Рон Рэш - The Best American Short Stories 2018

Those energies she used in doting on Curtis, fussing over him the way it seemed Lena fussed over Andre. As soon as Curtis set his fork down on his plate, his mother snatched them up, along with her own, then went to the sink and began washing them.

“I was telling Shirley what we talked about on Friday,” she said. “She thought you were gonna give me lip, but I said Oh no, my boy gets it. Look, I know you loved Marvin. He was like kin to you. But following his people around ain’t what’s right for you. I know you know it. Can’t look back. It’s like the Bible says: Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor the left—”

“Ma, don’t you gotta go?” Curtis said.

She waved him off with a gloved hand, flashing yellow, flicking suds and drops of water across the kitchen. “My baby is home,” she said. “Ain’t no thing to put some soap and water to a couple dishes.”

That’s right, he thought. Your baby. Can’t get a job, can’t get my own place, can’t open a goddamn bank account. You wouldn’t even care if I pissed the bed.

His mother snapped off her rubber gloves and glanced up at the clock. She blinked slowly, keeping her eyes closed a beat or two longer than necessary, opening them as she took in a great draft of breath. Curtis steadied himself for what was coming. This had the look of one of her speeches, the ones that began, Baby, you know the Lord has forgiven you. Now you just need to forgive yourself… Curtis wasn’t sure God had forgiven him. He wasn’t sure God agreed that the accident couldn’t have been avoided. He wasn’t sure about God. If God was true and had forgiven him, then why did He keep sending the woman into his dreams at night? Curtis had to do it the other way. If he forgave himself first, maybe then God would follow.

He steadied himself, thinking of beautiful things and filling his head with their music: The words of the man on the promenade, grabbed by the wind. “The Payback.” Freedom on his tongue like the taste of curry chicken and macaroni pie from Culpepper’s. “Someday We’ll All Be Free.” A pretty woman opening her legs and arms for him. Devil in a Blue Dress. “Ruby.” Marpessa Dawn taped to the wall. “A Felicidade.” Marvin, his friend. Andre, who looked so much like his father. “They Reminisce Over You.” “Little Ghetto Boy.”

Curtis followed Lena into a bank one afternoon that week. He tried to make their encounter seem like a coincidence, but could tell she knew better. They talked uncomfortably for a few minutes, both averting their gazes. Then he apologized for the other night and told her he wanted to see her. After some hesitation that seemed to him like a ceremony, Lena gave him her phone number.

When they got a room together on weekdays, Lena would tell Andre she was working an extra shift, but they usually got rooms on Saturday afternoons. Curtis brought her home once, while his mother was at work. Lena told him it was fine, but he felt humiliated being with her on such a small bed, in a room filled with his childish things. He was morose after they slept together. Even the scent of their sex couldn’t distract him from the pervasive smell of his mother. When Lena tried to comfort him, he asked her to tell him about the night Marvin died.

She flinched. “Y’all were like brothers,” she said. “You know all about it.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“I wasn’t there either,” she said. “You had to know that much.”

“But tell me about the last time you saw him.”

She was quiet for a while before she spoke. “I was waitressing back then too,” she said finally, “the late night shift at a diner over by Coney Island. I like waitressing. You get to know folks and they get a kick out of you remembering them and they tip you good—well, as best they can.”

“What about Marvin?”

“Like I said, I was working the third shift, and that started at midnight during the week. Marvin had already lost his construction job. Then he lost his side gig too. You know how hard things were for him.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Well, he couldn’t handle it. Poor thing was always beat from looking for jobs all day, every day, but he liked to stay up and watch me get ready for work. Tried to keep himself awake with a book of all things. Can you imagine? He was one to think reading in bed would keep a tired man awake.”

“What was he reading that night?”

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“Did he like Easy Rawlins and Mouse?”

“I don’t know.”

“And the fire?”

She looked at him for a long time and then studied her hands. Her voice, when it came, was cold now: “You must’ve heard how it happened, Curtis. It was just like that.”

“Tell me.”

“I told him not to smoke in the bed, especially when I wasn’t around. But the man was tired, always, and with every job telling him no, he was a bundle of nerves. I kept telling him to ask for help, but he had to do things all by himself. Too proud. He wanted life to be different for us, and for his mama. All that debt…” She shook her head. “He thought we deserved to be in a better place.”

“I heard his spirits were low.”

“Sometimes.”

“You would know better than me.” Curtis tried to say this with some tenderness, but she flinched again. For the first time she seemed genuinely pretty, even beautiful to him, like a woman grieving calmly in a painting. He pressed on: “Do you think he… ?”

“What?”

Curtis looked at her.

“Took his own life? Is that what you mean?”

He nodded. He knew he was being cruel, but couldn’t help himself. He wanted to hurt her.

“What, in his right mind he just lit a match and let it fall on the damn pillows? You asking me if he meant to destroy his own self? Why would you say such a thing? Why would you even think it?”

Curtis sometimes imagined that his friend would understand what it was like to feel that blue, but he knew Marvin had loved life too much to take his own. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. The faded Knicks poster on the far wall hung askew. “He wouldn’t have done that with Andre on the way. He knew about the baby, right?”

Lena seemed baffled. “Whatever did or didn’t happen, it wasn’t because of what was growing inside of me.”

Curtis nodded, but meant nothing by the gesture. “Tell me the last thing he said to you.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “As far as we were concerned, it was just another day.”

“Last time we saw each other, he gave me a hug.”

Lena lay with her back pressed to him, her knees drawn up and touching the wall. “That’s no surprise. I never heard him say a bad word about you,” she said. “What in the world happened between you two?”

Curtis didn’t reply. After that Sunday afternoon by Drummer’s Cove, Marvin eventually reached out to reconcile, but Curtis ignored him. He met any attempt to talk or spend time together with silence. When they finally did talk, Marvin begged to borrow some money.

“I lost both my jobs, man,” he said, “and nobody’s trying to hire a brother. I can’t catch a damn break.”

On the phone, Curtis stayed quiet.

“I’m having a real hard time, man.”

Before he hung up, Curtis said, “Well maybe that bitch you got can help you out.”

He didn’t tell Lena any of this, and it was obvious that she didn’t know. He listened to her breathing now, the steady in and out, the deepening. He closed his eyes. In a while he was startled awake by his recurrent dream, and then startled again by a cold hand on his shoulder. Curtis saw it had taken a great effort for Lena to reach out to him, even though they had no space between them on his bed. Her reddened eyes, taut mouth, and fingers roughly scratching at the points of her elbows meant she knew she could never be loved by him—he had told her as much as they talked before falling asleep. Maybe she already knew she couldn’t love him either. He held her, though, in the little bed, and then she held him too. As they lay there, he decided he would never bring her to his mother’s house again.