by Alice Quinn
6
I’d run out of cell phone minutes a while back, so I was looking for a phone booth to call Véro on her cell. I found one, but there was no answer.
As I passed her building, I rang her bell. Nobody there.
I didn’t want to harass Simon, but during the meal I tried to ask a few questions. “Was your mommy home last night?”
It’s not easy getting him to speak. But he started stammering. I’d never seen him so upset before. His face flushed and he began to cry.
Something serious must have happened. I consoled him, told him not to worry, that his mother would be home soon. Slowly, he began to calm down, especially when Sabrina choked on her spaghetti and started turning every color of the rainbow. I have to say, my rug monkeys are just awesome. Simon was so interested in this phenomenon that he forgot his misery. Sabrina finished her meal sitting in my lap, which had been her goal all along.
Simon managed to swallow one and a half strands of spaghetti, then he pushed his plate away and began humming to himself. I tried every trick in the book, but he didn’t want to eat any more. He never was much of an eater.
It didn’t look like Véro had spent much of Monday at home. Nor had the famous Alexandre. I think I’d managed to grasp, through all of Simon’s weeping, that before his mommy left, she’d asked a neighbor to take Simon to school on Tuesday morning.
Unbelievable. She left Simon home alone? And she didn’t call me to ask for help? Oh. I’m such a moron. I hadn’t checked my messages. I’d angrily thrown my cell in a corner when I saw I was out of minutes and knew I couldn’t afford more. The battery would’ve run out.
Maybe she had tried to call me. It wouldn’t have even rung.
I started to search for the phone, moving Pastis out of my way. I don’t know why, but Pastis seems to think getting under my feet is the ultimate fun. I finally found my cell at the back of the cupboard under the sink.
At the same time, I noticed I only had two diapers left. I had to go see the social worker until I could get more money together. I needed her to give me some stamps so I could get a few diapers for the kiddies.
I plugged in my cell and picked up my messages. Well, I deserved every bad name under the sun. What a moron I was, an idiot, an asshole. I couldn’t believe it.
Véro had tried calling me all Monday afternoon to ask if I could pick up Simon from her place. The reasons were confusing, and I wasn’t sure I understood everything.
It turned out that Pierre had disappeared while she was grocery shopping. He’d been in front of the bakery . . . or was it something about Alexandre (the famous, wonderful Alexandre) who’d lost track of him while they were out on a bike ride, or something? Basically, in a fit of panic, she’d reported Pierre missing, and while she was at the station, she had a sudden flash of intuition.
It was bound to be her bastard ex, Michel. He must have taken Pierre. He’d never liked how she dealt with the tots.
And she’d just seen him.
As I listened to more of Véro’s story unfolding in my voice mail, her tone sounded altered, her comments increasingly disjointed.
She said something about killing someone—but who? It wasn’t clear.
I felt my stomach knot and my heartbeat accelerate.
She said that all Michel had ever wanted to do was give her shit, and that it wasn’t going to go down like that this time because she had a boyfriend now, and he’d help her find the kid. Then she’d shoot Michel with Alexandre’s hunting rifle.
So the teacher was a hunter now, was he? Prince Charming himself. To say she was talking drivel would be an understatement.
I didn’t like the sound of this. I didn’t like it at all.
Véro is always in a state of anxiety. It’s enough to rip your heart out. But this time, it sounded really bad.
I was done for. It was all so unreal. Yet I only had one thought: I had to cobble some cash together so I could feed the horde. Everything else seemed secondary.
It was a pity it wasn’t Saturday, because I could have asked Tony to let me sing with his Saturday-night musicians. Last time, there had been tons of song requests from customers, and I got a five-euro tip. Not bad, right?
People love it when you sing songs from their childhoods. One man even said I had the perfect voice for jazz. He asked me to sing some Ella Fitzgerald. Who? I wondered, but I didn’t let on that I had no clue. I gave the guy Nino Ferrer’s back catalog and it went down really well.
Anyway, it wasn’t Saturday, so I needed to go and do a little waitressing to pick up some cash.
If only I had listened to my voice mail in the morning, I’d have known that Véro wouldn’t show at school, that she couldn’t have lent me any money, and I wouldn’t have spent all my cash on a ridiculous plastic lunchbox. I would have worked more hours instead of wasting my time down at the electric utility office.
But I couldn’t find anyone to take care of the munchkins, which meant I couldn’t work that evening. I went to see Véro’s next-door neighbor, who had taken care of Simon on Monday night. She gave me the keys to their apartment, in case I needed to pick anything up. I brought the children with me.
I managed to find diapers and two or three things we could eat. Véro’s apartment was a total mess. Nothing was where it should have been. It looked like a tornado had passed through. Véro was usually such a clean freak. Strange . . .
All in all, it looked like the school year hadn’t started out too well for me. Less so for Véro, I’d say.
When I got home, despite everything that had gone wrong, I felt the mood change and I hummed the love tune sent by my mom.
I could see the face of the young cop, floating along with the lyrics.
Wednesday: Palace Party
7
The situation must have alarmed my mother, because the next morning, Frank Sinatra was on the internal playlist with “Fly Me to the Moon.”
It seemed we had an emergency on our hands.
The song was impossible to get out of my head. The little ones had some Coco Pops, which I’d picked up from Véro’s. I had some too. It was Wednesday, a day off in France for many students and mothers. My social worker never worked Wednesdays. I dropped off Emma and Lisa at daycare—they had to go to school, poor things, but not Simon and Sabrina. They stayed with me. Simon being with us had given Sabrina a new lease on life. She’s usually much quieter. Anyway, I decided to go to Sélect and left the scamps to play in the back.
But Sabrina was screaming, running all over the place. She was a ball of activity, while Simon threw one tantrum after another, acting up like a loony tune.
After a half hour, Tony lost it and kicked us all out. But I got a whole hour’s pay. Awesome. A grand total of seven and a half euros.
I tucked it into my pocket and listed the groceries I’d picked up from Véro’s. I told myself it was better not to spend a single cent, in case something came up.
We went over to the square where the Mickey D’s was. The poor mites looked sheepish. We didn’t go to eat, just to play. It was the same one where I’d last seen Véro. On Wednesdays, because they have more customers, they don’t notice whether you’ve made a purchase or not—the children can just play. And they have the latest stuff for little ones, supersonic slides and rubber floors, that type of thing.
I was still annoyed that they hadn’t behaved in the coffeehouse. As if I wasn’t pissed enough, the kids began rooting around in the trash can.
“You’ve got this amazing slide and all these games, but you’d rather have fun in the trash? That’s what we’ve come here for, is it?”
But they wouldn’t listen to me. They probably wished they could have something to eat. They foraged in the waste and pretended they were fishing for remnants of fries and nuggets.
I was wrapped up in my dark and obsessive thoughts. We need to find something to eat, tons
to eat, and we need to do it fast.
I left them to it for a while, watching them without paying much attention to what they were actually doing. They found some boxes of promotional toys, publicity for some Disney fairy tale. I vaguely noticed Sabrina had a plastic figurine of an Indian princess or something, with veils and jewelry. She’d wrapped her up in a long, shiny necklace and was feeding her a feast of bits of curly paper.
Despite the evil eye I was getting from a customer, who obviously thought I was an unfit mother for letting my children play in the trash can, I carried on trying to devise some sort of quick-fix plan.
I knew that what they were up to was gross, but I didn’t have the energy to do much more than halfheartedly scold them from time to time. I felt like I was on the verge of finding a solution.
What if I learned all about betting on horses? There are people out there who live on their winnings from the racetrack. You see that in the movies all the time, right?
I glanced at the kids and saw they were going about setting a little table. Using the discarded boxes from burgers and fries, they’d prepared a lovely table set for three. They’re just too cute, including me like that! They’ve even put a plate down for me! That’s when I noticed they’d put their new figurine in front of the third plate and that I wasn’t included in their game at all.
They were scrunching up little balls of paper and setting them onto their makeshift plates. Convincing little “yum” and “mmmmm” sounds punctuated their game.
It was only when I realized they were actually munching on the pieces of paper that I decided enough was enough.
I stood and made my way over to them. “OK, that’s enough. We’re going home!”
Sabrina quickly shoved her new toy into her pocket.
They joined me while continuing to either chew up the bits of paper or rub them between their greasy little fingers. Some game. They swapped delighted looks.
“Mmmmm . . . Thith ithe cweam is tho gooooood,” Sabrina exclaimed.
I leaned in, trying to get them to cough up their pieces of garbage, and that’s when I nearly had my first heart attack. When Sabrina spat out the piece of mushed-up paper, I could tell immediately it was green. Euro green. The remains of a one-hundred euro bill. If I hadn’t been made of such strong stuff, I’d have fainted. I looked to my right, then to my left.
“Who gave you that?”
“Nobody, Mommy dawling.”
Sabrina calls me darling when she knows she’s done something wrong, but doesn’t know what.
“Where did you find it, then?”
“Gawbage.”
I forced them to spit out the money. Then, as discreetly as I could, I searched the trash can.
Some jumped-up broad with a Hermes scarf, a Gucci bag, and her two teeny runts threw me a horrified look. I winced and forced my lips into a smile. Trying to look as normal as possible, I mumbled, “It’s my baby girl—she’s always dumping her pacifier in the most insane places.”
The woman turned her head as if she couldn’t see me, and I stuck out my tongue at her while continuing to rifle through all the food wrappers.
Sabrina screeched at the top of her voice. “You’we thuch a wiar, Mom—I don’t have a pathifier now!” When she didn’t get an answer out of me, she didn’t let up. “Wiar, Mom! I’m all gwowed up. I’m not a baby anymowe. I haven’t had a pathifier for a vewy, vewy, vewy . . .”
Her lips started to tremble, but I still wasn’t listening to her. Or looking at her. I wasn’t listening to or looking at anybody. I was so afraid of passing out. I hung on to the side of the trash can with all my strength.
Sabrina’s distraught tears finally pulled me out of my daze.
As quickly as I could, I grabbed the manila envelope filled to bursting with crisp one-hundred-euro bills. I then thrust it into the messy basket under the double stroller, which was free of twins at this point, and hurtled off at great speed.
I didn’t even look around to check if anyone had spotted me.
The emergency message from my mom was clarified. I was going to fly me to the moon, where I would play with the stars, and I’d see what spring looked like on Jupiter and Mars!
As we left the McDonald’s, we passed a phone booth, and I caught sight of a city recycling can next to it.
If people were throwing tons of cash in the garbage bins these days, I was going to look in them all.
Why wouldn’t I, right? As a rule, I never look in trash cans, unless desperate times call for desperate measures and we’ve officially run out of crackers. But it was clear I’d been wrong not to. We usually just open them up with our fingertips and throw in our trash as quickly as possible. If only people knew the possible treasures inside, I wouldn’t be the only one rummaging through the refuse like a street rat.
I threw myself onto the second trash can, Sabrina still crying at my side and Simon looking on with interest. And there—bingo!—was another envelope, firmly sealed this time and bulging. I put this one in the same place as the last. I began skimming all the trash cans in the neighborhood like a crazy woman, followed by two children who looked equally crazy. Just like in the tune, my heart was filled with song and I wanted them to let me sing forever more.
Unbelievable, but true. I found—yes, found! Me!—the precious envelopes in no less than six trash cans in all.
My treasure hunt seemed to be taking me downtown. I got as far as the mini-mart, and here, to my great disappointment, the dumpsters didn’t have anything in them besides rotten banana skins, dented Coke cans, and sticky, greasy papers.
In a couple of the dumpsters, I found some empty plastic bags. They were a little damaged, but I hooked them onto the handles of the stroller so I could fill them with the envelopes. There were now too many to fit underneath the stroller.
I had never found a single thing in my life. The verb “to find” wasn’t even in my vocabulary. And now I’d just found the stash of the century. When I wasn’t even looking for anything! But this turn of events was more than to my advantage. Why have less when you can have more? Pecunia non olet. “Money doesn’t stink.” Money begets money. No more going to bed on an empty stomach!
I’d found something. And won. The jackpot.
8
After searching through more trash and finding nothing, I awakened from my trance and began to see and hear the world around me again.
I could hear the intoxicating words . . . and I wanted to dance like crazy. Dance with the stars and sing to the moon.
Thanks, Mom, you had it just right. I am among the stars . . .
Except I saw Sabrina was crying.
We sat down on a bench, and I held her tight. She still wanted me to admit that I’d lied about the pacifier business.
It was true. It had been over a year since she’d last used one. She was a big girl now.
She accepted my apology.
“So then, sweeties, how would you like to go and eat in a fancy restaurant?”
“Can we have ithe cweam for dethert?”
“Anything you want.”
She yelled, “Gweat, cool, awethome! Yay!”
We headed for the Place de la République, to the terrace of the Brasserie de la Piazza. It was a high-class establishment, which rarely—that is to say, never—saw my kind grace its doors. With my general lack of funds, you can imagine why.
Each of us ate enough to feed a family of four. The restaurant certainly lived up to its reputation.
We finished our meal with an ice-cream orgy, and I ordered three coffees to go.
The caffeine helped me straighten out my thoughts. I was getting a second wind. I’d been without coffee for so long.
When the bill arrived, after counting and recounting it (it was a classy restaurant, but these jerks are always ready to swindle anyone who walks through the door) under the incredulous eyes of o
ur waiter, I pulled two one-hundred-euro bills, all curled up and mixed in with other equally wrinkled bills, from the pockets of Sabrina’s jeans. She laughed.
“Mommy, you wath playing in the twath too. We thaw you.”
I glanced at the waiter apologetically. “Just ignore them . . . Kids, hah . . . You know how they are.”
I gave him a twenty-euro tip and said regally, “Looks like money’s growing on trees these days!”
We slowly wandered home. I hoped the children would agree to take a short nap when we got back. This whole adventure, followed by a meal fit for kings, had left me wiped out.
But my heart was singing. I wanted to shout out to everyone I passed, “Listen up! I’m rich!”
It was three o’clock already, and on Wednesdays I picked up the cubbies at half past four.
We got to our trailer. I put the kiddos in their room with their tape player and coloring books, and I sprawled out on the sofa bed in the lounge, falling into a deep sleep.
As soon as he caught sight of me in this position, Pastis made himself at home on my belly, which led to me having a horrendous nightmare in which I was trapped at the bottom of a tunnel, miles deep, like in the film Journey to the Center of the Earth.
But despite the nightmare and despite the fact that the crib lizards were no doubt making an impossible racket, there wasn’t a thing that could wake me up, not even a nuclear bomb.
I think it was when I’d gotten used to the weight on my stomach that my dream changed. My mother showed up for a visit.
She sang the praises of a mysterious Gaston—there was no one as quick as him, as manly as him, as perfect as . . .
It was from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. I loved that film when I was a kid. Still do. She was sure to be right, but what exactly was she trying to say? No one fights like him . . . nobody bites like him . . .
