Two very tall, thickset men stood between the dress aisles arguing over what looked like a large purple bridesmaid’s dress. A woman sat near the register, a book laid open on the counter in front of her. She wasn’t pretty in an ordinary sense, with her flat gray eyes and shoulder-length dark hair. Looking up, she met Morgan’s gaze and blinked as if a bright light had been switched on. “May I help you?”
“Is Sandy here?”
“Naw. There’s a show tonight at Tallulah’s. I’m covering his shift for him.”
“Oh.”
“If you tell me what you’re looking for, I can help you.”
She wanted Sandy, damn it to hell. She said, “He took me in back and found some clothes my size.”
The woman gave her a rather beguiling smile, came from behind the counter, and motioned for Morgan to follow her. She called to her customers, “I’ll be in the back room.”
Morgan followed her through the door and shrugged out of her coat. Turning to the woman, Morgan said, “I need some dress pants and jeans.” In this store, she was small, which delighted her.
“There’s a stack of jeans over there.” The woman pointed to the opposite side of the room. “Take a look.”
Morgan started digging. Some of the jeans’ sizes weren’t marked. “May I try them on? I suspect my size has changed.”
“Bathroom’s over there.”
Morgan sat on the lid to the stool and pulled off her wet boots. The back of the door was covered with a full-length mirror she couldn’t avoid. She stood, stepped out of her pants, and looked at her reflection. Good grief, she thought, I could lose five pounds by shaving my legs. Quickly wiggling into a promising pair of jeans, she pulled them up over her hips and tried to fasten them. The set-in waist refused to close. She tried the second pair, which was so new the tags hadn’t even been removed. She liked the boot-cut legs and the length was just right. She faced the mirror and sucked in her gut. The jeans fastened.
A knock at the door. “How are you doing in there?”
“Okay.”
“Can I get you something else?”
“I have one pair that’s a good fit.”
A few minutes later, Morgan heard a man’s voice. She hurriedly fastened the pants she’d come in with and opened the door.
One of the men from out front was waiting with the purple dress. “Miss Minnie,” said the woman, “wants to try on a dress.”
“Excuse me.” Morgan brushed passed him or her. She wasn’t sure of the decorum.
When the bathroom door was shut, the sales clerk snorted. “These queens. They love it here because we have formal wear in big sizes.”
Morgan brushed damp hair off the back of her neck.
“It is warm in here, isn’t it? Damn steam radiators. There’s no temperature control. They’re either on or off.”
“It’s all right,” Morgan said. “If it were forty degrees in here, I’d still be sweating. It’s what I do.”
The woman laughed. “Want to try another stack of jeans?”
“No, thanks. Just this one pair.” Morgan was hungry. Ever since she couldn’t close the waistband on the first pair of jeans, she’d been craving chocolate.
Suddenly Miss Minnie was in the room with them. She twirled and said, “What do you think? Can you see this with my red sequined pumps?” Miss Minnie had tattoos all over her shoulders and one on her hairy chest that disappeared into the bodice of the dress.
The clerk said, “Looks like it was made for you.”
“That’s what I tried to tell Daphne.”
Smiling, Morgan followed the woman to the cash register, wondering if she was a lesbian. It wasn’t as easy to tell as with the baby-butch trash collector or Miss Minnie and Daphne. Of course, even if she was a lesbian, she might not be single, or if she was lesbian and single, she might not be looking. Morgan wasn’t even sure that she, herself, was looking. She didn’t have time for a relationship anyway, given her mother and the new partner at work. Best to let sleeping dogs lie.
The young woman rang up the sale and put the jeans in a bag. She met Morgan’s eyes and said, “My name is Chelsea Brown. I usually work Friday afternoons and weekends.” When she said her name the room got warmer.
“Morgan Holiday.”
“Are you a friend of Sandy’s?”
“He just waited on me last time I was here.”
Chelsea pulled a ring of keys from the register. “Well. I hope we see you again.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll lock the door behind you. We close at eight.” Chelsea held the door as Morgan went out.
“Thanks for your help.”
“No problem.” Chelsea’s breath turned to smoke in the cold air. Then the door was closed and locked.
Morgan stepped off the porch. Why did she have to meet another Chelsea now? The name brought up as much pain as those jeans that wouldn’t fasten.
Freezing light fell from the moon, making ghostly shadows on the icy crust of the snow. At home she made a large glass of chocolate milk and finished a half-empty bag of Oreos. That night sleep jumped beyond her like Alice’s rabbit.
Chapter Eight
Celia Morning had first seen the girl at the corner house a couple of evenings after Smallwood disappeared. Days had been growing shorter, so by seven the shadows were long and night was setting in. Celia watched from her kitchen window as the girl tried the front door, then the back. After that she’d left a kitchen-sized trash bag on Smallwood’s front porch and walked around the house trying the basement windows, with no luck.
Celia hadn’t called the police and reported the trespasser because she was counting on Smallwood not being missed for a few weeks—longer, if possible. If she reported the kid, the authorities might connect Smallwood to Woods, the dead man in Carpenter Park. Considering the child’s size, Celia thought she might be eleven or twelve, a little older than her ten-year-old daughter, Merris. Thin and scrappy-looking, the child wore faded jeans and a denim jacket far too thin for the November evening.
The girl lit a cigarette and glanced around. Celia stepped back from her kitchen window. By the time she peeked around the curtain again, the girl and her trash bag were gone. Something about the kid, she wasn’t sure what, made Celia uneasy.
By winter, Celia had seen the girl often enough to know she’d moved into the house next door. From time to time, late at night, Celia saw a dim light over there. Sometimes she caught the faint smell of cigarette smoke when she was coming and going from her own home.
Newspapers piled up on the porch and finally stopped. The mailbox was emptied daily, as if the kid knew that postal carriers called the police when something on their route appeared suspicious.
Late in January, Celia noticed a man in a business suit and coat get out of a car that said First Trust Bank on its door. He walked around the house, looking in the windows, then left and came back with boards and nailed a broken basement window shut. In mid-February the bank put a sign in the yard that announced an upcoming auction of the property. One bright sunny day when the temperatures were single-digit, Celia watched as men on a truck disconnected the power. Did the bank know it was off? Maybe the water pipes had heat tapes. Did those require electricity?
That night, after her own children were in bed, Celia went over to Smallwood’s house and tapped on the front door, then circled the house to the back door. She called, “If you’re in there, I want you to know that I have heat in my house. Any time you need to get warm come and knock on my back door. I’ll let you in.”
Celia put her ear to the door and listened. Nothing. She knocked again and shouted, “No questions asked. No police. Just one neighbor helping another.”
By this time Celia had decided the girl could have been one of Smallwood’s victims or a runaway. He might have abducted her. Either the child was waiting for him to come home or she was aware the house was empty because she knew he was dead.
The next morning after Celia had taken her kids to school, sh
e walked over to the corner house again. This time she took a claw hammer and the jack handle from her car. She wouldn’t break in the front. Someone would discover that much sooner. She went to the back door and rattled the handle. A quarter panel of glass had been knocked out of the kitchen door. Celia laid the jack handle and the hammer on the back steps, reached in, and unfastened the deadbolt lock. As she opened the door she yelled, “Are you here?”
The stench of rotting garbage was the first thing she noticed. The trash was stacked in and around the can. Dirty dishes seemed to be stacked in layers on the table and in the sink. Cabinet doors hung open and the shelves inside them were practically bare. Only some spices and a couple of cans of spinach and kidney beans remained. The room seemed alive, and as Celia’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw thousands of cockroaches, circling madly, crawling in every direction. The last thing she wanted was to carry bugs home.
Shivering with disgust Celia stepped over the trash toward the living room. The coffee table contained an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts and burnt-down candles stuck upright to the tabletop in cooled puddles of wax. A thick film of dust covered everything. Empty soda cans were scattered around the couch, which was covered with several blankets and a couple of pillows. The kid had been sleeping in here and had probably been using the candles for a little heat.
Celia searched the house, checking closets and both bedrooms. In the larger bedroom she found hundreds of pictures tacked up on one wall. Some had been pulled off and ripped up—their pieces lay scattered on the floor. Celia searched the room, then returned to the makeshift gallery. They were pictures of children. Some dressed, others not. She picked up torn pieces from the floor and tried to fit them together. She was successful with one of them, which was a nude photo of a little girl. She might be the child who was staying in the house. The photo looked a little like her—except the girl in these photos couldn’t have been over seven years old.
Sick to her stomach, Celia laid the bits of paper on the dresser and was ready to leave when a photo on the edge of the display caught her eye. She moved closer. It looked like—yes, it was, Merris. Taken last summer in the park. Trembling, Celia snatched the photo from the wall and left the room.
In the kitchen, on the counter next to the back door, she saw a pile of unopened mail. Laid out in stacks were several windowed envelopes, a couple of them opened. There were late notices and shut-off notices for all the utilities. Several pieces of mail were from the bank.
At home, in her own kitchen, Celia placed the photo of Merris on the counter and dug empty grocery bags from beneath the sink. She opened her own cabinets and started filling them with potato chips, cookies, snack crackers, peanut butter, bread, and boxes of apple juice. She searched her cabinets for anything that didn’t have to be cooked or refrigerated, anything with some nutritional value. She topped off the second bag with a one-pound carton of Velveeta cheese and put a case of bottled water on the kitchen table, stacked the two brown bags on top of it, and carefully lifted the stuff. To her surprise, she made it all the way to the neighbor’s unlocked back door and into the kitchen without dropping anything.
Celia shoved the mail aside and set the water and the bags of food on the counter. Picking up two full black trash bags, she dragged them across the yard to her own trash cans, then returned to the neighbor’s house one last time to grab another bag and lock up.
Back at home, Celia quickly stripped off all her clothes and took a long hot shower.
She neither saw nor heard the child for several days. One afternoon the man from the bank pulled up to the curb again. Celia grabbed her coat and went out her front door. She called to the man and he turned in her direction.
This time he was carrying a No Trespassing sign.
She hurried toward him. “What’s going on?”
“It looks like your neighbor abandoned the property,” the man said, eyeing her suspiciously. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Smallwood around here?”
Celia shrugged. “Months ago, I think.”
“Was he close to any of the neighbors?”
“Not really.”
“You have any idea where he might have gone?”
Celia pretended to consider this. “No. He kept pretty much to himself.”
The man nodded and said, “This happens more than people think—especially in this economy. Now a homeless guy’s staying here.”
“You’re kidding.”
“You wouldn’t expect to have a homeless person in this neighborhood. Maybe it’s someone who knew the owner. Have you seen anyone?”
Celia shook her head.
“We’ll have to report it to the police. They’ll get the vagrant cleared out. We have a helluva clean-up job inside, thanks to this guy.”
“Maybe he decided to stay somewhere else since the heat is turned off.”
The man from the bank cocked his head and looked at her.
Celia’s heart leapt and she rushed to explain. “I saw the truck in the alley last week. I just assumed…”
“Jesus. I’ll have to go in and check the pipes.” The man dug in his coat pocket and handed her a business card. “My name is Frank Hughes. I manage the property for the bank. If you see anyone suspicious, please call me, or the police if it’s late at night.”
Celia stared at the silky gray card. She wasn’t really reading it. She just couldn’t look Hughes in the eye.
He didn’t seem to notice. “We’re in the process of a foreclosure and then we’ll auction this place. With an auction we don’t have to clean it up much, but the company that maintains our properties for us will have to get a truck out here to haul away the trash. No point in doing that as long as someone’s trespassing.”
Celia nodded and backed away. “I’ll let you know if I see anyone.” If they discovered anything illegal in the house—the porn on the wall and God knows what else—they might connect the abandoned home to the dead pedophile killed in the park last November.
Hughes called after her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name.”
“Excuse me.” She turned and hurried toward her own house. Over her shoulder, she said, “I left something on the stove.”
*
On Ruby’s first day home, Sophie took her to the spare bedroom upstairs, the one with the slanted ceilings, the one Matt used for most of his life. On the twin-sized bed, which was a little bigger than her prison cot, lay a stack of new clothes, the tags still on them.
Ruby looked at the tiny, dark room. She’d had some of this same furniture when she was a child—things that Matt used in turn. In a corner was a child’s-size desk with a globe, where Matt did his homework. She closed her eyes and let the image come—Matt, sitting there night after night doing his math problems so he could watch an hour of TV before bedtime. She could see him, with his father’s dark skin and her coarse, straight black hair. The shape of his eyes had been just Asian enough to make him appear perpetually tired. He’d been a smart boy—a good boy. School was easy for him once they discovered, in second grade, she thought, that he needed glasses to read. And though Ruby had used crack during her first trimester, he showed no ill effects.
Being in this room brought it all back, the guilt and the pain. Matt had earned the right to a college education and would have gotten one if Ruby hadn’t stolen and smoked the money. She cringed. Rightly so, Lois blamed her for Matt’s death. He had seen the military as a way to get a college degree and a leg up on a career, and that had cost him his life.
Lois hadn’t wanted him to go. She’d been in the military and knew what it was like. But what options were left? He could stay home and flip burgers or deliver pizzas for a living. He’d enlisted in the marines on his eighteenth birthday in the summer of 2001. He’d been completing basic training on September 11 when the terrorists attacked the U.S. He was shipped to Afghanistan in a matter of weeks and was killed in a helicopter crash on Christmas Eve that same year.
“I guessed at the size.”
Ruby was startled. She’d forgotten Sophie was with her.
“You’ve lost some weight since the last time I shopped for you.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Ruby said. “But you shouldn’t have.”
“You need clothes, don’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then just say thank you.”
Ruby turned and embraced her. She no longer felt the stiffness she had months ago at the end of that first visit. She said, “Thank you.”
The clothes were nothing fancy: two sets of sweatpants and sweatshirts, one red and the other gray: a pair of jeans, two flannel shirts, underwear, and socks. Sophie said, “The jeans will be all right for school, won’t they? I would have gotten you more than one pair, but like I said, I didn’t know the size.”
Ruby kept the promises she’d made to Sophie. She found an AA Clubhouse and started going to meetings three or four times a week. She’d enrolled at City College and would start taking classes in the summer semester. At home those first days it seemed like she and Sophie were the only ones in the house. Lois managed to avoid her when she could. A week went by before Ruby, weary of the tension, tried to talk to her.
That day was overcast and windy, a warm day for February. Ruby pulled her flannel shirt around her and went out the back door. The small bag she’d brought home from Dwight was gone. The trash collectors had taken it away several days ago on their weekly rounds. The backyard was one of Lois’s retreats. As Ruby approached her from behind, she saw a large black dog on the other side of the fence.
“My God,” Ruby said, “is that Daisy?”
Lois turned. “Do you remember her?”
“Of course,” Ruby said. “She must be old by now.”
“Both of us are.” Lois reached over the fence and scratched the dog’s ear.
“Why is she chained out here?”
Lois shrugged. “Her rat-bastard owner parks her and rarely gives her fresh water. Never exercises her. The list of things he neglects is fairly long.”
Retirement Plan Page 9
