“It might help?” offered Abby. In the pause, she had come to feel ashamed of her family’s wealth.
“Thanks, Abby. It’ll help a lot.”
Now it seemed that Enrique had simply been made solemn by the generosity of the gift. Relieved, Abby reached over and pinched his shoulder. He smiled. She turned to Gene, who tucked his chin and looked away, and gave him a thumbs-up he couldn’t have seen. “Well, guys, good luck,” she said. She rose from her chair and returned to study hall.
“COOP?”
He lowered the newspaper to reveal Wanda. “Well, howdy, little sister.”
“I figured I could find you here. You know, I can walk here from my place.” She seemed to be apologizing for having disturbed him at the Denny’s counter, his daytime sanctuary.
“Well, have a seat. Gina?” he called to the overweight waitress who sat in a booth, balancing her checkbook. “This is Wanda, my baby sister.”
“Hey,” the women said to each other.
“You want somethin’?” Coop asked Wanda.
“Iced tea?”
“Iced tea for the lady.”
“Shore thing,” Gina said. She scooted out of the booth, leaving a cigarette burning in the amber glass ashtray.
Coop turned to Wanda, who looked pretty, her cheeks full and her eyes weathered but lively. With a twinge of sadness, Coop had a sense of all the things Wanda had seen with those eyes. It had started so early for her. Coop’s childhood had already been over when their father died, but Wanda’s had hardly begun. Funny—when she used to show up on his doorstep, high or needing to get high, Coop had never wondered what she had seen, he had just wanted to be rid of her.
Gina set a massive plastic glass of iced tea before Wanda and returned to her booth.
“So,” Coop said.
“It’s been two weeks,” Wanda said. “I’ve been thinkin’ and thinkin’.”
“And?”
“I’m ready, Coop.”
“Well, then, there you go.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Coop didn’t need to put Wanda through the wringer. He could see that she was clean, and that she was serious. “I don’t have the money on me,” he said. “I’ll have to go to the bank. And I have one small requirement.”
“What is it?” Wanda asked.
“While I’m at the bank, I want you to visit with Uncle Frank.”
“Oh.” Wanda had expected Coop to interrogate her, to take long breaks to stare off and consider, to make her work for it. But this surprised her. Wanda still blamed Uncle Frank for setting off everything bad that happened in her life by killing her father. Coop had somehow forgiven him, but he couldn’t expect the same from her. Then again, it was only for a few minutes—a small price to pay, from Coop’s perspective. “All right,” she said.
“Gina?” Coop said. “Save my seat? I’ll be back in an hour or two.”
“Don’t keep me waiting too long,” Gina said without looking up.
“Do you want that to go?” Coop asked Wanda.
“No,” she said. She took a long drink of the iced tea just so she wouldn’t leave behind a full glass. It wasn’t nearly as good as her own.
Wanda felt a little guilty. The truth was, she had already been to Portland. She had gone through a round of tests and two interviews with agency staff members, and now a couple had asked to meet her. She needed more money to get back to Portland.
After she had last visited Coop, Wanda had gone through the most difficult week since the death of their mother. She had cut her pills into tiny quarter pieces and allowed herself only one a day. The difference between half and a quarter was surprisingly drastic. Wanda would pace the house in desperation, arguing with that side of herself that came up with reason after reason why she should be allowed one more chip of pill, then charge out into the street for a long walk. Wanda was careful not to walk past Gideon’s unit, which was just down the block from hers. There was always a half-smoked joint in his ashtray awaiting visitors, and to walk by his door was to face the possibility of ducking in for a quick smoke. Instead she would walk around the corner past the empty lot where someone had set up a little shrine—a statue of Mary in a bed of plastic flowers, a knocked-over oil drum before it to sit on. She hadn’t realized its purpose until she saw an old Mexican lady kneeling in the grass there, praying. Then she’d charge through neighborhoods where women in their curlers would turn from their soaps to watch her pass. No one went for walks, not around here. She’d reach the canal, where she’d throw in a handful of dirt to watch the red cloud roll along and disperse into the black water. The canal moved about as fast as she did, and gliding along it kept her mind off the ache. At night it took three sleeping pills to ease her into sleep—legal sleeping pills that she bought over the counter.
She felt she had earned the trip to Portland to register with the agency. She had earned the right to lie about her police record and her last name. Wanda Coper, she had written, and they hadn’t noticed the missing O. She had earned the right to reverse two digits in her Social Security number. A friend had used these tricks to register twice for welfare. They had made a photocopy of Wanda’s ID, but she figured that would just sit in her file. And she had earned the right to play a role in her interview with the psychologist—that of an independent country feminist, looking to do good for gals in need. In reality, she had a fundamental, if illogical, belief that once a couple’s baby was growing inside her, she would no longer crave anything.
But Coop had told her not to come back for two weeks, and it had been only one.
Wanda looked up Wojciechowski in the phone book and dialed the number. A woman answered, bringing to mind the round face of Mrs. Wojciechowski on the sports club membership card.
“Is Gary there?”
“Just a sec. Gary! Phone! . . . No, it’s a girl.”
A girl. It was enough to make Wanda smile, despite her nervousness.
“Hullo?”
“Gary, it’s Wanda.”
“Oh. Hi.”
“I was wondering if you could drop by. I have somethin’ I need to talk to you about.”
“What is it?”
“It’s real important.”
“I can’t get away.”
“Gary, I need three hundred dollars. To go to Portland.”
There was a long pause. Wanda had inflated the amount a little, since she knew Gary could afford it. And she allowed Portland to hang in the air. Ever since she was little, Wanda had known what people meant when they said, in a certain tone of voice, that a girl had gone to Portland. It meant she had had an abortion.
“I’ll bring it over tomorrow night,” Gary said.
The grave and stony look on Gary’s face when he handed her the envelope made Wanda regret it all for a moment. She had aged him. “Thank you,” she said, and was going to invite him in, but he turned and walked quickly back to his car. She would have explained if he had come in!
Gary was the age, Wanda mused after he left, that he wouldn’t doubt that he had gotten her pregnant with that one shot. These boys listened to their mothers’ frantic warnings, and the message they received was this: The girl will always get pregnant. He didn’t know the facts. Maybe Gary considered it a punishment from God. Maybe he would go through his life counting, year by year, the age his child would have been.
She soon put aside these remorseful thoughts. She had the money, and she construed things to make the ease with which she acquired it an indication that she was on the right track.
She did the same now, with Coop. He wouldn’t be funding her first trip to Portland, but her second. What was the difference? She hadn’t lied to him. She had been prepared to, but Coop hadn’t required an explanation, so she felt, really, in the clear. This was what the Catholics called a “sin of omission.” It was a term she had learned from an old boyfriend, Ricky, the only Catholic—and the only Mexican—she had ever dated.
As he drove, Coop gave Wanda
an update on the condition of their uncle. He had never done this before and so it was awkward. “They say he’s diabetic. Not so bad he has to take shots or nothin’, but he’s supposed to cut down on sugar, eat vegetables, whatever. He don’t care, though. Gettin’ a vegetable in him is about as easy as getting a camel up a cattle ramp, so I leave him be.”
Wanda wondered if Coop might try to draw her into her uncle’s care. The thought made her queasy. And when they pulled up in front of the house, with its roof that sagged a little over the porch, her queasiness turned to real apprehension. You need the money, she told herself.
The shades were drawn in the living room. “Frank?” Coop said. “Looks like you got yerself a visitor.”
“I’ll be,” Uncle Frank said.
“It’s Wanda.”
“Well, don’t she look purdy!”
As Wanda’s eyes grew accustomed to the light, she saw her uncle. He sat among a pile of pillows and sofa cushions on the floor, the shape of an enormous egg. He wore a gray sweat suit; his long beard, which spread from his broad neck, was gray, and his face—perhaps from the television glow—looked purple. He held a tall, silver beer can. The air was filled with the intimate musk of orange peels left to rot in the kitchen trash. It occurred to Wanda that the sole purpose of his body now was to create this smell: to strain the alcohol from the beer and send it through veins to the skin, where it was released the way orange oil mists from pores in the rind when you peel it.
“Hi, Uncle Frank.”
“I’ll be. Wander. Haven’t seen ya fer quiter while.”
A sharp bang from the ceiling made Wanda jump.
“Acorns,” explained Coop. “Now, I’m gonna run out on an errand, and Wanda’s gonna chat with ya. I’ll be back shortly.”
Wanda perched on the edge of the recliner, the only seat whose cushions had been left in place. “How you been, Uncle Frank?”
“Cain’t complain. No one’ll listen. Now, watch this.” He tipped his beer can toward the TV screen. It was The Price Is Right. A woman guessed the prices of household products, and Bob Barker pressed buttons beside them, causing a sign to flip open and reveal how far off her guess was. “Well, ain’t you stupid! Everybody knows big thinger Windex coss more’n a dollar. Swear, I watch this show thinkin’ I oughta go on there. Win a hunnerd bucks and a sailboat. Whud I do with that, though? The sailboat. Well, ain’t you just stupid!” Uncle Frank sipped his beer. He had the same dismayed smile affixed to his face as Coop often did, his eyes had the same squint, but there was no light left there even as he laughed at the woman’s guesses.
Periodically, a loud crack would come from above, followed by a rattle as the acorn rolled down the roof. Wanda was relieved that Frank didn’t want to chat. The last time she had been stuck in this room with him, a couple of years back, he had asked after her brothers and sisters, oldest to youngest. When he came to Louis, she had said, “Louis is dead, Uncle Frank. He died years ago.” That smile had stayed on his face, but his eyes had squeezed, and his head had turned back toward the television. “Guess I knew that,” he had said.
Frank seemed to find The Price Is Right endlessly exasperating. When a man failed to spin the Big Wheel all the way around, Frank’s bullfrog voice cracked like an adolescent’s: “Aw, come on! Ya gotta do it hard!” Wanda leaned forward, her chin parked on the heel of one hand, her fingers cupped to shield her eyes from the sight of her uncle. The way his shoulders shrugged when he suppressed a burp nauseated her.
Finally Coop returned. “Mormon missionaries!” he called from the porch. “Anybody home?”
Frank made a rattling laugh.
“Well, Uncle Frank,” Wanda said, standing, “you take care. I’ll come see ya again real soon, okay?”
“I’ll be right here,” Frank said.
“Thanks for that,” Coop said simply as he drove her home. He parked in front of her house and gave her the money.
“You won’t regret this, Coop. I’m gonna do good.”
“All right, little sister.”
Coop kissed Wanda on the cheek, then glanced at his watch as she got out. Two o’clock. Time to head back to school. He’d have to pay Gina tomorrow.
THAT NIGHT, LINA came in and lay next to Enrique on top of the covers. They still spent these minutes together before bedtime, but they no longer spoke Spanish. Lina was aware that, in this, Enrique had obeyed Jay.
“Mom,” Enrique said, “has that guy ever tried to kiss you again?” Enrique had put Mr. Hall’s gift in his closet without showing his mother.
“Oh. No.”
“ ’Cause I was thinking about it, and I think it’s okay. I mean you shouldn’t not kiss someone just because he’s married.”
This was a lie, and Enrique said it just to test his hypothesis of what his mother would say. Mr. Hall was a subject Enrique couldn’t help picking at, like a scab.
“Enrique, are you joking?” (She pronounced “joking” choking.) “Of course I shouldn’t.”
“I don’t know,” Enrique said.
Lina was quiet for a while. What did Enrique suspect? “Don’ start changing your mind just because you’re growing up, mijo. Right is right and wrong is wrong.”
“I don’t know, though. It’s not always so simple.”
“Who tol’ you that? Jay?”
“It’s like you said, you’re lonely.” Enrique felt tears rise as he said this. He had pushed the act too far and upset himself. And his hypothesis had been incorrect.
“Don’ be mean,” Lina said.
“I’m not being mean, Mama! I would never be mean!” He threw his arms around her. The sentiment was real, even if it had ridden in on a lie. “I just want you to be happy.”
“Arright, baby, now go to sleep.” Lina kissed him. To put a word to this hesitancy she felt toward her son—mistrust—would have broken her heart.
Once she was gone, Enrique allowed himself to rewrite the episode. He had been encouraging her to be free, to find happiness. He had sacrificed his own moral code for her. How could she accuse him of being mean? He was indignant.
Of course, Enrique still only imagined that it had been one kiss. His mental image was his mother, in an apron and yellow rubber gloves, caught in Blake Carrington’s arms upon turning from her task. Her eyes bulged in shock as the man’s mouth mashed against hers.
The next afternoon, as Lina lay in the arms of the real Chuck—bald Chuck with black moles like currants in his soft, dough-colored shoulder—Lina said, “Enrique suspects something.”
Step Three:
Hypothesis
Chapter 10
With trembling hands, Wanda flipped through an issue of Parenting magazine. It was all ads. That was okay, though, as she wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on an article anyway. Then Helen rushed in and sat right next to her.
“Are you nervous?”
Helen made Wanda nervous. She tended to sit too close to Wanda and to look too directly into her eyes. And if Wanda looked away, Helen repositioned herself, chasing her gaze around the room.
“Yeah, a little,” said Wanda.
“Well, take a few deep breaths through the nose. Exhale through the mouth. There’s nothing to fear. These are very nice people. You couldn’t ask for better, really—highly intelligent, both of them.”
Few things Helen could have said would have put Wanda less at ease. Intelligent people had never liked her. And only now was Wanda able to put her finger on what was wrong with Helen: she talked like a man. Not that her voice was low-pitched (it wasn’t), and she didn’t look like a man—she would have been pretty if not for a small, reptilian nose whose open nostrils exposed, in profile, a wet septum—but her sentences, in their precision and power, were like a man’s. Wanda would have wondered if Helen was a lesbian if she hadn’t already made references to her husband and daughter, and if this strange behavior didn’t seem to be a widespread problem. Many of the women Wanda had met at the agency, and in Portland in general, spoke this way. It was j
arring, when you were used to the sugary chirp of Eula women.
“All right, should we go in?”
Wanda nodded.
Helen led Wanda by the hand into her office. “Randy, Melissa, this is Wanda.”
The couple stood to shake Wanda’s hand. Randy was bald on top, had a beard that was thinner on his cheeks than on his chin, and wore thick glasses that made his eyes look small and far away. A band that had been cinched tight around the back of his head held the glasses in place. A happy gasp caught Melissa, who was a full head shorter than Wanda, and she took back her hand to cover her small, heart-shaped mouth. “I don’t know why I’m crying,” she said. “I never cry.”
Randy put his arm around her. “This process has been very emotional for Melissa,” he said.
“For both of us,” said Melissa.
Randy nodded and kissed the top of her head.
“Let’s all sit down,” said Helen.
Wanda gave Melissa a reassuring smile as they obeyed.
“This is just an introductory meeting,” said Helen. “We’ve read each other’s profiles, we’ve seen Wanda’s test results. At this stage in the game we like to have a brief face-to-face. There’s a lot to take in, so we keep it short. Of course, things are a little different since Wanda lives so far away. Wanda, I’ve made it clear to Randy and Melissa that you might be meeting with one or two other couples during your visit. So, like I said, just a brief meeting to put a face to the numbers. Okay?”
Everyone nodded and smiled at each other.
“Wanda, I think Randy and Melissa have a few questions they’d like to ask.”
Wanda crossed her legs and turned toward the couple, like a guest on Donahue.
Randy said, “Well, Wanda, your profile said that you grew up on a farm?”
“Uh-huh. My dad was a farmer and my mom was a housewife. They died not too long ago—”
“In a car accident,” said Melissa. “I was so sorry to read that.”
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