Arizona Allspice (34 page)

“Oh,” I reply. He hadn’t turned the television on so I stood awkwardly in the silence that fell as Joey stared down at his bare knee. I clothed him, I fed him,
I
brought him home safely. My job here is done.  “Well…” I sigh.

“Guess you’re going home now.”

“Yeah,” I nod. Joey stands up from the couch and squints a little from the pain. “You really should sit down and rest.” He wobbles on his shaky legs a few seconds and then gets the hang of it and rights himself. Then he takes some calculated steps towards me.

“I have to give you a thank-you hug,” he smiles.

My muscles tense. A hug can be friendly, but it’s coming from Joey. “Like, a hug between friends?” I ask.

He knits his eyebrows and his eyes dart from the floor and to my expectant face. “No, a
gropey
hug,” he responds sarcastically. I laugh and then relax. I take one step forward. He nears me slowly with his smiling blue eyes. I allow him to hug me. My arms hang limply at my sides as he wraps his arms about me. This is not a friendly hug.
Not at all.
His face is too close to my neck. His warm breath is at my ear as he murmurs, “Thank you for doing this favor for me…and Mom.” He mangled metal this morning with those strong lightly tanned arms. They’re too warm and comfortable around me as they gently squeeze the tension from my spine. My cheek is pressed against his solid chest. That was not a smart move on my part because it feels so good. I’m melting into him. I could fall asleep this way.

His weight against me feels as if it’s getting heavier. He’s starting to lean against me. Oh
no
. Are his tired legs finally giving out? I begin to panic. I’m not strong enough to hold his weight! My hands go up from my side and I press them flat against his ribcage trying to push him back and up. Heavier and heavier and then suddenly light as a feather. I lift my head and stare up at him. A big jester’s grin is on his face.

“You!”
I yelp. I can’t believe he scared me like that! He goes into a laughing fit, apologizing through gasps for air between bursts of laughter. I smack him hard on the shoulder but he only laughs harder. It doesn’t hurt him, the brute. I laugh and shake my head at him. He got me. “See you tomorrow, Joey.” I smile devilishly. His laughter quiets and he smiles worriedly.

I snicker and exit his house leaving him to anticipate being pranked tomorrow when really I have no plans to. His only punishment will be to spend the whole day wondering if and when. I laugh to myself as I walk into my house. I appreciate him making me laugh lately. I’m surprised at how fun he is to hang out with. I thought he was so surly and serious before. Then again, I was very serious and surly myself.

 ******

I didn’t call him. Nor has he called me. Manny and I are the same in that we both don’t like voicing our fears. When the nervous thoughts stay in our heads we can tell ourselves their irrational. My brother’s sentencing is tomorrow, Thursday, May 10th.

On a lighter note, I accomplished lots of writing while waiting for Joey to finish therapy today and then he practically walked out of Canyon Outpatient on his own. Well, he still has discomfort and pain in his legs, but not as much since the medicine kicked in. After only two sessions he only puts a hand on my shoulder to help him along now, a big improvement from having his whole arm and a third of his weight resting on me. And he shaved this morning. Hooray for all.

“I won’t have an appointment the day of the sentencing,” Joey mentions as we drive home from therapy. “The real schedule is supposed to be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but my mom didn’t want to give me any time to wallow so she made me start this week on a Tuesday. I won’t have therapy scheduled after Manny’s sentencing tomorrow. We’ll go to therapy Friday, get back on the normal schedule. Um…” He glances at me. “Are you alright about tomorrow?”

“Yeah.
Let’s stop at Taco Bell for lunch today. I see some
ooey
gooey nachos in our futures.”

He sighs loudly. “Are you sure you want to eat that?”

“Joey! What is up with you monitoring my every meal? I’m nervous about tomorrow! Okay! I admit it! Can I just stuff my face with processed foods and feel better!”

He looks out his window at the cars commuting with us on the highway and in a low voice I can barely hear over the engine he tells me, “I just want you to be healthy. Heart disease runs in your family.”

I gape at him stupidly. Thank God no one was in the lane to the right of me. I forgot I was driving and swerved a little into the next lane. I hold the steering wheel firmly and try to concentrate on driving. I keep taking my eyes from the road to glance at the side of Joey’s face. His square jaw is relaxed but his pink mouth is in a tight line. It takes a while for me to recognize that he is actually mad at me. I’ve never seen him angry at a base level. I’ve never seen him slightly upset. It’s usually all or nothing, rage or calm. At first all I can muster is to softly whine, “
Joeyyy
.”

Then it really hit me. Joey wasn’t just concerned about my health. He was concerned about my life. I know that sounds redundant, but what I mean is he was worrying about me
dying
and that just made me want to touch him, to hold his hand or something. “Joey, you worry too much. Even marathon runners can die from heart disease. You just never know.” He turns his head and looks at me, his expression unchanged. “I’m not going to live my life agonizing over every bite! I’m fine, okay? I don’t eat horribly all the time,” I assure him. “Besides, I’m more concerned with my mental health than anything physical,” I chuckle.

“Why?”

“Schizophrenia is in my family, too. I have a bad habit of bottling up my feelings, anger especially, and sometimes I wonder if one day I’ll snap and be where my father is.”

“I doubt that,” Joey surprises me by saying. I had expected to have to talk him out of worrying about that as well. “You’re saner than I am. I’ve never seen you do anything illogical. Look at me; I literally can’t control my temper to save my own life. Most people would have been able to walk away when their best friend started to act irrational. Not me. I just started swinging. I had to punch back and find myself with a brain injury and a best friend doing jail time because of it. I mean…that’s seriously messed up, what I did.”

“It’s not like you’re being a ruthless brat or anything. You feel bad about the things you’ve said or done and there are some good reasons behind why you make those mistakes.”

“Like what?”

Crap. I’m not supposed to know about those reasons, about the anger inside that’s been present since the day his stepfather unleashed it from him. “I-I don’t know. I just figured you had your reasons.”

“Well, I didn’t have the best male role models in my life…but that’s no excuse. The thing about mistakes is that you’re supposed to learn from them, but I just seem to
keep
making the same ones over and over again. It’s my fault I’m a monster.”

“No, don’t say that,” I say quietly. “No one’s perfect. You shouldn’t beat yourself up over that.”

“Angry people are angriest with themselves.”

Exactly
, I thought. I wrote a similar phrase in a short story of mine:
“The meanest souls were angriest with themselves.”
There are many times when I get so upset at other people for how they’ve wronged me and I have to admit I’m just projecting my frustrations with myself onto them. That’s so weird that he said that. Nervous, my left knee starts bouncing as I drive. “Wow. I didn’t know you, um…”

“What?”

“I just, you know, I agree.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

After thinking that over he says, “How about we go to my house and I’ll cook something for you.”

He can cook? Joey reads the big question mark on my face.

“I promise it’ll be delicious.”

“Is the food gonna be healthy?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

“Nope, a good friend of mine cared enough to encourage me to eat just a little healthier and I think I should take his advice.” With that I won Joey’s jackpot smile.

In the worn wooden cupboards and in the ten-year-old refrigerator with the wiggly door handle that stands in the Kinsley kitchen is a surprising selection of fresh and colorful fruits and veggies and alluring ethnic cuisine. For some reason I had expected plain old meat-and-potatoes. Was it a stereotypical reason? Probably, and I feel guilty for that. I promise to try hard not to assume things. I should know by now that Joey is different, that most people are different. They aren’t all the same, out to inflict pain.    

“You season the chicken and I’ll attempt to chop the mango and onion and everything else for the salad,” he instructs. Joey sits on a stool placed by me at the kitchen counter. I watch for a moment as he steadies his shaky hand to grasp the blushing red mango and grips the knife in his other hand to cut away the peel of the fruit. The gleaming knife hovers above the fruit and then comes down slowly, way too close to the fingers of his other hand. “Whoa. Careful.” I walk through the narrow kitchen space over to his right side. I hold his hand by the wrist and reposition it so the knife falls a few centimeters away from where it was before.

“Thanks,” he utters timidly.

I walk back to my place at the counter. After watching Joey with the mango to make sure he doesn’t nick his fingers, I look down at the raw pink chicken breasts I unwrapped from their package and laid out on a large plate. I spot ceramic salt and pepper shakers shaped like chess pieces; a white rook for salt and a black rook that held pepper. I sprinkle the two seasonings on both sides of the cutlets. “Okay. What’s next?”

“More seasonings!”
Joey grins. “You need garlic powder, cayenne pepper, ground ginger, thyme, cinnamon and nutmeg.”

“Cinnamon and nutmeg?
On chicken?”

He nods and begins chopping green onion. I groan and raid the cupboards for the hundred and one spices the chicken needs. Somewhere between the fifth and sixth spice on the list I begin to enjoy working alongside Joey to complete this unique meal. As I sprinkle a few tiny but powerfully aromatic leaves of thyme over the chicken, “Oh! And allspice, I forgot to tell you to add allspice.” I glare at him jokingly and he fakes a nervous “Please don’t hurt me?” chuckle. I smile, sigh, and retrieve the allspice bottle after much searching.

I begin to shake some onto the chicken and notice that Joey glances at me and then back at the romaine lettuce he is chopping with a little smile on his face.
Why is this amusing to him? Am I doing it wrong?
As the brown powder floats down to the already
well seasoned
chicken, a scented breeze of it reaches my nose. The smell is rich, sweet, and familiar. It pulled me in. Once I caught a whiff of it I couldn’t help but bring it to my nose to experience the smell again. It is deep with many layers of aroma, like a lovechild of several precious spices.
Fascinating.
Then, I gasp as I remember. The allspice bottle almost slips out of my damp, shaking hands and into the raw chicken.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.
What do I do next?” I ask without taking my eyes from the chicken.

There is an uncomfortable silence as he studies me. His eyes feel like hot ash against my skin. “You can pan fry it now. Heat the pan, drizzle in some olive oil and let the chicken brown.”