Boy Toy (7 page)

At the end of the day, it's a series of individual challenges played out against a team defense. It's a personal test every time I step into the batter's box: Can I do better than the last time? And that's why I love it.

I drive by the Narc on my way home. It's weird to think that I can go there now, even when Rachel's working. For a long time now, it's been like the Narc's a church and I'm a vampire. But now I can go inside. Redeemed. Or something like that.

I pull in to try out my newfound freedom. I'm in the breakfast foods aisle when I see her.

She's at the far end of the aisle, but I would know her anywhere, at any distance. She's wearing a pair of jeans that are loose and baggy, along with a sleeveless blouse. Her hair is shorter and lighter than it used to be.

Eve.

And then I'm suddenly
aware
of my heart, with Eve standing ten, fifteen feet away and my heart starts to announce itself to me, to the world, pounding like

—Xbox controller vibrates in my hands—

dinosaur footsteps or

—you're good at this one, Josh—

the thunder of big cannons on a gigantic movie screen, in Dolby surround sound

—come here come here—

or ... God! Goddamn it!

I lean against the shelf. My heart won't stop pounding. I can't breathe. I can't focus on the world anymore. The past keeps intruding on the present.

—like this, not like ... yes—

And I notice that she has a kid.

A kid.

A pudgy little boy, maybe three years old,

—do you have any—

—no, not yet, maybe someday—

clings to her right hand, wearing a red and white striped shirt and khaki shorts. His cheeks are shiny, his dark brown hair fastidiously combed back except for a stubborn cowlick that points starward.

Oh my God. Is that...? Could that be my—

No. No. I swallow hard, try to force my breath back into my chest, try to force my heart to stop leaping around like a kitten trapped in a sack. It can't be my son. It can't be. That kid's too young. How the hell did she get pregnant in jail? Is she still married? I never knew. No one would tell me if her husband left her or not. Was he allowed to visit her in jail? Was she raped by a guard? God, why won't my heart stop doing that? Is this a heart attack? Is this what a heart attack feels like? Why can't I catch my breath? What's that ringing in my ears?

I want her not to turn, not to see me. Especially like this, weak. But at the same time, I need her to turn. I need to see her eyes. I need—

And then she turns.

And looks down the aisle.

And I realize, suddenly, that it's all wrong. The shape of her torso, the set of her shoulders. And her eyes—brown, not green.

Things that don't change even after five years in prison. It's not Eve. It's just some cute twenty-something mom with a brat tagging along.

My heart, my lungs, my ears, my brain—they all start to come online and cooperate again. I take a deep, shaky breath and push myself from the shelf to stand unaided again. She looks at me strangely, so I offer her what's intended to be a reassuring smile, but I think it comes out creepy instead because she suddenly hauls her kid up onto her hip like a sack of laundry and says, "Come on, sweetie," and ducks around the corner to the next aisle.

The Narc is dangerous ground, still. Rachel's forgiveness notwithstanding.

I thought it was over, but it's not. She's out now. She could be here.

And then it hits me: She could be
anywhere.

The realization almost drives me to my knees. I feel like gagging right here in the store, right here in the breakfast food aisle, next to the Count Chocula and the Honey Grahams. She could be

—over here—

—move there—

anywhere at all. And I have no way of knowing. I don't know where she is. I don't know how to find her.

—here—

—here—

—here here here—

Damnit! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

Almost as soon as the flickers overwhelm me, they're gone again, and I'm just an idiot in the cereal aisle, wiping sweat from his forehead and praying that there are no security cameras trained on me right now.

I make my way to the front of the store. The Not-Eve is nowhere in sight, having no doubt taken her child and ducked out a back door, to where it's safe from random, spastic teenagers.

Still, I find myself looking around everywhere, as I walk through the automatic doors, as I cross the parking lot to my car. She's
out.
She could be everywhere and anywhere.

I stop for gas on the way home and sit like a scared kid in my car as the pump chugs away. She could be filling up at the next tank. She could be inside the convenience store, buying orange juice, and walk through the door any minute...

—come here—

Any minute...

—I want to see you in the light—

Right now

—to the left—

or now

—over more—

or now.

The gas pump thunks to a stop, shaking the car, and I almost leap through the roof.

Everywhere I go—she could be there. At a stoplight. She has to drive places, right? Fast food joints. Stores. She could come to my baseball games, right? Or is she allowed near the school at all? Probably not. But what if it's an away game?

Like next week's game. We play a team from Finn's Cross ing. They're 2–6 and their starting pitcher was busted a week ago for smoking pot at a party, so they're like a winged duck on open water. We'll mop them up no problem. But despite the court order, what's to stop Eve from sitting at the top of the bleachers, or maybe way out in left field? That would be far enough, I think. And she'd still be there, right?

My palms are slick on the steering wheel. I'm glad it's early in the day; everyone's at work, the roads are nearly empty, and there's less of a chance of me accidentally killing someone. I don't even know if she's in the state anymore, remember? She could be long gone. That's what
I
would have done—I would have left as soon as I got paroled.

Hell, that's what I
am
planning. It's just that it's taken five years because there's that whole "turning eighteen and graduating from high school" thing to deal with. I would have run like hell from this town when I was thirteen if I could have. I begged my parents to move us away. I couldn't stand walking down the street or the bus aisle or the school hallways, feeling people's eyes on me, knowing what they were thinking, knowing that they knew everything. I wanted to yell at them, to hit them, to
beat
them, to run away screaming...

Mom and Dad tried a bunch of things. There were the regular sessions with Dr. Kennedy, but also some New Age woman who explained to me that virginity was a state of mind and that if I didn't think of myself as "violated," then I wouldn't be. Um, OK.

In the end, it was Dr. Kennedy who helped. And even then, I couldn't tell him everything. I couldn't get him to understand all of it.

Dr. Kennedy:
How are you doing, Josh?

J. Mendel:
OK.

Kennedy:
That's a nice shiner you've got there. Care to tell me how you got it?

Mendel:
You already know.

Kennedy:
What makes you think that?

Mendel:
You get reports. You talk to people. You know everything before I even come in here.

Kennedy:
That's true, in some cases. You're still getting into a lot of fights, aren't you? Why don't you tell me about it in your words.

Mendel:
I don't feel like telling it in my words, OK?

Kennedy:
You're translating your mischanneled erotic feelings into rage and—

Mendel:
I hate that. I hate that shit.

Kennedy:
What's that?

Mendel:
That psychological bullshit. It's all a bunch of crap.

Kennedy:
To be fair, some of it is. Tell you what—if you catch me slipping into psychobabble, I'll give you a buck. How about that?

Mendel:
Seriously?

Kennedy:
Seriously.

Mendel:
It's your money.

Kennedy:
OK. Let me try to explain this: Sometimes, when children are sexually abused, they become incapable of what's considered a "normal" sexual response. Make sense so far?

Mendel:
You mean they can only have sex with the person who abused them?

Kennedy:
Well, no. But close. Look, as people grow older, they come to develop responses for situations, including sex, OK? But if you're abused when you're young, sometimes those responses can be twisted or changed. It could make it difficult for you to respond sexually to someone your own age, for example.

Mendel:
This is bull. I don't go crazy for every woman who's older than me.

Kennedy:
Do you have a girlfriend, Josh?

Mendel:
No. I don't. OK?

Kennedy:
Why not?

Mendel:
I was ... I was supposed to go out on this date. A double date. With my friend Zik.

Kennedy:
This is Zik who's dating ... Melissa?

Mendel:
Michelle.

Kennedy:
Right. I'm sorry. And Michelle is best friends with—

Mendel:
Rachel.

Kennedy:
The girl you—

Mendel:
Right. Anyway, we were supposed to go out. It was going to be Zik and Michelle and me and this girl, Lisa Carter.

Kennedy:
Why didn't you go?

Mendel:
Zik told me ... Zik told me that he was going to sit apart from us. With Michelle, you know? So that they could be alone and, you know, kiss and stuff. So I would be with Lisa. And he told me that Lisa thought I was cute.

Kennedy:
And?

Mendel:
And then he ... He didn't mean anything by it. He's my best friend. He was just trying to help. He told me that Lisa was really nervous and I should just be cool.

Kennedy:
Was it her first date?

Mendel:
No—don't you
get
it? It wasn't that she was nervous because it was a date! It was
me
. She knew about Rachel and the closet and E—Mrs. Sherman and
all
of it. Everyone knew. Everyone in town.

Kennedy:
Your name wasn't in the paper.

Mendel:
So what? Everyone knows anyway. That's what I'm trying to explain to you. Rachel's parents told people about what happened in the closet, and then the word got out
why
things happened in the closet, and then the trial and
everything.
And Lisa Carter was
afraid.

Kennedy:
You did nothing wrong. In this whole ... this whole
thing—
you're the one person who never did anything wrong.

Mendel:
No. That's not true. I shouldn't have touched Rachel like that. I shouldn't have—

Kennedy:
Have you ever talked to Rachel about this? Have you ever apologized to her?

Mendel:
She doesn't want an apology. She hates me. She's afraid of me.

Kennedy:
And you think Lisa Carter is afraid of you, too?

Mendel:
Wouldn't you be?

Kennedy:
I think you're assuming that everyone knows—

Mendel:
There's this website. I found it one day. It has scans of all these public documents, you know? For big cases, for anything that hits the news. It has all these scans about Mrs. Sherman and me. From her allocution. And because I'm under eighteen, my name is blocked out, but it doesn't matter. Because everyone knows it's
me,
so it doesn't matter. And everyone knows everything. How can I kiss a girl? How can I touch a girl? What are they expecting? What do they know? How—

Kennedy:
There's no question ... Look, I need you to take a moment, OK? There's tissues in the ... Right. Do you want some water?

Mendel:
No.

Kennedy:
OK, just ... That's it. Deep breaths, like we talked about. What are you doing in your head right now?

Mendel:
Figuring out Zik's IPA.

Kennedy:
Which is...?

Mendel:
Isolated power average.

Kennedy:
And that helps calm you down?