I pushed back from the table, trying to escape the words swarming me. “Maybe you were right. Maybe it was Derek.”
His expression, which had been knotted in agitation, tightened briefly then broke free. For the first time since I entered the room, he seemed to actually see me. “Maybe,” he said. He sighed deeply. “Maybe.”
And with that small grace, everything in me wanted to be spoken, to be shared with my friend: Evangeline’s arrival with filthy, torn hands; her concocted backstory; her surreptitious departures and late returns; her raiding of the pantry. And the small details that turned her real: battles waged for more light in the evening, jam licked from wrists, and only last night a lullaby sung to a dog behind the closed door of her room. Most of all, I wanted to tell him of her pregnancy, to rid myself of some of its weight.
I jolted to a stand, overwhelmed and worried that I would say too much, would reveal secrets not mine to share.
“What are you going to do, Isaac?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m here to help. The state can help too. There’s paperwork we need to file with DSHS. You know that. They’ll be able to place her in a good home.”
“No!” I said, surprised at my fierceness. “She has a home with me.”
He gave me a moment, then said quietly, “You’re a good soul, Isaac. She needs a place, and you’ve always had a big heart for strays. But give it some thought, all right? As for the forms, I’m with you. I’d skip them in a heartbeat, but we got our asses handed to us last time we tried that. Remember? With the Salconi kid? There are a lot of people to consider here, including yourself. We can’t know what she’s really after.”
“She’s after a home, and I have one,” I said. “I have more of a home than I need.”
Peter rose, placed his hands on my shoulders. “Okay. Let’s talk about this in a few days. For now, just . . . I don’t know, keep an eye out, will you? Who knows what we’re dealing with here.”
20
Walking home after school, Evangeline thought the day had gone as well as could be expected. Sure, it’d been awkward as hell, but a couple girls had joined her at lunch, and one in particular had made her laugh, made her believe she might find her place.
She’d just taken her first bite of salad when a girl with wavy black hair swung up, wielding thick curves with an unselfconscious pride. She plopped down. “I’m Natalia,” she said, offloading her plate, shoving the tray aside.
“Evangeline.”
Natalia stopped fussing, studied her. “That’s a good name. Evangeline. I like it.”
This pleased Evangeline more than seemed reasonable. She was about to ask Natalia something stupid like what grade she was in when Natalia twisted around, called to two girls at another table. “MJ! MJ! Over here.” Turning back, she said, “Masie and Jillian. Masie’s the little one. Everyone just calls them MJ.”
As the girls gathered their belongings, Natalia started in complaining about the chunks of fat in the pulled pork. She stopped in midsentence, leaned over abruptly, and whispered, “See that teacher over there, the lunch monitor? She still wears pantyhose. That’s why she’s such a bitch.” Evangeline must have looked confused, because Natalia shrugged. “It’s a circulation thing.”
So yeah, it had been an okay day. Evangeline imagined telling Isaac about Natalia. Maybe she would hang around the kitchen, offer to help with dinner. Remembering the chicken breasts thawing in the fridge this morning, she stopped, tried to picture a particular magazine page, attempting to read it in her mind. Satisfied, she flipped around and headed in a new direction.
* * *
—
FORTY MINUTES LATER, her jacket pockets were loaded with a small jar of capers, a lemon, and a wedge of Parmesan cheese. It was easy lifting small items like that. She would have been home by then, but the first store didn’t have capers, and she’d had to go to one farther away.
She had taught herself to cook the previous spring. Nothing fancy. Mostly overly spiced pastas and soups. Her most successful production was chicken piccata, a recipe she’d torn from a waiting-room magazine. Her mother had taken a bite and looked up, surprised. “Wow, this is really good.”
Maybe it was guilt, but during those early months in Port Furlong, Viv was nicer to Evangeline than she’d been in years, always thanking her for the simplest of meals and insisting on cleaning up though clearly exhausted. There were even moments when Evangeline felt a tenderness toward her mother. Viv would be soaking her feet in a plastic dishpan or falling asleep five minutes into her favorite sitcom, and Evangeline would think about offering to massage her tight neck. She never did, but it filled her heart with gladness that she half wanted to.
Naturally, that period was short-lived. By May, Viv had met Gus, a supposed born-again construction worker who came into the deli every afternoon for a roast beef sandwich and a bout of sexually charged flirtation. At least that’s the way her mother told the story, giggling like she was in middle school when she described the way Gus ran his tongue over his lips after each bite of the sandwiched meat. Evangeline wanted to flee, but she didn’t, because that would mean she had actually heard her mother say these things, and she was trying to convince herself she hadn’t.
By June, Evangeline was back on the pullout sofa in the living room and she could do nothing right. As best she could tell, Gus’s appeal lay exclusively in his disgustingness. With his close-set eyes, black hair sprouting from nostrils and ears, and breath that smelled like a limp boiled hot dog, her mother had little worry that Evangeline would be tempted to steal him away.
Unfortunately, that didn’t stop Gus from tracking Evangeline’s every move, doing so with the very lasciviousness Viv had moved to Port Furlong to escape. Evangeline took to wearing baggy sweats and not showering. Even then, her mother accused her of wearing “sleepwear” and developing an “earthy scent” to subconsciously seduce the lowlife.
At dinner one night, Evangeline reached across the table to score one of the soft rolls her mom had brought home from work, and her tee rode up and showed a bit of midriff. She could feel the cool air on her skin, but it was too late. Gus noticed that bare skin, and her mother noticed him noticing, and that started her off. She slapped Evangeline’s hand, knocking the roll into the oily salad, and told her she was getting fat. Not only that, she was slothful and unhygienic and ignorant, and it was high time she got off that sloppy ass of hers and did something to help out.
“You can’t keep mooching off us forever,” Viv said. “I was only fourteen—”
“—when I got kicked out,” Evangeline said, finishing the familiar refrain.
“That’s right, missy. Fourteen. You know what that—”
“—was like? I’ll tell you what it was like.”
“You want me to slap you, is that what you want?”
Evangeline said, “Not particularly,” and her mother lunged across the overdressed salad, getting oil all over her last clean work shirt, and slapped Evangeline hard enough that if someone walked in right then, they’d know exactly what had happened, not only by the bright red splotch on Evangeline’s cheek but by the startled, angry tears in her eyes.