Becoming Ellen

by Shari Shattuck

  Maddy wheezed slowly. “I . . . understand.”

  Spent, Ellen backed away and stood by the door to listen for anyone who might be coming. Temerity took over. “You have been very brave,” Temerity told her. “And Lydia has a real friend, a guardian angel in Ellen. I want you to know that, and not be afraid. The people Lydia are staying with are a really good family. Ellen went to make sure, without them knowing it. She thinks you can trust them to do the right thing. And believe me, you can trust her to know what the alternative is.”

  Ellen heard voices outside in the hallway. “Temerity,” she hissed in warning. She opened the door a crack and peeked out. The Rushes and Serena Hoffman were coming down the hall with a man in a white jacket. Lydia was in Mr. Rush’s arms. Ellen closed the door and looked desperately around the tiny room. The curtain hiding the other bed was pulled closed. “Come on!” She grabbed her friend’s arm and pulled her behind it just as the door opened.

  “Mama?” Ellen heard Lydia say fearfully.

  “Lydia . . . My baby!” Maddy said, and there was both sorrow and ecstasy in the three words.

  “Can she give her mom a kiss?” Mrs. Rush asked.

  “I think that would be fine,” came the unfamiliar voice of the doctor. “Ms. Carson, how are you feeling?” the doctor asked after a moment.

  “Hazy,” Maddy said. “Thank you for . . . bringing Lydia . . . to see me.”

  “I knew you would wake up, Mama,” Lydia said. “Now you can come home with us. It’s warm there!”

  “It might be a little while before your mom can go home, sweetie,” came Mrs. Rush’s voice.

  “Listen . . . to me,” Maddy forced out in her breathy exhale. There were excruciating pauses as she struggled to fill her lungs with enough air to speak. “I want you . . . to take Lydia . . . for now. If . . . anything happens . . . to me . . . then you can . . . I want . . . legal . . . understand?”

  “Ms. Carson? My name is Serena Hoffman, and I’m the social worker on Lydia’s case. If you mean that, I can get a verbal agreement from you, with witnesses, saying that you relinquish custody to the Ru—”

  She was cut off by Mr. Rush. “No, I think it would be best if we have temporary custody. That way when Madeline gets better, or well enough, she can maybe come stay with us until she can live on her own again. But if she can’t make decisions for her daughter, then we should be in a position to do it for her, if she trusts us. And I also think that part of that agreement should be that we will bring Lydia every Monday, more often if she wants, to visit with her mom. Would that be possible?”

  There was quiet, and then Serena said, “I don’t see why not. Ms. Carson, what do you think?”

  “I think . . . yes. Lydia?”

  “Yes, Mama?”

  “Don’t be afraid . . . you have . . . an . . . angel . . . someone to watch . . . out for you.”

  Ellen could almost hear Lydia smile at the secret, and she felt Temerity squeeze her arm. “I know, Mama. Not everyone can see her. Did you see her?”

  “Yes, baby . . . She was . . . here . . . She told me . . . it’s okay.”

  The doctor cleared his throat. “I think that this might be a bit too much excitement for right now. Would it be all right if you all waited outside for a little while? I’d like your mom to rest. Then you can come back and say good-bye for today.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Mrs. Rush said. There was a rustling of movement and then Mrs. Rush spoke again, her voice thick with emotion. “Thank you for trusting us.”

  “Thank . . . you.”

  Serena Hoffman said, “I’m going to prepare this document for you now, just so we have something in outline form, and then we’ll have a lawyer write it up and look it over and everyone can witness it. We’ll be back in a bit.”

  There was the shuffling of feet and the sound of a kiss, given with the purity of a child’s lips, and then only the sound of the machines.

  Ellen peeked out. The room was empty. She and Temerity came out from behind the curtain and went to the bedside.

  “Good-bye,” Temerity whispered, but Maddy’s eyes were closed, though now Ellen could detect life in the woman’s sleeping face.

  They made their way back out of the building and into the cold air. Neither spoke until they had come to the bus stop. Then Temerity raised her face to the cold wind, breathed deeply, smiled broadly, and said, “She’s a good mom, I’m glad.”

  Ellen was, too. She was busy listening to her heart, which was beating with a steady rhythm. Lydia CARson, Lydia CARson. And Ellen knew that Lydia would be loved.

  29

  Do you have anything planned for this afternoon?” Justice asked. “Maybe some bull-riding or, I know, we could throw axes at each other.”

  “You go ahead,” Temerity said. “Seth and I are going to help Ellen make bread.”

  “Oh goody,” Justice intoned, “fun with organic chemistry. I wonder if yeast has ever spontaneously exploded.”

  “Fine,” Temerity told him. “You don’t get any!”

  It was the perfect antidote to too much excitement. Ellen was delighted at the way the yeast foamed in the bowl, and she was surprised to find that the dough didn’t feel like wet fabric at all, more like spongy clay. It stuck to her fingers and took patience, but the smell of the bread baking was better than chocolate. Thelma and Beth arrived shortly after it came out of the oven, and Seth served them thick slices with butter and honey, his face glowing with pride as they congratulated him on his culinary expertise. Ellen watched the women closely—both of them looked at Seth in a new way—and with a surge of pride. Ellen realized that she recognized an emotion. They were “coveting,” but this time, it was a good thing.

  When everyone else had left or gone to bed, Ellen put on her warm jacket and went for a walk. She went to the bakery and watched through the grated door for a long time, not just observing now but absorbing.

  She slept most of the day Tuesday, exhausted from the odd hours and the unexpected interactions. When she went to work in the evening, she left especially early, because she wanted to be sure to be there well before Rosa. Ellen might not be able to face up to reporting an attack, but she could darn well try to make sure there wasn’t another one.

  Ellen checked the work assignment and for a change was pleased that she was working in the same section as Rosa and Kiki. They had auto goods, and she had the parallel aisle. The early evening went smoothly, and when the break came, Ellen went not to the broom closet, but to the women’s room on the docks.

  She locked herself into a stall with her coffee and a sandwich she’d brought from home. She could hear, through the metal vent high in the wall, the comings and goings of men in their bathroom next door. It was almost time to go back to work when she heard the distinct sound of someone turning the metal trash can upside down.

  Ellen crept out of the stall and went to listen at the wall. She heard scraping, rustling, then the door opening. Ellen waited a few seconds, then pushed open her own door to the dock.

  She could see the form of a man retreating quickly into the stacked boxes on the dock. He disappeared into the shadows and did not emerge on the other side. Ellen slipped out and found a vantage point of her own. When nothing happened in ten minutes, she decided that maybe she was wrong, and it hadn’t been Eric, or, better yet, he’d taken his drugs and left.

  Ellen went back to her cart and was cleaning in electronics when Thelma approached Rosa and Kiki. “Ladies, someone decided to bowl a few gallons of strawberry nectar in aisle four. Could you get your mops and join me there?”

  Normally this would not have been unusual, but Ellen had just been through that aisle, and it had been fine. Cautiously, she went the opposite way, and doubled back around to where the spill had been reported.

  It was a mess. Not just a single plastic jug, but several had burst onto the already cleaned floor. R
osa and Kiki were surveying it with shaking heads. “Looks like somebody overstacked the second shelf,” Kiki said, pointing. Ellen followed her finger and saw what she meant. Where there was otherwise a solid three rows of plastic gallon jugs, a gap, ten feet up, showed that a half dozen had fallen.

  “We’re going to need another bucket,” Rosa said. “Ugh, this stuff is so sticky.”

  “I’ll get it. And we’ll need the green cleanser, too,” Kiki said. “I’ll be right back.” She spun on her heel, and walked away, erect and disapproving. Rosa sighed and, taking hold of her mop handle, went to work.

  Ellen was wondering if she could help without being drawn into any kind of exchange, when a movement arrested her. On the second shelf, just above Rosa, something had moved. Ellen squinted her eyes and stared into the shadows. It was Eric, and he was looking down at Rosa with an evil grin. He turned, and crawled back deeper onto the shelf, and in the next moment, a large crate marked CANNED CORN, 200 COUNT began to slide from the back toward the edge. Ellen started forward, but Rosa had shifted to the far side of the aisle, out of range of the falling objects, and if Ellen shouted, Eric would almost certainly have plenty of time to get away, and he would be back.

  In front of Ellen was a set of movable stairs that the floor staff used to access things from the higher shelves. Wishing it weren’t so high, Ellen started up. She clambered out onto the shelf through the stacked canned goods until she reached the middle of the shelving where there was a kind of narrow tunnel between the goods. On her hands and knees she began to crawl in Eric’s direction. In the twenty seconds it took her to get into position behind him, he had pushed the crate all the way to the edge, and he was crouching, leaning out, peering down, no doubt judging when Rosa would be in his line of fire.

  “Hi, there,” Ellen said.

  Eric spun, lost his balance, scrabbled for a handhold, but found nothing except the slick side of the crate, and toppled out backward. Ellen moved quickly into his place and looked down. Eric was on the floor, stunned, four feet away from a startled Rosa, but pulling himself into a sitting position. Ellen saw Rosa look up, register the heavy groceries he had intended to crush her with, and a howl of rage came from the little woman.

  Eric sat fully up, and as he did Rosa’s string mop, heavy with sticky syrup, hit him hard in the face. He sputtered and spun onto his hands and knees, slipped in the syrup, and went down again as the mop came down on the back of his head. Rosa was screaming with great force, “You evil, horrible man!” Her shouts had called attention, and Ellen could see Kiki and Thelma running toward the fray. Eric managed to get a hold of the mop when Rosa struck again, and he used it to pull himself up, sending Rosa spinning against the shelf as he yanked it away from her. He wiped the syrup from his eyes and spotted Rosa doubled over. With a look of extreme malice, he grabbed a gallon can from the nearest shelf and raised it over his head.

  But he never brought it down. Ellen had only ever seen a little bit of football on TV, but the motion Thelma made now reminded her, forcefully, of the kicker. Without slowing her run, Thelma arrived behind him, swung her right foot up and planted it firmly between Eric’s legs from the back.

  He rose six inches off the ground, released the can, which hit him in the head, and fell back into the pink ooze, clutching his crotch, with his eyes rolling in his head.

  Ignoring Eric, Thelma and Kiki went straight to Rosa and helped her up. Ellen retreated, shuffling herself backward, and her knee landed on something squishy.

  She looked down. It was the package from the bathroom. It took Ellen three seconds to realize that meant Eric would not be connected to it. Without thinking, she pushed it to the edge of the shelf with the back of her hand, and let it drop over the edge. It landed on Eric. She ducked back, crawled for all she was worth back to the ladder, and climbed down. Everyone had gone to the opposite aisle to see what the commotion was, and no one had noticed Ellen. She moved down the aisle until she was directly across from the action.

  Thelma was limping. “Are you all right?” Kiki asked her.

  “I think I broke something,” Thelma grunted, hopping on one foot. Other people were running toward them now, including one of the security guards. Rosa shouted, “It’s Eric, he tried to push that on me!” She was pointing upward. “But he fell, and—”

  “All right, on your feet,” the security guard said, leaning over and picking up the package off Eric’s chest. “What’s this?”

  Eric, still writhing on the ground, unable to unclasp his hands from between his legs, registered the package. “It’s not mine,” he wheezed. The guard opened the top of the envelope and looked in. Then he sniffed at it and recoiled.

  “This is meth. Get up,” he said, yanking Eric to his feet.

  Eric said in a painfully high voice, “It fell off the shelf, anyone could have put it up there! You’ll see, check for prints! Mine aren’t on it. You can’t pin this on me.” Doubled over with pain, he groaned. “I just came back to get my jacket and that witch attacked me.”

  Thelma snorted. “You keep your jacket on a ten-foot-high shelf in canned goods?”

  “Let’s go,” the security guard said. He dragged a limping, sticky Eric away toward the office. There was a moment of quiet, and then Thelma turned to Rosa.

  “Nice work!” she exclaimed, raising a hand for a high five, which Rosa performed shyly. “Mop in the face! Excellent. He so had that coming.”

  “But will it be enough?” Kiki asked. She was twisting her hands together. “What if he gets off? I mean, he did try to attack Rosa, but nothing happened, and we can’t prove it was him before.”

  “If that’s crystal meth,” Thelma pointed out, “which we all knew he was doing and selling, though we couldn’t prove it, he won’t be bothering anyone for a long time. Ouch.” She leaned over and massaged her foot, which she had tested with her weight.

  “But what if they can’t prove it’s his?” Kiki asked, fretting. “You heard him.”

  Ellen had heard enough. She went quickly back to the locker room, sure that it would be empty, and scribbled a quick note. Then she went to Rosa’s locker and slipped the folded paper through the slots at the top. It was a simple note, just a reminder to do something, really. And because it was something totally different, Ellen Homes signed her name.

  All the note said was Change the deodorizer in the dock men’s room. Ellen.

  It didn’t occur to Ellen to call Detective Barclay until she got home in the morning. After she told the story to Temerity, her friend volunteered to do it. “Oh, he’ll love this!” Temerity said. “Gourmet food boxes, you said?”

  The detective stopped by that afternoon. He was grateful, but grim. “Unfortunately, this guy has a good lawyer. They are already claiming that he was framed by this Rosa Suerte, and there weren’t any of his prints on the package. So it’s going to be hard to prove that it was his. It’s possible a judge won’t even allow it without something else to tie it to him.”

  Ellen, who was sitting in the armchair away from the detective, cleared her throat. “You’ll get proof,” she said.

  Barclay looked over at her and sighed. “I’m glad you have confidence in me,” he said. “Let’s hope I deserve it.”

  “You do,” Ellen told him.

  And she meant it.

  30

  The motion-activated wildlife camera with a photo card that held five hundred pictures hidden in the deodorizer and Rosa were soon united. Detective Barclay and a team of detectives, who had descended on Costco after testing the methamphetamine and finding it a match to the batch they had been tracking for months, were stunned to be presented with actual photos of a gloved Eric not only recovering the drugs before his attack on Rosa, but also of him selling them to coworkers in the bathroom, in the days before. The detectives said they would never have expected that kind of tactic from a woman like Rosa, who just blushed and said she’d known he was
bad news and she’d been keeping an eye on him.

  Rosa was a hero, and Ellen thought that was appropriate. The gossip addict, who was so eager to know everybody’s business, had actually produced information that was not only useful, but incriminating.

  And there was much rejoicing, though Ellen did not participate in it. She did her work, as usual, but with a lighter heart. She had not found the courage to condemn someone publicly, but she had done it anyway, a different way.

  The quiet backbeat had pulsed its way to the front, and Ellen was able to watch, and enjoy, the result of the syncopation.

  • • •

  The next day, however, was anything but relaxing. The loft seemed crowded with people. The first to arrive was Serena Hoffman, who spent a long time sitting with Seth at the table, talking to him about his future. Not long after, Beth and Thelma came in, and the four of them discussed plans as well. Then the three women left together for something called a “home inspection,” and Ellen came out of hiding.

  Seth was on the sofa with his book of comics, one hand scratching Runt’s head in lazy circles. He looked up when Ellen sat down next to him.

  “Are you going to live with them?” Ellen asked without preamble.

  “I hope so,” Seth said. “I mean, I like it here.” He looked down and blushed.

  Ellen’s mouth curled up on one side. “I think you got the best of the deal,” she told him. “Temerity and Justice will still be around, but you’ll have a family of your own. That’ll be nice, huh?”

  Seth angled his head sideways and said, “Beth says I have to help out at the clinic.” His eyes sparkled at that. Then he frowned thoughtfully. “I never thought I’d live with two women.”