The Boy in the Black Suit (6 page)

We got back in the bed. Head to foot. I didn't care about Chris's stinky feet anymore, and our friendship was pretty much sealed, forever. We just laid there wide awake, listening to the neighbors in the hallway, the police officers and their fuzzy walkie-talkies asking questions (but nobody saw nothing), the ambulance sirens, the screams of what sounded like a little girl, and Mr. Staton's dog, barking all night long.

Chapter 3

THE BLACK SUIT

“D
EAR
M
AMA.
” T
HAT WAS MY
bedtime song after my Mom died. It was like Tupac was singing—well, rapping—some kind of ghetto lullaby to me. I laid on my back with my earbuds in and that song on repeat, staring up into the darkness, imagining there was no ceiling, or roof, or clouds, until there really was no ceiling or walls, and I was no longer in my small bedroom, but instead in some strange dream. The kind where you swear it's real because everything looks real, and feels real, and you don't even remember ever falling asleep.

In the dream I was at a church, the same church my mom's funeral was in, except this time the air conditioner was cranking. The same people were there. The greasy preacher. Ms. Wallace, my mom's co-worker. The same usher women with their ashy-looking stockings and white shoes. But my mother wasn't in the casket.
Instead she was sitting on my left, with her arm around me and her face smushed against mine. In the dream, even though the casket was empty, everyone was crying. The preacher was crying. The family friends and neighborhood folks were crying. Everybody. And I'm not talking a little whimper. I'm talking an ugly, snotty, loud sob. A painful cry, like the one I had. And while all the weeping was going on, my mother and I just sat in the pew smiling, until everything faded to black, and sleep faded back into awake.

I laid there for a second confused and a little pissed that the dream was a dream. It seemed so real that I could even feel the
AC
blowing in the church. At least I thought I could. I rolled over to see what time it was. Four in the morning. Tupac had probably said
Mama made miracles every Thanksgiving
at least a hundred times, and my father was just getting home.

Normally, I wouldn't have heard him come in over the music, but he didn't tiptoe up the steps and slip into his bedroom like I would've done if I stayed out way later than usual. Nope. Dad made it clear he was home by making a whole bunch of noise.

A loud thump. Then, the sound of glass breaking followed by my father howling like a sad dog.

“Dad?” I called from the top of the steps.

“Matt,” he said, surprised. “I'm fine, I'm fine. Go back to bed.”

His words were slurring. I ran down the steps to find him on one knee, holding on to the kitchen counter, trying to pull himself up. His face looked like he was terrified, as if he were gripping the edge of a cliff or something. On the kitchen floor was a soggy paper bag, soaked with what was obviously cognac. The
bottle had broken and glass had torn through the bag and cut his hand. Liquor and blood, everywhere. It was all on the doors of the cabinets and was dripping in the sink as my father struggled to get back on his feet.

“Dad!” I shouted. “What happened?”

In my mind, I already knew what happened. After Chris told me he saw him hanging with Cork, at first I wanted to jump down his throat and tell him he didn't know what he was talking about. But that wouldn't have been right. Chris wasn't no liar. Even if he wanted to lie, he couldn't. Plus, I had a feeling it was true. My dad had definitely been drinking more and more since the night my mother died. But hanging with Cork? That was definitely a move in the wrong direction. I knew where he was. I knew what was going on, but I still asked anyway. Maybe I was hoping I was wrong.

“I'm fine, Matt. I'm fine,” he repeated in that voice people talk in whenever they're trying to convince someone that they're not drunk. Cork always sounds like that, and it never fools anybody. “I just slipped, that's all.” He was still struggling to stand. His feet kept sliding around like our kitchen floor was icy. Recognizing that standing just wasn't going to happen, I grabbed a chair from the kitchen table and pulled it over to him.

“Here. Sit,” I said, frustrated.

“Shit, I cut my hand,” he groaned, plopping down on the chair. He squeezed his hands together to put pressure on the cut. Blood dripped from between his palms as if he were crushing cherries. As my dad rocked back and forth in pain, I grabbed a dish towel from under the sink.

“Let me see,” I said, kneeling down, holding the rag out.

Dad unclenched his hands. Red. I wrapped the cut hand in the towel, and told him to keep it tight. I could smell the liquor coming through his skin; with every grunt, his stale breath slapped me. He looked at me, his eyes glassy and lost like I was some stranger helping him out, instead of his son.

“Better?” I asked.

I knew it wasn't better, but it's one of those questions he had asked
me
a hundred times when I was growing up. It's like a reflex. When I fell off my bike and scraped my arms all up, he slapped Band-Aids on them and said, “Better?” When I got in my first and only fight—got the crap beat out of me in middle school—he put some ointment on my lip and said, “Better?” And it was never better. I mean, it was eventually, but never when he asked. But for some reason, whenever he asked, “Better?” I always felt like I had to say yes.

My father grunted in reply. It was like he suddenly had no words left, like his tongue was dead. Then, he grunted again, and out of nowhere a spreading wet spot appeared on his pants, and the cognac, now mixed with the smell of his piss, floated through the air.

Seeing him that way automatically made me think about how he must've been all the time, back when he first started dating my mom. She used to always talk about how when she met him at the restaurant, he was a part-time dishwasher and a full-time drunk.

“Baby, the bottom of the bottle was your daddy's second home,” she'd say, shaking her head. Then she'd always add, “And if I didn't stop him, he would've made that second home his grave.”

Even though she loved him (whenever he wasn't wasted), she told him that she wouldn't marry him unless he gave it up. So he did. He gave it up for twenty whole years. But now . . . now, without Mom . . . he just . . . damn. It's like he fell apart. At the same time, I kinda understood. And literally, by the time I stood back up, he was already 'sleep, slumped in the chair, snoring. And I looked at him like he was my kid—like we had switched places and this was his first night getting wasted and I was suppose to yell or punish him or tell him how irresponsible he was. Again . . . backward. And I couldn't do none of that. Because he wasn't my son. He was my father. All I could do was pray to God that he would get a handle on it.

The next morning was weird for a few reasons. The first was, I decided to put on a suit. The same one I wore to my mom's funeral. The only one I had. I figured since I was now working at a funeral home, a suit would be a better look than jeans and Nikes. Yeah, I knew that it would draw attention that I really didn't want at school, but I figured a few hours of immature giggles were better than having to put on Mr. Ray's jacket that smelled like old man. At least my suit fit. And it smelled like me, which smells like nothing. Not to mention, I didn't look too bad in it, though I must admit it always took me a few tries to get the tie right. The first two times it always ended up a tiny, little, jacked-up knot. Then I remember to loop it twice, and it's good.

The second thing that was weird about the morning was my
dad. I didn't come downstairs and find him with his forehead slammed against the kitchen table, drool oozing from his mouth like slime, which is definitely what I was expecting. Instead, I came downstairs to a clean kitchen. No glass, no blood stains on the floor, not even a whiff of leftover funk. My father stood at the stove sipping from his usual mug, the smell of burned coffee and almost-burned toast in the air. (He can't cook a lick. Can't even make toast!) His right hand—the cut one—was neatly bandaged and he held the coffee cup in his left, which was funny because he's right-handed and was clearly having a hard time getting the mug to his lips. But that seemed to be the only thing he was having a hard time with.

“Morning, Matt,” he said, like nothing had happened a few hours before. Then he looked me up and down. “What's with the suit?”

“Doing some work for Mr. Ray after school,” I explained, but for some reason I felt like it went in one ear and out the other. It was like he wanted to know why I had on the suit I wore to Mom's funeral, but he didn't
really
want to know. He also was standing at the sink, and didn't notice that the picture of us at the beach was gone. I had taken it to my room the night before.

He shrugged and went back to his toast and coffee.

“Want breakfast?” he said, plain.

I stood there for a second and examined him. He was in his raggedy gray sweatpants, his belly poking out as usual. This had become his uniform since he had decided to take some time off from fixing up houses—stripping floors, dry wall, the whole
nine. Now his day job was pretending nothing was wrong. But he couldn't fool me. He wasn't okay.

“Naw, I don't want to be late,” I said, still feeling uncomfortable about last night and wanting to get out of Bizzaro World as fast as possible. Even school would be less strange than the kitchen I spent the last seventeen years in.

My father smirked. “Hey, it's your funeral.” He's said that line tons of times, but on this day it stung, and even pissed me off a little since I was literally just babysitting him a few hours before. I wanted to say back,
and it was almost yours last night.

“Yeah,” I said, throwing my backpack over my shoulder, suddenly wondering if I should go back on my promise to myself about not saying anything.

I turned toward the front door, but then he began scratching scratching scratching his butter knife against his toast, the sound making me cringe inside. It was like the screeching sound the train makes when it pulls into the station. It pushed me over the edge. I had to say something. Maybe not everything, but something.

“Dad?” I turned around to face him.

“Yep?”

I thought for a moment.

“Last night . . . ,” I started. He instantly stopped scratching at the toast, but he didn't look at me. He just looked down at the half-black, half-brown bread. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't zing him like I wanted to—and trust me, I
really
wanted to—only because, well, we were both messed up, hurting, and it would've just been a wack thing to do. Just . . . mean. So I flipped the script
and continued with, “You weren't here when I got here, and I wasn't sure if you ate or not, so I bought a sandwich for you. It's in the fridge. You don't have to eat burnt toast.”

He took a deep breath, obviously happy I didn't say what he thought I was going to say.

“Oh.” He exhaled, looking at me, finally showing some signs of embarrassment. “Thanks.”

Uh-huh,
I thought to myself.

It was another one of Brooklyn's crappy fall days, where the clouds make nine in the morning look like six in the evening, but the rain just won't come down. Instead there's a constant mist like someone or something is continuously spitting on you. Gross. And to top it all off, I had on the most uncomfortable shoes in the world—stiff, clunky dress shoes, cutting into my ankles, forcing me to walk like my butt hurt.

“Man, you should've just left without me,” I told Chris, as I waddled up to the bus stop. He stood there with a gigantic umbrella, way too big for such puny raindrops.

“You said to treat you like normal,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “This is normal.”

I laughed and nodded to him.

“But this big-ass umbrella ain't,” I joked.

“Neither is that monkey suit you got on,” he gave it back.

I laughed again. “It's for my job. Remember? At the funeral home. Where I touch dead people,” I said, pretending like I was
going to touch him. “And anyway, I don't even know why you talking. You probably don't even have a suit. Probably can't even tie a tie.”

“You right. I don't have a suit. But what I
do
have is an umbrella.” He pulled the large umbrella farther down over him.