A Castle in Brooklyn(72)
“Elias, I just know things are going to turn out great,” she said, releasing him from the hug. Just the same, she kept her fingers crossed.
The entire time he was gone, Francine couldn’t get her youngest son out of her mind. Thoughts of Elias consumed her in a way no one in her family could, so much so that she wasn’t able to eat for the rest of the day, which was unusual for Francine, who was always hungry. She sat on the sofa in the living room, too agitated to start warming up the drumsticks for Patrick, as the setting sun covered the room in shades of orange and purple. Francine knew that mothers weren’t supposed to have favorites, and yet there was always something special, it seemed, about Elias. A sweetness, a vulnerability. Unlike Albert, or anyone else for that matter, each time she came into a room, he would ask how she was feeling that day. As she lay on the couch late into the night, it was Elias who would sprint upstairs just to get an extra blanket and cover her feet. He was the same with his friends, running out on a frozen night to help a buddy who had gotten a flat tire at 2:00 a.m. But it was that same sweetness that would often get him in trouble, his inability to say no to the drugs, the need to sedate himself after each rejection. Francine sat up as she heard a sound a few feet away, but it was only the jingle of Gracie’s dog tags as she scratched herself near the front door.
Later that night, after no sign of Elias, not even a phone call, Francine began to worry all over again, and this time it wasn’t only about the job. He showed up briefly one evening, still wearing the brown tweed suit. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks sunken in. Francine took one look at him and recognized the signs. No, he hadn’t been celebrating getting the job, but just the opposite. She didn’t ask any questions then, and not the next day, when he would disappear for a week, leaving the crumpled suit in the garbage pail at the curb.
It was just after lunch on an afternoon when school had closed for conferences as she was pouring kibble for the dogs, all except Bull, who was now out somewhere with Billy and his friends, when she heard him come in through the back quietly. Without looking up, she knew that it was Elias. Neither of them spoke as he sat down at the kitchen table and she poured him a mugful of the coffee she had brewed a half hour earlier. He drank it in one long gulp, black. Francine dug through one of the cabinet drawers until she found an emery board, plunked herself down opposite him, and began filing her nails, which were painted a rose pink. She stole a look at her son, his hands shaking as he tried to hold the cup steady. She moved the emery board across and then back on the nail of her left ring finger as she tried to slow the beating of her heart.
“Feelin’ better?” she asked finally.
He didn’t answer her, but he didn’t get up and leave either. She realized as she looked down the length of his body that he couldn’t. He had wet himself.
“Elias,” she said, putting the emery board down on the table, “let Mama help you.” She walked over and put an arm around his shoulders. His shirt stank from whiskey and tobacco. There were fresh track marks on his arms. After he shrugged her off, she went upstairs.
The next time, the last time, Elias left, he had been gone for nearly a week and showed up one Sunday afternoon, his pupils trembling in bloodshot eyes as he shivered, wearing only a flimsy T-shirt in the forty-degree weather. Francine didn’t ask questions but called on Albert, who was upstairs playing video games in the bedroom. He appeared at the head of the stairs.
“Get your brother into the shower,” she said, keeping her voice low. She threw her arms around the paper-thin body—Elias was shivering now—and let her thumb slide over the grainy marks on his arm, punctured by the string of needles. He was crying—loud, sloppy sobs just like he used to when he was a baby. Then she handed him off to Albert.
She found a Reese’s peanut butter cup in a drawer, unwrapped it, and took a bite, enjoying the brief pleasure it gave her. Then she glanced outside the window and saw Billy and his friends playing at the tree with the pit bull. She turned quickly away, not wanting to see more. But barely had the forbidden chocolate settled in her belly when something caught her attention.
Billy was sitting, knees up to his chest on the yellow grass, tilting his ruddy face toward the sun. The other two boys were under the tree with the dog, who was dripping saliva as, teeth bared, he made for the dangling hot dog, tied to a slim branch no less than six feet off the ground. One of them egged Bull on as the other, a rope wound around one wrist, waited just long enough for the animal to be at full height, ready to attack. With a yelp of pain, the dog was pulled back, its legs slamming to the ground.
“Here we go again,” Francine murmured to herself. She heard her knees crack as she got up from the chair.
Francine felt the blood rise to her head so suddenly she thought she might faint. She screamed again. Billy jumped up, and the boys turned white, their eyes riveted. But they weren’t looking at her; it was something else. Something that flew by, whether man or animal, she couldn’t tell. As the rage that had blurred her eyes faded, she soon realized who or what it was. Elias, butt naked, shower water still sliding off his skin. But it wasn’t that sight that caused her body to quiver; it was what she saw as she focused, the object in his hand.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Elias was half screaming, half sobbing as he approached the group at the tree, waving the small black gun back and forth like a flag, a rallying cry. No one moved. Francine wanted to say something, but her tongue had frozen solid at the bottom of her mouth. And before she could cry out, before she could even blink, Bull was leaping up for the meat, flying, eyes blazing with a color she had never seen before. And then, just as suddenly, a blast shook the tree, the ground, and everything in it until finally an eerie silence descended over them all. And when the smoke cleared and the stench of the residue shrank from their nostrils, there was Elias, big tears running down his cheeks, the trigger of the gun dangling from his fingers. And Bull, his brown snout pressed to the ground, which quickly tinted a river of red.