“. . . at Saint Augustine’s,” Lucille is saying gleefully. “In that old choir loft.”
I stop on the third step.
“Why you practicing there?” Mr. Herron asks.
“Well, Tyrone, who’s in charge of the group, is real good friends with Father Delaney, who’s the pastor at Saint Augustine’s. And since we don’t have a place big enough to practice in yet, Father Delaney said we could use the loft at his church. They haven’t used it in years apparently. Isn’t that sad? A big, beautiful choir loft like that, just abandoned? We’re going to head over this afternoon after lunch to wipe it all down, clean it up a little. Then we should be all set.” Lucille makes a clucking sound with her tongue. “I’ll tell you what, I can hardly wait!”
My hands are clutching Mr. Herron’s sheets so tightly that my fingertips hurt.
“Maybe I should ask Bird what kind of cleaning supplies are best for a job like that,” Lucille continues. “You know how dust can accumulate. I’m sure there are just layers upon layers of it up there. I wonder what the best kind of wood cleaners are. And dust cloths, too. I can’t even imagine how many cob . . .”
Her words trail behind me as I streak for the front door, leaving Mr. Herron’s dirty sheets in a pile at the foot of the steps.
“Bird?” I can hear Mr. Herron shout behind me. “Bird girl, where the hell you goin’?”
Chapter 34
I’ll have to take him to the apartment on the lake right now. It’s only ten o’clock, but there’s no way I can risk Lucille’s stupid folk group people showing up early. He won’t even have time to get inside the organ again, let alone find a way out of the loft by the time he hears any of them on the steps. My head is spinning. I’ll take him there now and then go back up tonight. Okay, then. That’s what we’ll do. I step down harder on the gas, curse as the light up ahead changes to red.
Inside my pocket, my cell phone rings. I have a mind to ignore it until I remember that it could be the preschool. I take the phone out of my pocket, glance down at the number. I don’t recognize it. Shit. I don’t know the preschool number by heart. It could be them. I flip it open, press it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Bird?”
“Yeah?”
“This is Mrs. Ross. From the probation office?”
I can hear someone crying in the background. My heart starts pounding in my ears. “What’s wrong?”
“You need to come home, Bird. Right this minute.” Mrs. Ross’s voice is devoid of her usual perkiness.
“Wait, what?” I pull over to the side of the road, throw the car in park. “Why? What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain it to you when you get here.” Her voice softens a little. “Just come home, hon, okay?”
“Home? Why home? Are you at my house?”
“Yes. I drove out this morning to see you about a situation that’s just come up.”
The crying in the background is getting louder.
“Is that my mother?” I explode. “In the background? Is she crying?”
Mrs. Ross clears her throat, muffles the mouthpiece with something. I can hear an exchange of words, but they are far away, as if under a blanket.
Then: “Bernadette?” I barely recognize Ma’s voice it is so clotted with grief.
“Ma.” I am shaking with rage and fear. “Why are you crying? Why aren’t you at work? What the hell is going on?”
“I didn’t go to work today.” Her voice is edged with embarrassment. “I didn’t even go to church. I was too tired . . . after everything that happened last night. Please just come back to the house. Mrs. Ross is here. She said the whole situation could probably be cleared up if you just sit down and—”
“What situation? What happened?”
My brain is racing. Did Charlie call someone? Is that what it is? Am I in trouble because I went to the hospital?
“I don’t know.” Ma starts crying again. The sound is killing me, snatching the breath out of my chest, turning the sun into a blinding pinpoint through the windshield. “Please, Bird,” Ma croaks. “Just tell Mr. Herron you have to go. That it’s an emergency. Please just come home and fix this. Please.”
“You wait right there. Don’t you move, Ma. I’ll be there in two minutes.”
I snap the phone shut again, throw the car back into gear. There’s no way in hell anyone could have found out so quickly that I was at the hospital this morning. Besides, I didn’t do anything. I barely even spoke to the guy. It’s got to be something else, some ridiculous triviality regarding my case. Did I forget to sign something? Is there some document I’ve overlooked regarding my payment schedule, some glitch regarding my last disbursement? Who the hell does Mrs. Ross think she is, coming to my house? She can pick up the fucking phone and call me from her office if that’s the case, just like anyone else would. I’m going to report this; I swear to God I am. That woman’ll end up with her ass in a sling.
I give the rearview mirror a quick glance as the car speeds away from Saint Augustine’s. Jutting out from the skyline is the silver tip of the steeple, the glint of the crucifix at the very top. I can still do this. I’ll go home, fix whatever situation has arisen, and then drive back over to the church and get James out of there, once and for all.
I keep my eyes on the steeple as I press down on the gas, watching as it fades slowly from sight.
MRS. ROSS AND MA stand up simultaneously from their places on the couch when I burst in. Steam is still rising from the mugs of tea on the coffee table, and for some inexplicable reason, Ma has set out a plate of sliced oranges.
“Bernadette.” Ma’s still in her robe, clutching the edges of it under her chin with pinched fingers. Her face is dry, but I can see the salty tear tracks along her cheeks. “My God, how did you get here so fast?”
“I drove fast.” I glare at Mrs. Ross, who is wearing a navy pinstriped suit and a bright red necklace with stones so large they look like eggs. “Probably over the speed limit. Now, can you please tell me what this is all about?”
“Have a seat, Bird.” Mrs. Ross looks at me with a sympathetic expression. Her hair is long and loose around her shoulders; tiny pearl earring studs dot her earlobes.
“I don’t want to have a seat. I have to get back to work. What do you need, a signature? A paper? What?”
Mrs. Ross blinks. “We got a call this morning from the police station, hon.”
“From the police station?” My heart skips a beat. “Why?”
“Apparently, a Mrs. Jane Livingston went down and filed a report a few hours ago. Against you, Bird. She said that you stole some of her drugs after you offered to go to the pharmacy and pick them up. Her Vicodin. Do you know anything about that?”
Can floors sway beneath you? Or do your knees somehow just unbuckle themselves and set you down? Both happen to me now, and I stagger over to the blue armchair in the corner so that I don’t collapse in a heap.
“Bernadette?” Ma says my name so softly that I have to bite down hard on my tongue to prevent the tears. “You didn’t take any of Jane’s Vicodin, did you?”
How did I honestly think I could get away with this? Of course Jane counts her pills. She’s neurotic about everything; why wouldn’t she be completely anal about the number of Vicodin capsules her cleaning lady brings back from the pharmacy? I wonder briefly if this is what the beginning of the end looks like; if the really big things in life, the ones that knock you completely off your axis, start off in your own living room, across from your mother, who is still dressed in her fluffy green bathrobe.
“Bernadette?”
I look up. “No. I didn’t take any of Jane’s Vicodin.”
“Why would she say that, then?” Mrs. Ross licks her pink-coated lips.
I shrug. “No idea.”
“She said she called the pharmacy first, Bird, to make sure they hadn’t miscounted. She said the pharmacist was one hundred percent positive that he put twenty-five pills in there, and when she counted them later, there were only t
wenty-one. Then later, after you left a second time, there were two more pills missing.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I didn’t take any kind of drugs.” I glance over at Ma. “I swear to you, Ma. I didn’t.”
Her face has softened some, but her shoulders are still tight, bunched up stiffly around her neck. “They need to look, Bernadette.” She motions toward Mrs. Ross with her head. “That’s why she’s here. She has to search your room.”
“Go ahead.” I am in full defense mode. Where the fuck are the jeans I wore last night? Did I throw them on the floor? The bed? Are they in the laundry hamper? How could I have forgotten about them there in my pocket? Jesus.
Ma steps back as Mrs. Ross crosses in front of her, then trots a few feet behind. Mrs. Ross turns as she gets to the foot of the stairs, looks at Ma kindly. “I should probably do this alone.”
Ma’s face withers; her shoulders sag finally.
“Come on, Ma.” I head for the kitchen. “She’s not going to find anything anyway. I didn’t take them.”
Ma follows, leaning heavily against one of the counters for a moment, just watching me. Her eyes are already lined, but now they look as if Angus found a pale purple marker and scribbled on the thin skin under them. She’s released the front of her robe; pink flannel peeks out from inside like a splash of spring lilac. I sit down at the table, pick up the lone ceramic pepper shaker, and put it back. It looks ridiculous there without its mate, in an awkward, solitary world of its own now, thanks to me. I crack my knuckles one at a time, and tilt my chair backward. Still, Ma doesn’t say anything. “You want some tea?” I let the chair fall back down heavily and stand up, moving toward the stove.
“No.” Her voice is as heavy as a stone.
“Ma.”
“Why, Bernadette?” Her face crumples in on itself and then, as if thinking better of it, straightens again.
“Why what, Ma? I haven’t done anything!”
Except that I have. I’ve done everything. And then some. I’ve done so much that, right now, thinking back on all of it—especially the last three days—I can hardly believe it myself. But I want so much to not have. Or, more accurately, I want so much to have done it all—and, somehow, still be good. To have her look at me with a tenderness I know she does not feel, maybe has not ever felt.
“You’re lying.” Ma is nowhere near tears anymore. She is on fire. Ma the Maelstrom, as Dad used to call her sometimes. She could get like a hurricane when she got that mad, a tempest. “I can always tell when you’re lying because of the way your chin moves.”
“My chin?”
“Yes.” She gestures toward me with one hand. “It quivers, right at the bottom there. It always does when you lie. Even when you were younger.”
“Oh, yeah?” I take a step forward. “Is it quivering right—”
“Excuse me, ladies.” We both whirl around as Mrs. Ross steps into the kitchen. She’s pinned her hair up for some reason, fastening it at the nape of her neck with a small plastic clip, and her heels make a light clicking sound against the linoleum floor. Without a word she walks over to the kitchen table and deposits the other two Vicodin, white and diamond-faceted, on the tablecloth. Then she looks at me.
“I don’t know where those came from.” I know I’m just making things worse, but I can’t help it. I’m drowning, begging for a life preserver, scrambling for a rope. Anything, anywhere.
Ma’s eyes are like coals across the kitchen, searing into my flesh.
“I’m sorry, Bird,” Mrs. Ross says. “But you’re going to have to come with me now.”
Chapter 35
Wait, you’re not taking her to jail, are you?” Ma hangs on to Mrs. Ross’s sleeve, her eyes pleading.
Mrs. Ross puts her free arm around Ma’s shoulders, pats her gently. “No, Mrs. Connolly. She’s not going to jail. But I do have to take her down to the probation office. Bird’s going to have to prepare a statement in accordance with the evidence I’ve discovered in her room, and then give us a urine sample. She’ll be charged with an initial probation violation because the drugs were found in her room, but if the urine comes up hot . . . I mean, if any trace of Vicodin shows up in it, we’ll have to charge her with another two counts as well. After that, it’s up to the judge.”
Ma clutches at the neck of her bathrobe again, as if pinning it to her throat. “I’ll get Angus,” she says, looking at me.
“You don’t have to get Angus. They’re not going to find anything in my urine, Ma, which means all they’re going to do right now is draw up some paperwork for finding Vicodin in my room. It isn’t going to take long.” I look at Mrs. Ross. “Right?”
She reaches up and fiddles with an earring. “Let your mother get Angus, Bird. I really don’t know how long things are going to take.”
I lick my lips. Inhale deeply, while holding Ma’s eyes in a vise-like grip. “Don’t you say a word to him. I mean it, Ma. Not one single word.”
“Well, of course I’m not going to say anything,” Ma scoffs, as if the possibility of doing such a thing would ever enter her mind.
“Okay, then,” Mrs. Ross says. “Let’s go.”
I grab for my keys and then pause. “I can take my own car, can’t I?”
Mrs. Ross hesitates, her eyes roving over my face, as if trying to find a shred of veracity somewhere in there. “No,” she says finally. “I think you’d better come with me.”
The ride over to the probation office takes less than ten minutes, but every red light, every stop sign, feels like a barrier. I look out the window, purposely avoiding Mrs. Ross’s eyes, which skitter in my direction every few minutes, and set my jaw. Her car smells like hairspray and cherries. A rubber air freshener in the shape of a lemon hangs down from the knob of her CD player, and next to my feet is an extra pair of heels. Blue leather, with a gold buckle. I kick them to one side, pretending not to notice as Mrs. Ross shoots me a look, and stare out the window. I still can’t believe Jane ratted me out. Yes, it was her medicine, and yes, the fact that I took them means that I am not to be trusted (God knows what else I must’ve taken), but going to the cops? Couldn’t she just have confronted me herself? Fired me, the way I’d deserved to be fired, maybe shut the door in my face, called me a few nasty names? Maybe I’m an idiot, but I thought the little bit of time we spent together—especially last night, talking about things, real things, not just the logistics of the house, or where I needed to clean, but her life, herself—might’ve tempered her decision. I’m not saying she should’ve let me off the hook, but couldn’t she have given me some slack? Just a little bit?
Inside the office, Mrs. Ross holds the front door open, stepping back to let me in.
“Don’t forget,” I say, striding past her. “I’m still innocent until proven guilty in this country.”
“I saw what I saw.” Mrs. Ross stalks on ahead, the muscles in her calves bulging with each step.
Screw you. You don’t know anything.
But I know that’s a lie. Even worse, I know she’s got the evidence of what she saw hidden in some Ziploc bag inside that gigantic purse of hers. Still, it’s not like she can prove that I took them from Jane. No one can, really, when it comes right down to it. Vicodin is Vicodin. I could’ve gotten it anywhere, from anyone. And my urine will come back clean, which is going to throw an even bigger wrench into the situation. By the time this whole thing is over, Mrs. Ross won’t know which end is up. She’ll have to let me go, and I will. There’s an eleven-thirty bus that comes to the corner right across the street. I’ll ride home, get my car, and hightail it the hell over to the church. If there is a God somewhere, I’ll have just enough time to still get James out of the loft before the folk group people get there and drive up to the apartment.
“Have a seat,” Mrs. Ross says abruptly as we reach the door outside her office. “I’ll be out to get you when I’m ready.” She slides some sort of credit card thing inside a little black box and then yanks open the door when it beeps.
&nbs
p; There’s only one seat available in the row against the wall. The other two are occupied—fellow probation violators, I guess. Or newbies, maybe, just like I was eighteen months ago. I sit down in between a guy wearing a leather jacket and sweat pants, and a woman who looks as though she hasn’t eaten a meal in at least a year. Even her ankles, which stick out from the bottom of a pair of yellow cropped pants, are the size and width of chicken bones.
I glance at the clock above the door: 10:36. As long as Mrs. Ross doesn’t drag her feet, I’ll still have a little less than an hour to go over and get James. Although how long it’s going to take me to get him down all those stairs is beyond me. And that’s assuming no one will be hanging around the vestibule or inside the church itself. I don’t have to worry about the time afterward, since going to Jane’s is out of the picture—so that’s one good thing. If I can just get James out of the loft, put him in my car and—
“Who do you see?” The guy in the leather jacket elbows me. His belly is so enormous that the bottom of it, jutting out from beneath his orange T-shirt and stretched taut with white-and-purple striations, reminds me of a marbled piece of meat. He’s wearing heavy work boots with the laces undone and white socks. Black stubble darkens the lower half of his face and his nose is pocked with deep pits.
“What?”
“In there.” He points his chin toward the door. “Who’s your probation officer?”
“Oh.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Mrs. Ross.”
“Uh-huh.” He nods, as if he knows her personally. “I got Billings. He’s a total dick.”
I stare straight ahead, hoping that he will get the hint that I am not interested in having even a small discussion about our probation officers.
But then the anorexic leans forward, tucking her white sandals under her chair. “I have Billings, too. And I agree. He is a dick. He doesn’t give me a break for anything.” There is fine hair growing on the tops of her arms, like chick fuzz, and she runs her palms over it lightly as she talks. “He yanked me in here again ’cause he says he saw me ‘hanging out’ with some of my old friends at the movie theater, which isn’t even true. There was one girl in the group that I used to know from before and I wasn’t even talking to her. I was there to see a movie and that was it.”
The Odds of You and Me Page 27