The Night Visitors

by Carol Goodman

  “Some people are assholes,” he counters. “I’ve always been proud to have a place like Sanctuary in our town. I never miss the Cookie Walk.”

  I cringe. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you when we met at Stewart’s.”

  “No worries,” he says, getting up to put a log in the stove. “You must see a couple dozen people a day.”

  This is true, but how have I missed this nice guy who contributes food and services regularly and was a classmate? What else—and who else—have I been missing all these years while I barricaded myself in this house and the work of Sanctuary? Sure, I’ve been “doing good,” but how much of that was to appease my conscience for what my father did?

  When I turn back to Wayne I see he has nodded off in his chair, coffee mug still in his hand. I take the mug from him and bring it and all the other dishes to the sink. It’s stopped snowing and the sky is lightening. I feel a pressure against my leg and for a moment I think about feeling that two nights ago and wondering if it was Caleb. But when I look down I find that it’s only Dulcie, looking up at me expectantly to be let out.

  I guide her through the thicket of sleeping bodies and open the back door. There’s almost too much snow, but the overhang has kept enough off that I’m able to clear a pie-shaped wedge. While Dulcie lumbers a couple of feet into the deep snow and finds a place to pee, I stand on the stoop and watch the sunrise. It tinges the snow a creamy orange, so much like the Creamsicle bar I used to get from the Good Humor man that it makes me hungry. The sky above is a clear, radiant blue with a smattering of celestial bodies: Arcturus, Jupiter, Spica, and a waning crescent moon. Spica is the only star of the constellation visible, but I know Virgo is there. Justice.

  I once asked my father the difference between justice and vengeance, and he told me the plot of a Greek play. Orestes has killed his own mother, Clytemnestra, because she killed his father, Agamemnon, which in turn was in revenge for him killing their daughter, Iphigenia.

  Talk about a dysfunctional family! Doreen had exclaimed when I told her the plot of the play during one long, quiet shift.

  The problem is that with his mother’s blood on his hands, Orestes is pursued by the Furies, the snake-haired, bat-winged agents of vengeance who hound their victims to a painful death. He flees first to the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, where Apollo tells him to go on to Athens. There Athena has Orestes tried for his crime by a jury of Athenian citizens.

  This is the birth of law, my father told me, triumphing over the old blood rules of vengeance.

  The jury is split, but Athena casts a deciding vote for Orestes. The Furies don’t take it well. They rage against the Athenians and their city until Athena offers them an alternative: if they break the cycle of blood vengeance they will be worshipped by the Athenians under a new name: the Eumenides . . . or the Kindly Ones.

  So basically she turned them into good furies by using positive reinforcement, Doreen said. Athena would have made a great third-grade teacher.

  I smile, feeling like Doreen is standing here with me. Wait until she hears this story! Then I hear police sirens coming up the hill and remember I have others to tell my story to first. I can only hope my listeners are as well disposed as the old gods.

  THEY TAKE US all into town to the police station to take our statements. I remind the officer—Tracy Bennerfield, who was in the third grade with Caleb—that they need to alert the Department of Child Welfare to be present on Oren’s behalf. Tracy bristles and says that she knows that, but I see her nudge her fellow officer to remember to make the call.

  I can tell it’s not sitting well with anyone that a fellow officer has been killed. It’s going to sit even less well when I tell them the whole story. How likely are they to believe that Frank, an upstanding member of the community and one of their own, was willing to kill to cover up his father’s crime? I ask to use one of their phones to call Anita Esteban, who says she’ll be there in twenty minutes. Then I call Doreen. There’s no answer, but she’s probably sleeping off a late shift.

  Anita’s at the station within fifteen minutes. I tell my story to her and I can see her eyes widen, but then she puts her hand on mine and says, “You’re the most honest person I know, Mattie. I believe you. But I gotta tell you, those officers aren’t going to like it.”

  “I know,” I say, squeezing her hand. “Can you represent Alice too—and make sure Oren is looked after? I’d like to reach Doreen to keep an eye on Oren.”

  I try Doreen again, but she still doesn’t answer.

  I tell my story to the officer on duty and he asks me a dozen questions to trip me up, but I keep repeating only the same facts: Frank Barnes shot Davis. He aimed his firearm at me. I escaped and armed myself. I followed him out to the barn, where he held me at gunpoint and told me what really happened to my family thirty-four years ago. When I saw he meant to shoot me—and no doubt Oren and Alice too—I switched on the hay pulley to distract him. I meant only to disarm him but the hook hit him so hard it killed him.

  When I’ve repeated the same facts a dozen times Anita accuses the deputy of harassment and asks if I’m going to be charged with anything.

  “Not now,” the officer answers, indicating with a glare that he’s not done with me.

  I sign my statement and learn that Oren has been claimed by Child Welfare and taken to a residence. No one will tell me which one. Alice is half crazed with panic; Wayne is trying to calm her down. “Doreen will find out where they’ve taken him,” I tell her. “Let’s go over to Sanctuary.”

  At Sanctuary I find Alana and the Bard intern both wide-eyed and jittery, like they’ve been up all night drinking Red Bulls and cramming for an exam. “Thank God!” they both exclaim when they see me. “No one else showed up for their shifts, so we stayed on.”

  “We lost power but we got the generator going!” Bard tells us.

  “We took in a dozen people stranded by the storm,” Alana says. “I know we’re not supposed to let people stay overnight, but what could we do?”

  “We made frozen pizzas for everyone—”

  “And directed the highway department to rescue people who were stranded on the road—”

  “And organized a shoveling brigade this morning!”

  They are giddy with their success. The place looks like a wreck. “Good job,” I tell them as I plug in my phone to charge it. I don’t mention that they gave away our location to Davis. I’ll leave that lecture on confidentiality for another day. After all, I’ve broken a lot of rules myself. “But didn’t Doreen come in?”

  “She never showed up,” Alana says. “We figured she was snowed in. I’ve called her a dozen times.”

  A ripple of unease passes through me. Doreen lives two blocks away in a second-floor apartment. Her landlord is a fit ex-fireman who gets out his snowblower at the first flakes. There’s no way she’s still snowed in.

  My phone beeps to life. There’s Doreen’s message to me from last night.

  Called Dept. of Child Welfare. Alice isn’t Oren’s mother. Not even stepmother. She’s the next-door neighbor who babysits. The father has had custody since the mother OD’d. Oren’s caseworker expressed concerns over Oren’s welfare but there was no evidence, etc. etc. Anyway, thought you should know. Call if you need me.

  It’s the “etc. etc.” that gets me. All the times Doreen tried to convince a caseworker that her son, Gavin, wasn’t doing well at his father’s and they told her that there was no evidence of abuse so they couldn’t do anything . . .

  “Etc. etc.”

  I can hear her weariness even in the text. And then there’s the last line: “Call if you need me.”

  I hadn’t called. Would she have assumed I lost power, or think I didn’t need her?

  I’ll stick around as long as you need me, Doreen had said when I talked her down from killing herself.

  Reflect back the invitations the person has given you, Doreen teaches in her suicide awareness training sessions.

  Doreen had been upset by
the call from Alice. I’d meant to talk it through with her but I never had. She asked if she could come stay with us last night. She hadn’t wanted to be alone. She left a message asking if I needed her . . .

  And the answer had been no.

  “Call an ambulance and send it to Doreen’s address,” I bark at Alana and Bard as I rush out of the building.

  I run the two blocks, dodging shovelers and snowblowers. How could I have been so blind? So deaf? Doreen had been telling me that she was struggling. I knew that Oren would remind her of Gavin. And yet I still let her go home alone to sit out the storm with her own bad thoughts.

  The three-story Victorian house where Doreen lives is cheerful against the snow. The front path is neatly cleared. Assorted wind chimes peal on the outdoor staircase that goes up to Doreen’s door. These stairs have been cleared too, and a note from her landlord has been left on her door telling her that garbage pickup has been delayed because of the storm.

  I knock, but when I don’t get an answer I kneel and move a Buddha statue aside to get her spare key. As I let myself in I hear the ambulance pull up downstairs. I’m going to feel really stupid if I’m wrong. Doreen will never let me live it down—

  The only light in the apartment comes from a lava lamp in the corner of the living room—a gag gift the volunteers gave Doreen once because she is such a hippie. It bathes the room in purple, then red, then green, painting the bare white walls and the futon couch in lurid colors. The colors do nothing to disguise the fact that this is a lonely place. Why haven’t I ever asked Doreen to come live with me in my great big lonely house? Because you were too in love with your own solitude, wallowing in your guilt and pride. Mattie Lane, the judge’s daughter, in her big house on the hill.

  Doreen is lying on the futon under an afghan. There’s a bottle of whiskey and three pill bottles on the coffee table.

  It feels like falling to reach the couch. I’m shaking so badly that I can’t tell if she has a pulse. I try to remember CPR training, but all I can hear is Doreen’s voice saying, Call if you need me, call if you need me.

  “I need you,” I scream into Doreen’s slack face. “I need you, goddamn it!”

  And then the EMTs are there. They push me aside and start to work on Doreen. “I’ve got a pulse,” one says. They load Doreen onto a stretcher, strap an oxygen mask to her face. I have just a second before they take her away.

  I squeeze her hand and her eyes flutter open. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have come sooner. I should have listened better. I should have—”

  Doreen waves a limp hand in the air, and I know what she would say if she could. We always tell our volunteers not to beat themselves up over what they could have done differently on a call. Learn from your mistakes. Move on.

  “Okay,” I tell Doreen as she’s taken from me. “I’ll do better next time. Just give me that next time.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Alice

  AT FIRST I think they’ve all forgotten me. A social worker comes and takes Oren, and I’m put in an ugly room with uncomfortable plastic chairs, dreary paint, and a stale odor of burned coffee and sweat. I feel like I’ve spent my whole life in rooms like this one, waiting for one hearing or another, waiting to find out where I’ll be moved next, like I’m a piece on a playing board. Not even an interesting piece, like the hat or dog in Monopoly, but one of those broken chips you use when the original pieces get lost. I’m not one of the original pieces that come with the game.

  Then a young Latina woman comes in and brings a whole different climate with her. The click of her heels on the linoleum seems to wake up the room and her smart red suit overcomes the dreary paint job. She takes my hand in both of hers and tells me her name is Anita Esteban and that Mattie’s told her all about me and she’s going to take care of everything.

  “Where’s Oren?” I ask.

  “Child Welfare is placing him in a temporary residence.” Her phone buzzes and she holds one finger up, looks down at the screen, then smiles. “Okay, this is good news, just give me a second.” She goes out again, talking fast into her phone, leaving me with the dreary paint and stale air, and I feel deflated. Oren’s already been swept up by the system. I’m not his mother. I have no claim on him. I’ve got a record. We’re just two pieces caught in the cogs of a machine, being moved farther and farther apart—

  But then Anita Esteban comes back in smiling. “Good news. Oren’s been placed at Horizon House, which is an at-risk youth center run at St. Alban’s—”

  “The convent?” I say sharply. “He won’t like that. He was scared by that building.”

  “Hmm,” Anita says. “It can look a little daunting from the outside, but it’s a good place. The best part is that in the other wing of the building they run a women’s shelter, and I got you in there. That is, if you want it. You could see Oren—”

  “Yes,” I say, “that’s perfect. But what about Mattie?”

  “She had to run out because of an emergency with her friend, but she sent me to take care of you.” Anita smiles at me. “Don’t worry. Mattie saved my life. That’s what she does. There are hundreds of people in this county who owe their lives to her. We’re all going to help her and you and the boy. Okay?” She takes both my hands and looks into my eyes. “The first thing I’m going to do is get you in a better room. This place stinks. You okay with that?”

  I nod because my throat is closed up and I’m afraid I’ll start bawling if I speak. I feel like I’ve just gotten a Get Out of Jail Free card and landed on the big ladder that takes you to the top in Chutes and Ladders. I feel like I’m part of the game.

  IN THE DAYS that follow, Mattie marshals an army of lawyers and social workers on Oren’s and my behalf. She does all this even though her friend Doreen is in the hospital recovering from a failed suicide attempt. She does all this even though her own case is looking difficult. No one seems to mind that it’s the week before Christmas or that everyone is still digging out from the blizzard. Whoever Mattie calls shows up to help. A man from DSS visits to help me fill out paperwork for Section 8 housing. Alana, the volunteer I was so mean to, brings a basketful of clothes for me. An old woman from Saugerties shows up to alter them for me. While she sews she tells me her story.

  “My husband was mean as dirt and hit me and our kids regularly. I blamed it on the work he did—he was a guard at a juvenile detention center—and I blamed it on myself for not knowing how to stop him. Then he got fired because he raped a girl at the facility where he worked. I was grateful when he went to prison—and I was grateful when he killed himself two years in. But then I found out that we wouldn’t get his pension. I’d like to say things got better, but the next ten years were a struggle. I drank. I hit my kids. I would have lost them, but this social worker showed up at my hearing and recommended me for a counseling group at Sanctuary. I thought I’d just go along with it to get my kids back . . . but then I started hearing the stories of other women who’d been through the things I’d been through and worse. I told the group one day that my dream was to open a quilt shop. The next day I found all these sewing supplies on my doorstep and Mattie Lane called to say that the Rotary Club was going to give me a business loan to open a quilt shop. It changed my life. It wasn’t just the handout that did it, it was . . .” Her voice falters.

  “Someone believing in you,” I said.

  “Yes,” she agreed. Then she put down her needle and thread and leaned forward. “You’re not on your own here, Alice. There are people here who believe in you.”

  Only after she left did I put it all together. A guard who raped a teenager at a juvenile detention center. Mattie. Mattie had found the wife of her rapist and had helped her put her life back together.

  And that old woman was right; I wasn’t on my own at St. Alban’s and it’s not a bad place. The nuns are kind and quiet. The other women are kind and loud. We have our own common room and kitchen. We cook dinner together and watch movies and talk late into the night. It’s what I
imagine college must be like.

  The best part is that I see Oren every day. He looks well fed and happy. He’s also got new clothes, including a brand-new Star Wars sweatshirt that I suspect Mattie got for him.

  Mattie comes every night. She brings bags of groceries, toiletries, and clothes—not just for me but for all the women and children at St. Alban’s. All the nuns and volunteers know her, and she gets to break whatever rules she wants, like getting Oren permission to come over to the women’s wing to watch movies at night. She brings all the DVDs of the Star Wars movies and we have a marathon.

  Mattie tells me that Doreen has a friend at Children’s Court working on my petition for custody. It may take a while but they think they will prevail in the end.

  “Is Doreen okay?” I ask.

  Mattie nods, her face tightening. “She will be. It helps her to have your case to work on.” Then she tells me her plans for me. She’s got a friend who runs a B and B in Mount Tremper, on the outskirts of Delphi, who needs a housekeeper. The job comes with a cottage out back. It’s not much, but it’s a place that Social Services will deem suitable for Oren to live. She’s got another friend at Ulster Community College who can talk to me about going back to school. She’s even got a friend (Well, Wayne actually, she says, blushing) who has an old car I can use.

  Anita Esteban was right. Mattie has hundreds of friends and she’s calling on them all for my sake.

  “What about your case?” I ask.

  She sighs and I think it’s going to be bad news. “When the police searched Frank’s house and computer they found evidence that he’s been taking money from Pine Crest for delivering young people to a judge in Albany who always sends them to Pine Crest. That kind of backs up my story, so Anita’s hopeful I won’t be charged.”

  “You don’t sound happy about that,” I say.

  She turns to me, her violet eyes shining in the reflection of the television set. “How could I have not seen what had happened to Frank?”

  It takes me a second to realize she’s really asking. That she wants my opinion. I look at her, at this woman who has spent a lifetime helping the most powerless and helpless people, who has built a safety net wide enough to catch me and Oren in our most vulnerable moment, and I know what to say. “You see the best in people, Mattie. You see what they once were and could be again if only someone would give them a chance. Look at what you’ve seen in me.”