A Safe Place for Joey (22 page)

“Right?”

“Right.”

Alice checked the card. “Mother.
Multiply. Let’s see. I guess I multiply the four by five and put it here:

“Now,
subtract, then bring down. Uh-oh. Now what?”

“Same old thing. Just go back up to the top of the card and start again. Daddy, Mom, Sister, Brother. Actually, it’s just like your own family.”

Alice turned and looked at me. “Yes,” she said, “except we hardly ever see Daddy anymore. Do you think he’s mad at me maybe? I mean because of school and everything.”

“I doubt it. Especially
since you’re doing better and better and better. Do you realize how much you’ve accomplished in just a little more than half a year? You’ve worked out your pill problem, your clothes problem, you’re getting good marks in school …”

“Well, not exactly ‘good’ in math and not new clothes.”

“But much better. You’ve made a friend, you look terrific …”

“And I don’t have those temper
tantrums before school anymore, so that can’t be why Daddy doesn’t come home at night sometimes.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Whatever the reason that he’s away, it sure isn’t you. Probably it’s his new job and traveling. Maybe you should ask him.”

“Maybe. Or maybe,” Alice tilted her head so that her sweet, serious face was close to mine, “maybe you could.”

I didn’t forget about
Alice’s poem. I was conscious of it all afternoon as I worked with other children, but I waited until I was alone before I took it out of my pocket.

She had centered the lines in the middle of the paper, and the printing was the neatest and clearest I’d ever seen Alice do. Surrounding the printed words was a border of little hearts and flowers.

Spring

All winter – the ground
has been frozen,

And the brook covered with ice,

Hard and white and still,

As if the world was dead.

But yesterday spring came,

The dirt in the garden is warm,

Seeds are sprouting,

Buds are bursting.

Winter is gone – spring is here,

And everything is growing.

I love you, Alice

I sat reading and rereading Alice’s poem, smoothing
it with my fingers, thinking about her and her own growth, and also about her father and her mother. Alice – sensitive, high-strung, intelligent, brave, lovely, still out of fashion, and always vulnerable. And her mother. I wondered if Mrs. Martin had made any friends yet and made a mental note to follow up on my lunch invitation.

If Alice hadn’t talked about her father in the preceding
months, she made up for it now.

“You know what he says? He says he’ll always take care of us.” Alice took off her shoes and slammed them on the floor. “Well, I don’t want him to take care of me. I can take care of myself.”

I waited. Knowing Alice, this was just the beginning.

“See,” she continued, “they don’t know it, but I can hear every single thing they say at night now. Saturday
night they had this big fight downstairs, and I couldn’t hear that too well, but when they came upstairs Mom told Daddy not to touch her and she didn’t want to be anywhere near him. And he told her not to go so fast, that they had to think of the children, and she says it was a fine time for him to talk about thinking about the children. Anyway, for the last three nights, he’s been sleeping
– or anyway lying – on this chaise lounge thing where Mom reads in the afternoon. It’s way across the room from the bed, so they have to talk loud to hear each other. They think we’re asleep, but I can hear everything.”

I shook my head. “Are you sure you want to? People say things they don’t mean when they’re angry.”

“Yes, I want to. I want to hear every little thing. I’m mad, too.
You know why he hasn’t been coming home? He has a girlfriend. He says he’s in love with her and wants to marry her – that’s when he said it was nobody’s fault and that he’d always take care of us.”

Alice’s rage slipped away as quickly as it had arrived, and now tears welled in her eyes. “What are we ever going to do now? You know what Mommy’s like. She doesn’t know how to do anything, I
mean like anything besides take care of the house.”

I sat beside Alice, smoothing her hair, thinking how crisis after crisis arrived in some children’s lives. Just when things seemed to be straightening out – crash, something worse happened.

“I’m sure he meant it,” I said. “I’m sure he will take care of you and see that the bills are paid, but that doesn’t make it any less scary for
you and Billy. How is Billy doing?”

“He’s okay. Billy’s always okay. That’s why they like him so much – he gets the best grades in his class. That’s all they really care about, anyway, is how many A’s you get. That’s probably why they’re getting a divorce, because I didn’t get enough A’s.”

“Come on, Alice,” I said. “You know that’s not true. You just told me your father said he was
in love with somebody.”

“Yes, but if I’d been good enough, maybe he wouldn’t have had to fall in love with somebody else. Maybe we’d have been enough.”

I stood up and then squatted down in front of the couch so that our eyes were exactly level.

“Don’t ever believe that, Alice. Promise me. If your parents get divorced, it’s not because of something you did or didn’t do. It’s between
them, and it’s not your fault. Okay?”

Alice’s eyes never left mine. “But see, it’s not just that I have this problem in my brain, it’s that I don’t really belong to them. I don’t belong to anybody. Last night Mommy said to Daddy that maybe they should never have adopted me or had Billy – that way she’d be the only one to suffer.”

“Oh, Alice, Alice.” I gathered her up in my arms. It
was bad enough to hear your parents arguing about a divorce, but to discover you are adopted at the same time is just too much. “Hadn’t they told you before?”

Alice waggled her head back and forth against my shoulder.

“Well, they should have. They’ve told other people, and it’s in your reports. They wanted you so much – especially your mom – and they were so happy when they found you.”

Alice peeked up at me. “How do you know?” she asked.

“Your mother told me herself. She also told me you were a very beautiful baby.”

Alice sat up. “Beautiful baby,” she repeated. “With holes in her head.”

“Alice. That doesn’t help.”

Alice shrugged. “Well, what are we going to do?”

I shrugged myself. “I don’t know. We’re just going to have to work at it.”

Alice, Billy, and Tara all arrived together at Alice’s next session. I stared at the trio in surprise. “What are you guys doing here?”

“Can we come in?” Billy asked, obviously in charge.

“Sure, but tell me what’s going on.”

All three sat down in a row on the couch, Billy in the middle.

“Well, we have this idea,” he said, “and we decided to come and check it out with you.”

I had to admit one thing. Alice did seem to be right about Billy. He did appear to be very much okay, especially for nine years old.

I nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Well, see, like, we’ve got this real mess at our house. Alice said she told you about it.”

I nodded again, unable to take my eyes off this bright-eyed, verbal kid. Even Tara seemed to be letting him lead the way.

“Well, the first thing we thought of was to track down this girlfriend of Dad’s and try to get rid of her – like, poison her or scare her off. But that could end up in a lot of trouble. So then we decided that she sounds like she’s pretty young, so we figured we could tell her how old Dad is, and Tara thought maybe if she saw us and thought she’d have to take care of us maybe she wouldn’t be so
crazy about being with Dad.”

Alice said, “Sigmund did not think this was a wise idea. Particularly since I never even want to lay eyes on that person. But then we thought, I thought anyway, maybe we could talk to Dad’s boss or somebody and get him transferred back to Kansas. He never acted like this back there.”

“But I told them that wouldn’t work,” Tara said. “It would just make him
mad to get both demoted and lose his girlfriend.”

“You’re probably right,” I said.

“So then we decided to work on Mom instead,” said Billy, taking over again. “She’s the worst off. I mean Alice was bad in the beginning, but at least she’s got us,” he said, and Tara nodded. “And being adopted’s not such a big deal if you’re not alone.”

“But Mom hasn’t got anybody,” Billy continued.
“Like, anybody her own age. Except that dumb Dr. Volpe, and she feels even worse when she comes back from seeing him. It’s, like, all she does with him is talk about her problems and so that’s all she thinks about and it makes her feel even more terrible.”

“Get to the plan, Billy,” Alice whispered. “Somebody else will be here in a few minutes.”

“Okay. Okay. What we decided was that
Mom ought to get a job – but the trouble is she hasn’t ever worked. So we had to think about what she’d be good at, and Alice got the idea because of the flowers and her garden.”

“We have this garden in the back,” Alice said.

I nodded. “Your mother told me about that and about how you were helping her with it.”

“Yes. It’s really nice. I like doing it and Mom’s flowers are beautiful,
and then she puts them in bowls all over the house and they look wonderful.”

“You’re the one who’d better hurry up, Alice,” Billy said.

“I know. So we decided she’d be good at being a florist – working at a florist’s, I mean. So Tara volunteered to go into that flower shop just off Spring Street; she kind of knows the owner. I gave her one of Mom’s bowls of flowers, and she showed
it to him and he said he’d be interested in talking to Mom.”

Alice looked at me hard. “Sigmund thinks it’s a good idea, but now we don’t know what to say to Mom. So we decided to come ask you.”

“Mmm” was all I could get out. I was overwhelmed at how enterprising these three kids were. At least I could tell them that.

“You have been doing some pretty impressive brainstorming –
trying out all kinds of ideas, not criticizing each other, being supportive, and I think you’ve come up with a really good idea.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Billy said. “But what about Mom? I mean what do we actually say? It isn’t like she’s ever tried to get a job before.”

“Why don’t you just tell her the truth, like you did me? It certainly shows how much you love her and how much you’ve been
thinking about her, and she’ll be glad to hear that. And then since Tara knows the man who owns the flower shop, maybe she could go along with your mother and take another flower arrangement.”

“Yeah, sure. I can do that. You just get me the flowers, Alice.”

“All right. That’s easy, especially since Mom will know. But what about Daddy?” Alice wanted to know. “I think somebody ought
to talk to him and find out how serious he is and everything.”

Three pairs of eyes stared at me without blinking. There was no mistaking their meaning.

“How about Dr. Volpe?” I asked.

“Daddy hates Dr. Volpe,” Alice and Billy said in chorus.

“Listen,” I said. “I’m no marriage counselor. Be fair. I’m a learning consultant.”

“Well, that’s okay,” Billy replied without
a moment’s hesitation. “Looks to me like Dad’s into learning things.”

“Billy,” Alice reprimanded. “Don’t be fresh. But remember, Mary, I asked you once before if you would talk to him. I mean you do have lots of parent conferences, and you could start out talking about me, couldn’t you?”

“Yes. I guess I could do that. I could try, anyway.”

Alice called as soon as she got home,
whispering into the phone. “He’s gone. Gone for real now. He left Billy and me a note saying he’s staying at a friend’s apartment. He didn’t say what friend. Anyway, here’s the number.” She rattled it off and hung up.

At least Alice didn’t seem heartbroken about being adopted. I blessed Billy and Tara for matter-of-factly accepting her adoption and for involving her in a plan of action.
Problem-solving is the best therapy in the world.

I tried to reach Mr. Martin early in the morning and late at night, but there was never an answer. It seemed unlikely to me that the apartment where he was staying belonged to his girlfriend, since no one seemed to be there. More likely he’d chosen some middle ground – perhaps moved in with someone else who was separated or divorced, or at
least had given that number.

I wasn’t able to reach Mr. Martin, but I did have lunch with Mrs. Martin. She told me about how the children had come to talk to her about getting a job and how touched she’d been – and that she’d decided to get up her nerve and go with Tara and talk to the florist, and how Alice and Billy waited across the street, and when she got the job they took her to have
ice cream to celebrate.

She’d been working at the florist’s for only about two weeks, but she loved it. She couldn’t imagine being paid for something that was so much fun. She said the only thing that had worried her was not being there when Alice and Billy got home from school. But then Alice had suggested that she talk to Mr. D’Ippolito, the florist, and he’d been so nice. He’d arranged
her hours so she worked from eight o’clock until three and could eat a sandwich right there at the shop instead of taking a lunch hour, and that also meant she’d lost a few pounds. So she, Alice, and Billy all left together in the morning, and they either walked home or waited for her to pick them up after school. Of course, the school year was almost over, and summer would be a problem.