::THIRTY SEVEN::
“Brubaker’s going after Douglas, Vetter.”
Jeanette and I took a long walk after finishing up at the laundromat. We could have taken a cab back, but it was nice to just walk with her through my old neighbourhood. There isn’t much left of my old school anymore but we walked by that too, and stopped for pop at a tiny corner store. The lady behind the counter still remembered me. Jeanette’s in the bathroom right now, fixing her hair.
Alvarez is at home, sitting on the front porch after sending the kids off with money to chase down the ice cream truck that turned onto the street. “Does Douglas know the kind of danger he’s in?” As far as anyone can tell, Douglas isn’t married, and his one kid is all the way across the country, in Miami. So he isn’t an easy guy to reach but that doesn’t mean he’s any safer personally. Would Brubaker really go so far as to kill Douglas just to try to make a case go away? Doesn’t he realize how insane that is? Killing a DEA agent here, on US soil, is a little different that killing agents in Colombia, where any lie could be told about what happened to them.
“He’s started sleeping at the office, so I guess he has an idea of just how dangerous Brubaker can be.”
“Is he safe there?” Jeanette peeked around the corner of the bathroom and smiled softly at me, before disappearing again when she noticed I was still on the phone.
“It’s said he’s sleeping with a gun under his pillow, Vetter.” Alvarez is laughing over the phone at that, but it leaves me quiet. I DID, at one point, sleep with a gun under my pillow, it didn’t do me any good, when the time came. “Douglas isn’t going to be the pushover Brubaker thinks he is, he isn’t a rookie anymore. Even Torres, the rookie, isn’t backing down. Him and Holloway have gone underground until this dies down. Vega is still waiting I think, until Brubaker is completely finished, destroyed.” There is a small part of me that is starting to, begrudgingly anyway, like Vega, and respect him a little, drug dealer or not.
“You, Adriana and the boys?…” I never really had to finish my question. It’s said very quietly, competing with the noise from outside on the balcony, where I went to finish talking to Alvarez. It’s so quiet on his end that I can still hear the sound of the ice cream truck on his street. I miss being home. I miss the quiet. It’s funny, I had been homesick, when I was in El Paso, and now that I’m here, I’m ‘home’, I can’t wait to go back. Watching Jeanette peak around the corner again, as she comes out to find one of my sweatshirts to wear, I realize it’s not the place you live in that makes a place a home.
“Everything’s quiet here, Vetter. You heard the boys already. Adriana is at some thing for her church. The last of the stuff came for your back deck yesterday, so we set that up for you.” I said thanks so softly I’m amazed he could hear me at all, I’m grinning like a fool again. I don’t care. “Did everything work out between you and Jeanette the other night?” His voice sounded worried, his concern so genuine it comes right through the phone, never mind the distance. I gave him a brief rundown on what happened, and got to listen to a short spell of profanity muttered under his breath. Alvarez isn’t exactly a saint, but he doesn’t usually curse like that, and not around the house. I had told him earlier, about meeting her parents. “You two will be home, where you belong, soon enough, don’t sweat those…” Another swathe of profanity. “Give Jeanette a hug from all of us, and you two kids take care of each other, never mind the rest of those fuckers.” I thanked him, as I got off the phone, missing the man and his family terribly. Homesick again.
It’s a little after three in the afternoon when I come in off the balcony, it’s hot, smoggy, and loud. Jeanette had taken the extra time, with me being on the phone, to put on a little makeup, like the first night we were in Seattle. Something so simple, it still takes my breath away. I kiss her hair and hold her tight, knowing my heart is racing and not caring. “From Alvarez and the family.” Her hand rests over my heart, her arm around my waist. It feels so good to hold her and listen to her soft laugh. It makes me sad a little to realize how far I’ve come in the short while since leaving here. Hicks will always be MY family, but OUR family? Jeanette’s and mine? Alvarez and his family are closer to us, because they already love Jeanette, and that means so much to me that it hurts sometimes. I squeeze her hard again, making her look up at me, her dark eyes inquisitive. She doesn’t ask, just strokes her hand over my heart, a lingering caress as we walk out to the elevators.
“How far is it to walk?” Catching a cab at this time of the day is murder, something else I had forgotten about being here. The traffic makes me even more glad I didn’t go through the hassle of renting a car for the time we’re here.
She says things that still take me by surprise. People here don’t really walk anywhere, not if they can avoid it, so you end up with this whole mindset that you can’t walk anywhere. I mentally go over the distance in my head. “About an hour I guess.” Maybe a little less if we take a couple of shortcuts, but Jeanette really isn’t dressed for shortcuts. Her hand slips down to hold mine as she takes a deep breath, looking out at the traffic. I probably could have planned this better, but it’s not really something I planned so much as something I really needed to do.
“We’d probably wait an hour just for a cab.” She breaks out in a laugh as she looks out at the traffic, bumper to angry bumper as far as we can see. “And we’d wait longer IN the cab. Maybe this way we can get off the busier streets. Which way?”
I haven’t really walked anywhere, and not this kind of distance, since I was a kid, when I didn’t have the money to take a cab. You walked or you rode your bike, everywhere. We ended up taking shortcuts, cutting through fences, down through the dry canal beds and back up through the scrub on the other side. We talked about favorites, and played twenty questions. Her favourite colour is black, mine’s blue. I had thought it would be pink, because of the daisies, that’s still her favourite flower of course. We passed a small neat house with a wild patch of lavender that ran the length of the fence out front. My favourite flower, because of the smell. She had a bunch of it in her pocket now.
I found out that she can run faster than me, even in a skirt, which took me by surprise. The agency still has me run for fitness evaluations and I’m pretty fast, but I guess she had more motivation. A huge brindle dog jumped out from a fence we had just passed. I got annoyed and was looking for an owner, to give him hell about his dog getting loose. A dog that was now snarling and advancing on us with no owner in sight. If I had my weapon I probably would have just shot the thing. A short huff of breath and she pulled my arm, hard, and we’re running down the street at breakneck speed. Jeanette with her skirt hiked up enough that she can run, her hair flying out behind her and that dog on us the whole way, until we got to a busy intersection and the dog thought better of braving all the cars. It took us both half a block to catch our breath, just enough time for the hysterical laughing to kick in. I felt like a kid on some crazy adventure.
She likes gummi sours, the ones that make your face screw up, and I like chocolate. We stopped at a small store about a block away from the cemetery, to get something to drink. Jeanette picked out flowers. “For Stacy.” I hadn’t wanted to buy flowers for someone else, for another woman, not when I was with ‘Nette. That she did it anyway I don’t really have words for it, it touched me more deeply than I know how to say. “If you need to see her alone, I understand, Sean. I can wait for you here.”
There is a small wooden fence that runs along the outside of the cemetery, and benches on either side of the gate. I was frozen there for I don’t know how long, as I held Jeanette and tried to tell myself I could do this without falling apart. “I don’t want you to wait out here for me, ‘Nette.” I held her a little tighter, my hand cupping the back of her neck. To someone else I’d have to explain how hard this is for me. To someone else. Never to ‘Nette, one of the only people that could ever know, really know, what I was feeling right now. My fingertips traced the lines of her beautiful face, her dark eyes flecked with gold in the light of early evening. I can’t say anything else, so I take her hand and walk through the cemetery, to Stacy’s headstone.
Jeanette stays silent as I kneel in front of her headstone. Stacy Vetter. No one’s been here for a while, the weeds are tall in front of her marker, and there’s no water in the small metal vase at the base, for the flowers I’m holding. Jeanette, still silent, pulls weeds out of the ground in front, her hand sweeping the dirt from the stone at the base. I’m puzzled as she gets up, I don’t want her to leave. I know this has to be incredibly awkward and I wish I could do something to make it less so. I move to get up and try to stop her, I don’t even know what she’s doing, she hasn’t said a word yet. Her hand on my shoulder presses me back, gently, her eyes are so dark right now I could get lost in them. Just when I think I know her so deeply, I turn a corner and there’s so much more. She’s going for water, for the flowers, from a small spigot near the gate. Returning, she fills the small vase with the plastic container left there for that purpose, and kneels again. That same graceful move, tucking her skirt before sitting on her heels, like the day I first saw her. She hasn’t said a word.
I had fought saying goodbye, even the thought of it had torn at me, making me furious when anyone would tell me I had to let her go. What the hell did they know? How could they know just what they were asking me to do? How hard it was? Jeanette says nothing, doesn’t tell me ‘it’s for the best’, or any other such garbage, just sits quietly with me. She knows already. John and her beautiful little Emily both rest in the cemetery at the bottom of my street.
My hand reaches out to brush over the letters carved in her headstone one last time. I know this will be the last, and it doesn’t make me sad, not really. “I’m in love, Stacy.”
A dam broke open in me at saying those words, aloud, here. It didn’t hurt. I thought it would, I thought it would tear me apart to say that in front of her, that I was in love with someone else, but it didn’t. Everything in me felt light, like I could feel Stacy all around me, and she was happy, so very happy that I was in love and that I didn’t have to hurt anymore.
I took Jeanette’s hand in mine, holding it close to my heart as I cried quietly, with that beautiful peaceful light in my heart, like I wanted her to feel it too. I told Stacy about Jeanette, and how much I loved her, and that she meant the world to me. I talked until I couldn’t anymore, looking up to see Jeanette’s own tears at the things I had said. I don’t think I’ve ever said so deeply, to anyone, ever, how much I loved them. Not even to Stacy herself. Maybe I would have thought it was stupid or maybe I thought I had the rest of my life to say it. I know how stupid a thing that is to think now. I held Jeanette’s eyes, as I finished. Stacy is still all around us, and can hear us anyway, and I finished telling her how much I love her, until words finally failed me.
I closed my eyes, and held Jeanette’s hand to my lips, kissing it softly, still waiting for a terrible hurt that never comes. This must be what letting go is like. Finally letting go. Kissing her headstone one last time before getting up. “Goodbye, Stacy.”
I still felt light, as we left. I held Jeanette’s hand and didn’t much care that I looked like I’d been crying, it didn’t matter. Everything felt brighter, I felt like I couldn’t breathe enough, that my lungs would burst from it until I could manage to take in one full breath. Calm, I felt so calm and still, everything that was dark in me, that I had held onto all this time, is gone, washed away. All there is now is Jeanette. I’m hers now, in a way I could never have been before. I keep waiting to be sad and it just doesn’t happen, I’ve been waiting for that feeling ever since meeting her; that I should feel sad, and I don’t.
I slip my arm around her waist as we walk, taking a different route this time. Her head rests against my shoulder for a moment. She still hasn’t said anything. What could anyone say? It’s a strange situation, even for us, it’s strange. “I love you, Sean.” Her voice is so quiet it would have been hard for anyone else to hear her. Right now, she’s all I can hear.
“I love you, Jeanette.” And I finally feel free to love her, and not feel guilt, even in a small part of my heart for it. She tilts her head up to me, as I’m about to kiss her hair again. Our kiss is gentle, and deep. Surrender. Holding her tight, breaking the kiss just to watch her, the gold flecks in her eyes, the faint freckles across her nose, brought out by all our walking in the sun today. I whisper that I love her again, holding her tight enough to pick her up off the ground. Even her squeal is wonderful.
Mom’s hasn’t changed; the rest of the neighbourhood has gotten older, and dirtier, but Mom’s is the same. I wasn’t really paying too much attention to where we were walking when we left the cemetery, but I just started walking here, as if it was the only choice I could have made. I was hungry, sure, but that wasn’t the only reason. Mom, Mrs. Angelino, or ‘The Angel’, as she’s known, had been like a mother to me, after my own mother died when I was nine. I didn’t start going there for dinner until I was a little older, but my father and I would see Mrs. Angelino in church every Sunday. That’s something else I haven’t done in a long time.
Her small white fence is perfect, no spray paint on it’s pickets, no graffiti. Jeanette had looked puzzled, when I told her I was going to see Mom, having told her earlier in the day that my mother had passed away when I was younger. Only those who grew up with me knew that I was a street kid for a part of my life, it’s not something I ever shared with anyone. Mom makes her way down the front steps before I get a chance to explain.
“Sean!!” She’s gotten a little older, but she never really seems to change. A simple plain black housedress and an ancient dark apron that hasn’t changed since I was a kid. Her black hair has more steel grey than black in it, in the same tight bun at the back of her head. Just like when I was a kid it doesn’t matter that I tower over her. She reaches up, tugging on my ear to bring me down to her, kissing my cheeks and hugging me tightly. We’re both blinking back tears and grinning widely when she lets go of my ear so that I can stand up. She loves us all like this, which is why we called her Mom. It wasn’t a cute sarcastic name with us, she was our mother, and every one of us loved her with a fierce and protective love that went beyond blood lines. She didn’t care that we were dirty, or that we had no real homes to go to. She didn’t care that we weren’t the best kids. She loved us, and she fed us. Until you’ve gone a few nights without a meal and slept out in the cold when you’re that age you can never understand, not really, how much we loved her back. “And you have a girl..” Her smile is so warm, she knew that I had lost Stacy, and, having seen Stacy and I grow up together, knew exactly what she meant to me. Her black eyes look right into my soul, I never could hide anything from her, even if I wanted to.
“Mrs. Angelino…” Her laugh comes out in a small snort, her hands on her hips after she swats me with the dishtowel she’s holding. I reach down and kiss her forehead. “Mom, this is Jeanette, Jeanette…”
Jeanette is pulled into a fierce hug, without the ear tug of course. “Call me Mom, anyone Sean loves can call me Mom.” I really can’t hide anything with her. “Come on, you can help me with the pots….” Jeanette peeks at me over Mom’s shoulder, her eyes dancing with laughter as Mom pulls the both of us along to help her get dinner ready. We share a look as we pass the eight or nine skinny kids sitting quietly on her stoop already. I was once one of those kids, skinny, hungry, dirty and tired. I tried my best to keep that from my friends at the time, and just because I didn’t have to do it for long didn’t change the fact that for a while, I was just like them. It was seeing the things I saw, here on this stoop, that really set me on the path to joining the DEA, to do something with my life, something good.
Mom’s kitchen hasn’t changed either, in all this time. She points Jeanette in the direction of the plates and cutlery, she’s gone to paper plates at some point in the past few years, and plastic knives and forks, but everything else is the same. The strainer is already in the sink for me to pour the huge pot of pasta while Mom fiddles with the pot of sauce that I know she makes every day, getting it to taste just right. A lot of people might not have bothered.
Mom won’t sit down, I don’t think she knows how, but she does stand by the door and watch, as Jeanette and I set up plates of pasta and meat sauce, with three meat balls for every plate. Interrupting only once, with her bright laugh that is decades younger than she is. “What, you don’t like my spaghetti and meatballs anymore, Sean?” If only she knew. Jeanette catches my eye, and the both of us are giggling, I don’t care how silly it sounds.
“I still love your spaghetti and meatballs, Mom. Are you eating with us?” She usually doesn’t, taking a small meal in the early afternoon.
“You’re a good boy, Sean. Come on, I get you to help me…”
I kiss Jeanette, telling her I’ll be out in a minute. She grins at me and I hold the door open for her, her arms full of plates. I can’t imagine any other woman I know doing this, I watch her for a moment, as she hands plates out to the kids sitting alongside the stoop. She came back in twice more, I would have held the door for her, but Mom had me moving boxes of pasta from downstairs. She smiled at me, before taking our plates last, and sitting out on the stoop herself, next to a skinny girl no more than fifteen.
She prays for all of us, she has for years. She never eats with us because she comes back into her front room, lighting the candles on her mantelpiece, and prays for us. I had heard something fall once, when I was a kid, and had ran inside to see if she was alright. It wasn’t anything, just a jar falling off the counter, but Mom had me sit and pray with her then, and I did so now, for a little while. “You’re going to marry her, I can tell, you have that same look in your eyes every time you look at her. It’s God’s will, that you should find such a perfect love again, Sean.” Adriana says so too, and Alvarez, it’s God’s will.
She doesn’t want to take the money, she wouldn’t, so I leave it under one of her cans of tomatoes without telling her, where she can’t miss it, for pasta. Jeanette is pulling off her sweatshirt, and insisting that the young girl she was sitting next to take it. She was wearing nothing but a thin shirt, and Jeanette wouldn’t stop insisting until the young girl put the warmer shirt on.
Almost everyone is gone when I join ‘Nette outside, sitting behind her on the stoop , moving my plate of pasta over. I didn’t wear a jacket when I left, so I rub my hands along her arms to warm her up a little. I would have done more, but we were on Mom’s porch now, and she can probably still flick a dishtowel like nobodies business. “I see now where you got the recipe, she’d be proud of you, Sean.” Jeanette discreetly pops a meatball in my mouth. Mom, who doesn’t miss anything, is probably making a point of not noticing.
“Spaghetti and meatballs, it’s always going to be my favourite.” There are days when it’s the only thing I had. I’ve never told anyone that before, but I told Jeanette now, as I ate my plate of pasta rich with memories. I know it’s not really anything to be ashamed of, that a lot of kids fall through the cracks for one reason or another, but I also know that for whatever reason, I never willingly told anyone before. She leaned back and kissed my jaw, our eyes meeting for a moment. There’s nothing I couldn’t tell her. It’s ironic that the weight of that thought leaves me at a loss for words.
Mom comes out to kiss us both again, before we leave, bringing me close to tears again. This day has done a real number on me, and exhaustion is starting to set in. I pick up plates while Jeanette gets her own hug from Mom, saying something to her that has Jeanette smile beautifully and drop her head, after catching my eye. It’s harder to leave than I would have thought possible, and Mom ends up flicking her dishtowel at me, she hasn’t lost her touch, I’m going to have a bruise.
We walked back the rest of the way to the hotel, it just seemed easier than calling a cab and having to wait forever for it anyway. Jeanette kicked her shoes off and wiggled her toes the minute she got in, and I called for coffee. We lay on the bed for a moment, kissing softly, before both accepting that we were just too tired to do anything more. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my whole life, mentally, physically and emotionally. Jeanette kissed me again, telling me to stay where I was, and put in the last of the zombie movies, laughing a little under her breath as she did it. “You’re trying to kill me, ‘Nette.”
She quickly stripped, and pulled on one of my t-shirts before curling up with me. “Don’t worry, Sean. Anyone trying to pull you under this bed is going to have a fight on their hands.” She timed it perfectly, waiting until I had a mouthful of coffee before she said it. Payback.
copyright © 2006 xxxevilgrinxxx