Sisters of the Road

by Barbara Wilson

  “I’ll be fine here,” she reassured me brightly, as if guessing my worries. “Me and Ernesto, we’ll just cuddle up and read.”

  “You find out anymore about her, this girl you’re saving from a life of crime?” June asked. She had found a small item in the newspaper about Rosalie’s death, hidden near the real estate ads.

  “A few things. She’s only fifteen and she doesn’t come from Broadmoor.”

  “See?”

  “June,” I warned. “You promised… It’s strange though, she keeps talking about this guy Wayne she’s in love with and about how much he loves her and all the money and things he gives her—but it turns out she was practically living with Rosalie and she doesn’t seem to want to turn to him for help.”

  “He’s her pimp, that’s why! She probably can’t show up les she’s got her quota.”

  “What do you mean, her quota?”

  “Her money, girl. He tells her she’s got to bring in a hundred and fifty—two hundred dollars a day and she’s got to make it or she can’t show her face.”

  “She said he’s an artist, a photographer. He’s got a studio in Belltown. That doesn’t sound like a pimp to me.”

  “You think pimps are all Black studs driving around in Cadillacs? You’ve been watching too many Hollywood movies. She on dope?”

  I shook my head and then shrugged. “I guess I don’t know how to tell,” I admitted. “She seemed restless for a while this morning, but she was all right when I left. She got angry pretty fast when I asked her about her parents.”

  “She’ll go out later to score if she needs it,” June predicted. “Probably a cokehead if her ole man’s an artist. Though kids these days—she could be on anything. The latest thing I heard, they’re spraying paint into socks and sniffing it. They go crazy.”

  “June, would you give her a break? She’s only a kid and she’s scared out of her wits.”

  “Humph,” said June. “Well, you watch out she doesn’t sell out your apartment while you’re gone. Seriously.”

  Carole came in, forty-five minutes late, mumbling something about snow in her driveway and looking totally disheveled.

  “Don’t suppose you’ve noticed,” said June with a scathing look, “But most of the snow has melted… What’d you do, meet another true love of your life?”

  “Just get off my case, would you?” Carole lashed out in a rare fit of temper. Her blond hair stood up in furious spikes above her forehead. There’s still snow in the North End and most of it’s in my street.” She stomped back to the darkroom and called, “Look at my car if you don’t believe me!”

  “It’s true,” I reported, peering out the window. “Carole’s car has snow on the roof.”

  “You know something?” June snapped. “You ought to get your own TV show—Pam Nilsen: Miss Fair Puts In Her Two Cents. You ought to get a medal for sympathetic remarks.”

  I sat down on the couch. “Look, all right, June—we both miss Penny and Ray. But wishing isn’t going to bring them back. We’ve got six weeks and if we don’t all start getting along better here we might as well cash it in right now and fly on down to Nicaragua to join them.”

  I’d never seen June cry before and I didn’t see her now either, but sudden tears came into her bright brown eyes and she let out her breath with a big huff. “You’re right, I guess. It’s not Ray so much though, it’s Penny. Only two days and I miss her,” she finally said. “It seems so—empty—around here.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that tough, does it? Listen, what are you and the girls doing this weekend? You want to go to the zoo or something?”

  “Change that show to Pam Nilsen: Social Director,” she said, but she smiled this time. I’ve got me a boyfriend and two kids, so what am I feeling so abandoned for? Anyway, I’m going skydiving with my club on Saturday. That’s something you should check out. We’ve got an extra parachute.”

  “Hey, I’m talking giraffes and you’re talking broken bones.”

  “Just come up in the plane. Do you good to get your feet off the ground for once.”

  And to my alarm, I said I would.

  10

  TRISH DIDN’T COME BY FOR LUNCH and she didn’t call either. Neither of which worried me all that much. I tried calling her twice in the afternoon, but there no answer both times. That worried me a little more.

  I kept my fears to myself, however, and put my energy into attempting to bring a bit of peace and harmony into the workplace. I went into the darkroom and got Carole talking about her frozen pipes and unplowed street, until she too began to unthaw a little. I asked if she’d like to have dinner with me and June at my house Sunday night. At first she seemed distant and glum, but by the end of the conversation she was more her old self and thanked me profusely for inviting her.

  “I’m sorry I was so out of it this morning, Pam,” she said, sighing and twisting her long curl between her fingers. “It was Suz, you know, that woman I met at the New Year’s party, the one with the cute little tattoo, you know, the anchor? Well, I spent the night with her last night and you know what she did, she brought out a pair of handcuffs. If I hadn’t had my blow torch I don’t know what I would have done.”

  For such an innocuous, optimistic person, Carole certainly managed to get herself in some strange situations. But it didn’t occur to me to ask her what she was doing with a blow torch at her lover’s house. Knowing Carole she probably just forgot she was carrying it.

  I went back to the press room and asked June about dinner too. She rolled her eyes and said, “Let’s not carry this collective friendliness too far.”

  “Oh, come on, June, it won’t kill you. Carole’s not that bad. I think she’s funny.”

  “Yeah and so is Lucille Ball. For about two minutes.”

  “But she means well—she’s just a little…”

  “Cuckoo.” June sighed, “Yeah, all right. You want me to bring something?”

  “Just yourself. I’ll make something good.” It would be my big chance to move into the Main Entries section of my cookbook.

  Mission accomplished, I turned to my work in the front office, trying to understand Penny’s instructions about the bookkeeping. It did feel lonely without Penny and Ray around, as if we were acting in a play with only half the characters, but I told myself it was for the best: Nicaragua had two willing workers and I didn’t have my sister suggesting that I might be getting in over my head with Trish and her problems.

  The afternoon was cold and quiet. Andrea called once and asked rather pathetically if I’d enjoyed the fruitcake she’d left outside my door for Christmas. I didn’t tell her that I’d had to give it away, finding myself shy of a suitable gift for someone else at the last minute—but I did praise the tomato sauce I’d used on the cannelloni last night.

  “I have some really great prune and apple chutney I could give you… you want to go to a movie or play this weekend?”

  “Uh, that’s really nice, Andrea, but, urn, I’m really busy these days.”

  “Oh, sure, I understand,” she murmured sadly. “You’ve probably got someone new, haven’t you?”

  “Well, kind of.”

  Sometimes I wished Andrea and Devlin and the rest of them could get together and tell Hadley what she was missing.

  Shortly before I closed up the shop at five I tried calling Trish again. The line was busy, an irritating but still reassuring sound that made me feel a little like the mother of a teenager. Yet I found myself oddly happy too, knowing that she was there, that there was someone waiting for me at home. It enlivened my spirits and quickened my appetite. I’d go by the Market on the way home and pick up something special for us tonight—fresh shrimps in their shells sounded good—or would Trish think they were too icky?

  I went down to First and caught a bus that let me off at the far corner of the Market, by DeLaurenti’s. I’d decided after all to stick with pasta and bought tortellini and sun-dried tomatoes, Niçoise olives and a hunk of Romano cheese. At the vegetable stan
ds I bought Romaine lettuce, a cucumber and red bell peppers, along with some tiny sweet Satsuma oranges. I stopped to goggle over the headlines at the Read All About It newsstand. MOTHER DELIVERS ALIEN BABY: HUSBAND DEMANDS DIVORCE blared the National Enquirer, while Business Week worried over the Japanese: SAMURI AND COWBOYS: SHOWDOWN AT THE IMPORT CORRAL. I noticed the stand was starting to carry La Barricada, the Sandinista paper, and bought a copy, more out of a sudden longing to participate in whatever my sister might be experiencing down there than because I expected my Spanish to be up to reading it.

  It was cold out; much of the snow had melted, but the air was frosty. People in down parkas and long wool coats rushed around making their last-minute purchases, the street musicians played old folk and new reggae and over the whole scene shone the beneficent light of the big red letters: PUBLIC MARKET CENTER. The words gave everything a festive, incandescent glow, gleaming on the worn brick of the street and enclosing the stage-like setting within a frame of color. For a moment, while I waited for the traffic light to change on First, I was stopped by the magic of it, the sense that here was the heart of the city, here was the city’s heart, beating red and warm against the cold black sky.

  Then I crossed the street and immediately everything changed. The street kids were lined up outside the boarded-up, graffiti-covered windows of the abandoned building that had been J.C. Pauley’s Department Store all through my childhood. Another group stood in front of the Son Shine Inn opposite. The inn was run by the Union Gospel Mission and displayed a faded painting of Jesus holding out his hands. Bedraggled looking street people went in and out; I guessed the Christians must be serving dinner inside. Outside its door a steady contingent of kids hung out, managing to look both restless and bored. They played with each other’s hair, pushed and jabbed and hugged each other’s bodies. A couple of the boys, Black and white, had ghetto blasters; they held on to them proprietarily or swung them like playful weapons at each other. Sound enveloped each boy and his circle, and fought with the music of his rival. “Hey, baby, what’s happening?” the boys called to the girls, who giggled and pretended to run away. “Nothin’ man, not a thing.”

  It wasn’t exactly Times Square; one seedy block didn’t qualify as a lurid red-light district. It was more like an urban shopping mall somehow, where the boys strutted and the girls combed their hair. The difference was only that most of these kids didn’t go home at night.

  I waited for the Number 7 trolley in front of the Pay ’n’ Save. The spirit of the city’s evening no longer seemed quite as festive, in spite of all the nicely dressed people around, going home a little late from work with packages and bags in their gloved hands. I kept seeing drunks in frayed sweaters, bag ladies pushing shopping carts, crazy people, beggars and kids with nowhere to go. It was as if there were two paintings, one on top of the other. And the one on top, the slick attractive one with the good-looking, youngish, employed shoppers, was peeling and cracking, so that the bottom painting was showing through, a faded, miserably drawn fresco that looked like it depicted people from another century.

  I got on the trolley, feeling shaken, found a seat, and kept my eyes closed nearly all the way home.

  Ernesto was mewing loudly when I opened the door.

  “Trish?” I called cautiously. “Trish?”

  The lights were all on, in the bedroom and kitchen as well as the living room. The sofa bed had been folded back up and the flannel nightgown was tucked neatly away under one of the pillows. Jane Eyre was open with the spine up. I mechanically picked it up and closed it, using a piece of scribbled paper as a bookmark, noting that Jane was now at Mr. Rochester’s house, wondering what those strange sounds from the attic could be.

  “Trish,” I called half-heartedly one more time, but I knew she wasn’t here.

  I picked up Jane Eyre again and looked at the scrap of paper inside.

  “Dear Pam, I’ve gone out for a little while, don’t worry. See you later. Trish.”

  Had she gone out to score drugs or to meet Wayne or to turn a few tricks? Who had she been talking to on the phone? Had anyone else been here, had they taken her away against her will?

  There was no sign of a struggle, as they say in mysteries. There was no sign of anything at all except this note.

  “Do you think she’ll come back?” I asked Ernesto. “Do you think she’s all right?”

  He sat on his haunches and stared at me accusingly.

  “I never should have left her alone without finding out who she’s afraid of.”

  And Ernesto yowled to show he agreed.

  11

  I WAITED UNTIL ABOUT NINE, hoping that Trish might show up. When I wasn’t pacing the floor I was watching the phone. I ate some of the cannelloni left from the night before; I didn’t have much interest in cooking. Once the phone rang, but it was only Betty, the classical guitarist, who had an extra ticket to Julian Bream at the Opera House in February. Would I like to go? I decided that February was far enough away to say yes to anything; besides, it showed that Betty no longer had any immediate designs on me and really did want to be friends.

  I also thought about calling June, but I was afraid she might not give me either the sympathy or the advice I wanted. If my car were broken down she’d be the first person to help; I wasn’t so sure about her when it came to emotional support. She’d probably tell me I could have expected it, which wasn’t what I needed to hear, and recommend a good movie on TV. There was always Carole; she had a good heart—and a blow torch—but it was hard to know how reliable she’d be as a sidekick.

  Around eight-forty-five I looked in the Yellow Pages under professional photographers for anyone with the first name of Wayne, but didn’t find a single one. Not that I really thought I would. This so-called artist lover of Trish’s sounded faker than a xerox copy to me. She said she loved him—what did she know about love!

  Suddenly I put on my jacket and yellow-striped cap, my blue muffler and mittens, and went out again. I thought about taking my car, but still couldn’t face the dried blood in the back seat. Instead I walked up to Broadway and got on the Number 7 again.

  Four hours had made a difference. The Market and shops were closed; street life had taken over on Pike. I recognized some of the same kids from earlier; many were high now, running back and forth across the street, sharing cigarettes, talking in loud, excited voices.

  I went up to one of the girls, a quiet looking thing of thirteen or fourteen, standing on the edge of a crowd, not sure whether she fit in or not, but determined to look as if she did. She was smoking in small, furtive gestures and was hardly made-up at all. Like Trish she wore a black felt hat; maybe that’s why I approached her first.

  I touched her shoulder. “Excuse me?”

  She jerked around and her eyes widened when she saw me. “Yeah?” she said, trying to be tough. She didn’t want any of the others to think I knew her or anything for godssakes.

  “I’m looking for a… friend of mine,” I said. “I wonder if you know her? Her name’s Trish.”

  The girl stared coolly. “Trish what?”

  I tried to act tough as well. “She goes by a lot of different last names.”

  The girl shrugged and moved in closer to the others. I thought for a minute she was going to ask her friends if they knew, but then I realized she was ignoring me.

  “Please,” I said, in a low and urgent voice. “It’s important that I talk to her. You must know her or where I can find her. She’s tall and has streaked blond hair and she wears a black hat like yours. She had a friend named Rosalie.”

  I discovered the whole group was listening. Another girl, older and harder-looking, with a small rosebud tattoo next to her left eye, said, “We don’t know nobody named Rosalie.” And with that they all dispersed, simply swam away like a school of disturbed fish, to other parts of the street.

  Great, now I’d really blown it. They had probably been asked about Rosalie by the cops; they probably thought I was a cop myself. And the way ne
ws spread on the street, nobody was going to give me information. I could see members of the group floating warily about, tipping the others off.

  I leaned against the wall of the abandoned department store and thought about what to do next. I could hit some bars in Belltown, the ones where artists hung out; maybe someone would know Wayne. But the thought didn’t appeal to me much. Whoever and whatever Wayne was, he had a hold on Trish; he probably wouldn’t like the idea of me looking for her one bit. Especially if he was the one who’d gotten her out of my apartment.

  I stood there for a while and watched. Near me was a seasoned older girl instructing a younger one to keep off her turf; a crazy-looking boy in a leather vest and T-shirt was yelling he was going to kill the next guy who stole his hat. Among the kids walked a couple of older prostitutes, arm in arm, tight skirts twitching over round asses; a man in a white suit and cowboy hat followed them drunkenly. On the corner was a tall thin guy in a sweater and corduroy coat talking earnestly to a lethargic girl in a pink sweatshirt and pants; he’d taken her by the arm and was showing her a pamphlet. He must be on the Lord’s business—she looked too dazed to protest.

  I stood there and for some reason began to remember an Introduction to Anthropology class I’d taken as a sophomore at the U. It had been a reassuring thing to hear, at twenty, that your own society was a mere episode in millions of years of human history, no better and no worse than countless societies that have existed or will exist. I recalled the kindly expression of Mr. Lieberman as he told us this, and the varying degrees of disbelief—and relief—on my fellow students’ faces.

  Like some of my classmates I’d dreamed briefly of following a career in anthropology. Find a Polynesian island of my own and chart its kinship systems, bring honor and fame upon the name of Nilsen. I’d be the Ruth Benedict or Margaret Mead of my generation, braving hardship, weird food and malaria to understand just what made those tribal people tick.