J. Wachowski - In Plain View

She gave me her careful eyebrow look, the one that indicates concern mixed with you-crazy-white-girl.

I don’t know why I tried to explain; I’m sure she’s right. “I spent the last few years in the field doing nothing but war and disaster. Half the time, I’d end up talking to the head guys because nobody worried about talking to a girl.”

We shared a long suffering eye-roll.

“And even though I sucked at first, figuring out how to ask questions and get answers, wearing masks to hide my disgust, hiding my fear-I wanted to do it. I believed.”

She nodded and picked up the barbell I’d just finished using, adding ten pounds to either end. She needed all the strength she could muster. Cynicism and hope were the left and right ventricles of a nurse’s heart and soul.

“Sometimes, I was so afraid.” Muscle memory caused a familiar burning roil below my diaphragm. “But I didn’t want to stop. The stories mattered. They mattered to me.”

Tonya gave me the blank look. “You are going to have to spell this one out. You’re losing me.”

“I’m just saying there’s something in the stuff I get attached to that kind of worries me. You know-with Jenny around now.” I popped my last three curls, breathing fast. My skin tingled, warm from the effort. “Damn. I’ll shut up now.”

“No. Say it.”

“In my head, I hear my J-school profs yelling, ‘You interview experts, you aren’t the expert. You report the news, you aren’t the news.’ So I try not to get involved, but there’s something underneath the stories I want to do that scares me.”

“Sounds normal to me. You want to know what’s under the rock. Remember how you obsessed about Dr. N?” Dr. Norman was part of my emergency-room story. He’d been in and out of recovery programs. He was good at two things that should have been mutually exclusive, high pressure healing and drinking. My theory was he used them both the same way-full body forgetting. “And it made a great story.”

“If I was in a hurry, I could do something with the lead I’ve already got on this story. Splice in some network research on deviant sex and I’m done. No brainer.”

“So why don’t you?” The words puffed out as Tonya curled.

I shrugged.

The weight clanged back into a resting position. Tonya took one deep breath, studying my face the whole time. “Then be about your business. Investigate. Report. Figure it out, baby. Figure it out. For yourself and the rest of us.”

Upstairs, the doorbell rang.

We both looked up, listening to Jenny’s feet run across the floor upstairs. Her voice filtered down to us. “I’ll get it.”

“How’s she doing?” Tonya asked softly.

“Okay, I guess.” I dropped my bar and everything sagged. Resistance was the better part of what kept me upright lately. “She ditched a class yesterday. Teacher asked me if she’s getting any ‘help.’”

“Like a shrink?”

“I guess.”

“Shit.” Tonya sighed. Therapists would not have been widely utilized in Tonya’s childhood neighborhood. Too hard to do therapy on somebody who doesn’t eat regularly. “You know any shrinks?” she asked.

“No.”

“You want me to ask around? Get you the name of someone good?” People who work in a hospital know better than anyone that they call the guy who finished last in his class at medical school “doctor,” the same as all the rest.

I sucked a long swallow of water. “I think she just needs some time. Her mother died. She ought to feel shitty. I do.”

“Yeah.” Tonya plopped her butt on the bench press and looked at me. “How bad is it?”

I stalled to get the bite at the back of my throat under control. “I got a six-minute story due in four days, jack-all in the can and my back-up is Opie the Boy Wonder. Jenny still wakes up screaming once a week. This house I’m living in is triggering flashbacks to my misspent youth and my prescription for Xanax has expired. I’m great. Just great.”

“I can help you out with the Xanax.”

“You’re a pal.” The only towel I could find this morning was embroidered with daisies. It made my sweat feel especially dirty.

Tonya smiled. “There’s always boarding school.”

That got a grunt.

One of those nights I’d run for it, I returned with a half-baked plan to sell my sister’s house and pack Jenny off to boarding school. My frugal sister had managed to build some decent equity. In the current market, I figured I could get the kid all the way through high school on that money. Summers, I’d let her stay with me, or she could go to friends. She’d make lots of friends at school, right?

Tonya had listened to the whole plan, one eyebrow cocked, television on in the background rattling on some typical morning news about a kid who’d gone missing and parents who were frantic. She’d clucked her tongue and dragged me up the hall to look in at Jenny dreaming. The room was warm with sleep, and smelled of what I knew to be Jenny and thought might be my sister, or even mother.

“No boarding school, yet. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Tonya answered. “Only one of us allowed to have a breakdown at a time.”

“I’m not having a breakdown.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m fine.”

“Fucked-up. Insecure. Neurotic. Emotional. Yeah, you’re F-I-N-E, all right.”

There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs and who should appear? Ainsley’s happy head popped around the corner. “Hi there.”

Jenny hadn’t followed him. I could still hear her feet shuffling around upstairs.

“Hi yourself. Who’s this?” Tonya drawled. Her posture altered and her chameleon-colored unitard suddenly took on that queenly nonchalance that only black women can pull off in lycra. Ainsley was suitably impressed.

“Meet my Boy Wonder,” I grumbled. “Ainsley Prescott. Tonya Brown.”

He reached out to shake her hand. Ainsley’s version of weekend casual wear consisted of a gray T-shirt-tucked in-and ironed blue jeans. The shirt hung loosely across his shoulders, his collar bone and shoulder blades cutting into the drape of the cloth at the back. Ah, young boy bones.

“And what a wonder he is. Very pretty. He gay?”

“Not sure,” I said to rile him. “Never came up.”

“Not,” Ainsley replied dryly. “I give demos, if you’d like to resolve any doubts.” He pressed a palm over his heart and smoothed it down his chest, stopping when his fingertips tucked in his waistband.

Tonya cackled, “Ooh, I like him.”

Uncle Rich would not be amused.

“Back upstairs, College.” I inserted my sweaty self between them, herding him toward the steps. “You’re early.”

“No beer. No videos. I woke early.”

As I hit the top of the stairs, Jenny came stumping out of the kitchen with a can of pop in her hand and cotton stuffed between her toes to protect her polish.

“Give me five minutes to change,” I told Ainsley. “Then we can run and meet Melton.”

“Are you going somewhere?” Jenny’s voice stretched to a squeak. Lately, even walking out to the road to get the mail out of the box, I’d heard that same question, in the same tone of voice.

Come on, kid. Keep it together. I answered slow and steady. “I’ve got to go pick up some stuff from the local newspaper. Tonya’s going to stay here with you.”

“How long will you be gone?” Tonya stepped behind Jenny, using her whole body to soothe. No hands, just a solid presence at the girl’s back.

Why couldn’t I do that, give her comfort automatically? How do you learn that?

“Not real long.” I saw the raised eyebrows of skepticism. T had offered to stay all day, if I needed it. Until that minute, I hadn’t realized how much I did.