by Sarah Willis
In August, almost one year to the day since Larissa came to stay with me, Michelle drives up from Cincinnati with her dad to get Larissa.
Her father is a small, wiry man with a fast smile and a quick laugh. He makes a breathy ha-ha sound after everything he says. “So this is my little granddaughter,” he says. “Ha ha.” Larissa hides behind Michelle, just peeking around her mother’s legs at this odd little man. I stand between my back porch steps and the old, rusty car that will take them away.
“I got some presents in the car for you, little girl,” Michelle’s father says. “Ha ha. You want to see them?” He sounds like a man offering candy to a child and I shudder. I want to run and grab Larissa, but she’s with her mother.
Larissa shakes her head no, and Michelle’s father ha-ha’s again, rubbing at his chin. I’m a good five inches taller than him. I can take him out, I think. I actually think that. I make a fist, but not to stop myself from spelling something.
Larissa tugs on her mother’s sleeve and whispers something in her ear. “Sure, honey,” Michelle says. “Go ahead.” Larissa runs over to me, circling wide around her grandfather. Stay, she signs to me, and runs up the steps into the house. I burst out laughing. Not a ha-ha sound, but a gurgle of laughter that takes over until I have to turn away. When Larissa comes back out of the house, she’s holding a small package. All the rest of her stuff is outside already, by the driveway. I didn’t want Michelle’s father entering my house.
Inside the wrapped box, so obviously wrapped by Larissa, is a stone the size of my hand. It’s shaped like a heart and painted red. My eyes get hot and I am afraid I’m going to cry.
“I found it at camp,” she says, “when we went to the creek. It looks just like a heart, doesn’t it? I painted it red.”
“Thank you,” I say, giving her a hug. “You come visit sometimes,” I whisper in her ear, and she looks up and nods seriously.
“We will,” she says.
I gave her a good-bye present last night, an album with pictures of her, most of them taken during the last two and a half months. I also gave her a camera and showed her how to use it. I loaded film in it, and told her to send me some pictures. I gave her twenty dollars to pay for the developing.
“I got to hug Sampson good-bye,” Larissa says to her mother.
“Go ahead, honey,” Michelle says. Her dad loads Larissa’s stuff into the trunk.
Looking at me, Michelle tilts her head in the direction of my backyard, then begins walking that way. I follow her. My perennial garden is at the end of its peak; only black-eyed Susans and some yellow mums are still blooming. The ground is hard now from so little rain this summer, the grass brown.
“Hey,” Michelle says, looking down at her feet then back up at me. “Thanks. I owe you. You did good by her. I know you did. She really likes you. She’s gonna miss you, I know it.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“We’ll call you. You call, too, anytime, okay? It’s okay with me, you call her and talk. You’re like her grandma now. We’re gonna come visit you, you wait and see, we will. It’s not so far away.” She rubs her nose with the back of her hand. Her fingernails are done again in a soft pink with a glittery stone in the center of each nail. She has no stripe of dark roots in her hair. Her dad is paying her nine dollars an hour with health care benefits, and she doesn’t have to pay rent. She has money for hair dye.
“Yeah, I’ll call,” I say. “And you call me anytime.”
“You done a really good thing,” she says again.
I look at her, at her honest admiration. We stand in my backyard, on this rectangle of my yard. Anyone looking at us would think us mother and daughter. “I hoped you wouldn’t get her back,” I said. “A lot of times.”
“Yeah, I know.” She smiles a half smile. “You didn’t like me much.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“But we’re okay, now?”
“Yeah, we’re okay, now.”
“Okay,” she says. “I’m going to give you a hug then. Don’t freak out or nothing. You don’t have to hug my dad.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
She hugs me, and I hug her back. Larissa comes out of the house, as if on cue. Michelle’s dad is rummaging around in the backseat.
“Had to move some of those presents over, so they’d be room for you,” he says to Larissa. “Ha-ha. You can open them as we drive.”
Larissa stays by her mom, going no closer to the car despite the presents. Good girl, I think.
“Do you need to use the bathroom?” I ask Michelle.
“Naw, we stopped before we got here,” her dad says. Michelle looks at me, and I know she made sure they did that.
“Miss you,” I say to her.
“Yeah, we’ll miss you, too,” she says, looking down at Larissa. I hug Larissa good-bye again, but can’t say anything else.
They climb in the car and drive away. Larissa waves Lucy’s arm out the car’s window. Careful, my hand spells. Careful Lucy doesn’t fall out, I think.
I keep the dining room table, the rocking chair, and Larissa’s bedroom set. Michelle’s dad is buying them all new stuff.
I go down to my parents’ house for Labor Day weekend. Bruce and Dylan can’t come. My father looks older than last year. My mother moves more slowly. At dinner we talk about the old days, then go to bed early. Sunday morning I wake with a terrible backache and stay in bed for the whole day. It feels as if my muscles are fists around my spine, that they have broken every bone in my back. It still hurts Monday, but I get out of bed. I’m walking crooked.
“This is how you mourn,” my mother says. “It’s your body talking to you, telling you you’re sad. It’s how you cry.”
“Really?” I say. “I thought it was my body telling me I’m in Goddamn pain.” I hear what I’ve said, and she smiles.
My body interprets for me. It’s what it’s good at.
“Love you,” I tell my parents as I get into my car. My mom leans over even farther than she already is and kisses me on the forehead. I close the car door and cry half the way home.
Michelle and Larissa call me every Sunday night, and I call them every Wednesday night. They come and visit once in late October. Michelle says things are going all right. Larissa is a second-grader now. She hardly sucks her thumb at all. Lucy is a mess. Together we patch her as best we can.
Two weeks before Christmas I pick up the phone and call Yolanda at work. “Do you have anyone who needs a home?” She’s asked me before if I wanted to do this again, and I always said no. Those times, she’d nod and say, “You may be right. Larissa was a great foster child. They’re not all that easy.” Easy. Not the right word at all.
“You sure?” she says now. “You might get a kid who’s difficult, you know. You might not fall for this one the same way.”
She’s probably right. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ve got this extra bedroom set, and all these fire extinguishers. I was just thinking there might be some kid who doesn’t want to spend Christmas down there with you guys.”
“Yeah, Christmas can be a hard time. You thinking about a girl again?”
“No,” I say. “Whoever you think might be best.”
“Any particulars?” she asks. “Age, race, religion?”
“No, Yolanda. No particulars.” Then I think of something. “Wait. Yeah. Siblings? A brother and sister? Kids you don’t want to separate? Are there any?”
“Yeah,” Yolanda says. “There are. You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sure. Hey, they can play Chutes and Ladders together. I’m never playing that game again.”
“There’s a lot of kid games, Alice. Might be easier buying bingo or something than taking in two kids.”
“If there are siblings you need to place, I’ll take them.”
“Okay, Alice. Trust me, there are.”
“And, Yolanda?”
“Yeah?”
“That guy, Adam, the one who did my home inspection. Does he still work there?”
There’s a pause, and then, “He does.”
“Is he seeing anyone?”
She laughs. “Hey, girl, I don’t know, but hold on.” She puts me on hold for a few minutes, then comes back. “All I can tell you is he’s not married.”
“Okay. Thanks. Could you give me his direct line?”
She has it all ready for me. “You call me right back,” she say. “All the details. I’m not kidding.”
“I will.”
I call the home study guy. I can hardly remember what he looks like except he was shorter than me and had a friendly way. “Hi,” I say. “It’s Alice Marlowe. Remember me? I needed a fire escape plan?”
He chuckles. “Yeah, I remember you. How’s it going with that little girl?”
“It went well,” I say. “She went back with her mother a few months ago. I’m going to take in a new foster child, maybe two, hopefully before Christmas. Do you need to do another home visit?”
“Not really,” he says, but I can hear the possibility in his voice.
“Can you come anyway? For coffee maybe? Just tell me if everything’s still okay?”
He doesn’t even pause. “Yeah. I could do that.”
I call Yolanda back. Then I call Polly.
“You’ll never believe what I did now,” I tell her.
“Try me,” she says. “Unless it involves breaking and entering.”
“Not that,” I say. “I just called a guy and asked him over for coffee.”
She shrieks. Right there in her office, she shrieks. “Alice! You didn’t! Who?”
“Adam, the home study guy. And I’m going to take in another foster child. Actually two.”
“Good for you,” she says. “Good for you.”
“We’ll get together,” I tell her. “We’ll find time.”
“Sure,” she says. “Of course we will.”
And that’s me, the woman you saw yesterday, the tall, white woman walking toward the playground with the short dark-haired man and two children walking with us. It was such a lovely day, the sky blue, the grass green, yellow daffodils and purple crocus blooming, a red cardinal singing from a bush, and you, you were wearing a lavender skirt, or pale pink blouse, or blue jeans, and someone laughed, one of us. You looked back at us. You looked curious. I thought I’d tell you who I am.
Adam doesn’t live with me, but he might someday. The children are Doreen, five years old, and Donnell, seven. They’ve lived with me for seven months now. It’s not easy. Yolanda was right. Larissa was special.
Some people say I saved Larissa. But they’ve got it wrong.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the many people who helped me with the research for this book. For their kindness, knowledge, time, and expertise I thank Detective Bartee of the Cleveland Heights Police Department; James McCafferty, director of the Department of Children and Family Services; Harold Harrison, John Lympany, Deborah Crawford, and Jackie McCray, all of the Department of Children and Family Services; John Lawson, Esq.; Judge Peter Sikora, Bailiff Theresa Nugent, Magistrate Patricia Yeomans, and Magistrate Nancy McMillen, of the Cuyahoga Country Juvenile Court; Sam Moore and Joey Heine, my teachers at the Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center; Lynn Hartman Oblisk, CSC; and Debi Epstein. Any factual mistakes in this book are my own invention.
Also, for their thoughtful readings and generous help, I thank the writers in my writers group: Neal Chandler, Steven Hayward, Paul Ita, Maureen McHugh, Erin Nowjack O’Brien, Charles Oberndorf, Amy Bracken Sparks, Lori Weber, Jim Garrett, and Charlotte VanStolk.
And finally, a standing ovation for my agent, Christy Fletcher, and my editors, Susan Allison and Leslie Gelbman.