The Cost of Knowing, page 14
The wife is on the local litter patrol. The husband regularly attends town hall meetings.
The wife is a natural peacekeeper. The husband is a natural protector.
The wife hears a noise outside. The husband gets up to investigate.
8 The Block
IT’S WEIRD TO BE driving through the suburbs toward a dozen flashing police cars parked haphazardly down the block without a trace of fear.
For once, I don’t have time to be afraid.
I have to get to Isaiah.
The drive home was a blur. I’m sure I thought about something along the way, but it just felt like I was in an alternate dimension. I don’t even remember watching the road. All I can think about now is that white bag I can already see about twenty feet beyond the caution tape. I park in the middle of the street, just before the small crowd of people begins. A few heads turn to look at me, and I look down at my lap as I fumble for my keys. I don’t want their pity. I just want to see Isaiah.
I think of the last thing I said to him, last night. What was it?
Yeah. We can do it tomorrow.
How was I supposed to know we couldn’t?
My eyes are trained on that bag beyond the caution tape as I climb out of the car. Everyone’s talking like it’s a normal day. It’s cold out here for a summer day, overcast and a little windy. I fold my arms against myself and wonder if I’m shaking from the wind or from my nerves. My head is throbbing. It smells like barbecue out here, and I wonder if someone’s been grilling this early in the morning, and why it’s a strange smell for such a day.
My little brother is probably dead, and people a few houses away are barbecuing.
Everyone from this block is standing out here, most of them chatting to each other and looking on at the scene.
“What happened?” asks someone’s voice nearby I don’t recognize.
“Robbery, they said,” says someone else.
“Is that the Johnsons’ house?” asks someone.
“No, the Martins’.”
Confusion settles into my head like a cold salve, a welcome reprieve from the guilt and dread that was once there.
The Martins’ house?
What the hell was Isaiah doing down the street near the Martins’ house? How did he end up in the cross fire?
I look between the mass of people, most of whom are taller than me by a few inches. I step forward into the crowd, past Mr. Jabbery, who is holding his wife Marge close, the couple whose lawn Isaiah and I mowed only a couple of times before her nephew came back to live with them and he took over mowing again. I keep my head facing forward, hoping they don’t look at me before I pass them.
They don’t.
The body bag looks like a bag of anything else. But it’s bigger up close.
Too big.
I hear a familiar voice.
“Alex?”
It’s frantic, it’s squeaky, and it’s almost unrecognizable until I match the voice with the owner. Mrs. Zaccari is scrambling down our driveway in my direction, wrapping a cardigan around herself against the cold and glancing between me and the scene.
“Alex, your aunt and I thought you were at work. What are you doing back?”
She throws her arms around me and rests her chin on the top of my head. She’s holding me like she would hold a small child, pressing my head against her chest and running her hand along the back of my head. I think the last person to hold me like this was Mom. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. She smells like barbecue smoke.
I look up and spot Aunt Mackie across the scene, right in between two of the cop cars, discussing something important with one of the officers, probably answering questions about the house where the robbery happened. The Martins’ house. Maybe the Martins aren’t home to answer questions right now and Aunt Mackie is the only one with details about the house.
She’s so engrossed in her conversation that she doesn’t see me, even though I’m only ten feet away. And then I put two and two together. A body bag that’s too big, and an Aunt Mackie who’s way too focused on the conversation to also be grieving the loss of her nephew.
“Where’s Isaiah?” I ask, feeling a lift in my chest as I look up at Mrs. Zaccari. She seems surprised at my question, and then she looks around a bit.
“I—I don’t—” she answers.
“Alex?”
I’d know that singsongy voice anywhere, and my eyes follow its source. There, in the open front door of the house—Aunt Mackie’s house—stands Isaiah. Whole. Alive. His eyes lock onto me, and he leaps off the front porch and sprints toward me, and I’m suddenly on high alert again. What if he trips and falls and lands face-first on the concrete? What if a distracted driver barrels down the street and hits him? What if it’s been an off day for these officers and one of them sees a suspicious running Black boy, instead of seeing my little brother?
I decide to close the distance, taking on as much of the risk myself as I can.
I take off sprinting toward him, meeting him in the middle of the blocked-off street, and he throws his arms around my neck. I pick him up without thinking, my arms around his middle, my hands against his back. A vision of the gray T-shirt he’s wearing flashes into my head, and I blink it away. As I set him down again, his grip on me doesn’t weaken. I can feel him shaking, and he sniffs, his face pressed against my pink apron, which I totally forgot I was still wearing.
“I thought it was you,” he whimpers.
“Huh?” I ask, unable to piece together what he means.
“I thought you were—” he says.
Oh.
He thought it was me.
“I thought it was you,” I say. “On the news. I thought—”
He shakes his head, but his gaze seems to tell me he understands. Either one of us could’ve become a hashtag today.
“Come here, man,” I say, pulling him close, careful to keep my hands balled into fists. “I’m right here, okay?”
I feel him nod against me.
“I just went to work,” I say. “I’m sorry. I asked Talia to tell you I’d be at work and she said of course she’d—”
Then dread settles into my throat.
“Where’s Talia?” I ask, pulling his shoulders away from me and looking down into his eyes. They’re flickering, like he doesn’t know what to say, and I can’t tell if it’s because he doesn’t know where she is, or because she’s in the…
No, she’s not. I saw her in my vision, standing somewhere, with black hair again, in the black dress she bought yesterday, glaring up at me like I’m her mortal enemy. She’s fine.
Her voice confirms it.
“Alex?” it calls from somewhere far away. I look up and spot her standing in Aunt Mackie’s doorway, in a pair of my gray sweatpants and a loose white T-shirt, with her neon-blue hair pinned up into a messy bun. She’s probably been at the house all morning, like she usually is in the summer, spending the night so often the neighbors probably think she lives there. She spots me, and her eyes get huge, and she shuts the door behind her and sprints down the driveway.
“Alex, oh my God, I’ve been texting you nonstop!” she screams frantically, practically tackling me in a hug. I pull her close, my fists closed against her back. I’m careful not to touch her bare arms.
“Talia,” I say. I don’t know what else to say to her, and I’m thankful when she fills in the silence.
“I was so scared,” she says. “We were scared. Someone broke into the Martins’ house and there was a gunshot and screaming and… I didn’t know what to do. I told Isaiah to stay in the house, but when he looked out the window and saw you, he just—”
“I wasn’t just going to leave Alex out here,” he says.
Something sour settles in my stomach at the thought that Isaiah might have risked falling down the porch steps or getting hit by a car, or shot, just to make sure I wasn’t out here alone.
“Isaiah,” she begins, pulling away from me and looking down at him with a furrowed brow. “After what happened out here today, I don’t think being around all these officers is a good idea.”
“Why not?” asks Mrs. Zaccari from behind me.
Oh God. As if today wasn’t anxiety-inducing enough, now my little brother’s employer is asking me why I, a Black kid, am uneasy with having an army of police parked outside my house.
“Uh,” begins Talia, glancing at me before addressing Mrs. Zaccari again. “No reason. Just, it’s a lot of men around with guns.”
Mrs. Zaccari folds her arms and takes on the tone of a preschool teacher explaining something to her students.
“These guys are here to help,” she says. “I promise. I know there’s been a lot said about the Chicago PD on the news lately that comes from a place of fear and misunderstanding, but I promise you, with them here, we’re safe. My husband used to be on the force. And I, for one, think they’re here at just the right time, given the event happening tonight. We won’t have to worry about any suspicious people trying anything.”
I look to Talia, who’s looking at me, and I’m sure she’s asking the same question I am in my head: How do I explain to this woman that I’m a suspicious person just by looking how I look? Mrs. Zaccari would bake cookies for anyone on this block. She cares deeply about her family, and all of us who live here in Santiam, but until she spends a day as a Black man, I don’t think she’ll ever understand why the cops make me uneasy.
Mrs. Zaccari, realizing she’s getting nowhere with me or Talia, turns to Isaiah.
“You don’t want suspicious people creeping around our neighborhood, do you, hon?”
Isaiah glances at me for only a second, but it’s long enough to tell me he’s only saying what he has to. Then he shakes his head.
Mrs. Zaccari turns and looks out at the scene beyond the caution tape, and I follow her gaze out of habit. I notice Aunt Mackie staring at me. She’s standing alone now, the officer who she’d been talking to directing his attention to another officer farther down the street, right behind where the body is lying statue-still.
It hits me like a truck. Isaiah will be like that before the weekend is over.
I look away before I get sick.
A sharp voice slices through the air.
“Are you Mrs. Karen Zaccari?” it demands, commanding me to look up.
A tall, slender officer with fire-engine-red hair and a chocolate-brown beard is staring intently in our direction, but Mrs. Zaccari looks undeterred.
“I am,” she says, stepping forward, unfolding her arms, and shoving her hands in her pockets. Seeing the pockets thing startles me, because a move like that might get me killed.
“Ma’am, we have some questions for you and your husband. Would you mind stepping under the tape and joining us?”
He beckons with his hand and steps forward to pull the caution tape up so she can crouch under. I can’t hear what they’re saying anymore, but I’m half-shocked and half-impressed at how calm she was the whole time he was addressing her. I’m standing here trying not to shit my pants, and all he did was look in my direction. But I guess she doesn’t really need to be afraid. For her, the police are the good guys. For me? It’s different every day, depending on what I’m wearing, where my hands are, and how lucky I am.
“So,” I ask Talia hesitantly, unsure whether I want to know the answer. “Who’s, uh… I mean, who… was it?”
Talia sighs and folds her arms against her like she’s suddenly uncomfortable.
“Apparently that guy,” she says, motioning toward the body with her chin, “was staying at the Davidsons’ down the street through a vacation rental app, and while they were off at work, he broke into the Martins’ house next door.”
“Why?” asks Isaiah, looking up at her. His hands are in his pockets, and I wish he wouldn’t keep them there while we’re out here with all these officers. Talia shrugs and shakes her head.
“I’on know. People just do things sometimes, Isaiah.”
“So,” continues my little brother, “how’d he end up…”
Talia looks at me as if to apologize for what she’s about to tell him, and I don’t even have a guess as to what it could be. Did the guy fall on a freaking chain saw or something?
“Mr. Zaccari shot him.”
I freeze. Mrs. Zaccari’s husband?
The ex-cop?
A chill goes up my spine, and I scan the crowd for him.
“Where is he?” I ask.
“They’ve got him in the back of the car. They’re taking him in to ask him some questions.”
“Mr. Zaccari killed somebody?” asks Isaiah. I’m as shocked as he is. Mr. Zaccari is super quiet. He’s barely said a word to me or Isaiah in all the times we’ve been over there. Mrs. Zaccari does all the talking for both of them. We used to sit in their living room and watch cartoons if we finished mowing their lawn early. He was usually asleep in the armchair across the room from us, but he’d always wake up to hug us goodbye before we left and helped us smuggle away extra white chocolate macadamia nut cookies into our backpacks.
Mrs. Zaccari’s words from last night bubble up in my head again.
There’s so much crap out there in the world, MacKayla, outside Santiam. I want to make sure all our kids are safe.
Apparently, so does Mr. Zaccari.
But I guess it could’ve gone way worse. The robber could’ve chosen our house to rob. He could’ve stolen some of my vinyls. He could’ve taken Aunt Mackie’s jewelry.
He could’ve killed Isaiah.
But then, that’s assuming this guy was actually dangerous. What if he was lost? What if he went out to breakfast and came back to the wrong house, thinking he’d locked himself out? What if Isaiah had accidentally kicked his soccer ball over the Martins’ fence this morning?
Sure, the “robber” could’ve killed Isaiah.
But under the right circumstances, so could Mr. Zaccari.
I take a long, deep breath. Better this guy than my little brother, I guess. Anything to keep him around for even a little bit longer. I’m suddenly feeling dizzy, and a cold breeze raises goose bumps on my arms.
“Come on,” I say, motioning to the house. “Anyone else hungry? Let’s order something.”
“Actually,” says Talia, her eyes trained on mine, “Alex, I need to talk to you about something. Isaiah, why don’t you go inside and watch cartoons? Aunt Mackie brought home the new double rainbow Lucky Charms for you today—”
“Yes!” he exclaims, and he’s racing up the driveway to the front door before I can say anything. God, I wish he wouldn’t run so fast like that, especially across concrete, where he could bust his head open. I know he’s itching to face our fears, but do we have to face so many before the concert?
Shit.
“Hey,” Talia says, her voice breathy as she folds her arms and stares up at me with an expression that’s hard to read. “Mind if we take a walk?”
It’s really cold out here.
“Yeah,” I say. “Sure, okay.”
We turn away from the blockade of flashing red and blue and meander down the sidewalk together. She doesn’t say anything at first, and I wonder if she expects me to start the conversation. The birds are whistling like crazy out here, and I wonder if this is one of those the-birds-know-some-shit-is-about-to-go-down situations where I should actually be at home in the house with Isaiah. What if he burns down the house trying to turn on the oven or something?
“I owe you an apology,” says Talia, snapping me back to now.
I look over at her, and she shakes her head.
“I shouldn’t have tried to pressure you into having sex until you were ready. It’s just, these things usually go in reverse, you know? I didn’t want to be one of those girlfriends who can’t keep up, or is scared to.”
I guess I know what she means. I don’t talk to many people at school, but from the conversations I overhear in the halls, in hetero relationships it’s always the girlfriend who’s pressured into giving up the V-card first. None of the guys in my class seem to have apprehensions. Then again, none of the guys in my class seem to have weird premonitions induced by touching things, especially their girlfriends.
“It’s okay,” I say.
“No, it’s not,” she says. “It was wrong to expect you to be ready, and I’m sorry.”
It should bring me comfort, but it doesn’t. I’m the one who should be apologizing to her. I’m the one who’s been keeping her in the dark about this whole situation. I’ve been lying by not telling her about my power, and I can’t ever. Her apology just hurts, because I know it’s going to keep happening. She’s going to keep asking, and I’m going to keep turning her down, and eventually, she’ll get sick of me, or find a guy with some notches. And probably more muscles than me. And more inches.
“I appreciate it,” I say.
I do appreciate it, in the same way adults appreciate a small child bringing them a flower that’s actually a weed—it’s a nice gesture, but it doesn’t really fix anything. Eventually, the weed’s going to grow back.
“Hey,” she says, reaching for my arm. I instinctively flinch at her touch, forgetting I have nothing to worry about since my hands are in my pockets. Her face is full of questions. “You good?”
“Yeah,” I lie, my heart racing. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“What do you say about… just… spending time together instead? No sex, no pressure. We can just… talk? We don’t even have to kiss if you don’t want to.”
That’s the thing. I want to. She means, without knowing it, if you can’t.
I try to swallow the lump in my throat. Why am I still shaking inside? Why are my hands still sweaty? She just said no sex. I take a deep breath and wonder if I’m afraid of the physical, or something else.
“That… sounds like fun,” I say, hoping it doesn’t sound as unsure as I feel.
Am I… am I really afraid to spend time with her at all?
And why?
“Awesome. In that case,” she says, immediately perking up to her normal self again and hopping in front of me. She turns to face me and stops, reaching for my hands. But I’m quick with the reflexes. I loop my arms around her waist instead and pull her against me, careful to close my hands into fists behind her so I don’t actually touch anything. Her face is only inches from mine, but now I don’t care. We’re at least three blocks from my house. Out here, ain’t nothing happening between us. Nothing I have to worry about anyway.
