Unexpected Dismounts

by Nancy Rue

  “What do you think?” India said.

  “I’ll tell you what I don’t think,” I said. “I don’t think a fashion show and chamber music are going to get rich women to fork over cash for the Sisters of Sacrament House.”

  “Honey, it’s what they’re used to.”

  “Isn’t the point to take them out of what they’re used to? Seriously, what does Mozart have to do with women sleeping in gutters and eating out of Dumpsters?”

  “Did you have another plan?” She still sounded India-cordial, bless her heart, but I pictured her rearranging her whole body at that point.

  “Let me think about it,” I said. “I’ve got a meeting to get to.”

  “Then how about this? I’ll just send out a save-the-date announcement and leave the rest mysterious.” She gave a ladylike harrumph. “Maybe you’re right. These women could use a little mystery in their lives.”

  “Go for it,” I said, hung up, and glanced at my watch. I needed to be at the FIP—Family Integrity Program—office in thirty minutes. Their building was only three blocks south of Sacrament House so I had time to swing by there first and see how Zelda was doing.

  When I pulled up, the front door was open and I could see through the screen that Mercedes was bustling around the living room with her usual vigor amped up several notches. Not a good sign. She had either just busted somebody’s chops or was about to.

  But it was Jasmine who pushed the screen door open before I even reached the bottom step. I could tell she’d been crying. No surprise there.

  “I heard you at the corner,” she said. “We was gon’ call you after you had your meetin’.”

  “Call me about what?” I said.

  At which point she burst into tears.

  “You ain’t no good to nobody that way, Jasmine,” Mercedes said. “Go get you a Kleenex.”

  “What’s going on, Merce?” I said.

  “Zelda.”

  “Is she locked in her room again?”

  “No. She gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Just gone. For good probably.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “We was tellin’ her las’ night that she needed to get her a NA sponsor if she want to make any progress, and she just had one a her fits ’bout how we tryin’ to run her life and get in her business. We tol’ her she need to go deeper and she says ‘I ain’t deep. I’m so shallow, you couldn’t go swimmin’ in me.’ Then Sherry start yellin’ and Jasmine start cryin’. It was a mess.”

  “You, of course, completely kept your cool,” I said.

  “I almos’ did, till she start talkin’ trash ’bout you. Then I lost it.” Mercedes went back to dusting the trunk coffee table with the vengeance of Attila the Hun. “She went all huffy to her room, and when we get up this mornin’, she gone.”

  Jasmine emerged from the dining nook, blowing her nose. “Did you tell her what else?”

  “What else?” I said.

  Mercedes wouldn’t meet my gaze.

  “What else?” I said to Jasmine.

  “She done took the money in the jar.”

  “That money you give me for when stuff come up, like we need a lightbulb or somethin’,” Mercedes said.

  “I don’t know why you tol’ her where it was,” Jasmine said.

  Mercedes gave her a black look. “What do I look like? I never tol’ her. She just a drug addict thief. They can smell money inside of a steel vault.”

  “You think she’s going to use it to buy?” I said.

  “There wasn’t enough in there for a fix. Besides, I don’ know and I don’ much care, which is why I’m cleanin’ this room. I got to do some kinda penance or somethin’.”

  I didn’t even know where to start telling her what was wrong with that theology. I had to get to the meeting or Chief was going to make me do penance.

  “This is nobody’s responsibility but Zelda’s,” I said. “Everyone who comes here has the choice to leave whenever she wants. Just—pray for her and I’ll see if I can find her. But don’t either of you go looking, are we clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they said in unison.

  “And tell Sherry that too, would you?”

  “Sherry done gone to work at her daddy’s,” Mercedes said. “You go on now. We be fine.”

  I fished in my pocket and pulled out two crumpled-up twenty-dollar bills. “Put this in the jar and I’ll bring you more later.”

  Where I was going to get more, and how I was going to locate Zelda and talk her back into Sacrament House, I had no idea. Nor did I recognize the sinking sensation that settled over me even after I was on the Harley and headed for Old Moultrie Street. It might have been a sense of failure, but who knew? I’d never cared about a job enough to give a rip whether I failed at it or not.

  I leaned into the parking lot and came headlight-to-face with a startled elderly man in a business suit who was heading toward the building. He held up his briefcase like a shield and jumped out of my way, and, I was sure, staggered inside to have his coronary.

  Enough, Allison. Get your mind lined up with a solution or stick it all somewhere for the moment before you mow somebody down.

  Or blow this meeting.

  I pulled up to the curb and hauled in a deep breath. That wasn’t an option. Not this time.

  Chief was already seated at the conference table in Vickie Rodriguez’s office when a harried administrative aide showed me in. I could tell from the way the paperwork was lined up on the tabletop in precise piles that the aide was suffering from Boss Intimidation. When I got my first glimpse at the back of Vickie Rodriguez at the coffeepot, I saw why.

  Either the woman was a former ballerina or she was wearing a steel back brace. I’d never seen a spine that straight. Atop it was a longish head on which dark straight hair had been disciplined into a French braid that dared not allow a strand to come loose. I glanced at Chief, who motioned for me to take off my bandanna. A stop at the ladies’ room would’ve been a nice touch, his eyes said.

  But it was too late now. The Rodriguez woman turned, stainless steel mug in hand, and looked at me and the wall clock in almost the same instant.

  “Am I late?” I said. “I had to take Desmond to school and—”

  “You’re not any later than I am!” a voice sang out behind me.

  I could have hugged Liz Doyle at that moment. She, of course, flung an arm around me and murmured, “Don’t let her get to you,” before she dumped her purse, tote bag, and the stack of papers that apparently fit into neither, onto the table, sending one of Vickie’s neat stacks over the side.

  “Oh! Sorry!” she said.

  Liz’s eyes, made greener by the jade jacket now pushed to a rakish angle, blinked at überspeed. I could never decide whether that was from stress or just a bad pair of contact lenses. She was clearly not the picture of efficiency, but somehow she managed to run the FIP’s foster-care program, for which I loved her. She was responsible for getting Desmond into my home and getting this particular ball rolling as well.

  Unless Stick Woman stuck her foot out and stopped it. I couldn’t get rid of the image of an uptight soccer goalie as Vickie Rodriguez somehow made her way around Liz and offered me her hand.

  “Miss Chamberlain?” she said.

  “Yes—ma’am,” I said.

  Her hand was cool. Mine was invitingly clammy, I was sure.

  “You can call her Allison. She’s good people.” Liz beamed at me and, of course, blinked. “She and I go all the way back to high school.”

  “Is that right?” Vickie said. I couldn’t detect a trace of interest.

  “She kept the bullies from making my life miserable,” Liz said. “I’ll never forget that.”

  Obviously Vickie already had because withou
t comment she motioned me to a chair and slipped into hers while simultaneously pulling on a pair of rectangular reading glasses and pushing the retrieved stack toward me with white-tipped nails. Was I the only woman in the city of St. Augustine who didn’t get a weekly manicure?

  “Let’s get started,” she said and flicked a glance at Chief with gray eyes that would have been pretty if she weren’t using them like a laser pointer. “Mr. Ellington, I assume you have been through the forms with your client.”

  I did my usual double take when someone referred to Chief by his real name. He was, thankfully, in Mr. Ellington mode, and assured her that he had assisted me in filling out the forms, and that as far as he was concerned everything was in order.

  “Good on my end too,” Liz said. “Let me just see …”

  She dug into her tote bag, and Vickie Rodriguez all but rolled her eyes.

  “So, we’re all set then?” I said to Ms. Rodriguez.

  But Vickie only watched Liz until she produced the set of papers she was evidently waiting for. I was in agony as Vickie swept her eyes down the pages. It was all I could do not to grab Chief by the lapels and scream, “What is going on?”

  When I couldn’t hold it in any longer I said, “Excuse me. Is there a problem?”

  Vickie shook her head, eyes still on the page in front of her. “No, I just didn’t receive these beforehand so I need to read through.” She snapped that stack to the table, picked up another, and finally said, “There are just a few potential red flags.”

  Chief squeezed my knee under the table. “And those would be …?” he said.

  Vickie scooped up yet another set of papers and scanned the top one. It occurred to me that if in that moment she were blindfolded and asked to describe my face, she wouldn’t be able to. Now, her paperwork—that she could have probably recited without missing a syllable.

  “Your job description indicates that you work with recovering prostitutes.” Vickie’s eyes flashed at me and down again. “You don’t have any currently living in your home, do you?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “They have their own residence.”

  “But you had them residing with you at your address on Palm Row at one time.”

  I looked at Chief, who nodded.

  “I did,” I said, “before the Sacrament House Ministry was formed and they moved over there.”

  “And you do have another form of transportation besides your motorcycle?”

  “Uh, yeah—yes, ma’am.”

  I was back in Vice Principal Foo-Foo’s office.

  Vickie finally looked at me over the top of her glasses, gaze resting somewhere around my upper lip.

  “I have a van,” I said. “Well, the ministry has a van that I owned and then donated. I have access to it.”

  An eyebrow went up.

  “All the time,” I said.

  Chief squeezed my leg again, which I was sure meant, Do not tell her Mercedes has had it for a week.

  “Now in terms of financial support.”

  Vickie fanned through the pages she was holding, gave her brow permission to furrow only slightly, and picked up the final stack. I resisted the urge to wipe off the beads of sweat she had stared out of my upper lip.

  “You are the founder and director of Sacrament House.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That sounds impressive, but I don’t see a salary listed here.”

  “I don’t draw one. Yet.”

  “Miss Chamberlain is currently working pro bono,” Chief said. “As more funding is acquired for the nonprofit, she’ll be a paid employee.”

  He sounded so sure. Vickie Rodriguez, not so much.

  “And in the meantime?” she said.

  “In the meantime, Miss Chamberlain’s inheritance from Sylvia Mancini is sufficient to support her and Desmond.”

  “That isn’t going to last forever.”

  “Nor does it need to.”

  “Health insurance? Oh, I see that you have the adoptee on your policy.”

  The back of my neck bristled. “The ‘adoptee’?” I said.

  I could almost hear Chief groaning, but honestly—

  “I apologize,” Vickie said, with no audible signs of remorse. “Desmond. He’s referred to here as ‘the adoptee,’ so I—”

  “Then might I suggest that you get your nose out of your paperwork and look at me so you can tell what kind of mother I’m going to be?”

  Chief sat back in his chair. Liz came forward in hers.

  “She doesn’t mean to be impersonal, Allison,” she said. “It’s just that—”

  “I can answer for myself.” Vickie Rodriguez lowered the forms to the tabletop and set her glasses on top of them. “I don’t have to look at you to know what kind of mother you’re going to be, Miss Chamberlain. Anyone who would voluntarily take on a twelve-year-old mixed-race boy with the kind of background he has is already mother of the year, as far as I personally am concerned.”

  I felt my lower jaw drop.

  “The judge, on the other hand, is going to want every i dotted and every t crossed before he’ll grant the adoption.”

  “The judge?” I said.

  “I told you—” Liz started to say.

  “It will merely be a formality if he feels that everything is in perfect order. So, if we could continue?”

  “Absolutely,” Chief said.

  He didn’t have to torture my leg again. I was still sitting there with my mouth hanging open.

  The glasses went back on. “You own a home free and clear, in a decent neighborhood.”

  “It’s a little more than decent,” Liz put in. Was that a pout I saw?

  “The biological mother, Geneveve Sanborn, is deceased.”

  “Before her death she stated in a legal document that she wanted Desmond put in Miss Chamberlain’s care,” Chief said.

  “I see that the father is ‘unknown.’”

  “That is what his mother indicated,” Chief said. “You’ll see that in the document as well.”

  If Vickie Rodriguez picked up on the fact that Chief sounded like he was measuring his words out with a teaspoon, she didn’t show it. I myself was barely able to keep from blurting out more than anybody needed to know on that subject.

  “I’d like to have that spelled out,” was all she said.

  “I’ll get on that,” Chief said. He wiggled my leg. “I’m going to have to hire a paralegal just to handle your stuff.”

  In other words, Lighten up, Classic.

  “What?” I said. “You mean I’m not your only client?”

  He rewarded me with a smile.

  “You won’t need a paralegal for this case, I don’t think,” Vickie said. “I never make promises, but I honestly don’t see anything standing in your way.”

  “Okay, I just want to make sure,” I said.

  “We’re making sure, Allison,” Chief said.

  “No, I have one more question.”

  Vickie nodded at me.

  “Does the fact that he’s still struggling in school—is that going to go against us?”

  “The fact that he’s even in school is a hundred percent improvement,” Liz said. She tilted her chin up at Vickie until Ms. Rodriguez gave her a grudging nod.

  “That’s right,” she said crisply. “Nobody expects him, or you, to be perfect.”

  Well, then, there was that at least.

  Vickie flipped open a large calendar book and ran her nail down the side, turned the page, trailed it down some more. What was she scheduling, the Louisiana Purchase?

  “I’m going to request a court date of April fifth,” she said. “Does that work for you?”

  Chief had his hand around my arm before he and I even got to the
elevator. I was sure he’d have put the other one over my mouth if the bunny rabbit of an admin aide hadn’t been scampering past us on her way down the hall.

  “Tell me you didn’t expect to walk out of there with the signed adoption papers in your hand,” he said.

  “No. But I didn’t think we’d have to wait until April.”

  Chief steered me into the elevator and mashed a button. “Do you think something’s going to happen between now and then to stop it?”

  “Do you?”

  The elevator reached the first floor, but Chief pushed the CLOSE DOOR button. He turned his face down to me, eyes going right into mine.

  “You’re worried about Desmond’s father.”

  “That wasn’t what you’d call full disclosure in there,” I said.

  “Geneveve stated it in the guardianship document: ‘Father unknown.’”

  “We both know she lied. Sultan is his father.”

  “Was. You were there when he died.”

  “I wasn’t there when somebody made off with his body. We don’t even know if there’s a death certificate.”

  “All the more reason to let Geneveve’s document do the talking for us.”

  I pushed both hands through my hair. Chief caught my wrists in his and held them together at his chest.

  “I’m asking you to trust me, Classic. Can you do that?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just freaking out.”

  “Does Desmond know you’re freaking out?”

  “No. But I think he is.”

  I filled him in on Desmond’s debate with himself in the kitchen the night before. I could see Chief’s mouth resisting a smile.

  “What?” I said.

  “Desmond thinks you’re a good listener.” He pressed the OPEN DOOR button. “I’d like to see him tell that to Vickie Rodriguez.”

  “Yeah, what is with that woman?” I said as I walked with him across the lobby. “Does she have, like, ice tea in her veins?”

  “Too bad you didn’t rescue her from bullies in high school.”

  “First of all, she wasn’t even born yet when I was in high school, and second of all, I bet she was a bully.”