“Early on, but Rick kicked her out. I think it was because she wouldn’t sleep with him but he said it was because she wasn’t doing her share of the chores.”
“But you stayed in touch with her.” It was a statement not a question.
Karen looked at me suspiciously. Her shoulders tensed.
“Gus told me you were the only one who visited her when she was in prison.”
Karen seemed to relax. “I felt bad. She took the rap for a lot of other people. They made her into a symbol. It could have been any one of us.”
“So you were one of the Amazons?”
Karen looked startled.
“I read about them in the paper.”
“You should talk to your mom if you want to know more about that.” Karen’s voice was prim. She re-arranged some papers on her desk.
“I can’t believe my mother was one of the Amazons.” It was hard to imagine my mother running through campus, bare-breasted, spraying slogans on buildings.
Karen merely looked at me with those steely eyes. “Ask her! Ask her if she was one of us!”
I remembered what Gus and Rick had said about an informant. “You think my mother was an informant?”
Karen made a little sideways nod with her head. “She was the only one who wasn’t there that night. And the police were waiting for us.” She paused. “I always thought your dad took Ellie’s case partly out of guilt over what your mother did.” She straightened some more of her papers. “She’s certainly taken a different path than the rest of us.”
“You mean my mother?”
“Just look at her now. Married to Robb Ross!” She pursed her lips. “Well, they deserve each other.”
Later I wished I had followed up on that comment but at the time I tried to steer the conversation away from my mother and towards Ellie. “I understand you visited her while she was in prison. What was that like for Ellie?”
“I really didn’t get much of a chance to talk to her because she wanted to spend all of her time with Sky.”
“You took her daughter?”
“Yes, the state let me have custody of her since Ellie had no relatives who wanted to raise her. I was there are at her birth, you know. It was a magical experience. I still remember coming out of the hospital and seeing the sun rise over the mountains. The whole sky was pink. It was like the whole world was new.
“And what about the dad? Was he there?”
Karen shifted in her chair and looked away. “Ellie never talked about him. Just said he wasn’t interested.”
“So when Ellie got out, you had to give up Sky?”
To my surprise, Karen’s eyes filled with tears. She tried to smile, while blinking them back. “Hardest thing I ever had to do.” She pulled a Kleenex out of a box on her desk.
“You didn’t think Ellie was a good mother?”
“She was great actually. Everything she did, she did for Sky.”
“Joining Weevil?” I was shocked.
“She wouldn’t have done that if not for Sky,” Karen said, her lips pressed tight.
“What do you mean? She thought robbing banks would help her daughter?”
“I can’t really explain it,” Karen said. She drummed her fingers on the desk. “It doesn’t matter anyway. It didn’t work out the way she planned.”
“So you knew she was involved with them?”
“Of course, I did. We were best friends. I tried to warn her not to trust…” She stopped, blinked her eyes. “I tried to warn her, but she wouldn’t listen. Ellie always went her own way.”
“What happened to Sky after the bank robbery?”
“I tried to adopt her but the state wasn’t having any of it. I think they thought I would somehow manage to smuggle her back to Ellie.” She wiped at her eyes. “It was such a shame. Here I was, the most consistent person in Sky’s life, and they wouldn’t let me have her.” She choked back more tears. “It got me going though. I went back to school, got a degree in social work, and I’ve focused on working in the foster care system. If I wasn’t going to be able to make a difference in one kid’s life, I would make a difference for a whole bunch of kids.”
She waved her hand at the bulletin board over the filing cabinets and I saw they were full of photos of kids, smiling, standing with their parents. “I’ve permanently placed over two hundred children into good, loving homes in the ten years I’ve been working here.”
“Do you ever hear from Sky?”
Karen shook her head impatiently. “No, that’s not the way it works. I mean, in some cases, contact with a previous foster parent might be appropriate. But it seldom is. You want to have the child bond with the new parents.”
“What about Ellie?”
Karen frowned. “What about her?”
“Do you suppose she ever contacts her daughter?”
Karen’s eyes narrowed. “She wouldn’t be able to. No one knows where Sky is. Not even me. Why do you keep asking about Sky?”
“Just curious, I guess.”
“You always were the curious one,” Karen observed, relaxing a little. “How’s your sister?”
“She’s doing great,” I said. “Graduated from nursing school. Married. Has two kids. Lives out in Issaquah.” And still my mother’s favorite daughter, though I didn’t say that.
“And your dad?” Karen leaned forward a little.
“Down in L.A., working as a divorce lawyer,” I said.
She shook her head.
“Too bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your dad was a terrible lawyer,” Karen said, with a curl of her lip. “He had trouble with appropriate boundaries.”
I thought she was referring to the scandal that caused him to leave town. He had several affairs with women who he was representing while they filed for divorce, and one of them reported him. His license was suspended and shortly afterwards he left for LA, where, either they didn’t care about little things like affairs with clients or he had cleaned up his act. I didn’t ask. He didn’t tell.
Just then, another woman poked her head in the door. It was Mrs. Williams, from the front desk. She frowned when she saw me. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s OK, Linda,” Karen said.
“Well, I just came to tell you that your three o’clock is here,” Linda said with a little sniff, to let me know what she thought about my subverting procedure.
“That’s OK, we’re done here,” Karen said firmly.
“Can I call you if I have more questions?” I asked.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Karen said.
Chapter 15
Karen Eveschild
Karen always said she was born to be a caretaker. Her father was a busy doctor, who spent more and more of his time out of the house, always claiming he was overworked. Her mother was an invalid, who spent more and more of her time in bed, always complaining about vague, unspecified pains. Karen fetched her books, plumped up her pillows, cooked her meals, and doled out her pills, which was the worst, since her mother was always begging for more of the pain-killers her husband prescribed for her.
At school, Karen liked to play with the younger children. She felt more comfortable with them than with kids her age. They looked up to her and she watched over them. She was especially attracted to kids who were getting picked on. She took great pride in helping build their self-esteem.
Karen was an only child—her mother sometimes claimed it was Karen’s birth that had caused her poor health—and she worried about leaving home. Who would care for her mother? That question became even more pressing when Karen was a sophomore in high school. Her father left to go live with the woman who had been his mistress for the past ten years. He walked away without ever looking back at his wife and his daughter and the nice house in which they lived in Downers Grove, Illinois.
But then to everyone’s surprise, Karen’s mother rose up from her bed and found herself a new man. He loved taking care of her and Karen was no longer need
ed. So she applied to colleges, got accepted by all of them, and picked the one that was farthest from home: the University of Washington.
College was a revelation. The freedom went to her head. She was no longer bound to any obligations, to any role, to any particular identity. For a while, she tried them all on: Wild girl. Poet. Druggie. She even pledged a sorority. But in the end, she couldn’t shake the serious core of her nature. She gravitated towards classes in the Humanities that dealt with people, classes like Sociology and Psychology, where they studied the effects of poverty and racism and sexism.
The women’s consciousness raising group was her idea but Ellie was the one who found most of the participants, because, face it, Ellie was the one with the friends. Karen was still a loner, the person who stood in shadow on the edge of the group.
Karen met Ellie in one of her classes—Images of Women in the Media. Karen felt a great deal of sympathy for Ellie. Very few people knew what Ellie’s early life had been like. And no matter how tough Ellie appeared, Karen knew she had a soft heart. That was made her such an ideal leader. She inspired confidence in people because of her strength but she was animated by her passion.
It was Ellie who invited Karen to live at the RAG house, and so it was ironic that Ellie got kicked out, while Karen stayed. Karen suffered from the sidelines as she watched her friend make a number of bad choices, but that was Ellie. She had no fear, as far as Karen could tell. She was willing to try anything: any drug, any man, any opportunity for mayhem.
Like the Amazons. Karen went along with the idea but she never felt like it was right. The other women seemed to get off on running bare-breasted through campus, shrieking and throwing rocks, but Karen didn’t see how this was creating change. Ellie argued they were raising awareness. Karen thought it was rather silly.
When Ellie got her hands on the grenade, that’s when Karen got really freaked out. She begged Ellie not to use it but Ellie wouldn’t budge. Karen was the one responsible for casing the building to make sure it would be empty that night. And it was Karen who called in the warning to the campus police. And so Karen felt she was responsible when the janitor died, even though Ellie had thrown the grenade. Every year, she went to the cemetery on the anniversary of the bombing and left flowers on the grave of the janitor: Kirby Jackson.
The grief and the guilt scattered the Amazons. Ellie was arrested and when she was released from jail, pending trial, Karen rented a little bungalow near Green Lake so Ellie would have a nice place to stay. By then, Karen recognized that she was in love with Ellie. She figured that Ellie knew it too. She was just waiting for the day when Ellie would make a move, would transform their friendship into a romance.
Then Ellie announced that she was pregnant. She was happy about it. She didn’t think the jury would send a pregnant woman to prison. She refused to say who the father was. Karen didn’t care because whoever he was, he wasn’t around. It was Karen who made sure Ellie got to her doctor’s appointments at the newly opened Free Clinic and plied her with healthy food (she couldn’t convince her to stop smoking or drinking). They pored over baby books together looking for baby names. In the end, Ellie got her way with Sky. Karen wanted to name the baby Renee.
She began to dream about the two of them raising the baby together. An unconventional family, for sure, but then everything was unconventional then. Karen would fix up the garden, plant roses, make soup. She had a job. She could pay for their expenses. Let Ellie stay home with their daughter. Or maybe they would enroll the baby in the Rainbow Children preschool so Ellie could pursue her dream of becoming a lawyer. She came away glowing from the strategy sessions with her defense team.
But it didn’t work out the way she hoped. After a three day deliberation, the jury found Ellie guilty of second degree murder. Karen was in the courtroom when the decision was read. She saw the shock ripple through Ellie’s body. She had really believed that she would be found innocent, despite the overwhelming evidence against her. But the greatest shock appeared in the face of her lawyer: Marty Stern. His face went white. He began to tremble violently.
“This is an outrage!” he cried, getting up from his seat and rushing towards the jury box, his tie flapping, his arms swinging. “What’s wrong with you? Are you idiots? Fools?”
He had to be restrained by the other lawyers on his team and pushed into a side room, from which his muffled outcries could still be heard. Ellie, on the other hand, stood with head bowed, as she was ushered out of the courtroom in handcuffs.
Ellie was stoic about the decision and her sentence of twenty-five years in prison. “I did throw the grenade that killed that poor man,” she told Karen on one of her first visits to the prison.
Chapter 16
By the time I got home, I was exhausted, emotionally and physically. I put my notebook on the desk and went upstairs to take a shower. The hot water beat down on my body, washing away the sticky heat, the sweat, the stress. I was also hoping it would wash away the unpleasant truths I was learning about my own parents. I did feel better when I stepped out of the tub, put on a pair of shorts and a camisole top, and wandered downstairs. I let the ferrets out and went into the kitchen to look for something to eat. I was rooting through the refrigerator when I heard a knock at the door.
I looked out the peephole and saw a man in the khaki-colored uniform of the King County Sheriffs.
He knocked again impatiently.
I pulled open the front door, leaving the screen between us. I needed it anyway to keep the ferrets inside, although they were nowhere in sight.
He was a big man. He had broad shoulders and a belly that hung over his belt. His hair, greasy and black, was receding in the front but long in the back and pulled into a short ponytail. Not a good look. Judging by the pouches and dark circles under his eyes, he was a heavy drinker or suffering from liver disease. I thought he was about fifty. Probably nearing retirement.
“Miss Stern,” he said, slipping open a wallet which contained a badge. “Fred Proctor of the King County Sheriff’s Department. We’re conducting an investigation and we have a few questions to ask you.”
“Okay,” I said cautiously. I wasn’t sure why a King County Sheriff would want to talk to me. “I’ve already talked to the Seattle Police.”
“This is on a different matter,” he said. “Can I come in?” He glanced around. I could see the sweat gleaming on the top of his shiny head.
“I guess so,” I said. I felt uneasy but couldn’t think of any reason to say No. When I opened the door, he charged into my living room, his hand on his belt as if someone might be ready to ambush him.
My living room is unassuming. A big sofa under the front windows. In front of it, a coffee table littered with magazines I never have time to read. My desk is set up beside the front door, so I can look out the window at the interior courtyard of my apartment building while I work.
He seemed most interested in my desk, craning his neck to look at it.
“What’s this about?” I asked, stepping in front of him to block his view, meanwhile wondering if there was anything visible he should not see.
“What are you working on?” he asked.
“I don’t see how that’s relevant to your investigation,” I said.
“Let me be the judge of that.”
There was a thud in the next room. I recognized the sound: one of the ferrets had knocked over the potted palm again. They love to dig in the dirt and if they dislodge a sufficient quantity, the plant—top-heavy due to the weight of its fronds—tips over.
Sure enough, I saw Bandit go loping by, heading for the shelter of the kitchen. The ferrets always hide there when they know they’ve been bad.
Fred whirled around and drew his gun. Half crouching, he advanced on the door to the dining room.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Those are my pets.”
But he wasn’t listening.
“Come out where I can see you with your hands up,” Fred snarled.
I had to stifl
e a giggle at the thought of my ferrets responding to this command.
“Hold on,” I said, coming up behind him.
He motioned me back with his arm. “Stay back!” He repeated his command. “Come out where I can see you with your hands up.”
I heard a faint clink of metal. Bandit was no doubt hiding in the pan cupboard.
Fred had reached the door to the dining room and scanned the room carefully, his head swiveling left, then right. It was a small room, about nine feet square, with just enough room for one old wooden table, the ferret’s cage in the corner and the hapless palm tree, which lay on its side on the floor
Fred turned his attention left to the kitchen, and edged his way into that space. It would have been obvious within a few seconds that the kitchen, which was about the size of a walk-in closet, was empty as well. The door at the end might have provided an escape but it was tightly closed, with the chain fastened.
“What’s going on?” he asked, keeping his eye on the door. “Are you harboring a fugitive?”
I pointed at the fallen palm tree, and the tiny dirty paw prints which led from the toppled pot into the cupboards of the kitchen.
“My ferrets like to play in the dirt. But they know they’re not supposed to so they’re hiding.” I looked at his gun, then at him. “I’ll show you, if you put that away.”
“Alright, but no funny business,” he said. He shoved the gun back into his belt.
I squeezed past him, knelt in front of the cupboard and opened the door. Back in the shadows of the corner I saw Bandit’s gleaming dark eyes. I wondered where Trixie was.
“Come here, you,” I said, reaching for him. He lay limp in my hand like a tiny furry stole. This was his usual posture when he had done something wrong.
I got up and turned around to show the deputy. His eyes got wide and his mouth crumpled. He backed away, into the dining room, holding up one hand.
“What is that?” he asked. “Is that some kind of rodent?”
“A ferret,” I said, scratching Bandit between the ears. As usual, this makes Bandit grin, exposing rows of tiny, sharp white teeth.
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