Blueberry Court

RONNIE WASN’T COOPERATING.

“Okay,” he said. “How about this? Overweight ex-con with receding hairline, bites nails and smokes like chimney. Likes kiddie porn and quiet nights in front of the television.”

“That’s not funny,” said May.

“It wasn’t a joke.”

“Come on, Ronnie. This isn’t going to work if you don’t try. We’ve got to look on the bright side.”

“The bright side? Why didn’t you say so? Let’s see…I have no job, no friends, and everyone hates me. I think that about covers it.”

“You have friends,” May insisted, but she regretted the remark as soon as it came out of her mouth.

“Yeah? Like who?”

She thought it over. “What about Eddie Colonna?”

“That was tenth grade, Ma. If Eddie saw me now, he’d probably spit in my face.”

“You must have had friends in…in…” May’s voice trailed off. She had a hard time saying the word prison out loud. “You lived there for three years.”

“Oh yeah,” said Ronnie. “I was extremely popular.”

“Dr. Linton liked you,” she continued, not knowing why she felt a need to press on with such an upsetting subject.

“She was paid to like me. If the state stopped sending her checks, I don’t think we’d have been hanging out together too much.”

“Didn’t she say you were highly intelligent?”

“She also said I was unusually devious and not to be trusted around children.”

“Well, I know Bertha likes you.” This wasn’t precisely true, but May was determined not to come up empty-handed. “She said so the other day.”

“Oh, that makes me feel much better. It’s nice to have a nasty old wino in my corner.”

“Bertha’s my best friend. And I won’t have you talking about her like that.”

“You know why she likes you, Ma?” Ronnie was giving her that hard, pitiless look, the one that scared her sometimes. Like he saw right through everything and everyone, to the worst truths you could imagine. “Did you ever think about that?”

“Don’t,” said May. “Don’t do this to me.”

Ronnie let out a long, weary breath and buried his face in his hands. Then he smiled meekly, doing his best to be a good boy.

“I’m sorry, Ma. I know you’re trying. But sometimes that just makes it worse.”

May couldn’t really blame him for being discouraged. It was bad enough that his own sister refused to talk to him or let him anywhere near her kids, and even worse that he couldn’t find a job, not even collecting garbage, or delivering pizza, or bagging groceries. All the applications had a question about your criminal record; you got in trouble with your parole officer if you lied, and nobody would hire you if you told the truth. And then those posters started showing up with his picture on them, spreading the ugly rumor that he’d been involved in that poor girl’s disappearance five years ago. But the police had looked into all that. He’d been called in for questioning three times—once by the FBI—and nothing had happened. If Ronnie had had something to do with that, they would have arrested him, wouldn’t they?

“Come on,” said May. She held up the personal ads page of The Bellington Register. “There are two whole columns of lonely women here, and only a handful of men. The odds are on your side.”

Ronnie lit a cigarette and gave May the same incredulous look he’d been giving her since he was a teenager, as though she were some sort of fantastical creature never before seen on earth.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “Why wouldn’t one of these women want to meet a nice person like you?”

“I’m not a nice person,” Ronnie said. “I’m the scum of the earth.”

“You did a bad thing,” May admitted. “But that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.”

“I have a psychosexual disorder, Ma.”

“You’re better now,” said May. “They wouldn’t have let you out if you weren’t.”

“They let me out because they had to.”

Ronnie lit a fresh cigarette, sucking on it like a kid drinking out of a straw. May felt panicky, like maybe one of her breathing attacks was coming on. Her inhaler was upstairs by her bed, next to her denture glass. She wished she’d thought to bring it down.

“Well, maybe if you found a girlfriend”—she paused for breath—“closer to your own age, you wouldn’t have the bad urges so often.”

“I don’t want a girlfriend my own age,” said Ronnie. “I wish I did.”

“Look at this one,” said May, choosing an ad at random. Even with her reading glasses on, the print was painfully small. “‘Lovely green eyes. Kindhearted DWF, 33, looking for friendship and maybe more. Nonsmoker preferred.’ Whoops, forget her. How about this one? ‘Full-figured mama, midforties. Likes swing dancing, Everybody Loves Raymond, and lazy Sunday mornings.’”

“Full-figured,” chuckled Ronnie. “She’s probably three hundred pounds. The black guys in jail would go for her.”

“So what if she is? Maybe she’s a nice person inside. Maybe she’d appreciate it if someone gave her a chance and didn’t make her feel bad about the way she looked. Maybe she’d be willing to overlook another person’s faults as well.”

Ronnie took another drag and exhaled two neat jets of smoke from his nose, just the way his father used to do. If Pete had been kinder and more reliable, May had a feeling Ronnie would have been a happier child. Maybe the other boys wouldn’t have picked on him so much, or maybe he’d have known how to defend himself when they did. But her ex-husband was a liar, and a cheater, and a mean drunk who enjoyed making other people feel small and stupid, and Ronnie was always his favorite target. When he finally left it had seemed like the end of the world to May, but now she saw that it was for the best. Ronnie gave a small shrug of surrender.

“All right, Ma. If it’ll make you happy, I’ll give it a shot. But just one date, all right? I’m not gonna make a career of it.”

He was humoring her, but that was better than nothing. It wasn’t natural for a grown man to be living with his mother, no hobbies and diversions, just reading the paper and watching TV all day. It was almost like he was still in prison, except for the long rides he took on his old bike, which made her nervous, since he refused to tell her where he went or what he was doing. But a bike was better than a car, wasn’t it? She wouldn’t want him going around in a car, or in a van, God forbid. Plus, he could use the exercise. He was always complaining about the prison food, but he’d come home fifteen pounds heavier than when he’d gone in.

What he needed was a girlfriend, and May intended to help him find one. If he had a nice girl in his life, maybe he wouldn’t spend so much time alone in his room, spying on the neighborhood kids through his binoculars. He always denied it, but she knew what he was up to. And if he got married someday—Why not? Didn’t all sorts of people get married: midgets, retarded people, people with missing limbs, whatever?—then she could die in peace, without worrying about what would become of her boy if she wasn’t around to keep him out of trouble. Because she got so tired sometimes and just wanted a little rest, some time to put her feet up. Didn’t she deserve that much, after a long life with so much trouble in it, and so little happiness? She often found herself thinking about the cemetery as she drifted off to sleep at night, and it seemed like a nice, welcoming place, all that grass and those beautiful trees, and neighbors who didn’t make you feel like you had some sort of disease. She flipped open her steno pad and started writing.

“You have a nice smile,” she said. “Why don’t we start with that?”

 

As usual, Bertha arrived just in time for lunch, carrying a small brown grocery bag.

“Here’s the fruit juice,” she said in a loud voice, winking slyly as she handed the bag to May. “I brought the fruit juice like you told me, Mrs. McGorvey.”

For some reason or other, Bertha insisted on calling the wine coolers “fruit juice.” At first, May had assumed that she did it for the benefit of any neighbors who might be within earshot—not that it was any of their damn business—but it turned out just to be another of Bertha’s private jokes. She had a whole storehouse of them—most were tiresome rather than funny—but May accepted them as the price of her company. God knows she’d put up with worse in her day.

“Where’s the Prince?” Bertha asked, peering into the living room. “Out gallivanting on his tricycle?”

Almost as soon as Ronnie had come home, Bertha had nicknamed him “the Prince” in honor of his alleged freeloading tendencies, even though May had explained repeatedly that her son was not unemployed by choice. Bertha scoffed at this claim. In her view, Ronnie had an enviable setup: a grown man with no responsibilities whatsoever, boarding at his mother’s expense, eating chips and watching cable all day, and generally carrying on like a member of the royal family.

“He’s getting some exercise,” said May, though both women understood that Ronnie despised Bertha and timed his bike rides to coincide with her visits.

“Something smells delicious.” Bertha sniffed the air as though it were a flower. “What’s on the grill?”

“Nothing,” said May. “We’re having tuna sandwiches.”

“And fruit juice,” said Bertha. “Don’t forget the fruit juice.”

Until she’d struck up her friendship with Bertha, May hadn’t been in the habit of drinking in the daytime hours—in fact, she rarely drank at all—but she’d learned to make an exception for her wine cooler at lunch. Partly she did it to be sociable—Bertha didn’t like to drink alone—but she’d come to rely on the pleasantly fuzzy mental state induced by the beverage, even if it sometimes left her headachy and tired later in the afternoon. It was a small indulgence, and May felt like she’d earned the right.

 

May had first seen Bertha four years earlier in the visiting area of the county jail, where they each had a son awaiting trial. It was hard for them not to notice each other, two old white women in a sea of mostly younger, mostly darker faces. May would offer a shy smile of commiseration whenever they made eye contact, but she was reluctant to introduce herself or otherwise invite conversation. Ronnie’s case had attracted a fair amount of lurid publicity—the Girl Scout cookie angle made it irresistible to the newspapers—and May had felt a distinct chill fall over most of her encounters with other people. Friends stopped calling. Neighbors no longer smiled and waved hello. Her own daughter said terrible things about Ronnie that were probably true, but that May didn’t think should be spoken out loud by members of his own family. Father Ortega even suggested that she take a short break from volunteering on bingo night until “things settled down.” May was in no hurry to meet anyone new, or put herself in any kind of situation where she’d have to explain who she was and what she was doing at the county jail.

It was Bertha who finally broke the ice. She followed May out to the parking lot one breezy spring afternoon and began chatting as naturally as if they were old friends, making a series of statements to which May could only say Amen, about how mortifying it was to see your own child under lock and key, and how he was still your little boy, no matter what he’d done, and how you had no choice but to keep loving him, no matter what he’d done, and how impossible it was for other people who hadn’t had this experience to understand the strength of the bond between a mother and her child, no matter what he’d done. Then she started moaning about the long and difficult trip from the courthouse back home to Bellington on Sunday, when the buses ran so infrequently, and before May had a chance to think it through, she blurted out that she lived in Bellington, too, and would be happy to give her a ride home.

For the next few weeks May shuttled her new friend back and forth on visiting days, until Bertha’s son, Allen, was sentenced to six months—it was not his first offense—for stealing a welding machine from a construction site and trying to sell it to a man who turned out to be a cousin of the original owner. By that point, though, Bertha had already begun stopping by May’s house at lunchtime, first by invitation, then on impulse, and finally, on a more or less daily basis. During the school year, Bertha worked as a crossing guard outside the Rayburn School, and she had a couple of hours to kill between lunchtime and dismissal, so why not spend them with May?

And the truth was, May appreciated the company. Not because she liked Bertha, exactly—Bertha was hard to like in any simple way—but because a person needed company. Something went sour inside if you didn’t have someone to talk to every day. So what if Bertha dyed her hair a brassy red and drank too much (though May couldn’t say she approved of her drinking on school days), or made mean jokes, and rarely had a good word to say about anyone? No one else was visiting May these days, except her daughter, Carol, who came by maybe once a month to complain about Ronnie and insist that May acknowledge what a repulsive person he was. Diane Thuringer from down the street, whom May had once considered a good friend, pretended not to notice her even after their carts almost collided in the supermarket. So that was May’s choice: not between Bertha and family, or between Bertha and someone nicer, but between Bertha and no one.

It wasn’t that hard to choose.

 

“He knows where the body is,” Bertha insisted. “You can tell by the way he blinks those shifty little eyes.”

May didn’t even like thinking about Gary Condit, let alone talking about him. The missing girl, the grieving parents, the murderer walking around unpunished—it was just too horrible. Bertha, on the other hand, couldn’t get enough.

“He might as well have had the word guilty stamped across his forehead. And sweet little wifey standing by his side.”

What else can she do? May wanted to ask. What else can she do if she loves him?

“I got news for Congressman Howdy Doody.” Bertha twisted off the cap on wine cooler number two. She could polish off three or four during the average lunch. “His shit stinks like everyone else’s.”

“Please,” said May. “Language.”

“I hope she gets to visit him in prison. I’m sure he’ll look very distinguished in his jumpsuit.” Bertha cackled at the thought. “So who spray-painted your driveway?”

She asked this question so abruptly and matter-of-factly that it took May a couple of seconds to realize that they weren’t talking about Congressman Howdy Doody anymore.

“Spray paint?”

“You didn’t know?” Bertha couldn’t quite conceal her pleasure at being the bearer of bad news. “You got some new graffiti last night.”

“Oh no. Is it disgusting?”

“Just one word,” said Bertha. “But it’s not a very nice one.”

May started to rise from her chair, then thought better of it. The word—she could imagine which one it was without too much trouble—could wait. There was no sense spoiling her lunch, getting herself all worked up for nothing.

“The nerve of these people,” she muttered.

“The tuna’s good today,” said Bertha, though she’d only taken a few tiny nibbles of her sandwich. “Is it StarKist?”

“The store brand,” May replied distractedly.

“I don’t buy the store brands.” Bertha shook her head with great vehemence, as if she’d learned this lesson the hard way. “You save a couple pennies, but I’d rather have the peace of mind.”

“It’s the same product,” said May. Her heart wasn’t in the argument, which she and Bertha revisited every time they ate tuna fish. “They just slap different labels on the cans.”

“Don’t be naive,” said Bertha, but her attention shifted suddenly to the steno pad in the center of the table with the red pen resting on top. She picked up the pad and examined it. “What’s this?”

“Ronnie’s personal ad. I need to find him a girlfriend.”

“Hmmm.” Bertha seemed impressed. She squinted at the page and read aloud. “‘SWM, 43, nice eyes and smile. Likes biking and long walks on beach. I’m not perfect and don’t expect you to be, either.’”

“What do you think?” May asked. It sounded pretty good to her.

Bertha pondered the matter for a few seconds before shaking her head.

“It’s not gonna work. You need to say handsome.

“I wanted to. Ronnie wouldn’t let me.”

“Trust me,” said Bertha. “If you don’t, they’re just gonna think he’s ugly.”

“That’s what I said. But you know how stubborn he can be.”

Bertha uncapped the pen and scrawled a quick correction to the ad.

“There,” she said. “He’ll have to beat them off with a stick.”

 

May stood in the midday sun and stared at the awful word painted on her driveway. It wasn’t the one she’d expected. Her legs felt weak.

“Where do people learn their manners?” she wondered. “This used to be a nice town.”

“It was never that nice,” Bertha told her. “It just liked to pretend it was.”

“But vandalizing someone’s driveway?”

“Probably teenagers,” said Bertha. “They go drinking in the woods, and then they run amuck.”

“No,” said May. “It’s that creep in the van. He’s always driving past, honking the horn, stapling those damn posters everywhere.”

May knew that Ronnie had seen the word on his way out of the garage. He must have ridden right over it on his bike. She hoped it wouldn’t spoil his day or make him any more depressed than he already was.

“I’ll go to the hardware store,” she said. “I can spray right over this with some black paint.”

“I can loan you a gun if you want,” said Bertha. “Allen has three of them.”

“I wouldn’t even know how to hold it,” said May.

“It’s easy,” said Bertha. “I could teach you in a few minutes.”

May shook her head. She didn’t want to think about guns. She wanted to think about the day she moved into this house. It was a long time ago—over thirty-five years. She was pregnant with Carol; Ronnie had just started school. It was the first house she’d ever owned.

It wasn’t like she had any illusions about her life even then. She already knew that she’d married the wrong man—at the beginning he’d at least been a charming drunk, but by then the charm was all used up—and that her son wasn’t going to have an easy time of it in school. There was something about him that people didn’t like.

But in spite of everything, she’d felt hope. They were moving into a place of their own in a nice neighborhood near a good school. Maybe things would be different there; maybe they would be happy. She stood on the front lawn in the early evening and whispered a prayer that her family would thrive on Blueberry Court, that her marriage would improve, that her children would grow up into healthy, successful adults.

And this is what her prayer had come to: the word EVIL spray-painted in gigantic Day-Glo orange letters at the foot of her driveway, along with an arrow pointing straight to her house.

“God help us,” she said, reaching for Bertha’s arm so she could steady herself for whatever was coming next.