Al Capone Does My Shirts (17 page)

“If she gets in, how long till she starts there? Can you at least tell me that?” Piper asks.

“I dunno for sure.”

“So we better get going!” she says.

“PIPER, FORGET IT!”

“Wouldn’t you like to know what happened?” Her eyes are burrowing inside me now.

“It’s not safe, Piper.”

“Why not? You’re going to be right there.
We’re
going to be right there.”

“What is it to you, for chrissakes?” I glare at her.

“I want to meet Al Capone.”

“This is just some guy. Some criminal choir boy Onion guy. It isn’t Al Capone.”

“Yeah, but it’s a start. Who knows where it will lead.”

I stare at Piper. Those squinty eyes. That cute little movie star mouth. That long straight hair. Then I get it. It isn’t just about Al Capone. “You like to play with fire. You love being around all of this criminal stuff, don’t you?”

“And you don’t?”

I stare out at the water, busy with ferries and fishing boats. “Not half as much as you do,” I say.

 

 

All I think about is telling my mom about 105. She’ll say ugly things, but then it will be done. I’ll never be given this kind of responsibility again. I’ll go back to being a kid—the way I was before moving to this stupid turd-covered rock. Natalie will be safe and we can all move somewhere else. I would do this in a flash if it weren’t for my father.

I can’t stand to disappoint him again.

I try to forget all of this—try to stop the churning in my mind—but as soon as I do, Natalie mutters “105” and I’m back into it again. She’s always had a “number of the week,” as my father calls it. It’s usually the number of buttons in her collection or shoes in my mother’s closet or spools of thread in the drawer. Ever since the day I lost her, the number has been 105.

“105!” she says almost every day now, her hand on the doorknob and the hard force of her whole self headed out. But somehow I keep her inside. I let her play with her buttons and feed her four pieces of lemon cake while she sits by the door.

 

On Tuesday when my mother comes home, she seems to know we’ve stayed inside again. Of course, I’ve managed to separate Natalie from her buttons before my mom walks up the stairs from the dock. Even so, my mother knows. And when Natalie refuses to eat one bite of supper, so stuffed is she with lemon cake, my father knows too.

I hover around my father. When he says he has to help the warden with a project after supper, I offer to go with him—beg him, actually. I don’t want to be left alone with my mom. But he says he can’t take me. There’s a problem in the cell house kitchen, where I’m not allowed to go.

“Moose,” my mom says as soon as my father is gone.

“I have a lot of homework,” I say.

My mother nods.

I can’t bear this. It’s in my head, the sentences I plan to tell her. The truth. I let my sister hold hands with a convict. They were alone together. Twice? Three times? I don’t even know how many. I was over there looking six, seven times.

I wish I could make my mother understand how much more complicated this is than she thinks. But the only way to do this is tell her what happened, which I can’t seem to do.

My mother doesn’t yell about us staying inside. Not one critical word comes out of her mouth. She doesn’t have to say anything. The air itself carries her blame. I feel it when I breathe.

We both keep our space, never passing close to one another, like magnets set to repel.

 

The next day, when the door closes behind my mother, Natalie says what she’d said all day long the day before. “105.”

“No, Natalie. Not today. Today we’re doing buttons,” I say.

But the buttons aren’t in her bureau drawer. They aren’t on top of the icebox or in the cupboard by the stove. They aren’t in my mom’s closet or the bread box either. I turn the place upside down, searching every drawer twice. But I know I won’t find them, because they aren’t there. My mother has taken them with her. I didn’t see her do this, but I know she has.

The only thing I can do is keep Natalie inside. I look for cake. One slim piece of lemon is all I find. Half a piece, really.

Natalie looks up at me. She has watched my feet as I’ve looked for her buttons. I can’t tell if she knows exactly what’s going on, but she knows something.

“Fine,” I say, pulling open a drawer for the third time now. “Fine. We’ll . . .” I let the sentence drift off, then I march to my room and get my math books and stack them by the door. We’ll read math books all afternoon. I’ll stand in front of the door. I won’t let her pass. I’m stronger. I have forty, maybe fifty pounds on her.

Natalie is rocking wildly, like a little boat in a ship’s wake.

“105,” she says.

“No,” I say.

“Buttons,” she says.

“Numbers,” I say, cracking open a book and offering it to her. “Look, Natalie, you can read about numbers.”

“Buttons 105!” She’s rocking crazy hard.

Why not just let her throw a fit? Why try so hard?

“OUTSIDE, buttons. 105.” She’s spinning now.

I try to ignore her. I open my book, but I read the same sentence over and over. The meaning won’t go into my head. “Stop it, Natalie!” I yell.

But she’s losing herself. The scream has started. It begins low, like a piece of machinery that needs time to warm up.

“Stop it, Natalie!” I holler loud in her face. “Stop being like this! Don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re not a little kid, stop acting like one!”

She throws herself on the floor. She kicks the coffee table.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing to us? To Mom and Dad? You’re making them old. They worry about you all the time. At least you can try. At least you can do that. Sometimes I think you don’t even try and I hate you for it, Natalie. We try so hard and you don’t. I hate you, Natalie! I do!”

A vase hits the rug. It thumps hard, but doesn’t break.

She’s near the windows now, twisting, banging feet, hands flailing on the floor. The more I yell, the more she screams, like we’re trying to top each other. My shouts are full of words, hers are only sound. Animal sounds. Piercing and terrified.

There’s banging outside. I see through the window Mrs. Trixle’s brand-new red hair and short round Mrs. Caconi trying to see what’s happening. I’m surprised she made it up the stairs so fast. Someone else is banging too.

“Moose! It’s me, Theresa! Let me in!”

“Open up, Moose. What’s going on in there?” Bea Trixle calls.

“I can help! You need me!” Theresa again.

“Theresa! Go back inside!” Bea Trixle cries.

“Stop it! Stop it!” I have my hands on Nat’s arms. I want to shake her, shake her hard. My arms tremble with the effort not to.

Natalie screams louder. I look into those trapped eyes. Wherever she is, she can’t get out, which only makes her scream louder. And suddenly I’m not angry anymore.

“Open the door, Moose!”

“We’re okay!” I call, though I know how ridiculous this sounds.

“Please, Nat, don’t do this.” I run to the kitchen. “How about some lemon cake?” I plead. But she’s well beyond lemon cake. She takes the cake, mashes it in her hand and throws the plate against the wall, busting it into a billion pieces. Her whole body is moving in all directions, as if each limb has its own plan.

All of a sudden I remember what my mother used to do. I pick Natalie up, screaming and fighting, her skull bashing against my chin, and set her as gently as I can on her back on one corner of the rug. She’s moving so wildly, she kicks me in the shin, her hand boxes my ear.

It’s hard to keep her in one place, but I grab hold of her waist and pin her down at one corner. I hold her and the corner of the rug and roll, tightly, gently, using my knees to keep her in. When the rug is all the way around her, I wait. And slowly the fight begins to leak out of her. With the tightness surrounding her, she feels safe, secure somehow.

She lays shaking, grateful and forlorn in the stained red carpet. I breathe in a dust-rug-sweat smell.

Mrs. Caconi and Mrs. Trixle are still banging on the door. They have gotten Mrs. Mattaman now. She’s tall enough to see what’s happening inside. She’s holding baby Rocky.

I ignore them and talk to Natalie in a sweet calm voice, as if she were a baby too.

“Natalie, how can I help you?”

Natalie is quiet. Breathing hard. She’s calm now except for her eyes, which seem to be moving back and forth in her head, as if they are still searching for a way out.

“You’re okay now, Natalie.” I stroke her tangled hair, my hand brushing against her hot wet forehead.

“Moose, Natalie outside,” she says.

“Oh, Natalie.” I shake my head.

“Eye,” Natalie says.

“What? Something in your eye?” Her eyes have slowed down. I look to see if something is in them. I can’t see anything.

“Eye.”

“Yes, I know you were upset. That’s why your eyes are moving around that way,” I say.

“Eye,” she says. She’s calm now. I unroll the rug. She sits up. Both hands on her chest, petting it as if it has a full coat of fur. “Eye,” she says again.

“That’s not your eye, Natalie,” I say. “That’s your chest.”

“Eye outside,” Natalie says.

“You want to look outside?” I check to see if Bea Trixle and Mrs. Caconi and Mrs. Mattaman are still there. They’re gone. Maybe they realized we were okay and went away. Or maybe they’ve gone to get a crowbar or my father. I look back at Natalie. Her face is scrunched up. It’s crushed, as if she wants me to understand and I won’t.

“Eye outside,” she says loud, like I’m deaf.

I say nothing. I don’t know what she wants.

Her face seems to close in with the effort. “Eye want to go outside,” she says finally.

We’re working on pronouns.
My mom said this. Pronouns. Natalie, who never called herself anything but Natalie my whole life, just called herself “I.”

“Oh,” I say. “I want to go outside?” My voice breaks.

“I want to go outside,” she says, the look of relief on her face as big as thirty states.

I open the door then. I do. How could I not?

 

 

We go to the parade grounds. Natalie gets on the swings. There’s a mom there with her four-year-old son. She pushes him. I push Natalie. She’s too big and too old for this. Her hips are too large for the seat. I ignore this. I ignore them. She can pump herself, but I know she prefers to have me push. After a few minutes I notice her head is tipping to the side. I run around to the front, just in time to catch her as she falls forward. She’s sound asleep. Tantrums exhaust her. I can sure see why. They exhaust me too.

I carry her home as best I can. She seems so solid. So big. A real grown-up person in my arms. I stop often, leaning her weight on a cement wall, the edge of a building, the banister.

I’m almost to the back stairwell when my dad finds us.

He doesn’t ask what happened. He simply takes Natalie from me and I follow him to our apartment. We walk through the wild mess of our living room. Rug pulled out from the coffee table, vases upended in a puddle of water, broken plate slivers and lemon cake scattered everywhere. My foot crunches the china pieces as I follow my father to Natalie’s room. He places her gently on her bed and covers her with her favorite purple blanket.

Then he goes to the icebox and opens a beer. He looks over at me, seems to think a minute, opens another and pours a full glass for himself and half a glass for me. My father rarely drinks and never with me. I had a few sips once at Pete’s house, but I didn’t like it much. That doesn’t matter. What matters is he seems to understand.

In the living room, he sets his beer down, picks up the vase and puts it back where it belongs. I set my beer by his and get the broom. The room is silent except for the clock ticking on the mantel, the sound of sweeping and the clink of china pieces as my father drops them in the metal trash tin.

“Dad,” I ask. “How come you always do what Mom tells you?”

My dad makes a funny sound, a kind of laugh through his nose. He says nothing and then, a full minute later, “I don’t always.”

“Most of the time.”

My father swallows, considers this. “Yeah, most of the time I guess I do.”

“How come?” I ask, sweeping a glass piece off the rug to the floor and up the incline to the dustpan.

My father takes a sip of his beer. “Things matter more to your mother than they do to me.”

“What things?”

“Everything . . .”

“Everything?” I ask. I’m watching him now. Searching his golden brown eyes.

“Everything . . . except you.” My father bites his lip. The tears well up. He turns away and busies himself tugging the rug back in place.

I strain my eyelids open and try to breathe the tears back in my head. I look down, then take a breath. “Dad?” I ask.

I’m going to tell him what happened now. I am.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Did I cause Natalie to be the way she is?” The question seems to come from somewhere deep inside of me.

“Moose?” My father freezes, his eyes riveted on me.

“Something I did? You said she got worse when she was three. That’s when I was born. Was it me?” I concentrate on the rug.

“Moose.” My dad grabs my shoulders and he looks straight into my eyes. “I don’t know,” he says, taking a teary breath, “what caused Natalie to be sick. I don’t think anyone knows that. But I do know this.” He bites his lip, his voice so full of feeling, he’s having trouble speaking. “Absolutely . . . absolutely for sure it had nothing, nothing at all to do with you.”