Chapter 22
E’Leveyn ‘Lev’ Laurent
Day Ten
The office had been empty for almost an hour before I finally shut my laptop.
I sat there a few seconds longer anyway, staring through the glass wall at a floor nobody occupied but me.
The cleaning crew had already passed through the hall two times already and the lights had been cut off in the offices farther down.
My phone sat beside my hand with three missed calls from BJ and that was the only reason I hadn’t gone straight home.
Barbara Jean didn’t call three times unless somebody was dead, bleeding, locked up, or making her nervous enough to believe one of those things was about to happen.
She had left one voicemail, but all she said was, “E’Levyn, come by my house when you leave that office,” in the same firm voice she had used when I was twelve and knew I was in trouble before I ever crossed her threshold.
I slid the laptop into my bag and stood up.
That office was supposed to represent everything I had changed about my life with men in suits calling me Mr. Laurent instead of whispering my name because they needed something moved, buried, or handled.
I had worked too hard to build distance between who I had been and who I had become, but lately Marv kept shortening it for me.
Every call about him felt like somebody pulling on a rope tied around my fucking neck.
By the time I rode the elevator down, irritation had already got the best of me, and it stayed there through the parking garage, through the valet bringing my truck around, and through the entire drive toward BJ’s estates.
Before I reached the door, she opened it.
BJ wore a long house dress with her reading glasses hanging from a beaded chain around her neck.
Usually, she would make me knock even if she saw me through the window, claiming she didn’t raise any of us to enter people’s houses like the police.
Tonight, she stood there holding the door with one hand and pressing the other against her chest.
“What took you so long?”
“I came straight from work.”
“You could’ve left that work early.” She scolded with worry wrinkles all over her face.
“That’s not how work goes.”
She stepped aside without answering with her lips tight enough to tell me arguing wasn’t gone improve her mood.
The house smelled like onions, butter, and whatever cake she had baked earlier.
The television played in the living room and a half-finished cup of tea sat on the end table beside her chair, but the bag remained floating inside it, untouched.
BJ never let tea steep that long, so I knew something was wrong. I set my keys on the small table near the door knowing this was about Marv. “Where he at?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You called him?”
“Of course I called him. The phone either rang until it cut off or he sent me to that machine.” She walked toward her chair but didn’t sit. Instead, she turned and looked at me as though I had already failed to fix the problem. “He came here earlier.”
“What time was that?”
“Little after four.”
I looked down at my watch and sat down. “What happened?”
She opened her mouth, closed it, then pulled her glasses off the chain and pushed them onto her face even though there was nothing in front of her to read. “Something ain’t right with that boy.”
I glanced toward the kitchen. “What he do?”
“He was high.”
Shit irritated me even more as I flexed my jaws. “High how?”
She looked offended by the question. “Don’t ask me no foolishness like that. I raised enough of y’all to know what high look like.”
“I’m asking what he was on BJ.”
“That powder.” She confirmed. “I don’t care what this big pretty house looks like, I’m still from the hood and I knew a no good powder head when I see one.”
I looked away and blew hard before rubbing my hands over my head clenching my jaws.
BJ watched me. “You knew?”
I nodded my head. “He denied it, but yeah, I knew. Told him he need to leave that shit alone.”
“He was sniffing, wiping his nose, walking around here talking so fast I could barely understand him.” Her voice rose as she moved farther into the living room.
“Couldn’t even sit down and every time I asked him a question, he started answering something I never asked.
That fool was looking through my blinds like somebody was outside.
He even went in that kitchen and opened every cabinet like he was searching for something. ”
“What was he talking about?”
“Everything and nothing.” She pressed her palm against her forehead. “Said somebody was watching him, also said he couldn’t trust nobody. He started talking about people stealing from him, then told me you were trying to take over his life.”
I gave a dry laugh. “Yeah, that sound like him.”
“It is not funny, E’Levyn.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“That bullet did something to him.” She pointed toward me as though I had denied it.
“Ever since he got shot, he ain’t been right.
He got out that hospital acting like he was fine because he could walk and talk, but something in his mind changed.
Now he’s back sniffing that mess, running around here like he’s losing whatever sense the Lord gave him. ”
I leaned forward with my forearms against my thighs still listening letting her vent because I knew what was coming next.
BJ finally lowered herself into her chair, but she didn’t sit back. “You need to get control of him.”
I looked at her. “BJ.”
“Don’t BJ me. You heard what I said.”
“He’s grown.”
“So are you.”
“Exactly, which means I can’t keep my eye on another grown man every hour of the day.”
“You his cousin.”
“I know what he is. He also has siblings too, you forgot?”
She placed her hand on her hip and frowned. “But he listens to you.”
“No, he don’t cause if he did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. I seriously didn’t know what else BJ wanted from me. I didn’t have no kids, but she wanted me to treat Marv as such.
She then folded her hands together, squeezing them so tightly her knuckles turned white. “He needs somebody.”
“Nah, he needs rehab.”
“Then put him in one.”
I leaned back and shook my head because she still wasn’t getting it. “I can’t pick him up, throw him over my shoulder, and lock him in rehab because you said so. He gotta want help.”
“He’s not in his right mind to know what he wants.”
“And if I keep chasing behind him every time he gets high, starts a fight, or goes looking for something that ain’t there, he gonna have me back in jail or tied into street shit I spent years getting away from.”
Her expression changed at the word jail.
BJ rarely softened when she believed she was right, but her eyes moved away from mine, toward the framed photograph on the wall of me wearing a cap and gown at a graduation I had almost missed because my probation officer had threatened not to approve the travel and that was from a juvenile case.
“I prayed too hard for you,” she said quietly. “I sat in too many courtrooms and watched them take you away from me.”
My jaws flexed, but I kept my voice steady. “And I’m telling you I’m not going back.”
“Then don’t.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
She glanced down at her hands. “I love all y’all the same. But Marv…” She shook her head slowly. “That boy always made me worry different.”
BJ loved every grandchild and great-grandchild she claimed, including the ones not connected to her by blood but had eaten enough meals in her kitchen to become family.
She remembered birthdays nobody else remembered, kept money tucked inside cards, and defended all of us publicly even when she planned to tear us apart privately, but Marv had always occupied a fragile place inside her.
Maybe because my auntie had left him with BJ more often than she kept him.
“He stood right there,” she said, pointing toward the space near the television, “and asked me if I had cameras in my smoke detectors. I told him the only thing watching him in this house was Jesus, and from the looks of him, Jesus was tired.”
I looked up at the smoke detector as a laugh almost escaped me, but I caught it when I saw tears gathering along the bottom of her eyes. “He scared me, Lev.”
I stood and crossed the room, lowering myself onto the arm of her chair. She let me take one of her hands, though she kept her face turned away. “I’ll find him.”
“You just said that.”
I shook my head. “I said I can’t control him. I didn’t say I wouldn’t talk to him.”
Her fingers tightened around mine. “Don’t go over there fighting him.”
“I’m not.”
“And don’t let him pull no gun on you.”
“He not pulling no gun on me. If he does that, I’m shooting his ass before he shoots me.”
That did not satisfy her, but nothing would until Marv stood in front of her clean, sober, and apologizing. “I need you to promise me,” she said.
“I’ll talk to him.”
“No, promise me you’ll do something.”
“What you want me to promise? That I’ll fix him?” I shook my head. “I can’t promise you that.” I told her. The hurt on her face made me regret how bluntly I said it, but lying to her would have been crueler. I bent and kissed her forehead. “I’ll handle what I can.”
She caught my wrist before I could step away. “And call me.”
“I will.”
I walked into the kitchen before leaving, checked that the stove was off because she was distracted, and poured out the cold tea she had forgotten. When I set a fresh cup in front of her, she complained that I made it too light, took a sip, and kept drinking it anyway.
At the door, she called my name again and I turned. “Bring him back to me.”
I gave her the only answer I could. “I’m going to try.”
I unlocked the truck and had one foot on the running board when my phone vibrated with Navy’s name. The sight of her name changed my mood. I answered before the second ring. “What’s up?”
For a second, all I heard was movement behind her and voices calling to one another, and a monitor beeping steadily somewhere in the distance. “Hey are you busy?” she asked.