Windfalls: A Novel (39 page)

A little wind skittered through the empty building, stirring trash and dust and then moving on. Otherwise the only sound she heard was the distant growl of the freeway. After the bustle of the kids at after-school care and her crowded life at the shelter, the wide silence of the fairground seemed oddly welcoming, as though it had been waiting for her, as though there were a place inside that silence that was just her shape.

It was a relief to be unknown and unencumbered once again, to be committed to nothing more than caring for the unfortunate pet of her own body. It was a relief to leave the little worries and the heartrending sorrows of other people behind. While the last light seeped from the room, she took off her shoes and crawled between her blankets. Travis, she thought expectantly. She stiffened her body and held her breath, willing herself past the torture of his death to the place where he still lived. Lying beneath her collection of blankets, she waited for his scent, his voice, his smile, to possess her. But this time, though she missed him with a longing so strong it might have severed atoms, she couldn’t seem to find him in her mind. She could remember parts of him—the hollow at the back of his neck, his cushiony cheeks and sturdy legs—but those parts kept shifting, refusing to become a whole boy.

No matter how hard she tried to conjure him, he never came. She could remember a million moments with him—changing his diaper, feeding him his dinner, giving him a bath. But she couldn’t seem to find her way back inside those times. It was as though her memories were becoming set and flat, like the photographs in the albums that Rita used to have, the little snapshots whose color was slowly seeping out of them, leaving their images pale and yellow-tinged, like fading bruises.

Out on the fairground a lone frog began to sing, its call tentative and plaintive in the dark. A moment passed, and it was answered by a lush chorus. Lying on her paper bed, Cerise let herself be lulled a little by the frogs, let time pass until finally she felt almost used to the awful ache that was her life.

She woke much later to the sound of footsteps and hushed voices. Stiff with adrenaline, she lay in the darkness, pressing her spine against the back wall of her stall and holding her breath, willing herself to disappear, willing her eyes to see through the dark.

“In here,” a male voice said, and she was desperately trying to gather a reply when the intruders passed her stall and entered the one beyond it. She heard a girl’s giggle and the man’s low answer, and her panic ebbed a little.

Terrified of giving herself away, she lay not six feet from where they embraced, trying not to listen and yet unable to hear anything else. At the sound of their shifting bodies, their cozy moans and murmured answers, she almost envied them the little transports she imagined they had in store.

But a moment later the girl gave a whimper. “No,” she said, “Oh, please,” her voice tight and small and scared as though she’d suddenly become a child.

“You’ll like it,” the man answered. “Just wait a minute.”

The girl made a little cry, a muffled word that sounded, almost, like
Mommy,
and Cerise felt an awful shadow cross her mind. Sick with anxiety, she lay in the darkness, hating herself and helpless to stop a thing, unable to even to put her hands over her ears for fear of making too much noise. She remembered her own introduction to sex, how the bludgeon of Sam’s penis had appeared so unexpectedly between her legs, as startling and insistent as a truck bearing down, how she’d been a mother before she’d really understood what Sam was trying to do.

When the thrusts and whimpers ceased, frog-song poured in to fill the silence. After a pause the girl’s voice pleaded, “Do you love me?”

But the only answer Cerise heard was an impatient grunt and the quick growl of a zipper being closed.

Long after the couple had left and the frogs had ceased their calling and the stalls were once more silent save for the intermittent wind, Cerise lay awake, tormented by the thought of all she’d been unable to change or stop or save. Before she finally managed to fold herself back inside a thin sleep, she thought she heard, far beyond the distant freeway hum, the incessant ringing of an unanswered phone. Listening to that sound that was so muted it might only exist inside her mind, she felt an uneasy flicker of longing. It’s too late for that, she told herself, and pulled her blankets over her head.

She woke to a barrage of birdsong and the thin light of dawn. The air was cold against her face, and the stall smelled of dew and hay and old manure. She huddled beneath her blankets for a long time, watching the slow advent of morning, listening to the chatter of birds and the increasing roar of traffic on the freeway.

She had no reason to rise. She couldn’t return to the shelter now that she’d lost her job and stolen one of the shelter’s blankets and broken the rule about staying out all night, and there was nowhere else she could think to go. She lay on her newspaper bed and wondered how she could possibly endure the waste of hours that lay ahead before she could lose herself in sleep once more.

The shelter director had said everyone needed plans. She’d said that plans were the ropes you used to pull yourself into the future. But Cerise had no use for the future. The future was only the present stretched out forever, like rubbish scattered along an endless freeway. And yet she knew she couldn’t remain forever in her stall. Sooner or later someone would find her and make her leave. Sooner or later her greedy body would drive her into the world.

The rectangle of light the rising sun opened on the floor had almost reached her before she remembered that it was the day she had promised to visit Lucy and her mother. It doesn’t matter, she thought, staring dully at the nails angling through the cobweb-covered boards of the ceiling of the stall. They probably hadn’t really expected her to come anyway. Lucy’s mother would no doubt feel relieved, the baby would never know, and if Lucy were disappointed, she would get over it soon enough. Sitting up, Cerise put on her shoes and then stood to shake and fold her blankets.

But as she stacked the newspaper in the corner of the stall, she kept remembering Lucy’s woeful face on the day they found Andrea. She remembered how still Lucy had sat, her whole attention focused on the stroking of Cerise’s brush. She remembered how solicitously Lucy had passed Cerise’s brushstrokes on, and she remembered how tender the girls had all been with each other, how caring and careful. She would go to Lucy’s house, she decided abruptly. She would go to Lucy’s house and say good-bye. She didn’t have to go inside. She could just stand at the door and explain to Lucy that she couldn’t stay. She could say that she was sorry, but she didn’t have time to come in, that she was going away, and wouldn’t be able to come back for another visit later. And after that, Lucy’s disappointment would not be her problem any longer.

It was a long walk from the fairground to Lucy’s house. Cerise passed first through neighborhoods where the houses all had grated windows and sagging doors, and broken toys were scattered across their unkempt yards. Worn-looking people sat on the front steps and nodded or scowled as she passed. She walked through the city center, with its thick traffic and slick buildings and grim-faced shoppers, and then through neighborhoods that seemed like different worlds with their wide streets, white sidewalks, and velvety lawns. The brass eyes of sprinklers dotted the grass, and tidy signs warned that the houses were being guarded, day and night.

When she finally reached the right address, in a neighborhood where a street of older houses edged the top of a steep ravine, Lucy came dancing out to greet her even before Cerise turned up the walk.

“You’re here!” Lucy cried, circling Cerise like a gleeful puppy. “You’re here. You’re at my house!”

“Hi, there,” Cerise said gruffly. “Look. I came to say good—”

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.”

I
T 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.