The Orphan Daughter

by Cari Noga

  I slide up the rolltop desk cover and pile the folders on the smooth wood, then hesitate with the gray velvet bag. Not the safety deposit box Langley advised, but for now it will do. I push it behind the folders and tug the top back down. It catches a few times, but I manage to close it completely. There. No one would be the wiser.

  The thought echoes as I stand with my hand on the doorknob. The thing is, no one else matters. Just me. Maybe I was never meant to convert Matt’s room to a home office. Maybe it was destined to stage an encore mother act, with Lucy. Once Matt left home, the raw edges did dull a bit. With an empty nest I could more easily forget that it was only ever half-full. I look around, imagining the walls cleared of the army poster and sports photos, a fresh coat of paint, the shelves bare and ready for girlish paraphernalia, the blinds open to let sunshine stream in.

  But it was also after Matt was gone that Jim dropped the divorce bombshell, shattering my illusion about our marriage’s state of benign neglect.

  “Matt’s grown up and on his own, after all. It’ll give us both a fresh start,” he’d said. He meant a fresh start for him. With Kate. And her daughter.

  The daughter. That hurt the most, him recouping what first drove a wedge between us. He’d been seeing Kate for a whole year when he finally told me. She worked in IT, and they met when her company was hired to install some new software at the base. It was love at first click, or something. He’d been offered a transfer to Clearwater, Florida, and wanted to take her with him. Take them with him.

  Even if we’d lost the intimacy, I had thought our marriage was at least still honest. I knew the planting, blossom, and fruit emergence date for every single tomato plant I’d grown for the last three years. But for a whole year, I hadn’t known my husband was having an affair. It hurt, like Jim had picked at the scabs Plain Jane’s had helped heal. Can I risk that again?

  I close Matt’s door and my mind to the picture of the room retrofitted for Lucy. Outside, I stab my shovel into the depths of the compost pile, which hasn’t had a good turn since Thanksgiving. Dig, lift, flip. Dig, lift, flip. Dig—and then my rhythm is abruptly halted, the shovel still sinking in where the slatted two-by-four sides should have stopped it, halfway burying the handle.

  Two rotted-out boards on the back of the bin are responsible. I give the whole thing a once-over, shaking it vigorously. Several boards are loose, and one corner sags. It’s been ten years—probably should be replaced altogether. On the other hand, two new boards and pounding a few nails would be faster and cheaper. As I dither over the choice, Miguel’s truck pulls in.

  “Bueno, ¿sí?” He hands me my spare house key while nodding toward the smooth driveway.

  “You did a great job. What do I owe you?”

  “One fifty.”

  “Really?” Supplies had to be at least fifty.

  “Sí.”

  “Let me get my checkbook.” Leaving the shovel stuck in the compost, we walk back to the house. Miguel’s truck is full of bundled stacks of newspapers. “What are you doing with all these?”

  “Delivering up to the store.”

  “Another job?” Besides being a 24-7 on-call handyman and farm laborer for anyone in Grand Traverse or Leelanau Counties, Miguel already drives a school bus route.

  He nods. I don’t push it. You do what you have to do. The story of our lives, me a hollowed-out mother, dutifully following Coast Guard orders, Miguel the lone American in his family, born to Mexican migrant parents while they were in the US. One day he came home from high school to an empty house.

  “Deported,” Martha had told me, solemnly. “His sister still had her Dora backpack on.”

  Lonely and frightened, he had to be, but I’ve never heard a word of resentment. Instead, he parlayed good humor, bilingualism, and connections with the migrants into a liaison role that makes him virtually indispensable around here. I’ve seen him on the school bus route, and he’s just as good natured there, too, waiting for kids running late, waving and smiling to any passing vehicle. Now running newspapers out to the end of the peninsula. Inside the house, I scribble out a check for two hundred dollars.

  Outside he glances at it and frowns. “Too much.”

  “Go ahead. Take it.”

  He shakes his head. “Only what’s fair. No charity.” He waves the check at me, trying to give it back.

  I keep my hands in my pockets. “You fed Sarge and kept an eye on the place all week, too.”

  He shakes his head again. “That was helping una amiga.”

  He looks upset. No good deed. Shit.

  “Then consider it an advance on my next job. Since I already wrote it. All right?”

  He hesitates.

  “Please. In fact, I’ve already got one. Gotta rebuild the compost bin. Boards are rotted out.” I jerk my thumb over my shoulder. “Use that for some two-by-fours. After you get it built, you can let me know how much more I owe.”

  His face relaxes and he folds the check into his pocket. “OK. I’ll go measure.”

  Chapter 15

  LUCY

  I don’t talk to Deirdre again until we pass Midtown Pets and I have to stop and look in the window. I love dogs and cats, but especially kittens. Daddy’s allergic, so we can’t have one.

  Daddy’s allergic. Daddy was allergic. I forget, and when I remember, it feels like it’s happening all over again, everything going just fine and then Mrs. Creighton calls me to her office and everything stops with a jerk, like the dry-cleaning rack, and there I hang, swinging wildly. Deirdre keeps walking ahead, pulling the little foldable cart.

  “Deirdre, wait. Can we go in?” I call her back.

  “Oh, Lucy, we’ve got all the shopping with us.” She turns around.

  She’s got a cat at home in London, though. “Please? They’re so cute. Look at that little gray one there. What’s your cat’s name again?”

  She’s already smiling. Or maybe she just feels guilty about before, in the bus-stop shelter. “OK. Just for a minute.”

  It smells in the shop, and it’s kind of noisy, but I don’t mind. On the back side of the cages stacked in the window, I can get close, even put my fingers up to the cage of that little gray kitten. She sniffs my fingers and mews, arching her back against the cage.

  “Looks like she likes you,” Deirdre says.

  “Can we take her home, Deirdre, please?”

  “Oh, Lucy, no. You’re leaving in two months.”

  “I could take her with me. I’m going to live on a farm, remember? Farms have all kinds of animals. Please?”

  Deirdre starts to shake her head. No! She can’t say no! I never wanted anything this bad. Desperately I search for a reason. “Mr. Meinert said a pet would help me, right?”

  That scores. Deirdre sighs. “Well, if you’re going to get a kitten, we should go to a rescue organization, not buy one.”

  It sounds like she’s going to say yes, but I like that little gray kitten so much. I look back at her, lapping up water in her dish, then at Deirdre.

  “Can we go today?”

  She looks at her phone and nods. “Let’s take the food home, and then we’ll see what we can find.”

  While she’s putting away the food, I go online.

  “Deirdre, look! The Humane Society’s on Fifty-Ninth. It’s so close.”

  She looks over my shoulder. “Fifty-Ninth and Second. All right. But we have to call your aunt first. Make sure it’s OK.”

  “It’ll be fine! It’s a farm, right?”

  “You never know. What if she’s allergic, too? I’ll just call now.”

  Aunt Jane doesn’t answer.

  “All right, then. Let’s have a little lunch,” Deirdre says.

  I look at the pictures of the dogs and cats while we eat. “I don’t see many kittens.”

  “A kitten would be a lot of work. You’d have to train it and all. An adult cat, one that’s trained, might be easier.”

  I want a kitten. Something cute and cuddly and little. Something to take ca
re of, that I’ll take care of forever and ever.

  It’s one o’clock, and Aunt Jane hasn’t called back. One fifteen. One twenty-five. One thirty.

  “Deirdre, they close at four! And they’re not open Sundays. Please, can we just go now?”

  She sighs and looks at her silent phone again. “All right, then. It is a farm, like you say.”

  At the Humane Society they don’t let us see the animals right away. I sprawl on a chair while Deirdre fills out a questionnaire with about a million questions. “‘Any pets already in the household?’ No. ‘Any experience with pets?’ No. ‘Any children?’ Yes. ‘Pet preference?’”

  “Kitten!” I interject.

  “‘Are you willing to pay licensing fees and have your pet spayed or neutered?’ Yes.” Deirdre checks the last box. Finally!

  “Can we see them now?” I jump up, following her back to the counter.

  “Well, that was quick,” says the lady there, whose name tag says she’s Aliyah, from Brooklyn. “So you’re looking for a cat today?” She has the musical voice of someone from Jamaica, or the DR, blond dreads and cat-eye-shaped glasses.

  “A kitten,” I say before Deirdre can say anything, and then I hold my breath. If I don’t breathe before she answers, they’ll have a kitten.

  “Hmmm. Well, we don’t always have kitties, but you’re in luck. Today we do have a litter.”

  It worked! I let out my breath in a whoosh, and we follow Aliyah past rows of stacked cages, around a corner, and down a hall. All the way at the back, next to an exit door, is a cage with four kittens mewling and tumbling around. I drop down to my knees.

  “Oh, Deirdre, look—they’re adorable!” I watch them bat at each other. “How old are they?”

  “About six weeks. Something must have happened to the mother. Someone brought them in two weeks ago, skin and bones and freezing. Two didn’t make it.” Aliyah lowers her voice, intending to tell only Deirdre the last part, but I hear her. Something happened to the mother—what about the father? Poor kitties, left all by themselves.

  “Dear me,” Deirdre says. “Are they all right now, then?”

  “Right as rain. See any you like, young lady?”

  “That one.” I point at one with patchwork fur. Yellow and white and gray, too. It sits a little bit apart from the other three, washing its face. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

  “Girl.” Aliyah unlatches the cage and hands her to me.

  I stand perfectly still, afraid I’ll startle her. She’s tense, too. I can feel her body throbbing and her tiny claws through Mom’s hoodie, but otherwise she holds herself rigid. She’s so tiny! I stroke her soft back. I’ll keep you safe now.

  “She still has her claws?” Deirdre asks.

  “Generally we leave at least their front claws. It’s much more humane. And if there’s any chance she might become an outdoor cat, she’ll need them.”

  I flinch when she says “outdoor.” Step on the grass, make her car crash. I’ll keep her inside, where we’ll both be safe together. “Does she have a name?”

  Aliyah shakes her head, the blond dreads waving. “The honor’s all yours.”

  She’s latching the cage and walking down the hall, talking to Deirdre about cages and bottle-feeding and training. It’s happening! I have a kitten. She’s relaxing a little in my arms, too. Until I start walking away from the cage. She starts mewling again, pushing herself up on my forearm, trying to peek over my shoulder. Behind me, the mewling from the cage gets louder, too.

  Her paws knead a rhythm on my chest, like she’s trying to climb up it. Aliyah and Deirdre have turned the corner.

  I turn back to the cage, letting her sniff between the wire squares. The ones inside jump and paw at the cage. Now that she can see them, my kitten seems more content. She settles back down in my arms, head on her paws.

  “I’m glad you got to say goodbye,” I whisper into her white ear.

  “What are you going to name her?” Deirdre asks as we walk along Fifty-Ninth.

  “I don’t know yet. It’s got to be just right.”

  “Not just Kitty, then?”

  “Uh-uh.” I shake my head as we turn down Lexington. We walked over, but carrying the cage and all, Deirdre wants to take the subway.

  “Funny how different it feels over here,” Deirdre says. “We’re not all that far from home.”

  “Uh-huh.” At least it’s still New York. Imagine how Michigan will feel. Her name should remind me of the city, I decide. She’s going to be my ambassador. To the foreign land of Michigan.

  We go downstairs, into the station at Fifty-Ninth and Lex. Lex. I turn the word around in my head, liking the sound of it. It doesn’t sound girlish, though. Lexie? That does. Lexie. It reminds me of Daddy, too. He went to school in Texas and joked about being Tex-Mex, from both sides of the border. Yes, Lexie.

  At home, Lexie stays asleep in her cage even after she’s inside.

  “Probably worn-out from the trip. Everything so strange all of a sudden,” Deirdre says. “Let’s just let her sleep. I could use a little lie-down myself.”

  “Go ahead.” A chance to get back in Mom and Daddy’s room! Being in there, I can’t get surprised by that awful, jerky feeling of remembering they’re gone. Maybe I can find out more about Daddy’s family, too, so I don’t have to go to Michigan.

  “What, the au pair napping while the child runs wild?” Deirdre shakes her head.

  “I don’t run wild. I’ll just watch TV.”

  “I know. You’re a good girl, Lucy. It’s just—” Deirdre yawns before she even finishes.

  “It’s fine.” Please! “Lexie will keep me company.”

  “I’ll just stretch out here on the couch with you.”

  Ten minutes into some cooking show, Deirdre is sound asleep. I slide off the couch, take Lexie’s cage, and tiptoe down the hall.

  Inside my parents’ room I waver. Back to Daddy’s desk and computer? Or Mom’s closet?

  The closet, I decide. Up on the top shelf, there’s stuff that I’ve never seen moved, let alone opened. Three boxes labeled GS-O. Gloria Santiago-Ortiz, Mom’s initials. Two with Daddy’s: LO, the same as mine. I pick his to start with. It’s not too heavy. I get it down the ladder and open the flaps.

  Photos. In albums, in envelopes, loose in the box. They’re older—mostly square instead of rectangle, the color faded. There’s Daddy, in between a woman and a man. He’s a lot younger, with a dark-brown mustache. It looks funny. He has his arm around the woman, not Mom. Is she Aunt Bonita?

  The other man is standing a little bit separate from them. Who’s he? He’s got a mustache, too. All three of them have dark hair and big smiles. I wish Daddy had talked more about his family. They’re standing outside someplace in the picture. Where they grew up in Mexico?

  I dig back into the box. The newest-looking thing is a stack of envelopes wrapped in a rubber band. Inside the top one is a handwritten letter and a school picture of a girl who looks a little older than me, wearing a uniform. There’s another picture of the same girl holding a soccer ball. That one’s a normal picture, a rectangle. The girl isn’t smiling. In the corner it says, “Aug. 2010.”

  I frown at the swoops and swirls of the letters. I speak Spanish pretty well, but reading, especially something handwritten, is way harder. It is from Aunt Bonita, wishing us a merry Christmas. Her daughter, Graciela, is twelve in the picture, she says. Graciela, that’s my cousin’s name. Not Gabriella. I didn’t know she was so close to my age.

  “Lucy? Lucy, where are you?” Deirdre is calling from the kitchen. I throw everything back into the box and push it behind some clothes before she walks in. With a cousin so close to my age, why didn’t we visit more?

  “Here again?” She frowns. “I don’t think this is healthy, Lucy.”

  But I have to stay here. I have to find more about Graciela, mi prima. About the rest of Daddy’s family in Mexico. My family in Mexico. I cross my arms.

  “How would you know?” I ask, remembering
something else from the first day. “Mr. Meinert said to follow my lead.”

  That was a good one. She hesitates.

  “All right,” she finally says. “A half hour. And I’m calling Phoebe’s mother about a playdate.”

  Lexie woke up when Deirdre came in and is mewling inside her cage. I let her out. She starts playing with the photos, batting them around with her paws.

  “No, Lexie, no.” I gather up more of Graciela, or at least a girl playing soccer. She’s got boobs. I look at my flat chest, then back at some more letters, but I can’t read much. Aunt Bonita sounds worried about money, and someone whose name I can’t read. The only recent pictures are of Graciela, so I can’t figure it out that way.

  Lexie is still walking over everything, so I put it all back in the box and go to the computer.

  “Gloria Ortiz car crash,” I type into Google.

  There are thousands and thousands of stories, in English and Spanish, too. I hold my breath on the first couple I click, afraid of some new detail. After three or four, though, I figure out they’re practically the same story. Two dead. Driver injured. Investigation ongoing. Interstate 405 closed for hours. Even the same pictures of Mom and Daddy. I click one more story, and suddenly there’s a new picture. Of the car. Crashed in all along the passenger side, with fire coming out the back. “El coche de la muerte,” the headline says. I gasp and squeeze my eyes shut, but it’s too late.

  “Lucy! Time’s up!”

  “OK.” I close the window, but I can’t unsee that picture.

  That night I dream of cats, of soccer players, of Mexico. Soccer players in bright-red jerseys chasing cats. Soccer players kicking balls at a piñata, like I had for my birthday when I was five. The piñata crashing to the ground, grass smears all over it. Then a car crashing silently, bursting into flames, and a cat meowing loudly. I wake up with a gasp, and it’s Lexie, meowing next to my ear.