The Between Page 8

  And he could see the difference on Antoinette’s face, softening her gaunt features, making the worried lines above her forehead vanish, if only for a time. The more she spoke, the less labored her words and breathing sounded.

  “Where’s your uncle today?” Hilton asked during a lull.

  Antoinette clicked her tongue against her teeth. “I dunno. Jail, could be.”

  “You haven’t seen him?”

  “He needs to get his behind here and fill out a form, that’s what the nurse said. And our phone been shut off. I ain’t calling over there no more.”

  “Where’s your baby brother?”

  “With his godmama, I guess. She called here once for something, but they had took me out for tests.” She sighed. “He’s all right. I’m ’a go look after him soon as I get out. She stay way up by Northside. The L bus go up that way, with a transfer.”

  “How old is your brother?” Kaya asked.

  “Eight,” she said.

  “My brother is eight, too.”

  “For real?” Antoinette asked, and the two shared friendly gazes again. Antoinette’s straight teeth, and one gold cap with a star imprinted on it, glistened against her skin. Hilton wondered if this was the last time he would see her smile.

  Hilton and Kaya were still at Antoinettes bedside, in their imaginations, twenty minutes later, while they stood in a downtown Miami movie line and heard babbling conversations about film trivia, the Lotto jackpot, and whether it would still be sunny enough later to go to the beach. Hilton was kicking himself for taking Kaya to Jackson. He’d fought back tears himself when they told Antoinette they had to leave, thinking how silly it seemed to go to a movie when so many lives were confined to bare rooms like that one. This had been Kaya’s day, and he’d ruined it for her by making it too heavy. Again, he’d blurred the line between work and family, and family had suffered.

  An apology was forming on Hilton’s lips when Kaya poked his kidneys to get his attention. “Antoinette’s really sick, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And she probably won’t leave the hospital, right?”

  Hilton paused. “Could be, honey,” he said.

  “But does she know that?”

  “I’m sure she does, Kaya. Antoinette watched her boyfriend die, so she knows what’s going down. She’s so sick that she can’t walk anymore. Even if she leaves, she’ll need a wheelchair.”

  The usher took their tickets and directed them to a theater at the far east end of the multiplex. The previews of coming attractions hadn’t begun, and they easily found seats in the dim light of the half-filled theater. Kaya leaned on the armrest closest to Hilton and fingered her popcorn without eating.

  “But Dad, how come she said that stuff about going to get her brother and taking the bus and everything? And she said she wanted to come see this movie, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  Kaya sounded pained. “How come?”

  Hilton wrapped his arm around Kaya’s shoulder and leaned closer to her, sighing. None of the patients he’d visited in that wing had ever even spoken the word AIDS. “A lot of people who are dying, even when they know they’re dying, pretend they aren’t. They keep on planning just like they would if they weren’t. It’s called denial.”

  A woman with a mane of African-style braids and holding a toddler in her lap snapped around to gaze at them, as if offended by Hilton’s words, then she remembered herself and turned back to face the screen. Hilton understood her surprise. Death had no place here today. Death was not something to be explained to children like a confusing plot twist.

  “So she knows she won’t ever really go on the bus,” Kaya said, uttering the words like uncomfortable shoes she was trying on for the first time.

  “That’s right. She knows.”

  Hilton tried to force himself to laugh at appropriate spots during the movie, but it was hard. Kaya was unusually silent. She brought the silence with her when they pulled out of the parking garage of the Omni International Mall and drove toward Interstate 95. The sun, as someone had predicted earlier, had been smothered by dark cloud cover as a prelude to a fall-afternoon rainstorm. Miami never saw snow, but it got enough rain to more than make up for it.

  Unexpectedly, while they waited at the traffic light near the overpass to the expressway, Kaya blurted, “Maybe I won’t go to the arts school next year.”

  The county school system had special schools, designed for desegregation, that also gave children a chance to specialize early in arts, sciences, and languages as enticement to make them take long bus trips away from their neighborhood schools. Kaya was a straight-A student, but she’d been bent on going to South Miami Middle School so she could study drama during the week. But her best friend wanted to attend an inner-city science school farther north, so Kaya had also toyed with the idea of going with her.

  “And do what? Science?”

  She nodded, gazing out of her window through rain droplets dyed red from the stoplight above them. “I get good grades in science,” she said. “I dissected my frog better than anyone.”

  “But you get good grades in all of your classes. You can do anything you want, really. What made you think of that?”

  Kaya didn’t answer right away, and when she did, she was indirect. “It’s terrible there’s a disease like that, where people can’t even see your face when you visit because you’re wearing a mask. And kids get it, and everybody gets it.”

  “It’s terrible, all right,” Hilton said.

  “If there were more doctors and they really worked at it because they really cared, I bet they could find a cure for that disease,” Kaya said.

  “They do care. They’ll find a cure within your lifetime.”

  “Some doctors are researchers, and that’s all they do.”

  “Yep. That’s right,” Hilton said.

  “I could do that,” Kaya said after a pause.

  Hilton gazed at her, and he realized he was feeling a sadness completely isolated from any thoughts of Antoinette or his nostalgia for Kaya’s lost childhood. “Of course you can,” he said, but his throat was dry and his words sounded like lies to him for a reason he couldn’t grasp. “You can do anything you want.”

  The traffic light turned green, but a black motorcycle officer in a fluorescent rain jacket and rubber boots scooted into the intersection and thrust out his open palm toward Hilton. His flashing blue light lit up the underpass and the bundles of clothes and furniture that belonged to the invisible homeless who lived there. The moustached officer sounded his siren in a spurt to warn other traffic to stop.

  Then a procession of headlights began, with a long shiny hearse passing in front of them first, then two limousines, then a stream of cars filled with blacks in Sunday hats and dark suits and hidden faces. Hilton thought of the Dennis Miller joke about funerals, about how the police stop traffic for you the one time it doesn’t do you any good. That was what life was about, empty gestures. It was one of Hilton’s favorite jokes, but the memory of it left him feeling hollow. The line of cars seemed endless, and Hilton felt a growing certainty as each new car passed that all of the mourners’ forlorn eyes were watching him.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Oye. Over here, man.”

  Raul’s voice was unmistakable even over the drone of noise inside the Miami Arena, which was packed for the Heat’s game against the Orlando Magic. Raul was decked out in his black satin Heat jacket with its flaming basketball logo, and he stood and waved his trademark Mets cap to Hilton with a grin. The hat and jacket clashed, but Raul never went to a game without his badge of loyalty to his hometown Mets. As usual, Raul had lucked into good seats, putting their eyeline directly above the press table with a perfect view of center court.

  Hilton was still marveling at their seats as Raul embraced him warmly and squeezed his forearm in the affectionate way Hilton had noticed in some Hispanic men, treating one another like brothers. Hilton was more reserved, but he was used to Raul’s
hugs. Raul’s arms were still lanky, but the years since they’d first met had widened his middle with a slight paunch. “Sit down. Taste your Coke.”

  Hilton sipped from the large paper cup Raul offered and had to catch his breath. His soft drink was drowned in rum, and no doubt a dark Puerto Rican brand. His throat felt singed.

  “I don’t get how you sneak that eighty-proof in here every time,” Hilton said, and Raul tapped his jacket pocket while keeping his eyes surreptitiously straight ahead, as though he carried nuclear secrets on his person.

  “You have your talents, I have mine,” Raul said. “Mira. There’s Shaquille O’Neal, looking cocky tonight. I’d yell something, but we’re too close. He might kick my ass.”

  “Hell, I might kick your ass. The Heat’s my boys, but Shaq’s the man now. Don’t get crazy on me.”

  “Fucking traitor.”

  “Damn straight.”

  Hilton’s friendship with his former therapist was as unplanned as it was unlikely. Several months after his therapy ended, he and Dede ran into Raul at a wine-and-cheese reception sponsored by a nearby bookstore following a poetry reading by a Puerto Rican writer Dede admired. Raul seemed to avoid them at first, but Hilton insisted on cornering him because he felt a genuine affection and respect for the man who had stopped his nightmares cold. Two months later, Hilton thought of Raul when Miami New Day needed a therapist to volunteer a few hours a week. He called Raul to ask if he knew anyone who might be interested. Raul said he had some free time on Wednesdays, and he would be happy to do it himself. He came three times, until Hilton could hire someone full-time to make up for the staff shortage. As compensation, he invited Raul to a Dolphins home game with him; Stu had backed out on him, and he had complimentary tickets for Miami New Day.

  Raul shook his head firmly, clearing his throat into his fist. “Oh, no. Gracias, but no. I have a strict rule about not socializing with former clients.” He was obviously a sports fan, however, because he eyed the tickets hungrily even as he demurred. “I don’t suppose those would be good seats, your comp seats. You might get a nosebleed in those seats, no?”

  Hilton assured him that Miami New Day was well-liked by a major corporation that provided very good seats. Fifty yard line.

  Abruptly, Raul’s head stopped shaking. He sipped delicately from his cup. “Ah . . . well, those would be good, wouldn’t they? Quite good. Yes. It’s really a shame about this rule of mine.”

  “There’s no statute of limitations?” Hilton asked. “It’s been nearly a year, man. What’s past is past. Besides, I owe you. I promise never to talk therapy.”

  For more than four years, Hilton had kept that promise. Despite his urge to seek advice, he remembered that promise again as the Heat and Magic players flailed their arms in the air for first possession of the ball, and a lucky swipe landed it in a Heat players sure hands.

  “You’re good with your drink?” Raul asked him.

  “Damn, man, I can only drink one at a time,” Hilton laughed. Hilton had never felt he needed Raul for anything other than friendship, and he was a good friend to have; non-judgmental, curious about things he didn’t know, and with a bizarre sense of humor: once he showed up at a Heat game with black lace women’s panties draped over his head like a tam. He did it straight-faced and with no explanation, except for saying that a beautiful woman was bound to tap him on the shoulder and demand to have them back. It didn’t work, but it was good for stares. If a woman’s gaze lingered too long, Raul asked, “Did you lose these, miss?” He almost got punched out many times that night. Hilton could hardly believe this was the same man who had so skillfully guided him from the prison of his dreams.

  And he had accomplished more than that, even. Raul had helped Hilton save his marriage, and he’d allowed him to talk to Nana. Toward the end of their sessions, after weeks of preparation, Raul scraped an empty chair across his floor and rested it directly in front of Hilton. Then he told Hilton to talk to the chair, to talk to Nana, to imagine that she was there before him.

  After all of their hypnosis and soul-searching, with Raul taking him back to the beach, back to the monstrous undertow, Hilton was ready to do it. He faced the chair and could almost see Nana’s tall, well-built frame there. She was not smiling in that picture of her in his mind, but he was no longer afraid of her.

  “Nana,” Hilton began in a husky voice, and he paused a moment to let his words frame themselves without forethought. “It was my fault, what happened. You told me not to go out too far, and I didn’t listen to you. I disobeyed you. And then”—his throat was hot, closing itself tightly—“and then you drowned, and it was my fault. I’m sorry, Nana. No one knew you told me to stay close to the shore. No one knew how bad I was. The Jameses gave me cake and toys and a beautiful house, and I didn’t deserve it. I killed you. I didn’t mean to, but I killed you.”

  Hilton could barely speak for his tears. He’d never vocalized these thoughts before, he’d never remembered them. But, yes, he’d been a scrawny eight-year-old kid pampered and nurtured, in his view, for the act of killing his grandmother. No wonder he had nightmares. No wonder she haunted him in his sleep. He couldn’t tell anyone how he felt, that he had murdered her, because he was afraid the Jameses would turn him out or send him to jail. They were such good people, they would never understand such a bad thing.

  As an adult confronting his youthful logic in the face of an empty chair, Hilton realized how he’d tortured himself as a kid. As soon as he spoke, he could almost hear Nana’s voice reassuring him, saying: Hilton, you was just a child. Children don’t always listen, because they just don’t know what’s best. You didn’t kill me. What happened was an accident. Nana knows you’re sorry. Nana still loves you, Hilton. You can’t make up for me by doing for other people. Do for yourself, do for your wife, do for your children. I swam out to save you that day so you could have a whole life of your own. Don’t live that life hurting over me.

  Just live.

  Soon after, the dreams were gone. He felt a relief that brightened all of his days, as though he’d ducked around the corner from bullies who would never chase him again.

  And now, unexplained, they were back. Not to mention his eerie, wide-awake hallucination the other night. Hilton stared at the basketball court with heavy eyes, barely registering a Heat three-point shot that tied the game. He didn’t even know what the exact score was, or if O’Neal was still on the court. Raul was hooting gleefully beside him, but the other sounds in the vast indoor arena sounded far away. Hilton drank the last of his rum and Coke and rested the empty cup beside his feet. He should know better than to drink on an empty stomach.

  Hilton was annoyed by the too-loud whispering of a man and woman sitting behind him, the kind of pompous conversation spoken to be overheard: “. . . but let’s just say I don’t have to fly to L.A. next month. Say we shoot in Orlando. That still leaves us four, five weeks to edit. We’re not dead in the water the way they found that poor orphan child . . . And no lifeguard . . . Course not, just us coloreds . . . Brought him down from Belle Glade way . . . You knew Eunice Kelly, who was raising him after her daughter ran off . . . died of an attack, just like that, some kind of heart ailment . . . That’s what I’d heard . . . boy found her in the kitchen, dead-cold . . . Lord have mercy . . .

  “. . . His cousin Melva brought him to Virginia Key, wanted to see if somebody from the family could . . . Oh, well, no sense worrying ’bout it now. . . . Water was plain deadly, Matt said . . . The grandmama dead last year, now the boy . . . Damn shame . . . This world ain’t right, just ain’t right. . .”

  “Are you fucking crazy?” Raul asked Hilton, nudging him.

  “What?” Hilton mumbled, stirring.

  “You’re asleep at a fucking game. Now I’ve seen it all.”

  “I’m not sleeping. Go to hell,” Hilton said, but he knew from his familiar heartbeat thudding at his temples that he’d been sleeping, that he’d been dreaming. He glanced around him at the cheering faces, at men w
aving their game programs with wide-mouthed shouts as the players bounded toward the Heat’s end of the court. He looked to see whose voices were speaking behind him; he saw a blond-haired woman wearing a black dress and sunglasses, even indoors; the man beside her wore his graying hair in a ponytail. They were huddled close together, discussing details of some film project. Hilton stared a moment, then looked away. He hadn’t expected them to be white, for some reason. He hadn’t expected to see a man, or a woman so young. He’d expected someone else.

  “What’s the score, then?” Raul taunted. “And don’t look.”

  “All right, all right. I was sleeping. Lay off, huh?”

  “You’re better off asleep. Twelve unanswered points. And this guy misses . . . Oye, maricon!” Raul’s voice rose to a shout as the basketball bounced wildly off the backboard.

  Hilton stared hard at Raul. He hadn’t noticed how much his friend’s hair was thinning, that he was combing it to the side to make his scalp look less sparsely covered.

  “What are you looking at? Too much rum for you, I think.”

  “Where’s your Mets cap?” Hilton asked suddenly.

  Raul touched the top of his head, then shrugged and turned his attention back to the game. “Left it tonight. Couldn’t find it. De-fense, de-fense! They call that defense? Jesus Christ.”

  The screams and shouts in the arena roared a moment in Hilton’s ears as though he were in a sound tunnel of pulsing waves. He leaned over to examine the floor, finding crumpled hot dog wrappers and a discarded program. Then he glanced at Raul’s lap, where Raul held tightly to his cup still half-full of rum and Coke. No Mets cap.

  “You were wearing it when I came in. You took it off and waved it to me,” Hilton said.

  “Are you here to be fashion consultant, or are you watching the game? I can’t believe you were sleeping,” Raul said, not looking at him. His voice was slightly slurred. “I think you’re still sleeping.”

  Hilton sighed, annoyed at Raul’s tipsy dismissal. “Maybe so. I can’t sleep at night lately.”