The Odds of You and Me

by Cecilia Galante

  “No.” She puts her hand on my arm. “Please don’t go. Please. I just . . .” She covers her face as new sobs overtake her, shakes her head behind her hands.

  I stare at her disbelievingly, one hand still on the baby. “Do you . . .” I start tentatively, hoping I am saying the right thing. “Do you need to go to the pharmacy to get your medicine? I don’t mind staying with the kids for a minute.”

  She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I can’t go out right now. I can’t even drive. I’m a mess.” She pauses, looking at me. “Would you . . . do you think you’d mind going and picking it up for me?”

  I take the tiny washcloth draped over one side of the tub and lay it out flat on Olivia’s stomach. It’s transparent against her skin, the swell of belly barely visible beneath, like a sinking island. “Sure. Where is it?”

  “Harrold’s Pharmacy? On Butler Street?”

  Less than a mile away. “Yeah, I know where that is.” Olivia is actually gurgling now, splashing her tiny hands in the water.

  “Oh, Bird,” Jane says. “You don’t know what this means to me. Thank you so much. Let me get my wallet. And I’ll call the pharmacy now and tell them you’re coming.”

  I TOOK VICODIN once after I had my wisdom teeth removed. It didn’t do much except make me feel numb all over, which, in the long run, I guess, is exactly what it was supposed to do. I take out the drug information insert stuffed alongside Jane’s prescription bottle and sit in the car and read.

  Vicodin is a pharmaceutical containing acetaminophen and hydrocodone used to relieve moderate to severe pain. Hydrocodone is in a group of drugs called narcotic pain relievers. It may be habit forming. Vicodin should not be taken by anyone who has liver problems or who consumes three or more alcoholic beverages a day. Vicodin should never be given to another person, especially someone with a history of drug abuse.

  There’s a lot more, but it’s all stuff I can’t even spell, let alone understand. The only thing I really zero in on anyway is the part about moderate to severe pain. And how little I’ve done to help ease James’s.

  I uncap the bottle, look inside. There are at least twenty-five pills in there. At five hundred milligrams each, I wonder how many Jane takes a day. She’s so tiny; it can’t be more than one. Which will make it a lot easier to miss a few, I think, stuffing four of the pills into my front pocket.

  If she notices at all.

  Chapter 22

  One Sunday when I was about ten years old, Father Delaney gave a long sermon at Mass about stealing. I listened intently, taking in the information, and then promptly forgot about it. Later, however, at dinner, I brought it up again. Ma had made one of her enormous pot roasts, serving it with roasted potatoes, carrots, and turnips. There was a little bowl of horseradish sour cream, too, and a basket of bread. But I wasn’t interested in any of the food; I wanted some answers.

  “I know it’s wrong to steal a candy bar from the store,” I said. “But what if a guy’s family is starving and he steals bread and peanut butter? That’s not stealing, right?”

  “It most certainly is.” Ma put her fork down and looked straight at me. “You don’t always get to choose your circumstances, Bird. But you do get to choose how you react to them.”

  I let this answer fly over my head the way I did with most of Ma’s cerebral responses. They were so obtuse sounding that they never seemed to make any sense. “So do you really think God would punish that man for stealing?” I asked. “Even if he did it so his family wouldn’t starve?”

  Ma tilted her head slightly to the right, raised her eyebrows. It was her way of saying “yes” without actually saying the word.

  “Well, now, I disagree,” Dad said.

  Ma stopped chewing. “With who?”

  “With you.” He pointed his fork across the table at her, the sleeve of his brown sweater drooping around his wrist. “But just with your last sentence. I think stealing is wrong, too, but I don’t really think God would punish a man in that kind of situation.”

  My heart swelled, just looking at him. Dad always understood. He always made sense.

  “Even if he stole,” Ma prompted him.

  “Yes, even if he stole,” Dad said. “Because he did it for the greater good. He did it to feed his children. Don’t you think God would have a harder time forgiving a man who let his family starve, than someone who had to steal food to keep them alive?”

  “There are other ways,” Ma said. “No one has to steal.”

  “What other ways?” I asked.

  “Like getting a job,” Ma answered. Her jaw was moving up and down so hard I thought she might bite her cheek. “Or going to a soup kitchen.”

  “What if he couldn’t find a job?” Dad’s tone was still light and easy. There was no reason for this to segue into an argument; it was just a family discussion around the dinner table. We could agree to disagree. “What if the guy was injured? Or what if he was in between jobs? What if he was supposed to start something in a day or two, but in the meantime his family was starving?”

  “And he had little babies,” I piped in. “What if he had little babies, Ma? They need milk, you know.”

  We were both looking at her now, waiting for her to answer. I expected her to come back again with some other retort, or even recite something that Father Delaney had told her about mortal sin. For Ma, things always came back to sin. Always. But instead, she set her fork and knife down on either side of her plate and stood up. “Why are you doing this, Bill?” Her voice was barely audible, but so venomous that if she had screamed, it would not have had the same crushing kind of impact.

  “Doing what?” Dad was aghast.

  “Putting me on the spot like this!” Ma was blinking back tears now. “Making me out to be the monster of this discussion!” She glared at me. “Babies, Bird? Really?”

  And then she left the room.

  As badly as I felt, that day was a turning point for me. Because I realized that the real root of Ma’s frustration was that she had run out of answers. That, at least in this particular situation, she didn’t know what the right thing to do was. It was my first foray into the world of gray. An introduction to the possibility that maybe it wasn’t all as black and white as Ma always held it up to be. Dad’s way of seeing things could work, despite the insistence of Ma’s nagging rebuttals.

  Now, driving home from Jane’s, I remind myself of that every time I think of the Vicodin in my pocket. They are painkillers that I have stolen, yes. But they are for a man who is in unbearable suffering. They will ease the torturous state he is in for at least a little while.

  They are for the greater good.

  EVERYONE AT AFTER care—the kids, Molly, Miss Annie, and Carol—is pressed up against the big glass window in the back when I come for Angus. I watch Jeremy, who is elbowing Angus a little, trying to get a better view of whatever it is they’re looking at, and then step forward. “Hey, guys! What’s out there?”

  Angus turns immediately at the sound of my voice. “It’s a bad guy, Mom! The cops are looking for him!” His eyes are button-sized; there is a dried ketchup smear along his chin.

  Molly tears herself away from the window, walks briskly toward me. “There’s a bunch of policemen across the street.” Her voice is low, brimming with excitement. “They’re searching those two big office buildings over there next to the movie complex. Someone said they got a tip. You know, for Rittenhouse.”

  “Oh.” My heart skips a beat. Is a church considered an office building? Will they go to the rectory, ask Father Delaney to lead them through any unused rooms?

  “You can’t see them now; they just went into the bank.” Molly clutches my elbow, points to the window. “But the kids were all excited when they saw the lights.”

  I look in the direction Molly is pointing until I can see the cars myself. There are four of them—plain Buicks painted to read NEW HAVEN POLICE DEPARTMENT on the sides. Two of them still have their lights on; the cubed blue-and-red flashes swirl around me
thodically, turning the sides of the building a pale red. My mouth feels hot and much too dry.

  “Okay, well, thanks.” I look away from the trucks, back over at Angus. “Come on, Boo! We gotta go!” But he and Jeremy have gotten involved in some sort of tussle. Jeremy’s got Angus around the neck, bending him in half, almost to his knees. Angus’s arms are out straight on either side of him, flailing uselessly. I’m over the two of them, yanking Jeremy off Angus in two seconds, leaning my face in close to his.

  “Don’t you touch him!” I know my voice is too loud, the harshness of it unacceptable for a child this age. But I don’t care. “You stay away from Angus from now on, do you hear me? I don’t want you to be his friend. I don’t even want you to say hi to him anymore.” Jeremy takes a step back, stares up at me defiantly. “Do you understand me?” My voice is on the edge of a shriek, my eyes bulging. Jeremy breaks finally under my crazy-lady stare and starts to cry.

  Molly, who has been standing next to him, gathers Jeremy up in a hug, holds him close against her. Jeremy wraps his small corduroy legs around her waist, shoves his face into her shoulder. “Mrs. Connolly,” Molly says.

  “Miss Connolly.” I grab Angus’s hand.

  “Miss Connolly.” Molly’s cheeks flush pink. “I know these two have been having some issues, but there’s really no need to speak to a child like that.”

  “Well, someone has to.” And before Molly can say another word, I pull Angus out of the room, down the hallway, and into the car.

  ANGUS GETS IN the backseat very carefully, fastening his seat belt without being told, and folds his hands neatly in his lap. His steady gaze along the nape of my neck feels like a heavy necklace settling around the top of my spine. I put the key in the ignition, start the car, and then put my head down on the steering wheel and sob.

  “Mom?” Angus lets himself out of the seat belt again, climbs over the seat until he is next to me. “What’s the matter?”

  His questions make me cry harder, and I bury my face into the side of his neck, right where the bottom of his hair curls.

  But my onslaught of tears is abruptly curbed when I feel Angus’s tiny hand patting my shoulder. No, no, no. He shouldn’t see me like this. I’m the mother. He’s the child. Pull yourself together, Bird. I sit up, smear away my tears with the heels of my hands. “I’m sorry, Angus. I didn’t mean to scare you like that. I’ve just had the worst day.”

  Angus studies me for a moment, his mouth slightly ajar, just the tips of his tiny teeth inside peeking out. Behind him, a large forsythia bush is clotted with straining yellow buds. “Wanna go see Dopester?” he asks. “Just you and me?”

  I nod, smooth my hand over the curve of his head. “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, let’s go see Dopester.”

  Chapter 23

  We sit in the car for a few minutes, both of us leaning out the driver’s side window, staring at the little gnome. He is the very last one in the row, all the way on the other side of the lawn, but it is easy to see his wide, sail-like ears sticking out on either side of his cherubic face and his purple hat drooping down low over his forehead. “Why do you like Dopester so much?” I ask Angus after a minute. “I mean, there’s seven of those little guys there. What is it about him that you like the best?”

  Angus wiggles in a little more tightly against me. “His shoes,” he says finally.

  “His shoes?” I lean out the window a little farther, trying to make them out. All I can see is a pair of brown slipper-like things, exactly like all the rest. “They all have the same shoes, Boo.”

  “No.” Angus shakes his head solemnly. “Dopester’s are different. They’re smaller.”

  “They’re smaller?” I squint, visoring my eyes with the side of one hand to see more clearly. “How can you tell?”

  “’Cause he’s the smallest dorf,” Angus says.

  “Dwarf,” I correct him.

  “Dorf.”

  I let it go. “So you like him the best because he’s the smallest?”

  Angus nods. “And because he has the smallest shoes. Which makes them magical.”

  “Ah.” I tuck a curl behind his ear. “Kind of like your magic shoes?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, no wonder he’s your favorite, then. That makes perfect sense.”

  Angus rests his chin on the backs of his hands, which are holding on to the bottom of the window, and smiles.

  “Hey, Boo?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You want to go see a favorite thing of mine?”

  He turns his head without lifting his chin. “Where?”

  I PULL MY car into the circular driveway, a carpet of pine needles and soft dirt crunching lightly beneath my tires. The hollow drilling of a woodpecker echoes in a tree above me; the scent of pine is thick as smoke. I inhale deeply. Moon Lake is only a ten-, fifteen-minute drive outside of New Haven, but coming out here always feels as if I’ve landed on another planet, complete with oxygen, white-pebbled yards, and cedar decks high as trees. Even the light out here is different—softer somehow, with a pale, fluid quality, as if filtered through water.

  And here, not fifty yards ahead of me, is the white bilevel house that Angus and I will soon be calling home. Someone (probably Mrs. Vandermark) has replaced the rosebud wreath with a green chinaberry one; and the heavy deck furniture sits like shadows behind the screen of the enclosed side porch. Even from the back it is impossible not to glimpse parts of the enormous oak tree on the front lawn, the new buds that are just now starting to turn green. A lone branch, thick and solitary as an arm, reaches out above the water, as if trying to glimpse its reflection below. After we move in, I am going to hang a tire swing from that branch for Angus. I’ll stand on the doorstep every evening as the light drains from the sky, and watch as he sails out over the lake, dark hair rippling, his shouts carrying over the wind.

  I took note of where Mrs. Vandermark left a spare key the very first time she showed me the apartment, hidden inside the swirled crevices of a conch shell just behind the first step. I realize that what I’m about to do could technically be considered breaking and entering, but it’s not really. I’ve already paid Mrs. Vandermark the first and last month’s rent, which is two-thirds of what I owe. Which means, at the very least, that the place is already two-thirds mine. I turn the shell over in my hand, let the key drop out, smile at Angus. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

  “Whose house is this?” he asks, already climbing the steps.

  I trudge up behind him, holding a cardboard box filled with kitchen items, which has been in the back of my car for over a week now. “It’s gonna be ours, Angus. This is gonna be our new home.” I hold my breath, the way I always do whenever the front door opens, as if we are stepping into Disney World. It’s not Disney World, of course, but you wouldn’t know it the way Angus runs into the living room, flushed and wide-eyed, hollering at the top of his lungs. “Echo!” His voice bounces off the empty white walls, scuttles along the hardwood floor, and down the tiny hallway that separates his bedroom from mine. “Echo!” he yells again. “Echo, echo, echo!”

  I put the cardboard box down on one of the kitchen counters and run up to him quickly. “No yelling, Angus. That’s gonna be one of the rules when we move in, too, okay? You can’t yell.”

  Angus ignores my reprimand, pointing to the large, Buick-sized window on the other side of the room. “Look! You can see all the way to the other side, Mom!” The last time I’d been here, it had been raining, and so foggy that I couldn’t see halfway across the lake, much less to the other side. Now, as we walk over to the glass together, my eyes are riveted on the opposite shoreline. It is barely visible, almost a smudge; a house with a red roof appears the size of a toy. In between, the water is vast and dark, a heavy, cloudy blue. A wind is blowing tiny whitecaps across the surface; the sky is the color of cream. I can feel my breathing slow, the beat of my heart settling back down to a normal, steady rhythm. Maybe it will have the same effect on James.

  An
gus disappears down the hallway, into the room where we will put his bed and dresser and his Buzz Lightyear comforter. I stand in the middle of the living room for a moment, trying to envision where I will put James tomorrow. It would probably be safer to hide him away in one of the bedrooms, but maybe he can stay out here—at least until Mrs. Vandermark returns next week—so he can look out the window. Enjoy the view. I’ll get blankets and sheets, arrange a bed of sorts on the floor here, right next to the window, so he can get comfortable and lay down flat and look out at the water.

  I open up the red cupboards below the kitchen sink, slide my few dented pots inside one, a colander, three bowls, and four plates inside the other. One of the drawers gets the plastic silverware tray, and I separate the forks and knives and spoons carefully into its wide partitions. Afterward, I withdraw one of the pots from the cupboard again, fill it with water from the sink, and set it on top of one of the stove burners. Tomorrow night, after I bring James here, I will boil the water and pour in some tube pasta. I’ll buy some fresh vegetables and fruit, too, maybe some bread and cheese. I will have to get soap and shampoo, so that he can use the shower properly. Toilet paper. Some clean towels, a toothbrush, toothpaste. And water. Lots more water. Hadn’t he told me some other statistic once? Something about the Three Threes when it came to survival? Humans could go three minutes without air, three hours in extremely harsh weather, and three days without water. After that, your chances of survival plummeted by the moment. Yes, I would be sure to stock up on water.

  Angus comes running out of his bedroom. “I just saw a blue jay, Mom! Right outside the window! It was sitting in the tree, and I was watching it and then it flew away! What do blue jays eat? Do they eat blue food?”

  I put my arm around my boy, kneel down next to him. “I’m pretty sure they just eat worms, like all the other birds.”

  Angus’s face falls. “Not even blueberries?”

  “Maybe blueberries.” I stand back up, press my hand against my chest hard, as if to quell the banging of my heart beneath it.