“Hi,” I say. “You’re Annie, right?”
She nods.
“I’m Mary. I met you the other morning at your Uncle Jimmy’s house.”
She doesn’t smile at all. Instead, her eyes lock on to her dad as he launches himself onto the Bears fan on the ground. I let myself see it through her eyes: A man in her uncle’s jersey getting the living hell punched out of his face by her father. I turn so she can’t see it so easily, and place my hand on her small, bony shoulder, so frail though her thin pink jacket. She buries her head into my scarf and squeezes me with her legs. I look down and see her tights are dirty and there’s a hole over one knee. She’s wearing pink moon boots, patched with duct tape. The seams of the boots are coming open, and I see her little toe poking out. I swallow my horror and press my head to the side of hers.
Her little arms tighten around me. “It’s okay.” I bounce her gently on my hip.
“I don’t like yelling,” she says into my ear. “Too loud.”
I hold her close, gripping her tiny body to warm her up and reassure her. There’s evidence of a healing scrape under her eye, and a smudge of something at the corner of her mouth. “I don’t like the yelling either.”
She presses her face into my scarf, and I turn to see how things are panning out with that useless excuse for a man who happens to look just like Jimmy.
He hasn’t fared well, but neither has his opponent. Michael’s face is all bloody, and two security guards are hauling him off. He doesn’t say anything about Annie at all, but keeps on screaming bloody murder about how, “The Bears will never stand a motherfucking chance.”
And then I see four uniformed cops come down the concourse. Two of them take Michael away in one direction and the guy in the Falconi jersey is hustled off in the other.
At no point, not even for an instant, does Michael turn to look for Annie. Neither of the cops looks back. It is as if she wasn’t here at all. Annie sniffles and holds me a little tighter. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “I’ve got you.”
I carry Annie back to the bathroom line with me and introduce her to Bridget. “This is Jimmy’s niece,” I say. “Annie.”
Bridget’s eyes flash at me, and then I see her bite her lip in anger. I nod, raise an eyebrow. Bridget shakes her head. Bastard. What an absolute bastard.
Annie might be terrified, but she’s strong. And yet, there’s a limit. She looks from me to Bridget, both of us total strangers, and starts to cry. Through sobs, she says, “I want to go home.”
I make sure that Annie’s gloves are on tight, and take my own hat off to put on her head. It’s too big, but at least it’s something.
“I have to take her out of here,” I tell Bridget, who nods, looking utterly pained, just like I feel.
I don’t want Jimmy to see an empty seat where I was, but I know I can’t put this little girl through more trauma. She needs a quiet place, maybe some hot cocoa and a nap. She doesn’t need to see her uncle getting pounded like a heavy bag or be surrounded by the population of a mid-sized American city screaming at him either.
Bridget’s face shifts from worry to panic, and she begins patting down her jacket for her phone. She yanks it out of the little front pocket where she always keeps it when she’s on call. “Fuck,” she groans, wincing as soon as she realizes she just dropped the f-bomb in front of Annie. But I’m pretty sure it’s not the first time she’s heard it. “Fudge,” Bridget says. “I’ve got a mother in labor. I need to go.”
Bridget blinks at me. What do we do?
The plan comes together immediately in my head. “You Uber. They’ll pick you up out front. Does that work?”
Bridget nods distractedly as she opens up the app. “Perfect.”
“And we,” I tell Annie warmly, “are going home. What do you say?”
She sniffles and then says, “Yes, please,” near my ear.
With Annie clinging to me, I use my thumb to type out a short message:
Your brother got in a fight.
I have Annie. I’m taking her to my apartment.
Good luck, my love. You’re doing great.
Followed by a smiley. And a heart.
“Want to say anything to your uncle? To wish him good luck?”
That’s when, for the very first time, she smiles a little. She pulls off her glove and with a steady, tiny, finger—a bit dirty under the fingernail—she reaches out and presses on the football emoji, and then tucks her face in next to my neck again.
I remember after I went to live with my aunt, after my parents passed away, she would always happen to be thinking about making cookies when I got sad. I’d have a meltdown or cry over something or other, trying to make sense of it all, and she’d say, “Well, you can’t cry now, lovebug. We’ve got oatmeal raisin cookies to make. How about that?”
Annie clings to me all the way out to the parking lot and doesn’t let go until I’ve set her down in the front seat. Wait. What the hell am I doing? That’s never going to work. A long stream of news stories about the dangers of front seats for children flood through my head. So I pick her up again and flip the seat down, so I can get her squared away in the back. She picks up Frankie’s panda and gives it a squeak, which isn’t a squeak. Just a click.
“That belongs to my dog,” I say. “You’ll really like him.”
She eyes me suspiciously. I can tell she’s a thinker, the kind of girl who gets lost in her thoughts. A lot like me, maybe. “Your dad is going to be okay. He’s just got to deal with a few things.”
Right. Like the finer points of the Cook County jail system, I’m pretty sure. And a night in the drunk tank, I hope.
I shut the passenger’s door and go around to my side. She has the panda pressed to her chest and is watching me like a hawk. I hop in, buckle up, and turn to her. “You know, it’s a good thing you were there today, because I was about to go home and make some cookies.”
“Cookies?” she says, her eyes big and wide, and for the first time, she almost looks happy. I reach back and place my hand to her tiny knee in its tiny dirty tights.
“Yes. Chocolate chip. What do you say?”
Then I see that little adorable smile. A smile that really does look so much like Jimmy’s it takes my breath away. She squeezes Panda again, and this time by some miracle he does squeak a little. She presses him to her chest.
“Okay?” I ask as I turn on the engine. “Cookies? Sound good?”
She beams. “Yeah.”
I turn on the engine and adjust the rearview so I can see her. I think back to my very first date with Jimmy. “And a little birdie told me you like How It’s Made. Is that right?”
Her eyes light up and sparkle, and I feel something—something I have never ever felt before—right underneath my heart.
Frankie Knuckles follows Annie around like her own personal watchdog, and doesn’t even try once to take Panda from her.
“He likes you,” I say, crouching down to put a pan of cookies in the oven. She helped me make them—I was on mixing duty, she was on rolling duty—so they’re all adorably tiny balls. Lilliput-sized.
But she doesn’t answer. Just smiles and then stands in front of the oven door watching the dough balls turn shiny in the heat.
I set the timer and take Annie by the hand, leading her into the living room, where I help her up on the couch. Under my palms, I feel her skinny frame. Her ribs, even. Not an ounce of extra fat on her. When I was that age, I was so plump that I sat on a dishwasher door and broke it. But she’s just a feather. I’ve kept her in her boots because it’s cold in here, and now I grab a blanket from the back of the couch and wrap her up in it. I take off her boots and, automatically, she tucks her legs up under her body and shivers.
Like I remember my aunt doing for me on really cold days when I’d been outside playing, I run my hands up and down over her arms to get a little friction going. At first, she’s rigid like a board, but she slowly starts to loosen up and smile a little. That’s when Frankie leaps up next
to her and brings his nose to her face for a kiss. There is a sudden burst of static electricity, a snap that pops through the air. Frankie stares at her, she stares at Frankie, and he sneezes right in her face.
Her laugh is huge, contagious, and pure. And it has the added benefit of making Frankie lick her even harder. Inch by inch, all over her face, her nose, her eyelids. When he gets to her ears, she squeals at the top of her lungs and flops back against me, giggling so hard she can hardly breathe.
She drops Panda in the fray and wraps her arms around Frankie’s barrel chest. He looks at me like, Well that’s it for me, Mama Mary! I can die a happy man now! And then maneuvers himself for a belly rub.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and while Annie is busy with Frankie, I take the chance to give it a glance. It’s Jimmy replying to me from earlier.
Is she okay?
That bastard.
I snap a quick photo of her with her arm around Frankie, and caption it: “We’re all ok!” I see him typing, and then he says:
Thank you so gucking much, Mary.
Fucking.
Did you win?
I didn’t know if she should watch you on TV.
So we made cookies instead.
The timer dings, and I hustle back to the kitchen, snatching out the cookies right before they start to burn. Perfect timing, thank goodness. The poor thing has had a hard enough day without the smoke alarm going off. I set them down on a cooling rack and take off my oven mitts. My phone buzzes again.
I have to go bail the bastard out.
And yes. We won!
My heart feels so full, so relieved for him I could almost cry.
We will be here.
I knew you’d win. I just knew it.
xoxo
Poking my head back into the living room, I see that Annie has a little bit of Mrs. Friedlander in her, and has landed on How It’s Made without any help at all. On the screen, an infinite line of lollipops fills a conveyor, and I see her smile and pull Frankie a little closer.
From the fridge, I grab a bottle of milk and two glasses from the cabinet. Taking my seat back next to her on the couch, I pour out a glass for each of us. As a machine spins the lollipops, and another machine puts the wrappers on, her mouth drops open. She is utterly, totally, wholly engrossed. The upset of the day is gone. Her dad, bloody on the floor, no longer in her head. The worry and the terror that must be part of her life, not here. For this moment, it’s just her and Frankie and lollipops. I hand her a glass of milk, and she takes it in two hands, guzzling it down like it’s the very best thing she’s ever had.
“Thank you,” she says, a magnificent milk mustache going halfway up her lip.
“You betcha.” I grab another afghan from the other end of the couch and drape it around her and Frankie.
Again, I feel that pinch in my heart. This isn’t some little girl, the child of a stranger or a client or even a friend. This little girl is different. She’s quiet and contemplative and has Jimmy Falconi’s eyes.
And I really, really like her.
I settle back onto the couch, under the blankets with her. As the cookies cool and the sun sets and the wind whistles in the windows, we learn everything there is to know about lollipops. And saddles. And garden hoses. And all-natural vegan bean burritos.
31
Jimmy
By the time I get to Mary’s place, it’s dark and I’m in a foul fucking mood. The bowels of the Cook County correctional system is not the place to be celebrating a win, but it had to be done. And they’re keeping him overnight to sleep off whatever godforsaken combination of Jack and Fireball he’d been downing since breakfast.
Thank God for that.
When I park, I send Mary a text to tell her I’m here. As I walk toward the building, her head pops out of a third-floor window. “Hi!” she calls down to me. “Catch, champ!” And drops her keys. I’m so awestruck by her, so distracted, that I miss the catch completely. They land in a nearby snowdrift, and I pry them out.
It’s the first time I’ve been to her place, and it feels a little bit magical. Grim in the stairwell, but still pretty magical. Because this is her turf, and I like that a lot. I walk up the steps, thinking of her laugh in here, thinking of wrapping my arms around her and kissing her on the cramped landings. As I walk up the steps, I study all the stuff attached to her keys. A Chinese coin with a square hole in the middle is on the ring, along with a little plastic-encased photo, an inch square, of her friend Bridget snuggling Frankie Knuckles. There are what look like office keys, and a locker key, for the boxing gym I’m guessing. And then there is a small silver circle, engraved with the words: “Unfold your own myth.” – Rumi
There is still so much I don’t know about her. So much I want to know. So much I need to know. Looking into her eyes today, before I ran for that touchdown, it was like the world stopped. It was just like I said to her that day when I was so wrapped up in her. The sun will rise and set on this.
When I get to 3A, I knock softly. I hear the sounds of the television inside and Frankie snuffling at the bottom of the door. She opens it up and I’m in heaven. There she is, and with her comes the smell of freshly baked cookies. And roses everywhere. Vases on every table, every flat surface, even sitting on cutting boards on the radiators. “Someone must like you,” I say, taking her into my arms.
“Pretty, aren’t they? He’s a real gentleman. And he can throw!”
She gives me a huge squeeze. Not a lover’s embrace, but an unapologetic bear hug that says everything. Congratulations and Sorry your brother is a shithead and I’m so happy you’re here.
Pulling her to me, I close my eyes and press my face down into her hair. My shitty mood vanishes instantly. “Hi,” she whispers in my ear.
It’s as if I dissolve a little in her arms, pulling her close, feeling the curve of her against me. “What a day. How is she?”
“Good!” Mary says quietly, wrinkling up her nose. “We found How It’s Made and everything was better.”
I peek my head in toward the television and see Annie passed out. Frankie is next to her, making a nest in the blankets, scraping and scratching and going around and around in a circle. Her hand slides off her stomach onto his back. He freezes, mid-nest, and flops down on the sofa with his head on her leg.
“I’m so glad about today,” she says, pulling me close with my shirt in her hands. “I knew you could do it.”
I walk her backward and press her up against the fridge. I bring her lips to mine. Now it’s her turn to dissolve a little, and she tips forward, letting her weight fall against me. Her hands move up my forearms, and she grips me by the wrists as we get deeper and deeper. After a long, long, long kiss, she pulls away and smiles, the light from the television making her eyes shine.
Keeping my voice low, I tell her, “I’m so fucking glad you were there today.” I think about what could have been. Children and Family Services, and the fucking disasters that the system entails. “And just seeing you in the stands.” I kiss her softly on the forehead, letting my lips linger there before placing my chin to the top of her head. “That first touchdown is all yours. I took one look at you, and boom. Magic. I felt like it was…”
She smiles up at me, waiting for the end of that sentence.
What was I? Happy. Excited. Cared for. All the human things I haven’t felt in so, so long.
“…I don’t even know. Fucking teleported to somewhere that was quiet and warm. Where I was happy. Where I could do anything.”
On her tiptoes, she gives me another kiss. This one is sweet and soft, lips to lips. Then she lowers back down and takes my coat from me. She hangs it on a hook by the door, over the top of her jacket.
“Well, teleport yourself to the couch.” She drums her fingers on my chest. “And I’ll make you a grilled cheese.”
I make my way to the living room. Her apartment is a bit messy, in the very best way. Just a little bit of chaos, which somehow feels like home. Lived-in, lived-through. On
the wall are IKEA pictures of poppies in black IKEA frames. There are dog toys here and there, and the very reassuring feel of Mary everywhere. I notice some knitting needles and yarn in a basket by one of the chairs in front of the television, along with a copy of Knitting For Dummies poking out. I scoop Annie up into my arms and hang on to her tight.
From the kitchen, I hear butter hissing in a pan, and the sound of the fridge opening and closing. On the screen, olive oil labels get stuck to the bottles as they spin away.
Leaving Michael in the drunk tank flashes back to me. The way he punched the bars, the way he scowled and glared and roared. Truthfully, I probably could have gotten him out. But I didn’t. Because he deserves to be right there, in the puke and the noise. Not once, not even once, did he ask about Annie. In my arms, she rolls over and sticks her thumb in her mouth. I brush her hair to the side of her forehead with my fingers and look at the scar on her cheek. Deep down, I feel my gut tumble. That scrape was my fault—she got it when the little kid’s baseball we were using popped up off the ground and whacked her in the eye. And I remember thinking when it happened, maybe they’ll think Michael did it. Maybe the daycare that I pay for will finally understand what her life is like, and that the screaming and hollering is hurting her so much more deeply than any graze on the skin.
I hear Mary’s footsteps and watch her come into the living room holding a plate with two sandwiches and a little bowl of ketchup on the side.
Ketchup. This woman totally has my number.
I dip the top sandwich into the ketchup and take a huge bite. With my mouth full, I say, “I’m tired, and when I’m tired I have no filter. So maybe I’m being too forward.” I jam another big bite into my mouth. “But if you serve grilled cheese with ketchup, I think we’re meant to be.”
She snickers and curls up next to me, watching me in the flickering light of the TV.
Hail Mary Page 19