The Evolution of Love

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  Lily tripped on something hard and black. At first she thought it was just another plastic bag of garbage in the street, but the rigid thing had fur, ears, and a tail. She kept moving, walking through the deepening shadows. She missed hearing the helicopters, the droning warp of their engines as they passed overhead, the sense of airborne authority. They made her feel as if someone, somewhere, had a handle on things. The pilots must have landed the choppers somewhere for the night. She pulled out her flashlight and tucked it into the front pocket of her jeans.

  When she got to Joyce Renaldi’s flat, the bottom half of a small Victorian, she stood on the sidewalk, dreading the next part. After she’d left for the airport, Tom had called Mrs. Renaldi, one of Lily’s clients, and asked for Joyce’s phone number. Then he’d called the Fair-Oaks-to-Berkeley transplant, asking if Lily might stay with her. It was so presumptuous of him. They hardly knew her. Joyce, a class behind them, had left Fair Oaks right after high school.

  But where else could Lily go now? She supposed she could go to one of the shelters, but she didn’t like the way Annie had spoken about them, and anyway, she didn’t know where they were. It would be totally dark in a few minutes.

  Stalling, Lily stroked the long spiked leaf of an iris. There were two tight helixes of deep purple buds shooting from the middle of the plant. Next to it were the dark green glossy leaves of a calla lily. Travis sometimes called her that and once asked if she’d been named for the creamy coil of a flower. She liked calla lilies very much. Elegance balanced their sturdiness.

  The footsteps came quickly and from behind. By the time she realized they were uncomfortably close, it was too late. An arm tightened around her neck and closed off her breath. Lily made a sound that was a cross between a grunt and a gurgle. The assailant jammed his knee into her right buttock and someone else gasped.

  Lily caught a whiff of gardenia.

  “Come on,” said a squeaky voice from a few feet away. “Please. Just come on.”

  “She told on me to Kalisha. She gave those milks to that other guy.”

  Lily relaxed her body, tried to impart calm. The girl was surprisingly strong, and yet, for a moment, Lily felt as if Annie were holding rather than restraining her, a desperate clutch at an adult. The arm around her neck loosened enough for Lily to say, “Let go, Annie.”

  Annie stepped around to face Lily.

  Binky was already running, a fast sprint, the loose red shoelaces flickering like hummingbird wings in the twilight. He disappeared around the corner.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Lily asked her. “What do you want?”

  “You’ve got a house.” She jutted her chin toward Joyce’s place.

  “It’s not mine.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Didn’t you eat at the church?”

  “All that food is shit. And Binky is really hungry.”

  “That food is not shit. It was delicious.”

  “Shit,” she repeated, but quietly, her lower lip trembling.

  “Where’s your family?” Lily asked.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “It sort of is. I mean, you’re mugging me. Your family should be providing you with food and shelter.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Obviously, her family wasn’t providing her with food and shelter. Maybe they’d been killed in the earthquake. Support beam, crushed her.

  “Binky and I are hungry. I need money.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree. Good night, Annie.” Lily stepped around her and walked up the three wooden steps to Joyce’s porch. She didn’t want to ring the bell until Annie had taken off, so she turned to check.

  The girl hadn’t moved. Lily snapped on her flashlight and shot the beam at Annie. Except for scrunching up her eyes, Annie didn’t flinch. She just stood there with her arms hanging at her sides, hands curled into loose fists, messy braids shooting off her head like shouts. She wore a long red T-shirt over purple leggings, topped by a too-big green army jacket. Her legs splayed out from the knees, her feet pointing in different directions.

  Lily lowered the beam of light. “You better go find Binky,” she said softly.

  Annie gaped for another long moment, obviously wishing the incident had turned out differently. She said, “He doesn’t do so well on his own.”

  “Go on, then.” Lily watched the girl lumber slowly down the sidewalk, waiting until she was swallowed by the dark. Then she rang Joyce’s doorbell.

  4

  Annie sat on the curb and looked out into the black night. She should have at least taken the flashlight off that woman. Now even Binky was gone. She hated when he ran off like that—he was such a scaredy-cat. It took her forever to find him again, sometimes even a couple of days.

  “Binky?” she stage-whispered. If she yelled, she could attract the attention of the wrong person, someone who would force her to go with them somewhere, since she was a minor, and that somewhere would be awful. Twice already adults had “found” her and tried to take her to the police. That was the good thing about the earthquake: turning someone in was much more problematic than it was under normal circumstances. Both times it had been easy to slip out of their grasp and get away.

  Running away in the first place was the best thing she ever did in her life, a very smart move. Of course, there was the little complication of the worst disaster in the history of the universe, which happened just a few days after she arrived in Berkeley, but that kind of luck defined her life. It was exactly what she should have expected. So no biggie. Fine. An earthquake.

  In any case, besides the general confusion providing good cover, the earthquake led her to Binky, and Binky was the best thing in her life. Ever. Past, present, future. The amazing part was that she’d told him everything, the true everything. It was like his skinny neediness, his desperate heart-on-his-sleeve way of going through life, forced Annie to be fully honest with him. A lie would snap him in half. He needed to hear pure truth. She thought maybe she was saving his life. She told him he was definitely saving hers, and she thought even that might be true. Together, they would make it. What “making it” meant, they didn’t know, but they spent a lot of time considering the options. Binky wanted an island in the Pacific, a place that was always warm and where you could drink the milk out of coconuts. Usually Annie told him that’s what they’d do, but if he was in a stronger mood, if he seemed relatively stable emotionally, then she told him her plan: to stay right here in Berkeley and open an animal shelter. They would save all the strays, and also rescue the animals that people abused. If they got enough land, they could take in the bigger ones, too, like circus animals who’d been forced to perform their entire lives. Binky sometimes liked that idea and said that staying in Berkeley would be a lot more practical. To be conciliatory in return, Annie said they’d get a vacation island and fly there whenever they wanted.

  She was pretty certain he told her the truth about everything, too. Of course, she had no real way of knowing this. After all, she’d sworn to a million teachers, social workers, neighbors, and other kids that she was telling the absolute unadulterated truth when she’d been lying through her teeth. That test of looking someone in the eye while saying it? She passed every time. It was easy. Lying was the easiest thing in the world.

  The scary part was how good it felt to tell the truth to Binky. She loved how he listened, batting his beautiful gray eyes at her, waving his faggy hands in the air at the exciting parts, even crying at the sad parts.

  “Binky!” she called out again, this time using her whole voice, risking being heard. “Where are you?”

  She hated his being gone. It felt beyond dismal. She wished she had something to eat. Sadness and hunger always felt exactly the same way, and she wanted to fill the hollow in her middle.

  Annie pushed herself up from the curb and started walking. “Binky!” she called, n
ow loud and repeatedly, as if he were a lost dog. “Binky!”

  Cedar Rose Park, where they’d met the morning of the earthquake and where they still sometimes slept, was close by, so she went there first.

  She heard the squeak of the swing set, the rub of the metal links connecting the chains to the frame, and as she drew closer, she saw a ghostly figure swinging in a short arc. Once she’d teasingly called him Caspar.

  “I am not a ghost!” he had shrieked. “I am not a ghost!”

  She’d said she was sorry. She would never call him that again. She made a point, after that, of telling him how beautiful she thought his paling-to-blue skin was, how she liked the way she could see his veins right on the surface, those baby blue rivers of blood. She’d trace them with her finger and smile at him.

  Tonight, though, her fear of losing him, even for those few minutes, snapped her tenderness into kindling. “Why the fuck did you run away?” she called across the park.

  Binky pushed off with his feet and swung higher. His right hand held the swing’s chain and his left hand clutched the orange kitten on his lap.

  “Come down off of there,” Annie said, now standing by one of the swing set struts.

  “You went too far this time,” Binky said.

  “Oh, and you have a better idea? We have to eat. We have to sleep. We need money.”

  “You attacked that lady.”

  “So what? She’s prejudiced. She gave extra milks to some white dude and not to me.”

  “You physically attacked her.”

  “So what!” Annie lunged for the swing chain on its downstroke and grabbed hold. The swing wobbled violently and Binky yelped. Annie seized his forearm and pulled him off the black rubber seat. The orange kitten leapt onto the playground bark.

  “Let go of me,” Binky said, but his lithe body fell gently against hers.

  Annie wanted to kiss the side of his head, maybe his temple, but she didn’t.

  “Promise you won’t do that again,” he said.

  “Do what?” There were a number of things he could be referring to.

  “Jump someone.”

  “Okay, I promise.”

  “You said you’ve never lied to me and that you never would.”

  Annie felt trapped for a moment. But then she realized he was right. She should not be assaulting people, if for no other reason than it was bad for her and Binky. She could promise this and mean it. “I said I promise.”

  Binky scooped up the orange kitten who had been sitting on its behind, front paws neatly parallel, watching the argument.

  “Let’s walk,” Binky said. They often walked all night. It was safer that way, keeping on their feet, staying awake when it was dark out. They could sleep later, when the sun came up.

  So the two kids set out toward the hills, bumping elbows and hips, sniffling and clearing their throats, but otherwise simply walking.

  5

  Joyce locked the door behind them and walked to the kitchen at the back of the flat. She lit a camp stove and put on a pan of water. Lily remembered her as one of those smart, bossy, straight-A girls, the type who used jump ropes to play horse on the playground. She was small, compact, athletic, her frosted hair pulled back in a taut and stubby ponytail.

  “You’re lucky you found me here. I’m staying in San Francisco with Dennis. Why didn’t you text?”

  “My phone is dead.”

  “Call Tom. Let him know you’re not.” Joyce pushed her phone across the kitchen table.

  “I’m sorry he pulled you into this. I’m sure you have enough on your plate.”

  “I really do. I have to be back in the city early tomorrow, which means I have to ride my bike in the dark to the ferry dock and catch the first one across. I only came over here to see if you’d arrived.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll be out of here in no time.”

  “He’s worried. Call him.” Joyce picked up her cup of tea, carried it into the bedroom, and shut the door.

  “Lily!” Tom’s voice sounded as if someone were strangling him, a cross between extreme relief and horrified disbelief.

  “I made it. I’m at Joyce’s.”

  “Vicky?”

  “I’ll go up to her house tomorrow.”

  “Sweetie.” He hadn’t called her that in a couple of years. The word sounded coolly medicinal now. She could taste what it was aiming at, how he was trying. “I’m worried about you.”

  “It shouldn’t take long. I’ll be back home in no time.”

  “Joyce told me that people are getting ugly. Attacking people who have stuff. Breaking into houses.”

  “I’ve seen just the opposite. I helped out in a free meals kitchen at Trinity Church this afternoon.”

  “She said that people are forming these things they’re calling Clusters. They’re starting to maraud. You’re out there by yourself, completely clueless about how people are. You always have been.” He paused and added, “I’m not being critical. That’s, you know, who you are. But it only works in places like Fair Oaks.”

  “I haven’t seen any ‘marauding.’” What kind of word was that? “You know, people do sometimes work together. Help each other. Like the bonobos.”

  “Wow.” Tom breathed the word hotly. “Okay. Fine.”

  She knew the wow wasn’t about her defense of humanity.

  “So that’s what this is.” He spoke slowly, accusingly.

  Lily could feel the pause in their entire relationship, a quiet at the center of everything.

  “I’m here to find Vicky. Who lives in the heart of a disaster zone. Who I haven’t heard from since the earthquake.”

  “You said he was moving to Berkeley.”

  “And?”

  “Just a coincidence.”

  Tom wasn’t entirely wrong. She’d come here to find Vicky. But she might never have had the courage to come all the way to California, in the midst of a disaster, to look for Vicky if she hadn’t been reading Travis’s letters all these years, learning that people can and do take great risks for those they love. His letters had felt like a giant precipice from which she viewed a brighter, more vibrant world. It was also true that his last letter told about his own crisis, and that he was going back to Berkeley. So yes, maybe it was a coincidence.

  It was also possible that it wasn’t.

  She forced herself to speak calmly. “Travis was a homework assignment, in case you don’t recall. And Vicky is my sister. My sister. We spend every Sunday with your entire extended family, every single Sunday, and I can’t have a few days to look for Vicky who might be seriously hurt?”

  Even conjuring the picture of an injured Vicky didn’t change his course. “It’s insane to be out there now. Please just come home.”

  “You’re not going to help me with this, are you?”

  “How can I help you? You went on your own.” His voice cracked.

  “I asked you to come with me. You wouldn’t.”

  “Because it was a bad idea.”

  “I love you, Tom.” She waited a beat for this to sink in. “And I’m sorry I had to do this. But I know Vicky is alive and I have to find her. I have to. I’ll come home, I’ll bring her home, as soon as I can.”

  “I don’t like this. Any of it.” His voice switched from emotion-laden cracking to petulance.

  “I know you don’t. I’ll call you later, after I find a way to charge my phone.”

  He wouldn’t say goodbye. She heard only heavy nose-breathing.

  “Tom?”

  More silence.

  “Tom! What? What is it?”

  “Nothing. Call me as soon as you find her.”

  Lily walked to the closed bedroom door, raised a fist, and knocked.

  Joyce opened the door and held up a flat hand. “I need to get some sleep. So look. You can stay here fo
r a few nights.” She took the phone from Lily’s hand. “You haven’t asked me for advice. And I wasn’t eavesdropping. But I couldn’t exactly avoid hearing. Don’t go back to Trinity Church. I’ve heard things about that operation. Everything, everywhere, is sketchy now. My advice: check out Vicky’s house, satisfy yourself that she’s not there, get back to an airport, and fly home.”

  “She’ll be there.”

  “A couple of nights.”

  “Thank you!” Lily said to the shutting bedroom door. “I appreciate you letting me stay here.”

  She lay down on the couch and pulled the sleeping bag Joyce had put out for her up to her chin. She would find Vicky in the morning. They would travel together back to Fair Oaks. Everything would be okay.

  But she couldn’t sleep. She kept hearing Tom’s silences on the phone. For the past few months, he’d been an odd combination of extra attentive and extra distracted. She knew it was about the big fight they’d had, the biggest one of their entire relationship. The weather of that argument still clouded their every interaction. They couldn’t seem to recover. She wished she knew how to get them past the stalemate.

  How can you fight about babies? They’d married straight out of high school because of their eagerness to have a family. They’d picked out names. They’d talked about where they’d go on family vacations, how they’d dress and educate their children. But the children didn’t happen. They’d done all the tests and found no detectable abnormalities. A rare few couples, the doctor had told them, just don’t conceive.

  Still, they had tried and tried, all the while agreeing against adoption.