19. Mike
MIKE
My phone buzzes on her nightstand.
She's out cold. I fix the blanket on her.
In the hallway, I stop.
There are photos along the wall.
A wedding portrait — Janet young and lit up, leaning into a man I recognize from the one photo she keeps on the nightstand. Joe. Tall. Good-looking. The face that looks like it never expected anything bad to happen to it.
Next to it, Janet, in a black robe and cap, holding her Cornell diploma. Grinning like she could take the whole world apart and put it back together before lunch.
I look at it a long time.
I leave.
In the car, I text my mother back. On my way.
I pick my mother up outside the house in Queens.
She's already at the curb in her good coat, a grocery bag over one arm.
"You're late," she says, getting in.
"Sorry, I forgot to set the alarm."
"What, did you sleep in the car?"
"I didn't make it home."
"Go ahead, I'd like to get there while I'm still breathing."
I pull away from the curb.
Queens is barely awake. Delivery trucks. Store gates. Men standing outside bodegas with coffee in paper cups. The morning has no color yet.
She doesn't ask about last night.
I don't have to lie.
We drive north through the Bronx, past Yonkers, up the Thruway toward Coxsackie. The city thins out behind us. Buildings turn to trees. Traffic opens. The road gets quiet.
She falls asleep against the window.
Even when I stop for gas, she doesn't wake up.
An hour and forty minutes later, we're sitting across from Ryan.
He looks better than last time. Eyes sharper. He sits up straight. A week.
"You look good," she says.
"I feel good." His eyes move to me. "You got it done."
I smile. My mother squeezes my arm. She is smiling in a way I haven't seen in years. Like something has been returned to her. Maybe it has.
"What are you going to do?" she asks.
"I'm going to play for the Mets."
"Again with the Mets. You never had a shot at the Mets."
"Your brother had a real shot at the Mets.
" Ryan smiles at that. A real smile. She keeps going, softer now, telling him how he used to sleep with a glove under his pillow because he was sure the Mets would call someday.
"You had a good arm," she says. "Wild as hell, but good.
" Ryan looks down at the table, still smiling.
My mother reaches across and takes his hand.
He lets her. He's not the type, but he lets her.
"Seriously now, you're staying with me at the house until you figure things out."
"I was thinking I'd stay with Mike."
"Not a good idea," I say.
"Why's that?" Ryan says.
"Because it's still to our benefit if no one knows we're brothers."
"What's going on with her?" Ryan asks.
"She's feeling the pressure," I say.
"She say anything? About the video?"
"No."
"Nothing? She didn't say she knew about it?"
"She never mentioned it. I broke it off with her."
"Shit, are you serious?" she says.
"That was the plan. Get the video, dump her."
"I know, but now I'm seeing the benefit of you continuing with her."
"Ma's right. As long as she doesn't know she can keep telling you shit."
"Well, I broke it off."
"Well, buy her some flowers or some shit. I want to know what she's thinking, her next move."
He studies me. I hold his eyes.
"I mean, from what I'm getting," I say. "Maybe someone else buried it. Maybe it was an honest mistake."
The words come out before I decide to say them. I don't know why I say them. I don't even believe them.
Ryan sits back. His jaw tightens.
"Honest mistake." He says it flatly. Like he's tasting it and spitting it out. "She was the prosecutor, Mike. It was her case. You don't accidentally bury a video showing your officers contaminating the scene."
"I'm saying we don't know for certain?—"
"I know." His voice drops. "I know what she did. Five years, Mike. I sat in here for five years because she decided I was guilty and the rules didn't apply to her. That's not a mistake. That's someone who thought she was above it."
She nods along, says nothing.
I look at the table.
"Get back in her bed. She will need someone to talk to, someone to dump all this shit on when she cracks. You be there when she does."
I nod.
"That's not going to be easy. I was pretty harsh when I broke it off with her."
"You're good with the girls, Mikey. You always have been. Get her back on board."
"You're a lover, not a fighter. Remember Betsy from around the corner I was with? She told me she wanted to fuck you more than me."
"Alright, do I need to hear this?" She says. “And she was a little tramp.”
My mother is wired on the ride back. She watches the highway. "He's going to need work," she says. "Something real. Not corner work."
"I know."
"You could bring him in. At the club."
"I've thought about it. But this is going to take a while. I can't keep Janet close and him at the club."
"True," she says. "Your brother needs to do something — you know him. If he's sitting around the house, he's going right back to the streets."
"I can give him money."
"That's not what he needs. He needs action. He's always loved the action."
"Maybe I can show him how to trade stocks and stuff. It's like gambling — he likes that."
She folds her hands in her lap. "Give him something when he gets out. Give him a start."
"But Ma, I can't have him in the club. It will get messy. That business is one hundred percent legitimate."
"You owe him."
I keep my eyes on the road. "I just got him out of prison. Isn't that enough?"
The slap is fast. Open hand, the side of my face, hard enough to mean it.
"Don't you ever say that to me again."
I say nothing.
"It is not about debt." Her voice is quiet now, but tight. "It is not about what you owe him. He is your brother. That's not a transaction. That's family."
The road runs out ahead of us for miles.
I don't answer her.
But I think about Janet's hallway. Joe's face in that photograph. The way she looked graduating from Cornell, like she could remake the world.
I think about how she broke down last night. How she let me hold her in Joe's bed like I was something safe.
I don't say any of that.
I pull up to the house.
"You want to come in. I'll make you something to eat."
"No, I want to go home, shower, and everything."
She kisses me on the cheek. The same one she slapped me. "I love you."
"I love you too, Ma."
"This is going to work out. I'll have both my boys together. Doing good."
My phone flashes. Janet.
"Well, well, well," she says. "I think you should answer that."