Orphan Train (25 page)
Authors: Christina Baker Kline
I attend the homecoming dance with Tom. He shows up at the door with a wrist corsage, a fat white carnation and two tiny roses; I’ve sewn my own dress, a pink chiffon version of one Ginger Rogers wore in
Swing Time,
and Mrs. Nielsen loans me her pearl necklace and matching earrings. Tom is affable and good-natured right up until the moment the whiskey he’s tippling from a flask in the pocket of his father’s too-big suit coat makes him drunk. Then he gets into a scuffle with another senior on the dance floor and manages to get himself, and me, ejected from the dance.
The next Monday, my twelfth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Fry, takes me aside after class. “Why are you wasting time with a boy like that?” she scolds. She urges me to apply to colleges out of state—Smith College in Massachusetts, for one, her alma mater. “You’ll have a bigger life,” she says. “Don’t you want that, Vivian?” But though I’m flattered by her interest, I know I’ll never go that far. I can’t leave the Nielsens, who’ve come to depend on me for so much. Besides, Tom Price notwithstanding, the life I’m living is big enough for me.
A
S SOON AS
I
GRADUATE
, I
BEGIN TO MANAGE THE STORE
. I
FIND
that I am suited to the task, and that I enjoy it. (I’m taking a class in accounting and business administration at St. Olaf College, but my classes meet in the evenings.) I hire the workers—nine in all, now—and order much of the merchandise. At night, with Mr. Nielsen, I go over the ledgers. Together we manage employees’ problems, placate customers, massage vendors. I’m constantly angling for the best price, the most attractive bundle of goods, the newest option. Nielsen’s is the first place in the county to carry upright electric vacuum cleaners, blenders, freeze-dried coffee. We’ve never been busier.
Girls from my graduating class come into the store brandishing solitaire diamonds like Legion of Honor medals, as if they’ve accomplished something significant—which I guess they think they have, though all I can see is a future of washing some man’s clothes stretching ahead of them. I want nothing to do with marriage. Mrs. Nielsen agrees. “You’re young. There’ll be time for that,” she says.
“Buying all these fancy vegetables is eating up my whole salary,” Dina
grumbles. “I don’t know if we can keep doing this.”
Dina’s talking about a stir-fry that Molly has thrown together for the three of them after returning from the library in Bar Harbor: tofu, red and green peppers, black beans, and zucchini. Molly has been cooking quite a bit lately, reasoning that if Dina tries some dishes that don’t have animal protein front and center, she’ll see how many more options are available. So in the past week Molly has made cheese and mushroom quesadillas, vegetarian chili, and eggplant lasagna. Still Dina complains: it’s not filling enough, it’s weird. (She’d never tried eggplant in her life before Molly roasted one in the oven.) And now she complains that it costs too much.
“I don’t think it’s that much more,” Ralph says.
“Plus the extra cost in general,” Dina says under her breath.
Let it go, Molly tells herself, but . . . fuck it. “Wait a minute. You get paid for having me, right?”
Dina looks up in surprise, her fork in midair. Ralph raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know what that has to do with anything,” Dina says.
“Doesn’t that money cover the cost of having an extra person?” Molly asks. “More than covers it, right? Honestly, isn’t that the reason you take in foster kids at all?”
Dina stands abruptly. “Are you kidding me?” She turns to Ralph. “Is she really talking to me like this?”
“Now, you two—” Ralph begins with a tremulous smile.
“It’s not
us two
. Don’t you dare group me with her,” Dina says.
“Well, okay, let’s just—”
“No, Ralph, I’ve had it. Community service, my ass. If you ask me, this girl should be in juvie right now. She’s a thief, plain and simple. She steals from the library, who knows what she steals from us. Or from that old lady.” Dina marches over to Molly’s bedroom, opens the door, and disappears inside.
“Hey,” Molly says, getting up.
A moment later Dina emerges with a book in her hand. She holds it up like a protest sign.
Anne of Green Gables.
“Where’d you get this?” she demands.
“You can’t just—”
“Where’d you get this book?”
Molly sits back in her chair. “Vivian gave it to me.”
“Like hell.” Dina flips it open, jabs her finger at the inside cover. “Says right here it belongs to Dorothy Power. Who’s that?”
Molly turns to Ralph and says slowly, “I did not steal that book.”
“Yeah, I’m sure she just ‘borrowed’ it.” Dina points a long pink talon at her. “Listen, young lady. We have had nothing but trouble since you came into this house, and I am so over it. I mean it. I am so. Over. It.” She stands with her legs apart, breathing shallowly, tossing her blond frosted mane like a nervous pony.
“Okay, okay, Dina, look.” Ralph has his hands out, patting the air like a conductor. “I think this has gone a little far. Can we just take a deep breath and calm down?”
“Are you fucking
kidding
me?” Dina practically spits.
Ralph looks at Molly, and in his expression she sees something new. He looks weary. He looks over it.
“I want her out,” Dina says.
“Deen—”
“OUT.”
Later that evening Ralph knocks on Molly’s bedroom door. “Hey, what’re you doing?” he says, looking around. The L.L.Bean duffel bags are splayed wide, and Molly’s small collection of books, including
Anne of Green Gables,
is piled on the floor.
Stuffing socks into a plastic Food Mart bag, Molly says, “What does it look like I’m doing?” She’s not usually rude to Ralph, but now she figures, who cares? He wasn’t exactly watching her back out there.
“You can’t leave yet. We have to contact Social Services and all that. It’ll be a couple of days, probably.”
Molly crams the bag o’ socks into one end of a duffel, rounding it nicely. Then she starts lining up shoes: the Doc Martens she picked up at a Salvation Army store, black flip-flops, a dog-chewed pair of Birkenstocks that a previous foster mother tossed in the trash and Molly rescued, black Walmart sneakers.
“They’ll find you someplace better suited,” Ralph says.
She looks up at him, brushes the bangs out of her eyes. “Oh yeah? I won’t hold my breath.”
“Come on, Moll. Give me a break.”
“You give me a break. And don’t call me Moll.” It’s all she can do to restrain herself from flying at his face with her claws out like a feral cat. Fuck him. Fuck him and the bitch he rode in on.
She’s too old for this—too old to wait around to be placed with another foster family. Too old to switch schools, move to a new town, submit herself to yet another foster parent’s whims. She is so white-hot furious she can barely see. She stokes the fire of her hatred, feeding it tidbits about bigoted idiot Dina and spineless mushmouth Ralph, because she knows that just beyond the rage is a sorrow so enervating it could render her immobile. She needs to keep moving, flickering around the room. She needs to fill her bags and get the hell out of here.
Ralph hovers, uncertain. As always. She knows he’s caught between her and Dina, and utterly unequipped to handle either of them. She almost feels sorry for him, the pusillanimous wretch.
“I have somewhere to go, so don’t worry about it,” she says.
“To Jack’s, you mean?”
“Maybe.”
Actually, no. She could no more go to Jack’s than she could get a room at the Bar Harbor Inn. (Yes, I’d prefer a water view. And send up a mango smoothie, thanks!) Things between them are still strained. But even if things were fine, Terry would never allow her to stay overnight.
Ralph sighs. “Well, I get why you don’t want to stay here.”
She gives him a look. No shit, Sherlock.
“Let me know if I can drive you anyplace.”
“I’ll be fine,” she says, dropping a pile of black T-shirts in the bag and standing there with folded arms until he slinks out.
So where the hell can she go?
There’s $213 left in Molly’s savings account from the minimum-wage job she had last summer scooping ice cream in Bar Harbor. She could take a bus to Bangor or Portland, or maybe even Boston. But what then?
She wonders, not for the first time, about her mother. Maybe she’s better. Maybe she’s clean and sober now, with some kind of steady job. Molly’s always resisted the urge to look for her, dreading what she might find. But desperate times . . . and who knows? The state loves it when biological parents get their shit together. This could be an opportunity for both of them.
Before she can change her mind, she crawls over to her sleeping laptop, propped open on her bed, and taps the keyboard to nudge it awake. She googles “Donna Ayer Maine.”
The first listing is an invitation to view Donna Ayer’s professional profile on LinkedIn. (Unlikely.) Next is a PDF of Yarmouth city council members that includes a Donna Ayer. (Even more unlikely.) Third down is a wedding announcement: a Donna Halsey married Rob Ayer, an air force pilot, in Mattawamkeag in March. (Um, no.) And finally, yep, here she is—Molly’s mother, in a small item in the
Bangor Daily News
. Clicking through to the article, Molly finds herself staring at her mother’s mug shot. There’s no question it’s her, though she’s wan, squinty, and decidedly worse for wear. Arrested three months ago for stealing OxyContin from a pharmacy in Old Town with a guy named Dwayne Bordick, twenty-three, Ayer is being held in lieu of bond, the article says, at the Penobscot County Jail in Bangor.
Well, that was easy enough.
Can’t go there.
What now? Looking up homeless shelters online, Molly finds one in Ellsworth, but it says that patrons have to be eighteen or older “unless with a parent.” The Sea Coast Mission in Bar Harbor has a food pantry, though no overnight accommodations.
So what about . . . Vivian? That house has fourteen rooms. Vivian lives in about three of them. She’s almost certainly home—after all, she never goes anywhere. Molly glances at the time on her phone: 6:45
P.M
. That’s not too late to call her, is it? But . . . now that she thinks about it, she’s never actually seen Vivian talking on the phone. Maybe it would be better to take the Island Explorer over there to talk with her in person. And if she says no, well, maybe Molly could just sleep in her garage tonight. Tomorrow, with a clear head, she’ll figure out what to do.
Molly trudges up the road toward Vivian’s from the bus stop, her laptop in
her backpack, red Braden slung over one shoulder and Hawaiian Ashley on the other. The duffels are knocking into each other like rowdy patrons at a bar, with Molly stuck between. It’s slow going.
Before the blowup with Dina, Molly had planned to go to Vivian’s tomorrow, to tell her what she found at the library. Well, plans change.
Leaving was anticlimactic. Dina stayed behind her shut bedroom door with the TV blaring while Ralph lamely offered to help Molly with her bags, loan her a twenty, drive her somewhere. Molly almost said thank you, almost gave him a hug, but in the end she just barked, “No, I’m fine, see ya,” and propelled herself forward by thinking: This is already over, I am already gone . . .
Occasionally a car lumbers past—this being the off-season, most cars on the road are sensible Subarus, ten-ton trucks, or clunkers. Molly is wearing her heavy winter coat because, though it’s May, this is, after all, Maine. (And who knows, she might end up sleeping in it.) She left behind heaps of stuff for Ralph and Dina to deal with, including a few hideous synthetic sweaters Dina had tossed her way at Christmas. Good riddance.
Molly counts her steps: left, right, left, right. Left right. Left
right
. Her left shoulder hurts, strap digging into bone. She jumps in place, shifting the straps. Now it’s sliding down. Shit. Jump again. She’s a turtle carrying its shell. Jane Eyre, staggering across the heath. A Penobscot under the weight of a canoe. Of course her load is heavy; these bags contain everything she possesses in the world.
What do you carry with you? What do you leave behind?
Gazing ahead at the dark blue sky striated with clouds, Molly reaches up and touches the charms around her neck. Raven. Bear. Fish.
The turtle on her hip.
She doesn’t need much.
And even if she loses the charms, she thinks, they’ll always be a part of her. The things that matter stay with you, seep into your skin. People get tattoos to have a permanent reminder of things they love or believe or fear, but though she’ll never regret the turtle, she has no need to ink her flesh again to remember the past.
She had not known the markings would be etched so deep.
A
PPROACHING
V
IVIAN
’
S HOUSE
, M
OLLY LOOKS AT HER PHONE
. I
T
’
S
later than she thought it would be—8:54.
The fluorescent overhead bulb on the porch gives off a dim pink light. The rest of the house is dark. Molly heaves her bags onto the porch, rubs her shoulders for a minute, then walks around to the back, the bay side, peering up at the windows for any sign of life. And there it is: on the second floor of the far right side, two windows glow. Vivian’s bedroom.
Molly isn’t sure what to do. She doesn’t want to scare Vivian, and now that she’s here she realizes that even ringing the doorbell would startle her at this hour.
So she decides to call. Gazing up at Vivian’s window, she dials her number.
“Hello? Who is it?” Vivian answers after four rings in a strained, too-loud voice, as if communicating with someone far out at sea.
“Hi, Vivian, it’s Molly.”
“Molly? Is that you?”
“Yes,” she says, her voice cracking. She takes a deep breath. Steady, stay calm. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
Vivian comes into view in the window, pulling a burgundy robe over her nightgown. “What’s the matter? Are you all right?”
