by Mira Gibson
Dangling from the rearview mirror was a rosary made of brown, weathered beads and a wooden cross she felt no connection to. Beside it hung a laminated prayer card of Saint Anthony. The saint's sorrowful, downcast eyes stared vacantly at her. His Mona Lisa smile and tipped halo that was too close to his baldhead to look like anything other than a strange toupee, gave her a weird feeling. St. Anthony, full of grace, please find me a parking space. Her sister's singsong voice laced with impatience ran around her head until she took her eyes off the saint. Wendy had probably meant well, but Gertrude wondered if she realized St. Anthony was the patron saint of lost causes.
She turned the key, but the Audi only whined and sputtered out. She felt lost without her index cards. She should make a few detailing how to start the car. Angling her gaze down, she stared at the excess of pedals then remembered one of them was the clutch. She pressed it down with her left foot, remembered the left foot wasn’t used for driving, pressed with the right, realized in fact the left foot was used for driving, shifted her feet and pressed again, feeling the prick she’d forgotten something critical all the while.
Jefferson was right about her sweater. She was sweating like a pig.
Again, she turned the key and the engine started growling, but without her foot on the brake she rolled backwards, gasped and slammed on the brake, forgetting the clutch. The car stalled out.
Dr. Hagstaff caught her eye through the windshield from where he was standing at the entrance doors. He gave her two emphatic thumbs up that made her cringe.
Lost causes, indeed…
She tried again—clutch, brake, turn of the key. It took some muscling and an air of intuition to find reverse—middle and right and down with pressure. She gassed it, swinging around and leveling a shrub, then slammed on the brakes, every inch of her flush with a slick layer of sweat. Determined, she found first gear and began creeping cautiously towards the parking lot exit, then shifted into second. She felt like she was cruising, though the car hadn't broken five miles per hour. When she turned onto the road, settling into third gear like a wisdom-weary grandmother too timid to drive the speed limit, she decided this was as fast as she needed to go.
The Division of Children Youth & Families branch of Child Protective Services, which had been her home away from home for the past ten years, was located in the Laconia District Office on Beacon Street West. And as Gertrude pulled into a parking spot, Audi bucking and jolting until she slammed on the brakes just shy of the cement slab that partitioned the asphalt from the sidewalk, she felt the swell of how much she'd missed this place.
The brick two-story building, spanning an industrial three hundred yard block, sat at the foot of the Opechee Bay Reservoir, a canal that connected Lake Winnipesaukee with its smaller twin, Winnisquam. As she climbed out of her car, she could smell the sun-kissed water rushing through the canal.
The DCYF awning, blue and faded, flapped in the summer breeze, as she approached, feeling beside herself with self-consciousness. Her sweater was too thin; her pants too saggy in the rear, and the knees were puffed out loosely like bubble-wrap a child had popped. She’d forgotten to shave her legs. Her calves felt prickly when she stroked one against the other, hesitating just shy of the glass door.
“Gerty!” Breathless in her excitement, Wendy hustled down the sidewalk, brown unkempt hair swaying and slacks swishing between her thighs. A blazer, black and petite and wrapped in plastic, dangled from her finger. “Got a little something here for you,” she explained as she smacked the plastic up and off of it, wriggling the garment free of its hanger. “Goodwill, but I had it dry cleaned. Go on.”
Quizzically, Gertrude slid her left arm into the right sleeve and Wendy immediately relinquished the undertaking, grabbing the blazer by the collar and holding it open for her like a knowing chambermaid, as Gertrude slipped it on.
“There,” she said, stepping back and giving Gertrude the once over. A satisfied smile spread across her face that her contribution had made all the difference in the world. “What about this?” She produced a scrap of black felt that Gertrude realized was a French beret when Wendy punched her fist inside it a few times, giving it shape before snugging it off-kilter onto her half-shaved head. Without so much as a stab at a French accent, she said, “Très chic.”
Gertrude could only assume she looked like a vagabond that had stumbled out of a costume shop, and it made her hope that the world wouldn’t notice she did not belong.
“Come, come,” said Wendy, cradling Gertrude with her soft, yet massive arm and ushering her to the door. “The gang is going to be thrilled.”
The corridor, dimly lit and stuffy, brought back a wealth of memories. How many times had Gertrude ducked out of her cubicle, stealing away to make a personal call to Doris in this dismal hallway with its smudged placards? She used to eye these faded awards—Public Elected Official of the Year NAWS Chapter Laconia District 2009, Social Worker of the Year NAWS Chapter Harold McNeil Representing Laconia District 2011, Susan Alby LSW Recognized for Lifetime Achievement in Social Work 2013—as Doris had blared complaints in her ear, Can you please come home and make a little something, I’m starving, and Gertrude's put-out grumbling, If you'd bothered to take your driving test you could go to the store yourself, and Doris' ever-rising impatience, You know I don't retain information, I'd never pass!
God, how she missed those arguments, hunching in the hallway out of sight, seething into her cell phone, studying the framed photos of the District staff, their glazed over smiles, and remembering the days certain photos had been taken. I didn't see a flash, and Harry's barked order, hold still, he doesn’t use a flash, and Gertrude standing in the back, her hair in a high ponytail, her eyes bright, smile wide, too ecstatic to be there. Each subsequent year, Gertrude had felt less and less proud to be amongst the winners, having gradually lost sight of the good she was doing, because she hadn't been, had she? Families remained broken. Drugs kept surfacing. Children died.
She studied a photo from last year, paying Wendy no mind, not that her friend was pressuring her to get on with it. Rather Wendy was watching over her like a patient parent in no rush to tear her child away from a fenced in goat at a petting zoo.
In the photo, Gertrude wasn’t even looking into the lens. She wore no smile, not even a plastic one for show. She seemed exhausted and dazed, but thinking back she couldn’t remember why. Had something bad happened? Had she failed in some way? And then she remembered. It hadn’t been work related. She’d been distraught over something Doris’ had told her. What was it? Gertrude searched her memory, but it wasn’t there, only the fact that Doris had shown up at her house in the dead of night—I can’t live with them, I can’t!
But why couldn’t she?
“Sorry,” she said, turning to Wendy.
“I know it’s challenging… you being here. We’ll take it one step at a time. You’re doing beautifully.”
They continued down the corridor, voices billowing through the walls, phones blaring louder and louder, fingers tapping across keyboards, a sense of displaced urgency filling the air, as they neared the office suite where the glass door read DCYF in black letters across the top.
Wendy opened it for her and Gertrude stepped in, but then paused, the frenetic energy of the place stopping her until Wendy proceeded, guiding her through the cubicles.
The conference room was in the back. She knew that much, but was momentarily confused when Wendy rounded into one of the cubicles. Then she read the nameplate that was tacked to the cubicle’s cork surface: Gertrude Inman, LSW—Child Protective Service Worker IV.
Delicately working her fingertips over the cluttered stacks of ad hoc case files and strewn pens then opening drawer after drawer, rummaging as non-intrusively as she could, Wendy found a notebook. “Ah, and this should do,” she said, pinching a pen from a ceramic mug that said Life’s a Beach but had an image of a screaming toddler. “Ready?” she asked, handing the items to Gertrude, who would’ve never thought to prepare he
rself so practically for the meeting.
Her smile was a nervous frown when Wendy told her it’d be a breeze. “Come, come,” she sang cheerfully to compensate for Gertrude’s ineptitude. And off they went.
A few glassy-eyed social workers glanced up from their reports as Gertrude passed by, but for the most part the employees dredged through their morning undisturbed by her return.
The Director of Children’s Services, Harold McNeil, a man with a bushy head of salt-and-pepper hair and a staunch New England coldness to rival even the most waspy WASP was angrily dunking a tea bag into a mug of creamy, hot water, as though he’d been seated at the conference table far too long by the time they stepped inside. Next to him and smearing away the stray drips from Harold’s mug that had soiled her notebook was Amanda Seevey, one of the Child/Family Advocates who’d started last May. She was young, dim-witted, and last Gertrude could recall, had been the subject of a secret pool. The department had been placing bets on whether Amanda would quit or get fired, and on what date precisely. It wasn’t so much her lackluster boredom that had inspired Malcolm Jarvis to start the pool, but rather her Louis Vuitton bag or more specifically the teacup Maltipoo inside it. It helps the kids open up, she’d argued, nose nuzzling the little thing as it yapped its head off, terrified to be out of the bag. No one objected in North Conway. And why would they have? The yuppie town in northern New Hampshire had been built on frivolities.
“Gertrude, you’re looking well,” said Harold, glancing up from his tea, which must have been disagreeable. He couldn’t stop bobbing the bag and grimacing.
“Good to be back, Harry. Nice to see you Amanda.”
“I didn’t realize you were gone,” she said through a big innocent smile.
Wendy scowled, but Amanda was oblivious or else very good at pretending to be. Gertrude was so anxious to seem professional, pleasant, unquestionably in her right mind however, that the quip insult had barely registered.
“Let’s get you settled right here.” Wendy was holding one of the weathered conference chairs out for her, having scraped it across the floor since its plastic wheels had given up years ago. The seat teetered precariously, as Gertrude sat.
With no further pretense, Harry launched into the case at hand. “Amanda’s been overseeing the King family. Visits, interviews, walk-throughs, the like,” he began, as Gertrude pressed her pen hard against her notepad, unsure of what to write down. “They’re on Winnipesaukee,” he mentioned like an aside. “First visit was three years ago, a total of five incidents. Then again two years ago, then every six months, only a few visits at a time after each incident. We treaded carefully, no deep probing.” Harry was skimming down a report that looked almost as old as Amanda. “You get the point. Family of four, Zhana, pronounced with a soft J then Ah-na," he explained, struggling then moving on, "and Charles married in the early nineties, fall from grace sort of thing. Two kids, Roberta and Maude.” Harry seemed bored already so he glanced at Amanda as though that’d be enough for her to pick up where he was leaving off. It wasn’t. “Amanda, why don’t you get Gertrude up to speed.”
“Oh,” she smiled, lost in thought, perhaps reminiscing about something amusing that had happened to her last night. “Just read the file. It’s all there. Oh, except that I haven’t been there in months. What?” she sang, another big innocent smile forming across her pug-face. “I’m super busy and they’re fine. They’ve been totally fine.”
“Except that Maude killed herself,” said Wendy, seething. Her cheeks had flushed and she was glaring at Amanda so hard Gertrude thought she'd stopped breathing.
“Right,” she said easily, “but like I said, I hadn’t been there.”
Wendy widened her eyes at Harry as if to say, she seriously doesn’t get that negligence caused this tragedy?
Harry cleared his throat and excused Amanda who sighed, finally! and then scooped up her tote-encased Maltipoo and left the conference room without closing the door.
To ward off the rant that Wendy clearly had locked and loaded, Harry pressed his palm on the table. “We’re understaffed.”
“Maude was a ten year old girl,” Wendy explained when Gertrude slid the case file in front of her, daunted at its volume. “The father owns many firearms." Rolling her eyes, she added, "Live free or die,” mocking the state motto that hadn't been in good taste since the Civil War. “As you can imagine, we’re concerned for Roberta’s safety. She’s seventeen and still a minor by all accounts.”
“We’re only focused on the environment,” added Harry. “Motives for why Maude would take her own life. Could be neglect. Why was she left unsupervised with an arsenal of weapons?”
“Reckless endangerment,” Gertrude supplied.
“Which we’re pushing for,” Wendy assured her. “But surprise, surprise, Charlie is a cop's cop.”
“He’s a police officer?”
“Retired,” Harry clarified. “But buddies with the police. When he said he keeps his guns locked up, detectives didn’t ask a follow up question. Believed him outright. Let’s not wade into law enforcement’s job,” he stated, straightening in his chair. “We only need you to investigate the home and see if it’s safe for Roberta to continue living there.”
“Grief counseling,” suggested Wendy with a sense of gravity so strong Gertrude for a moment felt the suggestion had been meant for her.
Leafing through the dense report, she asked, “When did Maude take her own life?”
“A good month back,” Wendy said, angling the report so she could find the exact date. “July second, it looks like.”
She already knew the answer thanks to Amanda, but Gertrude asked anyway. “And no one from social services stopped in since then?”
To Harry, Wendy demanded, “You need to fire that girl. She’s deplorable.”
“Has law enforcement removed the guns from the home?” Gertrude was shy about meeting Harry’s gaze. He had one of those faces that made her cower if she looked directly at him for too long. But this time, instead of flaring up like a missile, his expression drew long and weary.
Wendy answered for him. “They’re not working with us.”
“Why? Because the dad’s a retired coin?”
When they both stared at her quizzically, she blurted out, “Copper.” A stuttering swell of frustration came next. “Retired Cop. Is that the reason?”
Gently and with great purpose, Wendy placed her soft hand over Gertrude’s. “Get Roberta out of there. It’s not safe and you need to prove it.”
Chapter Three
Gertrude eased her old Audi onto the grassy shoulder, feet pressing intently on both clutch and brake as she jiggled the stick in neutral and came to a stop. Through a sparse line of Maples, she spied a row of dormer windows tucked under a pitch of wooden shingles that were so weathered they’d turned gray and buckled. The King’s home was a New England Cottage far past its prime.
To get her bearings on who she would need to be—the person she had been before the accident—she reviewed her car’s interior or rather the tips and instructions she’d left for herself. A yellow index card with black pen marks embedded deep into the paper told her to SMILE! from where it rested over the center of the steering wheel. It had fallen off several times during the drive and as a result had a smudged shoe print—gray and dusty—across its right side. Another card taped to the inside of the driver’s side door said, the truth is between the statements. And six others spanned the cracked leather dash, though it had been too dusty for the tape to stick properly. Realizing that, she’d stopped at Benjamin’s Crafts and bought crazy glue to adhere the cards—everyone has secrets, and kids want to be heard, and trust is built, and show them you’re safe. The last two, which had flapped when the windows were down, were glued to the glove box door and completely illegible, though she recalled their content: disclosure works and connect.
She realized the car was still idling, so she turned the key and slipped it into the front pocket of her blazer.
&
nbsp; The case file, thick and tattered, was resting on the passenger’s side seat where Doris should’ve been. And it might have been that association that prevented her from thumbing through it once more to re-familiarize herself with the three years of spotty visits as documented by Amanda Seevey.
Gingerly and partially anticipating the door would break off, she popped the handle and climbed out, bringing along only the notebook and pen Wendy had collected for her earlier that day.
Getting the door to latch closed required a number of attempts, the last of which included her throwing her hip into it, but sent her beret sliding down the buzzed side of her head on impact. She straightened her hat, starting for the gravelly driveway while peering at the house through the trees, their thick trunks and billowy tops, and the lake beyond.
Once she cleared the Maples and the house came into full view, she observed that its wood-shingled siding was nearly identical to the sloped roof—weathered gray and buckling like a snake in the throws of shedding its skin. The gables were chipped. The chimney bricks looked white and powdery as though something sickly was trapped inside and trying to escape, and the metal crickets at the base should’ve been smooth to prevent ice and water buildups, but were starkly bent like petals peeling off of a dying flower.
Doris would have a lot to say about this house. For a ragtag teen approaching her senior year of high school, it had been clear she would go into architectural design had she graduated, had she lived, had Gertrude been able to save her.
Doris would have personified the house in an instant—An old man too grumpy to let anyone care for him or a cripple in denial or maybe simply Sisyphus. And then she’d point out the architectural details, their flaws, offer a prescription, much in the way Gertrude assessed her cases, houses no different than people, objects and subjects deteriorating unless you helped them.
So lost in the comparison was Gertrude that she didn’t notice the planters wrapping the house, their bushes and weeds sprouting tall yet dying, until she veered up the muddy walkway and saw the hunched, squatting form—a red dress amongst vegetation—of what appeared to be a teenaged girl, her knees splayed like a frog, elbows deep in soil, head lost between the bushes that shook and rustled, as she dug.