Blonde Faith

39

I rented a room at a motel called Ariba on Centinela. I didn’t know if the military men had enough grunts left to stake out my house, but safe was definitely better than sorry. Not that sorry had left me unscathed. I lamented almost everything, even those things that I hadn’t and couldn’t have done.

I lay down on the bed with the pillowcase containing thirty thousand dollars at my side. I never once thought of keeping the money. It wasn’t mine, and I would have paid for that theft. One day I’d meet Leafa after she’d lived in the street for ten years. I’d see the pain in her eyes, and whatever money I’d stolen would be gone.

After thirty minutes of trying to sleep, I reached into the bag and pulled out Pericles’ letter. The envelope was made from cheap gray paper. It had been sealed and also taped. I used my razor-sharp pocketknife to sever the seam. The Dear Meredith letter was written on white paper of a higher quality than the envelope.

Dear Meredith:

I’m so sorry honey to tell you like this but I just couldn’t face you now. I’m going away. I can’t take it any more. I sit up in the house every night listening to them kids making sounds like wild animals and you in the bed next to me like Sonny Liston done knocked you dead.

It was the last straw when Hanley threw up on my newspaper and then Lola cried because she couldn’t read the funnies. Ten minutes later they were both laughing and I wanted to kill them. Then you says that I needed to get a new job to pay for all that. It came into my head right then like God talking to Moses. I needed something new all right. And I’m doing that.

Don’t get me wrong baby — this hurts. I came by the house just two days ago. I watched you guys from the alley across the street. I saw Leafa out there in a nice new green raincoat. She helping Lana learn how to ride a two-wheeler, and you were sitting there watching them. I almost went to you but then the whole brood came out of that house like pestilence and I ran away.

I am giving you this money. This $30,000.00. You can pay rent and feed the kids for a few years with that, maybe more. I will send more money when I can get it.

I am sorry baby.

Pericles Tarr

I read the letter three times, wondering what Meredith would think when she read it. It was the truth, but how could she know that? Pericles’ leaving her had nothing to do with Pretty Smart. He just couldn’t take it anymore. It was a house filled with noise and ugliness that only a mother could love. It’s a wonder that she didn’t understand what her man was going through. But then I thought, what would understanding have done for her? He would still have left. She would still have been set adrift with a dozen kids in a paper boat.

But none of that was my concern. I’d bring Meredith her money, and she would make it into their life preserver.

We all just make up life as we go along. At some point Pericles must have loved Meredith. He wanted a big family, or at least he wanted what she wanted and believed that she understood the consequences. And when the life he’d made turned out not to be the life he was making, Perry made up Pretty, robbed a payroll in Washington state, and bought two tickets for New York.

It was all make-believe, their lives and mine.

I PULLED UP in front of the Tarr home a little after four-thirty. The front door was open, and there were children ripping and running in and out of the house. There were more than twenty kids crying out loud and going crazy. The Tarr children had friends whose parents would never let them run wild like that.

I stepped over two wrestling eight-year-old boys to get past the threshold. In the kitchen I found Leafa making peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for smaller kids who needed fuel for their disasters.

When the perfect child saw me, she smiled. She had her father’s nose.

“She’s in the back room, Mr. Rawlins,” Leafa shouted, pointing with the jelly knife.

I went past the line of preschoolers to a closed door that I opened without knocking.

Meredith was there in a straight-back chair, sitting at an odd, distinctly unfeminine angle and staring at the wall.

“Mrs. Tarr.”

No response.

“Mrs. Tarr,” I said again, moving closer to her corner.

She turned her frozen gaze to me and frowned slightly.

“Have you fount his body?” she asked.

I handed her the pillowcase and the page Pericles had penned. She put the bag on her lap and unfolded the note.

Either she was a slow reader or Meredith Tarr read Perry’s last words to her many times over. I stood there because there was no other chair in that malleable room. After a long time, Meredith took up the pillowcase and looked inside. After that she turned her attention to me.

“What does this mean?”

“I found Perry in a house in Compton,” I said. “He was leaving for New York and said that he was going to send you this money. I told him you were just about to get evicted and offered to deliver it.”

“Did you read his letter?” she asked, ignoring my subtle lies.

“No.”

“It says he don’t love me no mo’.”

I had no reply.

“Was he with a woman, Mr. Rawlins?”

“Not that I could see. There was a woman in the house, but she was very definitely with another man.”

“What am I supposed to do now?”

I had been thinking about that question on the ride over.

“First I need to know something,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Do you believe that Perry wrote this note?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you think that I wrote it and that I brought you this money to hush you up?”

“Because Leafa just got that raincoat from the Anders across the street four days ago, but that ain’t all.”

“What else?”

“Hanley didn’t vomit on that newspaper, Henry did.” She smiled. “Perry was always confusin’ Hanley with Henry. He had to be alive to write this note. And it sounds just like him and this is his writin’.

“Why didn’t you just steal this money, Mr. Rawlins?”

“Because of Leafa,” I said.

“Leafa?”

“She’s a special child, Mrs. Tarr. She deserves better than she has.”

“She does.” Tears rolled down Meredith Tarr’s face, but she didn’t sob or moan.

“Mrs. Tarr.”

“Yes, Mr. Rawlins?”

“I’m going to give you some advice. So please listen.”

Meredith Tarr’s destroyed eyes became clear and focused.

“Do you have a good friend or a sister somewhere?”

“Melinda. She my half sister from Arkansas.”

“Call her. Have her come and live with you to help with these kids. If not her then someone else. Take the money and get a safe-deposit box. Don’t let anybody know you got this money, not even your half sister. I’m gonna have a friend call you, a woman named Jewelle. She will help you buy a house for ten thousand dollars or less. Buy the house and use the money you got left to pay for your sister and these kids. Rest up for a while and then get you a job. Perry told me that he’ll get in touch and send you more money when you need it.

“Are you listening to me?”

She nodded in a sentient manner.

“Where’d he get this money, Mr. Rawlins?”

“I don’t know and I didn’t ask.”

Meredith nodded again, this time sternly.

We went over my advice four or five times. I drilled it into her and I believe that she listened. When I was sure that she at least understood the way to go about taking care of all that cash, I headed for the door. I was half the way out of the back room when Meredith shouted, “Bastard!”

I turned to see if she was talking to me, but Meredith was staring at the wall again. Her healing had finally begun.