Brookwood

Fiction by Jeff Harrell

The third of April. About twenty minutes after six. The sun’s just starting to peek out from between the long block of low tenements. In the distance, the smoke stack of an abandoned factory is about to become a silhouette.

John takes a last drag on his cigarette, holds it in, carefully blows the smoke out the window into the frosty morning air. Tosses the butt, wipes his fingers on his jeans. They’re so cold they hurt.

Somehow he kills ten more minutes.

His feet crunch on the last of the late-spring snow as he gets out of the car. It’s mostly gone now, just a few patches left beside the curb, and a little under the solitary, pathetic tree halfway down the block. It was so pure and white when it fell three days before, but now it’s slushy and streaked with brown and black. Corrupted in its time on the Earth.

John doesn’t want to get his feet wet. He’s wearing his canvas sneakers, thin and grey with age. He thought about pulling on his hard soles during those few sleepy minutes in the dark when he was getting dressed, but he went with the sneakers. He’s trying not to regret it. He’s trying not to believe that it matters very much.

Leslie answers the door on the second knock. Her eyes are red. Maybe she’s just tired. Maybe she’s been crying.

Her shiner’s getting better. He can barely make out the bruise over her right cheekbone.

“Carla’s not here yet,” she says by way of apology. “She said she’d be here by six thirty, but that girl was late for her own birthday.”

She shows him into the tiny kitchen, lit with a sickly yellow light by a naked bulb in a socket on the ceiling. She offers him coffee. “Only if it’s no trouble,” John says, suddenly craving it fiercely. He tries to make small talk as Leslie spoons black powder into the bottom of a dirty cup and covers it with hot tap water.

That’s when he sees Meredith standing in the kitchen doorway, clutching a Beanie Baby and rubbing her eyes with a tiny clenched fist.

Leslie swoops to her. “Go back to bed, sweetie,” she hums, picking sleep out of the corner of Meredith’s eye with a chipped fingernail. “It’s way too early.”

Meredith ignores this. “Who’s that?” she asks in her drowsy voice.

“That’s Uncle John,” she says. “You remember Uncle John? Mommy’s friend? Uncle John?”

Meredith nods sullenly, jerking her chin up and down. A pout is forming.

Leslie whisks Meredith back to bed, padded footie pajama soles slapping softly on linoleum.

By the time Leslie comes back, John’s coffee is stone cold.

Carla shows up twenty minutes late and doesn’t even bother to apologize. She stomps her feet to be rid of imaginary snow and whispers eloquent sounding curses in Spanish.

John’s in his coat — he never took it off; the paper-thin walls are transparent to the cold — and he’s helping Leslie into hers. She’s rattling off instructions at a mile a minute. Carla’s heard them all before.

“We’ll be back by four at the latest,” Leslie says by way of conclusion. John does the arithmetic in his head. Four hours there, four hours back. Leaving them no more than an hour there. And that’s probably too much.

The door sticks behind them. Leslie has to put her weight on it to get it to close.

In the car, John turns the heat up to full blast. He turns the car around in a clumsy three-point turn, gets them pointed more or less west. The streets are empty at seven o’clock on a Saturday. The windows of the tenements are all still dark. Nothing moves.

As they make their way toward the freeway, neither of them can think of anything to say.

Leslie is staring out the window at the peeling billboards.

It’s a long time before she speaks.

When she does, she says, “You didn’t have to do this, you know.”

They’ve had this conversation before. “I know,” John says. “But you have to get there somehow.”

“I could have gone by myself.”

“No, you couldn’t have,” he says. He bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood.

After a moment, she says, “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

The sun comes up in the rear-view turning the dark and oppressive highway bleak and dreary. They start to pick up a little traffic around Evans. When he sees a motorcycle cop sitting in the breakdown lane, John instinctively lets up on the gas. But he needn’t have bothered. His twenty-year-old Civic couldn’t break seventy if he pushed it off a cliff.

Leslie sleeps for a while. He can tell without looking over. He hears her breathing change. He hasn’t heard that sound in years. He’ll remember it his whole life.

He wants to talk. He wants to talk to stay awake, and just for the company. But he can’t think of anything to say anyway. He lets her sleep.

She wakes up an hour later, suddenly, as if from a dream. She shakes her head a little to clear the cobwebs, then groans and presses her thumbs into her temples.

They stop for coffee just outside Farmington. She waits in the car, dozing, or at least pretending to. He comes back with two styrofoam cups and a handful of fake sugar and fake creamer in little packets. He forgets the stirrers, but it’s okay. She wants it black. As he steers and sips, he wonders when she started drinking her coffee black.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she says into her cup just as they pass a sign that reads BROOKWOOD 52.

“You said that already,” John says. “I don’t mind.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she says.

“Then what do you mean?”

She blows into her cup, takes a sip, gulps it down. “I mean thank you,” she says.

He glances over, but she’s not looking at him. She’s staring out the window.

They ride for another hour in silence.

When they get to the right exit, John pops the glove box. The lid thumps down onto Leslie’s knee, and she giggles faintly. He looks up to catch a glimpse of her smile, but it’s gone before he gets there.

He fishes out the directions he scribbled down. Left at the light, half a mile, two more lefts, then a right. Another mile and a quarter, then just follow the signs.

It’s a tiny little town, a shitass town of run-down houses and perpetually boarded-up service stations. Half the stop lights are out. It’s nearly eleven, and John expects to see traffic, or at least some signs of life. But the place is deserted. A ghost town.

It takes them about two minutes to get away from the depressing little houses. They’re on a two-lane road. The asphalt’s good as new but the painted lines are faded and peeled.

“It’s just up there, I think,” John says, pointing with one finger as he steers with one hand and double-checks the directions with the other. “We should be there in a minute.”

“Don’t go too fast, okay?” she says, and there’s a catch in her throat. She’s got big, fat, unwelcome tears in her eyes. She blinks, and one of them cascades down her cheek like a waterfall.

“It’s gonna be okay,” John says, because what else is he supposed to say?

She smiles at him, or tries to. It doesn’t work. She’s fighting it like a hero, but the tears come anyway, thick and hot and unstoppable.

He lets up on the accelerator. The Civic coughs once, then slows to forty, then to thirty-five.

But they get there anyway. The place is huge. There’s a wrought-iron fence all around it, with a broad drive that leads up to an ancient-looking building on the top of a low hill. There are trees on the wide grey lawn, dead and skeletal from the long winter. And a big sign, seven feet wide.

THE BROOKWOOD CARE FACILITY

All of a sudden John doesn’t want to, but he parks the car anyway. The visitor lot’s small, but it’s still half empty. Less than a dozen cars, most of them expensive late-models.

John kills the engine. The heat goes off with it. Instantly the temperature in the car drops a degree.

Leslie’s not crying any more, but the tears are still wet on her face. She pats her cheeks with a napkin, folds it over in her hands, then unfolds it and folds it again.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” John says. “Not if you’re not ready.”

Leslie grimaces at him. “You drove me all this way,” she says.

“And I’ll drive you all the way back if that’s what you want,” he says.

She dabs at her eyes again with the napkin. Wipes her nose. “No, I’m okay,” she says.

“You sure?”

She looks at him then, really looks at him for the first time that day. Looks him right in the eye.

She’s not remotely okay.

“I’m okay,” she says.

They get out of the car and walk a long way from the visitor lot to the front steps. John wants to put his arm around her, but he doesn’t.

The middle-aged black woman behind the sliding glass partition is all business.

“Leslie Gage for Stephen Gage,” Leslie says, barely above a whisper.

The woman behind the glass flips through her book, finds Lesley’s name on the schedule. Picks up the phone, dials a number. Says something inaudible.

“You can take a seat,” she says, pointing through the glass at a row of overstuffed chairs by the window.

John sits. Leslie paces.

Maybe five minutes go by. Maybe just one. Maybe an hour. Time is funny in this place.

A door John hadn’t noticed swings open. A man comes out. He’s not wearing a white coat. John had been expecting a guy in a white coat. But this guy looks ordinary. He’s in shirtsleeves, with a tie. Thinning hair. Tall. Like somebody’s dad. Not anybody in particular, just some random person’s dad.

“Leslie,” he says, and he holds out his hands. Both of them. Leslie takes a quick step and grasps his hands in hers. “You doing okay?” he says, casual and yet not at the same time.

Leslie nods, and the guy sees right through it. But he’s polite enough not to say anything.

John’s on his feet now, unsure of what to do. He takes a chance. He steps up.

The guy untangles one of his hands from Leslie’s, sticks it out. “Doctor Will Hamilton,” he says. He’s got a firm grip, businesslike but relaxed at the same time. Casual but serious. This guy’s walking all the tightropes today.

He turns back to Leslie, puts on his best compassionate-detachment expression. “You ready?”

Leslie looks at the floor for a second, then glances at John. “Can he?” she says.

The doctor sizes John up. Thinks it over. Then purses his lips. “Sure, sure,” he says like it’s the most obvious thing in the room.

And then they’re walking.

On the other side of the door, the hallway is big and wide. The floor’s tile, the walls painted cement. Their footsteps echo.

“We’ve got Stephen in the day room,” the doc is saying.

“How is he?” Leslie says.

“He’s having a good day today,” the doc says.

“Compared to what?” Leslie chuckles dryly.

The doc half-smiles. “Compared to the bad days,” he says.

They turn a corner, then the doc opens a door. The door has a sign next to it.

The sign says “DAY ROOM.”

Steve-o is sitting slumped in a chair facing a big picture window. He’s dressed in scrubs, like baggy blue pajamas. He’s got a thin robe on over it, so thin John can see the blue right through it.

He’s put on weight. It’s only been six weeks, but Steve-o looks like he’s put on thirty pounds. He’s got jowls now. Jowls and a double chin.

The doc holds the door open for them as they walk inside, going from cold tile to industrial-grade carpet, from bright blue-white fluorescents to dim grey sunlight. Then he just stays out of the way and tries to become invisible.

Steve-o doesn’t look up.

“Stevie?” Leslie says almost in a whisper. Steve-o still doesn’t look up. “Stevie?” she says again, louder, and this time he hears her.

He stares at Leslie for a long minute. Or five. Or for an hour. John can’t tell.

Then he gets it, and he smiles. A big, un-self-conscious smile, like a baby’s.

“Hey,” he says.

“Stevie,” Leslie says, “look who I brought.” She turns, and Steve-o follows her eyes, and then they’re both looking at John.

“Hey, Steve-o,” John says.

Steve-o’s eyes light up. “Johnny? Johnny, is that you?” he says. He gets up from his chair slowly, clumsily. Like he’s had too many glasses of Michelob. Then he stumbles forward.

“Hey, Steve,” John says again, fighting back his own tears.

Then they’re hugging. Steve’s robe smells like antiseptic, and Steve smells like stale sweat, but they’re hugging.

“How you doin’, man?” John says into Steve’s neck.

“I’m okay, pint-size,” Steve says, thumping John on the back the way he used to do when they were kids. Two for flinching, Johnny, he used to say. Two for flinching.

And then they’re sitting, the three of them, in a little circle. Going through all the ways there are to ask how you’re doing. Steve-o reaches out to take Leslie’s hand once, but she pulls away without saying anything, and he doesn’t try again.

They talk about Meredith for a little while. Leslie says she misses her daddy. It takes Steve a second to make the connection. They must have him on some powerful shit. Then he’s got tears in his eyes, says he misses her too.

“Are they taking care of you, Stevie?” Leslie asks.

“Oh, it’s great here,” Steve-o says, slurring his words just a little. “It’s great. They’re all real nice. It’s just great.”

“Keepin’ you out of trouble?” John asks with a grin.

“Mostly, mostly,” Steve-o says. “Sometimes it’s hard, you know,” he says. “It’s hard sometimes, but it’s okay.”

None of them say anything for a second. No big deal. Just a lull in the conversation. Totally natural, totally normal. Just for a second, nobody speaks.

Then Steve-o says, “I don’t like it, y’know.”

“Don’t like what?” John asks without thinking.

“You know,” Steve-o says. He’s gesturing now, waving his hands around a little wildly. Trying to pull words out of thin air. “I don’t like walking through people’s souls.”

Silently, Leslie starts to cry.

“I mean, you can’t help it, you know?” Steve-o says. He’s mumbling now like he’s got a mouth full of walnuts. “You walk around, just doing whatever, you know. And you walk through somebody’s soul. You don’t mean nothin’ by it. You just walk through somebody’s soul. And I don’t like that. I don’t like doing that.”

John doesn’t know how to respond to this.

“Hey, you been to the ballpark yet?” Steve-o says, suddenly animated again and grinning like a child.

“No, man,” John says. He’s got a lump in his throat the size of his fist. “No, not yet. Season just started.”

“Gonna have a good season this year, man,” Steve-o says. “Greatest season since eighty-six. Remember eighty-six? Remember that?”

“Yeah, man,” John says. He was four years old in 1986. He doesn’t remember a thing.

Leslie’s wiping her nose on the sleeve of her sweatshirt, trying to hide behind it. Steve-o doesn’t notice.

“Obviously his condition is very serious,” the doc is saying. Their footsteps are echoing in the hallway again. Leslie’s about three seconds away from totally losing her shit, but she’s holding on somehow.

John feels like he’s been kicked in the crotch.

The doc is still talking. Schizo-something, and this long list of drugs, or at least John assumed they were drugs, they could have been countries in Africa for all he knew.

“In cases like this it’s very difficult to make any solid predictions about the future,” he’s saying. “We have to take it one day at a time.”

Which is the doctor way of saying that Steve-o is batshit crazy, and nobody can do anything about it.

“Clearly because of the conditions under which his disorder first manifested itself” — he’s talking about Leslie’s shiner now, and the hairline fracture under her eye, and the three cracked ribs and the sprained knee — “it’ll be quite some time before we’re ready to talk about different long-term options,” the doc says.

They’re back in the lobby now. The black woman behind the glass is ignoring them like she’s being paid to, which John guesses she is. Leslie turns on her heel and looks the doc in the eye.

“Just tell me,” she says. “Is Stevie going to be able to come home?”

The doc goes through a slow dance of body language before saying, “The best case here is a transition to a group home environment with full-time supervision.” Leslie keeps staring at him. “No,” he says finally, shaking his head and looking away. “I don’t think Stephen will ever go home.”

Leslie chews on this for a minute, just letting the words roll around in her head.

“Okay,” she says. She sticks out her hand and the doc shakes. Pleasant words are exchanged. John shakes too, but by this time the doc is already miles away, thinking about the next family that’s coming to visit.

Back in the car, John lets the engine warm up for a second before putting it in gear.

Leslie’s staring out the windshield at where they’d just come from.

“You okay?” he asks.

She nods without saying anything.

John continues to watch her for a second, waiting for her to break down or sob or do whatever a woman does when she learns that her husband will never be coming home again. That he might as well be dead, except she doesn’t get the privilege of being called a widow or of getting to move on with her life.

But she just sits there.

As he grabs the stick to drop the car into reverse, Leslie reaches out and puts her hand over his. She does this without looking.

He freezes for a second. But she doesn’t say anything or even look at him, so he just puts the car in gear and drives away, feeling her cool hand draped over the top of his.

It’s nearly three o’clock before they decide that they can’t go on without stopping to eat. John pulls off at the next stop and circles through the drive-thru of the nearest fast-foot place, ordering two combo meals and two large pops and getting back on the highway again as fast as he can.

Leslie talks through a mouth full of french fry.

“You didn’t have to do this, you know,” she says.

“You keep telling me that,” John says.

“Cause it’s true,” Leslie says.

John shrugs, swallows a bite of his burger as he steers with his knees. “He’s my brother, Les,” he says. “I wanted to see him too.”

“Yeah, but I know you two haven’t exactly been close since the wedding.”

“That was his idea, not mine,” John says as a dollop of ketchup lands right in the middle of his shirt. He wipes it off with his thumb and keeps on driving.

After another mile, he says, “We’ll be there in a little bit. You want me to just drop you off?”

“If you want,” she says.

“I mean, I can stay for a while. I’ve got the night off tonight.”

“It’s up to you,” she says.

“I just didn’t know if you wanted the company.”

She looks at him then, from two feet and a million miles away. Looks at him long and hard.

“Don’t rush this,” she says in a whisper.

“I’m not rushing anything,” John says, instantly defensive because he knew he had been rushing the hell out of it.

“It’s not gonna be like you think,” Leslie says, a touch of anger starting to creep into her voice.

“I don’t think it’s gonna be like anything, Les, seriously,” he says, looking away from the road long enough to make eye contact with her. “Seriously.”

“Because we’re not eighteen any more,” she says.

“I know.”

“There’s more to this than just us,” she says.

“I know.”

“It’s not that simple,” she says.

“When was it ever simple?” John thinks aloud.

After a second, she does it again. She reaches out and puts her hand over his. Not holding it. Just resting it there, on top of John’s, which is holding the gear shift.

“It was simple,” she says softly. “Until it got complicated.”

John doesn’t know what to say to that.

They pass the miles in silence for a while.

“Okay,” she says when they’re too exits away.

“What?”

“I said okay,” Leslie says. “If you’re not working tonight anyway, some company would be nice.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s been a hell of a day.”

“Yeah,” John says.

“Besides,” Leslie says with a gentle squeeze of his hand. “Meredith misses her daddy.”

Their exit is coming up. John flicks his signal and puts the car into the far right-hand lane. As he downshifts to get off the highway, he feels Leslie’s thumb stroke the side of his hand. Just once.

He guides the car onto the off-ramp, down into the city, and into the long, cold night.

Copyright © 2007 by Jeff Harrell. All rights reserved.