Say Nice Things About Detroit by Scott Lasser Read Free Book Online Page B

decide not to do drugs. We’ll build from there.”
    â€œI know why my father sent you,” Marlon said.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œ ’Cause, like, what’s he gonna say? Be like me, work in a smelly steel plant they gonna close anyhow? Don’t get no education, drop outta high school?”
    â€œYour father has a high school diploma.”
    â€œGED,” Marlon said. Even the old man didn’t stick it out in high school. Dirk, of course, had a college degree, which meant that at this moment Marlon had to stand there and listen to him.
    â€œYou know,” Dirk said, “you do drugs, and I can bust you. And I will.”
    â€œHey, you the one with the big black Mercedes with the Blow Punk stereo and the subwoofer under the back seat. You just like playing Mr. Drug Dealer, if you ask me.”
    â€œI didn’t,” Dirk said.
    â€œYou did.”
    â€œI didn’t ask you, Marlon.”
    â€œI’m just saying.”
    Marlon could see he’d hit a chord. Not easy to do with Dirk. The man never got riled. He was cold and calculating, something he probably got from his white mother.
    â€œI risk my life,” Dirk said, “to clean up the streets. I’m just saying I’d appreciate it if you did your little part.”
    â€œThese streets ain’t never gonna be clean,” Marlon told him. “I’d rather have the car.”
    Â 

2006
    I
    T hey drove to Palmer Woods, her mother silent in the passenger seat, staring blankly out the window. They were in the city limits now, but it was quite nice, streets lined with trees just starting to turn. Dirk had bought a house here on FBI pay. Now Shelly lived in it alone. Michelle was a journalist at a small paper in Texas. Why Texas Carolyn didn’t know, but she could guess: Texas was far away.
    Shelly had invited them. She wanted to give Tina a photo album, dozens of pictures, all of them now digitally copied, printed, and placed in a leather-bound album. What a family, Carolyn thought, where a mother doesn’t have pictures of her son. Certainly there were no framed photos in the townhouse, and Carolyn didn’t remember any from their home. Dirk’s was a life hidden from sight.
    Carolyn asked her mother why she hadn’t raised her son.
    â€œThe world today is different than it was then. I did what I thought was best for him.”
    â€œBy giving him away?”
    Her mother turned from the window, looked at her. “You know nothing,” she said.
    â€œI’m just asking, Mom. You sent your son to live with someone else. Why?”
    â€œI am through talking about it.”
    â€¢ • •
    T HE HOUSE WAS brick, elegantly laid out, with a turret at each end and a Tudor-style roof. The front door was wood and enormous. When Shelly swung it open she seemed small, though in fact she was just shy of six feet tall.
    â€œOh, I’m so glad you came,” Shelly said, as if she half expected that they wouldn’t. She led them to the living room, lined with bookcases, each book without its dust jacket. Shelly offered drinks.
    â€œA vodka tonic,” Tina said.
    It was two in the afternoon. What the hell, Carolyn thought.
    â€œMake it two.”
    Carolyn sat on the couch with her mother. They looked at the album, lying there on the table. Her mother made no move for the book. Carolyn was curious; her mother, she guessed, was fearful. Carolyn tried to imagine what it might be like to live here, among the long shadows and all those books without covers. It held a certain appeal. Sometimes in California she felt depressed by all the light.
    â€œAre you okay?” she asked her mother. Lately she asked this often. Carolyn felt the loss of Natalie deeply, as if some vital part of her were missing. She knew she would never be the same, but Natalie was her sister and not her child, and nothing she felt could compare to what her mother was going through.
    Shelly returned with the