Detective Antonelli looked at my mother for a moment. Then he looked at me. He said, “Do you want a lawyer present, David?”
“No,” I said. “But—” I glanced at my mother. “I want to talk to you in private,” I said. “I don’t want my mother here.”
I had a pretty good idea how my mother must have felt when I said that. I was sure she was thinking the worst. But I didn’t care. I didn’t want her there.
She didn’t want to leave.
“I’m his mother,” she said to Detective Antonelli. “I have the right to be here.”
Detective Antonelli stared at me. “Are you sure, David?” he said. “You have the right to have a parent here in the room with you.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
“Do you want another adult here with you?”
“No.”
“I’m staying,” my mother said. “You can’t talk to my son without me present.”
Detective Antonelli stood up. He said, “May I speak to you outside for a minute, Mrs. Benson?”
It took my mother a moment before she got to her feet and followed him out of the room. Five minutes passed. When the door to the interview room opened again, Detective Antonelli came in alone.
“Your mother is waiting for you outside,” he said. “David, you have decided not to have a parent or any adult present with you. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“If at any time you change your mind about that, tell me. I will stop asking you questions until you have been able to talk to your parent or to another adult and, if you want, to have that person here with you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said and then asked, “My mother can’t see me, can she?” I looked at the mirror on the wall and wondered if she was on the other side, watching.
“No,” Detective Antonelli said.
“She can’t hear what I’m saying?”
“No, she can’t.”
I looked at him, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I didn’t know him well enough. Besides, he was a cop. Cops have a special way of talking and looking.
“How do I know?” I said.
“You have my word, David. Your mother can’t hear what you’re saying and she can’t see you. I’m being truthful with you, David. Why don’t you be truthful with me? Tell me about your stepfather.”
“He liked to gamble. He liked to play poker.”
“That’s not what I mean, David.”
“This is important,” I said. “I can tell it my way, right?”
Detective Antonelli’s eyes were dark and sharp. He never took them off me when he was talking to me or when I was talking to him. He didn’t take them off me now as he leaned back in his chair and said, “Yes, you can tell it your way.”
So I told him about Phil and how much he liked poker. He liked it so much that whenever he told me to do something and I didn’t want to do it, he always said, “Tell you what. Let the cards decide. We’ll play a hand of five-card draw.”
If Phil won, I had to do whatever stupid chore he had in mind for me. If he lost, he didn’t necessarily have to do it instead, but neither did I. Sometimes, “just to keep it interesting,” as Phil would say, we played best two out of three.
I gave Detective Antonelli an example.
About two weeks earlier, my mother went into the garage to try to find something that she had brought with her when she and Jamie and I had moved into Phil’s place a little over six years ago. I couldn’t remember what she was looking for. I’m not even sure she told me what it was. But I do remember that she couldn’t find it and that she said it was because the garage was such a mess. It was piled with stuff that, according to her, she hadn’t seen Phil use even once since we’d moved in. She muttered about it all week. She said that when Phil came home for the weekend, if he did one thing and one thing only, he was going to clean out the garage.
When Phil came home that weekend— one week before he got shot at the bank machine—they had an argument about the garage. Phil said what he always said: “I’m away from my family all week, working hard to put food on the table, a roof over everyone’s head, clothes on everyone’s back. When I come home for the weekend, I expect to relax. I deserve to relax.”
But my mother didn’t back down. She wanted the garage cleaned out.
No way, Phil told her. It was a whole-weekend job, and if she thought he was going to spend the whole weekend doing chores after he’d just spent the whole week working, she was going to have to think again.
My mother still didn’t back down. She was here all week, she said. She had to look at that mess. Worse, she had to try to find stuff in that mess. And, by the way, she told Phil, “I work too. I put in twenty-five hours a week at the store. Plus I keep this house clean. I take care of all the details. I make sure there’s food in the fridge and in the freezer so that you can eat good home-cooked meals when you’re here.” My mother was a good cook. “I make sure there are clean clothes in your closet and clean socks and underwear in your drawers. I even do beer runs so that there’ll be plenty on hand when your friends come over.”
Phil didn’t say anything to that. Instead, he looked at me. He said, “David, I’ve got a little job for you.”
“No way,” I said. None of the stuff in the garage belonged to me. I didn’t see why I should have to clean it out.
“I’ll play you for it,” Phil said.
It was such a big job that I wasn’t sure I wanted to play him. I didn’t want to take the chance I’d lose.
My mother said, “One of you is going to clean the garage or neither of you is going to get a meal out of me for a month.” It was totally unfair. I was the one who would suffer the most if she refused to cook. Phil was away five days out of seven. She scowled at us and left the kitchen.
“Come on, Davy,” Phil said, needling me. He knew I didn’t like to be called that. “We’ll play best two out of three.”
“Okay,” I said. I knew my mother wasn’t bluffing. She was angry about the garage and she wanted the job done. “On one condition.”
Phil looked at me. “Now you’re giving me conditions?”
“It’s for Mom,” I said. “The loser has to clean out the garage, even if it’s you. Deal?”
Phil thought for a moment. “Deal,” he said. He stuck out his hand and we shook.
Phil dealt the cards. I won the first hand—a pair of queens to his pair of nines. Phil won the next hand—three jacks to my pair of fives and pair of sevens. The next hand was the one that would decide whose weekend was ruined. I discarded three and tried to keep from grinning when I picked up the three replacements that Phil dealt me. One of them was a king. I added it to the two kings I already had in my hand. I was picturing Phil cleaning out the garage when there was a knock on the back door. The door opened and Jack appeared in the kitchen. “Hey,” he said when he saw us, “I thought the game was tonight.”
“It is,” I said. “We’re just playing a couple of hands to see who has to clean out the garage.”
“Talk about high-stakes poker,” Jack said with a laugh. He went to the fridge and pulled out a beer. He was watching us the whole time.
Phil discarded four cards—I definitely had him. I didn’t bother trying to keep a poker face now. He drew four from the deck.
“Read’em and weep,” I said, throwing down my cards. There were my three kings staring up at Phil.
Phil turned over his cards. Four aces. I couldn’t believe it.
“Looks like someone has his weekend cut out for him,” Phil said, grinning as he collected the cards from the table. “You ready to go to the car show, Jack?”
I slapped the table with one hand. Damn! I glanced at Jack. He shook his head.
“Is that why you did it?” Detective Antonelli said. “Because you lost and you were mad at your stepfather? Because you had to spend the weekend cleaning up his garage?”
I told him, “You don’t understand. I didn’t do it.”