by Sarah Willis
“Thanks,” I say.
A little while later I look out the front window. Larissa and Michelle are making snow angels in my front yard. I’m unmarried, Vince is dead, my parents are hours away, and these two peculiar people are in my life and I am strangely happy.
One day, I can’t find the garnet heart necklace my mother gave me for my twenty-first birthday, but I don’t remember when I saw it last. And now, sometimes, there’s less money in my purse than I thought, but I’m not sure. I start counting it more closely. One day there’s definitely ten dollars less.
March twenty-eighth, Michelle gets fired for stealing.
Chapter Twenty-six
“What the fuck were you thinking?” I yell at Michelle as she climbs into my car when I pick her up at the corner by the pharmacy. They’re not going to press charges. It’s only ten dollars. They just want her out of there.
“They don’t pay me shit,” she says. “And they make me clean the bathroom. No one else has to do that.” She looks petulant, not mortified. She is someone I don’t understand.
“Jesus,” I say. “It’s a job. You do what they tell you. I can’t believe you stole money from them!”
“Everyone takes something. I’ve seen them. Like toothpaste, or deodorant.”
“That’s your excuse? Someone else took deodorant?” I’m so pissed. Pissed that I’m driving toward my house to take her home. I have to be at John Carroll in twenty minutes. I do not want to drop her off at my house and leave her there.
It’s March and it’s snowing these big fat stupid snowflakes that looked beautiful in December. I take a sharp right and the car skids just a little, and that skid feels good. Michelle knows this is not the way to my house.
“Where you going?” she asks.
“I’m taking you to Teya’s and you can Goddamn well stay there.” Larissa isn’t the only one who swears the more she’s around Michelle.
“What? What if she’s not there?”
“She’s always fucking there, Michelle. She’s housebound. Did you take my garnet heart necklace? Tell me the truth or I will never forgive you.”
“Jesus, Alice. Calm down. I just took ten dollars. I was gonna pay it back.”
I pull over to the side of the road. “Own up to what you did! Stop making fucking excuses. You left your daughter alone! Left her sitting in an apartment that could have gone up in flames or something. She could have lit a candle. Turned on the stove and caught her pajamas on fire. She could have been so scared she opened a window to look out for you and fell right out. You didn’t have locks on them, or screens! She could have drunk Drano, or bleach, or taken your pills!” I’m getting good at imagining the things a little girl could do that might get her hurt. “And you left her for nineteen fucking hours. Didn’t you wake up once that night to go to the bathroom and think, shit, I gotta go home?”
“I thought Teya was going to get her!” Her eyes are welling with tears. Good.
“Bullshit! She’s almost a cripple. She can hardly get to her car. I don’t believe you thought she was coming. You took a chance, and you blew it. Yeah, it was a bad day, and I’m sorry your husband got killed, but don’t fucking lie to me. Did you take my heart necklace?”
“No,” she says quietly, looking down at the floor of the car. “I just took some money from your purse once.”
“Right,” I say. “Get out.”
“Here?” she says.
“Yeah, right here. There’s a bus stop someplace, I’m sure.”
“I don’t have money for a bus,” she says. “It’s all at your house. I got seventy cents. Look, that’s all I got.” She opens her purse, starts digging out her wallet. “I’m saving all my money to get Larissa back. It’s in a box, in the attic. I’m trying to save money, so I don’t take it with me places.”
“Yeah. You’re saving it ten dollars at a time. From my purse and the register.”
She’s opening her wallet. “Look, this is all I got. I’m sorry I stole from them. It was stupid. I’m not smart like you. I don’t own a house or a car or have an education—”
“And that’s a reason to steal?” I turn around in the cramped space and grab my purse from the back of the car. “Here. Here’s two bucks. Take the bus to Teya’s. We’ll talk later. I got to go to work. Goddamn, I’m so embarrassed you did that. You know how bad that makes me look?”
She’s crying now, one hand on the door handle. She takes my two dollars. “You never look bad, Alice. You help deaf people, you take in little black girls, everybody thinks you’re just great. You eat good, you read books. You work real hard being good. Nobody’s gonna think you’re not, never.”
“I don’t take in little black girls! Jesus Christ, Michelle. I took in Larissa because she needed someone. She needs you. You just don’t know how to be an adult and take care of her. Taking care of her means cleaning the bathroom at work and not stealing. From me or anyone.”
“I didn’t take your necklace,” she says. “I never saw it. I did take some money from your purse. I was going to pay you back.”
“Go to Teya’s,” I say, too worn out to shout any more. Too depressed. “I’ve got to go to work.”
“What will you tell Larissa?”
I look at her, and her mascara’s a mess. I hand her a Kleenex from my purse. “I’ll tell her Teya needs you.”
“Thank you,” she says, and opens the car door, gets out. I drive off. I know why I’ll tell Larissa that Teya needs her—because I’m so fucking good. What’s so bad about that? Why do I feel like shit?
Because I feel stupid. Because I let myself like Michelle, and I still do. I want to believe she never saw my heart necklace.
Larissa takes my explanation about her mother staying at Teya’s like a trooper. “When will she come back?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Can we go to the store and see her?” Larissa loves visiting her mother at the pharmacy. They have candy and cheap toys.
“She doesn’t work there anymore,” I say.
Larissa looks at me a long time, then nods. It’s a wiser nod than just eight months ago.
That night, she cries in her bedroom. When I knock lightly on the door she tells me to go away. In the morning, I find Lucy on the floor, one ear torn off. I sew it back on and put her into the bunny house. Larissa never mentions it.
Polly comes over that night after Larissa’s in bed. “Hey, you did your best,” she says.
“Yeah, I’m a good person,” I say.
She looks at me for a while. “Yeah, you are,” she says. She doesn’t know why I don’t smile, and I don’t explain. I need to talk to Michelle and tell her how she hurt me. Instead, we watch the war in Iraq, stunned into silence by it all. Polly leaves by eleven, and we plan on getting together again soon.
That weekend I call my parents, but I don’t tell them I kicked Michelle out, since I never told them she was here. I tell them everything’s fine, and we make plans to come down on Memorial Day. I call Bruce and Dylan, and they cheer me up for a little. Yolanda buys me lunch and says she’s sorry. I’m quiet around Ed and tell him that I’m just depressed by the war. Who wouldn’t be?
I tell Larissa we can have the hamster for one weekend if she wants, and she says he died a month ago.
Two weeks later, Michelle calls me. She’s called Larissa every day, but we haven’t spoken. “Can we meet someplace?” she asks. I spell no with my hand, but my mouth says yes. I tell her to meet me in the parking lot of the nature center. I don’t want to meet her at a coffee shop or someplace where we sit facing each other.
Michelle’s waiting in a corner of the lot by a tree. I don’t see Teya’s car. I’ve never seen Auntie Teya. If Larissa didn’t speak about her now and then, I might believe Auntie Teya never existed at all; I have come to doubt anything Michelle has ever said. I’m embarrassed by my memory of thinking we were friends.
She’s wearing a coat I’ve never seen, and immediately I think she must have stolen it.
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“Let’s walk,” I say, pointing to a wooden path that’s a short loop through the marshland. It’s April now and still cold. It’s been a longer winter than most people remember.
“I got some stuff to tell you,” Michelle says. I slow down, watching my step. The boards are icy in unexpected places.
“I called my dad and I told him I want the job, the one he said I could have if I come down. He says it’s perfect timing and all. You won’t believe this. The girl that answers the phone? She’s getting married and moving to Florida with some guy. Anyway, he says I could stay in the room above the garage. No rent. He’ll pay me good, better than the pharmacy.”
I take all this in, not saying anything. I head toward a place where, in the summer, there’s millions of cattails, higher than our heads. Right now they lie flattened from the snow. Michelle doesn’t say anything for a while. There’s just the sound of our footsteps. I spell leaving with my hand. We stop in a railed-in area about ten feet square. There’s a bare tree to the left with a big black crow on a branch. He makes a clacking sound with his beak like a woodpecker. Rat-a-tat-tat. I turn around and face Michelle. “Why are you doing this?” I ask.
She ignores my question. “I talked to Larissa’s social worker, told her about my dad’s house. She says I could get Larissa placed with him, but he has to have that home study thing and get a criminal check and fingerprinted. He said he would.”
There’s a bench here, but I don’t sit down. I lean against the railing. “I thought you said he’s a drunk.”
“Yeah, but he sounds different this time, really. He says he wants to see Larissa, be part of her life and all. He says he’s really sorry for kicking me out. He never said that before. I told him he’s got to go to AA meetings with me. I’d be doing something good, if I went down there, like you did. Help him get better.” She does her one-shoulder shrug, and my teeth clench. Only now do I notice she’s not wearing as much eyeliner. She looks older, without it. My hand spells the word strange.
“They may not let her go there, if he’s a drunk.”
“Not unless someone tells them,” she says simply, but I know her now. There is nothing simple about what she says. “He never got arrested for it or nothing. I think he’s better. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think so.”
I close my eyes and sigh.
“He says, I come down now and he’ll give me the shop when he dies.”
“It’s a body shop,” I say. “They fix wrecks, right?” I’m imagining this place, dingy and smelling of grease and oil, a few grungy guys with tattoos. “What do you know about running a place like that?”
She lifts her chin. “You sayin’ I can’t, ’cause I’m a woman? You think women can’t run body shops, or you think I’m stupid?”
I don’t answer. Talking seems like a waste of time. She’s made up her mind.
“I gotta do this, Alice, and I don’t want to fight with you. I feel bad. I know this is gonna hurt you, taking Larissa away and all, but I could own a business. Shit, that ain’t gonna happen here.” She’s running her fingers along the wooden railing. She’ll get splinters, but I don’t tell her that. I want her to hurt herself, just a little, and see for herself.
“You should go to college,” I say. “Learn a trade.”
She laughs. “Right.”
“Why don’t you go down there first? See if he’s really changed?”
Michelle looks up at the sky before answering. “I gotta do this,” she says. “I gotta get Larissa back with me. He’s gonna pay me good. He’ll give me a car. I’ll be able to get to my classes. I don’t know why I didn’t do this before.”
“Because you said you hated him.” I want to remind her of this, and so I say it a bit nasty. I want to remind her of her past, and all I’ve done for her. She just smiles a half smile.
“Yeah. Sometimes I do. He’s an asshole, really. But he’s gonna give me a job and a way to get my baby back.”
How can I argue with that?
“When are you going? How are you getting there?”
“He’s having some guy drive up for me two days from now.”
I nod, start walking back to the car. Michelle follows.
“What about Shaun?” I ask.
“Shaun’s a nice kid,” she says. “He can do better than me.”
I stop and turn to her. We’re too close. “Don’t dismiss him. Don’t hurt him, or Larissa. Do what you have to do, but stop hurting people.”
In the distance, the crow makes that rat-a-tat-tat sound. Michelle tucks her bangs behind her ear, then shakes her head and her bangs come loose again. “Dismiss. That’s one of your words, isn’t it? People like you. I’m not dismissing nobody, and I’m not trying to hurt nobody. Say what you mean, Alice. Don’t hurt you. Well, I don’t want to. I want us to be friends. That don’t mean I shouldn’t do this, though, do what’s right for me.”
The breeze is cold against my cheeks. I cross my arms. “Tell me something. Are you telling me all this hoping I’ll ask you back to live with me?”
“No, Alice,” she says. She sounds sad. She sounds like she pities me. My hands ache. “That won’t work. I’m not stupid. We’re nothing alike. I got to be with family now.”
I feel like I’ve been dumped. Now my cheeks are hot, despite the breeze. “Well,” I say, “I hope it works.” I have no idea if I’m telling the truth. I always thought the truth was such an easy thing to know.
Michelle moves down to Cincinnati. It takes a while for her dad to get the home study done, then they tell him he has to bring the house up to code first. Apparently the bathroom sink doesn’t work, the basement is a fire hazard, and the door to the room that Larissa would sleep in is missing. Michelle’s dad gets angry at the home study people, telling them that they’ve got a lot of nerve to say he can’t have his grandchild come stay with him till he fixes up his place. He says the people next door live like pigs but they got all their kids living there, and their grandchildren. The home study person tells him that might be true, but he has to fix up his house. He doesn’t do this as quickly as Michelle would like. Whenever she can, she drives up to Cleveland to visit Larissa. She always stays at Teya’s.
The next months go quickly; night comes before I’m ready for the dark. May is gone in a blink. We visit my parents for Memorial Day. Bruce and Dylan can’t come and it rains most of the weekend, so we put together a five-hundred-piece puzzle of stuffed bunnies my mother found in a catalog. My parents hug Larissa good-bye, saying, “See you soon.” I tell Polly and my parents that I’m ignoring my forty-ninth birthday, that I really can’t handle this right now, and that they are not to even bring it up. I must say it with such seriousness that they actually believe me, because all I get is a card from both of them.
I’m not turning forty-nine without you, I tell Vince. I’m certainly not going to turn fifty. If you don’t have to get old, neither do I.
And the alternative is? he says.
Yeah, yeah, I get your point. But I’m sticking at forty-eight. Period.
Well, sis, I died at forty-seven. I’m younger than you. I win.
I roll my eyes. We’re both crazy as loons.
Happy birthday, he says.
Same to you. Damn you for leaving me.
Love you, too.
Larissa graduates from first grade.
Walking to the car with Larissa on that last day of school, I want to turn to someone. Look, I want to say, I have gotten this child through a whole year of school and she has an art folder the size of Alaska, a pot with marigold seedlings, and a lined notebook with the alphabet written as neatly as any child has ever written. Sometimes I miss Michelle.
For Larissa’s birthday, we invite Michelle and Auntie Teya for dinner, and this is my idea. “Should we invite some of your friends from school to come, too?” I ask as we plan her birthday party on a piece of paper. She wants me to write everything down. She likes lists, like my grocery lists. We mark all Michelle’s upcoming visits on the calend
ar, trusting the promise of written words.
“No, no,” Larissa says to my question. “Just Mommy and Auntie Teya. Can we have a cake with a picture? I saw cakes with pictures. Can we have one?”
“A cake with a picture?” I ask. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’ll show you. I’ll show you,” she says. “They’re at the place you get those big cookies. Can we get one?”
“Sure,” I say. And I’m damned, they do have cakes with pictures on them at the bakery. It’s like a painting sprayed on top of a cake. Larissa orders one with a picture of a castle and a dragon and a princess. The woman behind the counter asks her if she would like the princess to be an African American, and I am swelled with that woman’s goodness all day. The cake turns out to be wonderful. Aunt Teya is huge. She wheezes with every word, and hugs me tightly. She says she can’t eat cake, and then she does.
“Oh, honey,” she says. “Don’t you worry about me. I don’t.” She laughs hard. I want to ask her if she really was supposed to be at the apartment that day. The whole time she is at my house, that question is in my chest like a flutter of hands. I keep thinking the words will fly out and change everything with the knowing who is at fault. I am a good hostess and never would embarrass her that way. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself, watching Michelle as she encourages Larissa to blow the candles out, Michelle looking for all the world like a kid who wants her own cake, her own candles. It doesn’t matter because despite everything that has happened, I like Michelle, and I like Auntie Teya, and knowing might change my mind, but not my heart.
In early August, Michelle’s father gets the okay to be her foster parent. Larissa’s social worker, who thinks I’m the greatest foster parent of all, is the one who tells me. “Guess what!” she says, as if I might be thrilled by the news. “Larissa’s going to go live with her grandfather!”