Coronado - Dennis Lehane [27]
Her voice is dry and torn when she speaks, and it takes a couple breaths to get the words out:
“Remember, Sonny, times like these—remember that somewhere there’s someone worse off than you. You’re always richer than someone.” She tries for a smile as she looks over at me. “Right?”
POORER, I’M THINKING as we get back in the Cougar and follow Lurlene’s directions to this other house. You’re always poorer than someone. And that poor is a high fence keeping you out of all the places other people can go. Only places you get to go are the shitty ones nobody else wants to visit.
Always poorer, I’m thinking, and then we reach this house Lurlene’s directing us to, and I’m suddenly thinking, Maybe not.
Because whoever owns this house may not be poorer than anyone. Whoever owns this house may be the richest person in the world.
The front lawn is bigger than East Lake’s football field. The house behind it is sprawling and beige with a red tile roof and it seems to spread itself from end to end like a god.
We come up to a tall, wrought-iron gate stretched between two beige brick columns that match the house. The gate is a good twenty feet high, and even with all the tequila-and-beer courage I got from the Biddets’, I can tell you I feel nothing but relief when I see that gate and realize we ain’t getting in. I see it in Terry’s face too, even though he says, “So now what do we do?”
Lurlene’s sitting on the console between us, hunched forward, skinny arms wrapped around her knees. She takes a last swig from a bottle of Cuervo and hands it to Terry. I’m ready for her to say, “Drive through it.” I’m ready for her to say anything. I might not like it. But I’m ready.
All she says, though, is, “Could I get by, kind sir?” and slithers over my lap and out the door.
She saunters up to the gate in her white boots and tarnished schoolgirl skirt and behind me, Vaughn Lewis says, “I’m fucked up.”
“Me too,” his brother says.
I look at Terry. He shrugs, but I can see the booze swimming in him, making his eyelids thicken and squiggle.
Lurlene finds this box sticking out of the column on our left. There’s numbers on it, and her fingers dance over them and then she’s heading back to the car as the gate begins to open, just starts sliding back into the bushes behind the column on our right. Lurlene hops in and sits in my lap, tosses an arm around my neck and looks out through the windshield as the gate goes all the way back.
She tells Terry, “Time to put it in ‘drive.’”
THERE’S A PICTURE of my parents taken just before they got married. It’s 1949 and my daddy’s wearing his uniform. It’s all neat and sharply creased, and his hair is short and slicked back, and he has all his teeth. He’s beaming this white, white smile, holding my mother so tight with one arm that she looks about to bust in half. She’s smiling too, though, and it’s a real smile. She was happy then. Happier than I’ve ever seen her. She’s young. They’re both young. They look younger than me. Behind them is a chain-link fence with a sign on it that says FORT BENNING, GA. My mother’s dress is white with a pattern of what looks like black swallows on it, those swallows soaring across her body.
And, man, she’s happy. She’s happy, and my daddy has all his teeth and all his fingers.
LURLENE GETS US in the house the same way she got us through the gate. Her fingers dart across these numbers on a gizmo beside the front door and then we’re inside.