The Evolution of Love

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  Lily couldn’t stop herself. She picked up the Dixie cup of red drink and drained it. The woman and the man looked at each other. The man filled her cup and Lily drained it again. She knew she should tell them that she wasn’t the person “they” were supposed to have sent five days ago. But she was too thirsty, and too hungry, to walk away from this vat of red drink and the basins of steaming hot food. She met eyes with the woman and nodded her agreement.

  “Kalisha,” the woman said. She pointed at the man. “Ron.”

  “I’m Lily Jones.”

  Kalisha looked her over and hitched away.

  Lily went to work filling the rest of the Dixie cups and stacking the trays. The service area where she worked connected to the community room via a rectangular cutout. On Lily’s side of the window was a propane-heated steam table. Covered stainless steel basins sat in hot water baths. Behind her was the kitchen, a big room with sinks, two refrigerators, an industrial-sized propane stove and oven, and a large work island. Propane cylinders covered much of the floor space.

  “Excuse me?” she asked Ron, who was washing cooking pots at one of the sinks.

  He glanced up.

  She wanted to touch the labyrinthine images tattooed on his triceps, as if they were a kind of Braille message. Instead she touched her own scar, the one right under her chin. “Kalisha said you’d train me?”

  Ron stepped around the propane cylinders and out to the service area. He lifted the cover off the first basin of food. The rich aroma of macaroni and cheese wafted into Lily’s face. It was all she could do not to put her face in the glop and eat. The next basin held green beans and the third one a vegetarian dish of root vegetables and tofu with the sharp perfumed funk of cumin. Cartons of milk and plastic containers of chocolate pudding crowded the shelves below the steam table.

  Ron pointed to the refrigerators behind him and then waved his arms in big Xs in front of his chest.

  “No electricity?” Lily guessed.

  He nodded and kicked one of the propane canisters. “D-d-de-de-l-l-l-l-l…” He couldn’t get past the L, and Lily didn’t know what he was trying to say. He returned to his sink and thrust his arms into the soapy water.

  “Delivered today,” Kalisha said, coming up behind her. “We’ve been cooking with fire in the parking lot until now. This is a major upgrade.”

  “You have water.”

  “We do. Lucky there. Our supply line never broke.”

  “How do you keep the milk cold?”

  “We don’t.”

  “Where do you get the food?”

  “You don’t need to know that. Just serve it.”

  The juice in all the cups on the top tier of trays sloshed hard. The flatware clattered in its tray. Propane cylinders toppled. The floor dropped and shook. A primitive sound leapt from Lily’s belly and out her mouth.

  “I don’t even react anymore,” Kalisha said. She paused and looked at Lily with something that might have been kindness. “Girl, you need to get a grip. That aftershock is nothing compared to the rabble I’m about to let in that door. You ready?”

  3

  As the clients crowded in, Ron showed Lily how to spoon food onto the plastic trays and line them up on the countertop just beyond the serving window. Lily dished out trays as fast as she could and made up answers to the diners’ questions about the weather, the food, FEMA, and herself. She shoved forkfuls of beans and macaroni into her own mouth and no one batted an eyelash at her gluttony. Everyone was hungry. Sweat dampened the back of her T-shirt and her feet ached from walking all those miles, but a full belly calmed her. Kalisha thought she was too skinny, too sensitive, to handle this job and these homeless people, but she was wrong. Lily liked serving nourishing food to hungry people.

  Kalisha shut the door promptly at five thirty, and by a quarter to six many of the clients had finished eating and were leaving. Lily found a wet sponge in the kitchen and headed out to the dining room. As she wiped down the tables, she asked everyone if they knew her sister, Vicky Jones. Most just shook their heads. Some said, “I’m sorry,” with too much finality. By now, their faces told Lily, people have either turned up or they’re dead.

  But they didn’t know her sister. Vicky found the exception to every single rule. It was her signature personality trait. Lily knew she was alive.

  When she came to a young man, maybe twenty-five years old, holding an infant, she stopped to caress the rose-petal skin on the bottom of the baby’s foot. “Where’s his mom?”

  The father looked up at Lily without expression. His white skin was too pale, his hair too limp, his eyes colorless and flat. “Support beam. Crushed her.”

  “Oh, God, I’m—” Lily turned fast, not wanting him to see her tears. She gathered up as many cartons of milk from the service area as she could carry and took them to the father. He scooped the cartons into his pack with a quick nod of thanks. Lily bent and kissed the little one on the head.

  “Herbert,” the man said. The idea of a baby named Herbert made Lily laugh, and the man laughed, too, probably not at his baby’s name, just seizing any opportunity for levity.

  When Lily finished with the tablecloths, she found a bucket and mop and washed the entire floor. She saw Kalisha glancing at her from time to time with a surprised expression on her face. Yep, skinny and sensitive, but with lots of initiative. When she finished the floor, she tossed her paper hat and latex gloves into the garbage can and peeled off her apron. As the white cloth cleared her head, she saw Kalisha slipping a plastic-wrapped sandwich into the left pocket of an old man’s tweed jacket and an apple into the right one.

  “You need to handwash that before you leave,” Kalisha said to Lily, nodding at the bunched-up apron in her hands. Lily knew the type: she had to make a harsh remark to counter being caught doing a kindness. “By four o’clock tomorrow. Earlier is always better. We have two hundred people to feed.”

  As much as she wanted to keep pretending, Lily thought she had better tell the truth. “I’m not who you think I am. I mean, no one sent me here.”

  “What do you mean? Who are you?”

  “I just came to eat. And you mistook me because I barged in early.”

  “Now what?” Kalisha said to the daft old man with bulging pockets.

  “I’ll fill in until whoever is supposed to be here comes. I mean, I’d like to. I can be here tomorrow at four.” The church community room already felt like home base in this crazy geography.

  Kalisha stared at her for a moment before saying, “Do I have a choice?”

  “You always have a choice,” the old man said in a thin, quavering voice.

  Kalisha smiled at him.

  “Maybe you could help me, too,” Lily said. “I came here, from Nebraska, to look for my sister. Vicky Jones. Maybe she’s been to the church? She looks like me, only sturdier. Short, thick hair, dishwater blonde. Her eyebrows are a few shades darker. Her skin is kind of a toasty almond color, like mine. Strong jaw. Great smile. Really beautiful smile.” Lily paused. “Butch. She’s kind of butch.”

  “I know Vicky,” the old man said.

  “You do?” Relief dropped Lily into one of the folding chairs.

  “Sure,” he said, as if the odd thing would be not knowing Vicky. Thick, coarse, and shaggy white hair covered his head. Fleshy lids draped over his pale blue, filmy eyes, but the clean-shaven skin on his cheeks was surprisingly smooth, pink, and mobile. He wore white sneakers, gray flannel trousers, a white button-down shirt, a brown tweed jacket, and a bright tie patterned with green and yellow Hawaiian orchids. He held a walking stick in each hand. “She lives next door to me.”

  “You live on Ridge Road?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Next door to Vicky. She used to bring me food. Bad cook, but a delightful girl.”

  “Used to?”

  “Everything’s been a bit topsy-turvy since the earthquak
e.”

  Kalisha smiled again. “That’s one way to put it.”

  “She might be staying at her girlfriend’s house,” he said.

  “You know Sal?”

  “Of course. The hyena lady!” The old man’s watery eyes brightened with pleasure.

  “Do you know where Sal lives?”

  “No. I’m sorry, Vicky’s sister.”

  “This is Lily,” Kalisha said and then waved a hand at the old man. “Professor Vernadsky.”

  “Philosophy,” he warbled proudly. “Fifty-four years at Berkeley.”

  As he started for the door, Kalisha went ahead to open it for him.

  “Good night, Professor,” she said and he waved one of his walking sticks at the now empty room.

  Excited to have made contact with someone who knew her sister, Lily scrubbed her apron with soap in one of the kitchen sinks, then rinsed it as well as she could and hung it on a hook to dry. When she came back into the community room, she saw Kalisha sitting at a folding table, on the far side of the room, poring over a sheaf of papers.

  “Bye! I’m leaving now.” Lily waved. In one of his letters, Travis had explained that the gesture of waving had evolved from people showing they had no weapons in their hands. Lily raised her other hand, too, and waved both. Kalisha nodded.

  Lily stepped out of the community room into a light too tender for the ruined urban landscape. What time had it gotten dark last night? How long did she have to figure out where she might sleep? She could never tell Tom that she’d slept in a crashed FedEx truck. Although the thought of his reaction almost made her smile.

  At the bottom of the cement steps, a big girl stood with her legs slightly spread, as if guarding someone in a basketball game. The fat kid looked to be about sixteen years old. Maybe biracial, her skin was honey-colored, and acne covered her face. Her hair stuck out in five-inch-long unraveling braids. Rhinestone barrettes pinned down a couple of the loose braids, and several big loopy curls framed her scowling face. Lily remembered the girl coming through the line. She’d been alone and anxious. She’d asked for extra milk. A manufactured gardenia scent clouded the air around her.

  “I saw you give that man all that milk,” she said.

  “He has an infant.”

  “I told you I wanted an extra milk. One extra.”

  Lily stepped around the overgrown child and started across the parking lot. She heard the community room door open and turned to see the girl disappear inside. Lily climbed back up the steps and reentered the community room in time to see the girl clump into the service area and grab four containers of chocolate pudding. She cradled her booty in folded arms, like it was a baby, and pushed past Lily and out the door.

  As Kalisha shot after her, Lily waited inside. A moment later, Kalisha returned with the puddings. She dumped them onto the counter. “Did you tell Annie she could have these?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You unlocked the door on your way out. You have to check the lock button every time.”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s no room for error here.”

  “It was unlocked when I came in before dinner.”

  Kalisha gave her a strict teacher stare. “Because I was expecting someone. But really, I don’t need to explain everything.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m trying to feed a couple hundred people a day, okay?”

  “You’ve said.”

  Kalisha paused at Lily’s sass. She cocked her head, as if about to mount an offensive, but then just sighed. “That oversize girl does not need extra chocolate pudding.”

  “I saw you give that old man an extra sandwich and apple.”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “The girl seems sad. She held those chocolate puddings like they were love.”

  “Chocolate pudding is nothing like love. Be on time tomorrow.”

  Lily left the church a second time, wishing she’d consulted her map inside the building, away from inquisitive eyes. She blinked hard at the dusk light, as if she could bring back the sun. The FedEx truck was beginning to feel like safety compared to her options for tonight. Vicky’s street was two miles from here, up in the hills. She had tried to find it earlier in the afternoon but gotten hopelessly lost. By the time she had encountered the National Guard troops, thirst and hunger turned her around.

  She sat on the top step of the church’s stoop and pulled the Berkeley/Oakland map out of her backpack. Why hadn’t she thought to ask Professor Vernadsky the route to Vicky’s house? He’d said she used to bring him food. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything; she probably knew he ate at the church. With Vicky, anything was possible. Lily bet she was ensconced in her house, keeping a low profile, figuring out how to thrive in the newly fractured city. That would be Vicky: turning catastrophe into opportunity. Lily closed her eyes and pictured her sister’s ridiculously goofy smile. She would forgive Vicky whatever cockamamie excuses she gave for not getting in touch after the earthquake. She would listen, without an ounce of impatience or judgment, to Vicky’s current exuberances. She badly wanted to try again, right now, to find her house. But the streets were a chaos of downed trees, telephone polls, and mudslides, and if she had been spectacularly unsuccessful navigating them in the daylight, doing so in the dark would be plain stupid.

  She considered Tom’s solution to her predicament. She found Joyce Renaldi’s place on her map, and it was just a few blocks from Trinity Church. Why did going there feel like she’d been AWOL and was turning herself in?

  As Lily got to her feet, an exaggerated throat-clearing drew her attention to the big girl sitting on the pavement with her shoulders against the exterior church wall, just below the cement steps. Her eyes were closed and her face was tipped to the sky, a pose of endurance. A scrawny blond boy sat beside her, twirling a coil of dirty hair. His pale skin was even more broken out than hers. He held an orange kitten against his chest. He squinted up at Lily and swatted the girl’s thigh. “Annie.”

  “What?” she pretend-snarled. “What d’ya want?”

  “Someone’s here.” He spoke barely louder than a whisper. Then he pulled up his knees, folded his arms across them, and hid his face. The orange kitten squeezed out of his lap and arched its back.

  “Yeah, I know,” Annie said without looking at Lily. She reached up and secured each of her two rhinestone barrettes.

  Lily descended the steps and headed across the parking lot as if she hadn’t seen or heard the two kids.

  “Asshole.” Annie spoke in a calm voice, as if merely saying, Good day.

  Lily couldn’t help turning around.

  Annie elbowed her companion and said, “Sit up, Binky. Here’s the bitch who wouldn’t let me get your dinner.”

  Binky didn’t raise his head, but he extended a hand to pet the kitten.

  Annie said, “But you had no problem letting the white guy take extra.”

  “He had an infant.”

  “There was a Mexican chick with a baby. You didn’t give her extra.”

  “Operative word: chick. She can nurse her baby. He can’t.”

  “Yeah, well, I have Binky, and I can’t nurse him, either. The pudding was for him.”

  “Binky is a grown boy. He can come to the church for dinner if he’s hungry.”

  “Oh, right. Like he’d survive that zoo.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She rolled her eyes like Lily was the densest person she’d ever met. The boy kept his face between his knees.

  Annie said, “He’s a fag. Obviously.”

  “I doubt the church discriminates.”

  “The church is a building. He gets the shit kicked out of him—by people, not buildings—like every week.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry. She’s sorry,” Annie said to the t
op of the boy’s head. “She’s sorry.”

  Lily walked over and squatted a few feet away from the kids. “So he’s safer out here by himself than inside with you?”

  Annie looked at a spot of pavement off to the side and shook her head slowly, like she just couldn’t believe Lily’s obtuseness. Then she snapped her gaze back and made challenging eye contact. “Binky doesn’t like crowds.”

  Lily stood up. “Okay. So, you kids are staying in one of the shelters?”

  “Now there’s a brilliant idea. A) The shelters are like the most dangerous places. B) They separate dudes and chicks. C) If he goes into a men’s shelter alone, he…well, use your imagination. Or maybe you really don’t know. But trust me, this boy doesn’t need to be in a shelter. He does need some chocolate pudding.” Annie spoke of Binky as if he were her ward rather than her peer. She elbowed him again and said, “Get up.”

  Binky sprung to his feet and picked up the orange kitten. Maybe fourteen years old, each one of Binky’s ribs showed through his tight white T-shirt. A length of rope held up his jeans. He wore brand-new Air Jordan high-tops, black with untied iridescent red laces. At first Lily thought the shoes had to be about three sizes too big, but then she noticed that the boy’s hands were as big as his feet. In spite of his raw face, mismatched body parts, and overall dishevelment, a dancer’s beauty graced his young body. He put the kitten on his shoulder and held out two hands to pull Annie up.

  “Thanks, Bink,” she said and smiled at her friend.

  Lily walked away briskly, once again trying to air confidence.

  “Where do you live?” Annie yelled to her back. Then, “Hey! I’m talking to you!” And finally, “Bitch!”

  Lily walked downhill until she came to Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and then she turned right, passing the Big O Tire shop, which had all its windows busted out. After crossing University Avenue, she left the commercial district and entered a neighborhood, marveling at how spring already flourished out here, though it was only March. Beds of flowering impatiens glowed fuchsia and white and coral in the beginning-of-dusk light. Gangly magnolia trees dropped their floppy petals. At home, her clients called in the winter for the occasional pruning job, but most of her work came between May and September. In California, gardeners had work year round. Not that she was thinking of staying.