The way she saw it, people got all caught up in the minutiae of who did what when and missed core emotional truths. If a few so-called facts needed a tweak here or there to help those people understand—or to distract them from investigating her prior life in Port Furlong—she’d be happy to supply them.
In this version, she was an only child. She liked starting out with something true. She said she’d never known her father—also true—and that her beloved mother had died of thyroid cancer in Ohio a year and a half before. Not true, but emotionally somewhat accurate. As it turned out, the Ohio tweak was ill considered, since her geography was poor, and Isaac, who had cousins there, seemed puzzled when she couldn’t place herself relative to Columbus or Cincinnati.
She plowed on, explaining she’d bounced around with distant family for months, each growing tired of having their den or living room taken over by a girl they hardly knew. In March, she was sent packing to Seattle to live with an aunt she had never met, only to come home one July evening to find the aunt’s apartment cleared out. She loaded the aunt up with lots of boyfriends, a drug habit, and a cruel mouth—someone he wouldn’t be tempted to track down. Wouldn’t he want better for his newly found orphan girl? She said she lived on the streets in the U District after that. There were other kids, and it was summer and warm, so it wasn’t that bad.
“How’d you get here?”
In August, she said, a boy took her on a ferry to Bainbridge Island for the day. But he got high and was a total jerk, and she refused to go back with him. Besides, she liked being away from the city. It felt safer. When she heard of jobs at the fast-food places in Poulsbo, she hitched there and slept in the park until a co-worker offered her sofa. Evangeline stopped, satisfied with this variant of her life.
“Poulsbo is forty-five minutes from here,” Isaac said gently. “How’d you end up in Port Furlong?”
“I heard it was pretty, so I hopped a bus a couple days ago.”
“Why?”
She hesitated, shook her head. “It had to do with a boy.”
Unfortunately, this story line confused rather than clarified, provoked more questions and more dubious answers. “I have no idea where my aunt went. She could be anywhere. Mexico, maybe. She talked a lot about Mexico. . . . Her name? Babs Phatbut . . . Yes, Phatbut is an unusual name. German, I think.”
She wasn’t always good under pressure. He didn’t seem to believe her on the Phatbut part, but she did actually know a girl by that name once—though, on reflection, that might have been a nickname. “My last name? McKensey.” He did believe that, or at least was willing to go with it.
Overall, she worried that despite her attempts to provide easy-to-understand details, he was getting distracted by what he perceived as factual peculiarities. She wondered if a less imaginative rendering would have gotten him further along in the core-truth department.
“That’s it,” she said, aiming for an air of breezy triumph. “That’s my whole story.” She told herself it didn’t matter what he believed. She wouldn’t even have bothered to answer his questions if her clothes hadn’t been in the wash.
He bent his head forward and rubbed his neck, as if listening to her had kinked it all up. His hands were a little off, the tips of his fingers not quite lined up. After a minute, he took a slow, deep breath and lifted his head to study her. The way his eyes landed on her, like those of an animal just wondering what she was, unnerved her. How did you play to eyes like that?
“I’ll go put my clothes in the dryer and get out of your hair,” she said.
Yet, with his eyes still on her, she was unable to move.
The man took another slow breath. “Seems like you don’t have anyplace to go.”
And what could she say? She tried to launch into a tale about friends of friends in a nearby town, but she was certain he would see through her.
“I’ve got that guest room no one’s using,” he said. “Why don’t you stay here? For now.”
She thought of the rain she’d barely escaped the night before, the cold descending. She thought of the trailer and how afraid she’d been. She thought of the baby and being alone. She hadn’t let herself know how bad it’d been these last three months. But to have it lifted off her, if only for that one night, to lie in a clean, warm bed not wondering if she would eat the next day . . . well, it crushed her knowing what she had endured.
“Okay,” she said, “maybe for a little while.” She would stay for the baby. The baby needed her to stay warm, to eat decent food. She just had to remember that the man’s generosity wouldn’t last. Nothing ever does. He’d said it straight out. Whatever he was offering, he was offering it only “for now.”
15
Each day I wondered if the girl would be there the next. She carried her stuffed backpack whenever she left and rarely came home when promised. She slept huge swaths of the day, raided the pantry—dry cereal shaken into her mouth, fingers dragged through peanut butter and jam—then slipped out in the late afternoon.
She reminded me of Henry, a scruffy terrier I adopted in my twenties, an alert-faced mutt who’d likely been on the run for some time. Whenever he entered a room, his eyes shot to windows and doors. He studied furniture he might climb should he need a high escape. He ran away with some regularity, but I always managed to find him and return him home. Until I didn’t. Until I never saw him again.
And what would it matter if this girl left and never returned? Why did I feel a loss each time she was gone yet declined Peter’s requests to stop by? I suspect I wasn’t ready to have Peter know about the girl, was worried he’d think she belonged elsewhere, because I harbored the same thought. But there was more to it than that, something the girl and I had in common that Peter and I did not. She and I shared an ignorance of each other. That is what I missed when she went out, the relief of another’s presence without the false notion that I was known.
* * *
—
IN THOSE FIRST DAYS, we focused on the basics: plans for her return to school, the purchase of clothing and supplies. I instituted two household rules, the need to appear for dinner and to let me know where she was. She seemed confused by these simple courtesies. “You do know I’m sixteen. I haven’t had to ‘check in’ since I was ten.” When I assured her that nevertheless it was a requirement of the house, she shrugged and muttered under her breath, “Now, that’s just plain weird,” then to me as if she hadn’t already spoken, “Sounds reasonable enough.”
Providing appropriate attire proved challenging. My inclination toward simple, functional clothes was more than a matter of preference; it was a statement of belief. We are all equal, and clothing should never suggest otherwise. Daniel had been easy. He lived in jeans and tees, a flannel shirt or two. Plain clothes suited him.
I was not so dimwitted as to think it would be the same for a girl. Still, I saw only virtue in my suggestion that she use Katherine’s things and only thoughtfulness in my offer of needles and thread for whatever alterations she chose to make. She did wear some of that clothing around the house, but she never picked up the sewing kit, and when she walked out the door, she wore only the outfit in which she’d arrived.
The fourth day, when I saw her leave once more in her stained jeans and pilled red cardigan, I understood the shame she’d feel in arriving at school wearing the discarded clothes of a middle-aged woman. It shocks me how slow I was in coming to that, but grief leaves little room for anything else.
I finally saw her as the other students would. They’d sniff poverty, a lifestyle beneath their own, and give it a wide berth. They had done that with Jonah, the skirting away. Even Daniel might have avoided him if I hadn’t urged him to keep Jonah in his group. And Evangeline had no friend like Daniel to break her path. She would be walking in alone, more than a month behind, hardly needing the additional hurdle of being embarrassed about her attire.
It was my habit to engage
in a process of discernment, and I did so then. It’s nothing more, really, than sitting in stillness. Some would call it meditation, but I don’t think of it that way. When I do, my mind becomes busy with judgments about my posture or the thoughts that invariably pass through. I question if it is okay to shift position or scratch an itch. No, my process was nothing as complicated as meditation. I simply waited for the murk of my mind to settle, to reveal the answer already there.
In the end, I set up a credit at the local mercantile and sent the girl over. Though she was likely disappointed in the plain selection, she came home with a couple of long, loose tops, leggings, and a pair of soft ankle boots. She also bought a simple knit dress I suspected would make her appear an entirely different girl.
* * *
—
BUT I HAVE AVOIDED THE MOST IMPORTANT DETAIL of those early days. I knew that the girl was pregnant. Each morning around seven, she raced to the bathroom and slammed the door. Though she blasted the shower, it wasn’t enough to drown out the noise of her gagging and puking. After a half hour or so, she’d go back to bed, showing up in the kitchen hours later, sometimes looking fine, other times rather gray. I wanted to assist her however I could, but I was a fifty-year-old stranger and she a sixteen-year-old girl. To ask after her health, her body—how would it not feel like an intrusion?
On Wednesday, her fifth day with me, she wandered into the kitchen around ten particularly ashen. She refused the eggs I offered but, at my insistence, accepted a serving of oatmeal. I sat opposite her, reading the news. She hunched over her bowl, poking at the cereal as if it were a snake not quite dead. Her table manners struck me as inadequate, and she often failed to thank me, but I had larger concerns. I made a decision and lowered the paper. “I’m making an appointment for you with my doctor.”
Her head jerked up. “Why? I’m fine.”
“You may be fine, but you need to see a doctor.”
“Oh,” she said. She was at a loss for words, a condition rare for her. After a moment, she returned to digging at her breakfast, and I picked up the paper.
“How about this?” she said, taking a few more jabs at her food. “How about you make the appointment with an OB instead?”
Given all that has happened since, it’s hard to remember many details of those first days, but I remember that moment, because she glanced up to catch my expression, and while I can’t say what she found in mine, I was startled by hers. I expected the darting eyes of embarrassment, perhaps even shame, but I confronted a defiant chin, eyes narrowed, almost a jeer, as if she were saying, This is what you’re in for old man. You sure you’re up for this?
16
When Evangeline arrived six days back, she studied the man to discover how he worked. He was the key to the bed and the food and the warm running water. But when he offered those things without asking for anything in return, she decided to ignore him and get some rest.
She slept for most of the first three days. Because she could. Because it seemed a luxury of enormous proportions. She slept for the months of lying on that broken sofa bed, ear perpetually cocked, waiting for a door smashed in, the shattering of glass, for a man foul with booze or meth or pure entitlement to appear over her bed. She had waited for this intruder as if he were her fate. And she had waited for wilder things too, for a cougar to drag its kill to the roof, throw entrails over the edge, for a bear to rear up and shake the place to hell. Worst of all, she waited, despite knowing better, despite the daily pain of being proved wrong, for her mother to return.
So she slept through those first days in the man’s house, and when each afternoon she woke, she had to escape for a few hours. The place turned sinister in the dying light. The man would sit—for hours, it seemed—stiff-backed and silent in his office chair. Though he said he was Quaker and she guessed it had something do with that, the rigid stillness seemed ghoulish, like each evening he died and rigor mortis set in. Then too there was that chair jammed against the stairwell door, as if holding back dark realms. And who wouldn’t tire of the constant fumbling along dim halls and patting around blind corners for the light switches he kept turning off? If it hadn’t been for Rufus, she wouldn’t have lasted two days.
The dog could be a terror, she had no doubt of that. He would hurl himself yowling at the doors and windows if a deer so much as wandered through the yard. But with her, he was tender and familiar, as if he’d known and loved her all his life. When she lay down for a nap, he’d jump onto the bed, walk around her, and nudge her with his nose, kneading and poking at arms and legs, at her low back, as if she were a pillow or a blanket he could mold into a nest. She’d tell him to stop it, that she’d had plenty enough, thank you, and he’d study her awhile, then arrange his body carefully against hers, his back to her belly, so his legs wouldn’t kick her in his sleep.
At night, he lay at the foot of the bed, facing the door. The man had decided it was okay after all. And she felt safe with a dog like that at her feet. A being that could transmute in an instant to flying muscle and rightful rage, who’d die for her if there was ever a need. She was already certain of that.
One morning, she woke and found him lying on his side staring at her, their noses a few inches apart, his deer-shit breath wafting over her. Crying sounds rose from his throat, as if even this small distance between them was too painful to bear. He held her gaze for a long while, as if pressing into her mind, and when he was done, when he’d jumped off the bed, pushed open the door, and sauntered out, she got up and went to find the man.
She asked him if maybe they could keep lights on in the main areas at night, at least when they were up, and did they need the chair in the hall like that? He looked startled by her requests, said he’d reflect on it awhile, but came to her a few hours later and said he supposed more light in the evening would be all right and he would take the hall chair away; it had only ever been there to keep the door from blowing open and it never had, so he guessed he could. He just asked that she leave the door alone, that she not disturb the upstairs. He didn’t say why. He had yet to tell her his son was dead.
And so she stayed one day and then another, until the man, Isaac, who had clearly heard her puking in the mornings, broke the breakfast silence to insist she be seen by a doctor.
* * *
—
AND NOW THAT HAD HAPPENED. She had been examined and was dressed again, awaiting the doctor’s return. She distracted herself by deciding Dr. Taylor had come from old money. Who else would have those fine high cheekbones and porcelain skin, that tall, lean frame and aura of royal control? She’d probably grown up with polo ponies, houses around the world, a coming-out ball. Why such a woman would pick Port Furlong to set up her practice was another diversion to keep Evangeline’s mind off due dates and all that could mean.
The doctor entered, sat on the stool, and scooted close. “Okay, here’s the deal,” she said. Her face was not kind, but it promised an unsentimental practicality Evangeline preferred. “You’re pregnant. Six weeks, I’d guess.”
Six weeks. That was good. Excellent, in fact. It was what she had thought. It really was. But still, she almost laughed in happiness. She didn’t think it’d be nine weeks. She’d had that funny little period after the trip to Bremerton, so she was already pretty sure, but what a relief to have it ruled out. Six weeks back. A life could be arranged around a date like that.
The doctor had been talking when she was thinking all this, so Evangeline missed most of what she said, and now the doctor was asking her something. “So what’s your plan?”
“My plan?”
“Yes. Do you want to keep the baby?”
“You mean an abortion?”
“Yes. Or adoption.”
“No! Neither of those.” She hadn’t considered either option, and she saw now how strange that was, given her situation and the child’s possible fathers. But then her mother had had her at fourteen with no fath
er around, and Evangeline was glad to be alive, despite all the crap that had happened.
The doctor sighed as if she’d seen this too often. “Well. You still have some time. Though a lot less on the abortion. Think about things, and if you have any questions, give us a call, okay?”
When Evangeline didn’t answer, the doctor leaned in, fixed her gaze sternly on her, and said, “We’re talking about your life here.”
Evangeline nodded. “Yeah. All right.”
* * *
—
RETURNING TO RECEPTION, she was startled to find Isaac waiting for her. When he’d scheduled the appointment, she’d offered to walk, but he insisted on driving, saying it was high time she learned to rely on an adult. That made her laugh. And she hadn’t thought for a second he would stay. She’d been gone forty minutes at least.
His face looked expectant, but she couldn’t read it beyond that. He was an odd one, Isaac, so slow to speak, everything bottled up in him, that terrible grief pressing a bluish tinge through his skin. Last night, she’d finally told him she knew about his son. She thought she’d explode otherwise, watching him twisting around, not knowing how to say it.
She’d said, “I heard about your son. I’m sorry.” A small convulsion like a shock, but he kept staring at the pork chop he picked at. After a moment, he said to the fried meat, “It’s good you know.” Nothing more after that. Another silent meal, another silent cleanup. It wasn’t as bad as you’d think. She was getting used to it, and there wasn’t anything in it directed at her.
As they drove out of the lot, Isaac didn’t speak, but she knew he was dying to know, that only his strange reticence stopped him from asking.
“She says I’m pregnant. Like that was news.”
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