A Heart for Robbie (14 page)

“It’s all good, Mr. Phelps. Mr. Hunter is looking for you. He’s over

by the food.” She pointed him toward the west door of the gym, where

they held games and other events because it had more square footage than the rest of the building combined.

“Thanks. You look really pretty, by the way.”

She gave him a distrustful look, like the compliment deserved some

kind of response, but an elderly couple in elegant suits came in just then, taking her focus. Simon jogged the few steps to the west side door and

peeked in. The students had set up stations all around the gym. Small

three-sided cubicles were made of flimsy plywood and covered with the

whitest sheets offered in bulk discount. They’d hammered nails into the

plywood to hang their artwork, and some of the more industrious had

reinforced their plywood with two-by-fours nailed to the back. All in all, they wouldn’t win any aesthetic awards, but they had space and work to be very proud of.

“Zack,” Simon called as he scanned the hall for the food Lisa had

mentioned. It was set up along the south wall. Punch bowls, with different colored liquid, and cookies were set up on a small table covered in another sheet.

“Simon, thank God,” a disembodied voice called from that end of

the room. Simon looked around again, not seeing Zack until his head

popped out from under the sheet over the food table.

A Heart for Robbie

75

“What are you doing?” Simon asked with a laugh and put a hand out

as Zack crawled from under the table. Zack climbed to his feet and

smoothed the sheet back into place.

“Plugging in my wife’s iHome for a little ambiance. She made a

playlist with classical music for the event.” He dropped an iPhone into

place, and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra began to play through the tinny

speakers. Simon only knew who it was because he could recite the words

from the old McDonald’s commercial as it played.

“Ding, fries are done. Ding, fries are done,” Zack said, and they both

laughed.

“Little late for Christmas music, isn’t it?”

“Hey, it’s the classiest thing she has on her phone.”

“What can I do to help?” Simon asked as he glanced around the

gym. Everything seemed to be in place. He looked up the left side of the hall and found one station with blank walls and no kid.

“Where’s Miguel, Zack?”

Zach sighed as he slid out a stack of clear plastic cups hidden from

view by the sheet-clad table.

“They let his old man out yesterday. His mother still refuses to go

into a shelter, and since she was the one who had the husband arrested she took the brunt of it, but Miguel’s face is bruised, and he has a split lip.

He’s in the art room.”

Simon had found his task. He nodded and went back out the western

door, turning left up an adjacent hallway. The art room lay at the end of the hall, and he could hear rough gangster rap seeping under the door. He pushed it open and found Miguel at one of the art stations looking out the darkened window. He must not have heard Simon come in, because he

didn’t turn. Simon watched for a moment, a desperate sadness in his heart at the lost, pained look on the teenager’s face.

Just fourteen, Miguel didn’t have a lot of options in this world.

Where Simon had grown up with more options than he could have ever

used, most of these kids had very few. Until the police either kept

Miguel’s father in jail or his mother went into a shelter, the boy would never be safe. Simon had talked to Zack a hundred times about letting

Miguel stay with him, but they had no legal recourse. He turned the dial on the old radio, bringing the volume down, and Miguel turned around.

Zack was right; he had quite a shiner.

76

JP Barnaby

“Hey,” Simon said, pulling up a stool to sit near Miguel, but not too

close. The boy jerked his hoodie tighter around him and kept his focus on the window. “You need an ice pack or some aspirin for that?”

“I’ll live.”

“There’s a difference between surviving and living, Miguel.”

Miguel scoffed but said nothing, staring blankly out the window. He

curled in on himself like a puppy waiting for the next kick and used a

fingernail to pick the paint off the art table in front of him.

Scrape. Scrape. Flick.

“One of my buddies wanted to get me a gun,” he whispered, the

sound of his voice as cold as the wind outside the window and just as

chilling. “Why didn’t I take it?”

Simon took a deep breath.

“Because you have a good heart, Miguel. You have values that

maybe some of the people around you don’t have. No matter how bad it is

right now, you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in jail.”

Scrape. Scrape. Flick.

“But he beats my mother. How is that worse?”

He noticed Miguel didn’t mention that his father beat him too.

“I know, and he hits you too, and that’s not right. I don’t have any

answers for you right now, but shooting him isn’t the right way to go.

Even if you got away with it, you’d have to live with that in your heart.

Could you do that? Knowing that you killed someone?”

He didn’t answer, but the reflected glint of tears in his eyes told

Simon everything.

“Did they arrest him?”

Scrape. Scrape. Flick.

“Yeah. But my friends think I’m a punk.”

“It takes a strong man to stand up for what he feels is right and live

the life he was meant to live.” As he said it, understanding about his own life and sexuality blossomed in his chest. “You are not the kind of guy

who shoots people, Miguel. You are an artist.” Simon stood and went to

the easel where Miguel’s pencil drawing of his grandmother rested,

waiting to be displayed.

A Heart for Robbie

77

He’d never talked about the woman in the drawing, at least not to

Simon, but the fact that he could bring her to life with such detail told of his devotion to her.

“What do you think she would tell you?” Simon asked, pointing to

the drawing. One of the welling tears fell from Miguel’s eye, and he

swiped it away with a furious gesture.

Scrape. Scrape. Flick.

“Abuela would have told me to live with her. She told me all my life

to stay away from the guns.”

“When did she die, Miguel?”

Another tear.

Scrape, scrape, flick.

“Two years ago.”

“She was a very smart lady. I think you should listen to her. I think

you should also show her to all the people out there tonight so they can know how amazing she was too. It’s not fair for you to hide such a brave woman back here in the art room.”

Miguel looked at him for a long moment, trying to decide whether

he wanted to display his grandmother’s memory or hide his face more.

Eventually, his grandmother’s courage, still alive in her young grandson, won out, and Miguel slid from the stool.

“Will you help me hang it?”

“Of course I will. Mr. Hunter still has all of the supplies out. He was

waiting for you, I think.”

“I like Mr. Hunter.”

“He’s a good man too, just like you.”

They carried the drawing of Miguel’s grandmother and a few other

impressive pieces of the boy’s pride back to the gym. A small crowd

milled through the space, stopping at the refreshment table but mostly

talking to the kids about their work. Animated hands waved as the kids,

who were invisible most of their lives, talked to strangers about their

passion. Simon helped Miguel hang his matted pictures against the

makeshift plywood gallery, as if he were a master artist rather than a kid whose life had few real paths out.

78

JP Barnaby

The elderly couple in their perfect suits sidled into his space, and

Simon backed away to watch Miguel shine. Free, for at least a couple of

hours, to be the man that he’d always wanted to be.

Something, Simon realized in that moment, that he himself longed

for.

A Heart for Robbie

79

Chapter 8

“NO, MOM, he’s good. The vomiting stopped when we took him off the

supplement. His weight is good, and Dr. Martinez says he’s growing faster than she expected, which is great. He just has his cath tomorrow to make sure his heart hasn’t gotten worse, but she’s not expecting anything.”

Julian balanced the phone between his shoulder and head while he stirred the oatmeal in the pan. Robbie watched him from the bouncer in the

middle of the kitchen table.

“And then he can stay the weekend with his grandma?” his mother

asked, her voice brimming with unrepressed joy.

“Yes, then he can stay the weekend,” Julian said with a laugh. “I’ll

be happy for the sleep, trust me.”

“It will be a great Mother’s Day present.”

“Angling for gifts, are we?”

“Nope, I’ll have all of my boys together in my house. That’s all I

need.”

“Good thing I don’t have time for anything else. I’d have to order

you some online gift basket with yak cheese or something.”

“As appetizing as that sounds, I think I’ll pass. What are you guys up

to today?”

“I thought we’d try the coffee shop. We’ve been trapped in the house

since he came home, and the doctor said that he should be okay out for a few hours. I’m getting cabin fever here. Besides, Ralph is going to make sure no one ever finds my body if I don’t make some kind of progress on

the next Black Heart book. I sat in front of the fire last night and did some serious plot work, but you know I work best with some activity and

noise.”

80

JP Barnaby

“I know, and if you want to drop him off here for a while so you can

work, you can do that too.”

“If this doesn’t work, maybe I’ll do that next week. But he’s going to

be around for a while. I need to start giving both of us some normalcy, you know?”

“Yeah. I think that’s a good idea.”

“Besides, I read online that guys use babies as a pickup trick all the

time,” Julian deadpanned. A moment of silence passed before his mother

burst out laughing.

“I think that only works if you’re looking for a girl, honey.”

“Oh,” he said with fake surprise. “Well, then that’s kind of the

opposite of helpful.”

“Go eat breakfast and get some work done. I’ll see you both

tomorrow,” his mother said, still laughing.

Julian said his good-byes and spooned the oatmeal into a bowl. He

put it on the table close, but not too close, to the foot of the bouncer and grabbed the milk from the refrigerator.

“Hey, buddy,” Julian said, putting his finger out for Robbie to grab.

With his other hand, he twisted the cap off the milk before realizing he’d forgotten a glass. He snatched one from the cupboard and poured the milk.

But Robbie, obviously wanting the attention of his father, began to fuss in the bouncer. Not the “I want food” cry or the “I’m wet” cry, it was more of a tiny little puppy whimper. Julian held his finger in front of Robbie, who grabbed it again. Silence fell over the kitchen, and the warmth inside Julian had nothing to do with the oatmeal he now ate one-handed.

After breakfast, Julian took Robbie upstairs and dressed him in one

of the little outfits his mother brought over just after they came home from the hospital: tiny pair of jeans—he’d have to wait a while for Guess or

Diesel—and a Bears sweatshirt. He had a feeling his father might have

had a little influence on that decision.

The snaps on the shoulder of the sweatshirt were sheer genius,

because Robbie’s head seemed to be larger than that of a normal child.

Julian spent a lot of time wrestling things over it. However, once he’d

gotten Robbie dressed and added the Nikes he’d received at the shower, he carried Robbie downstairs and put him in the carrier. He then started the arduous task of figuring out the rest of the travel system.

A Heart for Robbie

81

Julian laid out the stroller’s instruction booklet on the table. It wasn’t just a pamphlet but an entire booklet. It took twenty minutes for him to figure out how to unfold the thing and fold it back up. He practiced until he could do it without looking at the how-to diagrams on the page because he didn’t want to get to the shop and embarrass himself. Then he packed

the diaper bag, added a bottle of formula, sterile hot water in a thermos, another outfit, diapers, the changing pad, and an extra pacifier just for good measure.

An hour later, laden with half the contents of the nursery Robbie no

longer used, Julian lifted the stroller onto the porch. He hadn’t even left yet, and already he was exhausted. The sun shining down on his face lifted his spirits as he walked, and a light spring breeze ruffled his hoodie.