by James Snyder
Still, all this talking felt so strange. Why did they have to talk like this?
“Well, the important thing now is to keep you safe,” Melissa said. “That’s what your parents would want. You see, I work for the Child Welfare department, and that’s one of the things we do. The problem is, it’s the weekend, and it’s late, and none of my emergency caregivers can take you till, at least, tomorrow. So you’ll have to sleep here tonight.”
Eric said, “Why can’t we sleep at our house?”
“Because there’s no one there.”
Connelly thought about it and said, “Can’t we stay with Mrs. Bagleresi?”
“She told me she had a heart condition,” said Melissa. “No, the best thing is for you to stay here tonight, until I can make arrangements. We have a security guard here, and the doors will be locked, and you’ll be safe, I promise you.”
Strange, she thought. Everything was strange now. Ugly and strange. The way everything looked. The way everything sounded. Even herself. She just didn’t understand any of it; so, instead, she pulled her hands away from Melissa’s hands, fell back on the couch into a tight ball, and began to cry.
*
That night they slept there in Melissa’s office. They folded down the couch and made up the bed. Then they put back on their pajamas from their backpacks, brushed their teeth in the small bathroom connected to the office, and climbed beneath the cool sheets.
Melissa stood at the doorway and said, “I’ll be here first thing in the morning.” Connelly watched her, standing at the door, looking in at them. “I’m really sorry about your parents.”
She turned out the lights and shut the door.
Connelly lay there, looking around the dark room. You could see shadowy things, because a little light was coming through the window from the other room. After a while she said, “Well, I don’t guess we’ll go to Spaghetti Warehouse tonight, will we, Eric?”
He didn’t say anything. His back was to her, and he was very still.
She lay on her back, thinking: Our apartment in San Francisco is very small, and we are very happy. She wrote that at the beginning of school for her teacher, Mrs. Dougherty. She and Eric went to the same school, which was two blocks from their apartment building. In the morning, sometimes her mother, and sometimes her father, walked them to school. She was in second grade and liked it very much, even though she was not nearly as smart as Eric, who was in fifth grade and wanted to be a scientist like their mother.
She thought how Mrs. Dougherty put a smiling little bumblebee by their name when they were good and a sad bee when they acted naughty. She got a sad bee once when she hit Roland Mellon, who sat behind her, for pinching her bottom. And it seemed like forever, until the following week when she got a happy bee again, and she kept staring at it on the far wall, relieved.
In the afternoon, Mrs. Bagleresi always picked her and Eric up from school. Eric did his homework and she would draw, or watch TV, or go read on the balcony. She didn’t play with Fifi because the little dog would sit there and curl her lip if she tried to touch her.
“Fifi, you be nice to Connelly,” Mrs. Bagleresi always said, sitting there, sipping her tea and looking at her magazines. “She only wants to be friends with you.”
But Fifi would only lower her head in shame and slink up on Mrs. Bagleresi’s wide lap, turning around three times, before lying down in a small white circle with her back toward her.
Connelly liked Mrs. Bagleresi, but it annoyed her how the old woman would lean back her head and laugh at the television. She didn’t think the program was funny at all, but Mrs. Bagleresi did, and she would lean back her head and laugh, with the skin on her neck jiggling like a turkey neck, and bounce Fifi on her lap.
When she grew tired of watching Mrs. Bagleresi’s neck, she always went out on the balcony. She loved it there because they didn’t have a balcony at their own apartment, and Mrs. Bagleresi kept all her plants there. It was like a cool dark jungle, sitting there, surrounded by the big leafy plants, and reading.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Bagleresi,” she said each afternoon, taking her mommy’s hand.
“Good-bye, Connelly. Good-bye, Eric,” Mrs. Bagleresi would say, standing in the doorway, watching them walk to the elevator.
“Eric,” she said now, looking over at him. “Are you all right?”
He still didn’t answer her.
She sighed and lay back again, staring at the ceiling, thinking of…them. Her mother was a research assistant and worked in a laboratory. Sometimes she wore a white smock to work. Her father was a graphic artist. He did advertising and showed her pictures in magazines. One was a pretty lady standing there, wearing nothing but high heels and a long silver fur wrapped around her, and holding up a funny glass her father called a martini glass. That was advertising.
At home on weekends her father made paintings he called abstract. She loved sitting in the living room, holding Priscilla in her lap, and watching him paint wonderful, colorful things that made no sense to her.
One time she asked him, “Why don’t you paint a cow?”
“A cow?” he said in that surprised, teasing voice he used sometimes. “Why a cow?”
“Because I like them.”
“A cow?” he said, shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite believe her.
But hardly a week later she woke up one morning, and on the wall across from her bed was a beautiful painting of a big red cow, staring back at her with grass sticking out its mouth. That was also magic (even though she knew perfectly well her father had painted it and put it there during the night); and she had lay there, snuggling Priscilla in her arms, looking at that cow looking back at her, and sighed contentedly.
Now she shut her eyes, but when she opened them there was only Melissa’s ugly ceiling instead. She looked away and thought how sometimes her mother and father gathered up some of her father’s paintings, put them in the trunk of their car, and drove down the coast to the weekend art shows. They always left early in the morning and came home in the evening, and she and Eric had to stay with Mrs. Bagleresi the entire day. She didn’t like that, but Mrs. Bagleresi told them it was good for her parents to get away once in a while.
“It’s so hard being a parent,” she said. “Even with wonderful children like you.” And she patted Fifi on the head, sitting there talking. “Everyone needs to have some enjoyment once in a while.”
Still, she didn’t like it.
But when they came home on those evenings, it was exciting all over again. If they had sold a painting, they always went down to Fisherman’s Wharf or Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner. If they didn’t, they went to McDonald’s instead. But she would look up and see them there: all fresh and new, surprising her with their warm good presence each and every time…except one.
She heard something and peeked and saw the door to Melissa’s office open. There was a man there dressed in a uniform, looking in at them. She couldn’t see his face, but she could see his gray shirt and pants; and then he backed out of the room and shut the door back. Now she laid back her head and listened to the silence, and tried to think again about her mother and father. The thing was she didn’t really understand that—being dead. Then she remembered Miss Minnie-Pea, her hamster that died last year. She and her father had driven out of the city and buried her in a tiny box in a field somewhere. And she wondered if that was it, if that was all there was to it. She wasn’t sure. But before she could think any more about it, she heard something else. She heard the awful choking little sobs beside her—and she reached over and touched Eric’s shoulder, but nothing happened. Nothing changed. He just kept crying.
Chapter 2
Drop-house
In the morning Melissa took them to breakfast at McDonald’s.
“We’re going to have a busy day,” she said, smiling across the table from them. “First we have to go over to your apartment and pack you each a suitcase. Then we’ll take a drive down to south city. There’s someone there you can s
tay with until we can make better arrangements.”
Connelly saw that Eric was not eating his sandwich. He was just sitting there. She took a bite of hers and said, “How long?”
“What, darling?”
Connelly swallowed her bite of biscuit and egg. “How long do we have to stay there?”
Melissa smiled again. “Well, we have to make other arrangements. You see, you have to be assigned a permanent caseworker, and that person will make those arrangements. Then a judge will have to decide what to do about everything else, your estate and everything. It’s all very complicated, I’m afraid.”
Connelly looked at her, trying to understand. “You’re not going to stay with us?”
“Oh no,” she said, taking a bite of her own sandwich. “That’s not the way it works.”
Next, Melissa’s cell phone started singing. She quickly set down her sandwich and answered it. “Hey you,” she said, wiping her mouth with a napkin, as she turned her head away from them. “Well, I didn’t want to wake you.” She giggled. “No, this won’t take long, just a stop and drop—I should be back before noon.” She listened and giggled again. “Okay, that sounds like fun. Yeah, sure.” She listened to something else. “You are so awful, Brad. Just awful. Okay, later—bye.”
She snapped her cell phone shut and looked brightly over at them. “What—not hungry?”
*
That felt most strange of all. Connelly walked slowly through their little apartment and thought how everything looked just like it did the day before, only different now.
“We’ll have to hurry,” Melissa called from the front room. “We don’t want to be late.”
Everything looked like theirs, it was everything her mother and father had gathered for them; but everything looked so strange now, as if it didn’t belong to them anymore. And she kept expecting to look up and see her mother, with her soft pretty brown hair like Eric’s, come into the room, reading work papers; or hear her father, whose hair was long and dark like hers, and his funny voice, calling her down the hallway: “Hey, brat, c’mere a minute, will you. Take a look what we found at the flea market today.”
“Daddy,” she whispered urgently. “Daddy, where are you?”
“Hurry, you two,” Melissa said.
In her bedroom she put things into the overnight bag Melissa took from the hall closet. When they went somewhere, her mother always packed her things, so she wasn’t sure. Finally, Melissa came to help her.
“Plenty of underwear, girl,” she said, taking things from her dresser. “These T-shirts are so cute.”
“My mom bought them for me. We bought them together.”
“Well, you have nice stuff,” Melissa said. “Your mom’s got taste. Unfortunately, we can only take vital necessities.”
She didn’t know what that meant, but she watched as Melissa held up two pair of her jeans.
“Choose.”
She pointed to the pair with the pink flowers around the pocket hems.
Melissa smiled and winked at her. “You got taste too, girl, don’t you.”
She put the jeans in the suitcase and zipped it closed.
Connelly wished they could stay there for a while. Even though she knew her parents weren’t there, she wished they could just stay there, because she felt that was as close as they would ever be to them again. And she didn’t want to lose that feeling. She felt like all her feelings, one after the other, were being taken away from her.
“Can’t we just stay here for a while, Melissa?”
“Sorry, kiddo, in my business you always have to stay on schedule. I mean, I never know when my cell’s gonna ring and I pick up another case, you know?”
No, she didn’t know. She wanted to stay there. That was their house, their home. Why did they have to leave it? It wasn’t fair. Nothing seemed fair anymore. Oh, Daddy, why? Why?
“Then can I at least take Priscilla?”
“Priscilla?”
She pointed to her doll, lying back against her bed pillows.
“Sure, sweetheart,” Melissa said, looking into her eyes.
She went over and picked Priscilla gently up off the bed and held her tightly to her.
“I love the red cow,” Melissa told her, looking at the painting on the wall before her bed. She walked over and read at the name in the lower corner: “Michael Pierce.” She looked back at her. “You’re father’s an artist?”
“He was,” Connelly replied, holding Priscilla in one arm, as she lifted the overnight bag with her other.
*
Driving south through the city, Melissa mostly talked on her cell phone. She talked to her boyfriend, and then she had a conversation with one of her girlfriends, and then her boyfriend called back. It sounded to Connelly like the two of them were planning a picnic that afternoon at Golden Gate Park. Trying to block out all Melissa’s talking, which was annoying her, she thought about the picnics they had had—at the park, at the ocean, or at nowhere at all; that is, her mommy would pack their picnic lunch in the big straw basket with the leather straps, and they would drive someplace. It didn’t matter. There was no place special they were going. They would just drive until they saw a nice place to stop: at a roadside picnic table or a big field or, once, under a bridge.
“Oh, Daddy, let’s eat under that bridge!” she had called out from the back seat.
“Okay,” he said, looking for a place to pull off the road.
“Michael, are you sure?” her mommy said, who always had a practical mind, according to her daddy.
It was somewhere in the country, along a narrow twisting road. And there were big trees that ran alongside the creek that flowed under the bridge. They found a path down to the water, and there was a small square of sand there her mommy spread the blanket. The sun was hot that day, but it was dark and cool under the bridge, and they sat there, eating and talking and watching the water go by.
After they ate, Eric and her mother went to make a specimen list, while she and her father took a nap.
“We’ll let the two brains go count tadpoles, brat,” her father said, stretching out on the blanket. “Meanwhile, we’ll count the little black sheep jumping inside our eyelids.”
“Oh, Daddy,” she said, snuggling against him. And she listened to his breathing against her ear growing deep and steady, until she knew he was sleeping. Once, she heard his stomach growl, and she giggled. Then she slept.
“Shit,” Melissa said, taking another call. “Yes, Harold.” She listened, and then she said, “Can’t Jody take this one?” She listened again. “All right, if that’s all it is, but I’m blocking your calls until, at least, Wednesday. Yes, I love you too, Harold. Bye.” And she snapped her cell phone shut and looked at them in the rearview mirror. “Sometimes this job can be a real pain, you know?”
*
It was a small brick house in the middle of other small houses, she saw. Children were running and riding bicycles back and forth, everywhere, chased by dogs and other children. There were old cars and old boats in the driveways and between the houses and on the street. Some of the cars were in pieces, left open and raised into the air on big pieces of wood under the front tires. Things seemed piled about, things scattered. There didn’t seem to be any order here like she was used to. Like the city. Everything was just piled and scattered and moving about this way and that, as if a big wind had blown it and left it there, all broken and dirty and dizzily spinning, before moving on.
“I tried to get you someplace else,” Melissa said, pulling her car to the curb and stopping. She turned and looked back at them sitting there. “But there wasn’t a thing. The Johnsons are my go-to when all else fails. They’re a little rough around the edges, but it’s just until I can find something better. I’m contacting some children’s homes in the morning, I promise.” And she tried to smile again, but didn’t quite make it.
Connelly wanted to ask her why they had to stay there, at that horrible place, but she knew what Melissa would say. She looked over a
t Eric who was staring out his little window, not saying a word. She knew what his face looked like without even seeing it. She knew how he didn’t like things to be different. He didn’t like things to change. Everything in his bedroom was exactly in order: his toy models, and his little science trophies from school, and his books; he always drank a glass of milk at dinner, even if they had strawberry soda; and he always watched the same programs on TV, usually science programs, even if he’d seen them before. He and their mother sometimes watched them together, sitting perfectly still, side by side, never changing the channel, and then talking about them when the program ended. She and her father, meanwhile, would pop popcorn in a big bowl and lie together on the couch, jumping from one channel to the next, until they saw something they liked. And they would whisper things together, making jokes about something on TV, or about nothing at all, just making each other giggle, and eating the popcorn and getting bored with whatever was on, and changing the channel again.
“Okay then,” Melissa said, “let’s go inside.”
They walked up the sidewalk to the front door. The sidewalk was broken, Connelly saw, and the grass beside it had holes dug in it. There were other children watching them from the next house. Two boys and a girl stood there, eating purple popsicles, and watching them. She saw the melted purple lines running down their raised, dirty arms, and she looked away.
A woman was at the door. She was a big woman with funny, frizzled-looking hair, and wore a big flowered dress that looked like a sack dropped down over her, and she wore flip-flops on her feet. She was smoking a cigarette, standing there.
“Hey, Melissa,” she called out.
“Hey, Eunice,” Melissa answered her. “I’ve brought you two more.”
“I see that. Well, that’s all right, you know I always got room for more.”
“Well, you don’t know how grateful I am,” said Melissa.
Connelly was afraid to look at anything, going past the big woman, into the dark house. Inside, she stood there, looking down at the floor, wishing she and Eric could be almost anywhere else. She sniffed and knew she didn’t like what she smelled. It smelled dusty and smoky there; it smelled like things had been burned there, food and things she couldn’t recognize. While Melissa and Eunice were talking, her eyes began to adjust to the dark room. It was a small room with an old couch and stuffed chairs. In one of the chairs, in the corner, she saw a man sitting, looking at her. She looked away, back at the floor, and sighed.
