As she snapped the white plastic in the air to open it fully, she glanced at the security camera mounted on the wall about fifteen feet up. There were exactly twenty-seven of these cameras placed around the store, and Ellen had memorized their locations. That and a few surreptitious trips past the glassed-in security booth, which housed the monitors, had helped Ellen identify precisely what was revealed by these watchful electronic eyes, and, more important, what they missed. Making sure that her cart was blocking the chip bag from the lens, Ellen produced a box cutter that she kept in her fanny pack, made a slit down the back seam of the chips bag, shook about a fourth of the product into the clean bag, knotted it loosely and placed it on top of her cart. Then, using a roll of clear packing tape, she closed the seam of the Doritos bag and repositioned it. It looked much like the others. With a self-satisfied grunt, Ellen read the words “Contents may have settled during shipping.”
When her shift was over, Ellen would punch her time card and then spend an extra hour cleaning—off the clock. It was her way of paying for the items she took home. She knew they would never be missed, but she was a barterer, not a thief.
During break, Ellen went to a stall in the ladies’ room, taking with her a liter of orange soda and a family pack of Xtra Cheddar Goldfish snacks. She was munching the last broken fin crumbs when she heard the door open and someone enter. Closing one eye, she peeked through the crack in the door to see Irena standing by the sink, sobbing with her face in her hands. After a few minutes, the woman splashed cold water over her face, wiped it roughly with the brown paper towels, and left. Ellen came cautiously out. She did not like that Irena had been mistreated. She gingerly prodded the part of her that felt good she had done even a small thing to deter it. It didn’t hurt, so she decided to keep a closer eye on the whipped Russian puppy. Somehow, the idea made her feel . . . bigger, but then, she thought, maybe that was the Goldfish.
Remembering the satisfying feel of the bag snatcher’s instep under her stomping foot, a new and totally unexpected character trait raised its hand to request a turn in Ellen’s persona, like an infant flexing a tiny muscle, and Ellen’s cautious smirk writhed and curled deliciously.
So, the Boss thought that his antics were invisible.
Ellen thought, Welcome to my world.
When Ellen arrived home at seven a.m., she closed and bolted the door behind her. That was the first step to casting off the nerve-scratchy sensation that always followed her in from the world outside. But the next step was to shore up her interior walls of defense, which required constant maintenance, and she never went wrong with bacon. Its heft and solidity, its very fattiness, somehow staved off the hunger-fear inside her in the same way the lock on her security door created a safety zone between her and the dangers outside. She unpacked the chips and cookies, opened a soda, and fried half a pound of bacon. While the streaky breakfast meat was sizzling on the tiny range, making a subtle, reassuring sound not unlike a distant, muted conversation, she checked across the courtyard to see if her pets were up, though rising early was not habitual for either of them.
Surprisingly, Heidi was awake. It looked like she had made an effort to dress for the first time in months, and she was nervously straightening up her apartment. She had opened the large kitchen window onto the courtyard and, as Ellen watched her through the security bars, she washed the dirty dishes that had been piling up in her sink and on the small table pushed up under the window, then she scrubbed down the counters. Opening the back door, she swept the floor, whipping up small clouds of dust spotted with flittering bits of trash out into the bleak gravel. Cracking the window slats of her own kitchen door, Ellen could hear Heidi’s portable radio, balanced on top of the fridge, playing a hard rock station. Ellen sniffed with distaste; the only station she cared for was the local college’s classical one, though she couldn’t have identified a single sonata if her life depended on it. She liked symphony music because it lasted a long time and because it was like a soundtrack, with pictures provided by her own imagination. It took her places—around corners, through forests, to castles and islands—places she would otherwise never have thought to go.
Watching the unusual a.m. activity, Ellen ate her breakfast. She put the bacon on white toast, thickly smeared with peanut butter, and smushed it all down into a satisfying, soft yet crunchy mass with pressure from her wide palm. The constancy of peanut butter was something she could believe in. At one of her first foster homes, the refrigerator and cabinets had been kept padlocked and the only thing available was a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of harmless white bread, nestled in its happy packaging—polka dots and bright colors that clashed with the grim, cheerless kitchen.
Within a week of her arrival, Ellen had learned to open the door to that house of horrors soundlessly and slink past the den, which stank of unfiltered Brand X cigarettes and relentlessly belched the stupidity of daytime TV. Avoiding the spots on the floor that creaked and gave her away, she would cower in the kitchen as she quickly made three plain peanut butter sandwiches. Taking her schoolbag with its treasure of library books, she would escape up the stairs to the eaves under the roof to pass a few hours as far from the miserable housemother as possible. For Ellen, who avoided all meals in that house, accompanied as they were by a cloud of rancid smoke and her housemother’s constant stream of insults, those sandwiches had been her friends, had sustained her for the six months she’d slept on a mat in the attic before the social worker found the cigarette burns on the backs of her hands. The burns were the inevitable result of being noticed in that “home.” White bread and peanut butter would never hurt anyone. Ellen wrinkled her nose at the memory of the smell of meals in that terrible place—cabbage, always cabbage, cooked into mush—that had infiltrated up to even the unheated space under the roof beams.
But the deliciousness of bacon reassured her, bucking her up and dispensing of memories of that distasteful environment. One piece of the bacon she saved out and threw to Mouse, who ate it with relish and then wandered about sniffing the kitchen floor as if the hickory-smoked treat had materialized through a trapdoor and he was sure to find another. Ellen was enjoying a yawn when she heard a car pull up to the curb outside her front window. She checked through a slit in the curtains, but instead of the expected grocery deliveryman, she saw a well-dressed couple, probably in their late thirties, emerging from a white Land Rover. They glanced nervously up at the seedy apartment building as though they feared it might vandalize their precious SUV. After fixing it with a hostile look, presumably to warn it off, they walked around to the other side of the building. That meant they were headed for either Heidi’s or T-bone’s front door. And Ellen thought it was a safe bet that these people weren’t here to buy weed before eight a.m.
So Heidi had visitors. A second yawn was stifled before it could pry open Ellen’s jaws. Sleep could wait, she thought. This would be good. Positioning herself on her stool by the back window behind the screen, notebook on her knee, Ellen heard the grating rasp of Heidi’s door buzzer, and watched Heidi rush to turn off the music and then stand in the middle of the tiny kitchen, which Ellen could see almost all of through the open door from her slightly raised point of view. Muttering admonishments to herself that Ellen couldn’t make out, and spinning as though to double-check for any exposed contraband, Heidi shook her hands at the wrists, then disappeared from sight.
In a minute, she returned with the couple, leading them to her tiny table jammed up under the open window directly across from and below Ellen’s viewpoint. The angle was so perfect that the scene might have been staged just for her. Heidi nervously served them coffee in mismatched mugs. Her hands shook as she offered them milk from a small carton and it sloshed onto the scratched tabletop.
Ellen angled her head so that she could hear as much as possible, and cranked open the window slats another inch.
The woman was saying, “It’s not a problem, I’ll get it.” She wiped away the spilled
milk with a tissue from her bag, which looked expensive, and then exchanged a look with the man—her husband, Ellen assumed, due to their matching gold bands. “Sit down.”
When Heidi sat, Ellen had a view of all three of them—the couple across from each other in profile, and Heidi, between them, full on. As usual, the ridiculously small, stark-walled courtyard magnified their voices, so she could easily make out the conversation.
“So,” the man was saying, “you’re due in how many weeks?”
“Well, three, but who knows?” Heidi’s forced laugh broke, making it sound more like a gasp of fear. She stared down at her fingers entwined on the table.
The woman straightened her perfect white blouse, and then said, “And the father?”
“He . . . was killed,” Heidi replied, so softly that Ellen could barely make it out, but then Heidi cleared her throat and said more confidently, “In Afghanistan.”
“Oh, he was in the service.” The woman’s voice sounded to Ellen as though she were pleased rather than saddened at hearing what was traditionally regarded as bad news.
“Yes,” Heidi said. “He didn’t know I was pregnant when he shipped out. I didn’t know either, actually, until about three weeks after he was gone, and I never got a chance to tell him.” She gulped. “He was killed two weeks later, and my letter was returned. . . . There was a bomb. . . .” Heidi trailed off, pressing her lips tightly together.
The woman reached out a hand and patted Heidi’s shoulder awkwardly. Then the man spoke; it sounded as if he were trying to be gentle but kindness came unnaturally to him. “And you are certain that you don’t want to keep this baby? Are you sure?” Heidi didn’t answer right away, so he went on. “I’m sorry to be so direct, but we’ve been through this before. You can’t imagine how painful it is to go through this entire process only to have the birth mother change her mind.”
Heidi kept her eyes fixed just in front of her. She said, “I’m sure. I can’t afford a kid, and I don’t even have a job. I want to go back to school and, well, you know, have a life.”
“What about other family?” the woman asked. “Your parents, or his, for example. Do you think there’s any chance that they might try to claim this baby? You understand that they would have a legal right.” She had named the relations with distaste, as though she’d been stung by those scorpions before.
This time Heidi’s laugh was a harsh, hateful sound. “I haven’t spoken to my father since I left Illinois three years ago. He didn’t have much interest in being a father the first time around. In fact, I doubt he’s sobered up enough to notice I’ve gone. My mom died. The father’s parents?” Her mouth tightened. “I never met them, so I don’t have any intention of telling them. I’m not really sure where they are anyway.”
“What about the amount of money we discussed? Will you be willing to sign something that says that is final and you can’t come after us for any more at a future date?”
The girl shrugged. “Why would I do that?”
“I need a solid answer,” the man insisted, pressing harder for the response he wanted.
“Sure, yeah. Whatever.” Heidi shrugged again.
Ellen wrote in her book, “Selling the baby.”
“Do you have any questions for us?” The woman’s tone was tense, but she lacked her husband’s professional coldness.
“Uhm, well, I would just like to know that she’ll be safe, you know. Loved.”
The woman smiled and leaned forward, laying one hand on Heidi’s knotted fingers. “We’ve wanted a baby for fifteen years. But I can’t have any of my own. There are some medical issues. He—”
“The details aren’t relevant,” the man interrupted, and Ellen was sure that at least some of the medical issues were his. “What you need to know is that the child we adopt will be given every opportunity in life. The best schools, nannies, college.”
For the first time, Heidi looked up. Not at the man, but at the woman. She said, “And . . . love?”
“And love,” the woman said as though she were a salesman mentioning the excellent highway mpg of a car she was selling off the showroom floor. “She’ll have lots of love and attention.”
Yeah, right, thought Ellen, from the nannies, while you’re at work. Modern parenting: buy a kid and pay someone else to raise it.
Heidi nodded. “I just didn’t have the happiest childhood, and I don’t want . . .” She trailed off again, then cleared her throat. “And the doctor? Hospital?”
“We’ll take care of all of that, as we discussed on the phone. As long as you deliver a healthy baby, we’ll take care of the financial side and you can have your life back.” Once again Heidi didn’t respond, so the man pressed to close the deal. It was obvious to Ellen that he had a master’s degree in negotiation with a minor in manipulation. “We don’t have long.” As though to illustrate this, he glanced at his watch. Then he looked up at his wife, and Ellen could almost see him gather himself to win this one for her. He straightened up and said with clearly restrained impatience that barely covered his slightly desperate bid to win this objective, “So, not to rush you, we know this isn’t easy, but we need an answer as soon as possible.”
There was a long moment while Heidi twisted her fingers around and around. Finally, she said, “Let’s do it.” Her voice sounded ruined, smashed, thinner and sharper than a penny left on the track and flattened under the wheels of a locomotive.
“Are you sure?” the woman asked sharply.
Heidi stood up and started to clear the coffee cups, though they hadn’t been touched. “Absolutely. Get me the papers.” As she turned away, the husband gave his wife a thumbs-up and what looked like a genuine smile. Reaching off to her left without even having to glance away from the scene below, Ellen pulled down the binoculars she had purchased from an army-navy store and focused in on the woman’s face. Her jaw was rigid with frightened hope. She tried to return her husband’s smile, but her lips were pressed tightly together and trembling, so he leaned over the small table and gave her forehead a peck.
The man pulled a briefcase onto the table and opened it. A thick sheaf of legal documents was laid out. Ellen squinted down through the binoculars, spinning the focus wheel until she could see the writing. All she could make out were the names, printed in bold across the top: SUSAN SMITH NEWLAND, ESQUIRE, AND EDWARD NEWLAND, ESQUIRE, 583 WINSTON AVENUE, HIGHLAND PARK. Lowering the glasses, Ellen copied it into her book.
So, they were a team of sharpshooting lawyers and Heidi was the fish in a barrel, a fact that became more apparent as the conversation turned legal and difficult to follow, which translated to boring. Ellen yawned again and decided to go to bed. She brushed her teeth and changed into pajamas. While she was still nestling into her mound of blankets, she heard the Land Rover start up. Sneaking a look over the sill, she looked down at it. Through the windshield she watched as the woman put her face in her hands and started to shake. Her husband stroked her back, looking lost, then lifted her face and smiled encouragingly at her, speaking rapidly. Ellen was pretty sure he was stressing his confidence that the buck was in the bag, so to speak. So what? she thought as she settled back down. It was probably lucky for the kid these people showed up, lucky for Heidi because now she would have the money to go back to school and quit moping her life away. She should be ecstatic.
But through the still-opened slats of the back-door window, Ellen heard the rise of a strange drawn-out wail, broken by wet, gasping breaths. It wavered, fell, then began again.
Ellen’s gaze went to the card that Temerity had given her, fastened to the wall with a pushpin, and she wondered if Heidi would ever stop making that terrible noise. It was indulgent, Ellen thought critically. She was tired and she needed to sleep. Heidi didn’t want the baby, fine, but don’t turn it into a melodrama.
Yet, deep in some forgotten room of Ellen’s chest, of which she had previously been unaware,
an unsettled restlessness stirred. The fissure that Temerity’s laugh had split open was widening to become a pathway that was allowing things intrusive and unfamiliar to slip through into lost corridors. It didn’t occur to her to feel sorry for Heidi. Besides the fact that Ellen was adept at blocking emotion, not to mention the fact that having no one to empathize with left her a bit fuzzy on the overall concept of empathy, the girl’s problems were her own doing after all. And everyone had problems, all you had to do was pay attention to see that, and paying attention was what Ellen did best. It was more like . . . well, she thought uneasily, it’s that it wasn’t a soap opera melodrama, Heidi wasn’t a bad actor reading overwritten lines, it was her life, and Ellen was . . . invested in it. Someone was messing with her pet, and Ellen did not like it.
Before she could dismiss her irritation enough to go to sleep, a noisy car, the muffler missing or at least barely clinging to life, pulled up to the curb outside. A door slammed, feet stomped up her stairs. There was a tap at her door. “Delivery!” a voice called out.
Invisible Ellen Page 3
