The File on Angelyn Stark

by Catherine Atkins

  Mom laughs, more of a bark. “He likes you, all right!”

  I stare at her. “I think we should forget this. I will if you will.”

  Her eyes narrow. “What did you tell Mr. Rossi?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, it’s something. The way he looked at you.”

  “Mr. Rossi didn’t look at me. He looked anywhere else.”

  “The way he didn’t look, then. Like he was scared to look.”

  “Danny’s scared to look,” I say.

  Hands on hips. “Danny, again.”

  “He’s scared to look. Do we really want to go there, Mom? Do you?”

  She studies me. “Are you confused, Angelyn, like your teacher said?”

  “Yeah. I’m confused.” Totally sarcastic.

  A muscle car zips past, a vroom from nowhere and gone.

  I sweep a hand to the road. “Can we go? I want to go.”

  Mom nods. “I’m bringing Danny in on this.”

  “No!” I call after her. “Hey! I’ve got more reason to be pissed than you.”

  She keeps on toward the truck. I follow, nowhere else to go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Danny’s in the hall when we come in. A towel tucked in his pants.

  He thumbs to the kitchen. “Hey, Sherry, I made dinner.”

  Mom shakes her head. “We’ve got to talk.”

  “Something wrong?” he asks.

  I stand between them. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “So, go,” Mom says.

  When I come back, they’re in the front room. Danny’s in the armchair and Mom is on the couch. She slaps a spot beside her.

  “No,” I say, standing at the wall.

  “We’re doing this,” Mom says.

  “I’m tired and I don’t feel right. I need to lie down.”

  “You know something, Angelyn? I’m tired and I don’t feel right either. Come here and lie down if you want to lie down.”

  “No,” I say. “Not there.”

  Mom says, “Why not?”

  I make my mouth tight.

  Mom nods to Danny. “Say something to her.”

  “Act right,” he tells me. “It’s past time.”

  Head down, I fold my arms.

  “Let’s do this in the kitchen,” he says.

  Danny’s made tacos. He takes his time setting them up. My gut is like iron.

  Mom taps the table. “What’s the occasion?”

  “I picked up a job today,” Danny says over his shoulder. “A lady wants me to install new gutters. If she likes the work, she’s got more that needs doing.”

  “You’re getting paid up front?”

  “Half now, half when the job is done. Same as always.”

  Mom grunts. “It’s been so long I’ve forgot.”

  Danny sets the platter on the table and sits beside her.

  “Sherry, what’s going on?” he says.

  The tacos look foul, flopped in a slab, grease weeping through the sides. Pooling on the plate. The spice smell gets up my nose.

  “Angelyn was in trouble today at school,” Mom says.

  “That’s not new,” Danny says.

  “This kind of trouble is.”

  “What’d she do now?” he asks.

  “While we were out of town,” Mom says, “Angelyn spent the night at a teacher’s house. A male teacher’s house.”

  Danny takes a couple of tacos. “That’s deep.”

  “Shut up,” I say. Under my breath.

  “We had a little meeting about it,” Mom says after a pause. “The vice principal, the teacher, Angelyn, and me.”

  Danny crunches. “Is the guy in trouble?”

  The question hangs. Mom doesn’t answer it. She looks at me.

  My heart beats faster. “Mr. Rossi shouldn’t be in trouble.”

  Sour-faced, Danny chews on.

  “He shouldn’t be,” I add.

  Danny swallows what he’s got. “Sherry, you want to call her off?”

  “You can look at her, Dan,” Mom says.

  “What?” he says. I’m frowning.

  “Angelyn thinks you’re scared to look at her.”

  “Don’t tell him that,” I say. Then: “He is scared. He is!”

  Danny says: “Your mother told me not to.”

  “Mom, you did?” I ask, and we’re quiet.

  “Do you want to look at her?” Mom is hoarse.

  “Hell no!” He’s loud.

  “That teacher picked up some funny ideas somewhere,” Mom says.

  Danny’s looking at me now. “What are you stirring up?”

  I search him. Dull brown eyes, and nothing reflected back.

  “I’m not stirring up anything,” I say. “People are seeing it in me.”

  What you put there.

  “Am I being accused of something?” he says, staring now.

  Mom nods to me. “This is Angelyn’s show.”

  “It isn’t,” I say. “Mom, I don’t know what you want.”

  “Sherry, she pushes herself at people,” Danny says. “That’s the problem.”

  I do not. The words catch in my mouth.

  “She pushed herself at me.” He waves in my direction. “Twelve years old, and built almost like that.”

  “Don’t say how she’s built.” Mom is almost absent.

  I lean in. To cover myself. To talk to him. “I didn’t push. We were friends. You said so.”

  Danny’s lip curls. “She was all over me.”

  “Mom.” I sound like a kid.

  She’s head down, listening.

  “Okay. I was all over Mr. Rossi. I really was. And he wouldn’t. He said I was a child—a child to him now.”

  “That’s what this is,” Danny says. “She’s protecting this guy.”

  “No,” I say. “It’s not about that. Mr. Rossi doesn’t like me anymore.”

  Danny’s eyes play over me. “That’s ’cause he got caught.”

  Mom looks up.

  “So—” I say, “no one would like me unless they were messing with me?”

  Danny puts a hand on Mom’s chair.

  “Mr. Rossi didn’t mess with me.”

  “All right, Angelyn,” Mom says.

  “He stopped liking me.”

  I’m pointing at Danny.

  “Careful, now,” he says.

  Mom turns to him. “Careful?”

  Danny’s watching me. “She’s geared up for something.”

  “When he—” I stop. “When Danny—”

  “Just a minute.” He’s rising.

  I’m standing too. “You stopped liking me when you got caught.”

  “I didn’t get caught! It was that kid,” Danny says, “that dopey kid.”

  “He wasn’t so dopey. Not about you.”

  “I’ve heard enough.” Mom speaks evenly.

  “Danny touched me.” I sag with it.

  “You lie!” He shouts it.

  I sit, arms curved around my stomach.

  “Then you sit too, Dan,” Mom says, and I hear him sit, heavily.

  “It’s a lie,” he says.

  I raise my eyes. “I’m not lying anymore.”

  Mom looks back at me.

  Danny slouches. “Shut up. Grow up.”

  “It’s hard to grow up,” I say. “When my boyfriend touches me, I feel you.”

  “Boyfriend?” Mom says.

  Then there’s nothing. For I don’t know how long.

  “The girl never liked me,” Danny says.

  “I loved you.” I search him again. “Did you ever—like me?”

  His mouth works like he’s chewing tobacco. “No. I never did.”

  “That’s a lie.” My voice cracks.

  “Angelyn, you leave us to talk,” Mom says.

  “He’s lying. He is.”

  “Go.”

  I tip the chair, leaving.

  I hear Mom ask, “Has it started again?”

  Has it started again?


  It’s what I think when I wake up.

  How could she ask that?

  I check the clock. It’s 8:15. Long past our time to leave for her work and my school.

  Did she leave me here with him?

  Mom is in the kitchen at the window.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” I ask.

  She leans against the sink. “Have something to eat.”

  The table holds one set of dishes, used.

  “Those are mine,” Mom says.

  “Where are his?” I ask.

  “Danny went out on the job early.”

  My stomach rumbles. I take an orange. I work on the peel, facing her.

  “Mom, what’s going to happen?”

  She turns. “We’re getting your backpack today.”

  Sacramento is a two-hour run.

  “You won’t get in trouble on your job, doing this?” I ask as we start.

  “Let me worry about my job,” Mom says.

  “You keep saying you want me to worry about it too.”

  “Angelyn.” Her voice is strained. “I need a day to think. Away from here. Is that all right with you?”

  Away. “Yes,” I say, sitting back.

  Morning light floods the truck. We could be twins in ball caps and sunglasses.

  I flip the visor down. Mom gets coffee for the drive. I sip Diet Coke. An hour later we stop to pee.

  In Manteca we pick up Interstate 5 for the freeway part of the drive. The signs start for Sacramento.

  “Do you ever wish we’d stayed?” I ask.

  Mom jerks. “Stayed in Sacramento? No. Getting out is what saved us.”

  “Oh.” I was five when we left.

  “You don’t know what it means to me, coming back and having something now. A job. Some kind of life.”

  What kind? I think.

  “There’s plenty you don’t know.”

  I look at Mom. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “No one wanted us here. My family didn’t want us.”

  “They didn’t?” I say.

  “Danny’s the only one who ever gave me more. And I had to leave to find him.”

  “Do you—love—him?” I ask, my mouth twisting. “After last night?”

  Mom takes a long breath. “Don’t push me.”

  “I heard you ask if it was happening again. It isn’t. What did Danny say?”

  “He said no. He said nothing ever did.”

  I watch her. “The way you asked him, you know that’s a lie.”

  “We’re staying in Sacramento tonight,” Mom says.

  “We are? Why?”

  “I’m not only asking him. I’ve got questions for you.”

  I laugh.

  Mom jabs a finger at me. “Don’t laugh.”

  I’m leaning to the window. “It’s just— Mom, I said it all last night. If you didn’t hear me then, you never will. Or—is all of this my fault? ’Cause that’s how I am?”

  “I want to know,” she says, “how bad it got.”

  “Oh.”

  I look out the side. Rice fields. The endless flats. I remember.

  “You want to know—is it worth doing anything about.”

  “What do you want me to do, Angelyn?” Mom’s voice is sharp and sour.

  I don’t know, I think, and say it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Curled on her side, Mom watches me from bed. Cross-legged on mine, I work a comb through shower-wet hair.

  “If you’d screamed it,” she says, “I would have heard.”

  I point to the TV. A PBS pledge break. “I’m watching this.”

  Mom grabs the remote from the nightstand and pops the set off.

  The room is dark.

  “Not like this,” I say.

  I hear rustling. A switch flicks. She’s got the light on.

  “Thanks.” Cold in T-shirt and sweats, I climb under the covers.

  Mom sits at the edge of her bed. “You never told me anything.”

  It’s hard to look at her. “You never asked.”

  “You’ve had three years to say it, Angelyn.”

  “There never was a time. It was all about Nathan lying and Mrs. Daly being a busybody bitch. You called her that. Remember?”

  “Oh, her. Miss High and Mighty. She knew better how to raise you.”

  “We all pretended like nothing was wrong. We’ve been pretending. There was no other way to be. Was there?”

  “All right,” Mom says. “If I’d asked then, what would you have said?”

  I pull my knees up. “Whatever Danny wanted.”

  “Whatever Danny wanted.” She’s quiet. “Why?”

  “He was my friend. You could be scary.” You are scary.

  “How many times—”

  “All you have to know is, it happened.”

  “I said, how many times?”

  “Okay.” I turn my hands on the smooth sheets. “A baseball season’s worth. Part of spring, all summer, part of fall. Is that enough times?”

  Mom makes a sound.

  I look over. “Every Sunday morning.”

  “I slept late on Sundays!”

  Like she’s accusing me.

  Deliberately, I say, “Danny would shush me so we wouldn’t wake you.”

  Mom’s stare is awful.

  “We’d watch TV,” I say, “and—”

  “I don’t want to know,” she says.

  I push the covers back. “I’m getting some water.”

  “Get some for me.”

  I feel better, turned from her, rummaging in the ice bucket. But in the mirror I see Mom staring.

  I hand her a tumbler and take mine across the room, to the window. My backpack fills the orange vinyl chair. Next to it, I drain my glass.

  “Nathan saw us,” I say. “He really did. Ask him. He wasn’t lying.”

  “There’s something else you kept quiet.” She’s drunk her water too. “You’ve been in touch with that boy. For how long?”

  “I sent him off a million times. Nathan hung on. He only just gave up on me.”

  Mom sits against the pillows. “You’ve changed. We put this behind us.”

  “No,” I say. “No, we didn’t. I think about it all the time.”

  “You think about Danny?”

  I sit on the window ledge. “I think about things being wrong. The lie that happens every day.”

  Mom hmms. “He said something about you last night.”

  Despite myself, I ask what.

  “Danny said—” She looks at the ceiling. “The two of you used to play like puppies, and maybe his hand slipped once, and maybe you misinterpreted—”

  “Twenty-six Sundays, Mom.” I say it coldly. “I counted.”

  “Twenty-six?” Her voice is faint. “I don’t believe it. You could have told me. You should have told me.”

  I let my foot bounce off the wall. “Why? You don’t believe it now. And, you know—Danny could have told on himself, back then, if we were playing like puppies and his hand slipped. He could have told me—Sorry. He could have told you—I got too close with Angelyn.”

  Mom is quiet.

  “Mr. Rossi called me a cat,” I say. “Because of how I wrapped up against him. He didn’t use it to work me. He told me—” I stop. “He told me, Go away.”

  Mom stands and walks to the mirror. “You look like me. I’ve always heard that.”

  Dark hair, dark eyes. Tall. Long-legged.

  “I guess I do.”

  She slumps onto the bed. “How did we get here?”

  “How?” I stand. “You put it all on me. Every bad thing. What do you want me to say, Mom?”

  “I didn’t know about any of this,” she says.

  “You acted like you did. You’d tell anyone there’s something wrong with me. You said it to Miss Bass and Mr. Rossi—” I’m mad again, remembering. “Mr. Rossi was saying something true about me—right?—and you didn’t like it.”

  Mom raises her head. “I was trying to protect you.”


  “What?”

  “Our—” Mom waves. “Our situation. I was trying to protect that. How do you think it makes me look if this is going on and I’m letting it? I work there, Angelyn. I have to keep working there.”

  I sit. “I go to school there.”

  She pushes her hair back. “You’ve got a million chances. I’ve only got the one.”

  “But—” I think about that. “I’m your daughter, Mom. You’ve only got the one.”

  “Come here,” she says after silence.

  “Why?” I ask, but I do, sitting across from her.

  “How serious are you, Angelyn, about all this?”

  I look at Mom. “Serious?”

  “It won’t be easy,” she says. “It will be ugly.”

  I know what I want. “I want him out.”

  Mom reaches for the phone.

  “I don’t want to talk to him,” I say, pulling back.

  She pushes numbers. They build to ours.

  Danny picks up first ring.

  “Sherry?” He’s breathless.

  Mom says, “Be gone when we get back.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Before sunrise I’m at the window, watching traffic.

  Mom stirs. “Did you sleep?”

  “Not much,” I say, shy with her.

  She checks the time. “We need to start back.”

  “Now? It’s too early.” And: “I don’t want to see him.”

  Mom is up and stretching. “You’ll be at school. I’ll be at work. Danny has the whole damn day to leave.”

  I sit against the ledge. “It was real last night. You were serious.”

  “You bet I was.” She’s fierce.

  “Mom.” I can’t think what else to say.

  She’s on her way to the bathroom. “Angelyn, we are moving on.”

  Mom calls me. Soft, then louder.

  I blink awake. “We’re here?”

  “Almost,” she says. “Listen about today.”

  I uncurl, feeling fuzzy. We’re in town, passing Courthouse Park.

  “After school you’re going to walk to the bus yard and wait with me.”

  I tell her okay.

  “I’ll make sure that Danny’s gone.”

  “Just like that,” I say.

  “Don’t doubt it,” Mom says.

  “You’re making it sound easy. You said it would be hard.”

  “Getting him out is not hard. It’s what comes after that will be.”

  “What’s that?” I ask, watching her.

  “We’re reporting him,” Mom says.