Backseat Saints

by Joshilyn Jackson

  She turns her monitor, canting it so the back is squarely facing me. She looks back and forth from the book to her screen, typing in the numbers on the spine. She waits, squinting at her screen, while the old computer grinds its way to an answer.

  I can’t see the information that comes up, but Alswan says, “Oh,” in such a tone that I know at once she recognizes the name. This girl knows my mother; she softens toward me immediately. As she turns back to me, she looks me up and down, fast. It’s as if she is trying to see through my clothes, but not like her male colleague did. There’s no sex in it. Curiosity, maybe some pity, but no sex. Her voice is considerably warmer when she says, “You’re one of Mirabelle’s girls! You should have said so.”

  “Mirabelle,” I say, flat, so it could be a question or a confirmation. My mother’s name is Claire, and as far as I know, I am her only girl. Still, the name goes with the gypsy clothes and long strings of hair, and the first thing people in hiding change is their name. My heartbeat picks up.

  Alswan says, “Yes. Our book club meets at her house. Just wait over there, okay? I’ll call her and tell her you are here.”

  “Okay,” I say. I blink at her, suddenly short of breath, and she blinks back, all earnesty. I say, “Tell her it’s Ivy Rose. From the airport. Tell her I’m the one who has her book.”

  “Don’t worry,” Alswan says. Her smile is now so warm and encouraging that I find it slightly creepy. “She’ll remember you. She does this all the time.”

  “Thank you,” I say, wondering what it is my mother does all the time. I have some doubt curling up from my stomach like a growing vine, trying to close my throat. What if this mysterious Mirabelle is not even my mother? Perhaps my mother stole the book from her.

  I step away from the counter as Alswan picks up the phone. I do not go far. There’s an “Our Book Club Recommends…” table just to the right, where some industrious soul has set up a display of novels. I pick one up and stare at the cover, straining my ears to pick up Alswan’s soft voice.

  “Mirabelle?” I hear her say. “It’s Alswan, down at the branch.” I try to look as uneavesdroppy as humanly possible, but Alswan turns her back to me and I can’t hear what she says next.

  After a minute, she turns back to look at me. I pretend to be lost in the book I am holding. I don’t even know what it is. Hell, it could be upside down. I’m listening so hard, I’ve gone half-blind to compensate. I catch Alswan saying, “… five one sounds about right… Ivy… yes, dark hair.”

  Alswan turns away again. I wait until she hangs up, and then she’s busy, writing something down on a piece of scrap paper. When she’s finished, she gestures me over.

  “Mirabelle’s been expecting you.” The breath rushes out of me in a whoosh, and I realize I have been holding it. My mother is Mirabelle is my mother. “See, I told you she’d remember! Her house is a short walk away, not even five minutes. I put her number down in case you get lost.”

  The paper says, “Mirabelle Claire,” and then a phone number. Under that, Alswan has written detailed directions. I skim them. I am less than six blocks away from my mother’s house.

  Alswan is still talking. “She says she is about to start a reading, so you’ll need to wait outside. She’s sending Parker out to meet you…” Alswan falters. “That is, I didn’t think. Do you mind a man?”

  “Do I mind a man who what?” I ask.

  “Oh, you know,” Alswan says, and now she sounds a touch embarrassed. I look at her, puzzled. It’s clear I don’t know. “I thought you might be gun-shy.”

  A little Rose Mae Lolley gets out then, and I find myself smiling at her, showing quite a lot of teeth. “I’m not gun-shy.”

  “That’s good!” Alswan says, almost as if she’s proud of me. Like I’m two and I just took a brave bite of my peas. She adds in a reassuring tone, “And anyway, it’s only Parker.” She dismisses Parker as a sexual threat with a wave of her hand, and I think this Parker must be eighty-five, or gay, or five feet tall with no arms. Or maybe she only means Parker is taken.

  It suddenly occurs to me that Parker might be taken by my mother. She is sending Parker outside to wait for me, so they must be living together. They may even be married. They could have children for all I know, and everything in me recoils at this idea, my mother off in California raising a herd of babies that she liked enough to keep.

  “Are you okay?” Alswan says.

  “I’m sorry, yes,” I say. I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. I start to go, but Alswan puts her hand on my arm, stopping me. I freeze beneath it. I’ve never understood girly-girl friendships, all that hugging and squealing and air kissing. Girls can be so touchy-feely with each other. Me, I’m just touchy. But she seems sincere, and I’m so dizzy with hate for this Parker and my mother’s imaginary children with him that I don’t mind it. Much. She says, “You’re going to be fine. I know Mirabelle. All you have to do is follow her rules, and she’ll do anything for you. Anything.”

  I nod, solemn, though I haven’t the faintest clue what she is talking about: One of Mirabelle’s girls. Do I mind a man. Her rules. I’m wondering now if my mother has shed her gypsy clothes and become a madam. Or a matchmaker for lesbians.

  Outside, Gret is sitting up waiting for me, her nose pointing straight at the doors she last saw me enter. “I didn’t forget you, silly dog,” I say. I unhook her and we fall into step. Alswan’s directions are easy to follow, even with a detour to get my bag from the VW. I could drive the rest of the way, but as hard as it seems to park around here, I decide to leave it and tote the duffel.

  We walk down the streets, my feet moving faster and faster. Gret drags. A thousand dogs have peed out greetings onto the strip of green by the sidewalk, and Gretel wants to pause and sniff-read them all. I click my tongue at her, tug her along. I am close. I will see my mother—or at least her house and her maybe-husband—in four blocks. Then in three. Now I am almost running, questions stacking up with every step.

  Alswan said she was about to start a reading; I assume this means she has some hapless new age seeker paying her to lay her weathered cards. Hurrying will only mean waiting longer outside with this Parker fellow, but I can’t seem to slow. I am desperate to see the house where she lives, the man who shares it. Even now, accepted and on my way, I can’t quite believe this Mirabelle is my airport gypsy, my long-lost mother.

  It strikes me again how small the world can be and how hard it is to get truly and permanently lost. A couple of phone calls gave me Arlene Fleet. A library book is taking me directly to Claire Lolley, though she was all the way across the country hiding under a new name. My spine tingles, and I wonder how thick a trail of bread crumbs I have left for Thom Grandee to follow. I shove the thought away. He’s seeking Rose Mae, and there is no Rose Mae anymore. There is only a girl named Ivy Rose Wheeler, running to her mother, now a scant two blocks away.

  Questions from Alabama and Amarillo and new ones from the library are piling up into an avalanche that propels me forward toward her, fast, in spite of my heavy bag. Gret breaks into a cheerful three-legged canter to keep up with me, panting.

  I come to Belgria, the street where my mother lives. It’s an actual place, and I have found it, and now I am turning and now my feet are walking down it. I scan the sidewalk in front of the houses for Parker, her nonthreatening quasi man, the lover she’s sent outside to wait for me.

  All I see is a young woman, standing about four houses down, facing a sky blue house with a chain-link fence running around it. I’m at number 24, so that makes the blue house number 30. My mother’s house. I slow and Gret tugs at the leash, but I want to study this woman before she notices me.

  She’s not looking down the sidewalk, watching for me. All her attention is on the house. She is in profile, her long hair hanging down her back, and she looks part Asian and part a lot of other things. She’s leaning forward like a supplicant, and I read desperation in her tense shoulders. Her hands clutch and knead at the fence top.

  As I
get closer, I see she’s talking to a man in the yard. Parker. Has to be. He’s standing inside the fence, a few feet in front of the narrow, covered porch that runs the length of the house.

  I give Parker the once-over, and I understand at once why Alswan wasn’t worried that a gun-shy girl might get spooked. He’s a long, narrow, pale fellow, his posture so slouchy that he’s the droopy definition of nonthreatening. He’s wearing a long-sleeved jersey over khakis and, God help him, mandals. He has a sharp, attractive face, but his heavy-lidded eyes and laid-back expression say he’s about to carefully catch a porch spider in a Dixie cup and walk it out to the garden. Then he’ll recycle the cup.

  He has a couple of mutts lolling at his feet, Lab mixes, both floppy-eared and jet black. A third dog is standing on the porch stairs, a teeny Boston terrier with pugnacious shoulders. The terrier is the fiercest thing in the yard, man included, and he wouldn’t even come to my knees.

  I draw closer, trying to get a read on my potential stepfather. He’s young, I realize. Closer to my age than my mother’s. A lot closer. I find my lip curling up, wondering what the hell she’s doing living with a fellow who is young enough to be her— I stop abruptly. Maybe Parker is her son. He looks Irish, with high, flat cheeks and a narrow jaw, his skull so angular that it looks like it has a few extra bones in it.

  I come closer, close enough to hear Parker say, “It’s Mirabelle’s call, Lilah.” His voice is set low, as mellow as his posture. He calls her Mirabelle, not Mom or Mother, but maybe children call their mothers Mirabelle in California. As for Claire Lolley, she didn’t like motherhood enough the first time around to keep the job. Maybe the second time she kept the kid but not the title.

  “Please,” Lilah says. Her voice breaks in the middle of the word. “I can do it right this time.” She sounds breathless and sorry and eight years old.

  Just then Gretel clues in that we are approaching a yard full of dogs, and she jerks me forward, tail wagging.

  “I can’t help you,” Parker says, spreading his hands as if he is showing the woman that they are empty. “Let me call Safe Harbor.”

  “No!” Lilah says, fierce. “I want Mirabelle.”

  Parker raises his hands to his head. His hair probably looks dark brown indoors, but the sun has found a lot of red in it. It’s long, pulled back, and hanging in a tail almost past his shoulders. He’s pressing the sides of his head like his brain is starting to hurt, and then Gretel jerks me forward again, chuffing.

  The sound catches Parker’s attention. He smiles when he sees me, raising one hand in an easy wave. The terrier hears Gretel, too, and he starts barking, alerting the Labby mutts. They rise, and the whole pack of them surge like a hairy wave to the corner of the fence closest to us, barking and wagging. Gret tows me to the fence corner, and all four of them thrust their noses through the links to snuff at each other.

  When the dogs come running, the woman turns to see what they are racing toward. The side of her face that was turned away from me is mottled in spectacular purple and black, with violet and olive around the edges. Her right eye is swollen shut. The other eye is almond shaped, and its thick lashes are matted and wet. Pale women like me, we get red noses and splotch up, but this girl is a pretty crier, and the unmarked half of her face is lovely.

  “Hi,” I say, embarrassed, my gaze skittering sideways to meet her good eye. This is my mother’s house, but this beaten woman makes me feel like I am an intruder here. Meanwhile, my dog sniffs and wags and makes a pack of easy friends, just like that.

  Lilah stares at me, her good eye accusing, and she says, “She has my place?” She’s looking at me but talking to Parker.

  His eyebrows draw inward. “I don’t think so,” he says to her, then to me, “You’re not Ivy?”

  Lilah stares at me, hostile, daring me to be Ivy.

  “Why aren’t I?” I say.

  “You’re not… not how she described,” Parker says.

  I smile and say with almost no irony, “Maybe I’ve changed since she saw me last.”

  Lilah snorts. “Good luck.” She is speaking directly to me, meaning just the opposite. “I hope you’re perfect. You damn well have to be, here.” She lets go of the fence and turns her back to me, starts walking away.

  “Lilah! Do not go back home again,” Parker calls after her. He comes toward the fence, all the way to the gate. “Let me call Safe Harbor!”

  She flips him the bird over her shoulder and keeps walking. I come down the length of the fence, the dogs in step with each other on their separate sides. The Labs are dipping their front ends down, rumps up, asking in universal dog language if Gretel wants to play. She does. Only the terrier stands off to the side, suspicious, cocking one sprouty eyebrow up, then the other. I stop by the front gate. Parker is still watching Lilah walk away. She’s pretty from the back, too, but I can tell from the careful way she’s moving that the bruises on her face have plenty of company.

  After she makes the corner, I turn to Parker and say, “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  Parker’s head tilts sideways at the accent. “Where are you from?”

  Does he not know about me? The woman he lives with—our shared mother or his way-too-damn-old-for-him wife—is from Alabama.

  “Where do you think I’m from?” I ask.

  He says, “I don’t know. Someplace south. Virginia?”

  “Sure,” I say. “Virginia. Why not.” I say it like an asshole, my gaze pointy, staring sticks into his skin. He smiles, genial, oblivious, and I say, “So you’re…” I’m not sure what to call her. My mother? The gypsy? I can’t bring myself to say Mirabelle. Finally I settle on a pronoun, anonymous and plain. “So you’re her, what?”

  “Whose what?” Parker asks. “Lilah?”

  I jerk my thumb at the house, to indicate my mother, and find I also can’t say husband, stepfather, or, God help me, my brother. These words are all distasteful, and I don’t want them in my mouth. I finally say, “You’re her boyfriend?”

  Parker looks startled, then laughs. “I’m Mirabelle’s landlord.”

  “Oh,” I say, nonplussed. “That’s great. I mean, how great. For both of you, both.” I’ve been so caught up studying the people, I did not look closely at the house. I see now that it has two front doors. The one in the center has a dog door set in the base. The second door is at the far right end of the porch, so I doubt this place is a true duplex. It’s more like the house has a mother-in-law suite with a separate entrance. There’s an unlit neon sign in the window beside the far door: an open hand, palm forward. My mother’s business.

  I feel stupid for being so angry, for jumping to so many wrong conclusions. “Is she married?” I ask.

  “No,” Parker says, looking me over. His expression is as bland as oatmeal. “She told me you had long hair.”

  “I cut it,” I say.

  “And she didn’t mention the dog. It’s like if someone has a unicorn tattooed on their forehead. You don’t say they’ll have on a red shirt. A three-legged dog is the kind of thing you mention first.”

  “She didn’t know I had the dog,” I say, then remember he’s her landlord. “Is the dog a problem?”

  “Oh, yeah. I hate the stinking things,” he says, deadpan, while his mutts drip friendly slaver and try to goozle through the fence holes, jostling each other to be the one touching noses with Fat Gretel. I realize I’m grinning at him, so pleased to know he isn’t any kind of dreadful kin to me. He smiles back and then points from one big mutt to the other and then to the terrier, saying, “Buck, Miss Moogle, Cesar.”

  I point and say, “Fat Gretel.”

  He squats down and addresses Gretel directly, threading his fingers through the fence so she can smell him. “Are you a good dog?” It’s not rhetorical. She grins and pants joyfully into his face through the links, tail in a mad wag. “Yeah, you’re a good dog. Okay, then.” He straightens. “Come on in.”

  I block the entrance with my bag and then my body as he opens the gate for
me, and Gretel and I slip in without letting his dogs out. He shuts it, and Gretel and the other dogs are winding all around, each trying to be the first to get a noseful of the other’s butt.

  Parker says, “Let her off the leash before she trips you.”

  I let Gret go, and they take off in a pack, even the standoffish terrier caught up in the pleasures of lapping the house with a visitor dog. Meanwhile, Parker takes my bag for me and crosses the small lawn, heading to the porch in a shambling, amiable walk that reminds me of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo.

  He is talking at me loud, over his shoulder. “The stairs are in her reading room, so you can’t get up to your room without tramping through the middle of her reading. Sorry. Can I get you some water? Or tea?”

  “No,” I say. “That woman, Lilah. She used to live here?”

  There are three steps that lead up onto the porch, and Parker pauses on the bottom one. He turns toward me to shake his head, rueful. “Yeah.”

  “With Mirabelle,” I say. “Before me.”

  “Not right before. She was three—no, four before you. She keeps coming back, though.” He sets my bag down on the top step.

  “Four before me,” I say, hesitant. Parker seems to have no clue that I am Mirabelle’s daughter. He thinks I am Lilah’s successor, and I am starting to get a feel for what that means. My mother has been taking in stray ladies, the kind who have bad home lives and a lot of bruises. It appears to be habitual.

  The three big dogs all come charging around in a pack, streaming across the yard. Gretel is keeping up fine on her three legs. They disappear back around the corner, the stubby terrier trailing behind and barking like mad.

  “Safe Harbor is a shelter, for women?” I ask Parker. He nods, and I keep guessing, on a roll now. “Mirabelle works at this Safe Harbor place? This is like an annex?”

  “Nah. Safe Harbor doesn’t officially approve of Mirabelle’s… what would you call it? Freelance social work?” There are a couple of wicker rocking chairs with padded seats between the two front doors on the porch, but Parker sits on the wide steps, to the right of my bag. He leans back in the sunshine, stretching out his long legs. His rumpled khaki pants are too short. “But one of their directors, Jane, calls Mirabelle on the sly when all their beds are full, and at least three of Mirabelle’s, er, guests who didn’t work out here have ended up doing really well over there. Not Lilah, though.”