“You know what’s funny?” Angie asked in a voice that suggested something wasn’t.
“I do not,” I assured her.
“Most private investigators don’t get kidnapped and assaulted.”
“The practice is rumored to be trending upward, however.”
She frowned and I could feel both of us trapped inside ourselves, not sure what to do with today’s violence. There was a time we would have been experts at it. She would have tossed me an ice pack on her way to the gym, expected me to be raring to get back to work by the time she got back. Those days were long gone, though, and today’s return to easy bloodshed drove us into our protective shells. Her shell is made of quiet fury and wary disconnection. Mine is made of humor and sarcasm. Together we resemble a comedian failing an anger-management class.
“It looks awful,” she said with a tenderness that surprised me.
“It only feels four or five times as bad as it looks. Really. I’m fine.”
“That’s the Percocet.”
“And the beer.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to mix the two.”
“I refuse to bow to conventional wisdom. I’m a decider. And I’ve decided I want to feel no pain.”
“How’s that working out?”
I toasted her with my beer. “Mission accomplished.”
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, sweetie?”
“I like trees.”
“I like trees, too, honey.”
“They’re tall.”
“They sure are.”
“Do you like all trees?”
“Every one.”
“Even short ones?”
“Sure, honey.”
“But why?” My daughter held her hands out, palms-up, a sign that she found this line of questioning of global importance and—lucky us—quite possibly endless.
Angie shot me a look that said: Welcome to my day.
For the last three years, I’d spent the days at work, or, as opportunities dwindled, trying to hustle up work. Three nights a week, I watched Gabby while Angie took classes. Christmas break was approaching, however, and Angie would take finals next week. After the New Year, she’d begin an internship with Blue Sky Learning Center, a nonprofit specializing in educating teens with Down syndrome. When that was finished, in May, she’d receive her master’s in applied sociology. But until then, we were a one-income family. More than one friend had suggested we move to the suburbs—homes were cheaper, schools were safer, property taxes and car insurance premiums were lower.
Angie and I grew up together in the city, though. We took to picket fences and split-level ranches like we took to shag carpeting and Ultimate Fighting. Which is to say, not so much. I once owned a nice car, but I’d sold it to start a college fund for Gabby, and now my beater Jeep sat in front of my house, without moving, for weeks at a time. I prefer subways—you pop down the hole on one side of the city, pop back up on the other side, and you never have to hit your horn, not once. I don’t like mowing lawns or trimming hedges or raking the mowed lawns or the hedge trimmings. I don’t like going to malls or eating in chain restaurants. In fact, the appeal of the suburban ideal—both in a general and a particular sense—escapes me.
I like the sound of jackhammers, the bleat of sirens in the night, twenty-four-hour diners, graffiti, coffee served in cardboard cups, steam exhaled through manhole covers, cobblestone, tabloid newspapers, the Citgo sign, someone yelling “Tax-i” on a cold night, corner boys, sidewalk art, Irish pubs, and guys named Sal.
Not much of which I can find in the suburbs, at least not to the degree I’ve grown accustomed to. And Angie is, if anything, worse.
So we decided to raise our child in the city. We bought a small house on a decent street. It has a tiny yard and it’s a short walk to a playground (short walk to a pretty hairy housing project, too, but that’s another matter). We know most of our neighbors and Gabriella can already name five subway stops on the Red Line, in order, a feat which fills her old man with bottomless pride.
“She asleep?” Angie looked up from her textbook as I came into the living room. She’d changed into sweats and one of my T-shirts, a white one from The Hold Steady’s Stay Positive tour. It swam on her, and I worried she wasn’t eating enough.
“Our gabby Gabby took a breath during a discourse on trees—”
“Arghh.” Angie threw her head back against the couch cushion. “What’s with the trees?”
“—and promptly drifted off to sleep.” I dropped onto the couch beside her, took her hand in mine, gave it a kiss.
“Besides getting beat up,” she said, “did anything else happen today?”
“You mean with Duhamel-Standiford.”
“With them, yes.”
I took a deep breath. “I didn’t get a permanent job, no.”
“Shit!” She shouted it so loudly that I had to hold up a hand and she glanced in the direction of Gabby’s room and cringed.
“They said I shouldn’t have called Brandon Trescott names. They suggested I am uncouth and in need of an adjustment in my manners before I partake of their benefits program.”
“Shit,” she said, softer this time and with more despair than shock. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
We sat there for a bit. There was nothing much to say. We were getting numb to it, the fear, the weight of worry.
“I’ll leave school.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Yeah, I will. I can go back in—”
“You’re this close,” I said. “Finals next week, one internship, and then you’re bringing home the bacon by summer, at which point—”
“If I can even find a job.”
“—at which point, I can afford to freelance. You’re not packing it in this close to the finish line. You’re top of your class. You’ll find a job no problem.” I gave her a smile of confidence I didn’t feel. “We’ll make it work.”
She leaned back a bit to study my face again.
“Okay,” I said to change the subject, “lay into me.”
“About what?” All mock-innocence.
“We made a pact when we married that we were done with this shit.”
“We did.”
“No more violence, no more—”
“Patrick.” She took my hands in hers. “Just tell me what happened.”