Jealousy

I am lying in a narrow single bed in a room no bigger than a closet, in a tiny apartment. The pad of paper I’ve been drawing on this trip is a collection of hard edges against my chest; I hug it harder. Outside the window, Brooklyn rumbles like a big sleeping beast. It’s the traffic in the distance, speaking in its own tongueless grumble. They’ve come back from cleaning out a rat spirit infestation, and they’re bushed. Outside the cracked-open door I hear the clink of glasses, liquid being poured, and my father speaks again.

“You have to, August. I can’t leave her anywhere else, and I’ve gotta—”

Augustine interrupts. “Jesus Christ, Dwight, you know how dangerous this is. And she’s just a kid. Why leave her with me?”

I snuggle into the pillow. It’s Augie’s pillow. He had made the bed up fresh for me, in the only bedroom in this crackerbox place. He and Dad thought I was asleep. I took a deep breath. It smelled like a place only a man cleans, frowsty and tainted with a breath of cigarette smoke.

The slam of a shot glass on the kitchen table. Dad was drinking Jim Beam, and if he was doing it in shots instead of sipping, it was going to be a long night. Augie stuck to vodka. “She’s safer here than anywhere else. I’ve got to do this. For . . . for reasons.”

“Elizabeth wouldn’t—”

My ears perked up a little, drowsily. Dad never talked about Mom much. And apparently he wasn’t going to tonight either.

“Don’t.” Glass clinked again—a bottle mouth against the shot glass. “Don’t you tell me what she would and wouldn’t do. She’s dead, Dobroslaw. My little girl is all what’s left. And she’s gonna be here. I think that bastard’s up Canada way, and when I come back—”

“What if you don’t, Dwight? What if I’m left with all this to deal with?”

“Then,” Dad said softly, “she’ll be the least of your worries. And you’ve got friends who know what to do.”

“Not any I can trust.” August sounded morose. “You have no idea what you’re up against. I suppose it would take tying you up and sitting on you to stop you.”

“You’d have to kill me, Augie. Let’s not push it, not with my little girl in there.” Raw bald anger under the edges of the words. If I’d been out there, I would have made myself scarce. When Dad sounded like that, it was best to just leave him alone. He never got violent, but the cold scaly quality of his silence when he was this pissed was never comfortable. “Besides, this could be another wild-goose chase. The bastard’s slippery.”

“Don’t we know it,” August muttered. It wasn’t a question. “A month. That’s as long as I can hold off telling anyone, Anderson. And I’m not doing it for you. That girl deserves to be with her own kind.”

Another silence, and I could almost see Dad’s eyes turn pale. All the depth would drain out of the blue and he’d look like he’d been bleached. “I’m her own kind. I’m her kin. I know what’s best for her.”

I wanted to get up, rub my eyes, and walk out into the kitchen. To demand to be told what they were talking around. But I was only a kid. What kid can get up and march out and demand to be told something? Besides, I didn’t know half of what I know now.

I still don’t know enough.

When I woke up in the morning, August greeted me with almost-burnt scrambled eggs, and by the look on his face I knew Dad was already gone. The kid I was just shrugged, knew he’d be back, and decided that I was going to be doing the cooking from now on. The kid I was then knew everything would be okay.

The kid I am now knows better.