“I hate it there, the shelter and the school. But if you make me, I’ll go.”
“You have to make yourself go to school. I can’t run behind you like the police, and I don’t want to do that anyway. If I ‘make’ you do any of it, you’ll just run away again. You have to want what it’s going to get you in the end. And if we team up here, I don’t want you loose on the streets while I’m away. I’d worry myself sick about you. I did this time, and there’s nothing I can do from that far away and in the kind of places that I go to. I need to know that I can count on you to do what you say you will. Just like I do, when I tell you I’ll come home.” He nodded with a serious expression, and she could see that he knew she meant it. She wanted to help him, and she was willing to have him stay with her, she wanted him to, but not if he was going to run away and drop out of school when she was gone. She needed him to be more reliable than that. “So what do you think?”
“I think I’ll hate going back to school and staying at Houston Street,” he said seriously, then grinned at her. “But I’ll do it for you, because you’re a good person, and I don’t want to give you any trouble. Now can I come back?”
The look of gratitude on his face made her smile at him, with tears in her eyes. She was all he had in the world. She thought she had lost him when he disappeared, but now she had an idea.
“Yes, you can come back. But you can’t sleep on my couch anymore.”
“That’s okay,” he said matter-of-factly. “I slept on the floor at my aunt’s, and in the bathtub when her boyfriend was there. He was an asshole,” he added for good measure, which was the first time he had mentioned him. What Ginny knew about him, she had heard from Charlene. “I can sleep on the floor here.”
“That’s not what I have in mind.” She beckoned to him, and walked him back to the second bedroom that had been full of unpacked boxes since she moved in. “I have a job for you—minimum wage of course. We’re going to take this room apart, unpack the boxes, and set up a proper room for you, for when you’re here. How does that sound?” His eyes lit up like a child at Christmas as he stared at her in disbelief.
“I’ve never had my own room before,” he said in an awed whisper. “Not even with my mama. We slept in the same bed, but I was little then. When can we do it?” There was urgency and excitement in his eyes.
“Well, let’s see,” she said, pretending to think about it. “I’ve already read the newspaper. I’ve had a shower. I need to go to the grocery store later. Why don’t we start now?” He let out a shout and threw his arms around her, and then she asked him where his things were. He said he’d left his little rolling suitcase and sleeping bag with a friend at the station, but he could pick them up anytime.
“Why don’t we go out for breakfast to celebrate, pick up your things, and then come back and get to work? Tomorrow we can go out and get you a bed and a dresser and whatever you need.” She was thinking about IKEA, or a place she knew downtown that had decent furniture at reasonable prices, and she wanted to upgrade some of her own things as well. She was getting a little tired of the secondhand look, and she had already gotten three years’ use out of what she’d bought for nearly nothing when she moved to New York. Suddenly, she wanted to warm the place up and turn it into a home for them.
They walked down the street together to McDonald’s on a balmy April day, and the world felt like a good place to both of them. She had found him, and he was going to have his own room for the first time in his life. Both their wishes had been granted. And she told him about the camp in Afghanistan while they ate Egg McMuffins, and she mentioned the art and music high school to him again.
“Do you want me to check it out? Applications for the fall were due in September, and you’re late for auditions, but I talked to them before I left. If you’re serious about it, they might be willing to apply special circumstances, and accept an application now. It’s a big deal if they do that. If they do, and they accept you, you have to be responsible about it, you can’t drop out or run away. I’d be putting my word on the line to vouch for you,” she said solemnly, and Blue looked impressed. “And you’d have to audition, if they let you.” That shouldn’t be a problem for you. Maybe you’d enjoy school if you were doing something you love.”
“If I can play the piano every day, I’ll like it,” he said, stuffing another muffin into his mouth. He was eating as if he hadn’t seen food in three months.
After breakfast they took the subway to Penn Station. She followed him down the stairs, then waited on the platform while he went to find his friends on the ledge where they all slept at night. No one was there except a boy who looked about sixteen. Ginny watched Blue pick up his things, and talk for a few minutes with him. Blue had told her that there were no girls in the group, and they’d been sleeping there all winter. No one bothered them, and it was a good place to stay when it was cold. He was back with her a moment later, with his bag in his hand, and his sleeping bag under his arm. It was looking tattered and dirty, and she suggested they get a new one. With that, he ran back and gave it to his friend, which touched her, as the other boy took it gratefully from him.
Then they went back to her apartment and got to work. Ginny turned an overhead light on and looked at the markings on the boxes. She had never bothered to before, and she suddenly realized how much of it was sentimental. There were boxes marked “baby pictures,” another one marked “wedding,” and other boxes Becky had packed that weren’t labeled at all. She started with those, and was shocked to see photographs of herself, Chris, and Mark in silver frames, and some knickknacks from their living room, some of which had been wedding presents. There were some fur cushions and a beautiful cashmere throw. They were things Becky had thought she might use again. There was a beautiful antique tortoiseshell dresser set that Mark had given her for her birthday, leatherbound books she had given him, and a box of Chris’s teddy bears and favorite toys, which made her gasp when she opened it, and she closed it immediately. Some things were still too painful to see even now. There was an empty closet she had never used in the front hall, where she was planning to put the things she wouldn’t use, or was saving only out of sentiment, like the baby pictures and wedding album. But a lot of the other things she was happy to see again. Becky had chosen well.
They sifted through all of it by early afternoon, and among other things, she knew she wanted to buy a bookcase for her favorite books. She had taken several of the framed photographs out and put them around the living room. She felt as though she could live with them again. Blue’s lively presence was a buffer against her loneliness and grief when she looked at them. He picked up each of the photographs carefully and stared intently at Mark and Chris’s faces, as though trying to get to know them through the photos.
“He was really cute,” Blue said softly, as he set a photograph of Chris down gently on her desk.
“Yeah, he was,” Ginny agreed with tears in her eyes, and as she turned away, Blue patted her shoulder, and she turned to smile at him as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Thank you. I’m okay. I just miss them a lot sometimes. That’s why I keep running away to crazy places like Afghanistan and Africa. I don’t have time to think when I’m there.” Blue nodded as though he understood. He had his own way of escaping the memories, like dropping out of school and running away. But they both knew that you could never run far enough or fast enough to get away from the pain completely. It was always waiting nearby, and a sound, a smell, or a memory could bring it back to mind.
She looked at her watch then and decided they had time to go downtown. She had a sense of what they needed, and had measured the room. There was enough space for a single bed, a desk, a dresser, and a chair. She wanted the bookcase, too, and whatever else they could find. The place she wanted to go to was on the Lower East Side.
“How’re we going to get the stuff back uptown?” Blue asked worriedly.
She smiled. “They deliver,” she answered with a straight face, and he laughed. It had been har
d going through her boxes, and he hated to see her cry, but she’d seemed happy to find a lot of her old stuff.
As soon as they got to the store, they got busy picking new things. Ginny found a bookcase she liked for the living room that looked like an antique, and she bought a new desk to replace the ugly one she had. Her dining table was fairly decent, but she bought four matching chairs, and a slightly battered leather one that would go with the recliner. The pièce de résistance was a couch covered in dark gray flannel that was part of a sample sale. She hadn’t bought that much furniture at once since they’d decorated the house in Beverly Hills, and this was a far cry from what she’d had there, but it suited her life now. And then they looked at bedroom furniture for Blue. He stood, seeming paralyzed as he looked around.
“What do you like? Old-looking stuff? Modern? White? Wood finish?” It touched her heart to see him so overwhelmed, and he gravitated almost immediately to a masculine-looking set that was painted navy blue. It had a desk, a chest, and a headboard for the bed. Then his face lit up when he saw a red leather chair. Ginny picked out a couple of lamps for the room, and a small red area rug that matched the chair. All put together, it was almost grown-up, but not quite. It had the right feeling for a boy his age.
She had some prints and posters in the boxes, from her old kitchen, that she was going to hang on the walls. And the fur pillows Becky had salvaged for her were going to look great on the new couch. Her living room was going to be mostly beiges and grays now. She had decided to keep her own bedroom the way it was, since the furniture was in decent condition and all of it was white. And she had found a white Mongolian lamb rug in one of the boxes that she was going to use in her bedroom. Her whole apartment was about to get a major lift. She paid for all of it, and arranged for delivery the next day, and for an additional charge they were going to haul away whatever she no longer wanted, which was most of what she had. They had done a good day’s work.
They stopped in Chinatown after their shopping expedition, ate a delicious meal at a restaurant she loved, and then headed back to the apartment. Blue wanted to watch a movie on TV when they got home, but Ginny reminded him that he had school the next day. He groaned when she said it, and then at a look from her, he held up both hands in surrender.
“Okay, okay, I know.”
And when he went to sleep on the couch that night, after she made it up as a bed for him, she told him to kiss it goodbye, since it would be gone the next day when he came home from school.
He dragged his feet when he left in the morning, but he went. And Ginny printed out an application to LaGuardia Arts high school, as they had told her to do, while she waited for the furniture to come. She read the application carefully, and saw again that Blue would need to audition. They were several months past all the deadlines, but if they did allow him to apply and audition, he had a chance. The principal, whom Ginny had spoken to, had said that the exception they might make for him involved timing, but they would make no allowances for poor testing or a bad audition. He had to be qualified, like everyone else, and Ginny thought that was fair. She left the form sitting on her desk, and sent Charlene an e-mail that he was staying with her again, just so she knew.
And as soon as the furniture arrived, Ginny was busy, telling them where to put it, watching them move the old things out. The overall effect was magical when the pieces were all in place. After the deliverymen left, she put the fur pillows on the gray couch, which was perfect, and the lamb rug in her bedroom. She had a few other velvet cushions that she put on the couch, too, and a soft beige mohair one in the leather chair. She took out more photographs of her parents, Becky, Mark, and Chris, and put them around, then hung some art photographs and posters. The trunk she was using as a coffee table still looked all right, with the old travel stickers on it, and she set some magazines down on it. The four new dining chairs were a vast improvement, and she filled the bookcase with her books.
Then she went to work on Blue’s room. All the dark blue pieces looked beautiful, and the red rug and chair added just the right amount of color. She hung three bright posters in the room, plugged in the lamps she’d bought, and made the bed. The apartment looked like a different place by that afternoon.
When Blue came home from school, she let him in, and his eyes widened in amazement.
“Whoa! Whose house is this? It’s like one of those decorating shows where the people leave home and a decorator comes in and makes it all look good, and then everyone cries when they see it again.”
“Thank you, Blue,” she said, touched by what he said. And then he went to check out his bedroom and there was silence in the room. She glanced in, and he was standing still in the middle of the room, staring at it all in disbelief. The posters she had hung looked great, the lamps were lit, and the bed was made with clean sheets, a blanket, and a bedspread, waiting for him. He turned to look at her then.
“Why did you do this for me?” he said, suddenly realizing how much she had done. It had all looked different in the furniture store. Now it felt like a home, and for now anyway, he lived there with her.
“You deserve it, Blue,” she said softly, patting his shoulder, as he had done to comfort her the day before. “You deserve an amazing life.” He had improved her life immeasurably, and now she had a home, too, not just an apartment full of mismatched ugly furniture where she stayed between trips. It had taken her three years to open the boxes full of familiar things. Blue had given her the strength to do it and inspired her. Some of it was still painful to see, but she had put just the right number of photographs out—without feeling overwhelmed. And she was ready to live with them again.
They made dinner together that night, and she put candlesticks on the table, and lit the candles. And then she showed Blue the application to LaGuardia Arts. He glanced at it nervously.
“I don’t think I could get in,” he said, looking defeated as he flipped through it.
“Why don’t you let them decide that?” she said calmly. She had checked back with them that afternoon and they were willing to let him apply and audition late. It was an extraordinary opportunity. She didn’t push him about it, or want to overwhelm him. He had homework to do after dinner. She left him to it while she did the dishes, and thought about how drastically her life had changed since he had come into it. She looked into the living room from the kitchen while she dried her hands, and saw him working at the dining table, with his head bent over his books. The new furniture was perfect in the room. There was a homey feeling to it, and as she stood admiring it, he glanced up and smiled at her.
“What are you looking at?” he asked her, suddenly self-conscious.
“The place looks nice, doesn’t it?” It was so great having someone to talk to and share things with, and do projects with. Their lives had collided at just the right time, for both of them. She hadn’t once thought of throwing herself into the river since that awful night of the anniversary, the night before Christmas Eve, and now she had familiar objects around the apartment, and a boy who needed her and, more than anything, needed a chance in life and a lucky break. All she could do was hope that she was it. Just thinking about it made her life worthwhile.
She put the kitchen towel back on the rack and turned off the light. And Blue went back to doing his homework. That night he slept in his own bed and bedroom for the first time. She was just drifting off to sleep when he pounded on the wall, and she wondered if something was wrong as she leaped out of bed and heard him shout to her.
“Thank you, Ginny!”
She smiled and sat back down. “You’re welcome. Sleep tight!” she called, and slipped into her bed with a smile.
Chapter 8
It took some time to get his old transcripts together, and the recommendations he needed, but she and Blue finally filled out the application to LaGuardia Arts for the fall with an essay about how much it meant to him. And the next day, Ginny dropped it off to the admissions office herself. And he had an appointment for an audition t
he following week. He was nervous about it. She was doing all she could to reassure him so he wouldn’t panic, and she had promised to go with him. She had called the vice principal at his current school, and made every possible excuse for him and explained his home situation. She told him about the application to LaGuardia Arts and practically begged him to do what he could to help Blue get in. He said it would be a stretch, given Blue’s poor attendance record, but he admitted that his grades were good, and that he was capable, and he had written a strong recommendation for him. He told Ginny that if Blue kept his grades up in his final exams, and turned in the papers he hadn’t finished yet, he’d graduate in June. Ginny impressed on Blue the importance of that if he wanted to go to LaGuardia, which would be a lot more fun and interesting than a regular school.
They were walking down the street talking about it, and she asked him which term papers he still had due. She had suddenly become the substitute mother of a teenager, with all that it entailed, although it was part-time duty for her, since she was away for three months out of four and had only known him for four and a half months, but it was still a learning process for them both.
They walked past a church then, and she stopped, as she often did. She liked lighting candles for Chris and Mark. Blue waited patiently outside for her. He wouldn’t set foot in the church. And this time, when she came out, he looked bothered.
“Why do you do that? It just gives money to the priests, and they’re a bunch of liars and crooks. They don’t need the money.” He sounded harsh as he said it.
“It makes me feel good,” she said simply. “I’m not praying to the priests. It gives me comfort to light candles. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.” He didn’t comment as they walked along, and she decided to be brave and ask him about his contempt for priests and churches and all things religious. His anger toward all of it was obvious, and his evident hatred for the priests was almost rabid at times. She knew his mother had sung in a choir, so religion couldn’t be completely foreign to him. “Why do you hate priests so much, Blue?”
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