He looks at her, waits. She wants to say something, and he wants to give her the space to say it.
She starts off tentative: “I hear you. I do. I mean, he sounds like a good guy in so many ways. . . .”
“But?”
“I didn’t say ‘but,’ Jessup.”
“You’re thinking it.”
She puts her hands on his cheeks, kisses him gently, her lips lingering on his, just the slightest flick of her tongue. Pulls back. “I’m sorry. This isn’t easy for me. I mean, you’re telling me about how good of a guy he is, and you’re telling me what he’s like at home, but your brother . . .”
“Ricky.”
“People say it was a hate crime. He had Nazi tattoos on him.”
“They weren’t Nazi tattoos,” Jessup says. He says it too quick, too strident, doesn’t want to say anything about the tattoos David John carries, the double SS lightning bolts on his left pec, the letters F and R and G and N, “For God, Race, Nation,” inked below, the iron eagle with the swastika high up on his right shoulder. “And it wasn’t a hate crime. They attacked him first,” Jessup says.
Deanne retreats into herself. He feels like an ass, wants to apologize, but isn’t sure what he’s apologizing for. He didn’t do anything wrong. Ricky didn’t do anything wrong. He was just trying to protect himself.
Deanne speaks before Jessup can figure out what to say. “I guess what I’m trying to ask you, Jessup, what I’m trying to say, is that I’ve had a lot of kids tell me your family is into white power. And, you know,” she coughs out a laugh, “for obvious reasons, that’s not exactly easy for me to accept.”
Jessup looks out the side window. With the falling snow, there’s barely enough light for him to make out the dark sway of the trees. “But that’s not me,” he finally says. “I don’t know what to tell you about my brother. He’s my brother. He’s not perfect, and he’s going to be in prison until he’s forty. And my stepfather did time, too. And yeah, the church my family went to—goes to—thinks that it’s good to take pride in our skin. It’s . . . it’s not a white power thing, but I guess I can see how it looks. It’s more of, like, pride in your heritage. A lot of talk. Like, at church, they’ll say, what’s wrong with being proud to be white? If you can sit with the black kids at lunch, or if the Jews can call themselves ‘the chosen people,’ what’s the problem with wanting to hang out with people who are like you, who think that being white is a good thing? That kind of stuff. But that’s not me.”
“But that’s your church,” she says. She’s not angry. She’s trying to have a conversation.
“But it’s not my church,” Jessup says. “I haven’t gone there in more than four years, not since what happened with my brother and my stepfather. That’s not me. You know me. That’s not me.”
He stops. Thinks. It’s true. At least, he thinks it’s true.
He wants it to be true.
“I don’t know what else to say. Here we are. It’s not my church, but yeah, it’s my family’s church, my stepfather’s church, and he’s home now. And if I’m being honest, I’m happy to see him. I’m sorry, but it’s true. And I get it if that means . . . I don’t want to break up, but I guess I’d understand if . . .” He can’t look at her. “It doesn’t change anything having him home, not between you and me, but in a lot of ways it changes everything. I want to stay together, I mean, I’m so into you, Deanne. But I can’t turn my back on my family. I’m not part of that church, but my mom takes my sister there. It’s still my stepdad’s church. I’m not part of that church anymore, but no matter how much I like you, and I like you so much that it makes me hurt sometimes—I can’t even tell you how much I think about you—I’m still always going to be part of my family, and like it or not, they’re always going to be part of that church. I don’t know what I can do about that,” he says. And then he adds, “It’s complicated.” Because he doesn’t know what else to say.