A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [9]
His head shot up as she stormed by him. “I meant the mouth, the way it was opening and closing,” he said quietly.
“Bitch!” Serena said, just loudly enough to be heard.
At the door, the girl turned, held up her middle finger. Serena burst out laughing. Gordon’s face was red. He wasn’t used to hearing women swear.
On the top step of the house across the street, the frizzy-haired girl was hitting a stringed ball with a wooden paddle. She had been out there doing the same thing late last night, until a woman called from a second-floor window and told her to go inside, it was way past her bedtime. The girl hollered something back. The woman leaned even farther out the window and threatened to call Social Services. With that, the girl ran onto the porch, then ducked down behind the railing. When Gordon went to bed, the girl was still crouched in the shadows, knees up, back against the wall.
His instinct was to keep his eyes down, but he forced a smile and mumbled a low hello. The girl stared out from cold, dull eyes until he looked away. The paddle continued its steady beat. He paused by the roses. His father’s pampered shrubs had massed into a tangled hedge between his house and Mrs. Jukas’s. The inch of new growth made it easier to tell which were dead branches. Trying to avoid the thorns, thick and curved like black talons, he reached in and broke off a long dead cane. He broke off another, then more, almost lulled by the steady thwack thwack thwack across the street. His hands and arms were getting scratched, so he looked in the garage for clippers. A lump rose in his throat at the sight of all the empty hooks and shelves that had once held his father’s tools. The baby-food jars of nails and screws were gone, but their rusting caps were still nailed over the workbench. He went into the house and brought out scissors. Twenty minutes later, he had trimmed off enough to see which branch belonged to which bush.
The lowering sun was still warm on his back. A fat bee buzzed drowsily near his face. He had worked the last six hours a free man. He could do whatever he felt like, go wherever he wanted, could feel it pulse in his fingertips, the soles of his feet, electrifying, the shock of living, of just being here. The anxious chatter of squirrels rose to a high, quarrelsome pitch. In some nearby house, a baby wailed. A door squeaked open, then banged shut. Mrs. Jukas stood on her front porch, white-haired, dour as ever, tinier than he remembered, maybe not even five feet tall. Mr. Jukas had been a registry inspector. When Gordon failed the road test for his license, his mother called upon Mr. Jukas, who took him out every day, parallel-parking all over the city. By the end of the week, he could parallel-park better than he could drive. His second road test had been scheduled the day he was arrested. When the police pounded on the door early that morning, his mother first thought it was Mr. Jukas’s idea of a joke, some kind of private road test he had arranged, until they shoved the warrant at her, decreeing not just entry, but their bounding surge up the stairs, five of them, guns drawn, shouting his name as they pushed open the bedroom door, then darted back, but needn’t have because he was lying there waiting, still dressed in the clothes he’d worn the day before, eyes wide, waiting through the night, months, years to come, waiting for it to end, for it to finally be over. As they rushed him stumbling down the stairs, his mother’s face had turned old, her hair wild from tearing at it as she screamed at them. Leave him alone and get out! Get out! What are you, crazy? You’re at the wrong house.You don’t know what you’re talking about. My son wouldn’t lay a hand on anyone, much less murder someone. Not Gordon! No! No! No!
“What do you think you’re doing?” Mrs. Jukas’s voice cut through the warm air. “You get out of here! If you don’t get off my property right now, I’m calling the police!”
Gordon looked down at the base of the roses, wondering if the lot lines had changed.