The Summer Kitchen (6 page)

I locked up the house and the burglar bars, then drove past Blue Sky Hill to the corner where a Supercenter had been erected to serve the needs of the area’s new residents. It was only a few blocks away, but the glimmering commercial corner with its clothing shops, up-scale restaurants, and parking lots full of new cars seemed miles from Poppy’s street.

In the hardware department, I deliberated the issue of paintbrushes until finally a young clerk offered advice.

“What kind of existing surface are you trying to cover?” he asked, and I admitted that I had no idea whether the paint on the cabinets was oil or latex.

He laughed, and something in the sound reminded me of Jake. I felt a twinge, like an imbedded splinter that rubs at the most unexpected moments. The clerk had the look of a college boy.
He might be a student at SMU, like Jake.

“I’ll take one of each,” I said, and held out my basket for the three brushes we had under consideration. “Thanks for the help.”

“Anytime,” he answered. “Have a nice day.”

In the self-checkout line, I paid with cash like a cheating spouse, afraid her clandestine life might be discovered by a careless charge on the credit card. I justified it in my own mind as I threaded through the crowds to the door, then stepped into the sunlight.

“Excuse me,” someone said as I fished through my purse for my sunglasses before finding them on top of my head.

“Excuse me,” the woman’s voice repeated, more loudly this time. “Could someone give me a ride to my apartment?”

I didn’t know who she was talking to, but it wasn’t any of my business. Shifting my sack, I pulled out the car keys. A van stopped to drop off passengers, and a young man pushed a long line of shopping carts past the door, temporarily hemming in the crowd.

“Excuse me,” the voice beckoned again. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a woman on the bench. Her legs were strangely bent, and two walking canes rested beside her. “Could anyone give me a ride to my apartment? It’s close by.”

I looked around. There were men in business suits, a teenager with colored hair and a tattoo, a grandmother with a baby in her arms, a young woman in a pretty floral dress, an old man in leisure clothes, a mother with a little boy in hand, a pair of teenaged girls, and others—more than a dozen people altogether, and not one of them heard but me.

The woman watched one passerby and then another as they skirted her bench and walked on, as if they could neither see nor hear her. The row of shopping carts moved away, and the crowd began to clear. I stood watching, oddly fascinated. The woman’s thin hands, little more than skin over bone as they lay upon her flowered dress, made me think of Aunt Ruth.

“Could
you
give me a ride to my apartment?” Her eyes, a bright polished silver out of keeping with the weary, aged look of her face, met mine.

“I . . . ,” I stammered, caught off guard. At least a dozen warnings regarding crime schemes ran through my mind. “I don’t . . .”

“It isn’t far.” Lifting her cane in the general direction of Poppy’s place, she smiled, her brows rising expectantly, as if I’d already said yes. It occurred to me that if I didn’t pick her up, someone else might, and the next person might not have good intentions.

I thought of Poppy. If only someone had stopped to help him as he struggled with his attackers, the day might have turned out so differently. “Sure,” I said. “Of course I will.”

Bracing her canes in front of herself, she nodded and pulled to her feet, smiling. I noted that she didn’t have any packages, and an uneasy feeling crept over me again.

She seemed to read my mind. “They have free senior coffee and doughnuts here on Thursdays.”

“Oh, that’s nice.” I tried to imagine hitching rides with strangers just for a cup of coffee and a doughnut.

“Yes, it is,” she agreed, as we walked slowly to my car. “A little treat makes a person feel special sometimes.”

It was a sad idea, depending on a store freebie to make you feel special. “I imagine so.” As I helped her into my car, she patted my hand, and I was glad I hadn’t left her on the bench.

“You’re not from around here,” she observed as I backed out of the parking space, then sat waiting for a line of traffic. “People who know the neighborhood zip around back and go through the Jiffy Lube parking lot. It’s a right turn.”

“Ohhh,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll remember that.”

She asked where I lived, and when I told her Plano, she laughed. “I remember when Plano was just a spot in the road. Back then we thought it was a long way out of Dallas. I taught there my first two years out of college, but then I got a job closer in.”

I glanced at her, surprise obvious on my face before I hid it. No doubt she saw the question there, too. How does a teacher with a college education end up begging for rides at Wal-Mart? My mind repainted the picture of her, and I imagined myself in her place, then I pushed away the idea like an itchy sweater.

A million years ago, I was going to be a teacher. I planned to be the one who recognized the children growing up with family secrets. I’d find the bruises, even the ones on the inside, and I wouldn’t look the other way. I would be a confidante whom children could talk to, because I knew how the bruises felt. As an adult, I wouldn’t be powerless to confront things that were wrong, and as a teacher, I’d be in a position to make a difference.

Instead, I met Rob, and getting married at twenty seemed so much easier than sticking out another three years, working at the hospital reception desk and going to school, trapped at home with my mother and my stepfather. Rob was my white knight, and somewhere between putting him through medical school, struggling through the crushing disappointment of three miscarriages, and finally navigating the challenges of an international adoption, our life together eclipsed everything else. I had a son to raise, and then, after a miracle pregnancy with Christopher, two sons. Rob’s work was demanding. Someone had to be there to make a home and create a family that was healthy and happy. Jake and Christopher became the focus, but I’d never really considered that, in my efforts to give them everything that was missing from my childhood—the mom who scrapbooked every milestone, who showed up at the school parties with homemade treats, who read bedtime stories, drove the carpools, lined the batters up in the baseball dugout, and planned the huge birthday parties—I’d cast aside the dream I had for myself.

It didn’t feel like a sacrifice. It felt like a mission. But now, despite such careful attention to detail, the mission had gone awry.

“I had to quit work after my car accident,” the woman said, and I focused on the conversation again. “I wasn’t up to it.”

“Oh.” I pretended to be busy looking for a gap in traffic, but I was thinking that I understood how it felt to lose the very thing you thought you did so well. In a way, I was as down and out as she was. “I’m sorry.” Shifting in my seat, I turned away from her, anxious to drop her wherever she wanted.

“I loved the kids,” she offered. “I missed them. That’s been . . . oh . . . twenty years ago now. Doesn’t seem like it, though.”

I gunned the car into a gap in traffic, because I didn’t know what to say.

My passenger swayed in the seat, her hands catching the armrests. “I don’t think I’d want to be in the classroom these days. Kids aren’t like they used to be,” she said, looking out the window. “Back then, all you had to worry about was kids copying each other’s homework, and an occasional Saturday night party when someone’s parents weren’t home. If you had any problems, most of them had folks you could go to. Now, they live rough lives around these neighborhoods, and half the time there’s no telling where the parents are, or else they’re more messed up than the kids.” She pointed ahead to the narrow driveway of the shabby stucco apartment complex I’d passed last night.

“Turn left up there,” she said.

In the daylight, I read the government housing sign in front of the apartments. I’d never once given them a second thought before last night, even though we were only a few blocks from Poppy’s house. Once during the estate sale, I’d stopped for a soda at the mini-mart in the dilapidated strip mall across the street. The squat Pakistani man behind the counter was obliging enough, but the specially built cage around the register area and the group of men lingering in front made me uncomfortable. As we drove away, Holly pointed out that there was strange activity in that parking lot, all hours of the day. She surmised that, aside from possible drug deals and prostitution, it was a place where illegals hung out waiting for construction trucks to drive by with potential job offers. After that, we bought our sodas and filled up with gas on our own side of town.

Holly would have died of shock if she’d seen me calmly waiting to turn left into a place that looked even worse than the strip mall. The apartment complex seemed to belong in some third world country. I tried not to give an outward reaction as we bumped over the entranceway, and I drove between the buildings, pretending not to notice the piles of refuse lying windblown against the buildings. Foul words had been painted along the walls in bright colors. Three kids watched us from the front steps of one of the apartments, their mocha faces curious and slightly suspicious as we passed. I looked at them in the side mirror—a toddler wearing only underpants; a boy with sleek, thin limbs hanging loosely from an oversized T-shirt and a pair of shorts that were too large; and a girl who probably should have been in elementary school today. She stood twisting a braid around her finger, watching my car.

My passenger directed me to 9B. Behind us, the kids descended the steps and scampered toward the corner, the two older ones first, and the toddler following in a stubby, barefooted run.

Where in the world were they going?

“They wander around here all the time,” my passenger informed me, motioning to the kids as she opened the door and swung her legs around. “Be careful when you back out.”

I put the car in Park, intending to help her, but she braced her canes and hauled herself from the seat before I could get there. After thanking me for the ride, she moved across the parking lot in a stiff, swinging gait, then disappeared into an apartment with lace-edged curtains that looked out of place against the clouded windows and weathered stucco.

Opening the driver’s-side door, I checked the alley to make sure the children were out of the way. A young woman in tight flowered shorts, high heels, and a tank top came out of the end apartment. She balanced a laundry basket on her hip, her blond hair swirling in the breeze as she teetered down the steps, the shoes not suited to the heavy load. She was thin, long-legged, and gangly, her body hardly seeming strong enough to carry the overflowing basket.

When she reached the bottom step, she looked over her shoulder and saw me watching. The wind lifted her hair, and in a freeze-frame of an instant I remembered her from the night before. Up close, it was obvious that she was much younger than the clothes made her seem. She looked like a contestant in some beauty pageant gone too far, a child dressed up in the trappings of a woman.

Lifting her chin, she leered at me silently, as if saying,
What’s your problem, lady?
Then she tottered toward the street on her high heels, waited for the traffic to clear, and crossed to the strip mall parking lot, where the men whistled and catcalled as she passed the convenience store.

I stood watching, feeling sick to my stomach, thinking perhaps I should drive over, just to make sure she was all right, but she quickly disappeared behind the building, and the men returned their attention to the street. I climbed back into my car and scanned the rearview mirror, waiting for her to reappear. Finally I gave up and put the car in Reverse, letting it drift along the narrow pavement. Movement caught my attention as I passed the end of the building, and I hit the brake, looking around for the children. The smallest of the three was a few feet away, trying to shinny up the side of a Dumpster surrounded by a tumbledown fence. His dark hair caught the light, making a raven halo as he slipped and hit the concrete. Frustrated, he scrambled to his feet and kicked the Dumpster, ringing it like a metal drum.

What in the world . . .

The mother in me sounded a note of alarm and reacted. Cutting the steering wheel, I bumped onto the curb, threw the car in Park, and got out. The little boy saw me and froze where he stood.

“You get out of there,” I scolded. “This isn’t a good place to play.” As I moved between him and the road, he withdrew, then sidled up to the apartment wall and stood with his back pressed against it.

A head popped out of the Dumpster, then vanished again. The toddler’s wide dark eyes followed me as I walked to the edge and peered inside. In the narrow strip of light, the two older children were playing in the trash, their thin brown legs buried in offal as they tore open sacks and spread the contents around. A sickening smell assaulted me, and my stomach roiled. The myriad of potential dangers flashed through my mind—germs, rats, disease, broken bottles, used syringes. This was no place for children to play.

“You two get out of there.” My voice echoed into the Dumpster, and both children stopped moving at once. They turned to me, their hands rising from the trash bags, still gripping the contents, their faces moving from the shadow to the light. For an instant we stared at each other, motionless like figurines in a shoe-box diorama.

The toddler squealed and ran away, the sound of his footsteps disappearing around the corner of the building. “You two kids come on out of there,” I repeated. “Come on out, now. You shouldn’t play there.” I tasted the odor of trash, and bile gurgled up my throat. Pressing a wrist to my lips, I backed away as the kids scrambled up the corner of the Dumpster. They exited on the other side and peered at me from behind the smelly metal box, like stray cats trapped in a corner, then bolted for the service alley, and disappeared. I walked back and forth, checking the alley and the parking lot, but wherever they’d gone, they weren’t coming back. Even so, I sat in my car watching for a few minutes longer.