The Juke (Changes Book 2) Page 17

  He also thought about the picture on his desk at work. He thought of his tall sons. He thought of his old family. He wondered how they were. Matthew should be nearly finished with college, and Mark should be just starting. He hoped they went to college.

  He pulled out his wallet. Next to his few dollars, he found a slip of paper he’d had for some time. It was aging too, like the photo on his desk. It was wrinkled and the corner torn, but he could clearly see the logo of Sarah Renn, Esquire. He had scribbled a note on it once. But he could see the original message clearly:

  Tony and Michelle Santos 310-294-4643

  Frank looked at it as he had many times before. He moved to put it back into his wallet, as he had many times before.

  And then he grabbed the phone from the nightstand. He began to dial and then hung up. He put the phone back. He was going to walk out of the room, but then found himself holding the phone again.

  “Hello?” He knew Shelly’s voice immediately.

  “Hello, may I speak to Matthew Joseph?” He felt ridiculous for changing his voice. It just happened. He knew she would probably recognize him anyway.

  “He’s not here now. May I ask who’s calling?”

  Frank hung up the phone.

  XXIII

  “Hi, baby boy,” she said, unfocused eyes trying to smile at him. “Come here and hug Momma.” She put her arms out, her cigarette a quivering stub between her fingers. Perry slid into her arms. She had a slowed affect from heavy doses of medications, and she trembled weakly.

  “I missed you, Momma,” Perry said into her gown.

  “I miss my big boy too.”

  Perry pulled away. They took seats around an outside table. Frank couldn’t help but examine the quality of the wrought-iron table and chairs. The large umbrella staved off some of the heat, but it was still very warm.

  “How are they treating you, Mariah?” Frank asked.

  She was pale. Blanched. She reacted to his question, but slowly, as if she was on a delay. Long distance. “Well, it’s hard…I miss you guys.” Her blinks stopped halfway down.

  “Yeah, we understand. We miss you too, don’t we, Perry?” Perry nodded.

  Perry reached into the paper sack next to him. He pulled out a small wrapped box. “This is for you, Momma,” he said proudly.

  Again, slow to react. “Ah, that’s my baby boy…” and Frank could hear a bit of slur in her speech. He had been where she was. He had kicked. He knew the medicines they used to bring a junkie down. He now knew what others had seen in him.

  “Go ahead, Mariah. Open it,” he encouraged.

  She gave an anemic smile and bared her yellowed teeth. She stubbed out her cigarette, even though it had been to the filter for a while. “Oh, this is such a pretty wrapper,” she cooed. She picked up the box, but her hands worked against her as she tried to open it. Perry looked at Frank, and Frank just nodded back to him.

  “Let me help you, Momma,” Perry said. While she held it, Perry made the first couple of tears in the wrapper. Frank remembered doing the same for little Ruth on her first Christmas.

  Mariah ripped the rest of the paper. A small box was underneath. She struggled to lift the lid, so Perry held the bottom. “Oh my gaw, it’s so beautiful,” she said, voice croaking. She pulled the necklace from the case. She held the heart in her jerking hands.

  “It’s a locket, Momma. Open it.”

  Mariah struggled again, so Perry reached over and pushed the release. Inside was a picture of her on one side and Perry on the other.

  “Oh, I love these pictures,” she said.

  “Let me help you with it.” Frank stood up and came around behind her. He took the locket and draped it around her. He then moved to clip it around her neck.

  “Excuse me!” someone shouted. “Excuse me!” Frank looked up. “No necklaces allowed!” Frank saw a nurse moving toward them; she was scolding him with her waving finger.

  Frank help up a flat hand to her. “Okay, sorry,” he called out. He put it back in the box.

  “I’m still on suicide watch,” Mariah said, wan smile on her lips. She wished she hadn’t said that in front of Perry.

  He put the box down in front of her. “I’ll hold this until you get out.”

  “Thanks, Frank. It’s beautiful. Thank you both,” and her lips were too dry. She fumbled for her cigarettes. Frank pulled one out for her, and after she put it in her mouth, he lit it.

  “Momma, when are you gonna come home?” Perry asked.

  “Soon, baby. Soon,” she said, but she knew it wouldn’t be.

  “I have some good news for you, honey,” Frank said. Mariah was looking off into the distance. “Mariah?” She turned slowly to him. “I have some good news for you.”

  “Oh? Good news?”

  “Yeah, a television crew came by the shop.”

  “Yeah, Momma…I was on TV!” Perry said proudly.

  “You were?”

  “Yes, he was. They were doing a story about the work we’ve done with parolees. The governor has a contact at Channel 5. So they did a report on our program and interviewed some of our crew. They filmed Perry welding the frame for the chopper he’s working on.” She smiled at her son. “I taped it, and I’ll show it to you when you get out.” It was warming up, and Frank was beginning to sweat. “Anyway, I’ve been asked to speak at the prison more regularly and perhaps teach that class monthly. Figured it would be good to give back some, you know?”

  Mariah’s eyes were distant and lost again.

  “Momma, are you okay?”

  She came back more slowly this time. She smiled, this time not at anybody in particular.

  “Mariah, would you like to walk around a little?”

  She looked up at Frank slowly. He could tell her medications were coming on hard, and she was beginning to disappear into them. Walking would get her blood flowing. Without any acknowledgment, he stood up and the grating of iron on cement made her eyes focus. He helped her up, stuffing the necklace case into his pocket.

  They began to walk down the path in the grassy recreation area. She was off balance, so Frank held her hand on one side and Perry the other.

  “Oh, it’s so nice to be with my men,” she said in a faint, far-off voice.

  “We’re here for you, Mariah.”

  The heat in the sun was beginning to spike, and he could feel sweat running down his neck. He looked at Mariah, and she was as dry as a stone. Her skin was yellowed. She was probably dry from vomiting…part of kicking.

  “We’d better walk her back, Perry. She probably needs to rest.”

  Perry didn’t say anything, but didn’t protest as they turned around.

  When they neared the shaded visiting area, Mariah leaned close to him and whispered, “Frank, you need to get me out of here. I’m dying.”

  He spoke softly back to her, “Mariah, it’s for the best…”

  “Frank, I need to be home. I will die here.” He could feel her body trembling against his. He looked down to her, and through the fog in her eyes, he saw she was serious.

  “You’re just dope sick, Mariah, you’ve gone through this…”

  “It’s different this time. I’m not getting over it. I’m not kicking. I can feel myself dying.”

  He tried to keep his voice low. “Have you talked to the doctors?”

  “Frank, you know they won’t listen. I have to get out of here. You have to get me out.”

  “But you’ll go back to using…”

  “Frank, if I don’t leave here, I’ll be dead. I need out.”

  He looked down at her again. She had the stink of pharmaceuticals. Her lips were chalky. Her tattoos looked faded, like crayon drawings on yellowing paper.

  “I’ll see what I can do…” and he gave her a soft smile.

  “Promise me, Frank. Promise me.”

  And he did.

  XXIV

  The news anchor’s plastic hair and smile moved in unison as he turned to the new camera angle. “And finally tonight,
a former homeless drug addict’s dramatic turnaround and how he’s helping others. For more we go out to Nicole Garcia, joining us from Phoenix, Arizona.”

  From the split screen, young, dark-haired Nicole held the microphone just below her chin, ensuring the NBC logo was visible. “Thanks, Henry. Tonight we’re sharing the story of Frank Joseph. He is owner of Joseph’s Welding, a Phoenix shop that does custom welding, as well as building motorcycles and cars.” The camera panned back, and the shop was in clear view. “Mr. Joseph is a former homeless heroin addict. He was financially destitute, so he turned to theft to feed his growing habit. Now, he’s the owner of a successful welding company, and he’s giving back by helping parolees get new skills. We’ll speak to him in a moment, but we want to show some footage first. We followed Mr. Joseph to the Arizona Federal Penitentiary today, where he spoke to a group of inmates.”

  The camera cut to pre-recorded and voice-overed footage.

  Michelle Santos was cooking dinner when she saw Frank’s face on her small kitchen-counter television. She moved closer to it and watched as Frank spoke to the room of men in denim. He had aged, and his hair was grayer. He looked twenty pounds lighter, but had a lean hardness to him. His teeth looked whiter. He had regained the confident smile she remembered. The smile he had courted her with so long ago.

  “Mr. Joseph recounted the years of homelessness and addiction.”

  The footage rolled, and she saw a close-up. She couldn’t look away. “Those days on the street were tough. I had lost everything. My family. My work. I had given up hope. I lived on the streets for several years. Hopelessness led me to try heroin for the first time. It took away the pain and loss for just a few hours, but those few hours were more than I had had for a few years. It felt like it washed away my memories, so I kept at it.”

  “Shelly, shut those fucking kids up, will ya?” she heard her husband shout. “I’m trying to watch the fuckin’ game.”

  She switched off the TV. She moved down the hallway, to the closed doors of her children’s bedroom. Ruth and Luke were on their bunk beds, laughing at a show playing on the small TV in their room. The room was small, and there was room for little else.

  “Hi, Mom,” Luke said, but his smile faded when he saw her face.

  “I told you guys, keep the television down,” she hissed. “You know Dad gets angry when it’s too loud.”

  She jerked the remote from Ruth’s hand and pushed the volume button down until neither could hear the show. Shelly threw the remote onto Luke’s bed, then stormed out. Ruth began to sob softly.

  Shelly was back in the kitchen, and checked if she could hear her children. She could not. Mark hadn’t come home after school, and she knew he was getting ready to drop out of the community college he attended. She was worried Tony would have another of his rages. Tony seemed to have taken a dislike to Mark lately, so Mark avoided him, which only made it worse.

  The small townhouse in San Pedro was cramped and the kitchen small. They had sold their last townhouse now that Tony wasn’t working. Since they were on assistance and renting, they were all on top of each other.

  “Dinner will be ready in about five minutes,” she called out. Tony didn’t reply.

  She turned the television back on, but a sitcom was now playing, so she turned it off again.

  “Shelly, get me a beer,” Tony called out.

  She opened the cramped fridge and saw there were only two left. She had better run to the market. She took him the beer and grabbed two empties from the coffee table. Tony never broke eye contact with the television. He was paunchier now, and with his feet up on the ottoman she thought he looked very old, like her father.

  She was back in the kitchen, but her mind was on the images she saw on the television. So many years, so many memories. She knew every inch of that face, every movement of that body.

  She set the small table for two, as only two could sit at it. She served a plate for Tony, then went to tell him dinner was ready. He was asleep on the chair, head slumped forward to his chest.

  And she remembered. She remembered her life so long ago. Her happy family. Children playing in the pool. Their beautiful brick home. All that they had, all that they were. She was somebody then, and her circle of friends was extensive.

  She went back into the kitchen, sat at the table, and wept.

  The noise from the next apartment was incessant. The constant boom of the bass drum thundered day and night, and as these were basement apartments the sound had nowhere else to go. He always kept the television up high, and the deafening racket made him angry. He would yell sometimes, shriek others. The neighbors responded by turning up the bass even more.

  The room was small, the furniture old. Stacks of newspapers and empty beer cans were on every flat surface. Empty pizza boxes and microwave dinner trays were underfoot.

  Tonight was a bad night. Tonight was the type of night he had often lately. He had struggled to put on his mechanical arm; the harness was difficult to work with one hand. He had wanted to go out and get a hot meal. Without his arm, he would not leave. He had shrieked and cursed and cried, but he could not get the straps tight. He had thrown it down in disgust, and a strap lock had broken off. He would be without his arm until he could get it fixed.

  So he had opened another beer and sat with hot, angry tears in his eyes. He looked at the stump, moving it to shake off the tingling, the ghost of the arm he lost so long ago. He cursed in Hungarian and drank the beer too quickly. It was the ache in his heart that would not go away. He couldn’t drown it, but he tried.

  He had lost everything that day. He had lost his manhood. He had lost his business. He had incurred expenses he couldn’t cover. All in one moment. All consuming.

  When his girlfriend came to visit him in the hospital, the burning loss of manhood hit him just as that bullet had. He had seen her look at his bandaged stump, and he saw what he knew he would. He was less of a man. Though she would have never said it, he knew the look in her eyes and it affirmed his own feelings.

  He had sent her away in tears and told her never to return. In his mind, he knew he could never be with a woman who wouldn’t view him as a man.

  The ache of the amputation was more than he could have imagined. The heavy opiates he was given made him dopey. But he needed them. Badly.

  He had been so proud of that store. He had worked so hard to save the money for the down payment. When he had purchased it, he remembered the pride he felt the first time he received a shipment. He loved stocking the shelves and filling the coolers. He loved that everything he made had been his own. He never minded working long shifts and only reluctantly hired help. That day, that long distant day, his morning help had called in sick; he wasn’t even supposed to be there. Bad luck had put him in the path of ruin.

  His father had never known the satisfied feeling of building something on his own. His father had been a civil servant back home and had fled with his family when he could. When he arrived in America, he simply took a desk job and was happy with a steady check, though secretly he yearned to be home and never fully adjusted to life in the US.

  Hadur wanted more. He wanted the American Dream. He sweated and worked and saved every penny until he could afford his own store. His own. He knew someday he would own two, three, or even four stores. He knew his hard work would make him a success. He loved to work, to build. He wanted to craft his own future and hand his sons an empire, leave them with something more than his father could give him.

  And then that New Year’s morning, it had all changed so quickly.

  When the news came on that night, he was half-asleep from his oxy and beer. Though his tolerance was up, they still made him logy. Street oxy didn’t match pharmaceutical-grade, so he always had to take extra.

  And then the news had come on, and he was close to turning it off. He was tired and would take another oxy and drift off to sleep.

  Then he saw that face. There it was…clean-shaven now, but with the same eyes. Eyes that
had grown terrible in his nightmares. There was no mistaking it. A face he would never forget. A face that haunted him. A nameless face, nameless no more.

  He began to shriek. There weren’t words for what he felt. These were the sounds of the black places in his soul.

  PART V: CINDERS AND SEEDLINGS

  XXV

  Frank was in his office when his phone rang.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hi, Frank, it’s Claire at the desk. There’s someone here to see you.”

  He sensed something in her voice. “Who is it?”

  “She won’t give me her name.”

  He thought for a bit. “Does she look like trouble?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, be right down.”

  Since the television show, he’d had a few stray visitors. Fame makes people crazy. People just want to meet someone famous, or they’re bored with anonymity. Or they think famous people know something they don’t. Some came just to meet him. Others came asking for something. He would shake their hands and answer their flurry of questions. No, I don’t know anybody at the station who could get you a job. No, I don’t need any new people. No, I don’t have any connections in television. Thank you for coming by.

  From his office, he walked out onto the floor, sweat quickly forming from the heat. He saw the bright arcs of the welding. Cars and motorcycles were being tacked and assembled. He loved the smell of the ions and crackle and blinding sparks. Loved to hear the sizzle and zap. He had twelve teams working on different projects. Business was good. He paused a second to see Perry and two others sliding the engine onto the frame of his chopper. It was shaping up nicely. Perry’s skills were growing quickly.

  He turned and moved into the office.

  From the other side of the counter, she smiled at him. “Hi, Frank,” she said, smile too wide.