Windfalls

by Jean Hegland

  But before she could finish, Lucy grabbed her by the hand, pressed her small warm fingers into the tender skin of Cerise’s palm.

  “Come on,” she urged, dragging Cerise toward the door. “My mom and me made cookies in your honor.”

  IT STILL FELT VAGUELY WRONG OR RISKY TO ASK A HOMELESS WOMAN into their house. There was a taint to that word—homeless—that troubled Anna, as though it meant something worse than being without a home, or as though Honey’s bad luck were a kind of contagion they might catch from being in her presence. On the phone the night before Sally had said, “That’s nice that you want to help the homeless, but for the life of me I can’t see why you’d risk your own children to do it.”

  “It’s not a risk,” Anna had answered, standing beside a pile of clean laundry. Holding the receiver clamped between her shoulder and her ear, she’d picked up one of Eliot’s T-shirts, given it a brisk snap to shake the wrinkles out.

  “How do you know it’s not a risk?” persisted Sally.

  “Look at how Lucy dealt with the whole Andrea thing. I’m sure that Honey deserves a lot of the credit for that. How could she be a threat to Lucy?”

  “Maybe she didn’t really do all that much. Maybe Lucy’s just relieved that there’s finally some closure.”

  “Maybe,” Anna answered, adding the folded T-shirt to Eliot’s stack. “All I know is that we were expecting Lucy to freak out, and she didn’t—not at all.”

  “Besides,” Sally went on, “you’re not a social worker. This woman probably has all kinds of problems you know nothing about.”

  “How do you know?” Anna asked.

  “People don’t get to be homeless if they don’t have problems.”

  “People get to be homeless if they don’t have homes,” Anna answered crisply. She pulled one of Lucy’s nightgowns from the warm heap of laundry. It crackled with static and clung to the sleeves of her sweater as she attempted to fold it. “They say we’re all about three paychecks away from being on the streets.”

  “I’m not,” said Sally promptly.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’d move in with you.”

  “Oh, great,” Anna moaned.

  “I mean it,” Sally answered. “Don’t you see? You and I wouldn’t ever be homeless because we have too many resources. Before we became homeless, we’d have to alienate all our friends and family, lose all our life skills. We’ve got way too much to lose to ever to become homeless. If I were you, I’d be asking why this woman has so little.”

  But Honey didn’t seem sick or drifting or dangerous in the way that homelessness suggested. At the park she had been quiet and direct, but Anna had liked that. She’d liked the unaffected way that Honey spoke to Lucy and the way that Lucy had blossomed in response.

  Now, with Ellen on her hip, Anna followed behind them as Lucy proudly led Honey upstairs to show off her room. As she watched the careful regard that Honey gave to Lucy’s chatter and listened to Honey’s modest replies, Anna thought how groundless Sally’s warnings seemed, how pinched and mean and middle-class. Lucy was so happy, so expansive and at ease, showing Honey her Peter Rabbit night-light and her Cinderella sheets, showing her the drawings she and Kaylesha had been working on, and the shell with the ocean inside it that Aunt Sally had sent her from Tahiti.

  After Honey admired Lucy’s treasures, there was an awkward little pause where they all stood on the landing and tried to think what should happen next. Honey seemed pained, as though she wanted to speak but didn’t know quite what to say, and Anna wondered if she’d made Honey feel too self-conscious with her watchfulness. To smooth the moment, she adjusted Ellen on her hip and said, “Lucy and I were hoping you would join us for a snack.”

  A nearly imperceptible shadow sped across Honey’s broad face, and she seemed to hesitate for half a moment before she said, “Okay.”

  In the kitchen, as they peeled oranges, steeped tea, and arranged the cookies on a plate, it occurred to Anna that there were questions she should ask, things she should find out now, before their relationship went past them—businesslike questions about Honey’s background and her qualifications to care for Lucy and Ellen. But it seemed as though it would be a breach in something to make Honey talk about her past. It also seemed absurd to ask Honey for a résumé or references, especially since Anna wasn’t yet sure she even wanted to hire her for anything. She worried that questioning Honey so closely would imply that she was offering her a job.

  While she was still struggling with those thoughts, Honey cleared her throat and asked shyly, “What’s your work? I mean,” she added hastily, “besides taking care of your girls.”

  “I’m a photographer,” Anna answered, setting Ellen in her high chair and scattering a handful of Cheerios on her tray. “Or I was,” she added ruefully. “Mainly now I teach.”

  “What grade?” Honey asked.

  “I teach at the university.”

  “At the university?” Honey’s voice was tinged with wary awe.

  “Well, just part-time.” It was hard to sort out how she felt about who she was, talking with this woman who had recently been homeless, who had just lost her job.

  Honey asked, “You teach people how to take pictures? Like of weddings and things?”

  “I’m primarily a landscape photographer. Fine arts,” Anna said briskly. But when she sensed Honey’s dismay, she added more gently, “Not that a wedding might not make an interesting subject.”

  “You’re an artist?” Honey asked, as if she were trying to establish an important fact, and though the question cored her, Anna forced herself to answer, “Yes.”

  “Are these your pictures, on the walls?” asked Honey, staring around the kitchen in amazement.

  “There’s a photograph of mine in the living room. But these days it makes me homesick to see my work.” Anna winced at the blunder of mentioning homesickness to a woman who had no home, but Honey appeared not to notice. Instead she seemed to be intent on a thought of her own. “I knew a girl once,” she said, looking at Anna with something oddly near wonder on her face, “who wanted to be an artist.” She ducked her head as though she’d said something shocking or revealing, and began to arrange the orange sections on a plate.

  “Oh?” Anna said. “Lucy, do you want milk or apple juice?”

  “Juice,” Lucy answered. “Hey! Juicy, Lucy—get it?”

  Honey said, “But it never made a lot of sense to me, the things that girl did.”

  “What did she do?” Anna asked, pouring juice into a teacup and setting it down by Lucy’s place.

  “Once she got a lot of junk from the side of the freeway and spray-painted it gold. And then she made a big heap of all that painted trash and called it Harvest.”

  Anna laughed. “It reminds me of the stuff we used to do in college.”

  “Mel—this girl—she was in high school.” Honey answered. It seemed that a veneer of pride stiffened her tone, though when, after a pause, she went on, her voice was lower, as raw as if she were confessing something. “Back when she did it, I thought it was the dumbest thing. But lately—I’ve been thinking a lot, about trash and stuff, and now it kind of makes sense, what she was doing.”

  Anna wanted to ask why Honey had been thinking about trash, but something in Honey’s voice made her feel she would be trespassing if she did. Besides, it seemed that Honey had already confided something important, although she wasn’t exactly sure what it was. Instead she said, “That’s one thing art is good for, making us think.”

  But her words sounded too smug, and the meekness of Honey’s answering nod stung like a recrimination.

  “At least, that’s what I used to believe,” Anna said, bending over to pour the tea and feeling the words grate in her throat. “I used to think that art could make us think, and help us feel. I used to think that art could change people somehow. But now it seems like there are a lot of troubles that art just can’t touch.” It startled her to find herself saying those things to this haples
s stranger. She looked up from the tea just in time to glimpse a flicker of pain cross Honey’s face. It was like the shadow of a cloud, or the wince after a slap, and Anna wondered where on earth it came from, wondered how Honey’s distress could possibly mirror her own.

  CERISE HEARD THE PAIN IN ANNA ’ S VOICE, AND THOUGH ITS SOURCE wasn’t clear, it warmed her a little to think that Anna would trust her with something that mattered so much it hurt. But at the same time, Anna’s words stung her. For a moment she’d thought that she could learn from Anna how a heap of junk could be transformed into art, and it was disappointing to hear Anna dismissing what she had hoped to understand. She wished she could think what question to ask next, but while she was still pondering that, Anna announced, “It’s looks like we’re ready. Lucy, go wash your hands.”

  It was strange to sit at a table with so few people. The room seemed so quiet, and the plates of food all looked so small. Cerise felt cautious, awkward with her cup and with her talk, afraid that she might give herself away with any unwitting gesture, any word. She kept thinking she needed to tell them that she was leaving, but it seemed wrong to blurt that into the middle of their tea party, especially since no one had asked her to stay. Besides, as she rolled the words that she might use around like marbles inside her head, she realized that Lucy would be certain to ask her where she was going, and why, and she suddenly doubted she could concoct a lie deft enough to appease Lucy’s curiosity.

  “Where did you grow up, Honey?” Anna asked cordially, passing her the little plate of cookies.

  “Rossi,” Cerise answered carefully, taking a cookie and passing the plate to Lucy, who studied it with great concentration and helped herself to three.

  “What was that like,” Anna asked, “growing up in Rossi?”

  “It was okay.” Recovering the plate gently from Lucy and setting it down beside Anna, Honey added, “Rossi wasn’t nearly as big back then.”

  Anna gave an ironic laugh, “That’s what everyone says who grew up in California.”

  Cerise felt pleased to be like everyone, though she wasn’t sure what it would be safe to say next. She watched as Ellen intently pincered a single Cheerio between her soft forefinger and her plump thumb and then tucked it deep inside her cheek.

  Anna added more tea to both their cups. “I grew up in Spokane,” she said, sitting back in her chair and taking a comfortable sip. “Though what I remember most were the times my sister and I spent on my grandparent’s farm. That’s where Lucy was born, and it’s the place I think of when I think of home.” Cerise heard a strain of longing in Anna’s voice, but before she had time to consider its cause, Anna asked, “Do you still have family in Rossi?”

  Cerise winced and hunched into herself. “No,” she answered stiffly. Then, because it seemed she had to say something more, she added, “My mom and her new husband moved to Florida.”

  “You really are all alone, aren’t you?” said Anna, and the expression on her face was so kind that Cerise quailed. She buried her face in her teacup, felt its milky steam rising to her cheeks. She would leave, she decided, as soon as they’d finished their snack. She didn’t need to tell them she was never coming back. She could just thank Anna for the cookies and tousle Lucy’s hair and say good-bye. She was swallowing the last of her tea and trying to scrape together the right words when suddenly Anna spoke.

  “I’ve got some negatives I really need to develop,” she said, setting down her cup decisively. “I’ve been putting them off for a long time now. I wondered if you’d be willing to stay and play with the girls while I work on them. I’d pay you at least what you made at after-school care.”

  “Well,” Cerise said. “But—”

  “It’s certainly worth that much to me,” Anna said warmly, “to have someone we all feel so good about.”

  Every nerve and shred of instinct told Cerise that she should go, but even so a greedy longing ballooned inside her. She yearned to stay just a little longer, to bask in the feeling of being wanted, no matter how misguided that feeling really was.

  “Please,” begged Lucy happily, hopping off her chair to throw her arms around Honey’s neck. “Please, please, please, please.” And with Lucy’s cheek pressed against hers and Anna looking at her so expectantly, there was nothing to do but nod.

  “That’s wonderful,” Anna said warmly. “I’ll help you guys get settled in, and then I’ll go downstairs to my darkroom and get to work.” She seemed to give a little inward sigh, as though she were steeling herself to do something difficult, and then she stood resolutely. Lifting Ellen from her high chair, she smiled at Cerise. “Come on,” she said.

  When Anna mentioned her darkroom, Cerise thought she caught an odd pinch of fear flick across Lucy’s face. But in the next second Lucy was flying upstairs to get her toys, and Cerise was following Anna from the kitchen.

  WHEN ANNA TURNED ON THE LIGHT IN HER DARKROOM AND SAW THAT her film holders had been opened and the film sheets she’d dreaded having to develop were scattered across the floor, her first thought was that someone else had already decided they were worthless.

  It was only when she realized the absurdity of her reasoning that she noticed the lopsided flowers Magic-Markered on each negative, their colors weird and shadowy against the dark opaque surface of the film. Rage rose inside her like a wave, ramming aside every other feeling or thought or caution. The ruined negatives wobbling in her hand, she slammed out of the darkroom, burst upstairs to find Lucy and Honey and Ellen sitting among a scatter of toys on the living room floor.

  Sweeping past Honey and Ellen, she stopped in front of Lucy, held out the ruined sheets of film, and demanded, “What happened?”

  Lucy glanced up from the stuffed monkey she was dressing, and a quick succession of emotions crossed her face, her expression shifting from shock to guilt to terror. “I don’t know,” she said, staring at the sheets of film that trembled in her mother’s outstretched hand.

  It was the first time she had ever lied so boldly, the first time she’d lied about something that really mattered. “Of course you know,” Anna hissed, bending down and snatching Lucy’s wrist, yanking her to her feet so quickly that Lucy gasped. “You tell me, now,” Anna demanded, still holding Lucy up so that she nearly dangled from her own arm.

  Honey made a little move, half abashed and half protective, and Anna, reminded of her presence, turned to face her. “Excuse me,” she said stiffly. “I need to talk to Lucy.” Dropping Lucy’s wrist, she added, “Go to your bedroom, right now.”

  Upstairs, Anna closed the bedroom door carefully, twisting the doorknob so that it would not slam, and then she wheeled to face her daughter. “What on earth were you doing?” she asked, her clenched teeth biting knives into each word.

  A look of shocked vulnerability appeared on Lucy’s face. “Ellie did it,” she began desperately. “I told her not—”

  “Ellen did not do that,” Anna said. “Ellen can’t even crawl. Don’t you dare blame your sister.”

  Lucy’s face crumpled as though the bones themselves were dissolving. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Goddammit, Lucy,” Anna exploded. “You are never to go into my darkroom without my permission. You know that.” Her chest was heaving, and her fingertips tingled. For a second it felt almost as good as sex to feel the surge of that much righteousness, to feel anything that clearly, to rise above the muddle of everyday into an emotion so keen and strong. She shook the negatives so that they rattled in Lucy’s face and said, “There are dangerous chemicals down there. And all my work. These,” she panted, “were the first negatives I’ve exposed in a year and a half. And now they’re ruined. You ruined them,” she added cruelly.

  Lucy’s face was wobbling. Her cheeks were slick with tears, and more tears dripped off her chin to land like dark lopsided polka dots on the front of her pink T-shirt. “They were only black,” she said.

  “They were negatives,” Anna answered. “Don’t you understand? They hadn’t been developed yet.”
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  “Oh,” answered Lucy, looking at the floor.

  “What were you thinking?” Anna demanded. “What on earth were you thinking, to draw on them like that?”

  In feeble whisper Lucy answered, “I don’t know.”

  “You had to be thinking something. What made you do it?”

  A look of bewilderment passed over Lucy’s face, as though she suddenly found the answer as puzzling as she knew it would be to Anna. “I thought it would make you happy,” she said.

  Anna’s anger abandoned her, and she was all alone in the reeling world, alone in her flushed and trembling body while shame rushed in to take her anger’s place. “Make me happy?” she croaked.

  “You were so sad. So I thought to draw some flowers to cheer you up.”

  IT WAS SAD AND FRIGHTENING AND A STRANGE RELIEF, TO SIT BESIDE THE baby among the sprawled toys and listen to the pound and stab of Anna’s voice, listen to Lucy’s sobs and small replies. Cerise felt almost as if she were a child again, bewildered and dismayed by the anger of people larger than herself, though at the same time she recognized the echo of her own mother-rage in the tone of Anna’s voice. She felt a sting in her palm that was the recoil of the slap Melody had carried with her when she left the trailer, and she also knew a tiny vindication that someone as nice as Anna could get so angry.

  This is because of art, she thought, listening to the sounds upstairs and looking in uneasy wonder at the prints and paintings and photographs on Anna’s walls. Leaving Ellen to suck on the arm of Lucy’s monkey while she gazed expectantly at the doorway through which her mother had vanished, Cerise rose and began to circle the room. At first she felt audacious and a little embarrassed, as though she were sneaking something she had no right to take. But as she moved from one framed image to the next, her curiosity about what she was seeing became so great that she forgot her qualms.

  Two of the paintings were so pretty that she liked them right away—the blue bowl filled with crimson tulips that hung above the sofa, and, beside the window, the few brief strokes of misty color that made a duck lifting off a placid lake. But the other two paintings puzzled her. They had no picture to them at all, but only squiggles and slashes and random squares, and their colors were as jangling as the sound of a telephone. Match the goddamn ground you’re sleeping on? she remembered Barbara scoffing as her crochet hook flashed, and she wondered what paintings as garish as Barbara’s blankets were doing on Anna’s walls.