Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [87]
“You’re welcome.”
I followed her up the stairs to the second floor and my father’s room. It was clear she hadn’t slept, that she’d been packing his things for most of the night. His closet doors were open, the hangers and shelves bare, as were the walls, his hat collection gone, the top of his desk empty. There were cardboard boxes stacked under the window, and I imagined her driving to some all-night grocery store to get them. But then I saw the writing on the sides, the same professional movers she’d hired to deliver her nine thousand pounds of furniture up North. She’d stacked his albums on his weight bench, some of his books too.
She was smoking now and talking. Her voice was thin, her Southern accent stronger than ever, as if the fatigue she felt had taken her down to some deeper, truer version of herself.
“Lorraine?” I was about to tell her I was sorry this was happening to her, but that it was none of my business and I would not be able to help her pack up my father’s possessions. I would not be able to help her kick my father out of his own house. But the phone rang and Lorraine rushed to the other room, a feathering of smoke in the air behind her. I felt bad for her, and I wondered who this nineteen-year-old was Pop had gone to sleep with, but I had no business even standing in this room. I was just about to leave when I saw his gun.
It lay on top of the books she’d stacked on his weight bench, its leather holster unsnapped, the .38 halfway out of it. I picked it up. The holster fell away, the snub nose cool and heavy in my hand. I flipped open the chamber, and there were the brass firing pins of six .38 shells.
Had she loaded this? Would she know how? I looked but didn’t see a bullet box anywhere, and I could hear her in the other room talking to somebody from the college, some dean whose first name I recognized as she told him how my father had left her for a child, that he had spent the night with her in Boston and Little Andre was here to help her with his things.
I upended the .38 and tapped the handle against my hand. Six rounds fell into my palm. They were hollow-points, bullets designed to fragment once they hit their target, to do the maximum damage. I knew Pop had bought these, that he imagined having to stop some rapist with them, and maybe he was keeping his gun loaded these days, though I couldn’t see why. I stuffed the bullets into the front pocket of my jeans. I shoved the .38 back into its holster and snapped the strap around the hammer, and I opened the drawers of his desk, but she’d already packed them and I saw no boxes of ammunition.
Lorraine had walked down one level to the kitchen. She stood there staring out the window as she smoked and talked on the phone to one of Pop’s friends about what he was doing to her. I felt sorry for her, and I didn’t feel sorry for her.
She turned and saw me heading for the stairs and the front door. She held up her hand, a More between two fingers, its smoke curling above her head. I waited as she said goodbye to the dean. She hung up the phone and stubbed out her cigarette and walked up to me.
“You can’t stay, can you?”
I shook my head. “It’s really none of my business. Sorry.”
“No.” She put her hands on my shoulders, looked into my eyes. “I shouldn’t have called you.” She hugged me to her and I hugged her back. Her body felt so small and I could feel her breasts against me and I began to get hard and pulled away. She kept her hands on my shoulders, looked into my eyes, hers brown and edged with pain and something I couldn’t name. We stood there quite a while, it seemed. Then she thanked me again for coming, and I turned and left my father’s house, six hollow-point shells, heavy as a promise, in the front pocket of my jeans.
ALL DAY long, I went to classes and carried them with me, didn’t know where to put them.