Natalie shrugged.
“Natalie?”
“What?”
“Like why did you and what’s-his-name break up?”
“What difference does it make?”
“If you’re going to live here, I think we need to know everything.”
“What do you mean ‘we’? Mom, maybe.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I could be of some help? Did it ever occur to you that once everything is out in the open, things could go smoother? You can’t shock me, Natalie. And unless you’ve killed someone or committed some other heinous crime, I won’t hold whatever trouble you’re in against you.”
“I haven’t killed anyone.”
“That’s good to know.”
“I owe someone some money though.”
“How much money?”
“A little over five thousand.”
“What?”
“I thought you said nothing would shock you.”
“I lied. You owe someone five thousand dollars? For what?”
“What do you think?”
“Drugs?”
When Natalie didn’t respond, Paige went down a different path, knowing that she risked being shut off by Natalie and that would accomplish nothing. “Have you thought about what you’re doing to your unborn child with the drugs and alcohol?”
“Do you think I’m stupid? Of course I have.”
“So what are you doing about it?”
“I can’t afford to do anything about it. I have no money, no insurance.”
“Will you let me help you? You can’t do this to an innocent child.”
Natalie shot up from her chair. “And let big sister bail me out? Not on your life!” she shouted before retreating to her bedroom.
So much for the amicable sisterly discourse.
Paige gave her mother’s plants a quick watering before leaving for the hospital. On the way there, she pondered her sister’s resentment toward her. That brought her to thinking about Jessivel’s hostility toward her and, more recently, Leland’s. What was she doing so wrong?
Natalie’s addictions were worrisome. Google research on pain-pill addiction brought more than 15 million results, telling her that Natalie was far from being alone. Once she’d read a few articles on the subject, Paige knew that helping her sister in any meaningful way was out of her league—it would take a team of professionals. But having a better understanding of her condition was another matter and something she mentally committed to do.
Jessivel was more difficult to understand. If she could figure her out, she might still have a shot at helping her—something she wanted and felt obligated to do.
As for Leland, Paige regretted the way she had interacted with him—he’d done nothing more than show an interest in seeing her again. Without leading him on, she would have to make it up to him, especially if she wanted more information about her father.
Between Natalie, Jessivel, and Leland, she wasn’t sure who would turn out to be her biggest challenge.
Chapter 34
Jessivel awoke to someone knocking on her car window.
“Are you alright?” the male voice asked.
She took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust and to realize her whereabouts. Then she sat up in the car seat and rolled down the window a crack. The cool, damp air swept across her face, forcing her to fully wake up.
“I think so. What time is it?” she asked the same man who had shoved her out of the bar earlier.
“Four o’clock. The bar is closed, and you have to—”
“Four o’clock! I have to go,” she said as she fumbled for her keys.
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”
“I’m fine.”
Jessivel backed out of the parking space and drove as fast as she dared toward her home, a mile away. When she arrived, three police cars blocked her from parking in her assigned spot at her building. She pulled into a guest spot and hobbled toward the building, nursing her injured ankle. A police officer stopped her at the door.
“May I have your name?” he asked her.
“Jessivel Salter. What’s wrong? What are you doing here?”
“Let’s go into your apartment where we can talk.”
Jessivel followed the officer to her apartment—her ankle hurting worse with each step—thinking the worst of what could have happened to Kayla. Inside were two other male police officers, two women, and Kayla, all seated in the living room.
“Kayla…are you okay?” Jessivel asked as she rushed to her daughter. “What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t know what to do,” Kayla said through tears.
One of the women rose and said, “Kayla, let’s you and I go into your bedroom and let the adults talk for a while.”
Once Kayla was out of sight, Jessivel demanded to know what was going on.
“Miss Salter, your daughter called us when she woke up to an empty apartment,” one of the officers said. He looked her up and down before continuing. “She was worried that something had happened to you.”
“I left her a note. I just went out for a bit.”
He glanced down at a pad of paper in his hand. “Your daughter called 9-1-1 at three-o-five.”
“She doesn’t have a phone.”
“She called us from your neighbor’s.”
At a complete loss for words, Jessivel waited for someone to say something more.
“Where were you?” asked the woman who had remained in the room.
“Who are you?”
“I am Hazel Beckworth from DCFS. We were called when the officers found your twelve-year-old daughter here in the middle of the night, scared about what had happened to you. Now, I’ll ask you again, where were you?”
“I went out, just for a little while, but I hurt my ankle, and I sort of fell asleep in my car and…”
“Here’s what’s going to happen Miss Salter. We’ve interviewed your daughter and inspected your home, and now that you’re here and we’ve met you, we don’t believe there is any immediate threat to her safety. But we will give our findings to an internal investigator who will do a much more thorough analysis.”
“For what purpose?”
“To determine if there is likely to be any future threat to the child’s safety.”
“That’s—”
“After all the information is gathered and analyzed, the investigator will write a report and provide a recommendation that will be reviewed by a panel of DCFS supervisors. If they find everything to be in order, the report is filed with the agency, and you will be notified of what further steps, if any, will be taken.” The woman’s rote explanation was one she had obviously spewed many times before.
“Like what steps?” Jessivel asked.
“That depends on the findings.”
“Like what’s the worst that could happen?”
“Your daughter could be removed from your home and placed in foster care.”
The statement hit like a punch to the face.
“I’m not saying that will be the case. You asked what was the worst that could happen.”
The woman and the officers got up to leave.
“Do you have any questions, Miss Salter?”
Jessivel shook her head, wanting most of all for them to leave.
“Good night then.”
The woman who had gone off with Kayla must have been within earshot of the conversation. She emerged from the hallway and left with the others.
Jessivel sank down into the sofa, emotionally spent. After a few minutes, she went to her daughter’s room and peeked inside to see Kayla in bed with her back to her.
“Kayla?”
“What?”
“Are you okay?”
“Mm-hm.”
“I’m sorry this happened. I hurt my ankle and… Anyway, I’m sorry. Whose phone did you use, by the way?” Jessivel asked.
“Mrs. Harding from next door. She told us that one time if we ever needed anything
to just ask.”
“I know.”
“She was real nice about it.”
“That’s good.”
“I called you first, but it went to voicemail.”
Jessivel looked at her phone and saw there were two unopened voicemail messages. “I guess I didn’t hear the phone. Maybe the music…”
“It’s okay, Mom.”
Jessivel quietly closed the door and went to bed herself, mad at the world, but mostly at her father, followed closely by her mother.
“You’ve got to get a place of your own. I can’t keep living like this,” Jessivel told her mother over the phone the next day.
“I can only talk a minute, Jess. I’m busy here. What’s wrong with where you are?”
“Haven’t you saved up enough for an apartment or something?”
“No, have you?”
“If I don’t have a job soon, I’ll be kicked out of here.”
“Then find another job. What’s the problem?”
“You’re no help, you know that? I suppose you want to see Kayla end up in foster care.”
“Of course, I don’t. Are you looking for another job?”
“You know how hard it is to find a barista job near me? Do you know—”
“How hard are you trying, Jess?”
“I thought I’d at least get some sympathy from you.”
“That will come only after you tell me you’ve exhausted all efforts in finding another job.”
“I’ve looked, okay?”
“How hard?”
“Never mind. You know what? If I—”
“You’re acting like a victim, Jessie, and you’re angry. There’s no one more helpless than an angry victim. And you can change both. I have to go. She’s having ladies over for brunch. I’ll talk to you later.”
“You could at least—”
Her mother hung up before Jessivel could finish her sentence.
If she couldn’t rely on her mother, she couldn’t rely on anyone. Except herself, she knew some people would say. Like Dr. Phil. And pain-in-the-ass Paige. And Cassandra from the land of the I’m-glad-I’m-not-in-your-shoes social services office. She could rely on her father and did so her whole life until he died. Maybe Paige did too and was still depending on him with whatever she ended up with after his death, which was probably a bundle.
She loathed her mother’s so-called wise sayings. “There’s no one more helpless than an angry victim.” Right. Easier said than done. That was her own wise saying.
Jessivel stared at the pathetic furnishings in the living room of her apartment—a worn brown sofa that sagged in the middle; two blue side chairs, one with a hideous stain on the seat; a floor lamp from the eighties; and a lopsided coffee table that someone had tried to fix with slices of a wine cork held on with packaging tape on one leg.
She pictured Paige’s living room—a white leather sectional, matching ottoman, crystal lamps on glass-top end tables, fancy artwork on the walls.
She glanced up at the only thing hanging on her wall—a framed print of a bunch of weird-looking people milling around on a pristine lawn under some trees, some with umbrellas, even though it wasn’t raining. One woman with a huge butt held on to a monkey on a leash. She’d seen the same picture hanging in doctors’ offices and other public places her whole life. The original was probably worth millions and hung in some fancy museum she’d never visit. Her cheap print had a tear in the lower right-hand corner that someone had patched with now-yellowed cellophane tape over the monkey’s ass.
Despite her current terrible state of affairs, something gave Jessivel reason to feel a little sunny inside—Doubleday’s the night before. Some of the men she had danced with had been totally fine and seemed like decent guys who knew how to treat a girl. Having been without a man since her boyfriend left, she could still remember the feeling of being held, kissed, and told “I love you, baby” at the most unexpected but welcomed times.
But, damn, she had gone out for a little fun just one time, and it had turned into a disaster. If only her mother wasn’t so tied to her employer, she could have baby-sat for Kayla, and none of this would have happened.
It was time to get dressed for the back-to-back job interviews she’d scheduled, even though she knew they were going to be a waste of time. Even if there were open barista jobs out there, the employers would call Audrey to inquire about her work history, and Jessivel was fairly sure she wouldn’t give her a good referral, thanks to Paige.
She drove to Goodwill Industries. “I wish you had come a few days earlier,” Mr. Vargas told her. “The Daily Grind is near you, and they had a part-time barista opening. It’s been filled now. Barista jobs don’t come up too often, at least not in your area. I see you worked for The Busy Bean in Lincoln Park? Would you consider going that far again?”
“It took me forever to get to work every day. I was hoping for something closer,” she told him.
He told her he would contact her if he heard of anything.
Next was her appointment at the agency Cassandra had told her often placed people with little or no work experience. She filled out a long application and waited to speak with one of their placement advisors.
“Under ‘Skills’ you listed barista. Do you have any other skills?” the woman asked.
“Not really. That’s the only job I’ve ever had.”
“You’ve been trained at the Chicago Barista Academy. That’s excellent. And you were at The Busy Bean, let’s see, three months?”
“Yes.”
“And why did you leave there?”
Jessivel wasn’t prepared for this question. “I, uh, was being harassed by a customer and didn’t handle it very well.”
“Did you quit, or were you fired?”
“I walked away from the incident, and the owner thought I’d walked out on the job, so…”
“I see. Would you be willing to work downtown?”
All that way and where the worst of the coffee snobs are?
“I’d rather not. The commute would be a killer and expensive.”
“I see. Well, if anything comes up, I’ll contact you, but I can tell you that barista positions don’t open near you very often, so you might want to rethink your commute restrictions. I could send you on two interviews right now if you’d consider downtown.”
“I’ll let you know,” she told her.
Jessivel drove home and stewed over what the agency woman had told her. Why should she have to travel two hours a day to get to a stinking job where she’d be treated like shit by people who lived like kings and queens? That was her mother’s life, not hers.
Chapter 35
“My mother was transferred? Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Paige asked the nurse. She had driven to the hospital to discover her mother had been released the day before.
The nurse focused on her computer screen. “It says here that you were notified.”
“I was not notified. Where did you say she is?”
“At Waldon Rehabilitation Center. In Evanston.”
“This is preposterous. No one said anything to me. How did she get there?”
“They have a service that—”
“Give me the address of the place,” Paige said with a tone she soon regretted. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not your fault. But can you imagine how I feel about this?”
“You might want to talk to her primary.”
“Oh, you bet I will.”
Paige called her mother’s doctor while in the car on her way to where her mother now resided. When the woman who answered the phone said the doctor was currently with a patient, that she would give him the message, Paige lost it.
“You get him on the phone now! I don’t care who he’s with. My mother and I both signed a consent form after her surgery that stated no changes to her treatment would be initiated without my approval. Now she’s been transferred without any discussion with me. This is completely unacceptable.”
“Hold, please.”
/> Paige waited on hold for fifteen minutes, her anger rising with each passing minute.
“Miss West?” the doctor said.
“What happened to my mother? She’s no longer at Midwest.”
“I spoke with you on Monday about this. You agreed with my recommendation to transfer her to a rehab facility. You don’t remember our conversation?”
“No, I don’t. Because we never had it.”
“I have it here in my notes. I made the call at 1:15 P.M., on Monday. She was transferred yesterday.”
“Well, it wasn’t me you talked to. What number did you call?”
The doctor read the number to her.
“That’s my mother’s landline. Why would you call that number?”
“It’s the one I have on file for you.”
“That’s ridiculous. I don’t even live there.” She gave him her cell phone number. “Do not call any number but this one from now on. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly. I’m sorry for any—”
“How long will she need residential physical therapy?”
“At least two weeks. We can see how—”
“Thanks. I’ll let you know what I think after I see her.”
Paige hung up without saying goodbye, disappointed in herself for not handling it better with the doctor and incensed with Natalie, who had likely taken the doctor’s call. Still twenty minutes away from the rehab facility, she called her mother’s home phone and forced herself to calm down while the phone rang.
“Hello,” the voice on the other end said.
“Who is this?” Paige asked, not recognizing the high-pitched female voice.
She laughed. “It’s me, stupid.”
“Natalie, why did you answer the phone like that? You sounded like Minnie Mouse.”
“Mom doesn’t have caller ID on this phone, so I don’t know who’s calling. She’s due for pest control, by the way.”
“Natalie…” Paige changed her mind on going down the pest control path. “Mom left the hospital, you know.”
“She did? Well, she’s not here. Is she with you?”
“You were in on the decision to move her to a rehab facility, so…”
“I was?”
“You took the call.”
The Ring Page 18
