The Last House on Sycamore Street

by Paige Roberts

  Amy had just come in the house with some art supplies for Noah’s latke crown when her phone rang. She looked at the screen and didn’t recognize the number. It was a 215 area code, meaning the caller was based in Philadelphia, but she couldn’t think who it could be. She hesitated but decided to pick up in case it was someone from Beth Israel calling about Noah.

  “Miss Kravitz?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Leroy Harris. We spoke about two months ago, when you were planning that fund-raiser for Food Fight.”

  “Of course—how are you?”

  “I’m good, I’m good. Getting ready for Christmas. Always a busy time around here. Lots of programs in the mix.”

  “I’m sure. So how can I help you?”

  “I don’t mean to trouble you, but I can’t seem to get ahold of Julian.”

  “Oh. Is there a problem?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, there is.”

  Amy braced herself. Something in his voice told her she was not going to like what he was about to tell her.

  “Shortly after you and I spoke,” he continued, “Julian reached out to discuss the projects we were working on together. At that point we obviously didn’t know exactly how much money we’d have to work with from the fund-raiser, but we knew we’d have a few thousand. So the Monday after the event, a bunch of us community centers got an e-mail about how much money was raised that night—$50,000. We were ecstatic. Divided among us, that would allow us to do a lot of the stuff we’d discussed with him. The problem is, that’s the last I’ve heard about it. I waited a week or two before following up with Julian, but I couldn’t get ahold of him, and it’s been about a month now since the event. He doesn’t answer his phone, and he won’t return my e-mails.”

  Amy got a sinking feeling in her stomach. “Have you tried anyone else at the organization?”

  “Yeah, I’ve called the main number dozens of times. No one picks up. That’s why I’m calling you. You’re the only other number I have for someone affiliated with Food Fight.”

  “I’m not really affiliated with them. I just helped a little with the event.”

  “That may be, but I’m asking for your help. If you’re friends with him and his wife, you know how to get in touch with them. I need you to find out what’s going on.”

  “Okay. I . . . I’ll try. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.”

  “That may be, but it doesn’t change the fact that we have all sorts of programs lined up and a bunch of people very excited about them, without the means to pay for everything. Julian made the funding sound like a sure thing—I wouldn’t have green-lighted all these projects if he hadn’t. We were counting on that fund-raiser to help us out.”

  “I understand. I’ll see what I can do.”

  But a part of Amy dreaded what she might find because she was already beginning to suspect the worst.

  * * *

  Before Amy could look into anything, the calls started coming. It wasn’t just Leroy Harris. It was Shonda White from the Hunting Park Community Center. Yvonne Lewis from the North Philly Rec Center. Adam Rivera. Isaiah Wilkins. Martha Ramos. By the time the weekend was through, pretty much everyone she had called from the list of community centers had contacted her with the same question: “Where is the money?”

  Amy didn’t have any more luck than the rest of them in getting ahold of Julian, or Grace for that matter. She called a few times and left voice mails for both, but neither of them called her back.

  When the weekend passed without her hearing from the Durants, she decided she needed another strategy. She saw Grace nearly every day at Beth Israel. Grace no longer lingered to chat with the other parents, but Amy knew if she caught her at the right time, she could get an answer out of her or at least try.

  So on Monday morning, Amy dropped Noah off at school a few minutes earlier than normal and lingered by Noah’s cubby until she saw Grace come in with Ethan. Grace was so preoccupied with Ethan’s various accessories (backpack, lunchbox, hat, mittens, Star Wars mask) that she didn’t seem to notice Amy standing there until she was halfway through helping Ethan out of his coat.

  “Oh—hi,” she said, looking surprised. “Sorry—I didn’t even see you there.”

  “Is Noah here?” Ethan asked.

  “He is. I think he’s working on some sort of latke number tree. He could probably use your help.”

  Ethan bolted inside while Grace hung his coat in his cubby. “The day Noah needs Ethan’s help with anything number related is the day we all spontaneously take flight. . . .”

  Amy laughed. “Noah will be glad he’s here, whatever the case.”

  Grace slid into the classroom and signed Ethan in before saying goodbye to him and joining Amy in heading to the parking lot. They made small talk (how Ethan was doing, holiday plans, gift lists) until they approached Grace’s car, at which point Amy began to panic. Time was running out. Say something! a voice in her head shouted.

  “By the way,” she said, “did you get my voice mail?”

  “I did. Sorry—things have been really crazy.”

  “That’s okay. I just wanted to talk because . . . the other day I got a call from Leroy Harris.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy from St. Luke’s Community Center?”

  Grace shrugged. “Don’t think I’ve met him.”

  “No. Right. I guess you wouldn’t have. St. Luke’s is one of the community centers working with Food Fight. They were supposed to get money from the fund-raiser.”

  “Oh, okay. Sure.” She smiled. “Figures that you’d get close with all of those people. You certainly did enough work on the fund-raiser to warrant it.”

  “We aren’t really close. We’re just—I mean, we have a good rapport, and he seems like a lovely person, but it’s not like we talk all the time or anything.” Get to the point! the voice said. Stop prevaricating!

  “So he was just calling to—”

  “He wants to know where his money is.”

  The words echoed off the car windows and pavement. A chilly silence hung between them.

  “What do you mean?” Grace finally said.

  “He hasn’t received any of the money from the fund-raiser. None of the community centers have.”

  “I’m sure it’s just a processing issue.”

  “That may be, but Julian isn’t returning any of their calls or e-mails.”

  She looked down as she hunched up her shoulders and tucked her hands in her coat pockets. “He hasn’t been feeling well lately.”

  “It’s been a month.”

  “Yeah, but there are a lot of details to sort out when this much money is involved.”

  Amy stared at her for a beat. The wind whipped at her face. “I don’t want to cause any trouble, but we were both there the night of the fund-raiser. Julian didn’t seem himself. Frankly, you haven’t seemed yourself lately, either, and I’m guessing the two things are related. The fact that Food Fight raised $50,000 that night, and none of the people the money was supposed to benefit has seen a penny, is . . . well, it isn’t good, Grace. It’s concerning.”

  Amy wasn’t sure if it was their conversation or the cold, but Grace’s eyes were wet. She sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Okay. I’ll talk to Julian.”

  “Thank you. Honestly, I’m telling you this as much for your own benefit as for theirs. I don’t want you and Ethan caught up in something. Fifty grand is a lot of money, and it’s missing.”

  “I know, okay? I know.” She pulled out her keys and unlocked her car. “I’ll look into it. I promise.”

  Then she got into her car and drove off.

  * * *

  Amy waited until Grace had pulled away; then she returned to her car. She started the engine, but as she glanced at her phone, she noticed she had a voice mail from her mother, who must have called while she was talking to Grace. She pulled the car into gear and played the voice mail on Bluetooth.

  The first few secon
ds, all she could hear was her mother sobbing. Then: “Amy . . . give me a call as soon as you get this. Something’s happened and . . . ohhhh!” The sobbing resumed.

  Amy could barely breathe. She played the message again. A car behind her honked, and she realized she had stopped smack in the middle of the parking lot. But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t take her foot off the brake. Even without her mother saying much of anything, Amy knew why she had called.

  Tim was dead.

  Chapter 22

  The funeral was set for Friday. Ellen didn’t want a fuss. It was to be a small, private affair: just her, Amy, and three or four other family members. There wouldn’t be a viewing, as had been traditional in Amy’s Catholic family, since Ellen had decided on a closed casket. Amy had tried to persuade her to open the funeral to more people—friends of the family, other relatives—but Ellen refused. She didn’t want to be around so many people. All Amy could think was, It’s like losing Dad all over again. When confronted with grief, Ellen’s natural reaction was to push people away. The circumstances of Tim’s death only made it worse.

  On Tuesday, Rob dropped Amy at the train. She was taking Amtrak to Providence, where her mother would pick her up and drive her back to Woonsocket. She would stay through the week and return to Philadelphia Sunday morning. Part of her wanted Rob to come. He hadn’t known Tim very well, but he’d supported Amy through much of the roller coaster of Tim’s addiction. But Ellen had made it clear Rob wasn’t invited, so he would stay home and watch Noah.

  Amy looked out the train window and watched the trees and buildings whiz by. She replayed the conversation with her mother in her mind. She had dreaded such a call for more than a decade. She’d had nightmares about it. On dozens of occasions, she’d awoken to Rob rocking her in his arms, saying, “Shhh, shhh, everything is okay, it was just a dream.” The nightmares took various forms. In some of them, she found the body. Sometimes she’d have done so mere moments after he’d overdosed; other times his body had been rotting for weeks. In other dreams, though, she’d get a call from her mother, much like the one she received on Monday. Part of her had hoped—prayed!—yesterday’s call was just another dream, another nocturnal manifestation of her anxiety and guilt. But even in her shock, she knew it was real.

  When she called her mom back, Ellen had confirmed what Amy had suspected: Tim had died of a heroin overdose. She had seen him Sunday during the day, but then he’d left for one of his NA meetings. He was supposed to come back for dinner afterward, but he never showed. She’d called his phone again and again, but he didn’t pick up. Then she called his NA sponsor, who said Tim hadn’t come to the meeting that day; he’d tried calling him as well, to no avail. Late that night, Ellen got a call from the police. Tim had been found in a McDonald’s bathroom on Diamond Hill Road with a needle sticking out of his arm.

  “My Timmy. Oh, my Timmy’s gone!”

  Amy had never heard her mother cry so much. Amy assumed she must have when her dad died, but she never witnessed it. Ellen had been adamant about protecting her children in the throes of such a traumatic event. But Tim’s death cracked her wide open. She could barely get through the call.

  “I’m coming tomorrow,” Amy had said. “We will get through this together.”

  She’d meant it, but somehow the words sounded hollow. How would she help her mom get through this? What could she possibly say to dull the sharp edges of a mother’s grief?

  Amy leaned her head against the train window and watched the factories and industrial buildings pass. Scenes from her childhood played through her mind, a montage of her relationship with Tim. The first time they rode the Ferris wheel together at Rocky Point. The time they snuck downstairs at 3 a.m. on Christmas Eve and opened a present each before Ellen caught them and sent them back to bed. The time Tim short-sheeted Amy’s bed. Amy didn’t want to think about the later memories, the ones where she caught him trying to steal Ellen’s jewelry or found him passed out in his car. She wanted to think of the good times because there were good times, before it was all drugs and rehab and relapse.

  But most of all, she didn’t want to think about the fact that she never called him, that she never got to hear his voice one last time, that she didn’t do what she had promised to do, which was to talk to him about his recovery and encourage him to keep going.

  So she closed her eyes and let those early scenes play, like a carefully edited movie that didn’t make her think too hard.

  * * *

  “West Kingston! Next stop, Providence. This stop West Kingston. All aboard!”

  Amy awoke with a start. She’d fallen asleep for . . . well, she wasn’t sure. A long time, she suspected. She glanced at her phone. Two hours. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a two-hour nap.

  Her stop was next, so she gathered her things. As she waited for the train to reach Providence, she checked her e-mail and Facebook, where she saw a post by Emily about a local news story.

  “I KNEW this place was shady,” she wrote. “Good riddance.”

  Amy clicked on the story, which had the headline: “DEA RAIDS LOCAL URGENT CARE; 3 ARRESTED.”

  Her eyes widened as she scrolled through the story. This wasn’t just any urgent care—it was the urgent care, the one she’d visited when she was sick back in September. Apparently, she wasn’t merely feverish or delirious when she thought something was wrong with the place. The head doctor and owner of the franchise had been arrested on the suspicion of prescribing opioid painkillers for non-medical purposes. No wonder the waiting room had been so crowded with a strange assortment of characters. And the nurse she’d seen—was she even really a nurse? The pieces were all coming together. Reading the story in front of her, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t connected the dots sooner.

  But there was one dot she didn’t want to connect, even after the Food Fight event, even after the call from Leroy Harris. She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t ignore it any longer.

  The receptionist who’d known his name . . . his insistence on waiting even though Amy told him not to . . . his discomfort at seeing her there . . .

  “Oh, Julian,” she said to herself.

  “Providence! Providence, this stop!”

  Amy looked up to see the train slowing to a stop. She slid the phone back into her purse and hurried down the aisle, her mind awash with explanations, none of them any good.

  * * *

  When Amy emerged from the train station, she spotted her mom’s white Ford Focus about twenty yards away, parked behind a black pickup truck. Her mind was still reeling from what she’d read on the train, but she tried to push the story aside as she prepared to see her mother. Whatever trouble Julian was in—whatever he’d done—it could wait until Amy was back in Philadelphia. For now, she had to focus on comforting her mother.

  Amy waved as she approached the car, and moments later, the trunk popped open. She tossed her belongings inside and slid into the passenger seat, reaching across the center console to give Ellen a hug.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said, squeezing her tight. Ellen squeezed back.

  “Okay trip?” Her voice was tight.

  Amy rubbed her back, then pulled away. “Not too bad. I slept for a chunk of it.”

  Ellen swept at her eyes with the back of her hand. Amy suddenly realized how much older her mother looked. She hadn’t seen her in almost a year, but she suspected the past twenty-four hours were responsible for the rapid deterioration in her appearance. Her mousy hair somehow looked mousier; the bags under her eyes were more pronounced. Her entire face seemed to sag. It was as if every aspect of her biology was projecting sadness.

  Her mom started up the car, and soon they were on 146 North, headed toward Woonsocket. Ellen was quiet for most of the drive—not uncharacteristically so, given that she’d never enjoyed deep, emotional conversations, but the silence made Amy uncomfortable. There were so many things she wanted to say (“I’m sorry I never called Tim,” “I’m sorry you had to go through this al
one,” “I’m sorry I can’t make any of this better for you”), but she knew her mother well enough to know that if she wasn’t talking, it was because she didn’t want to.

  Thirty minutes later, they were pulling up the driveway to the house where Amy grew up. The home was a ranch, with butter-yellow siding, black shutters, and a glossy black door. Some of the houses on the street had seen better days (damaged shutters, mossy roofs, mildew-ridden siding), but Ellen had kept hers up well. It actually looked better than Amy remembered it.

  “The house looks great,” she said.

  “What’s that?” Ellen’s mind was somewhere else.

  “The house. It looks great. Did you repaint the door? I don’t remember it being that shiny.”

  “Tim did it.” Her voice was strained. She could barely get the words out.

  She parked the car and helped Amy unload. The two of them settled into the kitchen, were Amy poured herself a glass of water. In the kitchen door, she noticed a bottle of Autocrat Coffee Syrup.

  “Oh, wow, I haven’t had this stuff in years. Do you mind?”

  “Have whatever you want. I’ll never finish the whole bottle myself.”

  Amy poured some milk into a glass and then squeezed a healthy squirt of coffee syrup over the top. Coffee milk was one of those Rhode Island traditions that somehow hadn’t migrated to other parts of the country, other than New England. It was like chocolate milk, but with coffee syrup instead of chocolate. She mixed the milk and syrup together with a spoon and took a long sip. It tasted like her childhood.

  Her eyes welled up with tears as she thought about all the times she and Tim drank a tall glass of coffee milk after school. It was Tim’s favorite. Nowadays, most of the yuppie parents she knew wouldn’t let their kids near the stuff (“All that high-fructose corn syrup! And why should kids acquire a taste for coffee anyway?”), but Amy was tempted to bring a bottle back for Noah. He would never know Tim, but at least he could know a little about him and the things he enjoyed.