Rayleen snorted, and then said, “No, I’m not a social worker. I’m a manicurist. You know that. I work at that hair and nail salon down on the boulevard.”
“Oh. Yes, of course. Of course you do. I’d just forgotten.”
And then, frustratingly, they moved off in the direction of the stairs to Mrs. Hinman’s apartment. And, though they continued to converse, their voices now came through Billy’s door as nothing more than a muffled buzz.
• • •
Nearly two hours later, Billy looked out his glass door on to the gray winter day. Looked down on to the porch to see if the girl was still there.
She was.
He could have looked sooner. He’d thought of looking sooner. But he knew she would be, and he knew it would frighten him to see that she was.
He made a mental note to ask, for a second time — that is, if he ever got up the nerve to talk to her again — why she didn’t sit inside.
Grace
There was just no getting around it. Curtis Schoenfeld was a giant stinkhead. Grace had known it for a long time, and so she wasn’t quite sure why she’d listened to him, and why she’d let it hurt her feelings, what he’d said.
Why had she even believed him?
She sort of had, though, and that was just the problem.
You know how sometimes the nicest person in the world will yell at you and hurt your feelings because you’re doing something like talking too much when they’re trying to think or worry (or both)? Well, stinkheads are just the opposite of that, Grace supposed, because every now and then they will open their stinky mouths and say something horrible that might even possibly be true.
It was at the Saturday night meeting, the one in the church. Except not the church part of the church, not the religious part. It was the room where they did quilting lessons and had potlucks and stuff, and Sunday school, except this was only Saturday.
Some people even called that meeting the kid meeting, because lots of the people there were new in the program, and babysitters cost money. So people just brought their kids along. And it was a very big, very long room, so that the meeting people could sit on one side and have their meeting, and the kids could sit on the other side and be kids.
The kids had to be quiet. The meeting people didn’t have to be quiet.
That F-word guy was sharing. One of the guys Grace didn’t like. He seemed mad at everything, so that when he met you, he was already mad at you, and he didn’t even know you yet. And every other word that came out of his mouth was that one Grace would not be likely to mention (but it started with an F).
“I mean, really,” she’d said once, complaining about him to her mom. “Every other word. Get a dictionary.”
It’s not like she exactly cared. She knew the word. She’d heard it before. It just seemed rude.
So Grace was on the other side of the room with Curtis Schoenfeld and Anna and River Lee. Anna and River Lee were playing pick-up sticks, but Curtis couldn’t play, because he was in a wheelchair, and he couldn’t reach down that far. He had that spinal thing, that spinal-something. He always said spina-something, but Grace knew he was just being lazy or stupid and leaving off the “l” at the end, because everybody knows it’s spinal, with an “l” at the end. He was older than Grace, maybe even twelve, which is why she thought he should know these things.
So Grace wasn’t playing pick-up sticks, either, because Curtis couldn’t. How nice is that? Which is why Grace thought, after the fact, that it was a particularly bad time for Curtis to go and be a poophead to her.
And she wasn’t shy — also after the fact — about sharing that opinion.
So, anyway, he leaned his big head over to her (he had a big head and a red face, that Curtis) and said, “I heard your mom went out.”
Grace said, “Curtis, you big moron, she did not go out. She’s sitting right there.” And she pointed to the meeting side of the room.
He laughed, but it wasn’t like a real laugh. It was more of a fake laugh, like an idiot laugh. First it just squeaked out of his stinky lips like a balloon when you stretch the end (the end you just blew into, that is) and let air back out. But then later he changed it on purpose, and then it sounded like a donkey making that donkey noise.
Grace usually tried not to talk about Curtis like he was a total poophead, because you’re supposed to be extra nice to someone who’s in a wheelchair, but Curtis Schoenfeld just kept pushing it too far. Sometimes you just have to call a poophead a poophead, she firmly believed, no matter what he’s sitting on.
“Not out of the room,” he said, “out of the program. She’s out. She’s using. I can’t believe you didn’t know.”
Then the room got kind of spinny for just a second, and she could hear all those F-words firing off like little pops from a toy gun, like little firecrackers, and Grace remembered thinking how she had been extra-sleepy lately, her mom. That was in the one second before Grace decided to decide it wasn’t true in any way.
So she gathered herself up big and she said, “Curtis Schoenfeld, you are a total boogerhead!”
The F-words stopped. Everything stopped. It got real quiet in that big room, and Grace thought, Ooooops. I think that might have been just a little tiny bit too loud.
Grace always had trouble with that. Loud came naturally to her, and quiet took a lot of work, and if she let down her guard for even one tiny little second the loud would come marching right back in again.
Grace’s mom got up from the table and came back to the kid part of the room, and all three of the other kids gave Grace that look. You know. That “you’re gonna get it now” look.
She took hold of Grace’s arm and walked her outside.
It was dark out there, and kind of cold. People always think it doesn’t get cold in LA, but it gets plenty cold sometimes. And, also, they were in a neighborhood where it’s not so smart to be outside, but Grace figured her mom must’ve thought they were close enough to the people inside to be OK. Well. She didn’t know what her mom thought, really, she just knew what she thought, which is that she would yell like the devil if anybody came up to them, and run inside for help. And she knew her mom must’ve felt safe enough, because she lit a cigarette and then sat down on the cold street with her back up against the church.
She ran a hand through her hair and sighed real big, and Grace could see a sort of embarrassing rip in her jeans.
“Grace, Grace, Grace,” she said. She seemed too calm, and Grace wondered why she wasn’t getting mad. “Can’t you ever just be quiet?”
“I try,” Grace said. “I try to be quiet, really I do.”
Her mom sighed another time, and puffed on her cigarette, and she seemed to be moving kind of slow.
So then Grace gathered up everything she had that was brave, and she said, “Are you on drugs again?”
She braced for her mom to get mad, but nothing happened.
Her mom just blew out a long stream of smoke, and stared at it all the way out, like maybe if she watched closely enough it might sing and dance or something, and Grace remembered thinking she was pretty sure her mom used to do everything faster.
When her mom finally said something, this is what she said: “I’m going to meetings. I’m at a meeting right now. I still call Yolanda every day. I’m working my ass off here, kiddo. I don’t know what more you want from me.”
“Nothing,” Grace said. “I’m sorry, I don’t want anything more from you, that’s fine. I’m sorry I was too loud. I was trying to be quiet, really I was, but then Curtis Schoenfeld was a boogerhead to me. And when I was trying to be extra-nice to him, too. He’s such a liar. I wish I didn’t have to go to meetings with him. Couldn’t we go to different meetings, with no Curtis?”
A really, really long wait while her mom decided to answer.
“Like which ones? They don’t all allow kids, you know.”
“Like that nice AA meeting at the rec center.”
“Right now I need the NA ones more.”
“Oh.”
“Just play with Anna. And…you know…the one with the weird name.”
“River Lee.”
“Right.”
“I wasn’t playing with Curtis. You don’t have to play with Curtis for him to be a boogerhead to you. He just is. There’s no staying away from it.”
Grace’s mom stomped out her cigarette and peered at her watch, extra-close in the dark, as if it had to touch her nose before she could see it.
Then she said, “Deal with it for another twenty-five minutes, ‘K?”
Grace sighed loud enough for her mom to hear. “OK,” she said. But it came out sounding like the F-word guy trying to say “pleased to meet you” and not sounding very pleased.
All three of the kids were staring at her when she went back in.
River Lee said, “Did she yell at you?” in a sort of almost-whisper.
And Grace said, “No. Not at all. Not even a little bit.”
She was being kind of snooty-proud in front of Curtis, and she knew it.
Nobody went back to playing right away, which was weird, because then they pretty much had no choice but to listen to the meeting. This ratty-looking woman, the kind of person you see sleeping on the street, shared how her kids got taken away when she went to jail for helping her boyfriend rob a bank. All behind drugs. They gave up the kids because they wanted more drugs, and that seemed like a good trade at the time.
Really depressing.
Then some other people shared, and they were sort of medium-depressing.
Some meetings weren’t depressing. That nice AA meeting at the rec center was much better, Grace felt, because the people there had more time in the program, and usually it didn’t make you want to kill yourself.
After the meeting Yolanda came up to Grace, and smiled down from way up above her, and Grace smiled back.
“Hey, Grace,” she said. “Do you have my phone number?”
Grace shook her head and said, “No, why would I have your phone number? It’s my mom who’s supposed to call you, not me.”
“I just thought you might want to have it.”
She handed Grace down a piece of paper with the numbers on it, and Grace read them off to herself, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe because it felt like school, like homework, as if Yolanda were saying, “Look at these numbers and see if you know what they all are.” Grace knew her numbers really well, but did it anyway.
“OK. Um. Why would I want to have it again?”
“Just in case.”
“Just in case what?”
“Just in case you ever needed anything.”
“Then I would ask my mom.”
“Well, just in case she wasn’t around, or you couldn’t ask her for some reason.”
“Like what reason?”
“I don’t know, Grace. Anything. If you were alone or something. Or if you were having trouble getting her to wake up. If you got scared about anything, you could call.”
That was when Grace decided not to ask any more questions. Not even one more.
“OK, thanks,” she said. And she stuck the phone number in her pocket.
“Don’t tell your mom.”
“OK.”
Stop talking, she was thinking, but she didn’t say it.
Then Yolanda gave them a ride home, which was good, because it’s scary riding the bus home in the dark, and Grace was already scared.
Billy
Billy woke suddenly, hearing someone shout outside. It had come from the sidewalk in front of the apartment house.
Just one word.
“Hey!”
He squeezed his eyes closed again, mourning the sudden loss of his expectation for the new day: simply that it would be suitably quiet, and without conflict.
Then, being a realist at heart, he jumped up and slunk to his front lookout place, the big sliding-glass patio door, and peered around the curtain.
The girl was still there. No, not still. Again. Again, he meant.
Felipe Alvarez, one of his upstairs neighbors, was squatted down next to her, apparently engaging her in conversation. And Jake Lafferty, his other upstairs neighbor, was trotting up the walk to intervene, as if he found the scene quite unsatisfactory.
Then again, from what little he had been able to hear and observe over the years, Billy gathered that his gruff neighbor Lafferty found precious few situations to his liking. In fact, Lafferty even took it a step further by wearing that dissatisfaction on his sleeve, a misguided badge of…well, something. Billy tried to decide what, but found he couldn’t imagine.
Now Lafferty trotted to the base of the stairs and called out, “Hey! Jose! What are you doing with that little girl?”
Felipe rose to his feet. Not combative, so much — well, not quite, Billy gathered — but ruffled, and on guard. It made Billy’s poor tired heart hammer again, because it smacked of conflict, his least-favorite life element.
If only that little girl would go inside! Her presence there on the stairs, day in and day out, was like a wild card thrown into Billy’s day, dealing him terrifyingly unpredictable hands.
But, terror or no, he wanted to hear what came next. So, ever so quietly, he slid open the patio door about six inches, the better to watch and listen.
“First off,” Felipe said in his fluent but heavily accented English, “my name is not Jose.”
“Well, I didn’t mean that it was,” Lafferty said. “It’s just an expression. A nickname. You know.”
“I don’t know,” Felipe said. “I don’t know at all. Here’s what I know. I know I’ve told you my name prob’ly ten times. And I know you told me your name once, and I don’t never forget it. It’s Jake. Right? So how ’bout I just call you Joe instead? I mean, most white American guys are named Joe, right? So that’ll be close enough, don’t you think?”
Billy glanced down at the little girl, to see if she looked afraid. But she gazed back up at the two men with an open, almost eager face. As if what happened next could only be entertaining and fun.
She was plump, that little girl. What was it these days with kids and extra weight? In Billy’s day, kids ran around. There was barely such a thing as a fat kid. If there was, it was a rarity.
Then again, he’d spent nearly his entire childhood in dance class, which is hardly the land in which you’d find a plump kid — if there was such a phenomenon. Oh, he’d gone to school, of course. What choice would he have had? But he’d blocked those memories as best he could.
“I know his name!” Grace said. Well, shrieked.
But Felipe held up one hand to her and said, “No, wait. Let’s just wait and see if he knows it.”
“Listen you—” Lafferty said, signaling that he’d had quite enough.
Billy’s heart hammered faster, wondering if one of the men would strike the other. But Lafferty never even managed to finish his sentence. Because, no matter how firmly you corked the mouth on that little girl, it didn’t stay corked any longer than just that moment.
“It’s Felipe!” she shouted, obviously proud of herself.
“Fine,” Lafferty said. “Felipe. How about you answer my question now, Felipe?”
“Oh, yeah, and that’s the other thing,” Felipe said. “I was just asking Grace how come she’s not in school, and that’s all I was doing, and I don’t appreciate your suggesting otherwise.”
“You really are always looking for a fight, aren’t you?”
“Me? Me? I’m not the one looking for a fight, compañero. Every time I see you, you got that same chip on your shoulder. I don’t fight with nobody. You ask anybody who knows me. You just carry that same fight with you every place you go, and then dress it up to look like the other guy’s fight. You musta had that chip on your shoulder so long you don’t even see it no more. I bet you don’t even know what the world would look like without that great big chip blocking your view.”
Lafferty swelled his chest and opened his mouth to speak, but the noisy girl beat him to it.
“Do you
guys have to fight?” she asked, at full volume.
Billy smiled, inwardly admiring her. From where on earth did that brand of courage emerge? Then again, she was a kid. A kid could get away with just about anything.
Lafferty looked down at the girl disapprovingly.
“Why aren’t you in school?”
“Her name is Grace,” Felipe said.
“I know that,” Lafferty said, but it came off as unconvincing, and Billy was not sure, from the sound of it, whether Lafferty had known that at all. “Why aren’t you in school, Grace?”
“Cause I’m not allowed to walk all that way by myself. My mom has to take me. And she’s asleep.”
“At nine o’clock in the morning?”
“Is it nine o’clock?”
“It is. Five after.”
“Then, yeah. At nine o’clock.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“You’re the one with the watch,” Grace said.
Lafferty sighed miserably. “Do you have a key?”
Yes, Billy thought. She does. It’s very new. It sparkles. It has shine. That wonderful, indefinable quality. Shine.
“Yep.” She held the key up so Lafferty could see it. It still dangled on the long cord around her neck.
“Go inside and see if you can wake her up.”
“I already tried.”
“Try again. Will ya?”
The girl blew out her breath, loud and dramatic. Then she rose to her feet and tromped inside.
The minute she did, Felipe made his way down the stairs. Lafferty moved closer, stood nearly chest to chest with the younger man, and they stared each other down.
Billy leaned on the edge of the sliding door, feeling mildly faint.
“I’m not your compañero,” Lafferty said.
“You don’t even know what it means.”
“No, I don’t, and that’s just the trouble.”
“It’s not an insult.”
“Well, how am I to know? When I was your age, I was taught to respect my elders. My father taught me that.”
“You know what my father taught me? That if I wanted respect I better plan on earning it. All I did was get down and ask that little girl how come she wasn’t in school, and then here you come out of nowhere, treating me like I’m some kind of child-molester or something.”
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