Tuesday Night Miracles

by Kris Radish

  This morning she is whistling as she scrapes tiny pieces of scrambled eggs and toast crumbs off the plates. There are very few scraps of food left on the plates here. Everyone waits until every plate is filled, every child has eaten as much as he or she wants, every young mother is absolutely full, before seconds are requested.

  While the warm water fills the sink so that she can wash the pots and pans, Leah surrenders to a dream she has been growing since the first night she was transported to the shelter.

  She’s no longer living there but she’s still in Chicago, in a cute house with three bedrooms and a yard, where there is a swing set and a sandbox. Leah has always wanted to have a sandbox for her children, and she’s determined that she will. They might be teenagers, but someday Leah will get her babies a sandbox and many, many other things that she has promised herself to get them.

  And someday she’ll be in that little house with all the bills paid and her own driveway, and she will have saved enough money to get the van fixed and to fill up the supply closet and make certain there is new carpeting and maybe even a new kitchen floor at the shelter.

  Leah is still whistling, and when she opens her eyes to turn off the water she looks up and sees that Cindy, the daytime house supervisor, is standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, smiling at her.

  Leah is startled in that way all people are startled when they have been dreaming and are interrupted. She steps back, and water and suds go flying everywhere

  “What are you doing, Miss Leah?” Cindy asks, chuckling softly.

  “Oh!” she says, laughing as she wipes water off her face. “I’m just putting in new carpeting and changing tires.”

  “Honey, are you snorting suds over there?”

  “No. I was just thinking about how grateful I am to be here and how someday I want to be able to give back.”

  “So you noticed the flat tires and the carpeting from 1968?”

  “Mostly I noticed the warm hearts, quiet evenings with no yelling, and the gentle way you help transform women.”

  Cindy steps forward, grabs a towel, and starts wiping the pots as Leah washes them.

  “You never complain, Leah, and you’re the first resident I’ve ever seen who loves washing dishes. What’s up with you, girl?”

  Leah knows Cindy has heard every story in the book, because she’s been working at the shelter for fifteen years. She’s heard about guns and knives and locked closet doors and ropes and things even Leah can’t imagine, or doesn’t want to imagine. And Leah’s trying so hard to forget.

  She’s trying to forget about what brought her here to the shelter and the years before that, when she dreamed about living in a place just like this. A place where she doesn’t flinch every time a door bangs and where people are polite and kind; a place where she has one spot, even a few inches, that she can claim for her own. A place where her son and daughter can live without worrying about sitting wrong, or saying the wrong thing, or having the wrong expression on their faces. A place where they can play and laugh as loud as they want to, and maybe even fall asleep without having to put away the few toys they’re allowed to own.

  And a place where she can hear their untamed, beautiful laughter.

  Leah has longed to hear their shrieks and sweet cries of wonder. She has prayed for a day when they can giggle without worry, and when she can lie down beside them and keep them laughing for so long that they all roll into a heap—weak and short of breath.

  Leah tells Cindy that the simple task of washing dishes without someone yelling at her makes her want to sing.

  “But my voice is not the greatest, so I whistle,” she says, handing a huge frying pan to Cindy.

  “Your kids are adjusting well.”

  Leah looks down. She plunges her hands into the water, wishing that the water would scald her so that she would have a scar, something to always remind her that she is no different from him.

  “Thank God,” she manages to say.

  Cindy senses the change in her demeanor. She puts the towel down and gently touches Leah on the arm.

  “Leah, it’s okay. No one here is judging you. Your children adore you. You are making huge strides. You haven’t been here very long.”

  Leah can barely talk. “Forgiving myself isn’t easy, Cindy.”

  There is a pause. Leah knows Cindy is giving her a chance to compose herself, and Leah is smart enough to know this roller-coaster portion of her life is going to take a while to even out. She knows about the other mothers who have sold their babies for drugs. The mothers who have given their adolescent daughters away as gifts. The mothers who have pawned the new shoes and the bus vouchers to buy their boyfriends whiskey. The mothers who snuck out in the night and were never heard from again.

  “Honey, you have to stop being so hard on yourself,” Cindy tells her. “You’re trying. That’s more than so many other women are doing. How is your class going?”

  Leah wants to laugh and cry at the same time. She turns, and at the last minute decides not to say much. Cindy has heard it all, but she probably wouldn’t believe it if Leah told her about the shooting range and the arrow.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Do you like the other women?”

  “I’m not in the same league as they are,” Leah offers.

  Cindy snorts. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. They look nice. They dress nice. I bet they live in big houses and have those long, bright countertops I’ve seen in magazines.”

  “Granite. And, Leah, it’s just a hunk of rock.”

  “I bet they have granite in their kitchens, and they hate to look at me.”

  Cindy snorts again.

  “What?” Leah asks, perplexed.

  “Honey, they’re in anger-management class. Not just a regular old anger class for people who kick the dog. They are in court-ordered anger-management class. They are, pardon me, badass women.”

  This time Leah snorts.

  “I just feel inferior around them, and it’s not like they’re inviting me over to play bridge or discuss plans for the holiday bazaar.”

  Cindy fills up her lungs so it looks as if the buttons will pop off her blouse.

  “Oh, honey, you have got to be kidding me? Those woman should be polishing your shoes.”

  “If only I had shoes,” Leah jokes.

  Cindy looks down, smiles, and then says, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. Get your hands out of the water for a minute. Come with me.”

  Leah can’t imagine where they’re going or what’s going to happen next. She follows Cindy through the kitchen and into a small back room right across the hall. She has never been in the room and has no idea what’s inside.

  It’s apparently Cindy’s office, and it’s about the size of an airplane bathroom. Cindy is rummaging behind her desk. She stops abruptly and stands up.

  “I have a confession to make,” she says, leaning on the desk.

  “Whatever it is, I forgive you.”

  “I went into your room when you were down the hall showering the other day so I could see what size clothes you wear.”

  Leah stares at her. Where is this going?

  Apparently a woman called asking for Leah’s clothing size. She said she was a friend of Dr. Bayer’s and wanted to get Leah some items for her Tuesday-night journey.

  “My Tuesday-night journey?” Leah is perplexed.

  Cindy lets Leah think for a moment. It doesn’t take long.

  “Oh, duh,” Leah says, slapping herself on the forehead with the back of her hand. “Tonight. The meeting. Those women. My life.”

  Cindy smiles, reaches behind the desk, and heaves a stack of clothes into Leah’s hands.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s an alligator. What does it look like?”

  Leah sees tags on the clothes. These are new clothes. A stack of new clothes.

  Leah can’t move. She doesn’t know what to say. She can’t remember the last time she had something
new or anything at all, for that matter.

  “Who are these from?” she manages to ask.

  “Apparently you have a secret admirer. I don’t know who it was. Dr. Bayer called. Someone else dropped them off. That’s all they want you to know.”

  Leah is afraid to set the clothes down, move, say another word.

  “You can go try them on,” Cindy tells her, sweeping her hand toward the door.

  “I have to finish my dishes,” Leah says.

  Cindy smiles. “Oh, Leah, it’s okay to let them sit for a moment.”

  “I left most of our things,” Leah explains, looking away. “We took off so fast … I took things for the children, and then after that—”

  “You don’t have to explain,” Cindy tells her. “I do have to admit, I was getting sick of those sweatpants and that other outfit you wear on Tuesday nights. You know there are free clothes in the front closet. It’s slim pickings, but it’s there for anyone. Don’t be so shy.”

  “Cindy …” Leah hesitates.

  “What, darling?”

  “Darling? Not so much. There have been plenty of times when I’ve thought about how much easier my life would be if I was alone, if I had left the children, if I had never even had them. That’s part of the reason why accepting anything is so hard for me.”

  Leah feels as if she has just unburdened a huge part of her heart. But Cindy just laughs.

  “Oh, honey, every mother in the world feels like that. Being a mother is damn hard work. We all know that. You have got to stop being so hard on yourself. We all want to run away sometimes.”

  “Thank you so much, Cindy,” Leah says, clearly relieved.

  Cindy shoos her away and Leah takes the clothes to her room, gently sets them down on her single bed as if there is a newborn baby resting on top, and then hustles back to the kitchen. Someday she will be bold enough to share the rest of what is in her heart, the other secret, she promises herself, as she dips her hands back into the tepid water.

  When she finishes the last pot, and the water is draining, there’s a knock on the back door. It’s a delivery service and someone is asking for her. Goodness!

  Leah takes an envelope from the man, rips it open, and immediately starts to laugh. Dr. Bayer is out of her mind! Leah tucks the envelope into her pocket and turns to go back inside. That’s when she sees a woman walking past wearing a red-and-blue Chicago Cubs sweatshirt.

  The woman looks a lot like Kit, and she’s grinning like a clown as she jogs.

  28

  The Red Dot

  Jane is trying her best to embrace normalcy.

  She has made a few real-estate calls, which went nowhere, but that was no surprise. She checked listings that other agents have and made certain she answered the few emails that had trickled into her in-box.

  Then she wrote in her little happy notebook. It wasn’t much, but she did mention how it made her happy when Derrick sat and listened to her babble about the foot-and-arrow incident even if she didn’t understand what he was doing with her shoes. But then, for some reason, she couldn’t stop thinking about Leah’s life.

  “I almost wish I could talk to Dr. Bayer right now,” she said, staring at her phone and wondering exactly what she would say if Dr. Bayer answered.

  Hello. I’m feeling funny, like I should do and know better about everything, and that maybe you are very wise and all these assignments are starting to hit home. Help me more, Dr. Bayer. Lots of things don’t make sense.

  She would like to be able to tell Dr. Bayer that what she thinks she should do is take Leah out for lunch and buy her some new clothes. She would like to ask Dr. Bayer about her life and how she comes up with these assignments, and why there are only four of them in class. She’d love to tell Grace again how sorry she is and how it really was an accident. She’d like to tell Kit about feeding those swans.

  Jane knows there are areas in her life that are rough, and she also knows that she’s not really a bad person. Sometimes she doesn’t know what to say or do. Arrested development? Frightened? Confused? Or just Jane?

  She realizes that she should go stand in front of the mirror for about three years to look into her own eyes. She has watched other people and other families interact, and she knows her capacity to show affection and to receive it is all but nonexistent.

  Pushing herself away from her computer, she tries to remember the times her parents were affectionate. There isn’t a lot to remember. Mostly she can remember her father trying and her mother being worried about her hair, her makeup, what other people might say if they saw them—as if affection was something dirty and horrid.

  “Father, why does Mother think it’s wrong to kiss and hug?” she remembers asking him.

  Her father would take off his big black glasses, rub his eyes, and look at her with a smile. “Your mother is your mother, Jane” was what he usually said. But sometimes if she asked him when her mother wasn’t there he would lift her into the air, twirl her around and around, and then kiss her all over her face.

  When she was away from home at summer camp, and homesick for reasons she never understood, Jane sometimes lifted her fingers to her face and made believe her father was kissing her the way he did when she was a little girl.

  When Jane became insanely promiscuous during her college years, her roommate told her that it was because of how she was raised. The Tuesday-night gang would undoubtedly love to get their hands on those stories.

  Jane shakes her head to stop any other memories from surfacing. God forbid someone from her past should invade this lousy section of her life.

  Now what?

  This is what Jane hates about not working. She has absolutely no other hobbies or interests. She has almost always had a cleaning lady until recently, she’s not a big fan of anything in the kitchen besides wine-bottle opening, she works out a bit but isn’t an avid runner, biker, or tennis player. She reads a little, but usually she’s picking up business books or industry magazines. Forget yard work—she has to keep up her nails. And it’s not like there’s a large group of unemployed friends she can call to come over and hang out.

  All of these true facts usually depress Jane, but today she feels different and can only blame it on Dr. Bayer, and maybe this means she’s making some kind of progress. Who knows?

  She starts to pace throughout the bottom floor of her house when she gets the bright idea to cook dinner for her and Derrick. She’ll call him right now and let him know, and when she gets home from class everything will be ready. She’ll just reheat whatever she made or keep it warm in the oven. He should be amazed. There has to be some food buried in the freezer under the vodka stash.

  She calls his cellphone and the call immediately goes into his voice mail. That’s odd. Derrick rarely turns off his phone, especially when he’s at work. She knows that he leaves it on even during his meetings

  “Derrick, it’s Jane. Give me a call, okay?”

  Jane sets down her phone and starts rummaging through the fridge. There’s enough stuff for a salad. She crosses her fingers and starts an excursion through the freezer. Who knew? The freezer is absolutely stuffed. She can’t remember the last time she pulled open the door to look for anything besides the vodka.

  First she decides to throw out everything that looks as if it’s been inside since the beginning of time. Old vegetables, packages with one or two buns, something that must have once been a slab of lovely pork or beef. When in the hell did all this food even get into the freezer? She keeps digging until she finds a normal-looking beef roast.

  While it rests on the counter she tries Derrick again, and there is still no answer. She shrugs but is puzzled. Then again, when had she last called him at work or—not at work? If she stopped to think for a moment, Jane would realize that she never thought about needing Derrick. But she often thought of having him.

  It takes her a good ten minutes to locate a slow cooker she has never actually used, and then tries to remember how to use the damn thing. Then she
calls Derrick one more time, and when he doesn’t answer she decides to call his assistant. It’s past lunchtime, and it’s not like him to let his phone battery die or to leave the phone anyplace that isn’t within reach of his right hand.

  Ronald answers immediately. “Hello, Jane. Nice to hear from you.”

  “Is Derrick there?”

  He’s quiet for several seconds.

  “Lunch with you, Jane darling. He’s not back yet. Did you forget your phone in his car again?”

  Jane almost drops the pot roast on her right foot.

  “Oh,” she all but whispers. “No. Just. Well. Never mind. Have a great afternoon.”

  She hangs up the phone and feels her stomach lurch into her throat as if she might swallow half of her own body.

  Jane plops the roast on the counter and has absolutely no idea what to do next. She can’t imagine Derrick having an affair. Can’t imagine him lying to her, sneaking around, being with another woman.

  Jane doesn’t move for a very long time. She stands with her hands on the counter, and when she looks at them she realizes that she’s shaking. The kitchen is littered with old vegetables, hunks of freezer-burned meat, random pieces of bread and hot-dog buns. The kitchen looks the way she feels.

  Jane is absolutely devastated. This has to be a mistake.

  She turns and walks through the kitchen and takes the stairs to the bedroom two at a time. Screw the sadness. She is now absolutely livid.

  Where to start?

  First she moves to his side of the bed. She opens the small drawer on the nightstand and finds nothing but a few pens, some ChapStick, a half-empty water bottle. There are no cryptic notes from a lover.

  She sits on the bed for a few moments and imagines Derrick with another woman, in bed, kissing her face, talking softly, touching her hair, kissing her breasts.