She was dreaming now. Chad was standing in a hotel room in his ridiculous Simpsons boxers, a warm bottle of beer in his hand. He was standing in front of the television, doing a little dance that made Juno laugh. Bart Simpson waved his middle finger at Juno from the left ass cheek of Chad’s boxers. Behind him, on the blue-lit screen of the TV, Juno saw another of her former clients, Pattie Stoves. Pattie had been seeing Juno about the guilt she had over having an affair with the minister of her church, Pastor Paul.
“No, no, no—” Juno said as Pattie, on the TV screen, rode the minister, her lips opening in pleasure. Chad, who thought Juno was talking to him, looked momentarily over his shoulder, winking at her. He was a stocky guy, muscular, and for a moment she watched him twerk as Pattie moaned from behind his torso. Juno was about to tell Chad to put on some music when she realized a song was already playing: “Summer of ’69” by Bryan Adams. Now Juno felt sick, even in her dream. Her stomach rolled dangerously as Chad shimmied toward her, his Simpsons underpants tented with his erection.
“Wheeeeeeeee...” Chad cried, bending his knees and throwing his fists into the air. Juno’s eyes switched to the TV where Pattie Stoves was sitting on her minister’s hairy knee obediently. She was naked and seemed wholly unbothered by it as he reclined behind her.
“Get out of here...get the fuck out of here, you’re scaring the kids.”
Juno looked in confusion at the naked woman in the television. She could see the minister’s chest behind Pattie, smooth and muscular, dotted with sweat. He was massaging Pattie’s breast even as she screamed at Juno.
Pattie was really mad now; she stood up, her breasts bouncing sharply in her anger. And then she leaned through the TV, her torso emerging from the screen like it had been nothing but a box the whole time. She reached for Juno and grabbed her by the lapels of her coat.
“You’re a waste of life,” Pattie snarled into her face. Juno looked around for help. Where was Chad...? When Juno looked up again, she was suddenly in Greenlake Park, lying on a bench opposite the playground, Pattie’s scream echoing: “You’re scaring them!” But Pattie herself was gone; so were Chad and Pastor Paul, and a man was glaring down at her, his hands fisted on the shoulders of her jacket. He was young, and behind him was a little girl in a yellow coat, looking scared.
The man was leaning over her, bearing down. Juno lay on a park bench opposite yellow and blue playground equipment. She read his expression, noted the tight pull of his mouth, and realized he meant to do her harm. Juno tried to shrink back, but he kept leaning down into her face, saying terrible things. Her eyes darted around, looking for help, but none came. Overhead, clouds of charcoal rolled like the sky was about to split. To her right was a playground surrounded by pines so tall they disappeared out of her vision, poking at the gray thunderclouds. Could she use the covered slide as shelter? She’d done it once before, her bottom half curled into the mouth of the yellow tube, the rest of her lying on the metal pedestal that fed children into the slide. It was covered by a plastic roof that resembled the turret of a castle. There was just enough coverage from the trees that passing cops couldn’t see her. And then this man—this stranger—shouted her awake. He looked disgustedly at her as he shouted his next words: “Go!”
He released her abruptly, casting a look over his shoulder at the little girl. Juno fell backward, hitting her head on the bench, and then landing on her back on the concrete. She felt the pain burst in her head as she had then; sharp and blinding so that her vision blurred.
“Go!” he shouted again.
“Leave me alone,” Juno screamed, thrashing on the concrete. Couldn’t he see that she was struggling...that she didn’t want to be here any more than he wanted her to be here.
As the first drops of rain fell over the playground, he called her horrible names. But she wasn’t those things; she was a woman with nothing and no one, but surely she wasn’t just the sum of her mistakes. Must he take her bench, too?
“Cunt,” he’d said as he strode quickly away, snatching up his daughter like she was a cardboard prop. The little girl, no older than eight, met Juno’s eyes even as she hung over her father’s shoulder, bouncing with his steps.
Don’t see me like he does, she begged silently with her eyes. The child looked unsure, her little eyebrows drawing together. It happened so quickly Juno had to replay the moment several times in her mind to fully appreciate it. The girl lifted her hand and waved. It could have been that she was steadying herself as her father navigated the playground, lugging her back to the car, but Juno didn’t think so. She saw the girl’s little palm lift in a bumpy salute before she looked over her shoulder to where her father was carrying her. That little hand hung in Juno’s mind as she lay back on the bench gasping for breath. The porcelain palm of that child, accepting her with an innocent concern.
“I’m sorry,” Juno said. “I’m not what you think.” She wasn’t just telling the child with the deep brown eyes: she was telling everyone who was willing to listen: I’m not what you think. I’m scared, too. I’m sad, too. I want my family, but they don’t want me.
She woke with a start. The child was gone, the angry father was gone, Chad and his Simpsons undies were gone...the crawl space grinned at Juno. Her fever had broken.
She sipped timidly from the can of apple juice and thought of Pattie Stoves. Coy, shy Pattie—who wore Chanel N⁰ 5 because her mother told her men couldn’t resist it, and who knew how to line her eyes in just the right way to speak to a pastor. Pattie Stoves, who had been cheating on her husband with the minister of her church. She’d spoken more of their rendezvous than she did of her children. By their third session, Juno had gotten the distinct impression that Pattie didn’t want help from a therapist at all; what she really wanted was a girlfriend with whom to share her secrets. It was a bragging thing, her coming into Juno’s office and telling her every detail in that hush-hush little voice. Around their third session Juno came right out and asked the million-dollar question Pattie had been skirting around for the last two sessions.
“Are you here, Pattie, because you feel guilty on account of having sex with your minister, or do you feel guilty about cheating on your husband?”
Pattie Stoves had mulled over that one for a few minutes, her gold sandals and gold-painted toenails bopping along with her thoughts.
“The first one,” she said sadly. But Juno didn’t see any sadness in her eyes. Pattie was enjoying her affair. She described her minister in great detail, drawing a picture of a very fit golden boy who’d been pressured into marriage right out of college, and had nothing but Jesus in common with his wife. Pattie herself was nothing to write home about, but she had the sort of body that could pass for much younger, and Juno noticed that she dressed to emphasize it. After a year of biweekly counseling with Pattie Stoves, Juno felt like she’d been reading a particularly saucy romance novel, one in the taboo genre. One Sunday, when Pattie was visiting family out of state, and Kregger took the boys on a fishing trip, she’d put on a dress and gone to the church—Juno had learned its name from one of her sessions with Pattie. She arrived late and sat in the back pew, holding a Bible she’d stolen from a Motel Six a few years ago. Pattie’s minister was exactly as Juno pictured him. She wondered if Pattie was the only parishioner he was having an affair with.
When she’d looked around the church, every female eye was unblinking as they watched him deliver a sermon on... Juno couldn’t even remember what. After that, her obsession had taken a slight turn, veering away from Pattie and her high-schooler tits and toward Pastor Paul Blanchard himself. Pattie told her that Pastor Paul liked to go to Tip Top Donuts on Wednesday mornings to do his devotions and spend time in prayer. Tip Top was at least thirty miles away from the church, closer to Juno’s side of town.
Juno figured he’d probably told Pattie that to get some time to himself; affairs tended to be time-consuming. She stopped at the Tip Top on her way to the offi
ce one Wednesday morning, forgoing the drive-through to step inside. And there he was, Mr. Pastor Man himself, having coffee with a petite brunette. From then on Juno made it a point to always go inside on Wednesday mornings and was pleased to see that Pastor Paul was always drinking coffee with the same lady friend. It wasn’t his wife, either—she’d seen the pastor with his wife at the Sunday service.
She supposed that if anyone were to see them, Pastor Paul would say he was counseling the woman; after all, they met in a public place. And as far as Juno had seen there had never been so much as a pinkie touch between them, and no one even spared them a glance. She’d started thinking that maybe there was nothing going on between them, and then one day she’d waited in her car, waited long enough to see them leave. Instead of getting into his own car, Pastor Paul waited five minutes in front of Tip Top, leaning against the side of the building, his head bent over his phone. Then, with barely a glance around, he crossed the parking lot, hopping over a short hedge, and approached a dark blue minivan. The door opened as Juno imagined the brunette’s legs were ready to, and the good pastor would do his work in the back seat of the Honda. Juno waited thirty minutes before driving away. She had a session with Pattie in an hour and was fascinated to know if her own view of the woman had changed with this new development.
But it hadn’t stopped there. The next time had been by accident; Juno was going to the post office when she’d spotted Cayleigh Little through the window, heading for the Food Mart. Cayleigh, who went by Clee, was in her late twenties, one of Juno’s weekly patients. Juno avoided run-ins with her patients if she could; it was awkward for everyone involved. But she abandoned her place in line to get a better look.
Peering through the glass and into the street, she followed the woman’s progress across the parking lot. Clee Little was single, she lived by herself in the city, and she had no family in the area. She claimed to be a sex addict, often detailing her antics with pride in her voice. For a moment Juno wasn’t even sure it was her, but then, she spotted the hot pink key fob she often saw in their sessions. It was dangling from Clee’s free hand. Her other hand was attached to a child’s, and she had a baby strapped to her chest in a carrier. The whole scene upset Juno, made her leave the post office and walk faster to catch up. Clee was dressed differently, in blue jeans and a T-shirt. Had Juno ever seen her in anything but one of her high-powered work outfits? She was on the sidewalk now, following the mother and her two children through the sliding doors. They headed for the freezer section, Clee with the baby, no older than seven months, attached to her chest. Juno watched, fascinated, as she piled frozen dinners into her cart, calling out for the toddler to slow down as he darted ahead of her. She could be babysitting, Juno thought, eyeing the carrier on her chest.
“Mama!” the little boy called, running toward Clee. She’d not seen Juno standing nearby and was cooing to the toddler. Why would she lie and pretend to be single? Claim that she didn’t have children when she so clearly had two of them? For some people, the lie was the escape. Or perhaps she really was a sex addict and didn’t want Juno to know that she had a family. Clee never found out that Juno followed her around Food Mart. Neither did any of the others. For a while Juno was able to be as invisible as she felt and if anyone ever saw her—which they occasionally did (once at a restaurant)—she’d act like it was purely coincidental. She hadn’t needed to follow Chad; no. He’d pursued her from the start. Juno had his number and every other man who started their game with the same line: “I’m not like this, you’re the exception.”
Fourth degree criminal sexual conduct carried a minimum two-year prison sentence. The law frowned deeply on the abuse of power; for a therapist to have sex with a client was certainly that. And if that’s all she’d been charged with, perhaps there would have been something to fight for, but by the time Juno served a four-year sentence (two for the sexual misconduct and two for intentional affliction of emotional distress and sexual harassment by a professional) everyone from her life had moved on. She didn’t recognize them any more than they recognized her, those old friends. Her hands had touched things their hands would never touch; her eyes had witnessed things that would make them wet their practical high-waisted panties. Even as Juno scurried away from her former neighborhood, she’d realized that she didn’t want to be there anymore anyway. It felt soiled now; a white shirt you could never get the blood stains out of. Could a person change too much to go back? She used to say no, but now she lived the yes.
It was thirty-two degrees outside, according to the news, which Juno watched from Nigel’s den, wrapped in a thick fleece throw that smelled of Nigel. Juno knew the smell; she knew all their smells. Nigel smelled reedy, like grass and spices. Winnie didn’t have a smell of her own anymore; she coated herself with expensive perfumes and she smelled like a department store. And Sam, well, he smelled salty, like a kid. He left behind the faint scent of baloney.
She stared mindlessly at the TV, her hair still damp from the shower she’d taken. The shower had tired her out. On TV a reporter was standing in grass, wearing a thick puffer jacket. She looked uncomfortable in it, despite the resplendent Christmas tree behind her. Everyone was sick to death of winter, and it was only December. How long until Groundhog Day? she thought.
She turned off the TV and stared resolutely at the blank screen. It had become more difficult for her to get up from the crawl space in the last few weeks, the pain in her joints flaring beyond the help of the aspirin from the Crouches’ medicine cabinet. She wished there was still a stash of oxy in there, but that was gone now, thanks to Sam.
Most days she chose instead to lay curled in the nest she’d made with the foam mattress she’d snuck from the camping supplies. She’d taken blankets and a sleeping bag, too, from the linen closet upstairs, and once Winnie donated a garbage bag of old throws, as she called them, which Juno ferried down the hole before Nigel could cart it away. No one ever noticed her thefts, though Juno supposed they weren’t really thefts, since everything was technically still in the house, and it was stuff they were getting rid of anyway. Winnie and Nigel were too busy with their own shenanigans to notice hers.
She’d amassed a small wardrobe of discarded sweatshirts and sweatpants from the giveaway bags, things she washed weekly in the Crouches’ laundry room. When the weather got very cold, and the ground in the crawl space turned icy, Juno would crawl up at night and sleep in her old digs underneath the snowsuits and Halloween costumes in Hems Corner. That was a treat. On those days, she stayed upstairs for most of the day, collecting supplies and standing near a window for a few minutes to soak up some of the sun (if it showed itself). She washed her clothes and blankets, took a bath, ate a warm meal, and watched the news. By that time Juno was nearly asleep on her feet. When she lowered herself back to her crawl space after a day at the Crouches, she was tiiiired. Or maybe it’s your kidneys that are tired, she told herself. But as dandy as her growing nest and wardrobe were becoming, nothing compared to the bliss of sleeping in the apartment during this glorious week without the Crouches.
She could hear the faint rumble of the dryer from where she sat, trying to read but too distracted.
She took the clothes out, warm and smelling of the dryer sheets, and folded each one into the grocery bag she was borrowing from Winnie. She knew the vacation was temporary, and soon she’d head back to the crawl space. But if Juno were honest, she was able to spend multiple days in the crawl space in moderate comfort: changing out her clothes, sleeping without worrying about people messing with her or cops chasing her off. Cops young enough to be her son, boys who had little to no respect for people her age, never mind homeless people her age. No, she preferred it down here under the Crouch house, suffering in peace. She had a fleet of apple juice and water jugs now: three for waste, two for water, one for trash. She kept those in what she considered her toilet area—the farthest corner of the crawl space. Juno considered her crawl over to be exercise, which she g
ot very little of these days. She figured it wouldn’t matter for long; her kidneys burned like coals in her body, hot and sweating under the pressure of too many work hours and poor work conditions.
“Sorry, ladies...” She used one hand to reach back to massage a kidney and the other to slam the dryer closed. Juno’s things were packed and ready to go. She carried the bundle to the closet and lowered everything into the crawl space, the smells of dirt and ammonia sweeping around her in a gust of dead air. She was used to it, though Juno had no doubt she was now sharing her lungs with mold spores.
Standing up, she looked down with satisfaction at the things she’d managed to get done this morning: laundry, a shower, TV time, and she’d even got a little exercise in. The last thing she needed to do was eat.
The walk to the fridge was a long one; Juno never knew if there would be food to take. Glory hallelujah, someone had gone to the market, and if Juno could bet money on it, she’d say that the someone was Nigel. Leftovers were vegetarian meat loaf and real mashed potatoes. By the time they got back the food would go straight to the trash anyway. Juno ate it cold, straight from the tub. Then she washed and dried the Tupperware, putting it into the drawer with its fellows.
Outside it was raining; the grass was a spunky neon. The blue-gray clouds drooped like bellies over Seattle. Despite the clouds, there were spears of light breaking through, hitting the lawn and sidewalks and street beyond with the type of light you’d see in a Thomas Kinkade painting. Two memories surfaced uncomfortably in her mind. She looked away despite the beauty of the scene in front of her; in fact, because of the beauty of it. Juno the therapist had loved grass, a rarity in New Mexico. It had become a fascination in Washington to Juno the newly homeless. There was always grass, deep-watered, green and soft. When she slept in the park, she’d kept Kregger’s Swiss Army knife by her side, though the thought of trying to stab someone with the tiny blade held in her swollen, arthritic hands was laughable. It made her feel better to have it there, nevertheless. She hadn’t known where else to go, and there were always people chasing you away. The park had been the only welcoming place for Juno, so she stayed through summer and into fall. But Washington changed come fall, the never-ending drizzle coating the ground she slept on and leaving the grass wet. She remembered the damp seeping through her clothes night after night as she tried to get warm. She was never dry for those months and she’d become deathly ill, her fever spiking so high she’d been delirious. Some good Samaritan—a jogger who’d seen her in the same spot the day before—had called the ambulance. After that, she’d had the blue tent for a while.
The Wrong Family Page 16
