by Dani Collins
“You didn’t even need to take them. They were fine with Mom.”
“They are never fine with Mom.”
Porsha blew a stream of smoke out her open window. “They should be.”
In a perfect world, yeah, but they weren’t. Mercedes massaged the steering wheel. This was so hard. “So, um, can we agree you’ll stay until the end of school? Maybe you could find a place here in Flagstaff.”
“Ray lives in Phoenix. I know what you’re thinking about him, but you didn’t give him a chance. He’s really a good guy.”
Ray wasn’t the one Mercedes was worried about. Butting out the cigarette she had inhaled in record time—it had been both disgusting and insanely good—Mercedes considered how to handle this. The kids needed to see their mom. What they didn’t need was to see their mom losing her ever-loving mind. She couldn’t keep hammering Porsha with her reservations about Porsha’s behavior. Not right at this moment.
Turning into the parking lot of the daycare, she spotted Ayjia’s red T-shirt. The girl floated on a swing while Dayton crawled across the top of the monkey bars.
With the ease of routine, Porsha handed her a stick of gum and popped one in her own mouth, then dug a sample size bottle of perfume out of her purse, spritzing it once into her own neck then squirting Mercedes.
Mercedes worked her tongue against the bitter tang that landed in her mouth and climbed from the car. She felt icky now and light-headed from her first cigarette in years. She felt like a liar.
“Hi, Janice,” she said, greeting the woman at the gate. “This is my sister, Porsha. Dayton and Ayjia’s mom. Go on, Porsh. They’re going to be really excited to see you.” Mercedes urged her sister to enter the playground, hearing a high squeal of “Mommy!” out of Ayjia. The little girl tripped off the swing and ran like hell for Porsha.
Porsha crouched and closed her arms around the little girl, rocking her back and forth, barely coming up for breath, but holding out one arm as Dayton ran toward them.
Dayton curled one arm around Porsha’s neck and leaned into her, forcing her onto her knees so she wouldn’t be knocked over.
Mercedes smiled, but her throat closed. They had missed their mom so much.
“She’s back,” Janice said. “That’s good.”
“Yeah,” Mercedes said quietly and wiped at the damp tickle on her cheek. “But I still have custody.” Looking Janice in the eye so she understood the severity of the situation, Mercedes said, “Under no circumstances should you let Porsha take those kids unless I’m with her.”
Chapter 23
The knock on her door brought Edith enormous relief, but when she opened it, she found Edward Hilroy, not Dayton.
Her disappointment must have shown because Edward’s smile died and he apologetically offered a frosty cardboard box. “I only thought young Dayton might enjoy an ice cream after his lesson. My grandchildren seem to like these.”
“Dayton’s not here,” Edith said, finding it very hard to keep a level tone. “I’m sorry, Edward. I didn’t mean to make you feel unwelcome, but I’m terribly worried. The children’s mother arrived today. She is quite the piece of work.”
Accepting the box of ice cream treats, she waved him to follow her in, stuffing the box in the freezer without her usual care.
“I am not normally one to gossip,” she said in a low voice, aware of her open screen door. “But that woman has a mouth on her. I tried not to judge her showing up in some shiny limousine tricked out with all the high-rolling rick-rack, wearing little more than a bikini, but the way she made no apologies, and has no sense of what she’s put her sister through these last weeks.” She stopped herself from voicing her fear the man she was with intended to sell the children into child slavery, but it really didn’t seem so far beyond imagining.
“And you’ve already set out his lesson,” he said, noticing the carefully placed books and papers and pencils.
“I have!” Edith wrung her hands, worried sick.
“Is there someone we could call? Do we involve the police?”
“No, the police would be an overstep before we have all the facts.” Thomas would have said so, although he wasn’t speaking to her as often as he used to. She wished Harrison were alive. “Harrison would have trucked down there on the golf cart to ‘take a reading on the situation.’ That was his expression.”
“Why don’t we do that? Where are the keys for the cart?”
“Behind Mercedes’s desk. Can you drive one?”
“Dear Lady, I have been behind the wheel of nearly every vehicle you can imagine. There is no steed I cannot steer.”
“Ayjia, it’s too hot to have you sit on me,” Porsha said, pushing her daughter from her lap to stand beside her on the sofa. “Go eat your pizza.”
“Come sit at the table, sweetie,” Mercedes said, setting plates on the kitchen counter and serving up the slices of Hawaiian while Porsha said, “Yes, I know, I see,” to Dayton. He was showing off a clay dinosaur he’d brought home from school today, but along with admiring it, she gave Mercedes a wide-eyed, overwhelmed look.
Mercedes smiled with empathy, but her heart was with the kids. “You guys have lots to tell your mom, don’t you? Why don’t we take turns giving her our news while we eat.”
“Sounds good. But first let me pop outside for a breath of fresh air,” Porsha said. “Be right back.”
She took her purse and Mercedes felt an addict’s clench of desire for the cigarette Porsha would suck in, but settled for trans fat and nitrites.
“How was school today?” she asked, dragging the children’s attention from the living room where Porsha had gone out the front door. “How’d your spelling test go?” she asked Dayton.
“Good. I got fourteen out of twenty.”
“Really? Mrs. Garvey will give you a sticker for that for sure.” For a kid who’d been getting threes and fours a few weeks ago, it was amazing.
“And,” he said, pausing for effect, “I was the only one to get the tricky word. ‘Has’ sounds like it ends with a z, but it’s an s.”
“You’re right. How did you know that?”
“Mrs. Garvey told me.” He shrugged it off like it was no big deal, but he climbed to his knees to tell the story again when Porsha came back.
“Who’s Mrs. Garvey?” Porsha asked, her tone short as she tucked away her phone and yanked out a chair.
“The lady you spoke to today, the one in my old apartment. She’s been tutoring Dayton.”
“Why?” Porsha cut a slice of pizza in half and took the narrower side.
Mercedes licked her lips, searching for the words to explain Dayton’s challenges without impacting his growing confidence.
“Because I don’t want to be pushin’ forty and have to learn all this stuff then,” Dayton said matter-of-factly. “Like L.C.”
Mercedes snorted. “Is that what he said?”
“Yup. Can I have another piece?”
“Sure, hon.” Mercedes reached to serve it while Porsha said, “Who’s L.C.?”
“Auntie M’s boyfriend,” Ayjia volunteered.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Mercedes said, while a blush stung through her chest, up her neck and into her cheeks. “He was our neighbor. It’s a long story.”
“Oh, do tell,” Porsha said, hitching her elbows onto the table. “You can’t take a superior attitude over Ray and not ‘fess up what’s been going on here.”
“Nothing went on.” But if Porsha took the kids back, it could.
She wanted to swallow a bucket of cyanide for even letting the thought enter her consciousness, but it had occurred. She picked up Ayjia’s abandoned crust and put it on her own plate.
“L.C. lived next door for a few weeks, but he had to move back to his old hometown for family reasons. If you want more story than that, you can wait until the kids are in bed. Right now, I have to take Dayton to Mrs. Garvey’s.”
“No, Auntie M. Not tonight. I want to stay with Mom.”
“The whini
ng. How could I forget that piercing quality?” Porsha asked with thinning patience. “Look, just—” She took a breath. “Just go do your thing. I need to make a couple of calls anyway. Ray’s not answering.” She pawed through her purse. “I think I’ll try a couple of hotels.”
“Sure,” Mercedes said and began cleaning up the pizza, biting back the desire to scream, ‘These are your kids. Pay attention. They missed you.’
While Dayton slowly chewed his last piece, Ayjia brought her plate to the counter. She stayed beside Mercedes after depositing it. “Mom said we’re going to stay here for a few days.”
“I know. Isn’t that great? I get to have you and my sister visit.”
“She said the apartment in Holbrook is gone. Where did it go?”
“Oh,” Mercedes smiled and crouched down. “That sounds confusing, doesn’t it? No, sweetie, the building is still there. It’s just the people who own it thought you guys didn’t need your apartment anymore, so they let other people move into it. Like how Mrs. Garvey is in my old unit.”
“Mom said she doesn’t know where my stuffies are. Rainbow and Bluetail probably miss me, and I forgot to bring some of Polly’s clothes when we came here.”
“I’ll make some calls in the morning and see where your things are,” Mercedes promised. “Can you try not to worry about it right now?”
“Okay,” she said, but her bottom lip came out.
Mercedes hugged her and Ayjia hugged back so hard, her little body trembled.
“Do you want to walk up to Mrs. Garvey’s with me and Dayton?”
Ayjia shook her head. “I want to stay with Mommy.”
Porsha was looking up hotel listings while stacking ice cubes in a tall glass. Mercedes was trying to catch whether anything harder than soda went into it when she heard a beep outside.
Mr. Hilroy had driven Mrs. Garvey down on the golf cart. Mercedes saved her the trouble of climbing out by trotting across the grass toward them.
“What’s wrong?”
“I wasn’t certain if Dayton would be coming for his lesson,” Mrs. Garvey said, sounding breathless regardless of not having arrived on her own steam. “Are the children still with you?”
“They’re in the house with their mom. I should have phoned. Sorry we’re running late, but I was just about to bring Dayton up.”
“We don’t mind. It’s a nice evening for a drive,” Mr. Hilroy said. “And Edith was concerned about you.”
“Well, I had no idea what was going on. I haven’t seen you since you disappeared this afternoon. Your desk is in terrible disarray.”
“Oh, good grief, my desk! And the meeting tomorrow. I’m sorry, I forgot all about it. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I, uh—” She pushed her hair off her forehead, trying to work out the logistics. She hated to be paranoid, but the thought of leaving Ayjia with Porsha, while Dayton went to his lesson and she cleaned up the front desk, made her stomach knot with anxiety.
Why did everything have to be so complicated?
“What exactly is happening with the children?” Mrs. Garvey asked.
“Um.” Mercedes dried her palm on her hip and shifted so she could see into the unit, hating herself for being so suspicious of Porsha that she couldn’t even stand outside the back door without worrying her sister would steal the kids out the front. Mrs. Garvey was going to birth a cow when she heard Porsha would be staying a few days.
“It’s still up in the air,” Mercedes said, clearing her throat. “I, um, still have temporary custody so it’s not as simple as just letting Porsha take the kids.”
“‘Kids’ are immature goats, Mercedes. These are children we are talking about. I don’t mean to speak ill of your sister, but she plainly has no sense of consequence. You cannot allow her take them.” Edith Garvey tugged on the cuff of her sweater sleeve.
“Uh…” Mercedes was stunned.
Mr. Hilroy nodded, not nearly so shocked to hear this attitude out of Mrs. Garvey.
“You have fought very hard for the right to better the welfare of your niece and nephew,” Mrs. Garvey continued. “I would be very disappointed in you if you failed to continue in that vein.”
Mrs. Garvey’s stiff profile blurred. Mercedes sniffed as she looked back at the house where she could hear Porsha saying, “I’m on the phone.”
“Yeah, um...” Oh God, this was going to be hell.
“Perhaps Ayjia would enjoy a turn in the cart with Dayton. She could have a cup of juice in the cantina while you tidy up your desk. It truly is an eyesore, Mercedes.”
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry. Thank you, Mrs. Garvey.” Mercedes took a shaky breath and walked on weak legs to fetch the children. Not kids, children.
As it turned out, the Sahir’s grandchildren were visiting. Little Rashmika came to the cantina and played Animal Snap with Ayjia while Mercedes tidied her desk.
So much for the reports she had planned to finish. Along with justifying L.C.’s rent-free arrangement, she had intended to prove to the board that providing a venue for community hours had been a win-win and something they might consider offering to some other nice delinquent in the future.
As it was, she didn’t even list all the various projects the Fogarty men had worked on, only totaled them as one grand figure and slapped it into the budget with a silent promise to do it properly down the road.
Where the time for playing catch-up would come from, she had no idea. Unless Porsha took the kids.
She couldn’t let Porsha take the kids.
How could she stop her? They were Porsha’s children. They belonged with their mother.
But Porsha wasn’t a fit mother. She, Mercedes, was a better mother and she didn’t even know what the hell she was doing. Porsha was her sister. She couldn’t take away her sister’s children. She couldn’t give them away, either. Not to Porsha.
“Snap!” the girls said in unison.
Mercedes thought she might. She missed L.C. She missed Harrison. She couldn’t do this on her own. She couldn’t not do it.
Hell.
“You are working so late, Mercedes,” Mrs. Yamamoto said, coming in through the courtyard doors. “Where are the children? Not with your sister?”
“No.” Mercedes smiled, amused but not surprised that the news of her sister’s arrival had made the rounds. “Ayjia is in the cantina and Dayton is at his lesson with Mrs. Garvey.”
Mrs. Yamamoto’s worried frown softened to a serene smile. “Your sister has left with her fancy-man, then?”
“No, she um...” Mercedes glanced toward the cantina, assuring herself that Ayjia couldn’t hear her and wasn’t paying attention anyway. “Porsha’s staying with me for the moment.” Mercedes sighed, thinking of Ayjia’s crying fits and midnight requests for her mother. “What am I going to do? They want to be with her.”
Mrs. Yamamoto looked across to Ayjia and her new friend, kneeling on the floor, giggling and mixing up their cards. Mrs. Yamamoto wore a serene expression that might have been nostalgic or indulgent, but there was something else there, too. Wistful? Regretful?
“My sister had a friend she played with at that age, the only other Japanese girl in our town. They both married at the same age, but my sister’s husband was kind and her friend’s husband was cruel. My sister told her, ‘This is America. You don’t have to put up with that.’ Her friend said it was not that simple. She loved her husband.” Mrs. Yamamoto fiddled with her knitting bag.
Mercedes took her fingers from the keyboard, insides going still at Mrs. Yamamoto’s somber tone.
“My sister loved her friend. She did not feel it was her place to interfere so she didn’t. Her friend’s husband killed my sister’s friend. Beat her to death. It was very sad.”
“Oh my God.” Mercedes covered her gasp with her fingertips, staring into Mrs. Yamamoto’s rheumy eyes.
“I have always wished I had interfered,” Mrs. Yamamoto said softly. “She was my friend, too.”
Mercedes was as bad as Porsha, sneaking around behind her sister’s
back, tasting her sister’s orange juice—spiked with vodka, of course—then leaving a slightly more urgent message for Shonda and tying up Porsha with a call to their mother so she could drive the children to school without her.
“She’ll be there when you get home,” Mercedes promised the kids. If I have to chain her to a kitchen chair.
Porsha hadn’t been able to reach Ray and was saying things like, “If I could just get up to Page for the day.”
“Okay, have a good day,” Mercedes told Dayton after a small scene when she dropped Ayjia at daycare. For the first time, the little girl had fought being left there. Her tantrum was still on Mercedes’s mind as she walked Dayton through the gate of the Elementary School.
“Why are you coming in?” he asked.
“I just need to speak to the principal a minute.”
“To ask if we can leave school before it’s finished?”
“Actually,” Mercedes prevaricated. “I just want to ask a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Like what their rules are about which people can collect children from the schoolyard.”
“Oh.” He lost interest and darted off to greet a friend.
Mercedes blew out a breath and climbed the stairs, not impressed she and Vice-Principal Wilcox would have to sit down for about the tenth time in a handful of weeks.
Shockingly, the woman treated her like a human being.
“I understand. We have procedures we follow in situations like this. I’ll meet with staff at lunch and bring the need for extra caution to the attention of the schoolyard supervisors. As for Holly, there’s no need to bring her in to introduce her. She was a student here. I know her very well. Please call first if she’ll be collecting the children. Other than that, well, I wish there was something else we could do. This must be very hard for you.”
Mercedes let out a shaky laugh, deflated after working herself up to what she had expected would be a confrontation with harsh judgment.
“It’s brutal,” she admitted. “I haven’t even told my sister that I... Well, I couldn’t do it with the kids right there and I wanted the social worker there to help me, not that she can do anything. Porsha’s going to flip and who wouldn’t? She’s not a bad person. She loves her kids. She just...can’t expect to raise them when it suits her and drop them when it doesn’t.”
