Boom, whiz.
Ray sprinted across the street, and she leaped onto the pavement after him.
Boom, whiz.
Brakes squealed, but not before Lola was clipped at the legs and broken. Ray heard the screeching of the world on its axis and turned back to see what he had done. The part that stands out so clearly to me was Lola’s head thudding on the pavement and the blank expression on her little face.
All else is a running together of emergency vehicles and mayhem. Mom stumbling and crying, Dad not being able to save her from the combination of grief and gin, and Ray just being gone.
Dad’s voice shouted over the sirens. Where’s Ray? Where’s Ray? He wouldn’t leave with the ambulance. He wouldn’t leave without Ray. He kept me with him to search while Mom went away with the EMS team. When we found Ray, Dad held his hand behind him in a gesture that meant for me to stop short and I did. There was Ray, his knees folded up against his chest, hiding in the crook of two buildings whose sides didn’t quite meet.
I’ve never seen such a look of terror and torment in a person’s eyes as I saw in Ray’s that night. Dad kneeled down in front of him, and even though I tried to, I couldn’t hear what passed between them in the darkness. Ray shook his head and closed his eyes. Dad put his hand on Ray’s arm and helped him stand up. When Ray opened his eyes and stepped forward, he looked to me like a shell of a boy being led by the arm. I imagined that if I spoke loudly into his ear, my voice would echo around in his body, rattle inside his empty chest cavity, and come back out his mouth.
I think Ray is still folded up in that alley, waiting for the shell boy to let himself be forgiven.
15
A few days later, Ray calls saying that he needs me to come over. I was supposed to see Oliver for lunch, but I use Ray’s request to buy some time to think. Jack still has me rattled, and when I’m with Oliver, I can’t see past those eyes and lips and my mind is too easily clouded by his smile and the easy way he has about him. I’m trying to be practical, and Oliver makes that hard to do.
When I get to Ray’s door, I find that I’m afraid to knock. I fear his place will look like the set from a psycho stalker movie—takeout boxes littering the floor, the TV tuned to static, the room drenched in darkness, and Ray with three-day stubble, sitting in a folding chair by the window, face like stone, holding up binoculars fixed out at the park in the distance.
I take a deep breath and knock.
“Ray,” I call though the door. “It’s Nina.”
I hear rustling and shuffling, and I figure he’s scooting the chair back from the window and tossing a couple of little paper boxes in the trash. He opens the door.
“Thanks for the warning,” he says and smiles. “It gave me enough time to put away the binoculars.”
I must look terrified, but he just rolls his eyes and ushers me in.
“That’s not what I thought,” I lie, though I am relieved to see that his apartment does not, in fact, look like a set from a psycho stalker movie. He’s unpacked the boxes, although they are still lying around the apartment. “Did you need something?”
“Can’t a brother invite his sister over for a visit?”
I raise my eyebrow at him.
“And, yes, it is what you thought.” He goes to the kitchen, I assume, to get a beer from the refrigerator. “Don’t look at your watch,” he calls to me. “It’s after 5:00.”
I hate that he knows my suspicions. I hate that I have them. I sit down on the couch, and he sits in the chair beside it. He has two beers with him and hands one to me.
“Come on,” he says and opens one. “I got a nice dark one. Have a drink with your brother.”
“Thanks.” I hesitate to drink and Ray catches it.
“I can drink a beer and not turn into Mom,” he says, putting his feet up on the coffee table. “Besides, it’s the way I keep in focus.”
“Meaning?”
“You know what I mean,” he calls me out on it. “You do it too. Maybe not with beer, but you do it.” He takes a swig of beer and tilts his head at me.
“Do what?” I ask, but I know. Ray and I have never talked about this. I guess it’s about time.
“Tell me what your trick is.” He puts his feet back on the floor and inches forward in the chair. “To remember that it’s all a game. That you’re just playing along.”
Ray and I are not so different. I could have guessed all these years that part of what kept him whole was also what tore him apart. I find it hard to answer Ray. Hard to let anyone in.
“Nothing,” I say and scoot over on the couch a bit, as if the extra inch or two away from him will save me from this conversation.
“Open a door once in a while, Nina.” Ray sits back again, clunking his feet on the table once more.
“What does that mean?”
“Let somebody in. Let yourself out. You pick.”
“I tried that,” I say. “It didn’t work out so well for me.”
Ray whips around to look at me, then shakes his head. I think he’s annoyed with me, but I’m not the object of his disapproval. He sets his beer down and raises his hands in frustration.
“I’m a jerk,” he says. “You’re talking about Jack?”
I nod. “It’s ok.”
“No, it isn’t,” he says. “Come on, Nina, do your thing. Tell me I’m
