Pieces of Me

by Darlene Ryan

  “My dad’s mad,” Dylan said softly.

  I gave his shoulders a squeeze. “I think he was just worried about you and your brother.”

  He shook his head and stared at his feet. “No, it’s my fault. I was supposed to stay in the van.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I gave him another squeeze.

  In a minute or so, Q turned around and he and Dylan’s dad walked over to us. “Maddie,” Q said. “This is Michael.”

  “Hi,” I said. Michael was a bit heavier than Q, with short dirty-blond hair and a couple of days’ stubble. He had the same blue-gray eyes as Dylan, but there was a mean glint to Michael’s gaze. Or maybe I just thought that because I already didn’t like him. I kept my arm around Dylan. I’d decided if his father did anything mean, I was going to scoop the kid up and run like hell.

  Michael looked at Dylan. “Is your brother still sleeping?” Dylan nodded. Michael shot Q a quick sideways glance, no more than a flick of his eyes. I probably wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been watching his face so closely. Michael leaned toward Dylan, who leaned back against me just a little. “You did good,” he said.

  “I did?” Dylan looked up at me for confirmation, and I nodded slightly.

  I noticed then that Michael was carrying fast food. At the same time it was registering that it shouldn’t have taken so long for him to go get some greasy hamburgers, I realized I could smell alcohol on the man. He’d been somewhere for a drink. Or two. He was a crappy father cliché.

  Michael handed the bag to Dylan. “Here,” he said. “Wake your brother up and give him something to eat.”

  Dylan took the food, at the same time reaching for my hand and squeezing it. I squeezed back, then opened the door and helped him climb into the driver’s seat of the van.

  “See you, Maddie,” he whispered.

  “See you,” I whispered back.

  I turned around to find Michael watching me and Q watching him.

  “You know my wife,” Michael said. He didn’t look like he smiled much.

  “A little,” I said.

  “Man, I’m sorry about the misunderstanding,” Q said.

  “It’s just, Maddie loves kids.”

  “Shit, you want one?” Michael asked. “You can’t get a break, you know?” He wiped a hand across his face. “First I lose my job, and then the kids need so goddamn much crap, you know? You have any idea what diapers and all that shit cost?”

  “Lucky for me, I don’t,” Q said.

  What the heck was he talking about? I shot him a glare, but his expression didn’t change.

  I saw Q look to see if the kids were okay in the van. “We gotta get going,” he said to Michael. “You need a babysitter, like I said, Maddie loves kids.” He reached for my hand. I grabbed the pizza box, thinking I was going to beat the crap out of Q with it the first chance I got.

  “And sorry about before,” Q added.

  Michael shrugged. “Not a problem.”

  Q and I walked away, and I waited until we were out of sight of the van before I stopped and let go of his hand. “What was all that crap?” I said. “That guy’s a jerk.”

  “I know,” Q said evenly.

  I glared at him. One of my hands was clenched in my pocket. The other was crushing the pizza box. “You know? So what was all that ‘Maddie loves kids’ and ‘Sorry about before’?”

  Q started walking again, and I had to scramble after him. “Maddie, if I get into a pissing contest with that guy, who do you think’s gonna pay for it?”

  I had to take a bunch of deep breaths before I could say anything. “You think he’d…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “I know he would,” Q said. “Better he thinks he got the better of me than he thinks he looked like a fool.”

  I looked back over my shoulder. “We can’t leave them with him.”

  Q caught my arm. “Yes, we can. He’s their father.”

  I tried to pull away, but Q held on to me. “He left two little kids by themselves. And don’t say you didn’t smell him, Q.”

  “Let it be, Maddie,” Q said. “I know Michael was drinking. I know everything someone like Michael does. Believe me. But he’s their dad, and you’re just a kid living on the street. Who do you think anyone’s gonna believe?”

  I finally yanked my arm out of Q’s grip, but I didn’t bolt back to the van. “So I’m just supposed to do nothing?” I blinked a couple of times because all of a sudden there was something in my eye.

  “No. We’re going to be here for a few days, and so are they. You heard me tell him you could babysit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So maybe you’ll get the chance. And maybe you’ll be able to find out how Michael treats the kids.”

  I looked at him then. He was rubbing a hand up and down his arm. “Look, Maddie, I don’t want to see those kids with a dad who…” He shook his head and didn’t finish. “But taking them away and putting them in foster care? That’s sending them to hell.”

  I turned away, scraping my shoe on the ground.

  “Let’s go back to the car,” Q said.

  We walked the rest of the way to the Honda, which was parked about three quarters of the way down the row of trailers, tucked in between a big RV and a much smaller Volkswagen van. I got in the passenger side, leaned my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes. Q took the pizza box out of my hands and set it on the dashboard.

  “I hate not being able to do anything,” I said.

  “So someday you’ll become a doctor, and you will be able to do something.”

  “That’s too far away.”

  I could hear Q moving in the driver’s seat, probably trying to get his long legs into a comfortable position. “Dylan knows he can trust you,” he said finally. “That’s something.”

  I thought about all the adults in my life. My mother. The guidance counselor who’d shaken her head when I’d said I wanted to be a doctor. Evan. Maybe Q was right. Maybe Dylan’s knowing he could count on me was something. I opened my eyes.

  Q was sitting cross-legged on the seat watching me. “You all right?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  He gave the pizza box a poke. “You want a slice? It’s cold and probably stuck to the cardboard. Yummy!” He did the spazzy eyebrow thing.

  That made me laugh, even though I didn’t feel like it. “Okay,” I said.

  Q opened the mashed-in lid of the box and got a piece of pizza for each of us. The cheese was chewy, kind of like a pencil eraser, and the crust was soggy. “Yummy,” I said to Q, mimicking his eyebrow thing. That got me a smile.

  After we ate, Q collected the garbage. “You’re a good person too, Q,” I said quietly.

  He stopped but didn’t say anything, I reached out and caught his hand. He gave it a quick squeeze, the way I’d done with Dylan, and then he got out of the car.

  six

  When I woke up, I could hear Q moving in the backseat.

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said. “Did I wake you up?”

  I pushed my hair back out of my eyes and sat up. “Nah, my arm’s all weird.” I stuck out my right arm, rolling it from the shoulder until it made a loud snap.

  Q shuddered.

  One of my blankets had slipped to the floor. I opened the car door and got out, stretching my arms over my head. Q climbed out of the backseat. “If you make that noise again, I’ll puke,” he warned.

  “You’re such a wussy boy,” I teased.

  “I’m not a wussy boy,” he said. “With those shoulders, you should be in a freak show.”

  “How do you know I wasn’t?”

  He laughed. “You win. I got nothing.” Then his face got serious. “We’ll have to go to Tim’s to get cleaned up. They don’t open the mall until eleven.”

  “I’ll buy you a breakfast sandwich,” I said. He started to object, but I held up a hand. “It’s my bottle money, and besides, you got the pizza last night.”

  I put my hair back in a braid, pulled o
n my jacket and dug the sleep crud out of my eyes. Q locked the car and we started for Tim’s. I couldn’t help looking down the row of RVS for the old blue van. There was no activity around it.

  “He’s okay,” Q said.

  I nodded and hoped he was right.

  It was quiet at Tim’s. I got washed up, changing into my second-to-last clean shirt. Then Q and I sat at a table by the window and had our coffee and sandwiches.

  “Hey, Maddie, I got something I gotta do this morning,” he said.

  “Did that guy lend you his truck?” I asked.

  Q pulled a piece of bacon out of his sandwich and ate it. “No. All that stuff ended up going to the dump. What a waste.” He stretched his legs under the table. “It’s that I kinda promised I’d do something this morning.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “There’s this woman…she’s old and she doesn’t have much, plus she’s raising her granddaughter, I met them at the food bank a couple of times. She needs a couple of screens put on her windows, but the landlord keeps putting her off. I told her I’d do it.”

  He looked kind of embarrassed, pushing his coffee cup back and forth across the table from one hand to the other.

  “That’s really nice of you,” I said.

  “It’s not a problem,” he said. “And I like her.” He looked up at me then. “So is there anywhere I could take you?”

  It was my turn to look down, embarrassed. “You’ll laugh,” I said.

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Church.”

  “Church?”

  I looked up at him and nodded.

  “Okay, you have clearly been taken over by the Holy Roller pod people,” Q said.

  “See?” I said. “I knew you’d laugh.”

  Q pushed his cup away. “I’m not laughing. I’m just trying to figure out why the heck you want to go to church. Didn’t you get enough ‘Come to Jesus’ on Monday night?”

  Had it just been Monday night that I’d met Q? I’d only known him a week, but it felt a lot longer. “It’s not like that,” I said. “There’s this big old church down by the river.”

  He nodded. “I know the place. With the copper roof?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes I like to go there. I can just sit in the back and listen to the music, and no one bothers me. I like it. It’s peaceful.”

  They had a couple of services on Sunday morning, and sometimes I’d sit through both of them, putting a dollar in the collection plate each time. I didn’t mind. I figured it was a pretty good deal to be out of the weather and wrapped in all the music.

  And no one ever bothered me. I noticed a lot of students, and I just managed to blend in with them. A couple of times, I’d even gone for cookies and coffee in the hall after the service, walking around with my cup, smiling like I belonged.

  “Okay, so I’ll drive you down,” Q said.

  We finished eating, and I brushed my teeth in the bathroom. Then Q and I walked back to the car. Most of the RV people were up and moving around. It was still quiet at Dylan’s family’s van.

  “Do you think the baby is okay?” I asked Q.

  “Yeah,” he said, eyeing the van himself. “Little kids get sick all the time, and they’re better before you know it.”

  I nodded, but I couldn’t stop myself from watching for some sign that Dylan and his brother and sister were okay.

  It was still early when Q left me at the church, so I crossed the street and walked along the river for a while. When I did go in and find a seat, I found myself staring at the huge cross at the front. I looked around to see if anyone was watching, then I bent my head and closed my eyes. Thank you for Q and for having food and somewhere to sleep, I prayed silently. Please watch out for Dylan and his brother and sister. Amen.

  I felt a little silly when I opened my eyes again, but if you couldn’t pray in a church, then where could you do it? I hoped God was listening. I’d been in the church enough to know that here they believed that God was always listening, and I hoped for Dylan’s sake that he was.

  When I came out about quarter after twelve, Q was across the street sitting on the hood of the Honda in the sun. It felt good to have someone waiting for me, to not have to walk around the city for hours and then scramble to get something to eat and find somewhere to sleep. That cramped little car was starting to feel like home.

  “How was church?” Q asked, pushing his sunglasses up onto his head.

  “Nice,” I said. “They did something called a cantata. The music was beautiful.”

  He slid down off the car.

  “How was your friend?”

  Q shook his head. “I thought she seemed tired. She said she wasn’t, but that’s just how she is.” He reached for the car door handle. “I gotta get gas, so that means either the soup line or Pax for lunch.”

  I got in the passenger side. It would be hard to avoid Hannah if we went to Pax. If we went to the Community Kitchen, there was a chance I’d see Dylan and his family. And I’d have Q with me.

  “Soup line?” I asked.

  He grinned and pulled his shades back down. “Your wish is my command.”

  We parked the car a couple of blocks away from the Community Kitchen. Leaving it any closer was just asking for it to be trashed while we were in there. The line was long, and there was already some pushing and loud voices at the front. Q stood close behind me, and just the sense of him there, even though we weren’t touching, made me feel safer. I scanned the line for Dylan or his mother, or even Michael, but I didn’t see them.

  It was soup day—chicken vegetable with lots of veggies. Q and I took our bowls and a roll each and went to sit at the same table I’d sat at with Dylan’s mother and the children. I looked around the room. They weren’t there.

  “They might have gone to Pax,” Q said.

  That made sense. I was dipping the last bit of my roll in my soup when he touched my arm. “Maddie,” he said. He pointed to the door. Michael was just joining the end of the line. His wife was behind, shepherding the children forward. She looked worn-out. Dylan looked scared, cowed, but he was holding his little brother’s hand.

  I moved to get up to go over to them, but Q put out a hand to stop me. “Don’t,” he said.

  “Why? I just want to make sure the kids are okay.”

  “You’ll piss off their father.”

  I would have pulled my hand away, but I couldn’t. “Just by saying hello?”

  Q scooped up a spoonful of vegetables and let them fall back into his bowl. “Yes. Just by saying hello. Stay here. Let them come to you. I know what I’m taking about. Just pick up your spoon and eat. Please, Maddie.”

  I swallowed. I picked up my spoon and pretended to eat while I watched the family work their way through the line. Q let go of my other arm.

  They took a table about halfway from the back on the end wall. Michael started eating right away while his wife helped the two boys get settled. I wanted to go over and help her. No, that’s not true. I wanted to go over and dump that bowl of soup on Michael’s head.

  I realized Q was watching them too when he said softly, “He’s an asshole.”

  Dylan’s mother shifted the baby from one arm to the other, and even out of the corner of my eye, I knew she’d spotted us by the way her body language changed. She bent and kissed the top of Dylan’s head, and I had to put my spoon down again, because there was no way anything was getting past the lump in my throat.

  At least Dylan had her, I reminded myself, and it was clear that she loved him. I turned my head for just a quick look at him. He was eating and talking to his mother.

  “Don’t stare at them,” Q said. “Look at me, Maddie. Talk to me.”

  “This is not a place for little kids,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “I know,” Q said. He put down his spoon and ran his palm across his chin and down his neck. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. The dark stubble made him look older, and then I realized with a shock that I didn’t actually know how o
ld he was.

  “Maddie, Michael is the kind of guy who always has to prove he has the biggest set of balls in the room. Anything or anybody that challenges that, means he’ll strike out. The thing is, he’ll strike out at her and those kids.”

  I played with the zipper on my jacket. “So you want me to just pretend I don’t see what a dip wad he is.”

  He blew out a breath. “For now, yeah. Like I told you last night, no one’s going to listen to us.”

  It didn’t feel like anyone had heard my prayer after all. I made myself eat the rest of the soup. I didn’t look directly over at Dylan and his family, but I did sneak little sideways glances. I was pretty sure Q noticed, but he pretended he didn’t.

  “We should go, Maddie,” he said finally. He stood up and took our dishes back to the counter. I swung around and sat with my back to Michael and his family, because otherwise I knew I’d stare at them, or even worse, go over and make a mess of things. So I didn’t see Michael get up and come toward us as Q came back to the table.

  “Hey, guys,” Michael said.

  “Hey,” Q said. He stood in front of me in the same position as he had taken last night, hands in his pockets, feet apart.

  “You got any plans for this afternoon?” Michael asked. I noticed the jacket he was wearing was a lot nicer than the ones the kids had. And his blond hair looked like it had been cut fairly recently by someone who knew what they were doing with a pair of scissors.

  Q shrugged. Michael looked at me. My heart was suddenly pounding.

  “You said you like kids. Could you watch Dylan for a while? We gotta take the baby back to the doctor, and I think the other one has something too.” He rolled his eyes. “Kids. They get every freakin’ germ out there.”

  I knew I had to play this right. I looked up at Q. “Would it be okay?” I asked.

  He nodded and then turned to Michael. “Yeah, she’ll watch the kid for you.”

  Michael gave me a lazy smile. “You goin’ back up to the mall?”

  Q nodded.

  “Okay, man, I’ll see you up there in about half an hour.”

  “Yeah, that’s good,” Q said.

  Michael walked back to his family. “C’mon,” Q said.