Joey’s blue eyes sparkled. The dining room floor was littered with toy cars and trucks. He sat across the room from Jack and me, and waved vaguely in our direction. “Dad! Dad! Hand me that car.”
I held up a little blue ‘69 Camaro. “This?” I asked.
“No!” Joey happily shook his shorn head. “My other Dad.” Jack rolled a Ford wagon over to Joey, who grinned ear-to-ear, and sent it roaring down the plastic track. With his light coloration, I noted ruefully that Joey looked more like Jack’s son than he did mine.
Maryanne came down from upstairs, asked if I were hungry, and then darted into the kitchen. Jack wandered into the living room to watch TV. I followed Maryanne into the kitchen. She stood at the countertop, deftly assembling a sandwich. Thin, blonde, determined. Sandwich made, she turned from her task, shoved the plate into my hands and immediately headed for the other room.
“Wait, Mary—” I said. I was whispering and not even sure why.
“What?” Maryanne asked impatiently, her voice flat. She looked up at me with one eyebrow raised. There was an awkward pause, which I didn’t know how to fill.
“He calls him Dad?” I asked.
“Tim,” Maryanne said. “I do not want to hear the shit.”
She tilted her head sweetly, and then left me standing in Jack’s kitchen with a bologna sandwich and some potato chips.
I went into the dining room and raced cars with Joey. Later on, he showed me his room, with which he seemed delighted. Too soon, it was time for me to go. Maryanne asked if I were going across the street to visit my mother.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “No.”
“You should go,” Maryanne said. “She wants to see you.”
“Doubtful,” I mumbled.
“No. I called her,” Maryanne said. “She definitely wants to see you.”
“You called her?” My voice rose. Having someone else make the call for me hadn’t even occurred to me, but knowing Maryanne had called seemed somehow unimaginable—Maryanne and my mom had never been close.
“What did she say?” I asked, alarmed.
Maryanne slowly enunciated: “She said . . . she wants . . . to see you.”
Her consideration felt good, but her confidence that my mother wanted to see me left me feeling awkward, uncomfortable. At a loss for words, I hugged Joey, grabbed my bag, and made for the door.
“Thanks,” I said.
Maryanne waved her hand, dismissing her kindness.
Joey howled with disappointment.
Across the street, I tapped on my mother’s front door. After a few minutes, the curtain was pulled back. Mom; small, worn. A tight little knot of worry. Opening the door, she looked me up and down. Her hair was different now, short.
“Leave that there,” she said, indicating my bag. “No one will mess with it.”
I dropped the bag and followed her inside. One of my younger brothers was on the floor of the living room watching TV. Someone else was in the kitchen, but I couldn’t tell who. I was about to sit on the couch, but Mom indicated a kitchen chair she had dragged into the middle of the living room.
I felt uncomfortable and started to talk. Yammer, really. I told her about the weather in New York, how big Joey was, the furniture in Jack’s living room. Once I started, I didn’t dare stop. As I went on, I realized Mom was clutching her purse to her chest. This astonished me. I had never seen her act with such undisguised caution. One time when I still lived here, I had overheard her tell my younger brother that she thought I might be Satan. Not that I was possessed, but that I was actually Satan. “He goes through locked doors,” she’d said, her voice desperate, edgy.
“Okay,” Mom was saying, glancing at her watch. “You better go.”
My throat was dry from talking. About fifteen minutes had passed. More than anything, I felt relieved it was over. On the front porch, she wished me luck and gave me a quick hug, which surprised me.
“Write,” she said.
I was staying in a room over the Alva Restaurant, right next door to the train station, within walking distance of the court house. The kind of room prostitutes and their johns used by the hour. After my guilty plea was entered, I was duly remanded to treatment. I vaguely considered not going back to New York City, but the idea of staying near home gave me a bad feeling.
On the train ride back to Manhattan, I wondered about the unexpected visit with my mother. She’d asked me to write. Me. Write her.
I resolved I would.
Spring rolled in hot.
One afternoon at the rehab facility, I was sitting in the Vehicles Office with Aaron, one of the drivers. Aaron had a broad forehead, a quick wit, and thin brown hair that he wore pushed straight back. We had the morning shuttle route, which left at 7:00 a.m., and was usually done by noon, having us both back at the facility by 2:00 p.m. Vehicles was a cushy job.
Reading the New York Times, Aaron tipped his thick glasses up onto his nose. I sipped coffee from a paper cup. Another driver, Keith, poked his head into the office and shook the shaggy mop of blonde hair from his eyes. Keith tapped his fist to his chest, and then held up three fingers.
Looking up from his paper, Aaron grinned and made the same gesture.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Wehicles,” Aaron said, tipping his glasses higher on his nose. He held up three splayed fingers to make a W.
Keith grinned.
Creasing my brow, I shrugged. “Wehicles?”
Aaron looked surreptitiously out the door and then whispered: “Wehicles is for white people.”
I laughed. All the drivers were white. During the morning shuttles, the radio was a flashpoint for tension. Black people wanted Soul on one end of the FM dial, while the white people liked Rock down the other end. I tuned to Soul going downtown, and then Rock after the van had emptied. I hushed the occasional impertinent request for Rock on the downtown leg with a soft, “Oh, I want to hear this one,” regardless of what was playing, and then conveniently forgot the request soon after. Sometimes I patiently dialed in a baseball game on the AM band. Baseball was like a balm for the tension caused by the radio.
“That’s true,” I said. “Why are all the drivers white?”
“Brothers don’t need a license,” Keith said. He cut his eyes toward the hallway outside the office and kept his voice low.
I nodded as if this made sense. But I couldn’t imagine anyone not having a driver’s license, much less an entire race without a license. Aaron explained that public transportation in New York City was so good, you didn’t need a license unless you lived in a suburb. The few white people at Rockford other than me were from Staten Island, The Rockaways, or Throggs Neck. Mostly the white people were older, had lost their jobs, lost their health insurance, and then succumbed to some sort of addiction, typically crack. Rockford was the end of the line—free drug treatment.
Summertime—hotter. I got an official letter from the New York City Office of Child Support. I had a hearing in a few weeks.
Showing up on the appointed