Fishwives, page 31
Ramon walks back to TJ and crouches next to him. “We helped them tie that dead tree to the roof of their car.” He hooks his thumb toward The Ladies’ car at the edge of the driveway. “She looked fine. Well, like her usual self. I would have heard an ambulance. I can see them going in and out of their front door from my bedroom window.”
“She died after we saw her,” TJ says. “At the dump.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Ramon frowns. “You can’t have a heart attack and a stroke. Jackie’s flat on her back on her La-Z-Boy, with the TV on, snoring.” Ramon looks at the side of the house. “Right there in that window.”
“No.” TJ shakes his head. “My mom stopped me when I was leaving for work, says there was nothing they could do.” He shakes his head some more. “Jackie was gone before the ambulance even got there.” TJ’s mother works at All Saints, where Jackie arrived, DOA.
Ramon stands up and zips his parka. “No offense. Your mom’s a laundry worker.” And she was probably eavesdropping, Ramon thinks. “She got the name wrong.”
TJ stands up too and looks at the ground slowly shaking his head while Ramon wonders aloud how so many people can get so many things wrong.
“Jackie is dead.” TJ puts an arm over Ramon’s shoulder and starts blubbering like a two-year-old. Ramon stops breathing. His eyes dart around. He pulls away from TJ.
“You want to run?” TJ wipes his nose on the sleeve of his hoodie, watches Ramon’s face, and steadies himself for whatever happens next. He feels almost grateful to have something to concentrate on besides Jackie being dead. “You look like you wanna run. This how it felt watching me all those years I was going crazy?” TJ can’t help but think it would be better for both of them if Ramon was crying too.
Jackie dead. The thought is so ridiculous Ramon laughs, one of those horror movie laughs. TJ doesn’t even flinch when Ramon laughs. They just squat in the driveway together.
“We should have gone with The Ladies yesterday,” Ramon says.
“Yeah,” TJ agrees. “I better sleep on their couch for a while.”
Ramon wonders how often TJ sleeps at The Ladies’ house these days. The whole neighborhood knows who sleeps where. They know that TJ’s father hasn’t been around in a few years, and his mother has a new boyfriend who calls TJ “son” in a formal, respectful way. They know that Lotti’s boyfriend stays over on Friday and Saturday nights and eats her maizena in the morning. Everybody knows where TJ sleeps now. Except Ramon.
“You ever wonder if she minded that we called her a lady?” TJ says. He sounds like somebody else to Ramon. Someone who cries in broad daylight. TJ’s voice is soft, like when they used to walk in the woods behind the strip mall and it was Ramon, not Pock, touching the back of TJ’s head.
“What do you mean?” Ramon says this even though he knows what TJ means. The boys and Pock have always called Jackie and Regina “The Ladies.” All the kids in the neighborhood call them The Ladies. But Jackie is Jackie: buzz cut, men’s pants, work boots. Calling her and Regina The Ladies never changed that.
“Doesn’t matter.” TJ’s shoulder twitches like it used to when he was trying not to hit someone or trying not to cry. Now, it’s twitching because he’s trying to hold things together for Ramon. TJ watches Ramon who looks like he might spit on TJ. Not that he would. Probably not. TJ remembers that he spit on Ramon’s sneaker one time. Poor Ramon, apologizing every time he comes home: for not being here when Pock’s favorite cousin got mangled by a hit-and-run, for not being here when Oscar got mugged his first time alone on a public bus, for not being here when TJ punched a hole in the bathroom wall instead of that asshole at work.
Ramon sees TJ’s shoulder moving. “Your arm is spazzin’.” He jumps up. “Let’s go see.”
“See what?”
“If she’s in there, sitting in her chair. People on this street . . .” Ramon’s voice lifts with disdain for the bullshit that gets passed around. “You see an ambulance? You hear sirens?” Ramon’s heart races. Maybe he has hit on the essential point that’s going to save Jackie from being dead. Maybe TJ’s quiet mother, this one time, carried a rumor without checking it out, without making sure it was true before it came out her mouth.
“I told you she died at the dump,” TJ says. “The ambulance went there.”
Ramon sprints to the side of the house, stops dead in his tracks to stand with his back against the faded clapboard a few feet from the window. TJ follows, leans against the house, and stands shoulder to shoulder with Ramon.
“Look inside.” Ramon crouches and hugs his knees, his butt against the house.
“Jesus.” TJ slides down next to Ramon, half convinced that Ramon is right. It’s possible Jackie is sleeping in her chair a few feet away. His mom got it wrong? Why isn’t Yvonne here? Her car isn’t in the driveway. Wouldn’t his mom have told Ramon’s mom by now? The neighbor ladies should be here with casseroles and chicken and cake. Some people talk shit about The Ladies because they’re queer, but Jackie and Regina have lived here since before the boys were born. The neighbor ladies will turn out for them. The men will cut Regina’s grass and take out her trash for a few weeks. “TV’s not on,” TJ says. It’s still early, not nine o’clock yet.
Ramon stands. “The window is closed. How do you know the TV isn’t on?”
TJ stands slowly. “Come on, Ramon. You know she likes the TV loud.” They used to catch the score of a Patriots game by listening right where they stand now, didn’t matter if the window was closed or not.
Ramon stops breathing and listens hard. There is noise coming through the window. Not snoring, not the TV. Whimpering. Moaning. Ramon leans forward on the tips of his sneakers toward the window to catch the sound. “Jackie,” he whispers.
TJ stands smack in front and squints through the window. His hand shades his eyes from the glare that bounces from the snow to the glass. “Regina,” he says.
Ramon stands behind TJ. They stare in at Regina who sits on Jackie’s chair. They see a side view of her. There’s no light on in the room. The boys can’t see her very well. They can tell it’s her, though. She’s on the edge of the seat, staring straight ahead, making a sound that’s getting louder, or maybe sounds louder because the boys are listening so hard. She’s so close that if the window were open, they could lean in and touch her.
Ramon puts a hand flat against the window. Regina cocks her head to the sound of the loose pane rattling. Ramon pulls his hand away. The boys watch Regina’s slow movements as her head swivels in their direction. They watch her fight with the sash to unlock and raise the swollen window. They watch her close her eyes and bite her lip as she manages to move the stuck frame.
Something is happening in Ramon’s chest, like somebody shoved a fist in and is squeezing his lungs, maybe his heart. It hurts bad.
When the window is up Regina says, “Oh, TJ. Oh, Ramon,” and Ramon understands it was Regina, seeing her alone, that he dreaded as much as he feared Jackie being dead. Ramon knows how it is to lose the person you love.
TJ and Regina stare at each other. TJ’s mouth is open.
Ramon thinks TJ’s open mouth makes him look stupid, like Oscar before the occupational therapist taught him to lose his slack jaw. Ramon feels like he’s doing something bad looking at them. It’s the same feeling he gets when he thinks too hard about how it should have been him and not Pock who took care of Oscar after school when they were younger. It feels dirty watching Regina’s sad face and TJ’s open mouth, too private. It hurts too much. Regina looks older by the second. TJ’s hoodie is wet in the front.
TJ turns to Ramon, sees the expression on Ramon’s face, and thinks maybe Ramon is about to lose his shit. The thought of Ramon losing his shit scares TJ, who wants to run himself, but he won’t leave Regina. He won’t leave Ramon. Not this time.
“Remember when Jackie caught you peeing on the rhododendron in the backyard?” Regina says. “That bouquet of her own sunflowers you picked her. She still has those, all dried up on our dresser.” It’s like she’s looking at the boys and through them at the same time. “Ten, fifteen years of dust. She pulled them out of the trash when I tried to toss them.”
Ramon wants to scream that TJ doesn’t know the difference between a rhododendron and an oak tree.
“You were all of six years old,” Regina says. “I never meant to fall in love with children. Such handfuls, you kids. Jackie.” Regina stops talking to look into space. “She showed me,” she says abruptly. “You boys and Pock.” She smiles sadly and sighs. “You know what I mean?”
TJ nods. Ramon wonders if Regina remembers it was him, Ramon, not TJ who got caught pissing on the rhododendron. He watches TJ’s fists clench and thinks TJ’s mind might not be in fighting mode, but his hands want to put themselves through something.
Regina puts her fingertips on the screen, and TJ places his finger against hers. She offers Ramon a fingertip. Her touch is another stab to Ramon’s chest. Her hair is uncombed, her wrinkles deep.
“She loved you boys,” Regina says. “She didn’t want to embarrass you or herself by saying it too often.” She usually has pink lips and cheeks. Her face is all the same gray today. Her voice sounds younger than usual, a girl’s voice.
Ramon pulls his hand away and tries to breathe the fist out of his chest, tries to calm himself while TJ and Regina stare and touch fingertips. Ramon thinks of all the people he knows who died and all the times he didn’t panic. He held a baby, a little girl who lived right down the street, held her while her mother picked up the shit that fell out of her purse. A few weeks later that baby died. Ramon liked holding the baby. She smelled good. He felt bad, but he didn’t panic when she died. His uncle died. And Pock’s cousin. Old people, that’s what they do; they die. But Jackie—he thought Jackie would wait until TJ got better. All the way better. He thought Jackie would be living next door every time he came home from school, until he graduated, at least. What if Ramon is gone and TJ does something stupid and dies? Jackie is dead. TJ is too calm.
Lotti steps into view behind Regina. “I thought I heard you boys. Why are you talking through the screen? Come in.” She wipes away a tear and kisses Regina on the forehead. “Maybe you can get her to take a few bites of scrambled eggs. Lucky you’re home from school, baby.” She smiles at Ramon. “We’re going to need help.”
Regina has one spotty hand over her heart. Lotti takes the hand. “We have to get you dressed.” She puts an arm around Regina to shepherd her to the bedroom.
Ramon grips the windowsill and watches them go.
“Come on,” TJ says. “You my ironman, remember?”
“She forgot to tie the neck of her nightgown,” Ramon says.
“You’re freakin’. They left the window open. We gotta go inside and close it.”
“Her chest it was . . . like. Her skin.”
••••
“Yeah, she’s an old lady.” TJ throws an arm over Ramon’s shoulder. Ramon allows it this time and TJ holds him in a sideways hug.
“Jackie’s skin,” Ramon shivers, “must be cold by now.”
TJ speaks softly in Ramon’s ear, “Remember what you and Papi used to tell me, ‘breathe.’” TJ takes a long breath. “Do it for me.” He exhales and takes another deep breath. “I did it for you. Like, a thousand times.”
Ramon ignores the instructions. “I think they take the blood out of the body,” he says. “She should have a coffin. A really good one, so the insects. She’ll freeze and thaw.”
“Shut up.” TJ shoves Ramon. “Why you saying this? Of course her skin’s cold. Course they’re gonna put her in the ground. She’s going to disintegrate. Ashes to ashes.” He starts crying, letting his tears run angry now. “My arm’s spazzin’ again. That what you want?” TJ slaps his bicep. “What’s the matter? Jackie fuck up your perfect life by dying?” TJ can feel the need for a drink and the need to put his fist through something solid coming on strong. His new mantra walk away kicks in. He walks away. Fast.
Ramon tackles him on the front lawn. They roll over each other, almost acrobatically at first. Neither of them is any good at gymnastics, so they let their bodies slam together, needing above all else just this: to be near each other, rolling over the lawn, hanging on like they’ll drown if either one of them lets go.
“Get off me,” TJ moans, half cry, half growl, hanging on tighter. The boys tumble over each other, collecting snow on the tangle of themselves, like a snowball. They stop rolling, eventually land on their knees facing each other.
“Good Ramon thinks he gets to be the crazy boy now?” TJ has snow on his lashes and sees Ramon as a blur.
Their breath comes out in cold bursts that mingle and disappear.
“Call me Good Ramon again, Crazy Boy, and maybe I’ll go crazy for real on you.” Ramon gets up on one knee intending to stand, intending to be the one to walk away now.
TJ locks his arms around Ramon’s chest.
Ramon struggles, but he’s nowhere near as strong and he’s fighting against too much, including a lifetime of loving TJ. Ramon collapses, borrowing an old tactic of TJ’s, trying to make TJ put down his guard for a second so Ramon can rally then bust out of the hold. But TJ invented this trick. Before Ramon can make it happen, TJ wedges his head between Ramon’s neck and shoulder and makes sure both knees are firmly planted in the snow. He holds Ramon in a bear hug that Ramon struggles futilely to break.
“Come on, man, quit. I could kill you right now if I wanted to,” TJ says into Ramon’s neck.
“Why don’t you, then?” Ramon huffs, realizing TJ is barely out of breath.
“How many times you save me?” TJ’s voice is too tender for either boy to bear. Then there’s the moment that both boys long for and dread, when TJ pulls his head back and looks Ramon in the eye, and their shared grief hangs in the air for a few long seconds. TJ loosens his grip but does not let go. “Ramon, I don’t want to fight you. Don’t make me.” He kisses Ramon’s neck softly, lingers a moment feeling the beat of Ramon’s heart on his lips.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Ramon whispers, his voice a tangle of new and old heartache.
TJ leans his forehead on Ramon’s shoulder. He knows kissing Ramon’s neck was wrong, the wrong thing to do in The Ladies’ yard with Jackie dead and Regina heartbroken. Wrong for Ramon. Wrong for TJ. The boys kneel in their wrong embrace, TJ holding Ramon until Ramon’s body goes limp again. This time TJ pulls away slowly. The boys sit next to each other in the snow, their knees pulled toward their chests, their backs to Jackie and Regina’s house. They stare at the road.
Ramon says, “Shit. Poor Jackie. Poor Regina.” Tears roll down his cheeks until he gets too self-conscious to keep crying and laughs low in his throat. “Right here on the frozen lawn next door to my house?” He shakes his head. “Asshole. You kiss me here. Not even out in the woods by the strip mall?” The fringe of woods where no one ever found them, or only the one close call when TJ waved around a comb that the other boys thought was a blade, making the punks scatter and TJ laugh like a maniac.
Ramon laughs harder. “Now that I got a boyfriend?”
“Yeah, I tried to tell you, I’m the fucked-up one.” TJ laughs, too. “You don’t get to be the crazy boy. You come home with beautiful unfucked-up Gene. Jackie dies. I got Pock, but we all know she’s better than me. She’s leaving, too. She’ll be living at school, not even commuting next semester. Girl loves me this much.” TJ throws open his arms to demonstrate how much Pock says she loves him. Ramon pulls his head back so he won’t get whacked by TJ’s elbow. TJ’s arms fall back in his lap. “But she ‘has to be honest.’” TJ’s voice pitches high like Pock’s. “She’s not in love with me.” He goes back to his own voice. “I love you both anyway.”
TJ’s crying again.
“You expect me to feel bad?” Ramon is trying with all his heart not to feel bad for TJ. Or Pock. “Kissing my neck. Messed up. Even for you.” He doesn’t want to wipe his snot on his sleeve, but he has no choice. “Don’t touch me like that again.” The boys are still sitting in snow. Ramon grabs TJ’s arm. “Ever.”
TJ winces. The injury has long healed. But even through the double sleeves of the hoodies, Ramon’s grip still hurts the arm that TJ’s father broke.
“Shit.” Ramon lets go and winces, too. “I forget. How’d you live through all that?”
“My mom. You. Jackie.” TJ stands and starts slapping snow off himself. “Regina. Pock. Pock’s gonna kill me for kissing on you.”
“You are crazy.” Ramon unzips his parka and shakes the snow off. “Don’t tell Pock.”
“No?” TJ shrugs. “Okay. Fuck therapy.” His hair is white with snow. “I’ll just tell the therapist I told Pock.” He starts shaking his shoulders and head like a wet dog and laughs when Ramon scrambles to get his parka back on before his dry shirt gets snow on it. TJ grimaces when he moves his sore arm to zip his hoodie. “Might tell the therapist you kissed my neck.”
“Punk.” Ramon puts two fingers gently on TJ’s forearm and shakes his head. “Still hurts.”
TJ shrugs and points his chin at a car driving toward the house. “Bo and Yvonne’s car.”
“Just Yvonne’s car now,” Ramon says.
“Yeah. Good ol’ dead Bo. Why we so stupid to love so many old ladies?” TJ grins at Ramon. “Buried in a tuxedo. Like, a man’s tuxedo.” They watch Yvonne parallel park in the street.
Ramon grins back. “Wasn’t so stupid when they were letting us hang at their house and feeding us ice cream. Who bought you those Reeboks?”
“Every year.” TJ grins. “You gonna be CEO somewhere and Yvonne’s gonna be buying you sneakers.” Once a year Bo and Yvonne took the kids to the mall to buy sneakers. The last few years it’s been gift certificates to the shoe store at Christmas.
“Remember that big wooden box full of toys?” Ramon starts walking to the car.
“It’s still next to the TV, full of my weights now.” TJ follows Ramon.
