenic route home?”

  “As long as you can keep it to a minimum,” he said. “Too much scenery might throw me into a seizure of some kind.”

  Not only was there no police tape around the little house, but the windows weren’t blacked out now, and the pit bull was chained up closer to the house and sleeping in the shade by the front steps. It didn’t make any sense to me.

  Pops said, “What are you slowing down for? You’re driving like me now.”

  “This is where I almost lost it on the bike. Car pulled out in front of me.”

  “Out of that driveway?”

  “That’s the one. You have any idea who lives in that place?”

  “Somebody who needs a couple of driving lessons, is all I know. What kind of car was it?”

  “To be honest with you, Pops, I don’t even remember. I hit the brakes and started fishtailing. By the time I got the bike straightened out, the car was long gone.”

  “Well,” he said, looking out at the trees now, “let’s hope this little excursion past the scene of the crime has exorcised your demons.”

  We were still a couple of miles from home when I said to him, “Hey, you know what I all of sudden remembered when I was out in your unit yesterday? Those times you took me shooting in the dump.”

  Pops smiled and looked out the window. “That old dump’s long gone now. Some fella put a motel or something up along the edge of that ravine.”

  “Bed and breakfast,” I told him. “Built to look like a little English castle. You can’t even tell it’s all modular construction. Went up in four days.”

  “Probably took longer than that to clean out the dump.”

  “Probably did.” I let a few seconds pass. “Hey, whatever happened to that gun we used? That old revolver.”

  He looked at me and grinned.

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s in the MISCELLANEOUS box. It’s yours now.”

  “No kidding?” I said. “Does it still work?”

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  “Didn’t you tell me once that Gee bought it fo
r you way back when? It must be an antique by now.”

  “I’m an antique and I still work,” he said. “I drive a little slower is all.”

  “Yeah but you still get to go skinny-dipping with Lucy Liu.”

  “Every night,” he said. “I pop in that Charlie’s Angels DVD, turn out the lights, and then Lucy and me head off to the swimming hole.”

  I put on the turn signal and turned down the cul-de-sac. “These are things I’d rather not hear about, Pops.”

  “Just you wait,” he said.

  I pulled up in front of the garage. I knew the girls would come running out any second now. “Did you even have to register your firearms back in those days?” I asked.

  “Probably supposed to,” he said, and then he popped open his door, because here came the girls, laughing and squealing.

  You know how they say if you fool around with a Ouija board you open up a door that any spirit good or bad can come in? And that the ones that most want to get at you are the bad ones? I’m wondering if the same holds true for bad stuff in general. Like if I’m in a hurry to get to the bathroom some morning and I stub my toe on the dresser. An hour later I might spill coffee all over the floor, then scrape a fender pulling the truck out of the garage, then accidentally run over the garbage can because I’m so ticked off about the fender. It’s like that book Dani loves so much, something about a series of unfortunate events. And let’s say the first event was something a whole lot worse than stubbing a toe, something major, something like stealing a significant amount of money. Are even bigger and badder things now likely to follow in the wake of that?

  By doing that one bad thing, did I maybe open up my life to a whole world of bigger and nastier trouble?

  I’m going to have to answer yes to that.

  So the weekend passed, and Monday morning I kept telling myself to say something to Cindy about the plant closing. Sooner or later she was going to hear about it at the bank. Thing is, I knew how she would react. She can go into panic mode over the tiniest thing. Why put her through that sooner than necessary? Fridays were the busiest days of the week at the bank, so maybe I could squeak by until then.