Woman in Blue

by Eileen Goudge

  Before Bella was born, Jeremiah had been her whole world. She thought back to the night they’d met, eight years ago, when he’d picked her up hitchhiking. She was on her way to LA to see about a bartending job, and he invited her to crash at his place in Topanga Canyon. She never made it to LA. From that day on, they were inseparable. She was twenty-two and had been on her own for the past seven years, having run away from the last in a long line of foster parents (who’d probably been glad to see her go). Jeremiah did more than give her a home; he grounded her. With him she knew for the first time what it was to belong somewhere … and to someone.

  Jeremiah was the lead guitarist in a rock-and-roll band called Urban Decay. The first couple of years, she went to every one of his gigs, even sitting in on practice sessions, just for the sheer pleasure of watching him perform. She didn’t mind when other women came on to him; it only made him more desirable in her eyes. She was the one who got to go home with him at the end of the evening, the one to whom he’d make sweet love. She’d had her share of lovers before him, a lot of them one-night stands. But with Jeremiah, it was the real deal. She was in love. She loved everything about him: his face, his hands, his voice and low, seductive laugh, the fluid way he moved around onstage—sexier than any rock god—even the way he smelled, like their bed after a night of lovemaking. When they lay naked together, she never tired of running her hands over his skin, the golden brown of buttered toast, or threading her fingers through his dark, coiled hair that was like the pelt of some woolly beast. He was perfect in her eyes. Who cared if they were living from hand to mouth, or if their funky old house, built by some hippie who must have been stoned at the time, was practically falling down, or if the bills didn’t always get paid on time?

  The drugs were just part of the scene; at any given moment at least one member of the band was high on something. At first Kerrie Ann steered clear of all that, scared of ending up like her mom. But Jeremiah began pressuring her more and more. You trust me, don’t you? he’d urge, wearing that sweetly innocent smile. Would I do anything to hurt you? Finally she gave in. In the beginning it was just the occasional party drug—pot, Ecstasy, poppers, a line of blow here and there. She stopped as soon as she found out she was pregnant, but after Bella was born, when it became clear that the train, meaning Jeremiah, was leaving the station without her, she started again. With a baby to care for, she couldn’t go to his gigs like she used to. Without her keeping an eye on him, he began coming home later and later, sometimes not showing up until morning, and then occasionally smelling of perfume rather than just cigarettes and booze. She began to worry that he’d leave her for someone who wasn’t so tied down or tired all the time. She’d do almost anything to keep him, and the one thing they shared, besides Bella, was drugs.

  At first it was the best of both worlds. Taking care of her baby by day—sweet, precious Bella, whose chubby arms around her neck were the best high in the world—and by night, while her baby slept, getting loaded with Jeremiah and his bandmates. Not the hard stuff. That came later. By the time she was forced to admit to herself that she was hooked, it was too late: Quitting was no longer an option. Her extended season in hell, which began with that first rock she and Jeremiah smoked, led to four years in which she was lost to everyone, including herself.

  No, she had no illusions about why her daughter had been taken from her. She just wanted Bella back.

  Wordlessly Kerrie Ann dug a coin from the hip pocket of her jeans and plunked it down on the caseworker’s desk. “My six-month chip,” she said. “Do you know how freaking hard I had to work to get that? You ever tried pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks up a mountain? That’s what it’s like. And do you know what gets me through each day? The only thing that makes it possible to keep putting one foot in front of the other? My little girl. Not an hour goes by, not a single minute, when I’m not thinking of her. When I’m not counting the days until I can be with her again.” A tear rolled down one cheek, and she angrily brushed at it with the heel of her hand. She’d sworn she wouldn’t break down in front of Mrs. Silvestre, and she’d be damned if she would.

  The caseworker’s expression softened. “I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic,” she said. “I just thought you should know what you’re up against. It’s a high bar, Kerrie Ann. Yes, I can see you’ve come a long way, but you still have a ways to go.” She paused as if in thought before adding tentatively, “Is there a family member who’d be willing to help out? Someone who could provide backup? The court might be more lenient in that case.”

  Which was why Kerrie Ann was on her way to her sister’s now.

  Lindsay Margaret McAllister Bishop. Kerrie Ann rolled the name around in her head the way she might an unfamiliar taste on her tongue. She wondered what this Lindsay was like. Was she married? Did she have kids? Had she made a success of her life, or was she struggling in some way? If she’s anything like me, she won’t be much help. And if she turned out to be a nice soccer mom living in the ’burbs? She probably wouldn’t want her nice, tidy life muddied up by the mess Kerrie Ann had made of hers.

  Either way, her long-lost sister dropping in out of the blue was certain to come as a shock. Kerrie Ann, figuring that a phone call wouldn’t have the same impact as showing up in person, had decided to surprise Lindsay with a visit. It would be harder for her to say no that way.

  Kerrie Ann had done a Google search, so she knew a little bit about her sister. The name “Lindsay Bishop” netted at least a dozen entries, most of them articles having to do with a piece of property Lindsay owned. “Local bookshop owner at center of land controversy,” one of the headlines read. It seemed a hotel group with plans to build a fancy golf resort was trying to buy out property owners in that area. Lindsay was the lone holdout. So now Kerrie Ann knew two more things about her sister: that she owned her own home and business and that she wasn’t a pushover. Which might or might not work in her favor.

  As she boarded the flight to San Francisco, Kerrie Ann found herself wondering if this was a fool’s mission. Why should her sister want to help out? Lindsay didn’t know her. Maybe she didn’t even want to know her. The fact was that in all these years she hadn’t bothered to make contact. At least Kerrie Ann had an excuse for not getting in touch. What was Lindsay’s? According to the records, she’d been eight years older than Kerrie Ann when they’d been shipped off to separate foster homes—old enough not to have forgotten that she had a sister.

  She took her seat next to a petite, white-haired, grandmotherly type. They were buckled in, the plane readying for takeoff, when the old lady pointed to the wallet photo Kerrie Ann held clutched in her hand like a lifeline. “Your little girl? She looks just like you.”

  Kerrie Ann smiled tentatively. “You think so?”

  Her seatmate leaned over to peer at the photo. “The spitting image.”

  Kerrie Ann knew the old lady was just being polite. Her daughter looked nothing like her, except maybe around the mouth. If she was the spitting image of anyone, it was Jeremiah, with his burnt-sienna skin, curly dark hair, and striking amber eyes. The irony was that Bella had never known her dad. He’d split for parts unknown when she was just two.

  In his absence Kerrie Ann had tried to harden her heart, but it was easier to hate herself than to hate Jeremiah. He wouldn’t have left them if he’d been in his right mind, she reasoned; he’d been in the grip of the disease himself. Even all these years later, she missed him still. She’d been so wrapped up in him, it was almost as if he’d been part of her—an arm or a leg that had been chopped off. Closing her eyes as the plane taxied down the runway, she allowed her mind to travel back once more to the night they’d met.

  “You take the bed, I’ll crash on the sofa,” he offered after they’d arrived at his place, adding with a sloe-eyed grin, “Wouldn’t want you thinking I had an ulterior motive for giving you a lift.”

  “Why would I think that?” she replied with mock innocence. He could have anyone he wanted without having to scheme
, and she was no exception. The minute she’d laid eyes on him, with his eyes that glowed like a cat’s and body that made her want to jump his bones on the spot, she’d known she was in for a fun evening.

  What she hadn’t counted on was that it would be so much more.

  “My guess is you’ve had your share of guys hitting on you.” He looked at her, not like she was a piece of meat but admiring her as he might a beautiful piece of scenery.

  “You mean because I’m not afraid to bum rides from strange men?” she replied, shamelessly fishing.

  “You know perfectly well what I mean.” His grin widened, showing an adorably crooked eyetooth. His eyes, she noticed, were the exact color of the tiger’s-eye stone on the necklace she wore.

  “So you think I’m hot, do you?” she teased, sidling up to him.

  He laughed. “I’m not going to answer that on the grounds that it might incriminate me.”

  “Should I take that as a yes?”

  “Take it any way you like.” He played along, his eyes dancing. He still hadn’t laid a hand on her.

  “In that case, I have a suggestion—why don’t we share the bed? That way neither of us has to wake up tomorrow morning with a sore back.”

  “That’s assuming you plan on getting any sleep.” Jeremiah slid an arm around her waist, pulling her in close to nuzzle her neck as he lightly traced the outline of one breast with a loosely clenched fist. She felt a deep inner tug, like a guyline being cut, sending her spinning.

  Then he was kissing her, his lips soft against hers, his tongue gently probing. He held her head cupped in his hands, his fingers threaded through her hair, his thumbs pressed lightly into the tender flesh below her earlobes. As if laying claim to her somehow. Before she knew it, they were struggling out of their clothes, trying not to trip over themselves and each other as they paused, breathless, between kisses to quickly undo a button, wrestle down a zipper, release a hook. From the start she knew it was going to be different than with the men before him—too many to count, starting at the age of fourteen, when she’d been seduced by a twenty-year-old relative of her foster family at the time. This wasn’t just about satisfying an urge; it was way more intense. So intense it scared her. But it was a fun kind of scared, like riding the world’s steepest roller coaster.

  They never made it to the bedroom. They did it right there on the floor, on a ratty old carpet that might have been the softest down mattress for all she noticed. Not so much as if they were making love as inhaling each other. Her first high with Jeremiah, and not a joint or crack pipe in sight.

  She gave a bittersweet smile at the memory, bringing her gaze back to the photo in her hand: the child who’d been born out of that love. It had been taken shortly after Bella’s fifth birthday, one of those quickie studio portraits from Wal-Mart. She was posed against a backdrop of fall foliage, wearing the dress Kerrie Ann had bought for her first day of kindergarten, a yellow flowered one with a smocked front and puffy sleeves, and white patent-leather Mary Janes. Her curly dark hair was braided, little wisps standing out all over her head like the fuzz on a baby duck, and her smile as wide as a truckload of promises.

  That had been a good day. They’d gone out for ice cream afterward, and then to the kiddie park. Kerrie Ann had managed to keep it together for the most part, having vowed for the umpteenth time that she was going to clean up her act. Didn’t Bella deserve a mother who would look after her properly, give her the kind of childhood she herself hadn’t had?

  Her resolve lasted all of twenty-four hours.

  Kerrie Ann was firmly in the grip of her addiction, dealing a little on the side to stay solvent and keep the supply coming, when a concerned neighbor alerted authorities to what was going on at her house. They found her living in squalor, the kitchen awash in dirty dishes and the floors strewn with refuse, an unkempt and underfed Bella dressed only in a pair of dirty underpants. The police searched the premises, but by sheer luck Kerrie Ann was between runs, so they didn’t find any drugs.

  Before she could breathe a sigh of relief, one of the cops, a tall, skinny guy with bad teeth, approached her, saying in a stern voice, “Ma’am, I need you to answer a few questions.”

  Kerrie Ann nodded grudgingly.

  He looked at Bella. “That your little girl?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  The cop ignored her combative tone. “Shouldn’t she be in school?”

  Kerrie Ann couldn’t remember if it was a weekday, so she said the first thing that popped into her head: “She’s sick.” In fact, it was she who was sick. The jitters were setting in, along with the chills—she’d been on her way to meet her supplier when the cops had shown up.

  “Then why is she running around half naked?” demanded his partner, a fat-bottomed woman with frizzy brown hair. She glanced at Bella, who was staring up at them with huge dark eyes, the fingers of one hand stuffed into her mouth—a baby habit she reverted to when upset—then brought her gaze back to Kerrie Ann, her expression one of contempt.

  In a moment of terrible clarity, Kerrie Ann took in the squalid scene through the cops’ eyes. She saw her daughter—really saw her—for the first time in weeks: how dirty she was and how thin she’d gotten, her ribs sticking out of her narrow brown chest like rungs on a ladder. She saw the stain on the seat of her underpants that had come from not wiping herself properly and having no one to do it for her, the crust of dried food around her mouth. When had she last fed Bella? When was the last time she’d tucked her into bed at night or taken her to school? She couldn’t recall. There was only a terrible rushing sound in her head, like wind howling through a tunnel.

  She watched the lady cop crouch down and begin speaking softly to Bella. It wasn’t until she took Bella by the hand and began leading her toward the door that understanding kicked in. Kerrie Ann moved to block them. “Hey—where do you think you’re going? That’s my kid!” she cried. “Bella, come to Mommy!” It came out more as a shrill command than a cry of distress. Both cops looked worried that she might hurt Bella.

  Even Bella’s big, frightened eyes seemed to accuse her in some way. Bella began to cry.

  Kerrie Ann took a lunging step toward her, wanting to console her, but the male cop quickly moved in, seizing her by the upper arm and commanding, “Ma’am, please.” In a calming voice, he added, “We’ll take good care of her.”

  “You can’t do this. You have no right!” shrieked Kerrie Ann as the lady cop led Bella out the door, her partner maintaining a firm grip on Kerrie Ann’s arm all the while. When she ran out of curses, Kerrie Ann began to plead. “Where are you taking her? Please, at least give me that.” Her eyes were streaming, and phlegmy sobs erupted from her throat. The chills racking her body turned to uncontrollable shivering. She felt as if she were coming unglued.

  “Call this number.” He let go of her arm and fished a business card from his pocket, handing it to her.

  Kerrie Ann saw the Children’s Services logo on the card and felt herself hurtling back in time. The old nightmare playing itself over, this time with her child.

  As soon as she could pull herself together, she drove to the county offices, where her pleas and entreaties were met with more indifference. All anyone would tell her was that Bella was in a safe place. The woman at the front desk suggested that Kerrie Ann get a lawyer, which only left her feeling even more at a loss. Whom could she hire? And how would she pay them? She was on her way to her supplier’s—to satisfy a more immediate need—when, stopped at a red light, she spotted a billboard advertising a free clinic for those looking to kick a drug habit. Kerrie Ann would never know what caused her to head in that direction instead. In her twelve-step program they attributed it to her Higher Power, but for her it was simply a case of do or die—the choice between either stepping off a high ledge or retreating from it. Because the one thing she was sure of was that there would be no meaningful life for her without Bella.

  She had little memory of the first week in rehab; she was in the detox ward
for most of it, on meds that kept her so out of it, she barely knew what planet she was on. Gradually she emerged from the fog, and the days and weeks that followed were filled with meetings—meetings with her counselor, meetings with her peer group, twice-a-day twelve-step meetings—interspersed with a daily routine of menial chores and communal meals. All the while the desire to use again a constant beat on the boom box inside her head.

  It was the longest month of her life.

  She doubted she’d have gotten through it if not for Bella. She’d naively believed that if she could just get clean, that was all it would take to get her daughter back.

  Her counselor at the clinic, Mary Josephson, a recovering heroin addict with twenty years of sobriety, suggested she call Legal Aid, and Legal Aid put her in touch with Abel Touissant. Days later she had a court date. But at the hearing, it quickly became evident that things weren’t going in her favor. The judge, a portly middle-aged man, probably with children of his own, addressed her with such contempt that she felt as if she were on trial—which in a way she was.

  “The child will remain in foster care until such time as the mother—” he scowled down at Kerrie Ann from the bench, “can demonstrate to the court’s satisfaction that she’s a fit parent.” In addition to continuing with her twelve-step program, submitting to weekly drug testing, and taking a parenting class, she would need to find steady employment and “appropriate accommodations,” he elaborated.

  “How long? Weeks, months?” she tearfully asked her lawyer outside the courtroom.

  Abel spoke with a directness she would later see as a sign of respect but which at the time felt like salt on her wounds. “I can’t answer that. It’s up to you.” One misstep—a failed drug test, a lost job, a poor report from the caseworker—and she’d be back at square one, he warned.