Run You Down (Rebekah Roberts #2)(48)

“Give him space,” said Isaac. “He’s in love.”

But he couldn’t stop me. The next Thursday I got out of bed and drove to the Mobil station and waited for Ryan and his father. His father was covered in tattoos. He had a skull and the SS lightning bolts on his enormous arms. He had a spiderweb on his neck with a swastika in the middle. Ryan was wearing shorts, and I saw he had a skull on his leg. The skull had an open mouth and wild eyes. It was laughing at me. They were both wearing sunglasses and to me they looked like soldiers. Soldiers without an army, with only their anger. I almost ran them over, right there in the parking lot behind the gas station. I wish I had. Instead I followed them. They drove out of New Paltz and up the Thruway past Kingston. After almost an hour, they turned west onto a state route I’d never been on. I was down to an eighth of a tank of gas when I followed the truck down a dirt driveway under a thick patch of trees. Three trailer homes and one old house shared the entrance. One trailer was new, but the other two were sagging, aluminum skirts cracked and split and missing in places, one just sitting on cinder blocks. On the porch of the old house sat an old, legless woman smoking cigarettes. She was sitting in a wheelchair wearing a long t-shirt, the stumps dangling over the edge of her seat.

Ryan and his father got out of their truck and both immediately walked toward me.

“What the f*ck do you want?” The father was wearing blue jeans and a black sleeveless t-shirt with a faded yellow Batman insignia across it. Both their heads were shaved. I rolled up the window, locked the doors and pressed on the horn.

The father started screaming and banging on my window. I closed my eyes. I was here for Sammy. I had to get Sammy. The father banged and banged and then I heard Ryan say my name. I kept honking.

“Aviva! It’s okay,” he said, putting his palm on the passenger-side window. “I know her!”

“Tell her to shut up!”

“Aviva, please stop,” said Ryan, his face close to the glass. “Please.”

I stopped. The horn was very loud and it hurt my head. The father kicked my car door.

Ryan tried the door but it was still locked. “He’s not here,” he said to me through the glass. He looked almost as frantic as I felt.

“Who the f*ck is this bitch?” shouted the old lady on the porch. Her voice sounded like a robot’s. Another man, closer to Ryan’s age, came out of one of the trailers. He was shirtless, with an enormous eagle tattooed across his chest, and holding a shotgun. He shielded his eyes from the sun.

“It’s okay, Hank,” said Ryan. “I know her.”

“She needs to get off our property,” said Hank.

“Aviva, please, let me in.”

I shook my head.

“Ryan, you f*cking this chick?” asked the father.

Ryan didn’t answer.

“Tell him to put the gun away,” I said.

“Hank go inside, it’s fine!”

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Hank.

“Don’t be an *, Hank.”

“Fuck you, Ryan. Handle your f*cking *.”

“You’re freaking her out, Hank. Gimme a break here.”

Hank lowered the firearm. I cracked the passenger window open. Ryan grabbed ahold and shoved his mouth as far into the car as possible.

“Sammy’s not here,” he said. “This is my family’s place. Please, they don’t know.”

At first I thought he meant that they don’t know Sammy is Jewish, that he was trying to protect my brother. But then I realized he was talking about himself: his family didn’t know that he had sex with men. I let him in the car.

“I want to see Sammy,” I said.

“Fine,” he said. “Just go. Now.”

I backed out of the driveway and he directed me into town, past the A&P and the McDonald’s to the Dollar Store. We turned right and he told me to stop at a two-story apartment building.

“Thank you for not saying anything,” said Ryan.

“Where is Sammy?”

“He’s probably inside. I’ll take you.”

“What do you want with him? What does your father want?”

“My father?” Ryan was a little older than Sammy. Twenty-two or so. And he was very handsome. He had dimples in both cheeks. I remember noticing them in our kitchen once, before I saw his tattoo, when he and Sammy and Isaac and I were laughing about kugel. Ryan told us there was a similar word that meant an exercise for your vagina. It was a fun night. I remember being happy for Sammy that such a good-looking boy liked him. I thought it would be good for his self-esteem.

“Look,” said Ryan, his leg bouncing so wildly it kept knocking against the bottom of my glove compartment. “My family isn’t like you. It’s not okay to be … gay.” He stumbled over the word “gay,” like it hurt to say. It was almost funny: it is not okay to be gay in Sammy’s family, either. But to Ryan, I was Sammy’s only family. Me and Isaac. “Please don’t say anything.”

“We’re Jewish,” I said. I said it proudly for the first time I could remember. Like it meant something strong and positive.

“I know,” he said. “I’m not racist. I know the … thing on my back is awful. I’m real sorry about that. I knew you saw it but I didn’t know what to say. I got it when I was sixteen. It was kind of a thing in my family. Everybody has one. But I’m not like that. That’s why I moved out.”