Morris hated how weak that sounded, and he hated that his mother had baited him into defending a position that didn’t need defending, that was self-evident to anyone with half a brain and any feelings at all.
‘Morris.’ Very softly. ‘Once I wanted to be the female version of Jimmy, just as you want to be Jimmy now. Jimmy Gold, or someone like him, is the island of exile where most teenagers go to wait until childhood becomes adulthood. What you need to see – what Rothstein finally saw, although it took him three books to do it – is that most of us become everyone. I certainly did.’ She looked around. ‘Why else would we be living here on Sycamore Street?’
‘Because you were stupid and let my father rob us blind!’
She winced at that (a hit, a palpable hit, Morris exulted), but then the sarcastic curl resurfaced. Like a piece of paper charring in an ashtray. ‘I admit there’s an element of truth in what you say, although you’re unkind to task me with it. But have you asked yourself why he robbed us blind?’
Morris was silent.
‘Because he refused to grow up. Your father is a potbellied Peter Pan who’s found some girl half his age to play Tinker Bell in bed.’
‘Put my books back or throw them in the trash,’ Morris said in a voice he barely recognized. To his horror, it sounded like his father’s voice. ‘I don’t care which. I’m getting out of here, and I’m not coming back.’
‘Oh, I think you will,’ she said, and she was right about that, but it was almost a year before he did, and by then she no longer knew him. If she ever had. ‘And you should read this third one a few more times, I think.’
She had to raise her voice to say the rest, because he was plunging down the hall, in the grip of emotions so strong he was almost blind. ‘Find some pity! Mr Rothstein did, and it’s the last book’s saving grace!’
The slam of the front door cut her off.
Morris stalked to the sidewalk with his head down, and when he reached it, he began to run. There was a strip mall with a liquor store in it three blocks away. When he got there, he sat on the bike rack outside Hobby Terrific and waited. The first two guys he spoke to refused his request (the second with a smile Morris longed to punch off his face), but the third was wearing thrift-shop clothes and walking with a pronounced list to port. He agreed to buy Morris a pint for two dollars, or a quart for five. Morris opted for the quart, and began drinking it beside the stream running through the undeveloped land between Sycamore and Birch Streets. By then the sun was going down. He had no memory of making his way to Sugar Heights in the boosted car, but there was no doubt that once he was there, he’d gotten into what Curd the Turd liked to call a mega jackpot.
Whose fault is it that you’re in here?
He supposed a little of the blame could go to the wino who’d bought an underage kid a quart of whiskey, but mostly it was his mother’s fault, and one good thing had come of it: when he was sentenced, there had been no sign of that sarcastic curl of a smile. He had finally wiped it off her face.
During prison lockdowns (there was at least one a month), Morris would lie on his bunk with his hands crossed behind his head and think about the fourth Jimmy Gold novel, wondering if it contained the redemption he had so longed for after closing The Runner Slows Down. Was it possible Jimmy had regained his old hopes and dreams? His old fire? If only he’d had two more days with it! Even one!
Although he doubted if even John Rothstein could have made a thing like that believable. Based on Morris’s own observations (his parents being his prime exemplars), when the fire went out, it usually went out for good. Yet some people did change. He remembered once bringing up that possibility to Andy Halliday, while they were having one of their many lunch-hour discussions. This was at the Happy Cup, just down the street from Grissom Books, where Andy worked, and not long after Morris had left City College, deciding what passed for higher education there was fucking pointless.
‘Nixon changed,’ Morris said. ‘The old Commie-hater opened trade relations with China. And Lyndon Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Bill through Congress. If an old racist hyena like him could change his spots, I suppose anything is possible.’
‘Politicians.’ Andy sniffed, as at a bad smell. He was a skinny, crewcut fellow only a few years older than Morris. ‘They change out of expediency, not idealism. Ordinary people don’t even do that. They can’t. If they refuse to behave, they’re punished. Then, after punishment, they say okay, yes sir, and get with the program like the good little drones they are. Look at what happened to the Vietnam War protestors. Most of them are now living middle-class lives. Fat, happy, and voting Republican. Those who refused to knuckle under are in jail. Or on the run, like Katherine Ann Power.’