“Maybe you could get some more from your mother,” she said.
It was a reference to an envelope that had turned up in her foyer. Slid under her front door. It was a note from my mother, saying something to the effect that her granddaughter needed to eat. With a check enclosed.
I guess Caroline had no idea how bad I’d felt about taking that money. I felt like accepting it from my mom should have come with forgiving her, but I couldn’t forgive her, so I felt like I shouldn’t have taken it. But it was my first and last months’ rent, and security deposit. I had no idea how to get by without it. So I’d pushed my feelings of guilt down into a sort of indigestion in my gut. And I’d cashed the check. But I sure as hell wasn’t going back to her and asking for more, then walking away and offering nothing in return. Not even a softening of my feelings.
I had reached the end of my patience with Caroline, even though I recognized her good intentions. I have a sore spot—I’m not big on people who want to wrap up all your problems neatly with their simple suggestions. How do people like that think anything became a problem in the first place if its solution was so simple?
Why can’t people just listen and then say something like “Yeah, that’s hard” in response? Why do they have to try to fix you before they can walk away?
I wanted to ask Caroline, “And then after those first couple of months, what? Go beg off her again? And then again? The idea was to stop leaning on her.”
But Etta and I were guests in her home. And it was kind of her to let us stay. So I said nothing.
“Besides,” Caroline added, “it’s not really fair to ask this Molly to babysit.”
“Where Molly?” Etta asked.
“She adores Etta,” I said to Caroline. Shamefully ignoring the actual Etta.
“But she’d need to go to school.”
It’s not as though I hadn’t thought of that.
“I was thinking I could use evenings to help her study for her GED.”
“A GED is not as good as a high school diploma.”
“Well . . . it’s almost as good. It’s a hell of a lot better than what she’s doing now.”
“Well, anyway,” she said, “she’s gone. So you’ll just have to make your plans without her.”
“Etta and I are going to relax and have a little playtime,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s been a long day. We’ll be out of your hair soon.”
“No problem. Don’t worry.” She handed the baby back to me. Etta looked relieved. She might have had her doubts about the conversation, too. “Sounds like you have everything pretty well worked out.”
Which was a stunningly out-of-touch statement after what I’d just told her. But I tried to just stick with the idea that she saw me as fixed because she wanted that for me.
I didn’t challenge it. I just let her walk away.
I only responded within myself, by vowing never to live in anybody else’s house again.
I was a grown woman. I had to get my life into my own hands. Possibly for the first time ever.
In the morning I went to see that odd boy again. In prison. For what I figured would be the last time.
I didn’t really believe it would be helpful. But I was running out of time. By Monday I would be working all day. And my actual physical search for Molly—which mostly entailed talking to homeless people who might have seen her—had been a fool’s errand anyway.
I had to take one last shot.
When an armed guard walked Denver Patterson into the visiting room, I almost thought he’d brought me the wrong guy. He looked so different. His cheeks were full and soft. He wasn’t as thin and agile as a whippet anymore. His eyes looked calm and not particularly searching. He no longer seemed interested in conquering the world.
“Oh,” he said, and sat down across from me at the table. “You. I guess Molly was wrong about you.”
He reached out to Etta. In a lazy way. She was sitting on my lap, and he just extended a finger and waved it up and down. She smiled and grabbed at it.
“Where Molly?” Etta asked.
I had no attention to spare, so I held her closer as a substitute for answering her.
“Wrong about me? About what? What did she say about me? You’ve seen her since last time I was here?”
“Yeah. She came in once.”
“Did she say where she was living?”
“More or less. But not in a whole lot of detail. She just said it was between the freeway and the river that’s not really a river. You know. They call it the LA River, but it’s usually just a dry concrete . . . what do you call that? Like a spillway.”
He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. Or scratched it. I’m not sure which. The movement seemed oddly slow. Like I was watching a sloth move its limbs. I wondered if the prison people had him sedated. Or if he’d found a way to do it on his own.
“That might help,” I said.
“Well, good luck with that. Because there are quite a few miles of river. And quite a few miles of freeway.”
I felt all the air come out of me. I felt like a punctured tire.
He was right. She had disappeared into the fabric of the city. I was a fool to think I’d ever see her again.
Etta noticed the drop in my mood and fidgeted on my lap. Just on the edge of crying. I held her even more closely in the hope I could prevent it.
“So what did she say about me?” I asked.
I figured it would hurt. But I still needed to know.
“Say about you?” He asked it almost sleepily. As if he’d dozed off for a second. Forgotten we were talking.
“You said she was wrong about me. Wrong about what?”
“Oh. That. Yeah. She said you don’t really care about her. You just don’t want to feel guilty.”
I was right. It hurt.
He must have seen that on my face, because he rushed to soften the message.
“I mean, she didn’t say it like you were a bad person or anything. I think she figures you want to care about her, but your caring only goes just so far. You know? Like you’ll get her back in foster care and then walk away and figure she’ll be fine. But maybe she won’t be, but you’ll be out of the picture by then. I hope you know what I mean.”
I sighed. For a minute I didn’t answer.
I not only knew what he meant—and what Molly had meant—but she wasn’t far enough from wrong. The last night she’d seen me, I wasn’t utterly far from the place of caring he had described. Not far enough for my tastes, anyway.
“So how will you meet up with her when you get out?” I asked.
Because, despite what they both thought about me, I really, honestly cared about Molly’s welfare by that time. Maybe it had been a surprise to me, too. I just knew I was utterly haunted by not knowing where she was. By not knowing if she would be okay. By not being able to help her be okay.
I had promised I’d help her be okay.
“I won’t,” he said.
I couldn’t help noticing that he averted his eyes on that conversational note. A dose of shame, from the look of it.
“What do you mean you won’t?”
“I’m going to Kentucky when I get out.”
“And she’s not free to come along?”
“Well, I can’t really bring her.” For an uncomfortable length of time, he didn’t say why not. Then he leaned over the table. Almost conspiratorially. “It’s a relationship thing,” he said in a soft voice. As though he’d just told me a secret.
“You’re abandoning her for a relationship?”
It came out sharp. And accusing.
He sat back hard in his chair. I’d probably had no right to say it to him. How many friendships had I let drop when I’d married David? Then again, that hadn’t left any of those friends out on the street alone.
“You’re a fine one to talk!” he shot back.
“Me? What did I do?”
“Your mother threw her out of the garage.”
“Well, I’m no
t my mother. And I’ve put my mother out of my life over that. And I’m trying to find Molly so I can make it up to her.”
Etta, who was quite sensitive to disagreements, notably did not ask “Where Molly?” at the mention of that familiar name. She had fallen into her Quiet Girl mode.
His anger seemed to abandon him. And that abandonment left him noticeably deflated. He rubbed his eyes in a manner that hid them from my view. He was no longer sitting across the table from a person who had treated Molly as selfishly as he had. I could see the effect that was having on his mood.
“We both knew it would happen,” he said. His voice sounded mouse-tiny. He did not uncover his eyes. He had a conscience regarding the situation. He just wasn’t about to let it get in his way. “I mean, one of us was bound to meet someone.”
“And you think she knew that would be the end of your friendship?”
“She must’ve known,” he said.
He dropped the hand that had been rubbing his eyes. There’s only just so long you can pretend you need to rub your eyes. He kept his gaze averted. Looked down at the table.
“It just happened,” he said. “I didn’t know I was about to meet someone. Especially not in here. It was a total surprise. These things just happen.”
“A second ago you told me it was always inevitable and you both knew to expect it.”
“This is getting us nowhere,” he said.
I had to agree. But I agreed silently.
I rummaged around in my purse. Etta tried to help me. I tried to avoid her help. Tried to keep the purse out of her reach without being unkind. Otherwise I’d never find what I was looking for.
I had nothing to write on, so I tore a deposit slip out of my checkbook. Then I tore off the account number, because I didn’t want him to have it. I dug for a pen. Found only a pencil instead.
I wrote down the address at Caroline’s. Then the address of my new apartment. I carefully noted that the apartment address was only good after the first of the month. Which was coming up fast.
“In case you see her again,” I said.
And I slid it across the table to him.
He picked it up and stared at it for a long time. Like it might say any number of things. Like it was full of complex messages he needed time to decipher.
“Think you’ll see her again?” I asked.
“Not sure.”
His voice sounded cool. Calm and emotionally detached. I had made an enemy of him with my words. Put him on the defensive. Now I was unsure that I could count on him even to do this simple favor for Molly. Because it was also a favor for me.
“I tried to get her to promise she’d come see me one more time,” he added.
“But she wouldn’t promise?”
“No. She did.”
“But you have a reason to think she’ll break that promise?”
“Just something about the way she said it.”
“I don’t know her as well as you do. But she doesn’t seem like the sort of person who promises something if she has no intention of doing it.”
His eyes came up to mine. For the first time in a very long time. Maybe even the first time for that visit. They drilled into me. It made me distinctly ill at ease.
“Thing is,” he said, “there’s only just so many times people can break their promises to you before you start figuring everybody does it.”
That just sat on the table between us for a long time. Neither one of us seemed to want to touch it.
“Well, anyway,” I said. “If you do see her, please give her a message for me. Please tell her I need her.”
His eyes flickered up to mine again. Differently this time. As if he were chasing something that had recently eluded him.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me get this straight.”
“It’s a pretty simple message.”
“I’m trying to be sure I know who the ‘I’ is, and who the ‘her’ is. So if I see her, you want me to say, ‘Brooke says she needs you.’”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Need her how?”
“Just send her to one of those two addresses,” I said. “Depending on the date. And I’ll work that out with her directly.”
Then I caught the guard’s eye, and nodded. And he nodded back. And he let me out.
I figured I’d never see Denver Patterson again. And that was more than fine with me.
It was whether I’d ever see Molly again that concerned me. And I was no closer to an answer regarding that question. And Etta would ask again. And again. And again.
“Where Molly?”
I had no idea how long it would take her to forget to ask. I had no idea what to tell her.
I dropped Etta off at her day care, knowing it would cost me. Knowing I was falling more deeply into debt. It seemed to be a spiral with no end.
It was only an hour or two after going to see that boy in jail. I had to check out what he’d told me. I had to see how many people had set up camp between a piece of freeway and a piece of the LA River.
I couldn’t free myself from the feeling of having to try.
I had no map, and my car was too old and cheap to come equipped with navigation. So I just drove to a part of the city that I knew for a fact had the concrete river running through it.
I pulled over and stopped on the shoulder, despite knowing it was blatantly illegal to do so. I put on my flashers. That way, in case a cop came by, it might give the impression that it was an emergency stop.
With the wind and the din of cars racing behind me, I stared down at the “river,” running my eyes along its length until it faded to a pinpoint in the gray distance. It was still flowing with the last runoff of water from the recent rain. It went on forever. Or anyway, it seemed to.
The freeway didn’t parallel it everywhere, but off in the distance there were other freeways. Some ran at an angle to its concrete banks, crossing over it as overpasses. So many freeways. So much river.
I breathed out a long breath that I guess I hadn’t known I’d been holding.
I wasn’t down there. So I had no idea how much room there would be in these various places for homeless encampments.
I would go down there.
But I knew now, in my gut, that it wouldn’t do much good. Even armed with my new information, this strip of city was still one large haystack. And Molly was still one small needle.
The first place I stopped seemed to have people living directly under the freeway. And, oddly, it had something like an entrance. Stacks and stacks of pallets and wooden crates had been used to build a sort of wall around the camp. There seemed to be only one opening. Only one way in.
Beside that opening sat a man in his forties, his back inside a small, open tent. He smoked lazily, his eyes closed. The hazy sun burned down onto his bald scalp, which appeared sunburned.
He seemed to be something like a guard at the gate, though that might have been an accidental effect. It made me think of the mirror opposite of Saint Peter. Tending the gate to a place where, in this iteration, nobody wanted to go.
“Excuse me,” I said.
He opened his eyes. Fixed me with a gaze that was not aggressive. It was also not curious. Looking back, I’m not sure it was much of anything. He just noticed me there, standing over him. And seemed to accept it.
“I’m looking for a girl. Teenage girl. Reddish hair. Well, if it’s clean, it looks reddish. Sixteen. Goes by Molly.”
He squinted his eyes at me. It might have indicated something about his opinion of me and my question. It might have been that the sun was at my back.
“You a reporter?” he asked.
His voice sounded surprisingly high and clear. Like the voice of a boy in a choir.
“No. I’m not a reporter. Why would I be a reporter?”
He shrugged. He still seemed only half-interested in my presence.
“No idea,” he said. “But whenever somebody like you comes around here asking questions, it turns out they’re a reporter.”<
br />
“No. Not me. I just know this girl. And I’m trying to find her.”
“To give her a better life,” he said.
It struck me as an odd thing to say.
“Well . . . yes.”
“So same general idea as a reporter.”
“If you don’t mind,” I said, “I realize you don’t owe me anything, including information. But if you could just tell me if there’s a girl that age here . . .”
“Nope,” he said.
“Nope there’s no girl here, or nope you won’t tell me?”
“Little of both,” he said.
“Can I just go in and look around?”
“I wouldn’t. Everybody who’s here now is still trying to sleep.”
I glanced at my watch, vaguely wishing I hadn’t worn it. It had been a college graduation present from my mother. It had been expensive.
“It’s after eleven in the morning,” I said.
He shrugged again. “Don’t know what to tell you.”
I started to walk in. Look around for myself. Despite a cold hammering of fear all through my chest and gut.
He stopped me with words.
“She’s not here,” he said. “Youngest people here are like twenty, but anyway, we’re all boys. But for a dollar I’ll show you where the really big camp is.”
I dug a dollar out of my pants pocket. I was careful to make it seem like the only bill I had in there. I had purposely left my purse locked in the trunk. Because once I came down here and made it clear I had a little money, what was to stop someone from taking it all?
“That’s the ticket,” he said, and took the money from me.
He picked up a stick. I thought it was a bad sign, despite its being a fairly small stick. But I was wrong. It was just a writing tool for him.
He proceeded to use it to draw me a map in the gravelly dirt.
When I’d parked again and walked to the big camp, I saw it was more of a sprawl. A miniature city. It had no makeshift walls like the last city. It just spread itself out from underneath the freeway, through the vacant lots that sloped down to the concrete bed of the river.
Brave Girl, Quiet Girl: A Novel Page 25