“All right, all right, sit down before you pass out,” says Mac. We get a spot at one of the metal tables, and the seat is hot on my legs. “For goodness’ sakes, take it easy, Aoife.”
I tip my head, because he never calls me Aoife. He says it just about right, as good as Sister Mary Celeste at least.
We sit quietly and suck on our snow cones through straws.
“Hey Mac?” I say.
“What?”
“What did you and Uncle Donny have a fight about? Are you mad at him now?” Because if Mac isn’t the murderer, then I want him and Uncle Donny to like each other and then we can all have fun together.
“We weren’t fighting,” says Mac, and I laugh when he sticks out his tongue at me and it’s extra red. “Sometimes adults just have a disagreement, that’s all.”
“Hannah says that Uncle Donny is going to marry her mom and then we’ll be sisters,” I blurt out, all at once. I didn’t even know I was going to say it until I already had.
Mac chuckles, but I don’t see what’s so funny.
“Do you think he will?” I ask.
“Uh, no, Alf. I don’t think your uncle is going to marry the cougar next door.”
I wouldn’t say that Hannah’s mom reminds me of a cougar. I would say that she reminds me of a groundhog. But it’s fun that Mac knows how to play the game, too. “He might marry her,” I say, seriously.
“Well, kiddo, I guess you’re old enough now to understand that your uncle is, uh, of the homosexual persuasion. You know? So I don’t think you have to worry about any woman making off with him.”
But I don’t get what he means. I look at Mac, waiting.
He sighs. “He’s a fruit,” he says.
But I don’t know why he says that. Uncle Donny doesn’t seem anything like an apple or an orange to me. He really seems more like a penguin.
“Look, a lot of people in this world end up paired up to somebody, right? Not everybody, sure, but most people, they meet someone, they get married, right?”
“Okay,” I say. This doesn’t really seem to be true—Mama isn’t married, and neither is Mac, or Hannah’s mom, or Father Paul, or Stephanie—but I guess it’s true on TV.
“So most of the time, a lady marries, you know, a gentleman. Right? But sometimes, uh, a guy like your uncle Donny, you know, and he ends up marrying, ah, another man instead. Uh, instead of a lady.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “Uncle Donny isn’t married to anyone.”
“Okay, yeah, but if he was, it wouldn’t be to a lady. All right?”
I try to understand what Mac is saying, but it doesn’t really make any sense. “So, Uncle Donny would marry you?” I say. “Or Father Paul?”
“Uh, no, those are two people he would definitely not marry,” says Mac. “He’d marry, you know, another guy like himself, who also likes the gentlemen.”
Oh.
Mac looks at me, but he doesn’t say anything. After a minute, he lights up another cigarette.
“Sir, you can’t smoke that here,” says the snow cone man.
“Jesus Christ,” says Mac. “I’m outside, ain’t I? What do you want from me? C’mon, Alfie, we’re done here anyway, right?”
I guess we are, because Teddy’s feet have started to hurt and he’s already seen all the animals. But I drag the toes of my shoes on the ground all the way back to the gate because I don’t ever want today to end. I want to stay here at the zoo, forever, and turn into a monkey and live with my monkey friends.
We walk all the way back to the truck, and Mac unlocks the door and I climb in, feeling like my feet weigh a hundred pounds.
That’s when I remember that, if I want Mama to come home, I need to solve more clues. I promised the saints I would.
I try to think of a good question. “Did you ever take Theo to the zoo when he was my age?” I ask.
“Ah, I hadn’t met Theo yet when he was your age,” says Mac, lighting another cigarette as he gets in. He starts the car, and at first it makes a big noise but then it starts.
I laugh. “That doesn’t make sense,” I point out. “You said you were our father. You must have met him at least a few times.”
“I said I was your father,” says Mac.
But—but Theo is my brother. I thought that meant we have the same parents. I’m pretty sure that is what that means. Right?
Mac’s cell phone rings. He looks at the number and mutters under his breath before answering it. “Yello, Don. No, she’s with me … Because I picked her up from the church, that’s why. Well maybe she shouldn’t have been walking by herself with nobody but a teenager looking out for her, then! … No. No, I’m bringing her home right now. Keep your pants on Donny, Jesus.” He hangs up and reaches for the AC dial, turning it higher because it’s warm in the car with the sun beating down.
“But—how can you be my father and not Theo’s? Was Theo found in the cabbage patch? You said everyone has a father.”
It’s quiet except for the rattling of the truck. “Theo’s father is dead, a long time ago,” says Mac.
“Oh.” It’s sad that Theo’s father died, even though it’s exciting to be solving parts of the mystery. “He’s still my brother though, right?” I ask.
“Yeppo. He’s still your brother.” Mac doesn’t look like he wants to keep talking about this.
“Do you miss Theo? Is that why you don’t like to talk about him? Mama really misses him and that’s why it’s not good to bring him up too much.”
“Uh, you know, there’s things about me and Theo that are—are hard to explain,” says Mac at last. He uses the same voice that everybody uses when they talk about Theo. It doesn’t sound right on him because he’s usually pretty loud. “He wasn’t too happy with me, back in those days.”
I want to ask Mac to help me investigate so that Mama comes home. I want to tell him about the saints and the mantle over the fireplace. But before I can say that, I have a different problem.
“I think I ate too much snow cone,” I say. “I don’t feel so good. Do you have a bucket?”
“Christ,” says Mac, reaching back and rummaging around in the back seat. “All right, hold it, Alfie, hold it!”
* * *
When we get home, Mac pulls up right in front of the house in his beat-up truck. I’ve been resting against the window, watching the telephone poles bob past.
I didn’t get sick. Mac stopped the car on the side of the road and we let some fresh air in. “Well, kid. End of the line,” says Mac. “Guess we better go inside and face the music.”
I don’t understand what he means. “Are we in trouble?” I ask. I hope we’re not in trouble because of skipping Bible study. It won’t be fair if we are, because Uncle Donny said I didn’t even have to go.
“Eh, some people don’t think a man has the right to take his own kid out for the day without police supervision,” says Mac. “I tell you, Alfie, back in the day we didn’t have someone looking over our shoulder all the time, and we came out okay.”
Mac walks me up the front steps and inside, where Uncle Donny is waiting.
“You’re going to prison, Mac,” he says, his voice tight and pinchy like new shoes. But he has a smile on his face as he takes my shoulder and guides me into the living room. His smile is funny. His eyes aren’t scrunched at the corners at all.
“Here she is!” he says.
There are three ladies I’ve never seen before, sitting on the sofa with clipboards. “Aoife, these nice people are here to see you, okay? They’re from Child Protective Services, and they just want to have a little chat with us.”
Chapter Eight
Hannah said that big scary men would drag you off to Children’s Prison, but these are definitely old women—older than Mama but not as old as Sister Mary Celeste. Hopefully that means I haven’t been too bad yet.
“Well, hello ladies. Ah, Don, sorry I dropped her off a little later than we agreed,” calls Mac. His voice seems cheerful, but something about it sounds fake.
“I guess I’ll head back now, but you folks have a good night, okay?” He nods in their direction, but he’s already turned around and is heading out the door.
Uncle Donny does not walk him to the door to see him out. He keeps his back turned to Mac until he hears the door closed. Mama would say that is not good manners.
“Sorry about that,” says Uncle Donny, keeping his hands tight around my shoulders. “Little caregiver timing mix-up there. As you can see, Aoife’s fine, aren’t you kiddo?”
“I went to the zoo!” I tell him. “It was a surprise!”
“It sure was,” says Uncle Donny. “Aoife, these are some of my friends. This is Miz Carrie, and this is Miz Lori. Can you say hi to them?”
I peek over at Miz Carrie and Miz Lori. Miz Carrie has short dark hair speckled gray, and Miz Lori has blonde hair cut around her shoulders. They are both a little fat. If they were animals, they’d be hedgehogs. Both of them.
“Hi,” I say.
Teddy goes to hide behind the sofa, because sometimes when he meets new people he’s shy. But he doesn’t know that his fuzzy bear backside is sticking out from behind the couch because he’s too big to fit behind it. I want to giggle, but I don’t, because I just remembered that Uncle Donny told me not to talk about Teddy in front of the sea-pee-ess ladies. I close my eyes and ask Teddy inside my head to please, please not get me in trouble.
“Well hello, Eva,” says the dark-haired one, Miz Lori. Or maybe it’s Miz Carrie. Oh no, I already forgot which one is which! “We were just noticing how unusual your name is.”
New grown-ups always want to talk about my name. I don’t know why they never have anything more interesting to ask me.
“It’s my gramma’s name,” I say, because that’s what I always say.
“That’s right, your gramma Aoife,” says Donny. “Boy, she was a cantankerous lady. I once saw her yell at a store clerk for forty-five minutes in a Macy’s!”
I stare at him. Mama never tells that story. Every time I say I’m named for my gramma, Mama always says, “Your gramma Aoife, God rest her soul.” Uncle Donny just smiles at me, big, but I can’t tell if he’s joking.
“So, ladies, as you can see, we’re doing all right here,” says Uncle Donny. “Just muddling along, you know how it is, one day at a time.”
Both the Miz Carrie/Loris nod, but neither of them really smile.
“Well, as I was saying, Mr. Scott, in the state of Michigan, police and hospital workers are mandatory reporters,” says the light-haired one. Her voice is very calm, like she’s reading a bedtime story. It almost makes me feel sleepy again. “This means that if they have any reason to suspect any child is being abused or neglected, they must file a report with Child Protective Services.”
“All right, well, there’s no abuse or neglect going on here,” says Uncle Donny. “Look at this child—she’s not hungry, she’s wearing clean clothes, she’s just fine!”
Although my shorts are actually dirty from last week, but I don’t mention that.
One of the Miz Ladies writes something down in her notebook.
Uncle Donny clears his throat. “You’ve seen the fridge, you’ve seen the bedrooms, everything aboveboard.”
If the Miz Ladies looked at the fridge, I’m glad they looked after Uncle Donny came and cleaned it up.
“Ongoing lack of supervision is a form of neglect, and we’re also required to evaluate the risk of potential future neglect,” says one of the Miz Ladies. “Now, I’m not saying abuse has occurred, but we need to ensure that the child is not at risk. Ms. Scott is clearly struggling. We need to make sure there’s a support network in place.”
“You know, we’re two miles from the boundary of Detroit. I’m pretty sure there are a hell of a lot of children that could use more assistance than Aoife,” says Uncle Donny.
“This is a county agency, sir.”
The other Miz Lady leans forward. “You do understand that Eee-fah here was left unattended in the parking lot of the mall during the incident we were discussing.” She is trying to say it right, but it sounds funny anyway. She says the first part, Ee, with the exact same amount of attention as the second part, Fah.
“Siobhan is usually doing better than that,” says Uncle Donny, but he doesn’t sound very sure.
“Do you mind if we ask you some questions, sweetheart?” asks the lighter-haired one.
“Okay,” I say. Is that a good answer?
Miz Whoever smiles, but in a sad way. Like Sister Mary Celeste when she announced it was the last day of kindergarten at Sacred Heart. Some of the boys cheered, but at least one of the girls cried.
“Okay, Ee-fah,” says one of the ladies, “Well, what can you tell us about your day today?”
“I went to the zoo with Mac, and he told me he’s my dad,” I say.
There’s silence, and I look up. Everyone is looking at me.
“What?” says Uncle Donny. His voice is strange.
“Yeah, I thought I was going to go to Family Bible Study, but we went to the zoo instead. It was a surprise! And I like surprises, especially if there’s bears involved.”
“Aoife,” Uncle Donny cuts in, “what did you mean, Mac told you he’s your father?”
“Yeah, he said he was. He said, ‘Your old man will watch out for you,’ and he didn’t mean God, he meant himself. I checked. But Mama always says she found me in a cabbage patch. Mama always says that. Did Mac put me in the cabbage patch?”
“Is this … Mac her father?” the blonde Miz Lady asks Uncle Donny. “The file doesn’t have an entry.”
“That’s a question for Siobhan, when she gets home,” says Uncle Donny.
“He’s not Theo’s father, though,” I say, remembering the important part of the conversation. “I asked him, and he said he wasn’t.”
I am watching the dark-haired one’s face. When I say Theo’s name, her eyes look away from me, towards the light-haired one, but nobody says anything. “Well, Eva,” says the dark-haired one, “that must have been a very exciting day for you. How do you feel about Mac saying he’s your father?”
She’s back to saying my name flat wrong instead of kind of wrong. I don’t try to tell her the right way. I just push my hair out of my eyes, because it’s coming out of the ponytail I made. “Okay, I guess,” I say, because it’s true.
“Baby, this is probably something you should talk about with your mother, maybe when you’re older,” says Uncle Donny. To the ladies, he adds, “I’m sorry, Mac should have talked to Siobhan before just … springing it on the kid like that.”
“I liked that he springed it,” I say. “I like the zoo.”
“Uh-huh. Well, as you can see, ladies, Aoife is fine. She’s being supervised by a surplus of substitute parents. I think we can all agree there’s no problem here.”
“Mac says you’re a fruit,” I tell Uncle Donny. Both the ladies freeze. “Is that true?”
“Aoife, that’s not a very nice thing to say,” says the dark-haired lady. And for once, she says my name just about right.
I look around. Nobody wants to look at me, but I don’t know why. “That’s what Mac said,” I explain. “What does it mean? Does it mean you’re not going to marry Hannah’s mom?”
“Okay, well, as you can see, we’ve got a lot going on here,” says Uncle Donny. “I’d like to talk to Aoife about this in private, if you don’t mind, so perhaps we can wrap it up, hmm, ladies?”
“Is it not true?” I ask. I don’t know why everyone’s getting so mad. I’m just asking a question. Sister Mary Celeste says there are no stupid questions.
“I think we can all agree that this ‘Mac,’ who has no legal claim to be Aoife’s father at the moment, does not seem to be an ideal caretaker,” says the dark-haired lady. “Hmm?”
“Uh, yes,” says Uncle Donny. “I’ll, uh, keep him away from her until Siobhan’s back.”
“But I like Mac! He took me to the zoo!” Also, I really hope he didn’t kill my brother.
“Take
it up with your mother,” says Uncle Donny, rubbing his face with both hands.
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Scott, I’d like to ask Eva some questions that she should answer on her own,” says either Miz Lori or Miz Carrie.
“Sure, how can this go any worse? You just go ahead.”
“Would you mind coming with me into the kitchen?” the light-haired one asks him.
Uncle Donny looks at me and starts to say something, but then he closes his mouth and doesn’t. “Sure,” he says.
So he gets up and follows her, and I stay with the dark-haired one. I think about asking if she’s Miz Carrie or Miz Lori, but I don’t.
“Well, sweetheart,” says Miz Lady. “I’d like to get to know you a little bit. Would that be okay?”
“Okay,” I say. Although I think maybe I do mind, because I’m pretty sure if I don’t answer right they will call in the men to drag me away.
Teddy comes to climb into my lap, even though he’s supposed to stay out of the way. I don’t tell him to get down.
“I was wondering, do you like having your uncle Donny stay with you?”
I think about saying that it’s hard to sleep with him coming into my room at night. I’m extra tired from being woken up all the time. But I just nod instead, because it’s bad to complain.
“Okay.” She makes a note on her clipboard.
I wish I wasn’t here. I need to tell Hannah all the clues I’ve found.
“Now tell me, Eva, do you feel safe in your home?”
I don’t really know what she means by that. How you could you not feel safe in your home? That is what your home is, the place that feels safe. But Teddy nods his head real big, so I nod my head, too.
“Okay. Do you have any bruises or marks you would like to show me?”
“I skinned my knee,” I say, trying to help. I was trying to make cartwheels, but I fell. That was last week. I lift up my leg so she can see, although there’s not really much of a mark left anymore.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” she says. “Anything else?”
Say no, says Teddy.
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