When Ghosts Come Home(24)

Alone in his bed at night, Jay had stared up at the ceiling, listening to the sound of the Braves game on the television in the living room, the squeak of his father’s leather recliner as he leaned toward the side table and poured salted peanuts into his hand from the jar of Planters he always kept there. Later, he would hear the clap of his mother closing her book and getting up from the sofa to go into their bedroom, his father following behind her not long after. Once the house had gone quiet, Jay had lain there and imagined kissing Robin Francis, her breath warm and sweet with what Terry had promised would be the fruitiness of the Mad Dog, her braces shiny and sharp. Click, click, click, ding! he’d thought.

But once he was inside Mr. Wright’s store, all the doubts he’d had about Kelvin’s plan, his story of kissing Robin Francis, and the promise of the sugary sweetness of the MD 20/20 and all the things Terry had said it would get the girls to do, suddenly rose up in his chest like a sickness he feared would spill from his mouth.

After Jay had made his way to the back of the store and was standing in front of the drink cooler as if unable to decide what kind of soda to choose, he’d looked up at the convex circular mirror that hung above him in the corner of the store. In the mirror, he could see Kelvin standing by the magazine rack as if having the same trouble selecting what to read that Jay was having selecting what to drink. He could also see Mr. Wright in the mirror’s reflection, at least he could see his hands where they rested on the counter by the cash register. From this angle—the angle at which the mirror hung and the angle at which Jay was standing—Mr. Wright’s face was obscured by the bank of cigarettes that hung from the ceiling within easy reach of Mr. Wright’s fingers. Jay had seen him find a pack of cigarettes for a customer without even raising his eyes from where his other hand accepted the bills before pecking away at the cash register and making change once the drawer opened.

Jay didn’t need to see Mr. Wright’s face to be reminded of what it looked like. He was Jay’s father’s age, good friends with Jay’s father, actually. He had medium brown skin and a thin mustache and a head full of hair. Jay had grown up seeing Mr. Wright and his father and other men from the neighborhood sitting in his parents’ driveway beneath the carport on Saturday afternoons, smoking cigarettes, telling stories, drinking beer, and talking about whatever it was they were always doing together: bowling or playing cards or fishing; the kinds of things men did when they got off work and got away from wives and kids. Those driveway sessions were just about the only times Jay saw his father smile. He’d even laugh. In fact, sometimes he’d laugh until he cried, tears glistening on his smooth, dark skin, his cap coming off and revealing his bald head whenever he removed it to slap his knee with it or use it to pop one of his friends in the chest as they laughed together, hunched over in their chairs, stomping their feet.

Jay had stared at the mirror and waited to hear Kelvin’s voice speaking to Mr. Wright to distract him from what they were—from what Jay was—about to do. But Jay stared into the mirror and watched Kelvin just stand there by the magazine rack without saying a word. Mr. Wright’s hands had disappeared from view, and without turning around Jay was unsure of what the man was doing.

He looked at his own face in the mirror and saw himself for what he was: a lanky, skinny kid with a smooth face, skin and eyes just as dark as his father’s. His face looked scared no matter how much he tried to keep it from appearing that way. He didn’t want to steal from Mr. Wright or drink Mad Dog or feel Robin Francis’s buck teeth and braces in his mouth. But going through with the plan, even if the plan hadn’t quite gone into effect just yet, was easier than saying the truth out loud, especially if he had to say it to Kelvin.

Jay’s father’s name was James, and Mr. Wright had always called Jay “Little J,” and he’d always called Kelvin “Little K,” although Jay had no idea what Kelvin’s father’s name was. He didn’t know anything about Kelvin’s father aside from the fact that he didn’t live with Kelvin and Terry and their mother. Kelvin didn’t really want to talk about his father, and Jay didn’t push it. He understood. He didn’t want to talk about his own father either.

It wasn’t that Jay didn’t love his father or that he thought his father didn’t love him: quite the opposite. Jay knew he was loved, especially by his mother in her quiet, gentle way. She was a librarian, and throughout his life Jay would think of libraries when he thought of his mother: the fresh, clean smell of books in their bindings; the whispered voices; the confidence that whatever you needed or wanted could be found provided you had the time and the patience to wait for an adult to find it or to look for it on your own.

Jay’s father’s love was different, grumbling and marked by qualifiers like “because” and “but.” Boy, I’m doing this because I love you and Son, I love you, but. Jay’s sister, Janelle, had already been everything he knew his father now wanted him to be—smart in school, good at sports, self-possessed and certain—and by the time Jay was born, when Janelle was almost thirteen years old, Jay figured his father had spent one whole childhood confident that he had done the best he could and had, in fact, done well. And then Jay came along, and his father just didn’t know if he could do it again. It’s not that his father was an old man; he was only forty-eight, not that that really meant anything to Jay. But he did seem old. While other parents listened to Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, Jay’s father listened to the Temptations, the Platters, and the Supremes and kept the radio on all day in the carport, especially when his buddies were over, telling their stories on Saturday afternoons.