Home Body by Gerry Boyle

Author:Gerry Boyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Islandport Press
Published: 2017-07-28T17:38:49+00:00

At first he just sat there. I sat, too, arms across the steering wheel. Rocky cried, snuffling quietly and wiping his eyes with a dirty hand. I fought off pangs of sympathy by thinking of Sandra Baker on the couch, the smell in the room, Roxanne and the baby.

The child of a murder suspect.

I put the van in gear and pulled out. I’d driven fifty yards when Rocky said, “No.”

I pulled over again, this time in front of a thrift store where mannequins wore hand-me-downs in the window. Rocky looked out at them and wiped his face.

“Next time I don’t stop until we’re in her driveway,” I said.

He bit his lip and then took a deep breath.

“She was dumping bad on my mom.”

“And Rusty was telling her to stop saying this stuff?”

He shrugged.

“What kind of stuff?”

Rocky looked out the window. I waited. Slipped the gearshift down.

“Bad things.” he said.

“Like what?”

No answer. I took my foot off the brake and the van rolled forward.

“Bad things,” Rocky said, quickly. “About my mom and Rusty and Kitty, except she’s dead.”

“Sandra Baker said bad things about Rusty and Kitty, too?”

Rocky shook his head.

“No, not about Kitty. Kitty’s dead.”

“How do you know that?”

A pause. The van rolled. Rocky talked and it stopped.

“On account of what Sandra Baker said. About her being dead, I mean.”

“What did she say about her being dead.”

“I want my mom,” Rocky said.

I turned and he was crying more, his eyes reddened and swollen as though they’d been punched, black dirty streaks like brushstrokes across his face. I felt the sympathy start to well up inside me and I turned away and choked it back down.

“Rocky,” I said. “What was it Sandra Baker said about Kitty being dead?”

Rocky sobbed. I waited, steeling myself to the sound. He sobbed again and again. I let the van roll.

“She said—”

I braked to a stop.

“She made it up. She was just making accusations and lying and—”

“About your mother?”

In the mirror, I saw him nod.

“What about your mother, Rocky?”

“Bad things, but they weren’t true.”

“Well, if they weren’t true, then you shouldn’t mind telling me, right? If they were just made up.”

In the mirror, I saw him staring out the darkened window. When I looked ahead, I saw a car approaching the intersection. There was something stealthy about the way it moved, and I put the van in gear, and pulled out slowly.

“No,” Rocky said.

“Just hang on,” I said, and I drove up to the intersection and turned right, just as the patrol car passed through. The cop, a young man, glanced at me but drove on. A block up, I pulled into a convenience store lot and parked. I left the motor running and I asked him again.

“What was she saying about your mother?”

Rocky grimaced.

“We can be at Sandra’s in five minutes. Is that what you want?”

He shook his head.

“I can’t wait much longer, Rocky.”

He swallowed.

“We can just pound on her door, Rocky. If she isn’t home, we can just go in and wait. Sit right down—”

“She called my mom a lot of things.

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