Little Mercies, Page 3

  This bus was three times as big as the motel room they left behind and smelled, Jenny realized happily, breathing in deeply, like nothing. Jenny, setting her book bag and her father’s duffel bag in the aisle, slid into one of the high-backed seats that was covered in peacock-blue fabric and looked out the window. Her father was still outside talking to the lady with the tattooed arm, so she turned her attention to her immediate surroundings and stepped out into the aisle that intersected the two halves of the bus.

  Jenny, surprised that so many people had somewhere to go at midnight on a Monday, surveyed the passengers already seated on the bus: a woman with skin the color of cinnamon and a hopeful smile, a sad-eyed woman with four children, three of which needed a tissue, a man in a black suit and red tie already slumped in sleep. And to her dismay, the frowning old woman in the red-and-pink sundress. Before the woman could notice her, Jenny, clutching the book bag and duffel, dashed to the rear of the bus and plunked into the last seat on the right and waited for her father. From behind the high-backed seat, Jenny watched as the final cluster of passengers boarded the bus. There was a dazed-looking grandmotherly type with sugar-spun white hair, a blissfully happy-looking young man holding the hand of a pretty girl wearing jeans and a diaphanous bridal veil, and a stooped elderly man with thick glasses and an intricately carved wooden cane. Jenny pressed her nose against the cool, tinted window to see if her father was still talking to the tattoo lady. She was still there, leaning against the brick building, illuminated beneath the parking lot lights, but there was no sign of her father.

  The bus was steadily filling with people and, despite her reluctance, Jenny was beginning to feel excited about the trip. The prospect of her father having a steady, well-paying job meant that there would be no more mortifying trips to the food pantry, no more of the teacher’s helper who scanned her lunch ticket at school and slipped bags of Goldfish Crackers and baggies of carrot sticks into her locker each day. No more collecting and rationing foodstuff for when her father was having one of his bad spells.

  As the passengers embarked, Jenny braced herself for being kicked out of her seat, relegated to sitting next to the frowning woman or the old woman with hair so white that Jenny had to wonder what had frightened her so badly that it would turn her hair that color. To her surprise, no one tried to rouse her from her seat and she began to relax a bit.

  “Good evening, folks,” the driver said into the loudspeaker, his voice booming throughout the bus. “Please find your seats and we’ll be on our way.” Jenny squirmed in her seat and considered getting off the bus to go and find her father, who was probably in the bathroom or, more likely, talking to another woman. Jenny arranged her book bag and her father’s duffel carefully across the blue plush seats so as to cause no question that these seats were taken. As she looked out the window she suddenly caught a glimpse of her father, head down, walking quickly around the corner of the bus station and out of sight. Jenny sighed. She had no idea what her father was up to, but it was becoming very clear that they were not going anywhere today. With a huff that blew the bangs off her forehead, Jenny made the decision to get off the bus and rejoin her father.

  Jenny stood and hooked her book bag around her shoulder and was halfway bent over to retrieve the duffel when out of the corner of her eye she saw a tall, weedy, ponytailed man turn the corner just behind her father. She straightened and watched in disbelief as her father emerged from behind the other side of the bus station casting furtive glances over his shoulder. Two more men appeared and her father stopped short, hands up in placation as they circled around him, fingers poking at his chest. Jenny’s first instinct was to rush off the bus and to her father’s side but found that she couldn’t move, could barely breathe. The meanest looking of the men, barrel-chested and shaped like a fire hydrant, grabbed her father’s face between his thick fingers, causing his lips to pucker as if preparing for a kiss.

  Just as the bus rumbled to life, the hum of its engine vibrating in her ears, Jenny tried to call out, “Wait,” but words stuck drily in the back of her throat. The bus lurched forward and, off balance, Jenny fell back into her seat just as sirens filled the air. Immediately she slouched low in her seat. Her father hated the police and didn’t hesitate to share his distrust with Jenny. “See the cops coming,” he would say, “go the other direction.”

  “Why?” Jenny would probe.

  Her father would just shake his head. “Best they don’t find you. You don’t want to end up in foster care again, do you?”

  Jenny most definitely did not want to be sent off to a foster family again. Not that it had anything to do with her father. Her stint in foster care was just before she came to live with her father. No, that was her mother’s doing. And the man who stole her mother away from her. Foster care was an experience that she didn’t want to relive, though she was only four at the time and had only scant recollections. Snapshots of half-formed memories that she tried to blink away.

  Through the rear window, she saw her father lifted roughly to his feet by a police officer. She could see that he was speaking earnestly to the officer, bobbing his head frantically toward the departing bus. She should holler out to the bus driver to stop. That she needed to get off. Instead, Jenny stayed silent, turned her head the other way, just like her father told her to when it came to the police, and hunkered down in her seat, last row, right side. She pulled her book bag onto her lap, leaned forward and pressed her cheek into the seat in front of her, now damp with her tears, and watched as the buildings, the houses, the streets of Benton sped past.

  Chapter 5

  I awake with a start. The room is too bright, the light streaming across my face much too warm for six in the morning, even though it’s the middle of July and the hottest summer on record in more than a decade. “Adam,” I say, looking over at my husband who, jaw slack in sleep, is snoring. I used to, when I had time, in those brief moments when the children were asleep, when work could wait, watch my husband while he slept. The way his brown hair curled around his ears, the dark shadow that magically appeared on his chin during the night. The way, through the years, his face became fuller, more creased, like a love letter folded over and over and opened to be read and reread.

  “Adam,” I say, leaping from the bed. “It’s almost eight o’clock! Get up!” He pops up, eyes wide.

  “Jesus, I’ve got practice in a half an hour!” He is already heading toward the bathroom. “Did you set the alarm?”

  “I thought I set it!” I say, trying to recall.

  “Remember you’re dropping Avery off at the sitter’s and I’ll take Leah and Lucas with me to practice,” Adam says as my cell phone begins to ring. I grab it from my bedside table. Checking the display, I see an unfamiliar number and I ignore it.

  “Yeah, okay.” I scramble from the bed. The night before is a haze. All I remember is falling into bed exhausted. “I’ve got a meeting in ten minutes. I can’t be late again.” But I’m talking to the closed bathroom door, my voice drowned out by the sound of the shower. I rush to the extra bathroom that the kids use and strip off the t-shirt that is still damp with last night’s heat. I step beneath the showerhead, letting the cold spray envelope my body. I don’t bother to wash my hair but run the bar of soap across my skin, scrubbing the salt of my sweat away. I rinse quickly, avoid looking at my stomach, still slack from giving birth eleven months earlier, and wrap a towel around myself and briefly mourn the loss of my once fit body, uninterrupted sleep, time alone with my husband and evenings out with my friends. “Leah, Lucas, it’s time to get up!” I holler as I make my way back to my bedroom.

  Adam is sitting on the bed, pulling on his socks. “The kids are up already. I sent them down to grab something to eat before we leave.”

  “Avery?” I ask, pulling on the first outfit I see in my closet as I step into a pair of sandals.

  “Leah changed her diaper and got her dressed
. She’s in her crib. I’ll bring her down,” he says, rising from the bed and then hurrying from the room.

  “Thanks,” I say and run a hand through my cropped hair, once again glad that I keep it short. I finish dressing as my cell phone sitting in its charger on the bedside table begins to vibrate. “Damn,” I murmur, and check the display. It’s my mother. I meant to call her back last night, but between the baseball game and feeding and bathing the kids, I had forgotten. Again.

  I think of the morning after my father had died. My mother rose early, as she normally did, and moved quietly from the bedroom to the kitchen, trying not to awaken me and my brothers ensconced in our childhood bedrooms. She didn’t hear me as I followed behind her, silently observing. I watched as she absentmindedly opened the freezer stuffed full of all the things that my father loved best, the foods that he would never be able to eat again. My mother blinked back tears and pulled out the date-nut bread, double wrapped in aluminum foil, the Danish meatballs in Tupperware, and a small container of rice and salmon casserole, and set them on the kitchen counter. Lastly, she pulled out the unopened pint-size container of banana-flavored ice cream dotted with chocolate chunks and walnuts that was my father’s favorite.

  “Mom,” I said, startling her, “what are you doing?”

  I looked at the open freezer. “Mom?” I said again, a lilt of fear creeping into my voice. “What’s going on?” I heard her stomach rumble in protest, but still she ate, moving on to a Ziplock bag filled with peanut butter crisscross cookies. “Mom!” I shouted, rousing Craig and Danny who by the time they ran down the stairs found me trying to wrestle the plastic bag from my mother, and her dog, Dolly, lapping up the crumbs that tumbled to the floor because of the tussle. We took my mother to the doctor, watched her carefully, encouraged her to get a part-time job, to volunteer. But life goes on. Our own lives resumed, my brothers going back to their own towns and families, me going back to work and my family. She seems better, but I know she is still so lonely and once again I utter a silent vow to spend more time with her.

  I ignore the buzz but grab the phone and rush down the stairs, nearly tripping on the pile of folded laundry I had set there the night before to be put away. In the kitchen the TV is blaring, the phone is ringing and the kids are bickering over who gets the last Pop-Tart and who has to have a granola bar with raisins. In exasperation, Adam breaks both the Pop-Tart and the granola bar in halves and gives one each to the Leah and Lucas, who grumble anyway.

  “Morning,” I say, ignoring the phone and distractedly tucking my blouse into my skirt. Avery is in her high chair, her eyes still heavy with sleep. Leah has dressed her in one of her Sunday dresses and shoved tennis shoes on her feet. She looks beautiful. I bend over and lay a kiss on the top of her head and do the same to Leah and Lucas. “Thanks for helping out this morning, I gotta go,” I say, and then stop short. “Damn,” Lucas looks at me with reproach. “Sorry. Darn,” I amend. “I left my bag upstairs.”

  I turn on my heel and hurry out of the kitchen. “Ellen,” Adam calls after me, “I’ve got a game in Cherokee tonight, you’re going to pick up Avery after work, too, right?” Adam’s muffled words continue to follow me to the second floor but are blanketed by the buzz of my phone.

  “Okay,” I yell from the stairs. Maybe it’s my mother again, or maybe Caren, my supervisor, wondering where I am. We have a staff meeting every Tuesday at eight and once again I’m running late. Not recognizing the number, I press the phone to my ear. “Hello,” I say breathlessly. Nothing. No one is there. I shake my head in frustration and grab my bag teeming with notes and case files.

  I skitter down the steps, weighed down by my bag, and fling open the front door meeting Adam on his way back in the house.

  “Bye, guys!” I shout, blowing kisses in the direction of the kitchen. I am immediately met by the day’s heat; already it must be eighty degrees. As I open the van door my phone rings again and I fumble for it in the depths of my purse. Tumbling from my sweaty fingers to the driveway the phone bounces beneath the car. “Dammit,” I mutter, and try to tuck my skirt tightly around my knees as I lower myself to the ground. The ringing stops as I snake my hand beneath the van’s carriage, but the phone is not quite within my reach. Sharp pebbles bite into my knees as I try to angle my way closer. Again my phone rings. I slip off my sandal and, using the heel as a hook, I snag the phone, pulling it within my reach and it falls silent. Sweat has soaked through my blouse and my skirt is dusty and wrinkled. I glance at my watch before getting up. I’m late as it is. The meeting has already started and I will be lucky to get there before it even adjourns. No time to change my clothes. I slide into the driver’s seat and the heat seeps through the fabric of my skirt.

  Sweetly, Adam has started the van for me and lukewarm air from the air conditioner strikes ineffectually at my face. From the front steps Adam is waving. I catch snippets of what he is saying, practice, day care, kids. I wave back and give him a thumbs-up as my phone trills once again. “Hello,” I say breathlessly into the receiver as I brush my sweaty bangs from my forehead.

  The voice on the other end is young and frantic sounding, unintelligible. “Slow down,” I urge as I put the van into Reverse. “I can’t understand you.” I back out of my driveway and head toward the office.

  I listen for a moment finally realizing that it’s Kylie, a seven-year-old client of mine. “Where are they now?” There is no answer. Just heavy, frantic breaths. “Where are you? Are you safe?” I ask. In the bathroom, I don’t know, she answers uncertainly, more of a whimper actually, and a nugget of fear settles in my chest. Across the phone line I hear a heavy thud. “I’m calling the police and I’ll be right over. I promise,” I say, but the line is already dead. I stop the van in the middle of the road to dial 911 and I’m vaguely aware of cars honking at me from behind. I give the emergency operator the address, tell her who I am and what little I know about the situation. Cool air is finally puffing through the vents, but I barely notice it as I wrench the steering wheel to the right and pull into the nearest driveway so I can turn around.

  Chapter 6

  Jenny gradually awoke to the not so unpleasant feeling of being gently swayed back and forth. Disoriented, her mouth sticky and dry, she sat up in her seat, stretched and looked around. With dread she realized that she was not in the musty-smelling hotel with her father snoring loudly in the bed across from her, but all by herself on a bus traveling through the countryside.

  A few new passengers must have boarded while she was sleeping. In the seat across the aisle was a scraggly man wearing a camouflage jacket, eyes closed, headphones covering his ears; in front of her and to the right was a plump man wearing khaki pants and a striped button-down shirt. The bride and groom had gotten off the bus somewhere along the way as had the businessman. Remaining were the crabby old woman and the lady with the white hair.

  Jenny looked out the window where fields painted with gold and green rolled past. She had no idea how much time had gone by, though the sun had risen, and had no inkling as to where she was. A spasm of anxiety filled her chest and tears bunched in the corners of her eyes. The man in the khakis glanced back at her, a look of concern crinkling his friendly face. Jenny bowed her head and she began rummaging through her book bag until she found the bottle of water she had tossed in when she packed her few belongings. The quickest way to find your way into foster care, Jenny knew, was to gain the attention of some well-meaning adult. She blinked back her tears, twisted the lid and tilted the plastic bottle so that the warm water filled her mouth. After replacing the lid and returning it to her bag, Jenny turned her attention to her father’s duffel bag, which lay on the floor beneath her feet, and wondered what had happened to him. Remembering the wail of the sirens and the policeman yanking her father to his feet, she figured he was in a jail cell back in Benton. Jenny realized she had abandoned him by remaining on the bus, too scared to move. Jenny’s face reddene
d in shame and she felt the weight of her father’s cell phone in her pocket.

  She could call the Benton police department and tell them who she was and what she had seen, that it was the three men who had attacked her father. But what would that mean for her? Maybe it would be best if at the next bus station she just hopped on a bus back to Benton. Then she could talk to the police in person, or maybe by then the whole misunderstanding would have been worked out. Jenny had the feeling it wasn’t going to be that simple.

  She could call her father’s former friend-girl. Connie would know what to do. But what could she possibly say to her? Connie and her dad hadn’t parted on the best of terms. Her father wasn’t mean. He got grouchy once in a while when he got one of his headaches or when his hands started to shake, but he always went right to bed or out for a little while and then he would wake up or come back and be just fine. But Jenny knew that something wasn’t quite right about her father. He couldn’t keep a job; they never stayed in one place for more than a few months, sleeping on couches and floors of friends, moving in and out of run-down apartments and hotels. Plus he had so many friend-girls that sometimes he would confuse their names.

  Even if she could explain to Connie what she had seen, what if her father went to jail for a long time? Then what would happen to her? Why would Connie care? Back to Benton? Back to another foster family. Maybe back to the same foster family she was with when she was little, before she got to live with her father all the time. Never.

  She tried to think of who else she could call. Her mother? No. She didn’t know where she was, hadn’t heard a peep from her since she ran away with Jimmy. When she tried to bring up the topic of her mother with her father, his lips would press into a thin tight line and he would pull Jenny close to him. “You don’t want to think about that now. You’re safe. No one will hurt you ever again. I promise.” Jenny thought about telling him that she wasn’t ever really afraid of her mother. Her mother’s boyfriend, yes. And even he wasn’t always such a bad guy, but when he was mean he was really mean. Besides, she wanted to tell him, there were many kinds of hurt. There was, of course, the pain of being beaten, but there was also the ache that stretched itself across your belly when you realized that your mother was never coming back. Jenny also wanted to tell her father, but wasn’t quite sure how to put it into words, that the very worst kind of hurt was the kind that wasn’t there yet, but you knew was slowly creeping toward you.