“But you want to go.”
Pete did, no matter how badly he’d reacted just now. Despite the inevitable conversations about Emma he’d be dragged into at the Perrys’, talking with Julia had reminded him how much he’d missed his friends, his community. He wasn’t certain he was any more ready than his child to face his neighbors again, but their life was too damn empty without them.
“I want you to have Christmas the way you need to have it this year,” he reminded them both. “If that means keeping to ourselves except for when you visit Mallory’s tree, that’s fine with me. But I think it might be fun to see everybody else.”
“Do you think Mallory would go?”
Pete doubted it. “I guess you’ll just have to ask her,” he hedged.
“When?”
“We’ll know when it’s the right time.”
He imagined having Mallory beside him at the Perrys’ house instead of Emma. He had no clue what to do with the fact that it felt right somehow, in some way that he didn’t yet want to name. Except that he’d love for the rest of the community to get the chance to appreciate her quiet intensity and free spirit and honest understanding, when she wasn’t busting his balls for not being able to see the nose on his own face.
Would she come? Would having her become an even bigger part of their holiday plans make Christmas just a little better for him and Polly, and maybe Mallory, too?
“Is it like school, Daddy?” Polly chirped from the backseat, about halfway into town. She’d recovered quickly from their encounter with Julia—far quicker than Pete had after realizing how much he wanted Mallory to stay a part of their lives.
“Is it like school?” Pete considered Mallory’s inviting, welcoming clinic at Chandler. Polly and the other kids had been more than a little afraid of Nurse Karen. But evidently none of them could resist Mallory’s smiles and the cheery, colorful touches she’d added to the clinic, not even when they were sick and it was her job to give them medicine.
Then he thought of the few assistance shelters he’d seen spotlighted on TV news segments. The prevailing sadness of those programs didn’t bode well for Polly’s fairy-tale image of what they were about to walk into.
“No,” he said, giving the same answer he had all week. “I don’t think it will be anything like school. Remember us talking about what a shelter is?” His daughter was still acting as if they were on their way to an amusement park. “It’s a place for people who need help.”
“People like me.” Polly was playing with a Barbie, twirling the doll’s too-perfect hair around and around. Platinum strands the texture of straw swirled in every direction. The miniature woman’s ridiculously proportioned body parts were unabashedly bare. Polly kept losing the clothes, all except for Barbie’s hooker heels. “Do you think there will be lots of people?”
It was good that she was playing with some of her toys again, he reminded himself, even if she was obsessed with the most politically incorrect doll she owned. Emma used to keep up with Barbie’s bits and pieces. She’d been a pro at nurturing Polly’s love of make-believe, taking each unexpected twist and turn of their child’s imagination in stride and making the most of every adventure.
That was Pete’s job now.
“Daddy?” Polly said.
“Yes,” he said. “It sounds like Mallory helps a lot of people in the city.”
“Kids like me, right?”
“Sure,” he conceded, knowing his child was too excited to hear any answer but the one she was expecting.
Kids like me…
Some of Mallory’s patients would be homeless—some of them Polly’s age. Others would be living below the poverty level, even if they had a place to stay. Even in his and Polly’s county, Pete had seen a lot of sad things on his rescue calls. Pockets of poverty dotted the rural communities on the outskirts of Atlanta and beyond. And when those who had very little, none of it insured, lost it all in a fire, it tore him up to think of how they were going to start over again.
And in an urban metropolis like the city of Atlanta, it was a heartbreaking reality how many people in today’s economy couldn’t afford even the basics of day-to-day life. Those in the most need tended to flock to the midtown area, where free services like the centers where Mallory volunteered were in abundance, doing whatever could be done with their limited funding.
“So, it’s just like school,” Polly insisted.
“Yeah,” Pete agreed absently. “Just like school.”
Why would a woman who was no longer a practicing social worker keep immersing herself in others’ struggles the way Mallory was? Every weekend. The entire holiday. That mystery hadn’t let him go since she’d admitted where she spent practically every minute of her free time that she wasn’t doting on his child.
Polly had rolled out of bed each morning this week determined to have a better day at school so she would get the chance to see Mallory in the afternoon and then to work with her today. Ms. Caldwell had phoned to say Polly’s overall mood had lightened, she’d begun participating more in class, and she was even joining some of the Christmas craft projects that had upset her so badly just a week ago.
She continued to eat lunch in Mallory’s clinic, but she no longer sulked to get permission to go. She simply asked for a hall pass like the other kids. And in fits and spurts she was talking to some of her old friends. She was making it through the entire school day now until Pete picked her up in the car pool line. It was a transformation just short of miraculous, even though Polly was still underweight, eating mostly sugar and white flour, and was still exhausted from not getting enough sleep.
He just hoped today turned out to be another positive Mallory experience, instead of whatever they were about to walk in on setting Polly’s progress back.
He exited the highway and took Peachtree toward Ponce, passing the glistening skyscrapers and deserted Saturday sidewalks snaking into Midtown. He could have stopped on any corner for designer coffee, made his way to the Center for Puppetry Arts for a matinee, or be heading to eat greasy burgers, hot dogs, and onion rings at the Varsity. Instead, they passed by everything that was remotely familiar, heading to the heart of the seedy, hidden underbelly over which Atlanta’s nationally lauded progress had been constructed. All while Polly hummed and sang and chatted away with exhibitionist Barbie.
Like warm soda pop bubbling over the rim of a glass, there was no curbing her enthusiasm to see their visit as a kind of playdate. A little girl’s tea party with teddy bears. The kind of Saturday she’d enjoyed so often with her mother. He pulled into the well-kept, nearly deserted lot beside the Open Arms Shelter and prayed to Emma and whomever else was listening that he wasn’t making yet another colossal parenting mistake.
“There’s Mallory’s car,” Polly said, pointing and bouncing up and down within her seat belt.
Mallory’s ancient yellow Beetle had faded pansies tied to its radio antenna. She’d combat parked the heap near the side entrance of a dated redbrick building. Two young men in jeans and pullover sweatshirts were huddled just outside the doors, shivering in the morning chill and smoking.
Pete parked near the front of the lot. While he helped Polly from the car and pulled out the bag of wrapped toys they’d brought, a shabbily dressed man in overalls and a threadbare coat loped up to the younger guys, pushing a grocery cart that bulged with what looked like a trove of discarded items.
The man gestured wildly amid the shadows the shelter was casting, the sun not high enough yet to clear its low-built walls. Something wasn’t quite right about him, but the young men—Pete assumed they were volunteers like Mallory—ground out their cigarettes beneath the heels of their sneakers and companionably gestured for him to precede them inside. An attempt by one of them to help the guy up the entrance’s brick steps was shrugged off. An offer to assist him with his cart when it got stuck on the top step earned the other volunteer a generous hip check as the street guy swerved his things out of reach.
The second kid gla
nced back at his buddy, nonplussed, then opened the door and waved the man through.
It should have been a sad, pathetic reminder of all the worst-case scenarios that had been running through Pete’s mind. Instead, witnessing the volunteers’ offbeat respect for their cantankerous visitor made him smile, then chuckle. Their acceptance of a homeless man’s pride reminded Pete of Mallory’s just-the-facts demeanor when she’d faced him down that first night, when he himself hadn’t exactly been on his best, most neighborly behavior.
He chuckled again.
Thank God the woman was formally trained in dealing with annoyed, oblivious bums.
“Come on, Daddy.” Polly grabbed his hand and began dragging him inside.
Polly couldn’t wait.
She hadn’t been able to sleep at all last night. But it hadn’t been the bad kind of not sleeping that used to make her want to run away, because lately she and Daddy were cuddling up on the couch at night so neither one of them would feel so alone.
She’d wanted to walk to Mallory’s house again last night, to ask if Mallory was for sure going to be volunteering today. But Polly had promised she wouldn’t go out again after dark, so she’d stayed there with her daddy on the couch with a princess movie on the TV turned down low, so excited she could barely pay attention.
She’d done everything she’d promised that week so she could keep seeing Mallory after school and so this get-better Saturday could happen. And in the afternoons she’d gotten to hide more of Mommy’s special pins in Mallory’s cookie jar. Then when she wasn’t helping load the dishwasher and fold towels and sweep the floor of Mallory’s awesome kitchen, she’d gotten to look at Mallory’s amazing tree and all of the cool lights and ornaments on it that didn’t remind her of anything but what she wanted this Christmas to be about.
Her stomach still hurt sometimes, and her head, too, and her heart, when she forgot that she wanted to forget and thought about Mommy and how perfect things used to be. But mostly this week she’d been too excited to be sick, because she was going to get to spend today with Daddy and Mallory. She’d even played with Sally Mathews and Ginny Strom and the other girls at playground time yesterday, like she was as happy as them, when they had their mommies and Polly never would again.
The sick school feelings had come back after they returned to class and there were so many normal kids around her, happy that it was almost Christmas while Polly remembered she wasn’t like them anymore. She hadn’t felt bad enough to go see Mallory in the clinic and call Daddy to come get her early. She hadn’t had to do that all week.
She’d known all along this was going to be a magical day, just like the ones the characters in her favorite movies had, when everything that was wrong would with the swirl of a magic wand suddenly feel like it could all be better. And now it was finally here.
She held tight to her daddy’s hand as they walked into the big building, her tummy twisting the way it did when she worried at school because she was never sure anymore how she would feel about normal things. Would this be one more place she didn’t fit in? Would Daddy be able to see whatever he needed to see to say they could stay? He was worried, she could tell. And, magical or not, Mallory was worried, too, that this might not be good for Polly. And everything that wasn’t good for her had to go, Daddy had kept insisting before this week.
They’d stopped just inside the door. Polly had been looking up at her daddy’s face, wondering if he’d frown and if that would mean they’d have to leave. When he smiled, she didn’t know why until she looked at where he was looking.
Ms. Phillips?
Mallory?
Polly was smiling now, too, because instead of the princess Polly had always pictured her school nurse would play if she were in a cartoon, Mallory was dressed as Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz.
She had the crown, the magic wand, the glittery, poufy dress that was a cloud of white and blue sparkles, and everything. And there were kids piled all around her in the big room they’d stepped into, on the floor in front of the chair she was sitting in. All of them were laughing while she gave a Cabbage Patch doll a shot and the Transformer she had in her other hand shied away from the fake needle.
Polly wasn’t close enough to hear all that Mallory was saying. She let Daddy’s hand go and ran down into the group of kids.
“So what do you think happened,” Mallory asked them, “after Cathy Crabby got her flu shot and He-Man Henry didn’t listen to his mommy and went home without one?”
“Cathy kicked his butt,” yelled the boy sitting right in front, and the other kids and Mallory laughed again.
“Now, I’m not so sure Cathy Crabby could have done much of anything to Henry at first,” Mallory said. “But you’re on the right track.” She tapped the boy with her wand. “Because once the flu blew through their town…”
She reached under her skirt, under her chair, and pulled out a huge wad of bubble wrap that was rolled into a ball and tossed it into the crowd of kids. The boy batted it up into the air first, then Polly swatted at it next, and then they were all reaching for it, squealing and keeping it flying.
Polly felt it coming. She didn’t know what the feeling was at first. Then it shivered up her middle, making her tummy flutter in a good way for a change. It burst out of her throat, and only then did she realize that she was laughing, too. For the first time since she could remember she was laughing along with everyone else, and it felt like she could keep laughing forever.
She glanced at Daddy to make sure he didn’t mind, and he was smiling at her now the way he’d smiled at Mallory before. Like Polly was the pretty princess and she made him happy just looking at her. So she kept laughing, soft and then louder as she batted at the ball when it was her chance again, sending it up and over the boy at the very front. Mallory caught it and pushed the ball behind her.
“Once the flu blew through their town,” she said again, “all the kids knocked it back and forth for weeks the way they do in your schools and neighborhoods here in Atlanta. And of all the kids like Cathy who had their flu shots and the ones like Henry who didn’t, who do you think ended up in bed sick?”
“He-Man Henry,” everyone yelled, including Polly, when she hadn’t answered a teacher’s question at school all year.
Only no one was looking at her here as if she were different. No one was looking at anyone at all but Mallory. Polly was just like the other kids at Mallory’s shelter, just like she’d known she’d be. Like nowhere else in her life anymore, this was where she could be normal.
“Everyone used to be afraid of He-Man Henry,” Mallory said. “He used to be so strong and fast he’d swoop down on Cathy”—she flew the Transformer in front of the doll—“and ruin her tea parties, and all the girls would scatter.”
Mallory reached under her chair again, then there were miniature dolls flying into the crowd of kids, the kind that came with the hamburger meals Polly used to love. The girls, all ages, grabbed for them, while the boys groaned and shrugged away like they’d get cooties.
“But once He-Man Henry came down with the flu and the girls didn’t, because they’d listened to their mommies”—Mallory pointed her wand at the parents standing all over the lobby—“and to their nurses”—she swirled her wand over her crown, just like the good witch in the movie—“guess what happened?”
“They kicked his butt!” all the girls yelled. And when they laughed, Polly giggled with them.
Mallory nodded, the little stars and glitter on her crown sparkling. “Superheroes aren’t always the ones with the most muscles, but they’re still the bravest and the strongest people you know. Because real superheroes take care of themselves and other people even when they’re scared. So later today when your parents tell you it’s time to have your flu shot, or if you come to my office and I wave my wand-of-all-knowing and I say you’re due for a booster shot for something that might not sound so bad to you if you got it, what are you all going to say, even though a shot can be really scary?”<
br />
The kids just sat there, all of them, including Polly, who hated shots but had already had her flu one because Daddy had been so worried. All the kids were just as scared of shots as Polly and He-Man Henry.
“Are you going to say yes or no when it’s your turn to make sure you and your family don’t get sick this year?” Mallory reached under her chair again and pulled out a fistful of candy wrapped in Christmas colors. “Did I mention that everyone who’s a superhero gets something sweet? So, what are you going to say?”
“Yes!” they all yelled, then they were laughing again when Mallory tossed the candy into the crowd.
Kids scrambled for a piece, Polly, too. Mallory threw more, and Polly dove into the crowd, snagging one with a red wrapper away from another kid. No one warned her to be careful or worried that she’d get hurt because she’d been so sad and sick since Mommy got cancer. It was like a dream, a good one, an awake one, about when she used to feel this way all the time.
She ran toward the good witch, jumping into Mallory’s arms to show off her candy. She was caught out of the air and held, and even though she was crying a little now thinking how Mommy would have loved Mallory’s story, she was also still laughing a little, too. Because today remembering didn’t hurt, not much at all. She wasn’t scared or wanting to forget how it had been with her mommy. Not here where no one would ask her to think or talk about anything she didn’t want to.
“Can I volunteer with you every weekend?” she begged, burying her head against the good witch’s neck and holding on tight. “Please?”
Chapter Nine
The gleam of an heroic Act
Such strange illumination…
Mallory’s morning had become a swamp of anxiety and sleep deprivation. One jarring moment after another kept leaping across her path, thanks to her latest trip down memory lane in last night’s dream. The past had never seemed more determined to collide with her present.
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