Free The Detective's Garden by Janyce Stefan-Cole Page B

know what to do?” spat Clarke.
    “Okay,” his father said. “The next thing you need to learn to do is run.” He pointed to the end of the line of houses along the shoreline and to the wooden staircase. He had Clarke sprint up and down the beach while he timed his son with a wristwatch.
    AS HE DROVE the D.C. beltway, Charlie Basin called Dominick’s sister Annie Sawyer in Rockford, Illinois. She had a sweet voice, calm and self-assured. Charlie liked talking to her and stayed on the line longer than he needed to. She said she hadn’t heard from her brother. She asked what Dom might have done. She sounded concerned and protective. Charlie believed her and he liked that he believed her. He liked the person he was when he chose to believe people.
    Traffic on the beltway moved haltingly. When Charlie got off the phone with Annie Sawyer, he dialed the number for Duke University Hospital. Why hadn’t anyone told him that Charlene had been seeing a therapist? Would he have wanted to know? Why didn’t she want to speak with him now? Charlie had never understood what a father ought to say to his daugh ter. She had always been so angry. Was it his fault? What of his life was he supposed to share? What was he supposed to live with alone?
    The phone rang at his ear until someone picked up the line. Charlie asked to speak with Charlene Basin, a patient on the psychiatric unit.
    “Hello, Dad,” she said. She spoke too quietly. She dropped the ends of her words. “What’s going on?”
    “Just driving the beltway,” he said. The gray-green station wagon in front of him had left its right turn signal on for the last twenty miles.
    She didn’t say anything. He could hear a slight mucusy catch in her breathing. “I can’t do this,” she said. He waited until she spoke again. “I don’t want it, Dad.”
    “Don’t want what?”
    “Whatever you have to say.”
    “I’m not okay with that, Charlene,” Charlie said. “I talked to Oswell the other day. He tell you I called?”
    “He did.”
    Brake lights glowed red before him. Traffic began to slow. She wasn’t going to tell him anything. “He said you’re seeing somebody new. Dating. It might be serious.”
    “I don’t know,” Charlene said.
    “What’s his name? Tell me what he’s like.”
    “He’s okay. His name is Kurt.”
    “Charlene,” said Charlie, “I might drive down this weekend. Would that be okay?”
    “It’s a long way from D.C. to Durham.”
    “I know it’s a long way,” Charlie said.
    “I’m pretty busy. I’m trying to pull my life together in here.”
    “I’m pretty busy, too.”
    “Dad,” Charlene said, “I’m trying to find a nice way to say that I don’t want you to come.”
    A MIST FELL outside the windows of the garage apart ment. The kids stood inside the glass. They could see nothing clearly. Behind them Dominick walked shirtless to the single closet. His skin was the tan of desert. The floor creaked beneath his weight. He was banded with muscle. He had the body of a man who’d run miles with a weighted rucksack and crawled under fences on his stomach and sweat and bled and carried heavy weaponry. He stopped in the middle of the floor and be gan to shake. He dropped to his knees as though someone had pushed him. The floor shook hard and the kids turned from the window and Dominick pushed back at whatever pushed at him until his body calmed and his knees unbent. He swept his hair back. He smiled at the kids until they turned back to the window.
    Clarke and King watched two old women argue in the rain. Clarisse wore a patterned scarf knotted around her neck. The old neighbor wore her dark bathrobe. The neighbor gestured toward the garage with the burning point of her cigarette. The old women’s mouths opened into small dark holes. King’s hand crept over toward Clarke and latched on to his arm and Clarke felt his sister’s need of him spider across his skin.
    Their father pulled a shirt off a hanger and pulled it on.