I’m really not that young, I wanted to tell him. Your real age is inside you because of what life has done to you. But I didn’t want to get into any deep discussions. I was trembling.
“I have the last shift, so I see what goes on. Kids no older than you, and girls especially, are wanderin’ the streets in the early mornin’ hours. Who knows where they came from or where they’re goin’? Who’s checkin’ ta see if they ever came home? For a lot of ’em, I bet no one.
“I’m not married and don’t have no children, but it doesn’t take much ta realize that’s bad. So where ya been, missy?”
“Away,” I said, looking anxiously at the houses we were passing. They were bigger than the ones in Hurley, with more elaborate landscaping. The streets were wider, too. There were pruned medians and modernized, stronger lights, making the macadam glitter as if there was a thin layer of ice over them. Here and there were wooden benches.
It was still early enough in the evening for windows in all the homes to be well lit. Traffic was light in both directions. I saw people walking dogs and talking in the early evening. The taxi driver was right. Girls as young as I, if not younger, walked with older kids who poked and teased each other playfully. Others about my age were walking with their parents. It looked like a dream world, the idyllic community Mazy would describe as a painting by Norman Rockwell, her favorite artist. People were laughing and looked friendly in many of his pictures capturing rural scenes. Was this that world? Could there really be one? Was I too desperate to believe a place like this existed? I was afraid of hope. I knew too much disappointment.
“Ya live here in Sandburg Creek, right?” the driver asked. “Or are ya visitin’ someone?”
“I’m coming home,” I said. It was noncommittal enough for him to look at me in his rearview mirror.
“How long have ya been away?”
Was he writing a book? This was my first taxi ride. Were all taxi drivers this talkative and nosy? The silence in my hesitation was uncomfortable, even for me.
“A while,” I said. “I am in a private school,” I added, to hopefully shut him up. In a true sense, I had been in a private school with Mazy, not that it mattered too much to me that I might lie to a taxi driver.
“Oh. Well, welcome home,” he said, turning onto a new block.
I caught the house numbers. This was my father’s neighborhood. All the homes had good-size plots of land, so they weren’t on top of each other. They weren’t modern in style. Most of them were Queen Anne, more reason to believe I was in a Norman Rockwell painting. It felt as if I had dropped through time to a place where people might still leave their houses and cars unlocked. Strangers were people to be curious about and not to be suspected of some evil intention. Lights that looked like candles flickered in windows. Maybe mothers and fathers were with their children watching television, the way Mazy and I had done. Perhaps that was what my father was doing right at this moment, never dreaming he would be seeing me in his doorway.
Now that I was really going to ring his doorbell, what really made me tremble inside was the idea not only of confronting him but of meeting his new wife and his new children. I finally faced the thought, the frightening thought, that I had a new family. What would they see when they looked at me? How much did they know? I wasn’t just carrying some of my clothes in a small bag; I was bringing along a horrific past. The flames would be snapping and crackling right beside me. Maybe he had told them that I had died in the fire, too. When he and his family saw me, they might all chant it together: “You can’t come here; you don’t belong here. You’re dead; you’re gone, forgotten.”
They would probably be more frightened of me than I of them.
If so, where did I belong now? Would I join the homeless whom Mazy and I had seen on television news? Would I live in shadows, covered in the filth of the street? Would I die in some alley like a scrawny cat, scratching at the approaching image of death with its smile full of sharp, yellow teeth and its eyes swimming with cold glee? In a few more minutes, my whole life would be decided.
Dare I breathe?
As the taxi began slowing down, I wondered if I ever could be more terrified and my body ever be more frozen in fear than it was at this moment.
We stopped in front of one of the larger houses. It was a brick three-story with a veranda and an octagonal extension on the right and a three-story octagonal tower on the left. A half dozen matching brick steps led up to the front entrance at the center of the house’s wide veranda. My father’s home was easily almost three times the size of Mazy’s house. Even though there was no one on the veranda, it was well lit. The lawn looked more like a rich, dark pool of green soaking in the light. Well-pruned roses grew close to the veranda, hugging its shadows. On the right was a dark-pewter fountain with a sculptured little boy and girl under an umbrella off which the water flowed back into the bowl.
An umbrella, I thought, remembering the first time I had seen Mazy with hers and how she wouldn’t walk out of the house without it, rain or shine. I would never look at one, even in a picture, without thinking of her immediately.
“Wow. Nice house,” the driver said. “Yer family live here long? What’s yer father do? Is he a doctor or somethin’?”
“How much?” I replied, as if I hadn’t heard a word.
“Nine fifty will do it.”
I gave him a ten and opened the door slowly.
“Say,” he said. “Really. How come nobody met ya at the station?”
“I’m not supposed to be here yet,” I said, smiling. Lies as tools, I thought, remembering how Daddy once had explained why sometimes a lie was okay. “It’s a surprise.”
“Oh. Gotcha.”
I closed the door before he could ask anything else. He watched me in his rearview mirror until I walked around and started down the cobblestone walkway to the stairs. He didn’t drive off until I was nearly there. I could hear the television in the house, some comedy show with its usual canned laughter. Visions of Mazy smiling when she and I had sat together to watch television gave me some courage.
You’re his daughter, I thought. You’re his daughter, I chanted to myself. He can’t turn you away.
But what would he do? a little voice inside whispered. He turned you away once, didn’t he?
As soon as I stepped onto the stairway, another light came on above it, a motion detector. I felt like I had stepped into a spotlight. For a moment it blinded me, and I seriously considered turning around and rushing away. My heart was pounding. I tightened my grip on my shoulder purse and simply stood there, unable to take another step.
But before I could change my mind, I realized that the burst of light had alerted someone inside. There was a rush of footsteps, and then the front door opened.
For a few moments the expression on my father’s face said he didn’t recognize me, but that quickly fell away to be replaced by his shock and even fear the moment he did. He looked unable to move, unable to swallow, and even unable to blink. He had gotten older, his face rounder, softer. He was no longer his svelte, athletic self. He had a bit of a potbelly. Maybe it was just the veranda light, but it appeared that he had some gray at his temples. The hair he had mourned losing years ago had only receded more. Perhaps to deny what was happening, he had let his sides grow thicker and the back grow longer. His white shirt was gathered at his waist, some of it sticking out. My father had never looked this disheveled. Actually, he looked like he had just been wakened.
“Who is it, Derick?” we heard a woman cry from inside.
He stepped closer, his eyelids narrowing.
“Saffron?” he said. Just hearing him say my name began to defrost the icy fear in my body.
“Yes, Daddy,” I said.
“Derick?” we heard.
“Just a minute, Ava,” he shouted back, and closed the door behind him.
I almost retreated in fear when he moved us to the edge of the veranda so quickly.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
Fortunately, he sounded more curious than angry.
“Mazy died,” I said. Even in the yellow-tinted light, I saw his face whiten.
“Died?”
“I found your letters to her. I know everything about you and Mama and why Mazy is my real grandmother. I have money she left me. I called someone, a nurse friend, to go to her house and take care of her body and her cat. Then I got on the train. No one knows I’ve come here. No one back there knows anything. I threw the letters in the garbage before I left.”
I rattled it all off in one breath, hoping it would be enough to convince him it was safe to love me again.
His eyes seemed to roll in his head as he digested what I was saying and sifted through his mind to find some way to deal with what confronted him.
“Listen, listen,” he said, coming down the steps and reaching into his pocket as he did so. He took out a wad of money. “Go down the block and turn right. Go two blocks and turn left. Two blocks later, you’re in the downtown area, and there’s a hotel on the right called the Dew Drop Inn. It’s more of a motel, but the rooms are okay. I’ll call ahead so they’ll be expecting you. We’re part owners of it.”
“Part owners?”
“I’ll explain it all tomorrow. Check in, get something to eat, and go to sleep. I’ll meet you first thing in the morning.”
He shoved the money into my hand.
“I have money.”
I wanted to add that wasn’t why I’d come, but he did look frantic.
“Don’t worry. We’ll talk about how to do this,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Just go. Do what I say. We’ll work out everything. Check in to the hotel. I’ll make a call so you’ll be expected. There won’t be any problem.”
He glanced nervously back at the front door.
“Go ahead.”
“If I check in, I’ll be using my new name. Mazy had a birth certificate created for me,” I warned. I was hoping that would upset him, but he nodded, close to smiling.
“Saffron Dazy. I know. It’ll be all right. That’s perfect. Just go.” He looked poised to shoo me off like a fly.
I hesitated. That’s perfect? His name and mine had been sliced apart. Wasn’t he even going to hug me? I glanced past him at the front door, and then, when he didn’t move toward me, I turned and walked to the sidewalk. He watched me for a few moments and then hurriedly went into the house.
I thought I heard the door lock. The motion light went off. It was as if a curtain had closed.
I continued walking through what felt like a fog, not really looking at, seeing, or hearing anything. This was what I had feared, this feeling of being in limbo, floating, dangling. Suddenly, the streets were so quiet, with hardly any traffic. I felt as if everyone and everything around me were pausing to watch me walk alone. I caught glimpses of families through the warm light of their front windows. Somewhere off to the left, a dog began barking. The barking grew softer, lower, as I walked faster. When I made the turns he had described, I saw the Dew Drop Inn sign ahead in a purplish blue light. I paused.
Why not keep going? I thought. I had enough money for a while. Maybe I should find a bus station rather than return to the train station. But if I did, what could I possibly do? I couldn’t get a job. I’d be that girl of the streets I had envisioned on my way here. Any other girl in my place surely would be terrified and crying by now. Her father had just sent her away a second time. I credited Mazy for my stoic attitude and strength. She had raised me to be strong.
I walked on. Practically indifferent to where I was going and what I was being forced to do, I entered the small, brightly lit lobby with pale yellow walls and black-framed windows. Posted rules and regulations and No Smoking signs were scattered about. A short, elderly man with bushy gray eyebrows and an almost childlike body, small hands, and light-brown hair, still quite thick, stood up instantly and smiled. His thin pink lips seemed stretched to the point of snapping, losing their color, too. He obviously wanted to make a good impression. What had Daddy told him about me?
“Saffron Dazy?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Everything’s arranged.” He brought a key on a small chain with a Dew Drop Inn blue plastic tab to the counter. “Got my nicest room for you, twenty-one A. You just go out, walk to the left, go down the short walk, and it’s the first door on the left.”
He pumped the key at me until I took it.
“There are bottles of fresh water in your room in the minibar in the dresser. There’s an extra blanket and pillow in the closet. If you want something to eat, you’ll find a Birdie’s menu right next to the phone.” He smiled again. “My son owns Birdie’s. Great pizza. They deliver,” he quickly added. “Don’t worry about expense. Everything’s taken care of. Anything else you think you might need?”
A life, I wanted to say, but instead shook my head.
“Don’t I have to sign anything?”
People always did that in movies.
“No, no. I know your uncle for a long time. He explained everything.”
I stared. Did I hear him correctly? My uncle? Explained what? I was afraid to ask.
He smiled again.
“You just hit zero on the phone if you need anything,” he said. My silence unnerved him, I guess. He had to keep talking. “I’m on alone all night tonight, or I’d show you to your room. We’re not too busy today, but we do get busy on the weekends. Lots of hikers, and the lake still offers great fishing. Fed by a natural spring. People rent rowboats, have picnics. They come from hundreds of miles, some of them.”
I was simply staring at him, or through him, really. His words flew over me.
“You okay? I guess I can walk you to your room if you’d like,” he said reluctantly. He could have said, What are you waiting for? Get going. You’re making me uncomfortable.
“No, I’m fine,” I said, and started out.
“Just hit zero on the phone,” he called after me. “I’m here for anything you need.”
Right, I thought. I’ll hit zero and say, “I lost my father. Can you send around a new one?”
As I walked to the room, I kept repeating the word in my head as if I had to memorize it for a play or something: uncle.
When I unlocked the door and turned on the light, I stood there looking at the strange bedroom the way someone might look at a prison cell. Maybe the old man would come by and put a lock on the door so I couldn’t go back to my father’s house.
I hadn’t slept anywhere but my room in the house that had gone up in a fire and in Mazy’s house, my robin’s-egg blue room. Those were the only personal walls and windows, closets, and rugs I had known. People go on trips, vacations, and sleep in different places, but I imagined that sleeping in a new place without anyone you knew coming along with you had to be quite different from going somewhere with your family or friends.
Loneliness was such a cold feeling, and what could be lonelier than coming into a room like this? There was nothing warm about it. It was clean but bland, with light-brown bedding. There was a darker brown night table beside it with a phone and a pad and pencil on it. A small desk with a chair was in the left corner. The walls were papered in white with thick brown lines, and the floor was covered in a vacuumed but well-worn carpet. On the right was a dresser in dark brown with a cabinet I imagined was the minibar, just like I had seen on television. The oval mirror above was in a matching dark-brown frame. To the right of it was a television set on a metal wall shelf. The remote was on the shelf, too.
It’s nobody’s room, I thought, and also everybody’s.
I stepped in and closed the door. The bathroom was straight ahead and as bland as the room. The floor was a gray tile. There was a tub and shower and a sink with a cabinet above it. I looked in at empty shelves. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I had left home without a toothbrush and toothpaste. I went out and sat on the bed, still feeling caught in a daze. The trip, although not terribly long, combined with my confrontation
with my father and his hiding me away in a motel, swept me up in a wave of exhaustion. Without taking off a thing, I fell back on the bed and looked up at the bland white ceiling.
Mazy used to say that some motels and hotels are nothing more than human storage. I never understood what she meant until this moment. I had been put on a shelf until there was a decision about what to do with me.
Uncle, I thought, before falling quickly into a deep sleep.
I didn’t realize that my legs were hanging off the bed until I woke up in the morning, just as the sun was rising. Almost immediately, I felt, as Mazy would say, morning grimy, so I took a shower and changed my clothes. I was hungry, too. It had been almost a full day since I had eaten anything. After I bundled my dirty clothes and put them into my bag, I picked it up and my purse and started out. Daddy was approaching just as I closed the door.
“Good. You’re up,” he said. “I’ll take you to breakfast, and we’ll talk.”
He was dressed in a dark-blue suit and a light-blue tie, now looking well put together. It was how I remembered him. He started to turn, but stopped when he saw I wasn’t moving.
“Saffron?”
“Why did you tell the hotel manager you were my uncle?”
“You’ll see. It’s a good idea. You’ll see.”
Good idea?
When I just stared, he looked away for a moment and then turned back to me.
“I’m not going to send you away,” he said. “I want you to live with us. I’m just finding a way to make it happen.”
“You’re my father,” I said. “You already made that happen.”
He smiled at my firmness.
“I’ve got to remind myself,” he said, “that Mazy’s been bringing you up. Let’s just get some hot food in you and talk, and you’ll see that I’m finding the best way to be your father.”
I didn’t say it, but I thought it.
Out of the Rain Page 2
