I had a horrible, sickening feeling about what I had seen Mark doing. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and trust that this was probably the first time he’d ever lifted merchandise from the store, but even as sheltered as I was, I knew I had probably witnessed something that was a regular occurrence. I really wanted to believe he was going to make good on his word to run the purchases on Friday, too, but even that seemed like a well-intentioned lie.
But even as wrong as it was, and it was flat-out wrong, being so broke for the last month gave me a new understanding of what Mark was doing.
Was it really so wrong to take paint that he needed to finish something for school when he was being forced to choose between rent and his cat’s life and food? Wouldn’t it be a greater sin against God if he paid for the paint and let the cat die? Or let his girlfriend starve? Was I really doing anything so terribly wrong by not telling Jim? Or by lying to cover him if I was asked about it?
It was forty dollars’ worth of paint.
Two months earlier, and I would have rolled my eyes at forty dollars. Forty dollars wouldn’t even buy a pair of jeans. It wouldn’t even buy a ticket to a concert or dinner for me and Juliette both if we took the bus to Boston for the day. I had seen my Treadwell tuition bill the year before when I had gone home for Spring Break and knew for a fact that my Spanish I text book cost more than forty bucks.
But being on my own for the last month had taught me forty dollars was a precious amount of money to someone pinching pennies. It could pay the gas bill and the electric bill. It could buy a week’s worth of generic brand groceries and toilet paper.
I thought about all the times in the Bible when God had created really messed-up scenarios to test people’s faith. Like when God told Abraham to bring his beloved son Isaac to Mount Moriah to prepare to kill him to prove his loyalty to God. Everyone familiar with the story knows that at the last second, God basically said, “gotcha,” and told Abraham to kill a ram instead.
But still, that was messed up. It was like God enjoyed punking people. God’s punking of Mark and its related impact on me really made me angry. It was seriously not cool to put people in situations where they had to make lose-lose decisions.
I was truly beginning to wonder why Daddy had even chosen to devote his life to preaching God’s message. It had been pretty easy to follow God’s rules back at home when my parents were around. It was definitely harder not to covet my neighbors’ goods at Treadwell when my neighbors had pretty great stuff, like red stretch denim jeans from Tokyo and Miu Miu bags. My classmates had even cooler stuff than my mother. But it was proving to be impossible to distinguish between good and bad in New York. Every decision felt like a trap.
I remained in a bad mood all night, even after Aaron got home and brought me leftovers from the restaurant for dinner. His job had turned out not only to be pretty financially rewarding, but also convenient in that more nights than not, he was allowed to fill a plastic take-away container with delicious French-fries and leftover quiche for us to dine on. The wait staff and kitchen crew could take home anything that wouldn’t be edible the next day, so leftover bread, egg products and things that had already been fried were fair game.
I knew better than to divulge my secret to my brother. He would have commanded me to go straight to Jim in the morning and confess everything. As much as Aaron was quarreling with Daddy about right and wrong, he was just like me when it came to wanting to live an honest life. I knew he wouldn’t want me to do anything to jeopardize my job. But still…
The Mark situation was troubling me so much that I decided to confide in Jacinda when we spoke later that night. I missed my nightly talks with Daddy so much that I was more thankful for my chats with Jacinda on nights when she wasn’t with Orlando than she could ever know.
“Girl, you better stay away from that guy,” Jacinda warned. “There ain’t no excuse at all for breaking one of the Ten Commandments. Our heavenly Father delivered those rules to Moses on Mt. Sinai and they ain’t open for interpretation. And now this guy has gone and implicated you in his mess, too. Just look the other way and mind your own business.”
I could hardly believe my ears and I chuckled, lying on the floor in my bedroom. Jacinda, of all people, was preaching to me.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, annoyed by my laughter.
“I didn’t know you were religious,” I said.
“Of course I’m religious!” she exclaimed. “I’m the most adorable girl in God’s kingdom. Naturally, I gotta respect.”
As it turned out, Jacinda was not only religious, but she went to church every Sunday morning with her mom and sang in the choir.
“How come you never told me?” I asked.
“Religion is a weird thing,” Jacinda replied. “I figured you wouldn’t be into church at all, being all downtown hipster-y. You can come with us to services any time you want and see me sing, although I gotta warn you, I’m pretty amazing.”
Chapter 10
The Chan family lived in the apartment next door to ours. The parents seemed awfully young to me to be married with two kids, but then again, everyone over the age of twenty seemed old to me, so I’m sure they were older than they appeared. Their eldest child, a boy they called Feng, was a smart aleck in the fourth grade. His younger sister, Quian, was adorable.
I had said “hi” shyly to them in the stairwell a few times on my way in and out of the apartment, making note of Feng’s cute Cars backpack and the care with which the satin ribbons were tied in Quian’s shiny black hair. Feng was always fidgeting with his sister, tugging her hair, poking her in the side, pulling her knit winter hat over her eyes and making her shriek with annoyance. It was pretty obvious by his nonstop taunting that Feng adored his little sister.
The day after Thanksgiving when I was doodling in my notepad and trying to ignore the rumbling in my stomach, counting down the hours until Aaron would arrive home with a Styrofoam container of food for me, there was an unexpected knock at the door. Naturally my first suspicion was that it was Mama, or the police, or some militant federal agency arriving to drag me kicking and screaming back home.
And honestly, if had been any of those groups and they had come armed with piping hot butternut squash ravioli with cream sauce, I would have gladly gone anywhere they wanted. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving we had counted exactly one thousand, eight hundred and thirty-five dollars in a wild mix of twenty, ten, and five-dollar bills in what we had started referring to as our “money drawer” in the kitchen. Aaron had gone to the bank and had a check cut for our December rent, worried that we might be tempted to blow part of that cash before our rent was paid. But as a punishment for our prompt rent payment, we ate cheap pasta with on-sale spaghetti sauce out of a jar for Thanksgiving dinner.
Jacinda had invited us up to the Bronx for dinner with her family, but I felt too ashamed to take advantage of someone else’s hospitality. Neither Aaron nor I had a Metrocard, since we could both walk to work, so even travel to the Bronx would have cost us more than we could have afforded to spare.
After my heart attack passed and I tiptoed to the door, I looked through the peephole and saw no one.
Odd.
I opened the door to double-check and that’s when I saw Quian, who was too short for me to have seen through the peep hole view.
“Hello,” I greeted her.
“Hi,” she said. “Can you come over and help my mom?”
I felt more than a little weird stepping out into the hall to check on the scene in the Chan’s apartment next door. I didn’t ask questions, I just followed Quian as she motioned for me to join her. It was weird to see that their apartment had the exact same layout as ours, but was an actual home. The kids’ drawings hung on the fridge in the kitchen, held in place by magnets shaped like pieces of fruit. A small table with four chairs placed around it was crammed in one corner of the kitchen, and the two square feet of countertop space housed a rice cooker, coffee maker and microwave.
>
I gasped when I saw Mrs. Chan lying on the floor in the kids’ bedroom, which was the room on the right (in our apartment, that room was mine). Feng was crouched by her side, his eyes watery with tears. He was holding his mother’s hand, but she was clearly unconscious. Mrs. Chan was so tiny she looked like a child herself, so skinny and delicate in her stonewashed jeans and pink cardigan.
“What happened?” I asked. I had already pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans to call 9-1-1.
“She was changing the sheets and she just fell down,” Feng said.
He shook his mother’s limp hand.
I held my fingers to Mrs. Chan’s neck and calmed down a little when I realized she had a steady pulse. I placed my palm an inch below her nose and was relieved to find that she was breathing.
Score one for high school health class, because at least I had learned CPR at Treadwell and kept my cool in emergencies!
I dashed to the kitchen and ran a paper towel under cool water from the faucet and placed it over her forehead. I was figuring she had probably passed out from low blood pressure or something, but if I couldn’t get her to come to in a minute or so, I was definitely calling for an ambulance.
“Mrs. Chan,” I said firmly. “Mrs. Chan, can you hear me?”
“Mom!” Feng yelled at his mother. “Mom, wake up!”
Mrs. Chan’s eyelids fluttered and she stirred back to consciousness. She asked something in Chinese when her eyes landed on Feng’s face.
“Is she going to be OK?” Quian asked me.
I had been in such a rush to try to revive Mrs. Chan that I hadn’t even noticed Quian silently watching us from the corner of the room with fear in her eyes.
When Mrs. Chan had recovered and was able to make her way toward a chair in the kitchen, I made her a cup of tea and she told me in broken English that she was sure she was all right. She was pretty sure she was pregnant. She had fainting spells when she was expecting both Feng and Quian.
I couldn’t help but wonder where in this tiny apartment the Chans were going to fit another member of their family. But Mrs. Chan seemed unconcerned and very happy when informing me that she was convinced she had a baby on the way.
“Do you want to see my pictures?” Quian asked me when the cartoon that she and Feng had begun watching was on a commercial break. She had seemingly recovered from her mom’s scary fainting episode and led me back into her bedroom to show me all of her crayon drawings of flowers, bees and rainbows.
Being in that little kid’s room and spending time with her, talking slowly and asking her insightful questions about her drawings, made me acutely aware that I had always imagined that I would get married and have kids of my own. I had grown up picturing Daddy walking me down the aisle at a fancy ceremony at the chapel on our property in Phoenix. In my imaginary wedding I would wear a long, beaded gown with a flowing train behind me, requiring at least four flower girls to carry it so that I wouldn’t tumble. When I reached the altar, where my husband-to-be would be waiting for me, I would look over my shoulder at Mama and the expression of love on her face would bring tears to my eyes.
But that fantasy was impossible now. Running away with my brother effectively wiped the possibility of a beautiful future wedding for me off the table. My future was a completely blank slate and it was a little terrifying to know that none of what I had grown up believing my life as an adult would be like was probably going to be happening.
I went back to our apartment, a little lonelier now that I knew what warmth and activity resided on the other side of our wall. Afternoon turned to night, and I strongly considered spending the five dollars I had in my wallet on something small to eat outside, even though I knew Aaron would be home before midnight and had promised to bring me food. My stomach was rumbling. I couldn’t even sit still on the couch for more than a minute to concentrate on my book. I vowed that if I ever lived in a big house with a big fridge full of food again, I would never take it for granted.
Close to midnight, as I was texting with Jacinda, she implied that my brother was probably out with a girl. I wanted so badly to correct her that I took my phone out and put it away twice, both times preventing myself from pressing SEND. I couldn’t possibly convince Jacinda that my older brother had no interest in girls without disclosing how much trouble he had just gotten into with a girl. Even then, Jacinda would be suspicious of Aaron’s interest in girls. Jacinda was of the belief that all boys sought trouble with girls, all the time.
At some point after midnight, I fell asleep. At the time, I was a little angered by Jacinda’s suggestion, and while I was quite sure he wasn’t sneaking around with any girls, my brother had perhaps been convinced to go out for drinks with coworkers. Aaron didn’t drink often, or at least I didn’t think he did, but more than once he had come home from the restaurant smelling a little like booze, saying that someone had insisted that everyone have a shot after their shift and if he had refused, he wouldn’t have been considered a team player. Never mind that he wasn’t twenty-one yet. I was trying not to be judgmental because he had a more stressful job than I did, and what he did there was really none of my business.
I got up off the nest of blankets I had created on the couch and moved into my room, realizing when I looked through the window that the sun was starting to rise. Confused, I checked the time on my mobile phone. It was almost six in the morning, and Aaron wasn’t home.
Frantically, I dialed my brother’s phone, and got his voice-mail. At that point, with the morning noises of the neighborhood were beginning to fill our apartment – the garbage truck down the block, the fish delivery trucks stopping at all of the restaurants – there was no reasonable excuse for my brother not to have been home yet. Not only was I starving, but I was completely raging because of my assumption that he had gotten caught up in some frivolous activity and hadn’t cared enough to call me. Because we both went to boarding school, we hadn’t spent much time together during our teen years, so I didn’t really know if Aaron was this disrespectful on a regular basis. I was starting to think that I didn’t know my brother very well at all… first because of the trouble with Heather, and then staying out all night.
But what had happened to Aaron was much worse than staying out all night drinking.
Less than an hour later, the front door to the apartment opened and my brother, sweat clinging to his brow, lugged himself through the doorway. I was about to cuss him out when I saw that he had a huge plaster cast on his leg, and he had managed somehow to drag himself up all of our flights of stairs without crutches.
“Oh my God,” I said, stunned. “I mean… what happened?”
I had started saying oh my God way too often for my own comfort. It was a phrase of which Mama did not approve.
Aaron had slipped at the restaurant an hour into his dinner shift. There had been oil, or butter, or something slippery in the dining area and he hadn’t seen it as he was bringing a tray of drinks to one of his tables. He had gone crashing down, to his customers’ horror, smashing their fancy cocktails and in the process, hitting the imported tile floor of the restaurant with his leg twisted at an odd angle, so hard that his tibia broke right in half.
Aaron had actually heard the bone break and knew before he even tried to stand up – in excruciating pain – that he was not exactly going to be able to walk this injury off. The hostess of the restaurant called an ambulance, which made a huge ruckus at the restaurant even though the restaurant staff had helped him to the back so that he could leave through the service exit. He was taken to a hospital on the Upper East Side, and was asked for his insurance coverage.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Aaron said, stretching out on our sofa, his left leg bent in the cast in a strangely casual position. “I mean, I was in so much pain, really. I was seeing stars. I just made stuff up. They seemed to get that I wasn’t exactly in a good state of mind to be filling that kind of paperwork out. So they took the papers away from me, I went to get X-rays and I had kind
of hoped that would be the last I’d hear about it.”
But it wasn’t the last he’d heard about it.
After the bone had been reset and Aaron had been given a pain killer and a glass of water in a room he was sharing with an old man who was coughing incessantly, a nurse came in with a clipboard and informed him that there had been a problem with his insurance. She asked for his ID and for the contact information of his closest relative.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Aaron said, sounding exhausted. “I mean, it sounded like they were going to make me spend the night, and I can’t even guess how much money all the stuff they had already done probably cost. I mean, definitely thousands, right? But it was the ID that scared me. I gave it to her, but then I realized I had just handed a hospital employee a fake ID, so I knew I had to get out of there.”
“You left?” I exclaimed.
Aaron closed his eyes and remained silent for a moment.
“What else was I supposed to do, Gracie? Write a bad check? I don’t even have a checkbook. Tell them to call Daddy? I’m sure the journalists at Time magazine would appreciate that.”
I sat down on the floor and stared at my brother for a while as he dozed off to sleep.
He could barely walk, and hadn’t had the bright idea to steal crutches when he escaped from the hospital. He had stiffed a private hospital on an expensive medical bill and had given them an illegal, phony ID.
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