Not One Clue_ A Mystery - Lois Greiman [50]
He exhaled heavily. “She gave up her life for me,” he said, and winced, remembering. According to his stories, he hadn’t made it easy. “I couldn’t ask her to do more.”
“Are you sure you’d have to?”
He glanced at me.
“Are you sure you’d have to ask,” I explained.
He said nothing. I changed tack.
“I thought you had decided not to tell her about Jamel yet,” I said.
“I didn’t tell her. I planned to introduce them. But not like that. Not …” He paused, grimaced. “I didn’t want her to think I was a fuckup. Not again. Not anymore.” He chuckled. Humorless. “All grown up and still trying to impress my grams.”
“Maybe it’s admirable,” I said.
“Yeah.” He snorted, then scowled at me, curious. “How about you, Doc? You still trying to make your parents proud?”
His question spurred some hidden part of me, because deep inside I was pretty sure I had given up even before I had yanked my proverbial roots and escaped to the desert.
“You don’t think your grandmother is proud?” I asked.
“She didn’t cry, either,” he said. “Not when she saw Jackson on the floor. Not when she came to see me in jail. She didn’t even look surprised. Just disappointed. Just …” He exhaled, sliding into the black hole of self-recrimination. “Like Kaneasha. Like—”
“Did you lie to me about the events that night?” I asked, tugging gently at the rope that kept him swinging above the bottom of the abyss.
“What?”
“About how Jackson was shot. You said it was his gun. You implied that he would have killed you if you hadn’t stopped him.”
He looked away, face hard. “Maybe that’s how it should have gone down. Maybe he should have shot me.”
My stomach churned like a cement mixer. Some people believe therapists shouldn’t get involved with their clients. Obviously I’m not the only one who believes in fictitious characters.
“So you think it would be good for Jamel if his aunt’s boyfriend killed his father?”
He looked at me, eyes solemn. “Fuck,” he said finally, but softly.
“Did you lie to me?” I asked. “About that night?” He stared at me, eyes angry and strangely accusatory, but I continued. “Was the gun his?”
His face was devoid of expression. “He pulled it out of his waistband.” He swallowed, reliving. “He had that look,” he said. “That cocky-ass ‘I’m invincible’ look. I’ve seen it before. Seen it. Lived it.” His lips jerked spasmodically.
“What should you have done differently?”
“I don’t know.” He dropped his eyes closed for a moment, then shook his head. “Shit! I …” He exhaled a laugh. “Lavonn had bruises on her throat. You see that? I swore at him. Called him a fucking coward.” He laughed again, but his eyes showed his agony. “You know what you shouldn’t do?”
“Call a man names when he’s holding a gun?”
“See.” He flipped a tense hand at me. “Normal folks know those things.”
“Are you referring to me?”
He almost grinned, though the sadness never left his eyes. “If it had been you, Jackson wouldn’t have been in the hospital.”
I considered telling him that if Jackson had pulled a gun on me there was a fair chance I would have peed my pants and swooned like a debutante, but I’m a professional. “Jamel wouldn’t be better off with Lavonn than with you,” I said.
He raised his brows in surprise. “You actually giving me your opinion, Doc? I thought that was against shrink code or something.”
“They’ll probably forgive me if they find out I’m suggesting that you have something to live for.”
He watched me for a moment longer, then nodded. “Jamel,” he said.
“I think a boy needs a father, too.”
He sighed, frowned. “I fucked up.”
“Sometimes there are no perfect options.”
“Well, there should be.” He rose to his feet again, restive. There had been a time, early in our relationship, that I thought he might be using, but I had learned since then that thoughts of his past made him jittery. “There should be choices: education, consideration, kindness …” He paused, all but breathless.
I let the silence swell around us for a moment.
“Is that what you want for Jamel?” I asked.
“Fuckin’ A,” he said, but his tone was