I Bring Sorrow_And Other Stories of Transgression

by Patricia Abbott

  The man reached into his pocket and removed a small envelope, handing it to her. “Said to give it to you if need be.” Inside was a photo of her exchanging money for drugs in a park in Detroit. Another showed her removing the license plate on a Camry out in Warren, the GM Tech Center looming behind her. Bent over, her ass looked as big as a basketball. Why had no one told her this? She swallowed hard.

  “Feck’s been setting you up for bigger stuff ever since you turned up. Testing you in little ways. But don’t worry about this escapade.” He nodded toward the bedroom where the boy was. “This one’s gonna go off like clockwork.” He paused, looking at her carefully. “Kid gets his next injection at seven p.m. Then one every six hours after that. Can you remember that? Know how to set the alarm on your phone?”

  “What if something goes wrong?”

  “Nothin’s going wrong, worrywart. Just wear your mask if he starts to come ’round—wear it when you give him his meds too. Don’t be a hero. If he yells, no one can hear him out here. But keep him asleep. A doctor fixed it all up. He’ll be fine. This doc fixes tranqs for dogs on plane trips all the time—big dogs even. This is the same deal.”

  “Tranqs for dogs,” she repeatedly numbly.

  On his way out the door, he grabbed her car keys from the table.

  “Hey,” she started to say.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll get ’em back when I pick up the kid.” He shrugged. “Look, you could bolt, and we can’t have him here all by himself. Don’t want him to wander into the woods and get eaten by a bear. You got your phone, right?”

  “Right.”

  She was in this—whatever it was—up to her neck. Her second thought was had she brought her charger? Third, who would she call anyway? Feck cut her off her from everyone long ago. Not that there’d ever been a big social scene in her life.

  “Oh, and one more thing. Feck might call you to take a picture of the kid. Know how to do that? Take a picture and send it to him?”

  She nodded.

  “Practice by taking one of me now.”

  What world did this bozo think she lived in? Dully, she pulled out a phone and complied.

  “Now send it to me. Just for practice.” He gave her his cell number and in seconds, he had the photo.

  “Good. Wow, I could use a haircut,” he said, looking it over. “Now I’ll take your picture.” He made her pose with the kid on the bed, making her put a hand on the boy’s cheek, hold his hand. Nurse Doe.

  She did all of this numbly, not taking it in right away. Not figuring it out.

  After that, he erased his number from her phone and took off. “Doesn’t matter, of course. It’ll be in the trash five minutes after Feck has it. Guy doesn’t miss a trick.”

  For the next three hours, she sat staring at the kid, thinking about how dead she’d be if anything went wrong, leaning over him every few minutes to be sure he was breathing. She googled missing kids. Nothing fitting his description. She plugged her phone into the charger then and crept around the house, looking for something, though she’d no idea what. She gave the kid his next injection and continued to watch him, only leaving the bedside to pour some cereal. She could’ve guessed Feck would choose Fruit Loops. The milk tasted like cream. She finished the coffee from earlier.

  She needed to stay awake, but around ten, she fell asleep anyway, waking to find the boy staring into her face. It looked like he wasn’t fully awake. She realized after a second or two he couldn’t really see her clearly between the effect of the drugs and the darkness of the poorly lit cabin. She considered putting on her mask just in case, but his eyes were fuzzy and unfocused. It was too early for his next injection so she kept still, and gradually his eyes shut.

  Where the fuck was Feck? She dialed his number and left a message. “Call me, you jerk.” She began reading her Parker book again, remembering the ending sixty pages in.

  The kid started coughing about six a.m., a few hours later. His forehead was hot, really hot. Shit. Would it be safe to inject him if he was sick? She called Feck again. Still no answer, so she left a detailed message, trying hard not to sound too angry, too dangerous.

  Another hour passed. She found some aspirin in her purse, and after grinding a tablet to a paste, held a finger to the kid’s lips. Perhaps intuitively, he licked her finger. It was probably just a simple cold, but she began to worry more. She put on her mask and woke him up.

  He didn’t seem surprised to see a woman in a Snow White mask. Perhaps his life was filled with events like this. Hers had been.

  “What happened to Obama?” he asked sleepily. “Where’d Obama go?

  She wasn’t sure what he meant until she realized the guy who dropped him off probably wore a mask too.

  “Back to D.C., I guess. How do you feel?” She put a hand on his forehead. “You’re burning up.”

  But he was already sleeping again, his breath more ragged than before, his face glowing red. Now she wondered if it was the virus rather than the drugs knocking him out.

  She yanked her phone out of the charger, noticing the power read less than five percent. The outlet must be disabled. If she called 911 for help, they’d have a record of her cell phone number. She knew by now that there was no way this was going to end well. She could end up with Ruthie—probably in the ground—or she could end up in a cell. But she would not be responsible for letting the kid die.

  “There’s a sick kid here,” she told the woman who answered her call. “Sorry, I’m not sure of his name. Yeah, I know it’s strange.” She gave her location and the woman knew the spot right away.

  “Todd’s? Sure. Just stay where you are,” the dispatcher told her. “It’ll be a little wait. Our funds were slashed and we have to use the EMS from Caseville. We’ll do our best. Hang on tight.”

  She knew the woman would not be so conciliatory once she found out what was going on out at Todd’s, but it was nice to hear a friendly voice for now. After she hung up, she gave some brief thought to fleeing on foot, to even holing up in that Caddy. But snow was beginning to fall and it was miles away. Since she had nowhere else to go, she dampened a cloth and put it on the kid’s head. She listened to his pulse. She covered him with a warmer blanket. She ground another aspirin. She tried to be his nurse.

  And she waited. She was good at waiting.

  Mad Women

  “Come this way, miss.”

  Like Paul Winchell, the ventriloquist on television, the man’s lips hardly moved at all. “Don’t want to make a fuss now, do we?” His head swiveled toward the crowd of shoppers threatening to engulf them.

  Eve Moran, his prisoner, appraised potential paths of escape, and then, head down, went along. The grip on her arm bordered on assault. She wondered if the Belgian lace sleeves on her pink linen suit jacket would bear his fingerprints forever.

  The uniformed operator in the elevator shot her a sympathetic glance as the apparatus delivered them to the top floor. Her capture played out efficiently because the sophisticated security procedures of this august store detained shoplifters and miscreants every day: women who couldn’t keep their hands off the merchandise; agile men who picked pockets; scoundrels of both sexes with stolen charge plates; boys who broke things, then ran; teenage girls who sneaked into dressing rooms and exited resembling polar bears; females who ransacked makeup counters, dropping tubes, pencils, and nail polish bottles down their blouse or into their pockets; teams of professional boosters who made a science out of defrauding stores. It was 1962 and store theft was becoming professionalized.

  No one spoke or even glanced at Eve as she passed down narrow hallways, walking up a final flight of narrow, uncarpeted steps. The detective, if that’s what he was called, showed her inside a gloomy office, holding the door open without saying a word. The room was dark, tiny, and windowless except for a slit of light from the hallway. A battered walnut table, two chairs, and cheap p
aneled walls greeted her. It smelled of tobacco, burnt coffee, Dentyne chewing gum, sweat. It was not the sort of room where suburban women were coddled, pitied, or forgiven. Not a place where sympathetic gestures were offered, nor where men in off-the-rack suits looked the other way if a pretty face smiled back at them.

  She couldn’t think of how to turn this situation around. Her brief detentions with inexperienced clerks in shops in South Carolina or Texas, where Hank and she’d lived on military bases, were no preparation for the security staff at John D. Wannamaker’s Department Store in Philadelphia. Eve had no leverage to use here, no husband wearing bars or stars on his chest on a base a mile away to offer up excuses, bribes, charm.

  “I think you misunderstood what happened…downstairs,” Eve finally managed to get out. “I fully intended…”

  He put a plump hand up. “Not a day goes by when someone doesn’t say those words to me.” He motioned to a chair. “Tells me they were about to pay for it. Tells me I misunderstood. That they have relatives in high places.” His eyes fluttered toward heaven and his hand waved dismissively.

  “I’m sure I have the necessary receipt somewhere in my bag.” She began to stretch for her handbag, but he pushed it out of reach.

  This man, this security guard who looked like an M.P., had heard it all before from the look on his face. She couldn’t think of anything to offer him—anything to charm him. He looked far too tired and bored to trade absolution for a grope or a kiss. There was some relief in this realization, though, in knowing she’d been outmaneuvered and could await her sentence without discussion.

  He gestured again toward a wooden chair, and once she was seated he proceeded to remove the items from her bag, one by one, shaking his head at the variety of store tags: Gimbels, Lit Brothers, Strawbridge’s, Wanamaker’s—the four grand dames of Philadelphia shopping—finally saying with a hint of a chuckle, “You went wild, didn’t you? Had to have yourself a memento from every store. Was it a dare?”

  She was silent.

  He tossed her hard-won booty back in the bag. “Half of your haul is junk, lady. A dish probably selling for two dollars and ninety-nine cents? Crissake, there’s dust in it. It’s a display piece.” He held up his dirty finger, and she felt heat rising on her face. The charm bracelet from Wanamaker’s, with its dice and rabbit and one-armed bandit, still lay on the table. “This is something a twelve-year-old girl buys. Not a woman like you.” He fingered the dice charm. “Kind of a sign? You like taking chances, right? Have to have your souvenirs even if they’re worthless.”

  He asked to see her driver’s license, wrote a sentence or two on his pad, then picked up the stolen goods and headed for the door.

  “Part of the kick, isn’t it? Seeing if you can get away with it? Guess what?” She looked at him blankly. “You can’t.” He shut the door behind him.

  His suggestion that seeing if she could get away with it was part of the kick was ridiculous. She sat for a long time wondering if they’d called the police yet. What the fine or punishment might be. Could she cover it herself?

  How would Hank react? She could picture his red face—though it turned purple whenever she crossed swords with him. Maybe he could be kept out of it. How much money did she have with her? She hadn’t planned on needing more than enough for a quick sandwich at a counter or the automat. She reached for her purse.

  Something similar to this—an incident where things spun out of control—happened when she was fifteen. She’d taken a lipstick from Woolworth’s makeup counter. Well, okay, a couple of tubes of lipstick and some eye shadow on the theory “in for a penny, in for a pound.”

  The clerk caught her, grabbing her wrist as she reached for a third tube. The woman—only a few years older than Eve, which somehow made it more galling— called Eve’s father after demanding his phone number in such an authoritative voice that Eve couldn’t refuse, couldn’t help but fumble in her wallet until she found his office number on a yellowing piece of paper.

  The clerk then dumped the purse’s contents on the counter, attracting the attention of a number of shoppers as items crashed on the glass. Cheap, worn-out possessions, which looked ridiculous on display. The whole incident might’ve been forgotten if her purse’s interior hadn’t branded her as shabby.

  Her father showed up after what seemed like hours. Grim-faced, stoop-shouldered, scuffed-shoed Herman Hobart, hat in hand. Leaving his cubicle at the Philadelphia Naval Yard to travel across the city, he paid the dime store clerk with nickels and dimes and quarters. The one bill he pulled from his pocket fluttered to the floor, and when she retrieved it, the dollar felt like velvet, folded up as it was and probably had been for years.

  “I guess that’ll do,” the clerk said doubtfully, finally scooping Eve’s things up from the counter. After making a face, she returned Eve’s pocketbook. Her father didn’t speak to her once on the bus ride home.

  Sometimes it seemed like there was nothing but a long line of dour-faced men in her life: fathers, husbands, school principals, security guards, cops. Disapproving doctors her parents had consulted after incidents at school. All of them avoiding her eyes, disappointed in her.

  The episode at Woolworths hadn’t changed her behavior, but it’d made her more careful. No one likely to make a fuss had caught her again…until today.

  And no one found her with a pocketbook full of dross after that. Never again would someone dump its contents on a counter and find used tissues, dirty combs, tampons, worn-down lipsticks, half-eaten boxes of Good and Plenty, stuff she’d taken from other girls’ lockers in school, snapshots of movie stars from Hollywood studios, autographed by a machine, or so she’d been told.

  There was less than fifteen dollars in her purse today. She counted it twice to be sure, checked the little pockets, unrolled the white hanky, and dug around in her suit jacket pockets. Too little money to pay a fine or bribe the guard—if it came to that.

  She’d come downtown today in a fog. Could she tell this to whoever came into the room? That she hadn’t known any of this would happen? She hadn’t meant to take those things, hadn’t considered her heart’s desire until it was tucked inside her purse. Would they care she’d set out this morning in her pretty pink suit with nothing but a jaunt into the city in mind—a lunch downtown to break up the tedium of her life, some window-shopping at most. She looked so nice in her pretty pink outfit. The conductor on the train had smiled at her. So, too, had the ticket seller, the woman across the aisle, the man who gave her a hand stepping down from the train. It had started out so well.

  Then, suddenly, she had to have one or two of the beautiful things she saw, articles she‘d wanted her whole life. She didn’t understand it herself. It was like she was in a dream, doing these things as if sleepwalking. There must be a name for it. A name for this condition that overtook her.

  She got up, stretched, and looked out the tiny window and down at the people on the street, people free to walk around, to have lunch, to make a purchase. Only an hour ago, she had been one of those people. Was the window no more than a slit so imprisoned people like her couldn’t jump out?

  Occasionally, someone opened the door, never saying a word despite her hopeful smile. Making sure she hadn’t magically stuffed herself in some bag or box or drawer and found her way out of the office, out of the store, much like the stuff she’d tried to take. But there was no escape, only long, sinewy hallways lined with the offices of the people who’d spot her. An hour, perhaps more, passed. It was like waiting in the doctor’s office without the posters about various diseases to examine, without the eye chart.

  Suddenly, Hank stood in the doorway, looking more tired than angry. His face was ashen. “Come on,” he said, offering his hand. “Let’s get it over with.”

  Although the gesture implied some feeling for her—some pity—his voice was cold. Not even inquiring if she‘d done what they said. He led her out of the room, and d
own the hall. No one stood in their way; no one peeked from drawn blinds or through open doors. She was in a fog, absolutely terrified. Get what over with? What had Hank meant? Hadn’t he taken care of it? Wasn’t that what he did? Wasn’t that part of the deal?

  Hank led her to a larger and brighter office in the famous Wanamaker’s Department Store, the mother ship of emporiums in Philadelphia. It was too bad she hadn’t been caught at Lit’s, she thought, following him. Lit Brothers didn’t have such an exalted idea of itself. It knew its place. She’d have been able to bluff her way out of the lower-rung stores. Their security wouldn’t have made so much of it—so much out of the paltry stuff in her bag.

  The windows shone transparent here, the room was carpeted with a richly colored, thick rug. A slight odor of stale cigars hung in the air while she waited next to a too-silent Hank. She wasn’t going to be put in the Eastern State Penitentiary, she realized. People charged with a crime didn’t get ushered into offices like this one. Hank probably gave them a deal on their printing needs for the next fifty years. Men like Hank, president of his retired parents’ printing firm, didn’t have wives incarcerated in the Eastern State Penitentiary. It was simply not done.

  The store manager came in, Bill Harrison, a fellow St. Joseph’s Catholic High School graduate. Suddenly loquacious, Hank began a rush of glad-handing, jocular remembrances of St. Joe’s, memories about which priests were still teaching, talk of cafeteria food, of theatricals with all-male casts; the punishments dispensed by the principal—a man of uncommon strength; a few mutual friends. This took five minutes, during which she stood like a convicted felon awaiting sentence. The two men eventually ran out of high school remembrances, agreeing quickly once they got to it that Eve would get professional help.

  “I’ve something in mind already,” Hank told the store manager. “A place for Eve, that is. I’ve heard good things about it. We talked to the administrator there today.”

  Eve wondered who “we” was.