by Sarah Willis
“Look, Alice,” she says, looking right back at me. “Don’t worry so much. We’re getting older. People under twenty-five look too young to know jack shit. And the woman in the lavender, we all do that, judge people by the clothes they wear. Maybe she does that on purpose, if she’s so smart. Part of the plan. And Larissa’s mother, I figured she was black, too.” She leans back in her chair, crossing her arms. “Let me ask you this: How does that change things? That she’s white.”
“I can relate to her better, that’s how it changes things,” I say without thinking, but then know it’s true, as much as I don’t like it. “I was stereotyping the mom. Dismissing her because she was black. All of a sudden all my expectations were gone and I had to start all over again. She’s so young. Jesus, she could be my daughter. I’m not saying I like her, but I saw something . . . not like something of myself, I’m way too responsible to be where she is today, but something of her. Does that make any sense? If she were black, would I have seen that? I don’t think so. Jesus Christ, I’m prejudiced. All these Goddamn classes, people telling me stuff I don’t want to hear . . .” I push my plate away. “There was this lawyer, this young kid lawyer in a spiffy suit and polished shoes who accused me of wanting to foster parent Larissa so I could adopt her, because she was light-skinned and pretty, and then Larissa’s mother said the same thing, shouted it at me on the street corner. Really, am I judgmental? Prejudiced?”
Polly breaks a cookie in half, hesitating. “Yeah, you get a little judgmental sometimes, but I would never call you prejudiced. It’s not like you’re shrugging this off. You’re a good person, if that’s what you’re asking. That’s why you’re my best friend.” She smiles at me and takes a bite of the cookie.
“Thanks. But you know what’s strange? If Larissa’s mother had been black, I never would have been so stunned. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, I never would have understood what my expectations had been, how I’d judged her before I met her. It took a white woman to show me how prejudiced I really am. Isn’t that weird?”
“Come on,” she says. “You’re not. Really.”
I don’t know what more to say. It feels weird, trying to convince her that I am. I put down the goblet, squint my eyes, and tilt my head. “So . . . how am I judgmental?” I say it lightly, trying to get rid of the somber mood.
“Well,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “Like those last two guys I fixed you up with. They weren’t so bad.”
“So, I’m supposed to want to live the rest of my life with someone you characterize as not so bad?” I say with a laugh.
“I’m just answering your question.”
“Okay. But I have something else to ask.”
“All right.” She feigns a heavy sigh. “What now?”
“I want to ask the mayor to write me a recommendation. I’ll ask her myself. I just want you to know I’m going to, unless you say no.”
I did the mayor a favor last year, going to her daughter’s school, visiting several classrooms, explaining my job. She asked me to do that at this very table, over a dinner, one Polly actually cooked. It’s not like I’m asking a stranger.
“I don’t know,” she says. “She likes you, but she doesn’t really know what kind of person you are, to write a recommendation.” From the living room, Patrick laughs loud and quick at some show, as if the joke is hysterical but quickly over.
“She thanked me a million times for the school thing. And she knows I’m your best friend. Being your best friend makes me a good person, right?”
She smiles, knowing I’m using her own words to win this argument. “Okay. But let me ask her.” She shrugs. “It can’t hurt to try.”
“Thanks.”
As I help Polly clear the table, I look around at the cluttered dining room—Patrick’s paperwork and books, a box of files from Polly’s office, the dinner plate on the floor for the dog, paper bags filled with stuff for Goodwill, and in every nook and cranny there are family pictures, so many it feels like a family of countless children rather than two. I think about the home study woman coming next week, how neat my house is. I’m willing to bet this is the house they would prefer.
The next day is the six-month anniversary of Vince’s death. I drive down to see him, what is left of him: a place. My parents keep their half of him in a brass container on the mantelpiece. A month after he was killed I brought my half to the park where we used to walk when I went to visit him in Akron. There’s a large swamp that covers some twenty acres, and Vince would stop at a certain spot on the path, propping his workman’s hands on the wooden railing, and stare out over the murky land. We’d stand there, watch patiently for a blue heron to land, point to large snapping turtles sunning themselves on old logs, hope to catch sight of one of the eagles they said lived nearby, which we never did. We hardly had to talk. Once I put my hand on his as we stood there, just for a moment. We hugged occasionally, but seldom touched. My hand on his felt right at that moment. It is from that spot that I threw his ashes into the swamp.
I went steady with a boy in tenth grade. He was an artist, and I loved the beautiful things he drew and the words he used, like chartreuse and magenta. I wanted to be like him, so I signed up for Saturday classes at the art museum and bought creamy pastels and expensive books with thick paper. He thought it was great that I was trying to be an artist, and that word trying sat between us like a rock. He moved away at the end of the year.
In eleventh grade, I went steady with two boys. The first was on the chess team and played drums in a makeshift rock band. We broke up because we broke up; it was what you did when there were other possibilities. The next boy was the opposite of the chess player. A jock, blond, and as cute as a button, as my mother would say. One night he coaxed me into a closet at a party and kissed me too hard, his tongue in my mouth. As I tried to stop him, he pushed me against the coats and we stumbled on boots against the back of the closet, dark and hot and crowded with us and all that clothing. He put his hand on my breast and kissed harder, held me there as he rummaged his other hand down my low-slung bell-bottom jeans. I tried to kick him, but kicked an empty boot. I couldn’t even yell with his tongue in my mouth. I bit him. He slapped me. My hand went to my face, and his hand cupped my crotch. “Say a word,” he said, “and I’ll tell them we did it plenty before.” He was cute as a button and one of the most popular guys around.
That night I cried in my bed and Vince came into my room. He sat on my bed and asked me why I was crying. His concern made me cry harder. I told him about the boy and the closet. Two days later the cute-as-a-button ex-boyfriend came to school with a black eye and a limp.
There were boyfriends at college. None of them lasted. I gave up easily, or found men who would give up easily. We were usually well matched in that way. Hardly ever bitter. Then when I was almost twenty-eight, I moved to Cleveland, following the man who didn’t really love me. And then he moved away.
Vince never went to college. He was planning on owning the hardware store one day. The store hadn’t broken even in years, yet Vince believed that when it was finally handed over to him—there being no other relatives remotely interested—that he would turn it around. He had big plans. When my father sold it to True Hardware, Vince was furious. My father felt so bad that he tried to give Vince some of the money. Vince wouldn’t take it.
He moved to Akron, took up house painting, and wouldn’t visit our parents until he had his first son and Cindy was pregnant with the second. Then he called our mother and told her that he was coming back and everybody better be damn polite. We were. We were always nothing if not polite.
A few years later, just after Cindy left him, Vince brought along a buddy to our family’s Thanksgiving dinner in Columbus, a man named Jimmy Bain, with whom Vince painted houses. Everyone loved Jimmy; he was that kind of guy, friendly and talkative, humble, no ego. When I first met him he told me how his last car, a real clunker, had run out of oil on I-77. The car began to smoke, made a loud crackling noise, then s
topped running. He walked away and never looked back. He was one of those people who abandoned their cars on the highways, then laughed about it. He had an easy smile that I liked, and that annoyed me to no end. What did he have to smile about so much? Vince’s kids thought he was cool because he was six feet four and lifted weights. My parents thought he was sweet. Everyone loved Jimmy but me. I just liked him.
After that Thanksgiving, Vince would come up to Cleveland once or twice a month for the weekend, bringing his kids and Jimmy. We’d hike in the Chagrin Reservation, go to the museums, eat at cheap restaurants. Jimmy flattered me in such a friendly way that I never knew quite how to take it. He flattered everyone: waitresses, clerks, my mother. Then one Saturday, Vince took his kids to an afternoon movie, some cartoon Jimmy and I didn’t want to see, and we decided to go get lunch. Over lunch, Jimmy said, “I’ve kind of developed a crush on you, Alice. Is that okay with you?”
I was unsure, but my head nodded, my body wanting this. We slept together three weekends later. He always came up to Cleveland, so affable about making the drive. He’d bought an eighteen-year-old Chevy just to get here. Then one night, after making love, he told me he wanted to move to Cleveland. “You’ll marry me someday, Alice,” he whispered to me in the dark. “Won’t you?”
I was so touched by this intimate whisper, I said yes.
He moved to Cleveland, moved in with me. He found a job painting houses. We lived together for almost two years, his belief that we were happy carrying me along. I don’t know why I wasn’t. I don’t know why it took me so long to see that. When he asked me to marry him, one knee on the floor in the light of day, I said no.
It was the only time I ever saw him angry. He moved out that day. He was the only man who ever asked me to marry him.
Vince asked me why the hell I didn’t marry Jimmy. “He’s not good enough for you, right? That’s it?” Vince said.
“No, I’m just not in love with him.”
“Right. Because he isn’t good enough for you.”
But Vince was wrong. That wasn’t why I didn’t fall in love with Jimmy. I didn’t fall in love with Jimmy because he was too happy-go-lucky. I needed someone I could argue with, then love again. I needed someone that seemed as tough as me.
Once, after the man I thought loved me moved away, and before Jimmy Bain, I went to a gay bar. I was terrified and incredibly turned on. I knew that with my short-cropped hair, the way I wore it spiked up, that I looked a bit butch. I went home with a woman, to her house, not mine. I was so nervous the whole time that I never did it again.
I want someone in my life, but I am afraid I will never find him. It gets harder and harder. Maybe I wasn’t meant to live the rest of my life with a man, or a woman.
Maybe it wasn’t a wrong number, after all.
At the marsh, I watch for a blue heron to arrive, no longer hopeful for the sight of an eagle. It was Vince beside me that made me believe we might see eagles. I wait a long time, and then I leave. I drive home with the radio off.
Chapter Twelve
A few days later I call Mrs. Hunt and ask if I can come by and visit Larissa again. She tells me it’s not a good time; one of the children has the measles.
“Has Larissa had the measles yet?” I ask.
“Your guess is as good as mine, honey. She still ain’t speaking to me. Call next week. Should be better by then.” I call next Tuesday. “Not a good day,” she tells me. “Maybe Friday. You call me on Friday.”
I call Friday morning at ten. “Can I come today?” I ask. “Would that be all right? Is everything okay?”
“She ain’t here right now. My neighbor walked her down to school. She gonna meet her new teacher and have a tour of the place. You can come later today if you like.”
“How is she?” I ask.
“She seems fine, but she don’t talk. She waves her hands around, like you do, when she playing with her stuffed animal. That’s about all she does. I take her to the park with the others, but she just sits there and won’t play. I hope they find her a new place soon. It’s not like I haven’t tried.”
“I have a job at two. Can I come after that, around four?”
“That’ll be just fine,” she says.
Then I call Polly. “Is she in?” I mean the mayor.
“I asked already. She said she’d have the letter done by this afternoon. She really does like you. She said good luck.”
I can hardly talk. “Thanks. You’re the best.” And she is. I may not have a man in my life, but I have one hell of a best friend.
Around four, I drive to Mrs. Hunt’s house, coming from my job downtown—interpreting a rally for a group of people who are going to Washington for the antiwar protest. It’s a warm sunny summer day and at the house next door a half dozen children run through a sprinkler, shrieking at the top of their lungs. I feel a great energy invade me, a feeling of decency and joy. I want to come here, play with Larissa, sit down and talk to Mrs. Hunt on her front porch. This feeling began as I interpreted for the large crowd of people at the square downtown, the speaker’s passion so impelling. I signed with his enthusiasm, getting caught up in the rhetoric. I almost signed up for the trip.
Mrs. Hunt comes out her front door, shaking her head widely, lips pressed together. I know right away whatever she is about to say isn’t good. “She ain’t here. She took off. The police are looking for her.”
I stop walking. “What?”
Her chest heaves with indignation, as if she’s been running. “She took off when my neighbor, Mr. Klewer, be showing her the school. He can’t walk that fast. He was just trying to be kind, taking her there. I can’t believe she ran off on him. He’s a good man, and now he has to be talking with the police, giving them his name. They got up by the school, and he bent down to pick up a quarter off the sidewalk. She took off running. It wasn’t his fault. No one should go blaming him.”
“I’m not,” I say, blaming him, blaming her. “How long has she been gone?” A child running through the sprinkler hollers, and I want to shout at him.
“This morning, when we talked. Right about then. The police been looking for her.” Mrs. Hunt kneads her hands together, looks back at her house.
“Maybe she went home? It isn’t that far away.”
“I don’t know. They don’t tell me anything. They gonna bring her back here when they find her, but this has got me so upset, I don’t know I want her back. Too much drama, that child. Mr. Klewer, he’s got a bad heart. This coulda killed him, he run after her.”
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll go looking for her. Will you call me, please, if they find her? I’ll write down my cell phone number.”
She sighs. “I will. But I just don’t know—”
“It wasn’t your fault, Mrs. Hunt. These things happen with foster children.” Here I am, an expert after a few foster parenting classes.
“I appreciate your saying that. I’ve never had this kind of trouble before.”
I walk quickly to my car. One of those kids is going to run too fast through that sprinkler, run right into the street between all the parked cars and get hit.
I drive to Larissa’s apartment, parking in the lot behind it off a narrow side street. Sitting in the car, I turn my head slowly, looking for movement. From where I sit, I can see into the back-yards of the nearby homes. Garage doors are open. Some driveways have three cars parked tight together. She could be hiding anywhere. I remember hiding behind the McHughs’ house so long ago, sitting between the bush and the porch steps. No one would have been able to see me there.
After a while, I get out of the car and walk up the back metal steps to the third floor, and peek through the window on her back door. A half-filled cup of milk sits on the kitchen counter. I listen carefully. No sounds. Finally I knock. I don’t really expect her to come to the door, and she doesn’t, but I bet anything Larissa was here, that that was her cup of milk.
I drive home slowly, looking around for the shape of her, spelling Larissa with my
hand, as if my hand is calling her name out the open window.
There’s a message on my machine when I get home. Yolanda. She says to call her. They put me on hold for almost ten minutes before someone finds her. She starts to tell me about Larissa running off, and I interrupt, saying I already know.
“Well, we found her,” she says. “Mom took her to Burger King, says she was going to bring her back to us right after dinner, but a policeman noticed them first. Just happened to be one of the few policemen actually looking for her.”
“Larissa did go back home?”
“Yes, she did, and Mom should have called us right away, it would have looked good on her record if she had, but she didn’t.” She pauses. “And, Alice, they’re taking me off Larissa’s case.”
I don’t understand. “Because she ran away?”
“No, it’s standard to switch to a permanent social worker. I just thought they’d let me stay with her if I wanted. I was wrong. They . . .” She pauses, on the verge of saying something more, but doesn’t. “They’re still considering you, Alice. If they move her, which they probably will, they’ll move her farther away from her own neighborhood this time. We can’t get her to promise she won’t go back home. We can’t get her to talk at all.”