Boys’ cars always reminded me of dark caves; I wanted to close my eyes and sleep when I rode in them. Quinn turned down the music and glanced over at me. I watched his hand shift through the gears like it was the easiest thing in the world to do.
“You know Jo depends on you now?” he said.
“Yeah,” I mumbled.
“No, I’m serious. My mom says she talks about you a lot. Apparently you remind old Jo of young Jo.”
I laughed. “Maybe that means my future as a spinster artist is secure.”
He shifted down for a stop sign, making the engine roar and the whole car vibrate.
Quinn worked through the gears again, then glanced at me. “I’ve got two things to tell you.”
“Okay….”
He smiled. “First, my mom told me to explain what you’re going to see at Jo’s.”
My whole body pulsed with a wave of heat and anxiety. “What do you mean?”
Even in the dark, I could tell he was worried about how I’d take this. “It’s ten degrees outside and she’d been on that bench for who knows how long. Mom’s trying to warm her up right now and apparently that hurts.”
“It hurts?”
“She’s crying.”
I nodded, pushing an invisible gas pedal with my foot, wanting Quinn to get there faster. Jo needed me. I had no idea why.
“What’s the second?”
I felt him studying my face. “I might as well just come right out and say it because I’m not sure I’ll have you alone again.”
“What in the world, Quinn?” I turned and stared out my window because he was making me nervous and, even in the dark, I could see how blue his eyes were.
“I’m sure you know this already, mostly because your friend, Thanet, has a big mouth. But…I’ve got an enormous crush on you.”
“Isn’t this a strange time to bring something like that up?” My hands bunched the fabric of my sweats up.
“Yes.” He shifted his focus between the road and me. “People tell me Henry’s great and you guys are made for each other, but I’m just wondering…if that’s true, where is he?”
“He’s—”
“No, I mean. I know where he is. But I wouldn’t spend a year away from you, if you were my girlfriend. I don’t even get it.”
“Wow,” I said. “I mean. Wow.” I finally looked at him and he smiled.
“I’m famous for screwing things up,” he said.
I laughed. “Nothing is screwed up.”
“Yes, it is. If the ‘more than friends’ thing doesn’t work out, any chance we might have had to be friends is gone.” He closed his eyes and brought his fingers up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He looked like he expected me to laugh at him. “I just…I’m usually a more subtle guy, but not with you.”
“It’s okay. We can be friends. Of course.”
Quinn stayed quiet and I felt like I should fill the awkward void. “Henry’s doing incredible work. I wish I could explain how important it is. I would never keep him from that. He’ll be back. And, anyway, what about Reed?”
Quinn snorted. “Reed was the biggest mistake I ever made. We’re not back together. We’re not even really talking.” He groaned and looked at me. “She’s started IMing me constantly again. She made my life a living hell in Rhode Island.”
“How?”
“Let’s just say…what she felt for me was deeper than what I felt for her,” he said, toying with the gear shift nervously. “I never meant to hurt her, but it got weird enough that my parents were considering a restraining order against her. Abby was exaggerating, though. Reed is probably one-fourth of why we moved, not one-half.”
We turned into Jo’s driveway. Everything in me wanted to jump out and run inside, but Quinn had just made himself really vulnerable and that had me paralyzed. I raised my hand to touch his shoulder, but stopped before I got too close. He’d probably take that as some kind of weak pity move.
“That must have been really hard.”
He shrugged. “I learned from it. Lessons like, if a girl calls you her boyfriend after one date, then she texts and calls every fifteen minutes to find out where you are, she might have a problem.”
“Poor Quinn O’Neill,” I said.
He laughed. “I think she’s getting help, though,” he said. “So that’s good.”
“Listen, I think you’re great,” I said. “I have since we first met. You’re smart and weird and intense. I could easily have a crush on you. But Henry’s the one I can’t live without.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and stared toward Jo’s front porch. “I get that. You have no idea how much I hate to hear it, though.”
We smiled at each other. “And now,” he said, “we’re going to get out of my car and pretend this conversation never happened because I’m already awkward enough around you.”
“I won’t forget it,” I said. “I hope you meet someone perfect one day.”
“Ha…yeah, that’s just it. I think I already did.” As we opened our doors to step out, he touched my arm. “Just to be clear, if I, like, leaned over and whispered your name in your ear, still nothing?”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on, we’re wasting time.” I made it halfway up the walk before he got out of the car.
***
As soon as I stepped onto Jo’s porch, I heard her. She wasn’t crying; she was swearing. She was spitting mad. We opened the door and I followed the sound of voices down the hall to the bathroom. I motioned behind me for Quinn to wait in the living room.
I’m not sure about all the particulars that led to this moment. Do I believe life is a series of dots to be connected, or that no one can outrun destiny, or that all roads lead to truth and coincidence is a lie to distract us? The reason I was in this place no longer mattered. The harsh reality stared me in the face and demanded an immediate decision.
Walk away and blame it on my age. Or stay and try to help a woman who had slowly become my friend over the last few weeks.
Jo sat in her rusted old claw-foot tub. Naked and thin. So thin. Emaciated, more like. She babbled words I couldn’t make out and tore at her unbraided and half-wet hair.
“It smells like a whorehouse in here,” she said.
Jenny poured a pitcher of hot water down Jo’s back, trying to warm her. I cleared my throat to get Jenny’s attention. Jo’s head snapped up and her glassy eyes searched the room for me. When she found me in the doorway, she pointed at me.
“Remember when you told me about how Henry took you to that cave? And how later you went to church and turned over your life in that water?”
“Yes, ma’am.” My voice sounded weak to my ears, like it wouldn’t even carry through the steam in the room.
“I said it was a nice story?”
“You did.”
“What I meant was it was a bunch of hogwash. All that about letting go and forgiving and mercy this and mercy that.” She choked a little on her own spit, coughing violently. “You’re a fool to think being dunked in some water will save you from trouble in this life.”
Something in my chest shattered. “What are you talking about, Jo?”
“I’m talking about how I believed all that, too, when I was younger. And life still went in the crapper for me. I still ended up alone. He still died.” Her voice had risen to a shriek that sounded like a vulture. My head pounded with it. I just wanted her to be quiet and calm down.
“Who died?” Maybe if I could get her to say the words, we could have a helpful conversation.
“It’s a waste of time, Meg. Can I get an amen?” She repeated that last part over and over like she was trying to block out what she was hearing in her own head. She covered both ears with her hands and rocked back and forth in the bathwater, making waves that grew larger with each movement.
Eventually they began to splash over the sides; that’s when Jenny ended it. “Okay, Jo, that’s enough. This is enough.”
I swallowed, trying not to cry, but I could do nothing ab
out the way my leg muscles shook.
Jo stopped and spoke so calmly that it seemed like reason had slammed back into her body. “Here I sit, Meg, in a tub full of water. No time like the present. Say those holy words over me and shove me in this useless water. You’ll see. Nothing changes.”
“I’m not going to do that, Jo.”
She laughed to herself. “When I was young, I told my sister I was getting baptized and I’d come home a new person. She cried. She was too little to understand. She said, ‘But I’ll miss, you, Jo.’”
I moved closer so I wouldn’t have to yell over the running water and Jo’s voice. I really didn’t want Quinn to hear me justifying faith to a woman who’d gone off her rocker today. Wouldn’t that just prove some misguided point about it all being voodoo nonsense?
“I’m not sure why you’re talking about that, Jo.” I used my most reasonable tone with her. “Did something happen tonight?”
“I’m talking about it because you talk about it all the time. Henry and love and eternity. Don’t you see how ludicrous that sounds? Water? Makes you holy? And what do you know about what really matters?”
Jenny sighed and shook her head. “Now Jo, you don’t have a clue about what Meg knows. Stop this right now.” She patted me on the back and whispered close to my ear. “Sorry about this, Meg. She’s been insulting tonight. Keep her talking for a sec and I’ll go find a quilt to wrap her in.”
“Isn’t there something else we should do?” I didn’t care if Jo could hear me. “Can we call someone?”
“It’s either we take it until she calms down or I have to call an ambulance to take her to the hospital and they’ll pump her full of sedatives,” Jenny said. “You willing to try with me?”
“Yes.”
I perched on the edge of the tub, behind Jo, to protect her privacy as much as possible, and continued pouring water on her back with a pitcher. Her skin had turned red where the hot water had hit repeatedly. The top part of her spine was knobby and thick.
For a second, I stared at the map of her veins just under the surface of her thin skin. It was like her body was trying to become diaphanous. Instead of getting harder and stronger and full of life as we age, we disappear slowly. Our skin thins and evaporates. Our nails barely coat our fingertips. Our hair falls out. We are never more see-through.
“What happened today, Jo?” I said when she finally began to breathe with a rhythm that seemed more natural. Now that she was quiet, I could hear feet shuffling in the hall. Murmured words. Quinn and his mother. She was telegraphing bits of information to him. Enough to let him know the situation, but not so much that he’d run for the hills.
I risked a peek at the door and saw him standing in the hall, holding a hand over his eyes out of respect for Jo. “I’m right here if you need anything, Meg,” he said. But I couldn’t respond because Jo began to tell me the day’s story and Quinn shuffled back to the living room.
“Everything happened today,” she said, sounding defeated. “I tried to find you in town. Today was the day. I’ve nearly bitten a hole through my tongue trying to keep from telling you nothing turns out right and water can’t change that. He drowned, for pity’s sake.”
“I’m sorry you’re having a hard time,” I said. “You think because I’m young I don’t know things that are hard, but I do.”
She looked at me over her shoulder.
“Is today the anniversary of your son’s death, Jo?” I said.
Before she could answer, Jenny returned with a baby blue quilt and we both helped Jo out of the tub. Jenny dried her with a bath towel and slipped a nightgown over her head while I opened the quilt. I moved toward her, arms out wide, ready to wrap her small body. Jo seemed mesmerized by the pattern on the quilt.
“Where’d you find it?” she whispered.
“What?” Jenny said. “The quilt?”
“Where?” She raised her arm and pointed at Jenny.
“I found it at the top of the hall closet. It looked warm so I grabbed it.”
Jo nodded and looked at me. “Yes, Meg. Today’s the day and that’s the quilt.”
***
After we settled Jo into bed, she fell asleep quickly. The cold, the emotion, and the early morning hour made her exhausted enough to go down without a fight. Jenny, Quinn, and I talked in the kitchen over hot chocolate. I wanted to ask Quinn to take me home, but I felt rooted to my chair.
“Jo’s condition is progressive,” Jenny said, trying to explain things in simple English. “I mean, okay, this kind of stuff is confidential and I’m only supposed to talk to family members about her diagnosis. But let’s, for a minute, pretend you’re the only family she’s got, Meg.”
I nodded, raising one eyebrow. “I figure I should know. If the situation is bad.”
Jenny nodded. “She’s got subcortical dementia, which is a little different from your run-of-the-mill senility. They don’t just lose their memories, they lose themselves. They lose their personalities. They act out and get hostile. They’re paranoid.”
“That sounds about right,” I said.
“But they can form unnatural bonds with caregivers,” Jenny said, choosing her words slowly, with care.
“Unnatural?”
“Yes. For example, if she’s having one of these spells,” she said, waving her hand toward the bathroom, “she feels like things can’t be right again unless you’re there.”
“Oh, you’re her pappy,” Quinn said, shrugging like it made perfect sense.
“Her what?” I said.
He laughed. “Sorry. Pappy. It’s what I called the pacifier I had an addiction to until I was three.”
Jenny smiled at Quinn, but he watched my face as I processed my new role.
“I went from being a criminal stalker to being her pacifier?”
“I’m afraid so, honey,” Jenny said. “Hope you weren’t planning on quitting anytime soon.”
TWENTY-TWO
henry
Sam gave up waiting for me and walked over to the truck, leaving the officers in the courtyard. He sat in the passenger seat and flipped the radio on, tuning it to Radio Nicaragua, which faded in and out. Strains of Nicaragua’s version of pop floated into the news program, making the moment seem even stranger.
The host of the news show was interviewing an American missionary from Texas who did his best to keep his emotions in check as he answered questions about the day’s disappointing news for private orphanages. I sat up and leaned closer to the radio, forcing the Spanish into my confused brain. It sounded like a decision had been made to speed up the closing of certain orphanages, those which were noncompliant, outside of Managua.
I reached over to the radio and clicked the chatter off, silencing the anxious voices. Sam leaned his head back on the truck seat.
“John says we’ve followed every rule, even the asinine ones,” I said. “We’ll be found compliant and get more time.”
Sam, obviously nervous, massaged the palm of one hand with his thumb. “No, Henry, that’s not going to happen. These men are here with lists of our kids. Janice called John and he’s catching a flight now, trying to get here in time to say goodbye.”
“Did they actually find homes for all our kids?” I said. “These kids? The ones no one wanted?”
“They’re still working on finding Equis a place because there’s some question about a relative.” Sam shifted in the truck so he could keep the strangers in his field of vision. “Raf’s a different story. The Ministry of Family is trying to decide what to do with him.”
“Aidia?” I said.
Sam rubbed his chin. “Did you know Kate and John filed papers to legally adopt Aidia a couple of months ago? The committee is trying to locate her birth mother, who seems to have vanished. She has to sign off on all the documents.”
I let that small, bright news soak in. Aidia could be my niece, for real.
“I hope it happens,” I said. I knew, though, there’d been trouble in the past when Americans tried to a
dopt kids from Nicaragua. The timing might make it impossible.
About that time, the sound of gravel crunching under tires interrupted the quiet night. The crickets stopped their song abruptly. Sam and I watched two white passenger vans turn in and roll to a stop next to the police cars. The drivers both stayed put behind the wheels, watching the scene for trouble.
“This is it,” Sam said. He leaned forward and cradled his head in his hands. He prayed, his lips moving soundlessly through pleas that probably sounded as desperate as the ones in my own head.
When we joined the officers, one of them handed me a clipboard. He pointed to names that had been highlighted with yellow. “Tonight,” he said. “These, en amarillo.”
“Four girls, three boys,” I said. Each highlighted name had a twelve-digit number next to it, which must correspond to the case file containing their new address. “I want their new addresses.”
The officer I’d spoken to shook his head and said, “Confidencial.”
Sam took the clipboard from me to look at the names. “Look, Henry, all the other names have a date next to them. The dates are all in the next two weeks.”
I must have looked as bad as I felt because Sam handed the clipboard back to the officer and eased me over to a bench to sit down. He sat next to me, close enough that I felt him trembling.
“You need to breathe, son.” His voice was soft. “This is going to happen, but it doesn’t mean the fight is over. These children will still be the children of our hearts, no matter where they live. And they’ll be looking to you for reassurance.”
“But we could just refuse,” I said. “Tell them to get off our property.”
Sam shook his head. “No. We can’t. That’s why they brought national security officers. We’ve got no legal rights to these children right now. We were operating at the pleasure of the government and it is no longer the government’s pleasure that we be here.”
I rubbed my neck where a cramp had started. “I assumed we’d get to sign off on where the kids went. They’re not giving us any time to prepare the kids for what’s ahead.”
Perfect Glass (A Young Adult Novel (sequel to Glass Girl)) Page 15
