Triptych

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Cousin Woody. The cool one, the popular one. He had a weight machine in the garage and he spent most of his days working out and smoking dope. His chest was ripped, six-pack abs separated by a trail of hair leading down to his privates. Girls climbed all over him like kudzu up a pine. He drove a silver Mustang hatchback, brand-new. He got the kids at the local school to sell some of his stash for him so he always had money burning a hole in his pocket. His widowed mother was on the fast-track at her law firm, always working late nights, always leaving her son alone. Mr. “Come Upstairs,” Mr. “You ”Wanna Toke?“ Mr. ”Just Snort It Up Your Nose.“ Cool Cousin Woody.

John had been following Woody for almost two months now, parking the Fairlane at the Inman Park MARTA station because gas was too expensive to use the car for anything but business. That’s how John thought about it: business. He was the CEO of Keep John Out of Prison. The fucking chief financial officer, the vice president, the secretary, all rolled up into one.

From the beginning, Woody had made it easy for John to keep tabs on him. He had always been a creature of habit, and his adult life had proven no different. John could set his watch by the guy. He went to work every day, came straight home after, kissed the wife if she was home, tucked in the kid, then planted himself in front of the television for the rest of the evening. He did this every evening the first week, and John was beginning to think he was wasting his time when Sunday rolled around. The kid wasn’t there-the wife hadn’t brought him back from church and John assumed he had been left with a family member. The wife left around six, dressed for work, leaving her husband all alone in the house.

“Woody waited about thirty minutes after she was gone, then he got into his car and drove away. Weeks passed with him doing this, then a month, then another. Every Sunday night, Woody was in that car like clockwork.

With time, John had gotten good at keeping his distance, making sure Woody couldn’t see the Fairlane trolling along behind his car. Not that Woody seemed to be looking anywhere except toward the row of women who lined the streets of downtown Atlanta. He’d stop, wave one over, then drive her into an alley or park on an empty street. John would see the woman’s head go down for a few minutes, then it’d bob back up for good and she’d get out and Woody would move on down the road, have himself back in front of the TV an hour later.

Then one night, he’d changed the pattern. He took a left out of his street instead of a right, heading east up Highway 78. John had been forced to hang back farther than usual because there weren’t many cars on the road. He’d jerked the steering wheel hard at the last moment to take an exit, following Woody up a winding road for about twenty minutes, passing a sign that read, Welcome to Snellville… Where Everybody’s Somebody!

John had parked the car on a residential street, going on foot because that’s what Woody was doing. It was cold out, the first week of December, but John was sweating bad because he was smack in the middle of a neighborhood, sleeping kids packed into every house around him. He got so caught up in his fear that he lost sight of his target. He scanned the empty streets, walking down dead-ends, getting so turned around that he couldn’t even find the Fairlane.

John was worrying about his own safety now. He hid in the shadows, tensed at every noise, certain some cop would pull up, run his record and wonder what brought a pedophile to this neck of the woods.

Suddenly, in the distance, he saw a man walking with a little girl beside him. Both of them got into Woody’s car and drove off. John found the Fairlane five minutes later, cursing himself the whole way back to Atlanta. The next two weeks, he scanned the papers, looking for news of something bad happening in Snellville-an abducted child, a murder. There was nothing, but he knew it was just a matter of time.

The truth was simple: Woody was using John’s identity for a reason. He was trying to cover his tracks. John had spent enough time surrounded by criminals to know when he was seeing one in action. It was just a matter of time before whatever Woody was up to landed squarely back on John’s shoulders.

John decided then and there that he would kill himself, or find someone else to do it for him, before he would go back into prison. He had already lost twenty years of his life rotting away among pedophiles and monsters. He would not go back to that. He would not put Joyce through that pain and humiliation again. He had been strong on the inside, his will hardened steel, but the outside had made him soft and he knew that he could not take the loss of what little life he had carved for himself. He would put a bullet in his own brain before he did that.

John saw his sister around this time. Just before Christmas, Joyce had called him at the boardinghouse and he had been so surprised to hear her voice that he thought maybe someone was playing a joke on him. Only, who would play a joke? He didn’t know anybody, didn’t have any friends on the outside.

They met for coffee at a fancy cafe off of Monroe Drive. John had worn a new shirt and his only good pants, the chinos Joyce had sent to him so he would have something to wear when he left Coastal. The custom was to just give the inmate back the clothes he’d come in with, but John was several sizes larger than that scrawny kid who’d ridden the prison transport down to Savannah.

The night before, he had taken off work early so he could go to the gift shop down the street. John had spent an hour picking out a Christmas card for Joyce, going back and forth between the cheap ones and the nice ones. The weather had made business at the Gorilla sporadic. Art was laying off guys left and right. John had saved as much money as he could during the flush times, but he had finally had to get a winter coat. Even though he told himself he was never going to wear used clothes again, John had no choice but to go to the Goodwill Store. The only coat he could find that halfway fit him was torn at the collar and had a funky smell to it that he couldn’t wash out at the Laundromat. It was warm, though, and that was all that mattered.

Joyce was five minutes late to the cafe, and John was sweating it out over the fact that he’d had to pay three dollars for a cup of coffee just to be able to sit at one of the tables when she rushed in. She looked harried, her sunglasses pushed onto the top of her head, her long brown hair down around her shoulders.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, pulling out a chair and sitting across from him. She left about six inches between her and the table, even more space between her and John.

“You want some coffee?” He started to stand to get it for her but she stopped him with a terse shake of her head.

“I’ve got to meet some friends in ten minutes.” She hadn’t even taken off her coat. “I don’t know why I called you.”

“I’m glad you did.”

She looked out the windows. There was a movie theater across the way and she was watching the people who were standing in line.

John pulled the Christmas card out of his pocket, glad he had gone for the more expensive one. Three sixty-eight, but it had glitter on the outside and the inside was folded so that when you opened it, a snowflake popped up. Joyce had loved pop-up books when they were little. He could remember her giggling over one that had farm animals jumping off the pages.

He held out the card. “I got you this.”

She didn’t take it, so he set it on the table, slid it toward her. He had spent most of last night testing out his thoughts on notebook paper, not wanting to give her a card with words scratched out or worse, to write something stupid that would ruin the card and make him have to buy a new one. In the end, he had simply signed it, “love, John,” knowing there was nothing else he could say.

He asked, “What have you been up to?”

She focused back on him as if she had forgotten he was there. “Work.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Me, too.” He tried to make a joke of it. “Not like what you do, but somebody has to clean those cars.”

She obviously didn’t think he was funny.

He stared at his cup, rolling it in his hands. Joyce was the one who had called him, inviting him to this place where he couldn’t even afford a sandwich off the menu, yet he felt like the bad guy.

Maybe he was the bad guy.

He asked her, “Do you remember Woody?”

“Who?”

“Cousin Woody, Lydia’s son.”

She shrugged, but said, “Yeah.”

“Do you know what he’s up to?”

“Last I heard, he joined the army or something.” Her eyes flashed. “You’re not going to try to get in touch with him again?”

“”No.“

She leaned forward, urgent. “You shouldn’t, John. He was bad news then and I’m sure he hasn’t changed now.”

“I won’t,” he said.

“You’ll end up back in jail.”

Would she care? he wondered. Would it be better for her if he was back at Coastal instead of living right under her nose? Joyce was the only living person in the entire world who remembered John the way he used to be. She was like a precious box where all his childhood memories were stored, only she had thrown away the key the minute the police had dragged him out the front door.

Joyce sat back in her chair. She looked at her watch. “I really should go.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Your friends are waiting.”

She met his eyes for the first time since she’d walked in. She saw he knew she was lying.

Her tongue darted out and she licked her lips. “I went to see Mom last weekend.”

John blinked back sudden tears. In his mind, he saw the cemetery, pictured Joyce standing at his mother’s grave. The buses didn’t go out there and a cab would cost sixty dollars. John didn’t even know what his mother’s headstone looked like, what inscription Joyce had decided on.

“That’s why I called you,” she told John. “She would’ve wanted me to see you.” She shrugged. “Christmas.”

He bit his lip, knowing if he opened his mouth he would start crying.

“She always believed in you,” Joyce said. “She never once thought you were guilty.”

His chest ached from the effort of reining in his emotions.

“You ruined everything,” Joyce told him, almost incredulous. “You ruined our lives, but she wouldn’t give up on you.”

People were looking, but John didn’t care. He had apologized to her for years-in letters, in person. Sorry didn’t mean anything to Joyce.

“I can’t blame you for hating me,” he told her, wiping a tear with the back of his hand. “You have every right.”

“I wish I could hate you,” she whispered. “I wish it was that easy.”

“I would hate you if you had done…”

“Done what?” She was leaning over the table again, an edge of desperation in her voice. “Done what, John? I read what you said to the parole board. I know what you told them. Tell me.” She slapped her hand on the table. “Tell me what happened.”

He pulled a napkin from the container on the table and blew his nose.

She wouldn’t let up. “Every time you were up in front of the board, every time you spoke to them, you told them you weren’t guilty, that you wouldn’t say that you had done it just so you could get out.”

He took another napkin so he’d have something to do with his hands.

“What changed, John? Was it Mom? You didn’t want to disappoint her? Is that what it is, John? Now that Mom’s gone, you could finally tell the truth?”

“She wasn’t gone when I said it.”

“She was wasting away,” Joyce hissed. “She was in that hospital bed wasting away and all she could think about was you. ”Look after Johnny,“ she kept saying. ”Don’t let him be alone in there. We’re all he has.“‘

John heard himself sob, a bark like a seal that echoed in the restaurant.

“Tell me, John. Just tell me the truth.” Her voice was quiet. Like their father, she didn’t like to show her feelings. The more upset she got, the lower her tone tended to be. Joyce-She put her hand on his. She had never touched him before, and he could feel her desperation flowing through her fingertips and needling under his skin. “I don’t care anymore,” she said, more like a plea. “I don’t care if you did it, Johnny. I really don’t. I just want to know for myself, for my own sanity. Please-tell me the truth.”

Her hands were beautiful, so delicate, with such long fingers. Just like Emily’s.

“John, please.”

“I love you, Joyce.” He reached into his back pocket and took out a folded piece of paper. “Something is going to happen,” he said. “Something bad that I don’t think I can stop.”

She took her hand away, moved back in her chair. “What are you talking about, John? What have you gotten mixed up in?”

“Take this,” he said, putting the credit report on top of the Christmas card. “Just take this and know that whatever happens, I love you.”

John hadn’t brought the Fairlane with him, but he didn’t want Joyce to see him waiting at the bus stop outside the entrance to the mall so he jogged up the street toward Virginia-Highland, catching MARTA there. He didn’t want to go home, couldn’t face his roach-infested hovel or his fellow rapists in the hallway, so he went to the Inman Park station and picked up the Fairlane.

He didn’t normally follow Woody until the evenings on the weekend. John’s first two weeks of reconnaissance had proven the guy pretty much stayed inside unless his wife made him take out the trash. John had been thinking, though, that maybe Woody was more clever than he seemed. Maybe he had another car somewhere. It wasn’t much of a stretch, considering the post office box and the credit cards. Maybe John Shelley had purchased a car during the last six years.

This close to Christmas, Woody’s neighborhood was decked out with colorful lights and decorations. Luminaries made of old milk jugs lined the street. Just the week before, John had watched an old lady walking her dog go around and light each one.

It was a nice neighborhood.

John tucked his car between an SUV and a station wagon parked in the church lot, glancing at the times on the sign outside to check when the services were over. Woody’s wife always took the kid to church on Sundays, then spent most of the time with a woman who was probably her mother.

From the church, John walked down a side street that ran parallel to Woody’s house, whistling as if he was just a guy taking a walk. He plotted the distance in his head, cutting across a field until he could see what had to be the back of Woody’s house. There weren’t many trees for cover and John felt exposed. Anybody could come out their back door and see him. He was about to turn around when that very thing happened. A woman came out, standing in the open doorway. John froze because he was right in her line of sight, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was turned toward Woody’s house next door, her hand held up in a salute as she shielded her eyes from the sun.

John dropped flat to his stomach. The girl’s backyard was overgrown with weeds, but anybody who was looking could have seen him lying there. Thankfully, her eyes were following something more interesting. John saw Woody walk across his yard, hopping over a chain-link fence that had been taken down by a tree. He went right to the girl, not even tossing a look in John’s direction, picked her up and started kissing her.

John watched as she wrapped her skinny legs around him, their lips locked together as Woody carried her into the house and slammed the door closed.