“Dhumavati, you’ve got to be freaking kidding—”
She held up a hand to cut me off. “I want you to think about it.”
“I don’t have to think about it. That’s the most harebrained idea I’ve ever heard. I can’t even remember to bring pens to my classes. There’s no goddamn way I could handle your job.”
“My job doesn’t require perfection,” she said.
“Dhumavati—”
“It requires compassion. That’s why David wants you.” She got to her feet, wincing a little.
There was a small bronze plaque screwed to the back of the bench, right where she’d been sitting. BELOVED ALLEGRA, it read, APRIL 3, 1970–NOVEMBER 18, 1978.
And I’d just written November 17 on Mooney’s homework sheets.
Dhumavati kissed her fingertips, then pressed them against the raised letters of her daughter’s name.
I took her hand. “Tomorrow?”
“The eleventh anniversary,” she said. “Yes.”
“And Santangelo picked today to discuss replacing you?”
“Madeline,” she said, “ I picked today to tell him I need replacing.”
Something in her voice made me doubt that. I pointed at the plaque. “And does he realize?”
“David had this bench made for me.”
I wasn’t sure the gesture could be considered evidence of kindness.
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “I want a couple of months to myself. Three at the most. David has a house in Mexico—San Miguel de Allende. If you’ll cover for me, he’s willing to let me go down there. You’d only have to take the reins temporarily.”
I wondered if she’d overheard him mention the possibility of making my reassignment permanent.
“You’d be doing me a tremendous favor,” she said. “Promise me you’ll think about it?”
“I think it’s a mistake.”
“It’s not,” she said, turning to limp toward the front door of the Farm.
12
They had a woodstove cranked up inside, flames jumping red-orange behind the isinglass in its doors. The air was roasted so dry that breathing made my septum ache.
The kids were expected to chop all necessary wood. No furnace in this place.
Pete took Mooney’s assignment sheets from me, adding them to a pile on a long table at the center of the room. Beside that were two clipboards and a dented cardboard carton filled with Walkmans, each tagged with the name of the kid who owned it.
I asked Dhumavati what they were for.
“The kids can listen to music for study period if they’ve finished their quota of chores. David decided there had to be some tangible reward at the end of the day, something to anticipate.”
Pete picked up a clipboard and started reading off names. One by one, the kids took homework sheets off the pile, then lined up single file by a door at the back of the room. No one spoke.
“Textbooks are kept on their bunks during the day,” Dhumavati explained. “Could you help Mooney carry his?”
I got in line behind him. Pete opened the door to the bunkroom hallway. We shuffled past him, silent.
There was a girls’ room and a boys’ room, both doorless, as were the pair of singles for overnight supervisors. The air was cold away from the stove, with a sharp edge of mildew.
I followed Mooney into the boys’ room. The bunks were triples, made up quarter-bounce tight with army blankets and coarse sheets. He’d rated a bottom-tier bed because of the stitches.
I reached for the pile of books at its foot, whispering, “You guys warm enough at night? Those blankets look pretty damn thin.”
“This time of year,” he whispered back, “you gotta bring a hat.”
He lifted the pillow to show me a knitted watch cap. “Can you give this to Fay? I don’t know if she remembered.”
I snatched it up and hid it between two textbooks.
Back in the main room, the kids dropped their piles to claim scattered armchairs and sofas, then lined up at the table.
Dhumavati read a list of names off the second clipboard, and Pete distributed Walkman swag to every kid but Fay and Mooney.
“Two hours,” said Dhumavati. “Let’s all do a good job and keep it quiet.”
She followed Pete into the kitchen, pausing beside its swinging door to hang the clipboards on their respective hooks.
I was still holding Mooney’s stuff, so I lowered it onto the table.
“Sorry to make you miss out on the comfy spots,” I said.
He shrugged, watching Fay pull out a straight-backed chair. She didn’t look up at him, just placed her books on the wooden seat, dragging the load away from us toward a windowed corner across the room.
Mooney moved around to the other side of the table so he could keep an eye on her.
Fay pushed her books off the chair, then turned it so her knees shoved into the corner when she sat down. She slumped over toward the window, her cheekbone and temple coming to rest against its glass.
“Why’s Fay over there?” I asked. “Did you guys have a fight?”
Mooney shook his head. “She’s cornered.”
“Explain ‘cornered.’”
He picked at the mitt of gauze enveloping his injured hand. “Unless she’s doing chores, she has to sit in a corner with her back to everyone.”
I could hear the tinny whine of the other kids’ music, the crackle of the woodstove, Dhumavati and Pete murmuring in the kitchen. Against all that, Fay started humming a tuneless riff, soft and throaty, like Astrud Gilberto.
No-Hope Samba.
“Us kids aren’t allowed to talk to her,” Mooney said. “That’s why I want you to give her my hat.”
“Does she have to eat there?” I asked.
“Everything. From now until lights-out.”
“What if she needs to go to the bathroom?”
“She’ll raise her hand, wait for a teacher.”
I straightened his pile of textbooks. “It’s too much. She’s already on the Farm.”
“They don’t do both at the same time a lot. Santangelo got all freaked out when he found out she was cutting again.”
I shook my head. “Even so.”
“They should have made her be handheld.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Someone holds your hand all day. Comes to classes with you and stuff.”
I didn’t want to ask him again about the toileting logistics. “Another kid?”
“Yeah,” he said. “They wouldn’t’ve picked me, but it’s still better. At least you can talk.”
“They ever do that to you?”
“A bunch of times,” he said. “I actually think it helps, you know? You can’t just wallow in your own shit. It makes you want to not be a total suckbag, for the person who’s gotta hang on to you.”
“I guess I can see that.”
“It’s kind of comforting once you get used to it,” he said. “That’s what they should’ve done for Fay. Not cornering.”
“How long will it last?”
“If she does all her work, they’ll probably let her stop over the weekend.”
“How about your work?” I said. “You could finish reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”
He didn’t answer.
“Want me to crack the spine,” I asked, “so it stays open?”
My question skittered across his attention, weightless as a flat stone whipped sidearm along the surface of a pond.
I slipped the novel free. He didn’t take his eyes off Fay.
She was swaying a little now, one shoulder rocking slowly forward and back along a slender arc, keeping time as she continued to hum.
“It’s my fault,” said Mooney.
“Mooney,” I said, “you can’t take it all on yourself.”
He checked the room to make sure no one was listening to us. “ I got her pregnant. She’d be okay if it wasn’t for that.”
“How did it happen?”
He loo
ked away, shifting in his seat.
“Madeline,” he said, “if you don’t know, I’m not sure I should be the one to explain it to you.”
“No. I mean, did a condom break or something?”
“Right,” he said, “like we’re allowed to have condoms.”
Of course they weren’t. And the kids had no access to a drugstore unless they ran away.
Add another item to Santangelo’s “first things kids want to score on the road” list: coffee, Marlboros, pack of Trojans.
“I just—” He paused, picking at the corner of his math book. “I pulled out. I guess it wasn’t soon enough.”
“Mooney, pulling out doesn’t work,” I whispered. “There is no ‘soon enough.’ Didn’t they teach you that in sex ed?”
He didn’t say anything.
Of course they didn’t teach him that in sex ed, Madeline, because there wasn’t any sex ed at the hospitals they’d both been in before this place, and there sure as shit wasn’t any here.
“Fay keeps saying it’s her fault,” he said. “How can I make her understand that it’s mine?”
“First of all, you guys have to stop thinking of it as fault,” I said. “I mean, we’re all programmed to reproduce, you know? The decks are stacked in that direction. Believe me, I’ve done some really stupid shit—”
“I don’t just mean that,” he said. “It’s everything else, too. Like how I freaked out and punched the window . . . I scared her. Fay only cuts herself when she’s scared.”
He poked at the math book again. “If I’d been able to keep it together, she wouldn’t have done that. And we wouldn’t be down here.”
“You guys love each other, Mooney. You’re both scared.”
“You know they upped her meds after this morning? Tranqued her until it’s like she’s not even in her body anymore.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“I just hope they let her celebrate her birthday. She needs something good to happen.”
“Will they do that on the Farm?”
“Usually, you get a cake when you turn eighteen. Probably so they can sucker you into staying.”
“I’ll talk to Dhumavati about it,” I said. “I promise.”
“Listen, can you give her my hat before those two come back out of the kitchen? I don’t want to get busted.”
“If you start your homework, okay? Let’s get you out of this place as soon as possible.”
He took the paperback from me after I bent its spine wide at the page he’d dog-eared last.
I grabbed his hat and stood up.
“Tell her everything will be okay,” he said. “Tell her she has to remember I love her to pieces. That’s what the necklace is for.”
I told her.
Fay didn’t open her eyes, didn’t stop humming—just raised her right hand to touch the silver moon at her throat.
The motion made her shirt cuff slip, revealing a glimpse of the tape-anchored white gauze around her wrist. She pinched the sleeve’s fabric and twitched it back up an inch, exactly enough to cover the bandage.
A practiced gesture. She didn’t even have to lift her cheek from the window to look.
There was no dressing on her left wrist. I wondered if Dhumavati’s interpretation took into account the fact that Fay had damaged herself on the same side that Mooney had.
I stayed crouched beside her, watching her breath fog the glass. “Anything you want me to tell Mooney?”
She pressed her fingertip against a point of the crescent charm. “Tell him I’ll never take this off.”
I did, and Mooney looked so happy I thought he was going to cry.
“You’ll get through this,” I said. “Both of you.”
He squirmed again, tensing his jaw to tamp down the advent of tears.
“First I have to get through tomorrow morning,” he said. “I can’t chop wood so they’ve got me on rat duty.”
“Rat duty?”
“Tons of them in this place, gnawing on the walls all night.”
“Nasty,” I said.
“I have to help spread poison around at lights-out. Then I get to wake up early and scrape up the suckers that ate it.”
I looked at his bandage. “One-handed?”
“There’s this scoop thing. Opens up when you step on it, then you kick the bodies in.”
“Pretend they’re Santangelo,” I said.
“Or maybe Pete.”
“Aw, come on, the guy seems pretty decent.”
“Guess ol’ Wiesner called it right, then.”
“Called what right?”
“How Pete’s got you all over weak and swoony for those blond curls,” Mooney said.
“Wiesner’s an idiot.”
“Poor boy’s jealous.” Mooney popped a cheek with the tip of his tongue, grinning.
“Oh, great.”
“Still and all, you might wanna watch out for Goldilocks,” he said. “Word is, him and Santangelo are all buddy-buddy—like from back in college and shit.”
“No way they’re the same age,” I said. “College?”
The kitchen door started swinging outward.
Mooney snatched up Caged Bird before Dhumavati had so much as a toe across the threshold. He looked for all the world like he couldn’t get enough of Maya Angelou’s deathless prose.
I felt his knee nudge mine under the table.
“Might wanna watch out for Wiesner while you’re at it,” he sotto-voced.
Dhumavati was eyeing us, so I poked a finger at some random paragraph in his book.
“Who was Joe Louis?” I said, loud enough for her to hear. “A famous boxer. They called him the Brown Bomber.”
“Just keep wearing those big sweaters,” Mooney mumbled. “Wiesner’d get nasty with a dead goat if he found it alone in the showers.”
Dhumavati looked at Pete. “What’ve we got for time?”
He checked his watch. “Ten after five already.”
“Who’s on night shift?” she asked.
“Gerald and Cammy. Guess they’re running a little late.”
She smiled at him. “Why don’t you and Madeline go on ahead, start enjoying the weekend? I’ll cover until they get here.”
Mooney coughed into his bandaged hand as I stood up, and I could’ve sworn it sounded like “look out.”
Dhumavati walked me and Pete to the front door and shooed us outside.
I let him go first, then paused in the doorway, turning back to her. “I hope tomorrow goes okay.”
“Thank you,” she said.
I remembered my promise to Mooney. “I have a favor to ask.”
“Fire away.”
I dropped my voice. “It’s Fay’s birthday on Tuesday. I’m hoping we could bring her a cake?”
“Of course,” she said. “You see? That’s exactly the kind of compassion I’ve been talking about.”
Pete and I started trudging back up toward campus.
“Long day,” he said. “Lulu asked me over for coffee. Want to join us?”
“I’ve gotta get home, but tell her hey for me.”
“I hear she’s got a clandestine stash of caffeinated.”
“High-test,” I said, a little worried that she’d let him in on the secret, given Mooney’s warning.
“Can’t beat that with a stick.” Pete rubbed his hands together, flashing me a grin of anticipation. “I’m sick of drinking David’s crappy decaf.”
“Aren’t you fancy with the schmancy, calling him David already,” I said. “How long have you been here, a week?”
“That’s what he asked me to call him when he interviewed me.”
“So how’d you end up at this place?” I asked.
“A friend told me about what David was doing here. He said this might be a good place for me at the moment. I figured it was worth a shot.”
“Had you met Santangelo beforehand?”
“We all went to the same college. David graduated a few years before I showed up there.”
<
br /> “Only a few? How old are you?”
“Okay, maybe he graduated ten years before I got there,” he said. “I don’t really know. And I turned forty last September.”
“You’re fourteen years older than me?”
Pete smiled a little, vain about it. Still, it meant he and Santangelo hadn’t been frat brothers or anything.
I was just starting to feel relieved when he added, “I think David’s doing a remarkable job with these kids, you know? He’s absolutely amazing.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, fighting to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “I find myself constantly amazed.”
“His whole thing this morning, calling that guy Tim on his shit? I thought David was just incredible, the way he handled that.”
“Sure,” I said. “Incredible.”
“You and I need to work on Lulu, then. She’s got a lot of doubts.”
“Ya think?”
“I’ve been talking to David about it. He’s hoping I can bring her around.”
“You know,” I said, “I really could use a cup of coffee.”
“Did you bring your cigarettes?” he asked. “Lulu told me she always bums them from you, and I’m dying for a smoke.”
I felt a little sick. “You gonna talk to David about that, too?”
He laughed. “Not if you share.”
“You sure this guy’s cool?” I asked Lulu after Pete had asked to use her bathroom.
She gave me impatience: crossed arms with a tapping foot. “Don’t be an idiot, Madeline.”
I tossed the Camels onto her countertop. “Get us busted. See if I care. But I will seriously hurt you if you tell him about Fay.”
“For chrissake.” Lulu rolled her eyes and handed me a mug of coffee.
“I’m not kidding,” I said. “He’s been chatting you up with Santangelo, promising to bring you into the fold.”
“And I think we can keep him out of it,” she said. “He’s a decent guy. We can’t let him end up bald in some airport with a fistful of carnations.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Madeline, you know you wouldn’t wish that on a fucking dog.”
“Depends on the fucking dog,” I said.
“He’s one of us.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do,” she said. “You have to trust me.”
“But can I trust him, Lulu? We barely know this guy.”
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