A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [44]
“Is she dead? You think she’s dead?” Jerry demanded, grabbing the back of his shirt to make him stop running.
“No!” he insisted. Of course not.
“But she wasn’t moving. She was so still.”
“Yes. But she was making sounds.”
“What kind of sounds?”
“Moaning. Like soft moaning.”
“Jesus Christ, then we gotta go back!”
“No!”
“We have to, you fat, stupid fuck!”
“No, I can’t! I can’t!” he kept panting as he ran, arriving home in time for the popcorn his mother had just made and insisted he share with them, huddled in the dark little living room, staring at the television, while his mother, father, and Dennis watched the Red Sox, hating himself, sickened by his cowardice for hurting the poor woman and then for not going back with Jerry to help her. Please be all right. Please, please, please be alive, he was still imploring batters, pitchers, umpires, and screaming fans, who all seemed to be leering at him, when the phone rang in the kitchen. It was for him, his mother said.
“She’s dead,” Jerry whispered.
“No!” he said so loudly that they all looked up at him.
“Shut up! Nobody’s gonna know we were even there—so shut up! Just shut the fuck up! About everything—you hear what I’m saying?”
Then his mother was next to him, demanding to know who that was, then, with a gasp, held up his hands to look at the gouges down both arms. It was the bushes, he said. The rosebushes had scratched him when he came through the side yard. She called in his father, who said his rosebushes could not have made cuts as deep as those, enunciating each word as if he knew there was evil among them and would not have his roses in any way tainted by it. Then he said it was a fight. He’d been in a fight. With who? A girl? Dennis jeered.
“And look!” his mother said. “You lost your ring, didn’t you? His brand-new class ring,” she told his father, who had defied her by allowing Gordon to order the most expensive one.
“He’ll get it back,” his father said. “His name’s inside. I told him to have it engraved and that way he’d always get it back.”
The next morning a policeman was banging on the front door. Holding up a clear plastic bag, the officer asked if that was her son’s ring.
“You found it! Thank you.Thank you so much,” his mother said, joining the disembodied chorus, their voices chanting the warrant’s directive of names, dates, places, his right as to what to say or not to say, to speak, to be represented by counsel of his choice, and if not, the court would provide one.
Jilly drove him home. They would see the condo another day in better light. That was fine. He didn’t care about condos. All he cared about was not frightening her. She parked in front of his house. Across the street, two younger boys watched Jada Fossum reel out a yoyo then snap it back until it wobbled crazily on the taut string. Two dark figures stood in the porch shadows above her. A phone rang and one of the men paced back and forth as he talked on his cell phone.
“Gordon, wait,” Jilly said as he started to open the door. “I’m sorry. I mean . . . I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t you be sorry.”
“It was just such a shock. I mean, it was all so . . . like, new and fresh in my head, I didn’t have time to get it all straight.”
“No, I know.” He tried to smile.
The purple Navigator was parked down the street. The two hooded men came down the porch steps. Polie said something to the boys and they ran away. Feaster put his arm around Jada’s shoulder and whispered in her ear. She walked between the men to the SUV.
“Do you think it was, like, fate or something? I mean, what happened. The murder,” she said, watching him.
“What do you mean?” he asked with a faint note of amazement. Fortley had been filled with fatalism’s disciples, hapless victims of their victims.
“Well,