Right as Rain

10

Derek Strange's mother, Alethea Strange, lived in the District Convalescent Home in Ward 3, the predominantly white and wealthy section of Northwest D.C. The home, a combination hospice and nursing facility, had been operating in the city since the nineteenth century.

Strange didn't like nursing homes, for the same simple reason he didn't care for hospitals or funeral parlors. After his mother had her stroke back in '96, he had brought her to his house and hired a round-the-clock nurse, but a clot sent her back to the hospital, where the surgeons took her right leg. She had gotten around before with a walker, but now she was permanently wheelchair-bound, paralyzed on her right side, and she had previously lost most of her speech and the ability to read and write. Alethea Strange managed to tell her only living child that she wanted to go somewhere else to live out her days, with people who were sick like her. He suspected she was only asking to go away so as not to be a burden on him. Still, he granted her wish and put her in the District Convalescent Home's long-term care facility, as they accepted patients on Medicaid and there was nothing else that he could see to do.

In the lobby of the home that night, they were having some sort of event, young folks with green shirts, a church group most likely, trying to lead the elderly residents in song. There was a dining facility and a library with an aquarium in it down here, too. Alethea Strange never attended these events or sat in these rooms, and she only came down to the first level when Derek brought her down. In the spring and early summer, she would allow her son to wheel her out to the nicely landscaped courtyard, where a black squirrel, a frequent visitor to the complex, drank water while standing on the lip of the fountain. She'd sit in a block of sun, and he'd sit on a stone bench beside her, rubbing her back and sometimes holding her hand. The sight of the squirrel seemed to bring something to her day.

Strange went to the edge of the hospice at the end of a long hall and took the elevator up to the third floor. He walked through another hall painted drab beige, and as he approached the long-term wing where his mother resided he smelled the mixture of bland food, sickness, and incontinence that he had come to dread.

His mother was in her wheelchair, seated at one of three round tables in a television room where the residents could also take their meals. Next to her was another stroke victim, an Armenian man whose name Strange could never remember, and next to him was a skeletal woman in a kind of reclining wheelchair who never spoke or smiled, just stared up at the ceiling with red-rimmed, hollowed-out eyes. At the table beside them a woman fed her bib-wearing husband, and next to them a man sat sleeping before an untouched tray of food, his chin down on his chest. No one seemed to be watching the basketball contest playing on the television set, or listening to the announcer who was loudly calling the game. Strange patted the Armenian's shoulder, pulled a chair from the other side of the room, and drew it to his mother's side.

'Momma,' said Strange, kissing her on the cheek and taking her hand, light and fragile as paper.

She smiled crookedly at him and slowly blinked her eyes. There was a bead of applesauce hanging on the edge of her lip, and he wiped it clean with the napkin that had fallen into her lap.

'You want a little of this tea right here?'

She pointed with a shaking hand to two sugar packets. Strange ripped the packets open and poured sugar into the plastic cup that held the tea. He stirred it and put the cup in her hand.

'Hot,' she said, the t soft as a whisper.

'Yes, ma'am. You want some more of that meat?'

He called it 'that meat' because he wasn't exactly sure if it was fowl or beef, smothered as it was in a grayish, congealed gravy.

His mother shook her head.

Strange noticed that the table beside them wobbled whenever the wife leaned on it to give her husband another forkful of food. He got up and went to a small utility room, where he knew they kept paper towels, and he folded some towels in a square and wedged the square under the foot of the table that was not touching the floor. The wife thanked Strange.

'I fixed the table,' said Strange to a big attendant as he passed her on the way back to his mother. She nodded and returned to her conversation with another employee.

He knew this attendant – he knew them all, immigrants of color, by sight. This one was on the mean side, though she was always polite in his presence. His mother had told him that this one raised her voice to her and teased her in an unkind way when she had his mother alone. Most of the staff members were competent and many were kind, but there were two or three attendants here who mistreated his mother, he knew. One of them had even stolen a present he had given her, a small bottle of perfume, off the nightstand in her room.

He knew who these attendants were and he hated them for it, but what could he do? He had made the decision long ago not to report them. He couldn't be here all that often, and there was no telling what a vindictive attendant would do in his absence. What he tried to do was, he let them know he was onto them with his eyes. And he prayed to God that the looks he gave them would give them pause the next time they had the notion to disrespect his mother in this most cowardly of ways.

'Momma,' said Strange, 'I had a little excitement on the job today.' He told her the story of Sherman Coles and his brother, and of the young ex-police officer who had come along. He made it sound funny and unthreatening because he knew his mother worried about him and what he did for a living. Or maybe she was done worrying, thought Strange. Maybe she didn't think of him out there, could no longer picture him, or her city and its inhabitants, at all.

When he was done his mother smiled in that crooked way she had of smiling now, her lips pulled over toothless gums. Strange smiled back, not looking at the splotchy flesh or the stick arms or the atrophied legs or the flattened breasts that ended near her waist, but looking at her eyes. Because the eyes had not changed. They were deep brown and loving and beautiful, as they had always been, as they had been when he was a child, when Alethea Strange had been young and vibrant and strong.

'Room,' said his mother.

'Okay, Momma.'

He wheeled her back to her room, which overlooked the parking lot of a post office. He found her comb in the nightstand and drew it through her sparse white hair. She was nearly bald, and he could see raised moles and other age marks on her scalp.

'You look nice,' he said, when he was done.

'Son.' Those eyes of hers looked up at him, and she chuckled, her sharp shoulders moving up and down in amusement.

Alethea Strange pointed to her bedroom window. Strange went to the window and looked out to its ledge. His mother loved birds; she'd always loved to watch them build their nests.

'Ain't no birds out there building nests yet, Momma,' said Strange. 'You're gonna have to wait for the spring.'

Walking from her room, Strange stopped beside the big attendant and gave her a carnivorous smile that felt like a grimace.

'You take good care of my mother now, hear?'

Strange went toward the elevators, unclenching his jaw and breathing out slow. He began to think, as he tended to do when he left this place, of who he might call tonight. Being here, it always made him want a woman. Old age, sickness, loss, and pain… all of the suffering that was inevitable, you could deny its existence, for a little while anyway, when you were making love. Yeah, when you were lying with a woman, coming deep inside that sucking warmth, you could even deny death.

'You want a little more?'

'Sure.'

Terry Quinn reached across the table and poured wine into Juana Burkett's glass. Juana sipped at the Spanish red and sat back in her chair.

'It's really good.'

'I got it at Morris Miller's. The label on the bottle said it was bold, earthy, and satisfying.'

'Good thing you protected it on your little journey.'

'I was cradling it like a baby on the Metro on the way over here.'

'You really ought to get a car, Tuh-ree.'

'Didn't need one, up until recently. My job is close to my house, and I can take the subway downtown, I need to. But I was thinking, maybe I should get one now.'

'Why now?'

'Your house is kind of a far walk from the Catholic U station.'

'You're pretty sure of yourself.' Juana's eyes lit with amusement. 'You think I'm gonna ask you back?'

'I don't know. You keep making dinners like this one, I'm not going to wait for an invitation. I'll be whining like a dog to come in, scratching on the door out on your front porch. 'Cause you are one good cook.'

'I got lucky. This was the first time I made this dish. Baby artichokes and shrimp over linguini, it just looked so good when I saw the recipe in the Post.'

'Well, it was.' Quinn pushed his empty plate aside. 'Next time I take you to dinner. A little Italian place called Vicino's on Sligo Avenue, they got a red peppers and anchovies dish to make you cry.'

'That's on your street.'

'We can walk to it,' said Quinn. 'Stay in the neighborhood, until I get my car.'

Juana went to get coffee and brandy from the kitchen. Quinn got up and walked to the fireplace, where a pressed-paper log burned, colored flames rolling in a perfect arc. He picked up a CD case from a stack of them sitting on top of an amp: Luscious Jackson. Chick music, like all the rock and soul with female vocals she had been playing that night.

Juana's group house was nicer than most. Her roommates were grad students, a young married couple named James and Linda. He had met them when he'd arrived, and they were good-looking and nice and, as they had disappeared upstairs almost immediately, considerate as hell. Juana told him that James and Linda had the entire top floor of the house, and she had the finished basement for a quarter of the rent. The furnishings were secondhand but clean. Postcard-sized print reproductions of Edward Hopper, Degas, Cezanne, and Picasso paintings were framed and hung throughout the house.

Juana came out of the kitchen carrying a tray balanced on one hand. She wore a white button-down shirt out over black bells, with black waffle-heeled stacks on her feet. Black eyeliner framed her night-black eyes. She placed the tray on a small table and went around the room closing the miniblinds that hung from the windows.

'Wanna sit on the couch?'

'Okay,' said Quinn.

Quinn pulled the couch close to the fire. They drank black coffee and sipped Napoleon brandy.

'I downloaded all the stories they did on you last year off the Internet,' said Juana.

'Yeah?'

'Uh-huh. I read everything today.' Juana looked into the fire. 'The police force, it sounds like it's a mess.'

'It's pretty bad.'

'All those charges of police brutality. And the cops, they discharge their weapons more times in this town, per capita, than in any city in the country.'

'We got more violent criminals, per capita, than in any city in the country, too.'

'And the lack of training. That large group of recruits from back in the late eighties, the papers said that many of those people were totally, just mentally unqualified to be police officers.'

'A lot of them were unqualified. But not all of them. I was in that group. And I had a degree in criminology. They shouldn't have hired so many so quick, but they panicked. The Feds wanted some kind of response to the crack epidemic, and putting more officers on the street was the easiest solution. Never mind that the recruits were unqualified, or that the training was deficient. Never mind that our former, pipehead mayor had virtually dismantled the police force and systematically cut its funding during his distinguished administration.'

'You don't want to go there, do you?'

'Not really.'

'But what about the guns they issued the cops?' said Juana. 'They say those automatics-'

'The weapons were fine. You can't put a five-shot thirty-eight into the hands of a cop these days and tell him to go up against citizens carrying mini TEC-nines and modified full-autos. The Glock Seventeen is a good weapon. I was comfortable with that gun, and I was a good shot. I hadn't been on the range the official number of times, but I'd take that gun regularly out to the country… Listen, believe me, I was fully qualified to use it. The weapon was fine.'

'I'm sorry.'

'It's okay.'

'You're thinking, She doesn't know what she's talking about. Now she's going to tell me about cops and what's going on out in the street.'

'I wasn't thinking that at all,' lied Quinn. 'Anyway, we've got a new chief. Things are going to get better on the cop side of things, wait and see. It's the criminal side that I've got my doubts about.'

Juana brushed her hand over Quinn's. 'I didn't mean to upset you.'

'You didn't upset me.'

'I've never been with someone who did what you did for a living. I guess I'm trying to, I don't know, tell myself it's all right to hang out with a guy like you. I guess I'm just trying to figure you out.'

'That makes two of us,' said Quinn.

She moved closer to him, her shoulder touching his chest. They didn't say anything for a little while.

And then Quinn said, 'I met this man today. Old guy, private investigator. Black guy, used to be a cop, long time ago. I can say that he's black, right?'

'Oh, please. You're not one of those people claims he doesn't see color, are you?'

'Well, I'm not blind.'

'Thank you. I was at a dinner party once, a white girl was describing someone, and her friend said, "You mean that black guy?" and the white girl said, "I don't know; I don't remember what color he was." She was saying it for my benefit, see, trying to give me the message that she wasn't "like that". What she didn't realize was, black people laugh at people like her, and detest people like her, as much as they do flat-out racists. At least with a racist you know where you stand. I found out later, this girl, she lived in a place where you pay a nice premium just so you and your children don't have to see people of color walking down your street.'

'I hear you,' said Quinn. 'I used to live in the basement of this guy's house in this neighborhood, about a mile or two from where I live now.'

'You mean that nuclear-free bastion of liberal ideals?'

'That one.

'A lot of the people on the street I lived on, they had bumper stickers on their cars, "Teach Peace," "Celebrate Diversity," like that. I'd see their little girls walking around with black baby dolls in their toy strollers. But come birthday time, you didn't see any black children at those little white girls' parties. None of those children from "down at the apartments" nearby. These people really believed, you put a bumper sticker on your Volvo so your neighbors can see it and a black doll in your white kid's hands, that's all you have to do.'

'You're gonna work up a sweat, Tuh-ree.'

'Sorry.' Quinn rubbed at the edge of his lip. 'So anyway, I met this old black PI today.'

'Yeah? What'd he want?'

Quinn told her about his day. When he came to the Richard Coles part, he told her that he had kept Coles 'occupied' in the men's room while Strange, the old investigator, made his bust.

'You were smiling just then,' said Juana, 'you know it? When you were telling that story, I mean.'

'I was?'

'It made you feel right, didn't it, to be back in it.'

Quinn thought of the swing of the hammer, and the blood. 'I guess it did.'

'You like the action,' said Juana. 'So why'd you leave the force?'

Quinn nodded. 'You're right. I liked being a cop. And I wasn't wrong on that shooting. I'd give anything to have not shot Chris Wilson, to have not taken his life. But I was not wrong. They cleared me, Juana. Given all the publicity, though, and some of the internal racial stuff, the accusations, I mean, that came out of it… I felt like the only right thing to do at the time was to walk away.'

'Enough of that,' said Juana, watching the frown return to Quinn's face. 'I didn't mean to-'

'It's all right.'

Juana turned him and placed the flat of her hand on his chest. Quinn slipped his hand around her side.

'I guess this is it,' said Quinn.

Juana laughed, her eyes black and alive. 'You're shaking a little bit, you know it?'

'It's just because you're so fucking beautiful.'

'Thank you.' Juana brushed Quinn's hair back behind his ear.

'Well, what are you going to do now?'

'Keep working at the bookstore, I guess, until I figure things out.'

'I mean right now.'

'Kiss you on the mouth?'

'For an educated guy,' said Juana, 'you're a little slow to read the signs.'

'Thought it would be polite to ask,' said Quinn.

'Ask, hell,' said Juana, moving her mouth toward his. 'You nearly made me beg.'