Sarah Cortez - Houston Noir

Sunset Heights

She was walking through the streets at midnight because she had a man to meet, she was carrying a gun because she was going to kill him, and she was wearing high heels because she hadn’t thought it through.

For the first two hours, she sat by Jamie’s sleeping, dreaming body and ignored the pings his phone made. He lay on her couch, curled to fit his frame in its embrace.

She got a stack of clean white washcloths. Held them under the faucet and wrung them out, restacked and covered them with plastic wrap. Put them in the refrigerator. Then, one by one, she took them out and used them to bathe his face, as if he had the kind of fever that could be relieved with cool cloths. The kind that could be relieved by a mother.

He murmured in his sleep. Smiled, lifted his brows, sank more deeply in. She pushed his hair from his face. Her hand stopped at his temple, at the tiny dimple of a measles scar. Oh.

She remembered him in her arms. Solid and muscular even at four, bigger than the other children. The way his heavy head felt against her breast as she rocked him.

His phone pinged, facedown on the coffee table. A quick pool of light, then draining away.

In his jacket pocket, she found a pack of cigarettes. She went to the front door, disarmed the alarm, unlocked the door, and realized she didn’t have a lighter. She took a box of matches from the utility drawer and carried them with the cigarettes to the front porch.

They’d bought this town house, close to Downtown, in this still-iffy but gentrifying Heights neighborhood, when Jamie had graduated from high school and left for college. They didn’t need the big house anymore or the good schools and they didn’t want the commute. They were happy here for two years.

She struck the match against the side of the box, sniffed the sharp bite, watched the pure flame spring up. Lit the cigarette and drew on it hard. She hadn’t smoked since college, but you don’t forget how. She tilted her head back and let the smoke spiral from her mouth. She used to look sexy when she smoked — men told her so. She leaned on the railing and peered down into the flower boxes. The cyclamen she’d put out for Christmas had taken a beating and were spattered with mud from yesterday’s rain. She rubbed at them with her thumb; the petals were stained.

This new white town house was three blocks off 610. Closer than they’d wanted to be — you could hear the freeway traffic. That meant it cost less. Jamie was going to a private university. They were being careful.

She sat on the glider, moored to the front porch by a chain thick as her wrist — the sort you’d imagine holding the Queen Mary fast. Her husband bought it the morning they woke to find all the new townhomes on their block, a block dotted with crumbling shotgun houses and an auto-body store, had their porch furniture stolen. Only theirs was left, which was so funny. Kenneth went to C&D Hardware on 11th Street and came home with this absurd chain, and that made her laugh even more. First he’d been cross with her, then he laughed too, and they went upstairs and made love on the new bed they’d bought to match this new house and new way of living. They pretended the traffic noise was a river.

She got up and poked a hole in the soil of the flower box, dropped in the finished cigarette butt, covered it, and patted it down. She wiped her hand on her suit and went back in, locked the door, set the alarm.

Her son slept on. Happy. A faint smile on his face, the kind of smile a full and content baby makes when his mouth falls away from your nipple, eyes closed and lips wet with your milk.

He was still beautiful. Not the way he was when he played football. He’d been huge then — she and Kenneth could hardly believe they’d made this massive golden man. It had been so sweet to go to Jamie’s games and hear his name called, the crowd roaring for him. The golden muscled mass of him racing down the field.

He was beautiful. Not the way he was then. Not like a giant. A god.

He was beautiful like a tubercular. Like a Spanish martyr.

Like a heroin addict.

The first time, he’d gone into rehab straight from school. His coach put him on the plane, so they didn’t get to say goodbye. Only a phone call. When the phone call was over, Kenneth turned to her and said, “Was that him? I don’t think that was him. It didn’t sound like him.”

She remembered when they sent his clothes home. Boxes and boxes. This was, oh, a year ago. Her husband was gone by then. They blamed each other. They blamed themselves. She couldn’t bear his face — his eyebrows just like Jamie’s. Bird-wing eyebrows.

That day, the FedEx man piled the boxes on the front porch. She came out and dragged one into the dining room, and the FedEx man brought the rest into the house. She’d tried to give him money, fumbling in her purse, then upending it on the floor and scrabbling for dollars, holding out a fistful.

She’d locked the door, set the alarm, and gone into the kitchen for a glass of ice, a bottle of bourbon, and a paring knife. Kneeling on the hardwood floor, she filled the glass with bourbon, took a drink, and sliced open the first box. Jamie’s smell, faint, rose from the box. She put her face to the crack in the cardboard box and breathed in. Over and over. Great breaths of him. The way she’d put her face against his newborn skin and breathed in the sweet hay smell of this living, perfect child God had given her, after all the doctors told her it couldn’t happen.

That day, sitting among the boxes, she poured another drink, then fitted her hand into the slot and felt softness. She pulled out his shirts, one after the other, sky blue and pink and lilac and butter yellow — all the colors Lauren made polo shirts in. Sixteen of them. Made of really soft cotton, like baby clothes.

She pulled out his clothes and school books and the notebooks filled with his tiny, cramped handwriting and bordered with doodles — monster bodies with human faces and trees with cereal boxes hanging like fruit. The invitations and the dried-up boutonniere still pinned to the jacket lapel. Everything she pulled from the box, she laid on top of her heart. A business communication textbook that cost more than three hundred dollars: she put the six-pound book on her heart. Seven pairs of Levi’s 501s: seven pounds on her heart. A T-shirt: six ounces. That made an ounce too much. Her heart was crushed under the weight and she crumpled, resting her face on the smooth, cool wood. She held Jamie’s T-shirt to her face and smelled him. Then she lost herself, screaming, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, baby, and she screamed at her God, who had not protected her son although, God knew, she was on her knees every night praying for his deliverance. Promising God anything, anything, anything, only please God, please. Please.

That was a long time ago. Now she looked down at her sleeping son, his cheekbones like a model’s. The skin under his eyes deep purple.

His phone pinged on the table again.

Months before she knew, really knew, what this was — what had him — she’d picked up his ringing phone once, while he was in the bathroom.

Before she could speak to the caller, Jamie flew from the bathroom, holding his pants closed with one hand. He snatched the phone, hurting her, crushing her fingers. He raged, screamed down at her. She edged around him, her hands held up, apologizing again and again. Fled upstairs to her room, shut the door and locked it.

Told herself she wasn’t afraid of him. She slid down and sat with her back pressed against the eight-foot solid-wood door and tried to stop the shaking. Because she wasn’t afraid of her boy.

Ping.

His blond lashes rested on his cheeks. His cheeks were covered in red-gold hair. His huge hands lay open on his thighs, his whole body loose and easy and at peace. He was happy. This was happiness.