Chapter 10 Ronan
Ten
Ronan
Thanksgiving Day, there was a knock on my door. I opened it to Maryann and the twins. The girls pushed past their mom’s legs and hugged me.
“Ronan!”
“Hi, Ronan!”
“Look what we made!”
Lily and Cami hustled me away from the door, excitedly holding up Thanksgiving turkeys made out of brown construction paper, traced from their own little hands. Each finger was a colorful feather, with googly eyes glued to the thumb.
“We made these in class,” Cami said proudly.
Lily nodded. “We got to do arts and crafts and eat popcorn instead of do math.”
I smiled. Over the past few weeks, I’d learned to see the difference in the twins after spending more time with them.
Like when I went down to replace the batteries in their smoke detector or when they came up to visit me for no reason at all.
Separately, it was difficult to tell them apart, but together, it was easy to see the differences in the girls’ faces.
Their mom, of course, knew who was who without a glance.
Maryann gave me a small smile and a shrug as she shut the door behind her. “I hope we’re not bothering you. They’ve been talking all morning about when they could come over.”
“They never bother me,” I said. Just the opposite. I’d babysit if Maryann ever needed me but never offered. Didn’t want to come across as a perv. I just liked having them around.
The girls pressed their paper turkeys at me.
“They’re for you!” Lily said, and Cami nodded vigorously.
“For me?” My damn throat felt tight. The papers felt small and light in my big hands.
“Because today is Thanksgiving,” Cami said. “We’re going to Auntie Colleen’s house for a big dinner.”
“You can come with us,” Lily said. “If you want.”
I went to the kitchen and rummaged in a drawer for a roll of Scotch tape. “That’s nice of you, Lil, but I’m going somewhere already.”
“You are?” Maryann asked sharply. “Where? If you don’t mind me asking.”
I smirked. If Maryann was going to ask a question, she asked it.
“I’m going to Nelson’s,” I said, taping the turkeys to my refrigerator door. “He’s my uncle,” I told the girls.
Cami made a face. “We know.”
Lily wore the same sour expression. “Mommy says he’s a son of a bitch.”
“Lillian Angela Greer!” Maryann cried. She shook her head at me, her eyes wide. “I’m sorry. I never…”
I chuckled. “It’s all right.” I sat on my heels in front of the girls. “Your mom’s right, but don’t say those words in front of him.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not polite,” Maryann interjected.
“And they’re bad words,” Cami added.
“Right. And they’re magic words,” I said. “If you say them to his face, he might turn into an ogre.”
The girls’ eyes were wide. “Really?”
I nodded. “That’s why grown-ups never want kids to say bad words in front of other grown-ups. You never know if it’ll turn them into a monster.”
“How do you know so much about it?” Cami asked, the skeptic of the two. “Have you seen a monster?”
“I sure have.” I felt Maryann’s eyes on me and gestured at the turkeys on my fridge. “What do you think? Do they look good there?”
“Your fridge needed them,” Cami said seriously. “There’s nothing on it.”
Lily agreed. “Our fridge is covered in our artwork and when we do good on a project.”
“Do well,” Maryann corrected gently. She stood between the girls, stroking their hair. “So you’re having dinner with your uncle?”
I stood up. “Heading over at two.”
That, at least, wasn’t a lie. It was true I was going to visit Nelson but only because he needed me to drop off some invoices from a plumber we’d hired last week.
“That’s great,” Maryann said. “Hold on a sec.”
She hurried out, leaving the girls with me. It wasn’t too cold of a day; I was wearing a T-shirt, showing my tattoos—their favorite subject. They never got tired of looking at them.
“That looks ouchy,” Lily said of the dagger tattoo on my left arm.
“The clock says 10:05,” Cami said, inspecting the sleeve on my right. “We’re learning about time in class.”
“What happened at 10:05?” Lily asked.
She was pronounced dead. Right there in the kitchen. Because I couldn’t stop the monster…
“When I was a kid in school, we had recess at 10:05,” I said. “That was my favorite time of day.”
“Then you could go out and play with your friends?” Cami asked.
“Yep. Exactly.”
“That’s my favorite time too,” Lily said.
Maryann returned holding a box from a local bakery I passed on my walk to Central every day when I wasn’t suspended or working odd jobs.
“For you and Mr. Wentz.” She set the box in my hand. “Surprise! It’s pumpkin.”
“That’s the pie we were going to bring to Auntie’s!” Cami said.
“You said our job was to bring the dessert,” Lily added.
I started to hand the box back. “I can’t take this.”
Maryann stopped me. “Yes, you can. I’m trying to imagine the feast two bachelors may have cooked up.” She smiled softly, though her forehead was creased in worry. “Please.”
“What about Auntie Colleen?” Lily asked.
Cami nodded. “She’s going to be pissed.”
I shot Maryann a look. “Yeah, what about Auntie Colleen? She’s going to be pissed.”
The girls busted up, giggling.
Maryann smirked and rolled her eyes. “We’ll stop at the store and pick up something else,” she told her daughters. “Tell Ronan bye-bye.”
Again, I was surrounded, two pairs of little arms hugging me around the waist. I didn’t know what it was with those girls and hugging.
“Bye, Ronan!”
“Byeeee!”
“Thanks for the turkeys,” I said, then to Maryann, “and the pie.”
She smiled. “Happy Thanksgiving, Ronan.”
They left and, as usual, my place felt a little darker and emptier. At quarter to two, I grabbed the invoices and the pie and waited for the bus. The complex Nelson managed—the Bluffs—was at the very edge of my walking range and in an even worse neighborhood than where Miller and I lived.
The iron railings were rusted, and cages covered every lower window. The entire complex was painted a dark green not long ago. Nelson said it cost him a “pretty penny,” but why spend the money fixing the cracks when you could cover them with paint?
My uncle’s place was on the lower level, corner unit. I knocked and waited. A kid on a tricycle pedaled in circles in the cracked and pitted parking lot, watching me.
“Yeah?” Nelson called from inside.
“It’s me.”
“Come in.”
His apartment was larger than mine but seemed smaller. Stacks of newspapers, garbage bags filled with God knew what, and piles of old clothes were heaped all over. Not quite ready for Hoarders but getting there.
My uncle was watching football from a dark-green upholstered chair that matched the building’s exterior.
Slashes of yellow stuffing puffed out where the old fake leather had dried up and split.
A TV tray table sat beside him with three empty beer bottles and an ashtray overflowing with pistachio shells.
He had the footrest on the chair kicked up; the carpet beneath—a ruddy-orange shag—was littered with more shells, more newspapers, and empty soda bottles.
The entire place reeked of solitude. The kind that has settled so deep, you don’t care anymore who sees your place, even when it looks like shit.
“Here are the invoices,” I said. “And pie.”
“Toss ’em on the table.”
The kitchen table was just as bad, covered in fast-food wrappers, a month’s worth of junk mail, and coupons cut out of mailers. I cleared a space and set the pie and invoices down, wondering if they’d get lost in the sea of crap and not get paid.
“Have a seat,” Nelson said.
The only other chair in the living space was an old throwaway he’d salvaged from the curb. It had once been white. I sat on the very edge, resting my elbows on my thighs.
“Our team’s playing,” Nelson said. “Green Bay versus Dallas. Packers up by ten.”
“Sweet.”
We watched the game for a few minutes. The place smelled of sour sweat and old beer. I wanted to get the fuck out of there yet couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him alone.
“You’re doing a good job with the building,” he said after a minute.
“Thanks.”
“The tenants like you.”
I nodded.
“That’s fine so long as they don’t walk all over you.”
“They don’t,” I said, thinking of Maryann’s twins. They climb all over me.
“Good. See that they don’t.”
“The Cliffside building needs a new roof,” I said slowly.
Nelson let out a shout. “There it is! First down, hot damn.”
“Nelson…”
“I heard you. I’ll think about it.”
I left it alone. That was more than I expected.
The game went to commercials, and Nelson looked at me for the first time. “Did you say you brought pie?”
“Yeah. A gift from one of the tenants. Maryann Greer.”
“For me?”
I nodded.
His lips pursed and he hmphed. “Go figure. Well, I got two turkey dinners. You may as well stay. Since you’re here.”
I nodded, stunned. “Two dinners?”
“They’re in the freezer,” he said, his eyes on the TV. “Beer’s in the fridge.”
The freezer was frosted over, but I pried two dinners from the white cave. Sliced turkey, peas, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a square of some kind of dessert that looked like it might’ve been an apple tart.
Each one took eight minutes to cook. While Nelson’s was rotating in the microwave, I cleaned up a little.
I found cheap plastic plates in a cabinet and put the meals on them—minus the apple shit—so they wouldn’t look like TV dinners but more like real food.
I grabbed silverware and two beers from the fridge.
Nelson had cleaned off his TV tray and showed me where a second one lay folded against the wall.
We sat with our food in front of us and watched the game, neither saying much except to talk stats and Green Bay’s prospects for the rest of the season.
“I may live in Cali, but Wisconsin’s in my blood,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, thinking of my dad. Mine too.
After we ate, I cleared our plates and cleaned up until the counters and kitchen table looked a little better. A little more normal. I served up the bakery-fresh pumpkin pie.
“This is good stuff,” Nelson said, forking a bite. “Not bad, right?”
I thought about Miller and Holden, my friends I was going to meet later tonight at the shack.
I thought about how things were okay in my classes. Not failing any at least. Frankie Dowd still gave me the stink eye, but it seemed like the score had been settled.
I thought about Shiloh Barrera.
We’d only spoken a handful of words since I’d asked her to come to the shack. As close as I’d get to asking her out. Another moment of weakness. I’d had a hundred around her, always saying yes—to barbecue or help on a paper—when I should’ve been saying no.
Shiloh said no.
The right answer. You shouldn’t have fucking asked at all.
Now we only saw each other coming or going in history. She’d whisper with Violet, glancing at me sometimes as if I were vaguely familiar. Someone she used to know.
The nameless hunger in me grew sharp teeth then, but it was still my favorite part of the day.
And I thought about Shiloh with her grandmother, probably sitting down to their own Thanksgiving dinner at that moment. Safe. Happy.
“No,” I said to my uncle. “Not bad at all.”
That night, after hanging with Holden and Miller at the shack, I had a small hope that the nightmares wouldn’t come. Because being with my friends was always good, and dinner with Nelson hadn’t been half bad.
I was wrong.
I woke to my own ragged screams tearing out of my throat, to the bloody kitchen in Manitowoc slowly fading to the dark of my empty apartment in Santa Cruz.
“Fuck.”
I tore the covers off and sat on the edge of my bed, holding my head in my hands. My heart pounding, blood rushing in my ears, blood staining the floor…
The cheap clock radio said it was a little after 3:00 a.m. I gave up on sleep for the rest of the night, dressed, and headed out. After months of walking, I had a route now. Maryann first. I paused at her unit, listening. All quiet. The door closed and locked, I hoped.
Then I set off for Miller’s complex. All the windows were dark. Quiet. No trouble out of his mom’s boyfriend.
Next, I walked to the Bluffs, back to Nelson’s place. The TV was still on, droning through the open windows. I imagined he’d fallen asleep in the same chair where we’d eaten our version of Thanksgiving dinner hours before.
I kept walking.
No matter how hard I tried to pry it out of Holden, he wouldn’t tell Miller or me where he lived, so I didn’t have him on my route. Probably up in the Heights where the rich people were and too far from my shitty neighborhood. I’d still have walked it.
But Shiloh…
Her and Bibi’s house was in between my place and Central. In ten minutes, I was in her tree-lined neighborhood of small one-story cottages. Had to be careful here; if there was a neighborhood watch, I’d get busted, easy. No one would believe me if I told them what I was doing there. Or why.
The Barreras’ house was quiet and dark. Secure. No one suspicious or threatening out on the street.
Except for me.
I made the rounds three times—between Nelson, Maryann, Miller, and Shiloh—until dawn broke in the east behind the forested mountains.
Then I returned to my complex and checked on Maryann once more before heading upstairs.
I didn’t bother to change out of my clothes; I’d only get an hour or two of sleep if I were lucky.
I lay down in my bed, exhausted, and closed my eyes.
They’re all safe, Mom, I thought, and only then did sleep come.
Black, merciful nothing.