Mr. Mercedes (31 page)

“I can tell you what happened,” he said. “Seen it before. That piece of apple left just enough space around his windpipe to let him keep breathing. It's too bad you reached down his throat, that's all.”

“I was trying to get it out!” Deborah Ann said indignantly.

“I know, any good mother would do the same, but you pushed it deeper instead, and blocked his windpipe entirely. If one of the EMTs had done that, you'd have a case. Worth a few hundred thousand at least. Maybe a million-five. Seen it before. But it was you. And you told them what you did. Didn't you?”

Deborah Ann admitted she had.

“Did they intubate him?”

Deborah Ann said they did.

“Okay,
that's
your case. They got an airway into him, but in doing so, they pushed that bad apple in even deeper.” He sat back, spread his fingers on his slightly yellowed white shirt, and peeped at Deborah Ann's titties again, maybe just to make sure they hadn't slipped out of her bra and run away. “Hence, brain damage.”

“So you'll take the case?”

“Happy to, if you can pay for the five years it'll drag through the courts. Because the hospital and their insurance providers will fight you every step of the way. Seen it before.”

“How much?”

Greensmith named a figure, and Deborah Ann left the office, holding Brady's hand. They sat in her Honda (then new) and she cried. When that part was over, she told him to play the radio while she ran another errand. Brady knew what the other errand entailed: a bottle of efficient delivery system.

She relived her meeting with Greensmith many times over the years, always ending with the same bitter pronouncement: “I paid a hundred dollars I couldn't afford to a lawyer in a suit from Men's Wearhouse, and all I found out was I couldn't afford to fight the big insurance companies and get what was coming to me.”

The year that followed was five years long. There was a life-­sucking monster in the house, and the monster's name was Frankie. Sometimes when he knocked something over or woke Deborah Ann up from a nap, she spanked him. Once she lost it completely and punched him in the side of the head, sending him to the floor in a twitching, eye-rolling daze. She picked him up and hugged him and cried and said she was sorry, but there was only so much a woman could take.

She went into Hair Today as a sub whenever she could. On these occasions she called Brady in sick at school so he could babysit his little brother. Sometimes Brady would catch Frankie reaching for stuff he wasn't supposed to have (or stuff that belonged to Brady, like his Atari Arcade handheld), and then he would slap Frankie's hands until Frankie cried. When the wails started, Brady would remind himself that it wasn't Frankie's fault, he had brain damage from that damn, no, that
fucking
apple slice, and he would be overcome by a mixture of guilt, rage, and sorrow. He would take Frankie on his lap and rock him and tell him he was sorry, but there was only so much a man could take. And he
was
a man, Mom said so: the man of the house. He got good at changing Frankie's diapers, but when there was poo (no, it was
shit
, not poo but
shit
), he would sometimes pinch Frankie's legs and shout at him to lay still, damn you, lay still. Even if Frankie
was
laying still. Laying there with Sammy the Fire Truck clutched to his chest and looking up at the ceiling with his big stupid brain-damaged eyes.

That year was full of sometimes.

Sometimes he loved Frankie up and kissed him.

Sometimes he'd shake him and say This is your fault, we're going to have to live in the street and it's your fault.

Sometimes, putting Frankie to bed after a day at the beauty parlor, Deborah Ann would see bruises on the boy's arms and legs. Once on his throat, which was scarred from the tracheotomy the EMTs had performed. She never commented on these.

Sometimes Brady loved Frankie. Sometimes he hated him. Usually he felt both things at the same time, and it gave him headaches.

Sometimes (mostly when she was drunk), Deborah Ann would rail at the train-wreck of her life. “I can't get assistance from the city, the state, or the goddam federal government, and why? Because we still have too much from the insurance and the settlement, that's why. Does anyone care that everything's going out and nothing's coming in? No. When the money's gone and we're living in a homeless shelter on Lowbriar Avenue,
then
I'll be eligible for assistance, and isn't that just
ducky
.”

Sometimes Brady would look at Frankie and think, You're in the
way
. You're in the
way
, Frankie, you're in the fucking goddam shitass
waaay
.

Sometimes—often—Brady hated the whole fucking goddam shitass world. If there was a God, like the Sunday guys said on TV, wouldn't He take Frankie up to heaven, so his mother could go back to work fulltime and they wouldn't have to be out on the street? Or living on Lowbriar Avenue, where his mother said there was nothing but nigger drug addicts with guns? If there was a God, why had He let Frankie choke on that fucking apple slice in the first place? And then letting him wake up brain-damaged afterward, that was going from bad to fucking goddam shitass
worse
. There was no God. You only had to watch Frankie crawling around the floor with goddam Sammy in one hand, then getting up and limping for awhile before giving that up and crawling again, to know that the idea of God was fucking ridiculous.

Finally Frankie died. It happened fast. In a way it was like running down those people at City Center. There was no forethought, only the looming reality that something had to be done. You could almost call it an accident. Or fate. Brady didn't believe in God, but he did believe in fate, and sometimes the man of the house had to be fate's right hand.

His mother was making pancakes for supper. Frankie was playing with Sammy. The basement door was standing open because Deborah Ann had bought two cartons of cheap off-brand toilet paper at Chapter 11 and they kept it down there. The bathrooms needed re-stocking, so she sent Brady down to get some. His hands had been full when he came back up, so he left the basement door open. He thought Mom would shut it, but when he came down from putting the toilet paper in the two upstairs bathrooms, it was still open. Frankie was on the floor, pushing Sammy across the linoleum and making
rrr-rrr
sounds. He was wearing red pants that bulged with his triple-thick diapers. He was working ever closer to the open door and the steep stairs beyond, but Deborah Ann still made no move to close the door. Nor did she ask Brady, now setting the table, to do it.

“Rrr-rrr,”
said Frankie.
“Rrr-rrr.”

He pushed the fire truck. Sammy rolled to the edge of the basement doorway, bumped against the jamb, and there he stopped.

Deborah Ann left the stove. She walked over to the basement door. Brady thought she would bend down and hand Frankie's fire truck back to him, but she didn't. She kicked it instead. There was a small clacking sound as it tumbled down the steps, all the way to the bottom.

“Oops,” she said. “Sammy faw down go boom.” Her voice was very flat.

Brady walked over. This was interesting.

“Why'd you do that, Mom?”

Deborah Ann put her hands on her hips, the spatula jutting from one of them. She said, “Because I'm just so sick of listening to him make that sound.”

Frankie opened his mouth and began to blat.

“Quit it, Frankie,” Brady said, but Frankie didn't. What Frankie did was crawl onto the top step and peer down into the darkness.

In that same flat voice Deborah Ann said, “Turn on the light, Brady. So he can see Sammy.”

Brady turned on the light and peered over his blatting brother.

“Yup,” he said. “There he is. Right down at the bottom. See him, Frankie?”

Frankie crawled a little farther, still blatting. He looked down. Brady looked at his mother. Deborah Ann Hartsfield gave the smallest, most imperceptible nod. Brady didn't think. He simply kicked Frankie's triple-diapered butt and down Frankie went in a series of clumsy somersaults that made Brady think of the fat Blues Brother flipping his way along the church aisle. On the first somersault Frankie kept on blatting, but the second time around, his head connected with one of the stair risers and the blatting stopped all at once, as if Frankie were a radio and someone had turned him off. That was horrible, but had its funny side. He went over again, legs flying out limply to either side in a
Y
shape. Then he slammed headfirst into the basement floor.

“Oh my God, Frankie fell!” Deborah Ann cried. She dropped the spatula and ran down the stairs. Brady followed her.

Frankie's neck was broken, even Brady could tell that, because it was all croggled in the back, but he was still alive. He was breathing in little snorts. Blood was coming out of his nose. More was coming from the side of his head. His eyes moved back and forth, but nothing else did. Poor Frankie. Brady started to cry. His mother was crying, too.

“What should we do?” Brady asked. “What should we do, Mom?”

“Go upstairs and get me a pillow off the sofa.”

He did as she said. When he came back down, Sammy the Fire Truck was lying on Frankie's chest. “I tried to get him to hold it, but he can't,” Deborah Ann said.

“Yeah,” Brady said. “He's prob'ly paralyzed. Poor Frankie.”

Frankie looked up, first at his mother and then his brother. “Brady,” he said.

“It'll be okay, Frankie,” Brady said, and held out the pillow.

Deborah Ann took it and put it over Frankie's face. It didn't take long. Then she sent Brady upstairs again to put the sofa pillow back and get a wet washcloth. “Turn off the stove while you're up there,” she said. “The pancakes are burning. I can smell them.”

She washed Frankie's face to get rid of the blood. Brady thought that was very sweet and motherly. Years later he realized she'd also been making sure there would be no threads or fibers from the pillow on Frankie's face.

When Frankie was clean (although there was still blood in his hair), Brady and his mother sat on the basement steps, looking at him. Deborah Ann had her arm around Brady's shoulders. “I better call nine-one-one,” she said.

“Okay.”

“He pushed Sammy too hard and Sammy fell downstairs. Then he tried to go after him and lost his balance. I was making the pancakes and you were putting toilet paper in the bathrooms upstairs. You didn't see anything. When you got down to the basement, he was already dead.”

“Okay.”

“Say it back to me.”

Brady did. He was an A student in school, and good at remembering things.

“No matter what anybody asks you, never say more than that. Don't add anything, and don't change anything.”

“Okay, but can I say you were crying?”

She smiled. She kissed his forehead and cheek. Then she kissed him full on the lips. “Yes, honeyboy, you can say that.”

“Will we be all right now?”

“Yes.” There was no doubt in her voice. “We'll be fine.”

She was right. There were only a few questions about the accident and no hard ones. They had a funeral. It was pretty nice. Frankie was in a Frankie-size coffin, wearing a suit. He didn't look brain-damaged, just fast asleep. Before they closed the coffin, Brady kissed his brother's cheek and tucked Sammy the Fire Truck in beside him. There was just enough room.

That night Brady had the first of his really bad headaches. He started thinking Frankie was under his bed, and that made the headache worse. He went down to his mom's room and got in with her. He didn't tell her he was scared of Frankie being under his bed, just that his head ached so bad he thought it was going to explode. She hugged him and kissed him and he wriggled against her tight-tight-tight. It felt good to wriggle. It made the headache less. They fell asleep together and the next day it was just the two of them and life was better. Deborah Ann got her old job back, but there were no more boyfriends. She said Brady was the only boyfriend she wanted now. They never talked about Frankie's accident, but sometimes Brady dreamed about it. He didn't know if his mother did or not, but she drank plenty of vodka, so much she eventually lost her job again. That was all right, though, because by then he was old enough to go to work. He didn't miss going to college, either.

College was for people who didn't know they were smart.

6

Brady comes out of these memories—a reverie so deep it's like hypnosis—to discover he's got a lapful of shredded plastic. At first he doesn't know where it came from. Then he looks at the newspaper lying on his worktable and understands he tore apart the bag it was in with his fingernails while he was thinking about Frankie.

He deposits the shreds in the wastebasket, then picks up the paper and stares vacantly at the headlines. Oil is still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and British Petroleum executives are squalling that they're doing the best they can and people are being mean to them. Nidal Hasan, the asshole shrink who shot up the Fort Hood Army base in Texas, is going to be arraigned in the next day or two. (You should have had a Mercedes, Nidal-baby, Brady thinks.) Paul McCartney, the ex-Beatle Brady's mom used to call Old Spaniel Eyes, is getting a medal at the White House. Why is it, Brady sometimes wonders, that people with only a little talent get so much of everything? It's just another proof that the world is crazy.

Brady decides to take the paper up to the kitchen and read the political columns. Those and a melatonin capsule might be enough to send him off to sleep. Halfway up the stairs he turns the paper over to see what's below the fold, and freezes. There are photos of two women, side by side. One is Olivia Trelawney. The other one is much older, but the resemblance is unmistakable. Especially those thin bitch-lips.