by Lora Roberts
“No, no.” She put a small spoonful of yogurt into her bowl, and then added most of the remaining berries. “It’s fresh that you’re working on your body. I mean, I can respect that. I’ll diet, too.”
I laid down my spoon. “Amy,” I said, watching the dainty way she conveyed the tiniest possible amount of yogurt into her black-rimmed mouth. “What are you doing here?”
“We could talk about that later, too,” Amy suggested, digging into the cracker box.
“Let’s talk about it now. Does Andy know you’re here?”
She sniffed. “Daddy barely knows he’s alive. He’s, like, totally away from real life, from the street. I didn’t even know you existed, Aunt Liz. When Gramma got your letter and everyone started talking about you and what a disgrace you were to your upbringing …” She smiled at me sunnily. “I thought you might be a good relative. I mean, not like Uncle Dan or Aunt Molly.”
It was strange to hear my sister and brothers spoken about this way, portrayed as rigid adults. What I mostly remembered, growing up the youngest in a loud Irish household, were the incredible arguments that would last for days, with people changing sides right and left.
About some things, however, there was no argument possible. I had been given the opportunity of a college education. My older siblings had spurned such time-wasting foolishness, but that didn’t stop them from complaining about the unfairness of it. My brothers, when they could spare time from their construction jobs and the drinking and brawling that went with them, thought my parents’ money could have been better spent setting them up in business for themselves. And they were right, it seemed.
I had put all these people and their various disappointments in me out of my mind for quite a while. To hear them spoken of so dismissively, to hear the negative things I’d always felt about my family verbalized, stirred a strange mixture of recognition and regret. It took away the good moments, too, the times when I’d felt loved and nurtured, before everything I did began to be wrong.
Despite her black lips, I empathized with Amy. “You’re sixteen?”
“Seventeen,” she said, tossing that iridescent hair. “Almost.”
“And you just lit out, without telling anyone?”
“I copied the return address on your letter, and then I left,” she said scrupulously. “Is there any soda?”
My budget doesn’t allow for soda, when water comes right out of the faucet. I said as much, and she seemed concerned.
“Are you poor, Aunt Liz?” She looked around the kitchen, at the worn Formica countertops and the small, ancient refrigerator, the elderly gas stove and the scuffed wood floor. “I didn’t think—I mean, I just figured you must have made good or you wouldn’t have written Gramma.”
“I did make good,” I said dryly. Writing that letter had been spontaneous; I’d been cut off for so long from my family that the need to communicate had welled up and spilled over one day. And the Palo Alto address, no matter how shabby the house, meant something. I hadn’t told my mother that it was the first time in years I’d had a street address. I guess what I really wanted was something besides junk mail.
What I’d gotten was Amy. My mother had never answered my letter. I hadn’t even been sure she’d received it. So much for being the prodigal daughter.
Amy looked confused, but I didn’t bother to explain that the move from VW bus to house had definitely been upward mobility. Thinking about the bus, I remembered that funny noise. “I’ve got to change, Amy. Would you put away the lunch stuff?”
“Sure, Aunt Liz.” She jumped to her feet. At least she didn’t mind pitching in. I went into my teeny bedroom, hung up my skirt and blouse in my teeny closet, and pulled on jeans. I would have to wear those irritating “work” clothes again after Bridget’s party, when I went back to try and fill in my Census register with reluctant names. The panty hose did not come off unscathed; a run slithered down my leg when I brushed against the bed frame. My next thrift-store trip would involve pants, not skirts.
Amy trailed me out to the garage, chattering about her friends in Denver and how much my brother and his wife had hated them, and how she’d wanted to move in with her friend Lisa but Lisa’s mom had called her mom and her dad had dragged her home and forbidden her to hang out with her friends and how she’d just decided to leave and caught the bus three days ago and how she’d been riding it ever since. She didn’t sound at all concerned that she was now out of money and throwing herself on the mercy of a person her family had declared to be lost to all family feeling.
It gave me a cold chill to listen to her. I am no stranger to the street, and a lot of the young people who live on it started out the way Amy had—leaving home, cutting ties, failing to find that succor they’d looked for, gradually reduced to selling drugs, selling their bodies, losing their souls.
While I tightened belts and recapped spark plugs and tested connections, I listened to Amy’s artless prattle and knew I couldn’t boot her out or send her back—not yet, anyway. She wasn’t ready to go back. But I wasn’t ready to be responsible for a sixteen-year-old.
She was silent for a little while. I crawled out from under the bus to find her looking as pensive as a person with black, raccoonlike circles under her eyes could look.
“Amy,” I said, cleaning the oil off my hands with a rag, “you have to let your folks know where you are.”
Her lower lip stuck out. “They won’t care.”
“They will, and you know it.” I watched her for a moment, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Did you leave a note?”
She shook her head, turning away a little.
“So they’re probably frantic by now:” I hesitated, trying to conceal my reluctance. “You can tell them you’ll stay with me for a while. It’s summer—you won’t miss school.”
She turned back, beaming. “Aunt Liz—”
“Wait a minute.” I held up one hand. “There are rules. I am, as you noticed, poor. I don’t have extra money. It’s a struggle for me to get by, let alone support a teenager. You’ll have to get a job and contribute to the living expenses, plus take care of anything you need. Jobs aren’t easy to get around here. If you can’t find work, you’ll have to go home. I can help you with a bus ticket, but that’s all the spare cash I have.”
She thought about this, and gradually her lower lip returned to its place. “I’ll find a job,” she said optimistically. “I’ve been a waitress, you know. And a manicurist, for a little while. Can you believe they fired me just for taking a tiny little break to fix my own nails? I mean, I wasn’t away from my station more than a nanosecond. What kind of manicurist has a chipped fingernail?” She held up her black and white talons for inspection. “See, on the bus trip the polish chipped again.”
“Do you type?” I was signed up with a temp agency, although the woman who ran it didn’t seem to like me. Working for Emery wasn’t so bad—at least he saw me as a person. The jobs I was offered through the agency were for faceless cogs willing to be ground away by the big machine. I hated those jobs. Sometimes, if I’d sold an article, I turned them down. Maybe that’s why Mrs. Rainey didn’t like me.
“With these nails? You’ve got to be kidding.” Amy inspected the chipped polish anxiously. “Hey, how far is it to the Pacific Stock Exchange?”
“I don’t know.” I squatted down to finish tightening the new belts I’d installed. “Did you want to check your portfolio?”
“Actually, yes.” She sounded on her dignity. Peering out from under the bumper, I could tell I’d hurt her feelings. “I did some investing for a school thing, and I, like, have a talent for it. My picks all went up. Maybe I’ll get a job on the floor.”
With a great effort of will, I refrained from pointing out the statistical likelihood of that plan. It was pleasant in the sun. The gravel crunched under my knees and the bees hummed in the lavender that edged the drive. Amy’s voice rose and fell, telling me about PE ratios. At first I thought these had to do with gym class, but it turned out
they involved some complicated investment formula. I was impressed by Amy’s knowledge, but my attention wandered in the warm sunshine.
My cottage has a small green lawn in front, old turf dotted with little daisies and clover and chamomile that I’d sown that spring. The daffodils I’d planted along the front walk were long gone, of course, but forget-me-nots were blooming there, and I’d bought a couple of bareroot roses at the very end of the season, getting them cheap and soaking them for a couple of days to help them recover from the plastic bag. Now they had big blooms, and I could smell them over the engine oil—the dark, seductive fragrance of Oklahoma, my favorite hybrid tea, and the fruitier scent of Amber Queen. The sun, the scents, were transcendently peaceful.
Even Amy was affected by it. Her voice died away. She tilted her dead-white face to the warmth and closed her eyes. I cleaned the battery terminals and replaced the oil filter.
“So what did you do that was so bad, Aunt Liz?” Amy sat up straighter, opening her eyes. “I’m dying of curiosity.”
“Didn’t they tell you?” I don’t like talking about my past, even with relatives.
“You got married to a jerk.” She inspected a ladybug that had crawled onto her knee. “But I don’t see what’s so big about that. My mom and dad yell at each other all the time. Once he slugged her, and she broke the turkey platter over his head.” Amy shrugged, elaborately nonchalant. “They’re both jerks sometimes, so why did they get so mad at you?”
I wasn’t surprised that my brother was capable of domestic violence. My dad had knocked my mom around a bit, after the accident that took away his work with the big cranes. She’d been stoic about it up to a point, but when she handed down the ultimatum, he’d stopped. As far as I knew, which wasn’t far. At least Renee, Amy’s mother, could defend herself.
“I don’t know, Amy. I married a middle-class jerk instead of a working-class one. Maybe that was why.” I certainly didn’t want to talk about my ex-husband. I’d come to grips with all that, and as far as I was concerned, that part of my life was over. I handed Amy the ignition key. “Would you start it up real easy? I’ll tell you when to turn it off.”
The bus hummed sweetly, like a giant bee. I try to keep it from developing major problems that would be beyond my power to fix. It was coming up on the big 200,000—a lot more zeros than I saw in my savings account. A new used car would wipe me out. Besides, I was attached to my bus. We’d been through things together I hadn’t shared with any human.
Amy turned it off. I wiped my hands once more and carried my tools into the garage. She followed, examining everything with great interest. “It’s really radical that you can fix your car,” she said, watching me put the tools away.
“I can maintain it, but if the engine blows I’m sunk.” I stripped off the old coveralls I keep in the garage for car work and hung them on their hook.
“You probably need a new car anyway.” Amy looked back at the bus, and I looked, too—at its faded blue and white paint, the dents I had inexpertly filled, the dimpled bumpers and duct tape-patched seats. Even thinking about a new car was disloyal.
“This old bus has some great attributes,” I told her, shutting the garage doors. “For one thing, I’m absolutely safe from carjackers. For another, I never have to lock it.”
“True.” Amy nodded wisely. “It’s kinda Zen—less is more, and all that.”
“Very philosophical.” She glanced at me sharply, and I tried to rein in my sarcasm. “Actually, that’s my point of view. It works. That’s what matters.”
Amy looked up at the blue, blue sky. “It’s so different here,” she offered. “Warmer, for one thing. The air is wetter, somehow. And—oh, I don’t know—thick or something. Not smoggy,” she hastened to add. “I mean, it looks clear and all that. But it must be the altitude.”
“Or lack of it.” I hadn’t lived in high altitudes for a long time. The Denver I remember had its share of polluted air, made worse by the thinness.
She breathed deeply, nearly coming out of her T-shirt, and scrutinized the back of Drake’s house. He had painted the place and hired a mow-and-blow crew to take care of the yard, so it was considerably trimmer than when he’d moved in. My driveway looked directly out on the street; we could see the occasional car going by. “So is that guy your lover?” Amy said casually.
“Who? Drake?” The sheer unexpectedness of her question rattled me. “Is that any of your business?”
“Guess not.” She didn’t seem put off by my reply. “I just wondered if he was going to show up in the evenings or anything.”
“He might show up, but not for sex.” I could feel a blush rising on my face. It was embarrassing to have her speculate on my love life. Not, of course, as embarrassing as it would have been if I’d had a love life. “We’re friends. Neighbors.”
“He’s a cop.” She looked disapproving. “I’m surprised at you, with your record and all.”
“So you know about that, do you?” I turned toward the house.
She followed me. “I heard Aunt Molly telling Mom something about it. Don’t you hate the police for putting you in jail?”
“It was better than the alternative.” I sat down in the living room, gesturing Amy into the shabby, overstuffed chair by the fireplace. I didn’t want to talk about it, but obviously she did. “I spent some time in minimum security. It would have been better if I hadn’t felt the need to try and kill my louse of a husband, but actually I’m for people being locked up when they shoot other people. That’s Drake’s job, and he has my support for doing it.” I took a deep breath. “He’s not—we’re not involved in anything but a neighborly relationship. If it’s all the same to you, Amy, I would prefer not to be quizzed about all this. How would you like it if I asked about your sex life?”
“I don’t have one,” she said frankly. “I mean, I had sex once, but it wasn’t at all what I thought it would be, so I’m a virgin again.”
“Virginity can be regained?” I stifled a laugh, not wanting to hurt Amy’s feelings. If renouncing sex made you a virgin, I could qualify.
“Why not?” Amy didn’t find it troubling. She yawned. “Gosh, I slept and slept on the bus, and now I’m sleepy again!” She looked at the sofa I was sitting on. “Is that a Hide-a-bed?”
I got up. “Yes. I hope you’ll be comfortable there tonight, but you can use my bed for a nap. I’ve got some work to do in here.” My computer sat in the corner on an old library table. There were several writing projects in neat stacks around it; I had lots to do.
“So I’ll sleep here tonight?” Amy looked, for a moment, lost and waifish.
“Guess so. Before you nap, we’ll go call your parents.” She stuck that lower lip out again, but she didn’t say anything. I took my keys off the key rack by the door.
“Where’s the phone?” She followed me out the door.
“We’ll use Drake’s—he’s given me permission to do that. We’ll leave some money to pay for it. I don’t have a phone.”
This, in Amy’s eyes, was an even bigger problem than the smallness of my house. She marveled over it all the way across Drake’s yard. I opened the back door and let us into his kitchen. It was larger than mine and full of implements that hung from the ceiling and bulged from the cabinets.
Amy’s mother answered—I could tell by the high-pitched, frantic quacking that came out of the phone when Amy identified herself. She rolled her eyes at me while she tried to get a word in edgewise. “Mom. Mom—I’m okay. Of course not! Mom, listen! I’m at Aunt Liz’s.” More quacking. “Liz. Yes, in California. I took the bus.” She scowled into the phone. “I didn’t tell anyone! She says I can stay. So I’m going to.” More than a hint of bravado colored her voice. She crossed her arms, cradling the receiver between ear and shoulder, and sullenly examined her chipped nail polish. “I’m going to get a job,” she said finally. More eye-rolling. At last she held the phone toward me. “She wants to talk to you.”
I wasn’t well acquainted with my sister-i
n-law. She and Andy had gotten married not long before I did, and Amy’s birth had followed in six months or so. She had been very shrill about denouncing me, though, perhaps because all the flap over my marrying and quitting school had diverted attention from her “premature” eight-pound baby.
Now her voice on the phone was frosty, as if I’d somehow enticed her daughter away. “You’ve offered Amy a place to stay for the summer?”
“That’s tight, Renee.” Amy wandered around Drake’s kitchen and through the archway into the living room. “She’s spent all her money on the bus ticket, and I’m not too flush myself. She’s going to get a job, and if she can’t, I’ll front the money for her to get back home.”
“Just what kind of job?” Renee didn’t sound overjoyed. “What kind of racket are you running there, Liz?”
My patience began to seep away. “Look, Renee. Your daughter landed herself on me without a word of warning. You can come and get her or send her a plane ticket if you think she’s in danger. Believe me, I wouldn’t want a child of mine on the streets these days. I live very quietly, and a teenager is not my idea of a fun surprise, not to mention the expense. I don’t have a phone, and this call is costing me. If you have anything else to say, be brief. Otherwise, you have my address.”
Amy came back into the kitchen in time to hear this. Her eyes rounded.
“Settle your problems with Amy,” I said, exasperated. “I’m not in loco parentis, and I make no guarantees beyond offering her a clean bed and a sympathetic ear.”
Renee was speechless for all of thirty seconds. “Well! Really, Liz, I hardly think after what you did that you can set yourself up as some kind of example for an impressionable sixteen-year-old. What makes you think you can deal with an incorrigible young girl? Andy will have a few things to say about this! You must—”
At that point I gently cradled the phone.
“You hung up on my mother.” Amy blinked. “She’ll just call right back, you know.”
“No, she won’t. That’s the beauty of not having a phone. Annoying people can’t reach you except by letter, and you can throw those away.”
