The Big Finish Read online

  I exhaled, frustrated, and asked no one in particular, “Is breaking and entering a felony?”

  She ignored me and strolled around the room, running her fingers along the dresser, pausing to look at Carl’s old wedding photo, taped to the mirror. She leaned in a little closer, her nose inches from it.

  “Please don’t touch that,” Carl said.

  I said to him, “And so now, finally, he speaks.”

  She turned to Carl, jaw set. “Look. I came because I wanted to see you.”

  I said, “Nice try again, but visitors usually come through the front door.”

  “No joke,” she said to me, “but I’m pretty sure I’m not on the visitors’ list.”

  “There’s no list. Where do you think you are? A federal prison? This is our home. We have a coat check, even.”

  “Super, but today I didn’t feel like messing with some welcome-desk bullshit, so I walked around back, looking for another door in, and then I saw that note on your window.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “When I saw his name on the little sign—”

  “There’s no sign.”

  She smirked. “Stop it.”

  “You stop it.” I marched to the window and ripped the blind cord down, ready to point to nothing. The room flooded with light and blinded me, but, sure enough, when colors started bleeding back into my sight line, there, tucked in the corner of the windowpane, was a forgotten sun-bleached index card meant for Jorge. It read Carl is napping. Keep it down! (Por favor.)

  Her smile widened. “So I let myself in.”

  I snatched the card and balled it in my fist. My voice dropped into a timbre I hadn’t needed to use in years. “Enough. Why are you here, you little piece of—”

  “Duffy,” Carl chided, poised to stand, though knowing him, it was only a threat.

  She met his eyes, looking downright earnest. The girl was a pro, all right. She said, “I really thought you’d be happy to see me. I planned on spending the week here with you.”

  “Nuh-uh. Nope. No way,” I said, and went for the door.

  I was nearly there when Carl yelled frantically, “Wait!” He looked as surprised as me at his outburst. Nevertheless, he followed it up with an emphatic whispered, “Wait.”

  “For what?” I said. “She’s hustling you.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  I blinked at him, hardly able to speak myself. “It is a hustle . . . Right?”

  Another hard swallow, then finally: “She’s telling the truth.”

  “Christ almighty,” I breathed.

  “Thank you,” Josie said to him. And then to me, “See?”

  For a moment, I got dizzy. Maybe from the surprise of it all. Maybe from the knife in my back. When everything finally straightened out around me, I heard Nora singing. We all did. The hymn filtered into the room from somewhere in the hall, growing closer and louder.

  I swore a few times and walked in a circle. Carl stood, his legs bowing like they do, and wrestled his walker forward to brace the door from opening. Locking it did no good; Nora had the key and never hesitated to use it if she had cause for concern.

  Josie watched us, confused. “What are you guys doing?”

  “You shouldn’t be here like this,” Carl said.

  “Can’t. She can’t be here like this. This is worse than Milton sneaking in his cat and his cigarettes, and think of what happened to him.” When Josie didn’t move, I stopped pacing. “Well? Hide already.”

  “Fine. God. So much for this being your home.” She swept past us into the bathroom, hopped into the shower, and whirled the curtain closed.

  Nora’s voice came to hover right outside our door. Carl’s walker hiccupped as she tried to let herself in. “You boys okay? Why aren’t you at breakfast yet?”

  “We’re coming,” I yelled, then hissed at Carl, “That girl’s not staying here.”

  Carl whispered back. “Let’s talk about it.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  He tottered around to look at me with this horrid mix of desperation and pain. “Please.”

  The walker skidded back as Nora forced her way in. “What is going on in here?”

  A suspended second followed with all of us standing there, and during it I had an odd feeling—one I couldn’t quite place. It tugged just below my heart, near my gut. Made it hard to breathe, and it got even worse when I looked at Carl, with his forehead pleated all the way to the crown of his balding head.

  I nudged the bathroom door shut and slapped Carl on the back. “We’re talking, is all.”

  Nora crossed her thick brown arms, propping up her big bosom.

  I looked back at her, dopey-eyed, hoping it would disguise the flush creeping up my neck. Carl fussed with his sweater, checking the buttonholes to make sure he hadn’t missed one. We went on like this until she hummed an unconvinced mm-hmm, and backed into our bedroom door to open it.

  “I tell them,” she said to the empty hallway as if it held an audience, “don’t be acting like you’re blessed special, because you’re not, but still they’re walking around misbehaving, huffing Janelle Pratt’s oxygen—”

  “That was so long ago,” Carl protested.

  “And it was a joke,” I said. “We were just trying to have some fun.”

  She wagged her finger, her voice quiet. “You know Miss Sharon calls an ace a spade if it gives her a reason to sell your spot for twice the price. And for you, Mr. Duffy, she might even consider taking a cut.” She added a dramatic pause, then went back to hollering into the hall. “I tell them all the time, but do they listen?”

  She smiled then, teasing me. Warning me. She had a nose for our mischief, and thank God too, because it kept us from doing things that could get us booted. Things like this.

  “We listen,” I said after a beat.

  “Well, good then. Let’s be getting a move on the day. Time’s a-wastin’.”

  “Always is.”

  She opened the door wider yet. Carl shuffled forward, paused, and glanced over his shoulder into the room. I did too, and though there was nothing to see, I could feel it—a supernova energy, the kind from the wild blue yonder, the sort that came from sinking stars and gravitational collapses.

  It pulsed from within our shower, the one with handicap grab bars and an emergency-call pull string, and it radiated to my fingertips, plagued me with ear ringing, and gave me gooseflesh, all of which made me certain of one thing: This energy needed a new solar system—somewhere far, far away from here—and assuming Nora hadn’t already, I intended to make that point to Carl after I had my fill of coffee and cold powdered eggs.

  2

  And now they’re quiet. Who do I have to thank for that?” Nora said as she escorted us to our table in the corner of the dining hall.

  Carl pointed at me, while I pointed at him. She laughed her belly laugh, tucked us into our chairs, and scrutinized our nutritious, portion-controlled, diabetic-friendly breakfasts. It looked and smelled no better than the C rations from my army days, but still she hummed an mmm, mmm, mmm before leaving us to it.

  I kept an eye on her as she zigzagged between the mismatched tables dotting the room. Ours was an old Shaker-style four-top cozied up next to a window. I liked it because I could look outside and watch the world go by. Carl liked it because he could see visitors come in through the front door. But right now, we had something to do besides lounge around, keeping Centennial under surveillance. Right now, we needed to undo the nooses we’d tied for ourselves.

  When I felt no one was in earshot, which didn’t take much considering our present company, I leaned over my plate and said, “We’ve got to get that child out of here before somebody notices.”

  Carl tucked his napkin into the front of his col
lar. “Act normal, will you.”

  “Normal,” I repeated, making it sound as ridiculous as it was.

  He responded by slowly stripping the wrapper away from his straw.

  I said, “I think you’ve confused acting normal with acting like an idiot.”

  “Nora doesn’t think so.” His eyes darted in her direction.

  I peeked over my shoulder, and she met my gaze from across the way as she listened to blue-haired, big-mouthed Connie Salas yap. That old woman could beat her gums for an hour straight about the state of her health without even breathing. I forced myself to wink at both of them, turned back around, and, like Carl, paid extra-special attention to my fork, my milk carton, my cold eggs.

  “That’s more like it,” Carl said.

  I faked a smile and added a singsong lilt to my voice. “How could you keep something like having a daughter and granddaughter from me?”

  “We don’t have time to talk about that, Duffy.”

  I shelved the happy-day routine and pointed my fork at him. “Three years we’ve lived together, and you never once mentioned them.”

  Carl stared into his coffee, then reached for the creamer and poured.

  I huffed and started stabbing things on my plate without reason. I couldn’t decide if I was more mad or hurt, like we had time for either. It’s just that we’d itemized our entire lives for each other, starting with the days we were born. Nothing was secreted, not our stories of losing our virginity, not our shared complaints of persistent hemorrhoids, not our madcap ideas about God and heaven. We’d shared it all. Except for, I guess, we hadn’t.

  Carl finished stirring his coffee and tapped his spoon on the edge of the mug. Set it aside. “Let’s talk about what to do.”

  “Easy,” I said. “Call your daughter so she can come pick up her runaway.”

  “Well, I would, but . . .”

  “But what? We can find you a phone right now if you don’t want to walk back to the room. People carry those things around in their pockets nowadays.”

  When he didn’t respond, I stopped assaulting my eggs for a moment and stared at him.

  “I don’t have her number,” he said.

  “And why not?”

  His smile faltered. He stretched it back quick, though it didn’t carry through to his eyes. “I think you’re talking too loud,” he said, then took a bite of turkey bacon and chewed it like cud.

  I set my fork down, so that I didn’t accidently stab him, and lowered my voice. “Her father then. Phone him.”

  After a sour-faced swallow, Carl said, “He’s absentee.”

  “Oh? That sounds fancy. Is it a nice way of saying Josie’s a bastard?”

  “Duffy,” Carl reprimanded, as if our biggest problem at the moment was my lack of civility.

  I said, “Fine. He’s absentee. So who else can return her to wherever she came from?”

  Carl sipped his coffee and gave bald, Bible-beating Sherri Linley a wave from afar with his spare hand. He then plucked a sugar packet from the holder and raised it up as an offering to her, even though she had her own.

  I banged the table with my palm. All the dishes clattered, and the conversations nearest us quieted. The outburst was stupid of me, I realize, but I’d had it. This was not something to be trifled with. He’d heard Nora, same as me. If borrowing a little oxygen therapy from Janelle Pratt was borderline cause for eviction, then running a hostel from inside Centennial seemed like a surefire bet.

  I waited for the ripple in my water glass to settle before daring to look up. Thankfully, Nora had disappeared on some unknown errand. My next-door neighbor Charles, sitting one table over, stared at me.

  “Something wrong?” I barked at him. The man was stone-deaf, narcoleptic, obese, and destructive with his motor scooter. We’d never gotten on, because I spent most of my time yelling at him, either to wake him up or so he could hear.

  He turned back to his meal without answering.

  I whispered at Carl, “I nearly solved this problem ten minutes ago, but you told me to wait. ‘Wait,’ you said. So I did, thinking we’d have an intelligent conversation, and now here you are, acting as if . . . as if . . .”

  Carl set his coffee cup down, taking care that his shaking hand didn’t cause it to spill. He wiped the corners of his mouth with his napkin, pushed his plate away, and looked at me hard. “I want to keep her.”

  I snorted. “She’s not a pet, Carl.”

  “I want her to stay here for the week, like she planned. She looks like she might be in between places right now.”

  I readjusted in my chair, glanced around, then leaned in. “Have you had a stroke?”

  “Why would you say something like that?”

  “Maybe your hearing aids are broken.”

  “I can hear you just fine.”

  “Really? Then did you hear Nora this morning talking about Sharon? Remember that lady? She kind of looks like a hornet. Been around for a few months. Keeps busy by handing out pink slips to anyone who coughs wrong. Sound familiar?”

  After a reluctant pause, his chin dipped. I’d left out some of the more choice adjectives I had for Centennial’s new owner, but he could fill them in on his own.

  I said, “Well, that’s good news. You must just have low blood sugar then. Why don’t you eat something, and when Nora gets back we’ll tell her what’s happened. I’m sure she’ll—”

  “You don’t understand,” Carl said.

  “No, you don’t understand.” My pointer was suddenly at the tip of his nose, and my next words roiled in my throat like bile before I spat them out. “I don’t care if your granddaughter’s homeless. I don’t care if her name’s Josie or Jesus. I’ll be damned if one of your handouts lands me in Simmons.”

  My voice cracked open and bled on that last word, like always. That’s why I tried to never say it. Simmons Home for the Aged was the only other old folks’ home in Everton, Texas, and the moment its name passed my lips, I saw the hellhole in detail. There was my uncle, lying in that bed, looking up at me like he was a dog I’d accidently clipped on the highway.

  This was the same man who’d helped build my father’s farm, who’d taught me how to fly-fish and whistle, and the very last time I saw him, I ran from him. I ran from that place. He died there a week later, surrounded by nothing except the moans coming from the hallways, and at the time, the news gave me a cool blue feeling: Thank God I don’t have to go back. Three decades later, and that feeling had turned blacker than the inside of a casket.

  I swapped my coffee for ice water and took a sip, confident I’d made my point by merely naming the dump out loud, but, just in case, I added, “You got savings for some other place that I don’t know about? Because I sure don’t.”

  He shrugged, like it didn’t matter, and sat there for a while, fingering the dull wedding band stuck forever on his finger by his arthritic knuckle. I watched for a bit, then decided this must be about Jenny, his late wife. They were married for fifty-two years, no children to show for it, yet here we were. So he’d obviously messed up at some point, and now he wanted to pay his penance.

  Personally, I’ve never really subscribed to that stuff. Too much work. Carl, however, believed in heaven and hell, and at present he thought he had horns instead of a halo. Maybe he was right; I don’t know. A man like me couldn’t get all square with God this late in his life no matter what he did, so why bother trying. But Carl hadn’t been born sorry like me, even counting this mess, so I guess I didn’t bemoan the effort. Thing was, Josie staying here was a horseshit idea, soul-saving or not, so we had to think up a better way.

  I said, “How about you set Josie up at the Como Motel? It’s only sixty-nine dollars a night.”

  “That fleabag?” Carl said.

  “It’s a roof.”

  “I wouldn’t let my dog sleep there.”

&nb
sp; “Okay then. The hotel in town.”

  He gave me a give-me-a-break look. “A week there would be almost”—he paused to calculate—“two thousand dollars.”

  We both went quiet at the number. It sounded like a lot because it was a lot. More than we could afford.

  Finally, I said, “Wait until she gets settled somewhere and invite her to visit later, like a normal person.”

  “There is no later,” he snapped.

  “Easy now. How can you be so sure? You haven’t even offered—”

  “I have. There are shoeboxes in my closet full of—” He caught himself with a sharp breath and met my eyes.

  After a moment, I ventured, “Not shoes.”

  He shook his head and said quietly, “No. They have all the letters I wrote to my daughter after Jenny died, begging her to meet with me.”

  “I see,” I said, my voice wilting with the realization that he’d lied to me while hiding the truth right inside our room. I’d passed by those dusty boxes on the top shelf of his closet a thousand times and never once gave them a second thought. Didn’t have a reason to. I would’ve never pegged Carl for the kind of man who would piss on your leg and tell you it’s raining. Yet here I was, drenched.

  He cleared his throat. “I wrote her every week for ten years straight, but the letters always came back unopened. When I moved here, I didn’t have room to store any more, so I gave it up.” He paused, shaking his head. “For fifteen years, I’ve prayed for some kind of response—a note, a call, anything—and now my granddaughter is at my doorstep—”

  “Windowsill.”

  “—and I know if I turn her away, then that’s it. It could be fifteen more years before I hear from any of my flesh and blood again, and by then . . .” He looked at me, his spine bowing. His chin trembling. “This is it, Duffy.”

  I had to look away; seeing him break like that cored me out. It almost moved me.