“I promise,” I say, thinking that it has been over a year since we have kissed. Worry-the surest way to a woman’s heart. I thank her again and leave. If I didn’t know better, I would think Rainey still loves me.
At home Sarah and her friend Chris are watching a movie. Fortunately, it is dark in the house, which is lit only by the glow of the TV set. I carry my bloody clothes in a paper sack Rainey has provided me. Engrossed in some horror flick, Sarah barely speaks, and I escape to my bedroom after murmuring goodnight. Tomorrow will be soon enough for her to see my wounds. I take a couple of aspirin and sit down on my bed. Woogie, perhaps drawn by the medication, tries to lick at my face until I push him away. He is even a more inept fighter than his master and has perpetually sore ears to prove it. Before I turn off the light, I tell him, “They would have knocked every one of your teeth out.”
He turns his head away and settles down at the end of the bed as if to say he would never have gotten himself in such a mess.
The next morning every bone in my body feels as if someone has taken a hammer to it. Thank God I don’t have to get out of bed today, because I can’t move. Of course I do have to get out of bed or risk wetting it. As much as I ache, it is tempting just to say to hell with it and see if I can reach the window. I could always blame it on Woogie. As if sensing disaster, he hops down off the bed and scratches at the door.
At least he is civilized. Shamed by my own dog, I slip on some pants and creak into the bathroom. If anything, my face looks worse. Today there are streaks of yellow and green under my eye. I look forlornly at the spot where my tooth was. Even as bad as the others look, chipped and dingy, at least they are present and accounted for, and not in the parking lot of the Bull Run buried up to their roots in the tar.
Depressed, I limp into the front yard with Woogie, hoping nobody is out. Accustomed to more of a walk, Woogie contents himself with lifting his leg over my neighbor’s petunias.
What the hell. If his wife needs flowers, Jewell Patterson, a tall black man in his fifties, can bring home all he wants from patients’ rooms at the VA hospital, where he works as a registered nurse.
His brick home, the color of ginger, has three bedrooms to my two, and Jewell has a snow-white Lincoln Continental in the garage that he’ll wash this afternoon. Carol, his wife, is a schoolteacher. If we’re all outside in the yard and hear the sound of a gun being fired from the direction of Needle Park, Jewell will mutter, “Damn, those niggers!” and order Carol to go into the house. The second week in September, the morning, in contrast to last night’s humidity, is sharp and clear, a beautiful day for a walk, since Needle Park is usually quiet on a Sunday morning. Even drug dealers have to sleep some time. My bones ache too much to go further, however, and I turn around, disappointing my dog. This is what old age must be like.
“Pick up the paper and hand it to me,” I tell Woogie as I dodder up my driveway. He looks at me as if I were crazy, and I stoop in slow motion. Thank God, he can’t talk. He’d give me hell, too.
Normally, I would make some coffee and sit at the kitchen table and read the paper until Sarah gets up. Not today. I collapse back into bed and doze off after reading the funny papers, the last thought on my mind Margo’s underwear in Apartment 3-G.
“Dad, are you okay?”
I awake with a start. I had been dreaming about the fight and apparently was talking in my sleep. I look at my watch.
It is almost ten. I haven’t gone back to sleep in the morning since I was in high school. But I haven’t been beaten up since high school either.
“I guess,” I mutter.
“Come on in.”
“What happened?” Sarah exclaims immediately as she comes through the door. Her eyes redden as soon as she sees me. She is wearing her blue summer dress I haven’t seen since the spring, a strand of fake pearls her aunt Marty got for her at Christmas, stockings, and her white flats. Mass what else? What has prompted this? So far as I know, she hasn’t been inside a church in a couple of years. Then I remember her letter and our conversation on the way home from Conway during Governor’s School.
I put a finger to my mouth and motion for her to close the door. I assume Chris is still in the house. I feel as sheepish as if I had been caught with a woman in my bed.
“Just a little problem last night,” I say, pulling the sheet up to my chest.
“Sit down on the bed, and I’ll give you a real quick summary. Looks like you’re on your way to Mass. You look great.”
Obediently, Sarah sits on the bed, a horrified look on her face.
“Did somebody beat you up?”
God, she looks beautiful. My heart is about to burst as I realize how much she looks like her mother on our first formal date. We went to an outdoor seafood restaurant, not more than thirty yards from the beach in Cartagena. It was January, windy but still warm, and the waves crashed so loudly against the shore we almost had to put our heads next to each other to be heard.
“I was out at this redneck bar looking for some information about that case I have in four days involving the black psychologist, and a guy who obviously hates my client jumped me in the parking lot.”
“Oh!” Sarah says, jostling the bed and sending a wave of nausea through me. I shouldn’t have had that last beer at Rainey’s last night.
“Your eye looks terrible. I’m so sorry.”
I try to smile, but it probably looks like I’m wincing.
“I’m fine.” Except for the last two words, I’ve at least told some of the truth. There is no sense in trying to tell her the whole story right now.
“How come you’re going to Mass?”
Leaning forward on the bed, Sarah wails, “He knocked out your tooth!”
I lean up and pat her hand.
“It was the chipped one probably about to fall out anyway. I’ll get a fake temporary one tomorrow. It’ll look ten times better. Don’t worry.”
“Did you call the police?” she asks, tears beginning to trickle down her face, ruining her makeup. I wish she wouldn’t wear it.
I reach over and grab a tissue from the nightstand beside the bed.
“Quit this,” I say handing her the flimsy paper.
“Chris is going to think I’ve been abusing you.” Call the police? I think not. I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple weren’t there giggling as that monster at the door hustled me outside. At least he didn’t come out with me.
“Nay, calling the cops would have been sissy in that place,” I say.
“Oh,” she says, laughing in spite of herself, “where was it?”
“Go on to church,” I urge her.
“I’ll tell you more about it later. It’s no big deal.”
She looks down at the cheap Timex watch I gave her for her birthday last week. Seventeen. She’s been kissed, but I hope that’s all. A black boy from her Christians and Jews camp has called her a couple of times, but she says they’re just friends. Given who her mother was, how can I complain?
“Are you going to be okay?” she asks, pushing up from my bed.
“I can stay home. After not going for two years, it’s not like I’m trying for a perfect attendance record.”
“I’ve been a great father, haven’t I?” I say, forcing a smile. I run my tongue through the latest hole in the rapidly deteriorating dike that is my body. At least they didn’t knock out four or five.
“You’ve been a great father,” Sarah says, her voice trembling and hoarse with as much emotion as a radio evangelist’s.
Lighten up, kid, I think. It’s not as if I am trying to make a living as a prizefighter.
“Say a little prayer,” I instruct her, “that my dentist won’t enjoy fixing this too much. That’s what I’m worried about.”
I get the grin I want, and five minutes later I hear the front door slam. Woogie, pushing open the bedroom door, clicks into the room and sits on the floor looking hopefully at me.
His toenails are starting to look like bear claws. He could use a trip to the vet, but so could I. He wants to jump up on the bed, but he doesn’t deserve it. Lying flat on my stomach with my left hand under my pillow, which is down by my waist (my sleep position since Rosa died), I have to strain to see him.
“You wouldn’t have bitten a flea last night.” Disappointed I won’t let him up on the bed, he settles down on
