Casualties (20 page)

“So, you got company.” She waddled from the doorway and stood in front of the counter.

“Yeah.” Casey sipped from his mug and set it down again, next to a plate streaked with the remains of two eggs sunny side up, a side of bacon, and two pancakes drenched in blueberry syrup.

“You givin' away my food again, Lenny?” Belva barked.

“I can buy my own food,” Casey said.

“That's good to know. How long she stayin', or is it ‘he'?” A smirk planted itself on Belva's fat face.

“Not your business.”

“Everything's my business at Cactus Gardens, you know that,” said Belva, settling her fanny on the stool Lenny kept behind the counter. “You move another person into that trailer and your rent goes up. I'm not runnin' a charity here.”

Sooner or later, everything got around to the charity she was not running, Casey thought. Usually sooner.

His head was beginning to pound and his breakfast was not sitting all that well. He stood up to pay but paused. This was no time to pull a wad of cash out of his pocket where Belva could get a good look at it. “Need a couple of things,” he said, turning his back on her and walking down the single aisle of shelves sparsely furnished with packages of junk food, toiletries, and laundry supplies. He grabbed some toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a newspaper, and was working his fingers in his pocket, loosening a twenty from the roll, when Belva froze him with a shout.

“You've got mail.”

“What the hell . . .” The words died in Casey's throat. Belva fanned herself with a couple of white envelopes. He stumped back, laid the toiletries and his money on the counter, and grabbed the envelopes out of her hand.

“When did those come?”

“Yesterday. One of 'em's from the VA. Might be a disability check, which would come in handy for both of us, wouldn't it?”

Casey stuffed the mail in his back pocket, grabbed his purchases, and made for the door.

“Aren't you going to thank me?”

“For what? Giving me what's mine?”

He nearly ran down the old man who was in the doorway, his hand on his wife's elbow. “Watch out, son, you'll be old too one day.”

Belva's laughter followed him out the door. He was sick of the woman, sick of her bullshit and the whole crap fest she ran out here. By the time he got back to his trailer, he was sweating into his clean shirt, but he couldn't go inside yet. Ruth was in the shower. He could hear the water. He reached for his last cigarette and saw that it was crushed. Shit. No way would he go back in there now, though. He'd have to wait until Belva crawled back under her rock. He sat on the steps and pulled out the first envelope.

The VA again. The new faker was taking forever to get approved. He balled up the letter in his hand. Same old shit: His request was being processed.

Casey peered at the second envelope and felt a thump in his chest, like a blow. He stared at the familiar handwriting:
Mr. Casey MacInerney, Cactus Gardens, Jean, NV.
He did not need to check the postmark but he did anyway: Jersey City, New Jersey. The last time he'd opened an envelope like this one, a photograph of a young girl with serious eyes and missing teeth had fallen out. She'd been seven then. Ten years ago. He wiped the sweat off his hands on his jeans. Then he reached in his pocket for his penknife and slit the top of the envelope.

Inside were a couple of newspaper clippings and a short note on a square of plain white paper:
Thought you'd like to see how your daughter is turning out. She's been asking about you.
There was another line squeezed below, as though the writer had decided at the last minute to add it.
It's been too long. I'm not getting any younger and neither is she. Come home. I'll handle her mother. Moira's tough but she wants Em to know her dad.

Casey unfolded the clippings. The first showed a photograph of a long-legged girl on a basketball floor, airborne, a look of intensity on her broad face as the ball left her hands.
Emily MacInerney
, the caption read,
a junior, scored the tie-breaking shot for St. Anne's.
The sister school to St. Francis, his old school. He could almost hear the squeak of his black Chuck Cons as he ran down the floor, playing point just like the girl in the picture.

The note was not signed, but Casey knew the compact script belonged to Katie O'Brien, Emily's grandmother, once his mother-in-law, still the woman who helped raise him. She'd written a few times before, asking if he was okay. She never said anything about the money or Emily and nothing about Moira, leaving it up to him to ask. Sweat crawled down his spine. He thought of the letters he'd written and torn up.

He scanned the other clipping. No picture this time, just an announcement of kids on the honor roll and Katie's scrawl in the
margin,
Takes after her parents
. Sweat from his fingers darkened the thin newsprint and smeared the headline. Carefully, he put the articles and the note back into the envelope. He held it, square in his hands, and tried to imagine walking back into the house he'd left over a decade earlier.

He pictured himself standing at the foot of the steps leading up to the old frame house in the row of the brick ones being snapped up by wealthy young couples. Katie's lace curtains marked the window of the living room where no one ever sat. She'd be in her kitchen at the scratched Formica table where, as a boy, he and her own children, Mike and Moira, used to sit by the window eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, tossing crumbs out the window just to see the pigeons fight over them.

The refrigerator, the same gold color as the table and the oven across from it, would be plastered with lists on scraps of paper and children's drawings careening at odd angles after slipping from the fruit-shaped magnets she'd used to hold them. This was Katie's favorite place, the place where she held court, kept an eye on things out the window, and could keep a hand on both telephone and whatever was cooking on the stove. “Come into my office,” she'd say to a child with a scraped knee, or a neighbor with an unfaithful husband. She probably said the same thing to his grandmother the day they arranged for Casey to live with the O'Briens when it became clear the cancer would kill her. Band-Aids were in the drawer next to the sink, and a bottle of Jameson was kept ready on the top shelf for adult emergencies.

The kitchen had been empty the last time Casey entered it, fresh out of the third or fourth rehab. He'd looked around him in the dim light cast by the fixture over the sink. Katie, her husband Brendan, Moira, and Emily were all asleep. Mike, the beginning and end of everything good in Casey's life, had been dead for years, but Casey had heard him that night, taunting him, telling him to go ahead and leave, he didn't belong there.

Casey left no note, nothing for the sleeping people to find when they woke up. Instead, he'd yanked Katie's bottle of Jameson off the shelf, emptied the billfold in the drawer where she kept her “mad money,” and limped out with everything he needed stuffed into a blue gym bag.

The low persistent growl of the air conditioners protruding from all the double-wides called him back to the present. Sweat poured from his hairline down to his neck. The day suddenly stretched before him. The only new thing was Ruth, and he'd send her on her way as soon as he could. Then hours to go in the tin can he called home until he could get over to the casino, settle at the blackjack table, and play until another day dawned. He shifted the envelope from one hand to the other, wiped his palm on his jeans, then pulled out the clippings and the note and read them again.

She's been asking about you
, Katie had written.

Maybe it was the heat that was making him think about things he'd not let himself think in years. Or maybe it was the lump of cash in his pocket, giving him a strange kind of courage.

Instead of a few hundred bucks, he could give Emily a couple thousand, something to put away for college or something else she needed. He could, if he wanted, bring it to her himself. He could fly to New Jersey, knock on the front door of the old town house, and track her down. Katie would help him; she all but said so in the clippings. He could hear what she sounded like, search her face for any traces of his own. He wouldn't stay; he knew he could not buy his way back into his kid's life. At the same time, he wouldn't arrive empty-handed. The cash he'd been sending these past few years proved he still thought of her and cared about her. Maybe it was enough to buy him a few hours with her. A few hours would be enough to know if they had any more to talk about. Hope, sudden and frightening, opened up in him. For a moment he did not recognize the feeling. The idea of going had already taken hold, though. If nothing else, he told himself, going away would get him out of this hellhole. That's
right. Fuck the VA and fuck Belva Pointer. It was time. Maybe he'd catch one of Emily's basketball games. He shook his head. Not in summer; school would be out. He stood up. Fuck it. He didn't have to plan every step right now. All he had to do was do what he did every day in the casino. Show up. After that, anything could happen.

—

Ruth fumbled for the faucet and turned off the tepid drip from Casey's shower. She freed herself from the mildewed curtain clinging to her shins, then grabbed the towel he'd left her. She had no strength for revulsion. She was wet, she needed to be dry. She was naked, she would put on the clothes that he'd laid out for her. There was relief in the absence of choices.

As Ruth pulled a maroon shirt over her head and stepped into absurdly long black shorts, her cell phone sounded from somewhere beyond the bathroom door. Neal. He had his own ringtone. By now, he and Terri probably knew Ruth had taken the ashes from the funeral home. Maybe he'd gone into her house and had seen the mess she'd left behind in her rush to leave.

A tapping began on the thin folding door.

“Everything okay in there?” The man was back. Her heart still pounding, Ruth ran her fingers through her wet hair and slicked it back behind her ears. She could not go back to San Diego. Not yet. It was the only thing she knew for certain.

“Yes,” she said. She slid open the door.

He looked her up and down, the corner of his mouth lifting in the beginning of a grin.

“Not exactly your size, huh?”

“They're fine,” said Ruth, hunched over, arms folded against her belly to keep the shorts from sliding down.

“Got some things for you—if you promise you won't throw them at me.” His grin spread but his eyes looked guarded.

Ruth tried to smile. She needed him. At least for now.

“You're safe,” she said. Then, “I need to sit down.” She sank onto the bed as he stepped aside.

He dug a small tube of toothpaste and plastic toothbrush from his pocket and set them on the bed next to her, then pulled her phone out of his other pocket and handed it to her. “I found this in your car. It was ringing a few seconds ago. Thought about answering, but that seemed like a bad idea.”

“I don't want it.”

“It's been ringing a lot.”

“I told you, I don't want it.” She did not look at him. He set the phone on the bed next to the toiletries.

He cleared his throat. “Listen, lady. Ruth.” His voice trailed off.

Ruth glanced up. “You know my name,” she said. “What's yours?”

“Casey, not that it matters.” He dug his hands into his pants pockets and peered down at her. “So, what's your plan?”

“I don't have one.”

“Maybe you should see a doctor.”

“No, I just need some more sleep.”

“Here's the thing. You can't stay here. Not that I'm not enjoying your company, but it just isn't a good time.”

Ruth looked down at her body, adrift in the baggy clothes. She needed to think, but her mind, too, was submerged beneath layers of pain and fatigue.

“I've got no money. I can't even put gas in the car.”

“I bet whoever's been trying to call you can help with all that,” he said.

No.
She would not let Neal see her like this. There was Terri. Terri had all her credit card numbers; she'd know what to do. One call would do it. She'd wait for a time when Terri wasn't likely to pick up. She'd leave a message on her voice mail. That way Ruth would not have to explain things she could not even explain to herself.

“No,” she said aloud, her voice stronger now that she'd been using it. She heard a clicking and turned her head toward the sound.
It came from an ancient fan she had not noticed before, but it barely moved the hot air that surrounded her. “Jesus Christ.” Casey pushed himself off the counter and wheeled around, tottering a little on the left side. “I don't need this.”

He stared through the screen of the door at something outside the camper. “What's your story, anyway?” he said, a bit more gently, without turning around.

Ruth shook her head. “None of your business.”

“The law chasing you?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

He shrugged. “Well, I don't suppose it matters. I'm leaving, getting out of this shit hole. I'm in kind of a rush. Stay here if you want. Rent's paid through day after tomorrow.”

The BlackBerry sounded again. They both looked at it. “They're giving you another chance,” Casey said. “Go ahead, answer it. I'm going to pack.” He went into the bathroom and closed the door. She heard the sound of rummaging, the clink of what might be the can of shaving cream she'd seen.

She scooped up the BlackBerry and stared at the display. Her grandmother's number. Neal or Terri must have called her. The phone vibrated in Ruth's palm. She squeezed the phone until the ringing stopped. Out of nowhere, another fragment of the night before came to her. She was curled like a snail on the pavement, expecting another blow, wishing for it. She'd wanted the stranger to punish her.