FROM WHEN JIMMY WAS a real little boy—we’re talking three, four years old—I always said there was no sense him ever telling me a lie, because I’d always know. He has this kind of face, he just can’t pull it off, you know? You’d ask him, “Did you take the money that was laying on the dinette?” “Did you lift that candy from the store?” He’d get this look like he was about to throw up. He couldn’t even answer you. “Look me in the eye,” I’d say. “Just tell me you didn’t do it, and I won’t ask any more questions.” I’m not saying he didn’t get mixed up in plenty of trouble, because he did. But he was an open book. I’ve seen kids, they could stand there with your wallet in their hand and tell you, “Money? What money? I didn’t take any money.” Kids that could steal the pope’s rosary and show up the next day in church. But not Jimmy. It was like he figured he’d get struck by lightning or something, if he one time told me something that wasn’t true. He might say nothing. But he wouldn’t lie.
After Larry Maretto was killed, of course I got to thinking. Him being the husband of this teacher Jimmy’d been spending so much time with, and Jimmy taking all these showers and everything, always in a huddle with Russell and that girl Lydia, talking about who knew what. And then when that detective started coming around. You’d be a fool not to wonder.
But I never sat him down and asked, “You have anything to do with this murder?” I could say it was just that I never dreamed he could. But thinking back, I got to say, I knew Jimmy wouldn’t tell me a lie. And I was scared to hear the truth.
After they took him away though, and I was sitting here alone, I knew what I had to do. One minute you’re sitting there, reading some article in a magazine all about Tom Selleck or someone, the next thing you know they’re putting handcuffs on your son and taking him away, like some juvenile delinquent in a show. It doesn’t feel like your real life, you know? It feels like you’re on a show too. Only there’s no commercials. And it doesn’t end.
So I had to ask myself then, could it be he did it? And even though I knew this was a boy that cried when you’d pass a dead raccoon on the highway, I knew it was a possibility. He couldn’t of killed anybody for money, and he couldn’t kill for hate. But love? That could be a different story.
I went down to the police station. They brought him out into this room, just a table and a couple of chairs, the smell of sweat hanging over everything. They sit Jimmy down across from me, and I see his hand can’t stop shaking. You want to put your arms around him, but it’s not possible, on account of the glass.
So I just sit there, looking at him. I suppose some people, if they saw my boy, all they’d notice would be that crazy tattoo and that Guns ’N Roses shirt. But what I see is his sweet face. He’s got his father’s eyes, those dark lashes, that blue. He hasn’t been shaving long, so the hair on his upper lip is still that fine, soft kind. I’m looking at his pierced ear, that he never wore an earring in, on account of after he did it he found out he had them put the hole in the wrong ear, and he’s got the one that means you’re gay. That’s when he started wearing his hair long. To cover it up.
I remember looking at the clock on the wall, looking at the light coming in the window, hearing the sound of the dispatcher and the voices of the cops outside. And thinking, remember this moment. This might be your last hopeful moment. Last moment you still have any shot at all of thinking life might turn out OK.
Then I ask him. “Did you do it?” And like I said, Jimmy never lies.