Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (7 page)

But Desperate Troy was unfamiliar territory. He had never been backed to the wall in his life, and I had no idea what he would do with that. The possibility that it might be worse than what he had already done froze my fingers to the handlebars.

“Well,” Troy said, “nice meeting you, Desi.”

“Right back at ya, Roy,” Desmond said.

I took that as my cue to rev the engine. Troy stepped back and I pulled away far more slowly than I wanted to. It was as if I was being held back by the same force that had catapulted me there ten minutes before, right to a place I went to great lengths to stay out of. I never drove Desmond to school that way. There was no way Troy could have known I’d be going by.

What are we doing here, God?

Go another mile,
was the answer.

We pulled up to the stop sign at Charlotte and King Street and Desmond leaned in to shout over the engine’s growl.

“That dude really a ol’ friend of yours, Big Al?”

I barely trusted myself to speak, but I managed to say over my shoulder, “We used to be friends a long time ago. Not anymore.”

“I know that thing, now. Ain’t no way you be friends with somebody look at you like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like he ’bout to gank everything you got. You coulda took him out. He look like a wussy.”

The car horn behind us blasted and someone yelled, “Whatta ya waitin’ for, Harley?”

I opened the throttle and shot out into King. To my left, tires screamed. I could feel the heat from the hood of an SUV as I leaned to the right to miss and over-corrected to the left, into the path of a Mini Cooper. Between it and the pickup truck in the far lane was a narrow opening I squeezed through with no room to breathe. We left so much squealing and honking behind us it sounded like a scene from
The Blues Brothers.

With Desmond yelling, “Yeah, ba-
bee
!” on the seat behind me I let off on the throttle and kept the handle bars straight until I could ease into the no-parking zone next to the tourist train stop. He and Classic seemed to have had a fabulous time, but I shook my heart right up into my throat.

Or was it the answer I hadn’t given Desmond that was stuck there?
I have nothing left he can steal, son,
I wanted to say.

But the image of Troy peering desperately from a slit in his facade made me far less than sure of the truth in that.

PleaseGodpleaseGodplease show me what we’re doing.

The warning bell had already rung by the time we got to Muldoon Middle School, so none of Desmond’s gaggle of girls was there to be impressed. The only person at the curb was a tall, lean woman with short spiky hair and sunglasses as big as windshields.

“This ain’t good,” Desmond murmured to me as I slowed for the curve.

“Why?”

“That’s the Mosquito.”

I’d heard him refer to his PE teacher, Miss Skeeter Iseley, as that before, but I hadn’t met her. Currently she wore spandex shorts and a whistle on a lanyard in black and gold school colors that matched her tight T-shirt. There was so little fat on her I could see the bones in her sternum.

Yeah. I’d probably have come up with that nickname myself.

I prayed heavily Desmond hadn’t called her that to her face, although from the pointed way she stared at us as I slowed to a stop I couldn’t count on that being the case.

“Ms. Chamberlain?” she said when I’d turned off the engine.

Her voice whined, replacing all the other reasons for naming her after an annoying insect.

“Skeeter Iseley,” she said. “I’m Desmond’s PE teacher.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. How else did you respond to a woman who looked and sounded like she could raise welts on you?

“Hey, Coach,” Desmond said as he climbed off the bike. “I’m only late ’cause—”

“You still have five minutes to get to first period.”

He started to take off, but I caught him by the sleeve.

“Jacket,” I said.

He gave us both a toothy grin and wriggled out of his leather. “I can’t get away with nothin’ with you women.” He gave the top of my helmet a juicy kiss and once again headed for the front door.

“A motorcycle,” the Mosquito said. “A Harley.”

Desmond stopped behind her and formed the word
Du-uh
with his lips.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said again. “Is there a problem?”

“No,” she said. “Not yet.”

She zipped her head around to find Desmond, who, fortunately, was now forming nothing on his lips. They were firmly plastered together.

“I’m just trying to
forestall
a problem,” she said. “Just trying to be proactive.”

I leaned around her and once again looked at Desmond. “Have you done something to make the—Coach Iseley think there might be a problem?”

“No,” Desmond said. “Ma’am.”

“He knows what I’m talking about,” the coach said. “He knows.”

“Then let’s include him in the conversation,” I said.

She looked as if that thought hadn’t occurred to her.

“What’s she talking about, Desmond?” I said.

“You got me, Big Al. Only thing she ever said to me was, ‘Leave those girls alone. Give me five.’”

“Five …?”

“Push-ups,” the Mosquito said. “I’d give him more than that, but that’s all he can do. All.”

“Desmond,” I said, “are you acting inappropriately with the girls in your class?”

He looked stung. “I don’t act inapproprimately with girls
any
time. Me and Mr. Chief talked about that, now.”

“Desmond, get on to class,” Miss Iseley said. “Go.”

I wondered vaguely if anyone had ever told her she repeated everything with a synonym. I felt like reaching for a flyswatter.

Desmond was still looking at me.

“Go on,” I said. “We’ll talk later.”

I waited until he was inside before I turned to the woman who appeared to be sharpening her stinger.

“I hope you have a minute,” she said. “Just one.”

I pulled off my helmet. “Where Desmond is concerned I have all the minutes you need. But just so we’re clear, whatever you have to say about Desmond can be said in front of him. He’s old enough to be involved in discussions about his welfare.” I lowered my chin. “I assume this is about his welfare.”

“Not entirely his. It’s about the welfare of his classmates, too. Particularly his harem.”

“His
what
?”

“The girls who follow him around like he’s the sheik.”

She wasn’t telling me anything I wasn’t aware of, but her tone zinged its way right between my shoulder blades.

“Has someone claimed harassment?” I said.

“No,” she said. “If there were harassment, he would already be on in-school suspension.”

There was no mistaking the disappointment.

“Then what is the problem?” I said.

“There isn’t one. Yet. As I said, I’m trying to be proactive.”

“About what?”

She planted her hands on hips so narrow they barely existed. “There is one girl who is obviously having issues. Crying. Withdrawing. Like every other girl in the eighth grade, depending on her hormone levels.”

“You’re saying Desmond is the cause of that?”

“No. On the contrary. Just the opposite. He sits next to her constantly and talks to her like he’s Dr. Phil.”

Which is he, Mosquito Lady?
I wanted to say.
Dr. Phil or the sheik?

“As I see it,” she went on, “he is making this girl dependent on him for emotional support so that … may I be blunt?”

“I think that ship has sailed,” I said.

“I’ve seen it before, though never quite this blatant. He’s setting himself up as her comforter so he can prey on her sexually.”

My leg swung over the bike almost of its own accord. I had my face in hers before Classic’s weight even balanced on the kickstand.

“Has my son ever touched that girl in your class?” I said.

“I didn’t say he had.”

“No. You just said he was trying to get her in the sack. That is a very serious accusation.”

I had to hand it to her: she was not visibly cowed by the fact that I was all but breathing fire from my nostrils. “As I’ve
said
, I’m trying to ward off a problem before it starts.”

“You have no reason to think
that
problem is ever
going
to start.”

“Really. Because in my experience, children aspire to what’s celebrated in their community. If drug dealers are making the big money, all the kids want to be one. In this case—”

“In this case what’s celebrated in Desmond’s community is love and acceptance and healing.”

The woman looked at me as if I were five years old. “I’m talking about his community of
origin
, Ms. Chamberlain
.
I admire what you’ve done in adopting this boy, but you have to understand: the pimp was glamorized in his formative years, and you’re going to be hard put to erase that at this age.”

PleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod do not let me hit this woman over the head with my helmet and leave her for dead.

I pulled back and straightened my fingers as far from fists as I could get them. Just to be on the safe side.

“Ma’am,” I said. “You are out of line.”

“And you are in denial. Head in the sand—”

“No. I have never been clearer on an issue in my life. And here is how we’re going to deal with it.”

For the first time, she looked as if this was not the next line in her script.

“
We
will handle what, if anything, needs to be handled at home,” I said. “And I advise
you
to refrain from applying your sidewalk sociology to my son. He is in your class to do push-ups, apparently. His physical fitness is your only concern. Leave the rest to me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think we’ve gone beyond a minute.”

At least she had the good sense not to try to argue further. I think that was mostly due to my jamming my helmet back on my head and letting Classic have the last growling word with her pipes.

I only drove as far as the parking lot at the Oldest House Museum before I stopped and let both the engine and my heartbeat idle. I sat staring at the line of school children forming for their field trip tour.

There was no doubt the malaria-carrying creature didn’t know Desmond. At all. In the first place Chief had talked to Desmond on more than one occasion about the disrespect in considering the adoring group of pubescent females to be “his.” And the minute Desmond’s thirteen-year-old voice had started to deepen and those first tiny hairs had appeared on his young chin, Chief had the “talk” with him, which I gathered had not been the typical birds-and-bees conversation.

In the second place we didn’t glamorize anything in our community. It was all so real and raw the Mosquito wouldn’t last through the first hour of watching a woman howl her way into withdrawal.

Still, something poked at me. I pulled off my helmet and wiped my face with my denim sleeve. I knew my Desmond, but I didn’t know young girls with angst. I’d never been one. What if one of them
wanted
to show her appreciation for his comfort with more than a peck on the cheek?

Wow. I was thinking like a mother. Not
my
mother but one who actually cared whether her child’s life was twisted by adolescent sex.

I put my helmet back on and went easier on the throttle as I restarted the Classic. It wouldn’t hurt for Desmond to have another talk. I would put Chief right on it.

CHAPTER FOUR

I wanted to fill Chief in that night before the board meeting, but India got to me first and pulled me aside, eyes full of news. That could have been anything from a reminder that my roots needed touching up to her opinion that Second Chances was never going to get off the ground. It was neither.

“I have news about Reverend Howard,” she said. “I thought you’d want to know.”

I almost asked her why on earth she’d think that. Garry Howard and I hadn’t spoken in months, not since I’d offered my condolences for his being asked to leave the church he’d led for twenty-five years. Even then he just didn’t get why I’d left before him, of my own volition.

“He’s in hospice care now,” India said. “I think he was a perfect snake, treating you like he did, but still …”

She waited, her almost-violet eyes wide.

“Still what?” I said.

“Well, don’t you think the whole congregation turning on him because he took Troy Irwin’s money for building that school is what’s killing him?”

“I don’t even want to go there,” I said.

Where I did want to go was after Hank, who had just passed us with a plate of bruschetta saying, “Last call.”

India gave my arm a squeeze. “I just thought you’d want to know.”

She whispered her lips across my cheek and followed Hank into the living room. Chief passed her on the way toward me. It was starting to look like a Marx Brothers comedy.

“You coming?” he said.

I nodded him into the foyer, where I only had time to whisper the Skeeter Iseley highlights to him. All I actually got out was, “Would you talk to Desmond again about the girl situation? The Mosquito thinks he’s trying to bed one down by doing therapy with her.”

“You’re going to explain that to me, right?” he said.

“After the meeting.”

I started for the living room, but he pulled me back and put his face achingly near. “Just tell me you’re not seeing talking insects.”

When we joined the rest of the group, Hank, Bonner, and India were focusing too intently on the hors d’oeuvres, even for a D’Angelo special. Lips were fighting smiles and knowing glances were being furtively exchanged. They were all but blurting, “Aw, aren’t they
cute
?”

“These are fresh tomatoes, aren’t they, Hank?” India schmoozed.

“Right out of the garden at Sacrament House. Owen said they had more than he could can for them so he gave me the overflow.”

“God bless him,” Bonner said, mouth stuffed.

“Oh, here they are!” India tossed back her luscious hair and wafted a silk-draped arm as if she
hadn’t
had one eye and ear pointed in our direction the whole time Chief and I were in the foyer. “Y’all are missin’ it. I am holding Hank personally responsible for the size of my thighs right now.”

“Responsibility not accepted,” Hank said. “Is this meeting officially in session?”

“As official as it’s ever going to get.” Bonner waved the leather book he always took notes in. “Go for it.”

“Good, then,” India said, “because I would like to start with the boutique.”

“It’s tanking, isn’t it?” I said.

She looked at Chief.

“Not yet,” he said. “Ms. Willa gave us enough seed money to keep us afloat for a while.”

“Which takes the pressure off the Sisters.” Hank slid the bruschetta toward me. “They can develop their skills like you want them to—”

“But not their confidence,” I said. “Jasmine and Mercedes are convinced they’re failures because they’re not selling much. I don’t know about Ophelia.”

We all turned to India, who pressed her fingertips together on her chin. “How can I put this?”

“You could just say it,” Hank said.

Bonner gave a soft snort. “No, she couldn’t.”

“I don’t want to look that ol’ gift horse in the mouth,” India said, each word carefully formed. “Ophelia and I just think that the concept is wonderful and people are drawn to it, but, and again, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because Erin and Ms. Willa and Leighanne and Nita have been so great about collecting clothes for us—”

“Mercy, India,” Bonner said.

“Most of the garments are top quality and yet, shall we say, less than stylish.”

Hank gave a grunt. “No, we should say they’re downright dowdy. I tried on everything they had in my size and I looked like a frump. I bought a couple of things and then gave them to Goodwill.”

“Tourists aren’t going to do that,” I said.

“And neither are the townies,” India said. “Now, hear me, the Sisters have done a fabulous job with the displays, and they do everything except kiss the customers’ feet when they come in, but those shoppers take one look at the things we’ve got hanging on the racks and …” She shrugged.

I glanced at Chief, who was gazing at Bonner. Although Bonner could easily have made it to the cover of
GQ,
his eyes were beginning to glaze over as well.

“I’m no help whatsoever with this,” I said.

India patted my knee. “You have other gifts, darlin’.”

“So … suggestions?” Hank said.

“Well, now that we know what the problem is,” India said, “we can focus on it. Meanwhile let’s not encourage any more donations from anyone over forty until we get a handle on this.”

Erin O’Hare with her garbage bags flickered through my mind, but I turned to Bonner. “Any property issues?”

He glanced at a set of notes resting on the arm of his chair. “Both houses are in good shape right now thanks to the HOGs, but we need to have some funds in reserve.

“Owen’s got the Sisters working the gardens. Some of them. Not so much with Zelda and Gigi.”

“Yeah but Zelda’s tearin’ it up over at C.A.R.S.,” I said. “Gigi’s too new for us to know where she can fit in.”

“We have room for one more in Sacrament One,” Bonner said. “There are still women on the street, right?”

My turn.

“There are,” I said. “Probably more now than ever. Instead of, ‘I came here for a few beers and oh, look, I can get an hour with a hooker,’ it’s ‘I came here specifically to get a quickie in the alley because this is the Whore Mall.’”

“Allison, honey, that’s a little graphic,” India said.

Hank gave a soft grunt. “I think she cleaned it up a little for your benefit.”

I moved to the edge of the chair. “Even if they all came in and we had a fourteen-room facility, the real problem is we really need someone to help me oversee the houses. I mean, we want the Sisters to live on their own without somebody in there telling them what to do, but with me being the only one who can afford to do this full time …”

“And that isn’t going to last forever,” Bonner said, looking directly at me. “Anyway, it’s something to pray about.”

“Then the Lord be with you,” Hank said.

When everyone left I saw Chief edging toward the door himself. And I knew why.

“Desmond,” I said, eyes drilling into Chief, “would you come out here, please? Chief wants to talk to you.”

“You’re shameless,” Chief said as he headed across the kitchen for Desmond’s room. “I’ll go in there. We don’t need an audience.”

“Fine with me,” I said.

But I continued to hang out in the kitchen and, yes, shamelessly listened for snatches coming out under the door. From what I could piece together it went something like:

“We gon’ have the sex talk again, Mr. Chief?”

“Do we
need
to have the sex talk again?”

“I know everything I need to know.”

“I understand that. Knowing isn’t the same as not doing, though.”

“Ain’t doin’, Mr. Chief.”

“Just so you know, it’s harder not to when they find out you get them. Women like it when you get them.”

“I know that thing, now. They can see I feel it when they get all emo. Is that what you’re sayin’?”

“That’s what I’m sayin’.”

“It’s all good, Mr. Chief. I got me a female philosophy. You wanna hear it?”

“I can use all the female philosophy I can get.”

The sound of hand slapping.

“See, I make myself available to
all
my … wait, no …
the
women, whenever one of ’em needs me. That way don’t nobody think I’m gettin’ serious with anybody and I can be a friend with all of ’em, and that’s the Jesus-thing. You pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down, Mr. Chief?”

“Pickin’ it up, Desmond.”

“We good?”

“We’re good.”

More prolonged hand slapping.

I shifted my face into neutral just in time for Chief to emerge and close the door behind him. I nodded him into the dining room.

“Was that what you wanted?” he said.

I leaned against the table. “I didn’t hear a thing. Did
you
feel like it went well?”

Chief leaned beside me. “If you mean do I think he’s playing Father Confessor so he can seduce them, no.”

“You think he respects them, though?”

“Does he have a choice?” He pressed his elbow against me. “You’d put his helmet down the garbage disposal if he didn’t.”

“Yeah, but that whole ‘Female Philosophy’ thing.”

“I thought you said you didn’t hear a thing.”

“I lied.”

Chief shrugged. “Every thirteen-year-old boy has a plan for getting girls to notice him.”

“Notice him? He wants them ‘right here.’” I pointed into the palm of my hand.

“That’s his shtick.” He squinted at me. “What’s really bothering you about this, Classic?”

“Am I in denial about him?”

“Define denial,” he said.

I rubbed my palms together. “I’ve always thought the healing he saw in his mother the few months she was at Sacrament House had wiped out everything he lived with in the years before that.”

“He remembers she was a prostitute and an addict,” Chief said.

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the influence. I want to believe what we’re doing is more powerful in him than that was. I want to keep thinking that he wants to be the kind of man you are. But am I being realistic?”

“Where’s this coming from?” Chief nudged at my forehead with his. “The Mosquito?”

“Yes. But no.”

“That’s clear.”

I pulled away from him.

“What, Classic?”

“What if nature is stronger than nurture? I’ve only had him for a year.”

“A year during which you fought for him like a mother bear and took down anybody who tried to get to him. Including Sultan.”

“That’s just it, Chief. I didn’t take Sultan down. He’s still out there.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that. Detective Kylie is obsessed with catching him. Sultan gets a hangnail and Kylie knows about it.”

“What if Kylie isn’t telling
me
about it?”

“He told you he would. And what about Nick Kent? You know he passes on everything he finds out, and he says the coast is still clear.”

“What about the Sultan that’s in Desmond’s genes?” I said. “It’s the same thing that eats at Kade. He’s afraid he’s like Troy whether he wants to be or not, and he hates the man.”

“So where does God come in?”

My head came up.

“You talk about hope for the Sisters.” Chief shrugged the big shoulders again. “Doesn’t it apply to Desmond?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t have hope. I wouldn’t have adopted him if I didn’t hope I could give him a better life than he was going to have otherwise.”

“So …”

“I don’t know.”

“Hey.” Chief lifted my chin with the tips of his fingers. “How many times do we have to go through this? If you don’t trust me with what’s going on in there—”

“I do.”

“Up to a point.”

“What point?”

“The point where you think I’m going to say ‘enough.’”

“Enough … God?”

“
Do
you think I’m going to say that?”

I was tempted to ask him if he’d been talking to Hank. The point was,
I
had been talking to Hank. And I was in prime position to do what she said I needed to do.

“Okay,” I said. “I just have to keep hoping that God the Father will replace Sultan the Mack Daddy in Desmond’s mind.”

Chief’s face went so soft I had to touch it to make sure it was still his. He caught my hand and kissed my sweaty palm.

“I can hope that too,” he said.

The moment was so stunning I almost missed the next one.

“We still on for Friday night? I made a reservation at Columbia.”

“My, my,” I said, scrambling to recover. “Should I go with a sequined gown, then?”

“I’m picking you up on the bike.” He gave me the long prekiss look, sucking all the air out of the room. “Just one thing, Classic.”

“Yeah?”

“No shoptalk. This is going to be about you and me.”

“I can do you and me,” I said.

He left via the front door, and I watched through its tiny window as he eased himself onto the Road King and made it rumble the way his voice did. Longing. That was the only word for the push to run after him and beg him to stay.

I sat on the pew among the pillows and looked up at Desmond’s drawings. I’d found time to put the latest one of the two of us in a frame and as I dwelt on it now I decided it outshone all the rest. But even at that, I wanted one more, one that would make the picture of our life complete.

“Yeah, Chief,” I whispered. “I can do you and me and Desmond. In a heartbeat I can do that.”