Twelve
Alix Turner
During her fifteen-minute morning break Alix lit up a cigarette in the alley behind the café. Closing her eyes, she took her first drag. She held the smoke in her lungs an extra-long moment, savoring the instant sense of relief before exhaling. When she opened her eyes again, she could imagine—all too clearly—her husband’s pained look of disappointment.
Good boy that he was, Jordan Turner had never smoked. He couldn’t begin to understand how difficult it was to quit. What he understood even less was why Alix had started again after four years of not smoking.
She wanted to quit. Except that she couldn’t seem to do it, although they both agreed that she needed to be one hundred percent free of nicotine before she got pregnant.
A baby.
Tension skittered down her spine. Alix hoped to get pregnant soon and Jordan wanted that, too. They’d moved into his grandma Turner’s house on Star Lake and it was ideal, certainly for her, but perhaps even more for him. So many of his childhood memories were associated with the lake house. Only last night Jordan had said it was the perfect place to start their family. Which, of course, she’d been saying all along....
It’d be nice, Alix mused, really nice—until her gaze fell on the cigarette. In a fit of frustration and anger she tossed it on the asphalt and crushed it with the toe of her work shoe. And then she immediately regretted wasting most of a cigarette.
Besides being a nasty habit that made her hair smell and stained her fingers, it was an expensive one. At least she was down to a maximum of five cigarettes a day—less than two packs a week. The daily total varied, depending on the sort of day she’d had, but she never exceeded five. That was her limit, and she was proud of her discipline, proud she’d whittled the number down from twice that many just a few months ago. She knew it wasn’t sufficient. But still...
Jordan had been kind enough not to say anything about the cost, but it had to be on his mind. It bothered Alix, too. But she recognized that her inability to give up cigarettes was about more than the addiction. As much as she wanted Jordan’s baby, she was afraid.
She didn’t think of herself as a fearful person. A few years back she’d stood up to an armed drug dealer without even flinching. But back then she didn’t much care if she lived or died.
The truth was, becoming a mother terrified her. She’d tried to describe her fears to Jordan. He was better at listening these days, but after only a few words she realized her feelings on this subject were simply beyond his experience.
His family had nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with hers.
Jordan’s father was a pastor; Jordan was following in his footsteps and would one day have his own church.
Jordan’s parents were good people—loving, compassionate, down to earth. His mom was the Brady Bunch kind of mother who baked cookies and still owned an ironing board.
Parents like hers didn’t fall within Jordan’s frame of reference. He couldn’t possibly comprehend what it was to hide in a closet to drown out the noise of her parents’ drunken brawls. He knew things like that happened because he’d worked with troubled teens in the past. But he knew it in a theoretical, indirect way. It wasn’t part of him, a memory always hovering, always there.
Okay, so motherhood was scary. Alix admitted it and suspected the cigarettes were an avoidance technique. If she smoked, she could put off dealing with her doubts. She could defer finding out whether she was capable of being a mother. After all, crying babies upset her. She thought messy diapers were disgusting. As for breast-feeding an infant, which Jordan seemed to think came naturally to women, the idea filled her with trepidation. Other women might have strong maternal instincts, but not Alix. And after her mother’s example, who could blame her?
“Alix.”
Becky Major, the middle-aged prep cook, stuck her head out the door.
“Winter’s looking for you.” Winter Adams was the woman who owned the French Café.
“Hey, I’ve got another ten minutes.” Alix intended to take her full allotment of time. After a week of dismal rain, the sun was shining and she wanted to enjoy it as long as she could.
“Lydia’s here, too. She’d like to talk to you.”
Alix didn’t hesitate. She’d return to her motherhood worries later. A visit with Lydia was always a treat. On her way through the kitchen Alix poured herself a cup of coffee. If she couldn’t have nicotine, she’d settle for caffeine.
Lydia was waiting for her at the counter with a cup of her own. “Have you got a few minutes?”
Alix noticed her friend’s anxious look. “Of course. What do you need? Shall we go outside?” she asked, and Lydia nodded. They’d have more privacy there.
The sidewalk tables were set up with the umbrellas open and Alix chose a shady one close to the café. Lydia sat across from her.
“I hope you don’t mind me interrupting your morning.”
“Not at all,” Alix assured her. Actually, she was grateful for a reprieve from her scattered thoughts.
“It’s about Casey.”
“Who?” As soon as Alix asked the question, she remembered. “Oh, yeah. The foster kid.”
“Right.” Lydia held her coffee mug with both hands, resting them on the table.
“Wasn’t Casey only supposed to be with you for a week?” She knew that because of a comment Margaret had made during last week’s class.
“She was.” Lydia sighed. “Now it might be longer.”
Alix didn’t ask her why. Lydia would explain if she wanted to. But Alix didn’t have any difficulty figuring out that the social worker hadn’t found another home for Casey. Alix wasn’t surprised, either; she’d been shuffled around enough to know what that was like.
“So, how’s it going with Casey?” she asked, although she had a fairly clear idea.
“About all I can say is that we’ve tolerated one another. When Casey comes home from day camp, she goes straight to her room and closes the door.” Lydia paused. “It’s the craziest thing...”
“What?”
“She hoards stuff.”
“Like what?”
Lydia looked mildly embarrassed. “Toilet paper. I came across six rolls in her bedroom. Last Monday I got groceries and then later couldn’t find the crackers. They were in Casey’s room, hidden under the bed. The end of the box was sticking out and when I knelt down to pick it up, I found a box of cereal, some cookies and the toilet paper. When I asked her about it, she said she might need them.”
“Did you take the stuff away from her?” Alix asked.
Lydia shook her head. “I decided that if she felt more secure keeping those things in her room, it was okay with me.”
Alix suspected there’d been a time and a place when necessities like crackers, cereal and toilet paper had been withheld from Casey. During her years in foster care, Alix had developed some idiosyncrasies of her own.
“Dinners are the worst,” Lydia went on to say.
“How do you mean?”
Lydia’s expression was strained. “At least she eats, but she barely talks. I’ve done everything I can to draw her out. Nothing I say or do seems to reach her. From the looks she gives me, it’s as if she resents my showing any interest in her. Cody’s been great lately and Brad, too, but there just doesn’t seem to be any way to connect with her.”
Alix had been in enough foster homes to recognize the behavior. “She knows she’s going to be leaving soon, so she’s trying not to care about any of you.”
“But why? Brad and I have bent over backward to make her feel welcome.”
This was so hard for others to understand. “Listen,” Alix said, leaning toward her friend. “Let me put it like this. You’ve got a piece of tape and you stick it to something and it stays put. Okay?”
Lydia blinked. “Okay. Yes.”
“Peel it off and stick it again and what happens?”
“It still sticks,” she answered.
“Right. But what happens when you peel it away for the third or fourth time?”
Lydia shrugged. “Most of the stickiness is gone.”
“Well, it’s the same with kids. Casey’s protecting whatever stickiness she has left for the family who’ll keep her and care for her and love her. She can’t risk her heart on a family that’ll be part of her life for a couple of weeks.”
Lydia shook her head again as if she wanted to argue. “Brad and I do care about her.”
“Sure you do.” Alix didn’t mean to sound flippant or cynical but she couldn’t help it. “You care about her now. Casey knows that six months down the road you’ll have trouble remembering her name, especially if you take in other foster kids in emergency situations.”
“Oh.” Lydia appeared to mull that over. “Would it be better if we didn’t care?”
“No. Give her all the attention and love you can. It’ll fill her up. And that’s a good thing, especially when it comes time for her to change homes.”
Looking down, Lydia clasped and unclasped her hands. “She’s been with us for nine days now.”
“It seems longer than that, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah.” Lydia grinned. “She’s already tried to run away once.”
“Did she make it obvious?”
Her question surprised Lydia, who nodded.
“Typical.” Alix had tried it more than once herself. If Casey had really wanted to slip away unnoticed she would’ve managed to do so. It was a ploy to see if Lydia and Brad would stop her.
“What do you know about her family background?”
“Next to nothing,” Lydia told her. “Evelyn didn’t think it was necessary to tell us much, seeing that Casey was supposed to be with us for such a short while.”
“So now what?”
“Evelyn phoned yesterday afternoon and asked if there was any way Brad and I could keep Casey for another couple of weeks—until her classes are finished. Apparently the state will have to place her in a home in a different school district. Evelyn said there’s a real shortage of foster homes this summer.”
“What are you going to do?” Alix asked without emotion.
“I talked to Brad and Cody, and the three of us decided we’d be okay with having Casey stay longer. Only...only we don’t believe she wants to stay with us.”
“She does,” Alix told her confidently. “The problem is, she’s been moved around so much she’s afraid to let anyone know what she wants for fear it’ll be taken away from her.”
Lydia’s frown showed her dismay. “You mean...love? Security?”
“Yes...and even toilet paper,” Alix said with a small laugh.
This was a whole different world to her friend. Lydia couldn’t understand the mind of a child like Casey, not the way Alix did. Alix, too, had been a case number, a name on a file. Evelyn Boyle did her best; she was a good woman with a huge heart but she carried a heavy load.
“You talked about the tape and stickiness,” Lydia reminded her.
“Yes.”
“How can I give Casey some of her glue back?”
Good question. Alix leaned forward, resting an elbow on the table, and thought about it, recalling that time in her own life. When she was in the eighth grade, she’d lived in three different foster homes and attended three different schools. It’d been a bad year for her, and she suspected that once Casey left Lydia and Brad’s, her year would follow the same downward spiral.
“Does Casey have any family? A grandmother? Aunt? Cousins? Does—” She stopped when Lydia started to nod.
“She mentioned a brother,” she said eagerly, then paused. “Actually, I think it was Evelyn who told me that Casey has an older brother. Apparently he’s at the Kent Juvenile Facility.”
Alix had briefly been incarcerated there herself. Kent was a south Seattle community with the largest juvenile facility in the area, possibly the state.
“It would help if you could arrange for Casey to visit her brother.”
“But how?” Lydia sounded perplexed.
“Get Evelyn involved. I can guarantee that Casey will feel a whole lot better if she can spend even a small amount of time with him.”
Alix had loved her brother, too. She didn’t talk about Tom and very few people knew about him. Tom’s death had been the turning point in Alix’s life. Up until then, she’d experimented with drugs, hung out with losers and generally got herself into trouble.
Then Tom had been found dead. He’d choked to death on his own vomit after shooting up heroin. As long as she lived, Alix would never forget the day she’d learned that the only person who’d ever truly loved her was gone. Forever. She’d wanted to die herself.
Giving herself a mental shake, Alix returned her attention to Lydia.
“I’ll call Evelyn as soon as I get back to the store,” Lydia said. “I appreciate the advice.”
“I’m glad I could help.”
“Anything else you can suggest?”
“Well...you’re going to need lots of patience.”
“You mean more than Brad and I have already given her?” Lydia asked wryly.
Remembering her own youth, Alix nodded. “Lots more.”
“I was afraid of that.” Lydia laughed a little.
Alix laughed, too. She wondered whether Lydia’s sister had any opinions on this latest development—and was sure she did. “What does Margaret have to say about the situation with Casey?”
“You don’t want to hear.” Lydia’s smile wavered and she shook her head. “Margaret means well. It’s just that she’s so used to looking after me. Even now Margaret’s always positive that she knows best.”
Alix glanced at her watch and realized her break had ended five minutes earlier. She’d better find out why Winter had asked to see her.
“I need to get back to work,” she said and stood, collecting their empty cups.
“Thanks again,” Lydia murmured.
“Let me know if there’s anything else I can do. Or if you ever need to talk,” Alix said, and she meant it.